Jeffrey Thomas

- Jeffrey Thomas

It’s our pop culture, our technological environment. We’re living in a movie, and our lives need a soundtrack.

When not talking on our cell phones, we walk down the street with music pumped into our ears, so that our every step has a rhythm, ala John Travolta in the opening of ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ The first thing we do when we get home from work is turn on the TV, or the radio, or put a CD on. We play soothing soundscapes of trickling brooks, falling rain, pounding surfs to fall blissfully asleep to. When working in the office, we listen to the Muzak. When working at factory machines, we run our favorite songs through our heads. And the imp of the perverse can even play a song we absolutely despise over and over in our heads, for a day or longer.

How did our ancestors get through their lives before the advent of this technology, that can record the sounds we make – captured in a moment in time – and play them back to us? Well, I’m sure they thumped the side of a fallen tree like bongos, hummed to themselves while they flayed their mammoths. We have to announce ourselves to the universe. We have to hear ourselves constantly. It’s just part of being the creative, narcissistic, noisy entities that we are.

So it’s only natural that if we’re writers, we want to write to a soundtrack. As I say, it’s all about being a generation nursed at the twin nipples of movies and TV. I’m sure there are those writers who best summon the muse in silence, just as there is the occasional movie that dares go without a musical soundtrack. But I suspect most writers are like me, and prefer working with some music in the background. What that music is, though…well, the possibilities are wide open. It all depends on various factors. Your individual taste in music, naturally. (And that in itself depends on your age, your region to some extent, your personality, your upbringing, and so on.) Then there is the kind of story you’re writing. Sure, a movie soundtrack can make some unexpected choices. You can hear ‘Singing in the Rain’ while Alex and his droogs wreak havoc in ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ or watch Mr. White sever an ear to ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ in ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ but I suspect that when perusing his/her CD collection, a writer is going to select music that complements the work at hand most appropriately.

Let’s talk about me. Just for an example. Just for shits and giggles. Just because this is my day to blog and just because I like talking about me. Anyway, what do I listen to when employing my craft? What gets me in the mood, when I’m ready to get down to it? Well, my love life is none of your business – let’s stick to the topic of writing here, if you please. But yes, yes, we like to accompany THAT to music, too. (And I bet you listen to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ you sick freak.)

Where was I before you so rudely interrupted me? Oh yes, what do I listen to when writing. Well, it doesn’t HAVE to match up precisely – in tone and mood, in ambience and atmosphere, in texture and flavor – with what’s on my computer screen. For instance, as I write this essay I’m listening to Fiona Apple’s brilliant new CD, ‘Extraordinary Machine,’ and that’s simply because I bought it yesterday and because it’s extraordinary. But often I do choose a certain CD because I want the art of that performer to urge my own art to greater heights. I guess it’s almost a collaboration of sorts.

I don’t write kickass Bubba vs. the Undead kind of stories, so I don’t listen to kickass raucous music like AC/DC while I write. Or ever. Not that I don’t like loud, fast, energetic. Heavy metal’s just not my cup of Budweiser, dude. Pass me the Absinthe. Not being a snob; hey, there’s a book and a radio station for everybody here. Like I say, I do love charged music, but a lot of times I listen to that sort of thing outside of my writing. (My favorite performer, and no one else comes close for me, is Elvis Costello, and I never listen to him while I’m writing because I don’t want to do anything else but savor every moment of his stuff while I listen to it. I’d be too intimidated by his writing to do any writing of my own!) I work best with something a little less obtrusive. It can have vocals. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ melancholy and lovely ‘The Boatman’s Call’ works nicely for a wide range of writing experiences, for me. Poe’s ‘Haunted’ complements her brother Mark Danielewski’s amazing novel ‘House of Leaves,’ but it works just fine for me, too.

But also, I very much like writing to music without vocals. It’s more like I’m writing the words to the song, then. It’s more like a real movie soundtrack to the action unfolding on the silver screen of my monitor. And I often listen to actual movie soundtracks while I’m writing. (Though some of these, like the ones for ‘Pulp Fiction,’ ‘Lost in Translation,’ ‘Kill Bill,’ etc. largely consist of vocals.) If I want wild and crazy, I’ll listen to the Dust Brothers’ ‘Fight Club’ score. When writing a recent novel of mine involving samurai-like demons and a tragic love story, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ worked wonders (and that soundtrack has moved me to tears). When I wanted to get REALLY sad, I listen to one of the saddest-sounding scores I’ve encountered, the one for ‘The Wings of the Dove.’ Not lately, but in the past I wrote to ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘The Deer Hunter,’ ‘The Godfather.’ (Must have been my DeNiro phase.) Bernard Herrmann’s supremely lush score for Brian De Palma’s ‘Obsession.’ Philippe Sarde’s gorgeous score for Polanski’s ‘Tess.’ But these days I especially like writing to the clanging and clanking industrial weirdness, faraway organ music, whining mutant baby, and song of the radiator woman on the soundtrack to David Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead.’ Hell, it even has an extended dance track!

Then, there are the CDs that aren’t movie soundtracks but which have that kind of vibe, and create the perfect aural environment for all kinds of my work. My favorite of these was recommended to me by Michael Cisco (and if it helped him concoct his brilliant novels ‘The Divinity Student’ and ‘The Tyrant’, then it HAS to be good). This is ‘Metavoid’ by Lustmord. It is like sound recorded in another, dark and creepy dimension. It may be hard for you to find it. Good. I don’t want you to dip into my bag of magic! It’s mine, I tells ya! Another top favorite of this type is still a soundtrack, but for a video game rather than a movie. It’s the music for the eerie game ‘Silent Hill 3,’ and the CD came with the game as a bonus disk. The composer is Akira Yamaoka. There are some vocals here, the male singer doing a major Bowie imitation, but it’s all quite awesome. I loved it so much that I had another writer burn me a copy of the soundtrack for the next game in the series, ‘Silent Hill 4 – the Room,’ and it’s nearly as good.

I’m sure a lot of writers listen to classical, or jazz. (I’ll sometimes put on radio stations playing those, myself.) Rap. Country (gasp). Like I said, it’s all good – if not for me, then for you. Whatever matches your movie. Whatever makes your muse nod its head…play bongos on its thighs…and tap its feet. Whatever tune best inspires your fingers in their dance across those keys.

by Jeffrey Thomas

Well, you’re probably too busy wrapping presents and sipping spiked eggnog right now to read my Christmas Eve essay here at Storytellers Unplugged, but I’ll plug on nonetheless. In fact, I’m writing this entry ahead of time, on the 20th, because tomorrow night I’m heading off to spend the holidays with my wife’s family in Viet Nam. Consequently, I’ll be too busy to be visiting the web site myself, except to paste in the following. It’s a holiday buffet of random thoughts on Christmas past, present and future…the year gone, the year ahead…and the lovely craft of writing.

This year, I’ve been so extra busy with various distractions both creative and sordid that I did not have a chance to send out the dozens upon dozens of tree-based Christmas cards I usually do, many including a school portrait of my son Colin. Instead, I had to content myself with creating an email card — based on a recent photo of Colin in Santa’s hat — that features a wee and cozy poem about Christmas by H. P. Lovecraft. Love…craft? I know. His work usually does not conjure images of cocoa-swilling teddy bears in red and green mittens. My brother Craig, upon receiving this virtual card, said surely the poem was missing a stanza about, “Cthulhu delivering warm, steaming innards to rich and poor alike…with mottled eye and dappled liver.”

Thomas Hardy had a view of the universe no less gloomy than the Love-meister, and the Christmas poem I associate with him is truer to that character. It is also, sadly, very relevant to the year of 2005 despite having been inspired by the first World War. His poem “Christmas 1924″ is barely more than a limerick, but packs a terrific wallop in its few words. Hardy observes that, “After two thousand years of mass, we’ve got as far as poison gas.” Not much hope of a Scrooge-like redemption for the human race, there. Thoughts of Viet Nam lead to thoughts of Iraq. As Freda Payne sang back in that earlier war, I wish we could, “Bring The Boys Home” this Christmas. The irony isn’t lost on me that I am willingly spending the holidays in a land that many of my countrymen were desperate to leave, on Christmases of decades past. I wonder if someday soon, Americans like me will freely travel to Iraq to introduce their people — with brotherly cheer and pompous missionary zeal — to the joys of Christmas. Well, maybe the locals won’t object, if like my Buddhist in-laws they’ll be receiving Christmas cards stuffed with good old US dollars. Peace on Earth, good bills toward men!

By the way, this month I was going to write an essay I’ve been planning for a while, in which to vent my spleen about those publishers I’ve worked with who don’t give me the royalty money I have coming…or even copies of my own books (!!!)…and other such horrors. Yet in the spirit of Christmas, I will try to keep in mind only the wonderful, ethical and professional publishers I’ve had the tremendous good fortune to work with. God bless them, everyone. But beware, that rant is coming in 2006. I’m Tiny Tim with a shark-killing bang-stick instead of a crutch, baby.

Dicken’s ghost story hasn’t retained its impact for no good reason (and to me, nothing evokes this holiday better than watching the 1951 film adaptation starring the incomparable Alastair Sim). On a holiday focusing upon our loved ones in particular and the human race in general, those who possess empathy and conscience can not help but wax a little philosophical on our relationship with those fellow souls. And as the year crackles down to its last embers, we can’t help but reflect on what we’ve achieved and dream of what we hope to accomplish in the dawning year, and in the forthcoming few scant decades we are gifted with. We are creatures haunted by our pasts, by our futures, by ourselves.

As for myself…it’s been a delirious, overwhelming, often stressful year, but a fantastic one overall, bringing as it did my second marriage and a number of gratifying book sales. Not to mention, my invitation to participate in a very cool concept called Storytellers Unplugged. I want to extend my wishes for a wonderful holiday season and bright New Year to my fellow bloggers, and to the readers of this blog site. May your numbers increase abundantly in 2006! So…gather your loved ones close. Forget those diets and stuff your face with life’s rich and sensual delights. Don’t swear too much as you assemble those toys (you might wake up the kids). And if you see a tentacle come slithering down the chimney, have no fear from Santa Cthulhu. At this time of year, even H. P. Lovecraft got the warm fuzzies:

“Down from the sky a magic steals
To glad the passing year
And belfries shake with joyous peals
For Christmastide is here!”

– Jeffrey Thomas

It may have seemed like an ongoing act of love, but I think Vladimir Nabokov actually took the easy way out: he dedicated all his books to his wife, Vera.

I’m not going to complain too strenuously about the politics or difficulties of deciding who I should dedicate a book to; I’m lucky to have books to dedicate to anybody! There are more critical areas of concern in the writing, and publishing, of one’s work. But the issue does come up, and sometimes I struggle with it. Well, I don’t lose sleep over it…but it’s still a consideration. The way I figure it, as you read this essay on Thanksgiving day you may be too doped up on tryptophan to digest a weightier topic.

Well, how I’ve approached it thus far is like this. My first book, TERROR INCOGNITA, was dedicated to my Dad because he had recently passed away…and as a poet and painter, he’d been generous enough to pass along his creative genetic material. PUNKTOWN was dedicated to my first wife Rose, who retyped a lot of the book, and also to my brother Scott and my friend Tom Hughes, since I invited them to write Punktown stories as well from its inception, and thus they’ve always had a connection to that world. MONSTROCITY I dedicated to writer/publisher Joseph S. Pulver, because he encouraged me to finish this novel so that he could publish it through his Hive Press (which sadly folded before that could take place). Which reminds me, I still need to get him a copy! It’s been a few years now, and for all I know he might not even be aware that it was later published by Prime Books. (Note to self: track down Joe Pulver!) LETTERS FROM HADES was dedicated to publisher David G. Barnett with damn good reason. Dave wanted me to do a book for his new imprint, Bedlam Press. He gave me a very specific idea, too; could I set an entire novel in the version of Hell I depicted in a short story of mine he liked, called “Coffee Break”? So that novel wouldn’t exist at all were it not for Dave’s exciting spark of inspiration. Author Jeff VanderMeer receives a dedication in PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY for publishing the first Punktown book through his Ministry of Whimsy Press. Brother Scott shares half of the SHADES OF GREY collection, and he returns my earlier nod by dedicating his stories therein to me.

Sometimes, dedications can read like Academy Award acceptance speeches. I did a little of that with EVERYBODY SCREAM!, in which I thanked publisher Raw Dog Screaming Press for typing the entire novel up from a handwritten manuscript. I also thanked brother Scott again, since he gave me a lot of feedback on ES! and wrote a poem that appears at the start of the book.

So far, all of this has sounded pretty straightforward, but now it gets a little more complicated. Sometimes a book just doesn’t seem to attach itself to any one person in your life. Sure, I’d like to dedicate a book to my Mom, my sister Wendy, my brother Craig, or my son Colin (well, I’ve dedicated two short stories to him), but if a person really doesn’t have a connection to a certain book, I just can’t force it. This is when you might see a writer list a group of influential/inspirational authors, and as a result the line can blur between a Dedication page and an Acknowledgments page. I’ve seen the authors of Black Flame’s series of original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET novels dedicate them to Wes Craven or, in the case of Tim Waggoner, “Dr. Creep, host of Shock Theater, with thanks for so many fright-filled hours of fun.” My own forthcoming NOES novel, THE DREAM DEALERS, I dedicated to my second wife, Hong (whose name also translates to Rose…confused yet? I know I am). There is no character inspired by Hong in that book, and if I ever write a novel set in her native Vietnam, that might seem like a better project to save her dedication for. (Though I can always pull a Nabokov.) But sometimes a person connects to a book simply in a chronological manner. I associate Hong with THE DREAM DEALERS because we had just been married, and the writing of the book coincided with that heady period, which may have made it easier for me to write that novel as quickly and efficiently as I did. I swear, I didn’t dedicate it to Hong in order to placate her for dedicating an earlier book to first wife Rose! But maybe I should dedicate more books to Hong in the future, to offset the fact that I have two forthcoming books dedicated to a past lover of mine who inspired important characters in both stories (though I use two different, secret pet name for both dedications to protect her identity somewhat from people like her husband). Uh, you see the politics that can become involved? And ego gets involved, too. I was going to thank assistant editor Mark Newton in the dedication of THE DREAM DEALERS for giving me several great suggestions, such as a very specific idea for the prologue in that book…but later I decided not to make mention of his input, for fear that readers might assume my creativity was directed by other hands. Heh. Ahh, vanity.

Then there are books of mine that I just couldn’t think of anyone at all to dedicate them to. Maybe, since they’re short story collections, it has to do with the variety of the stories, a diffusion of effect that discourages a solid connection with any particular individual. Thus, my collections AAAIIIEEE!!!, HONEY IS SWEETER THAN BLOOD and THIRTEEN SPECIMENS contain no dedication. Then again, my novel BONELAND features no dedication, either. And I had no hesitation in dedicating the collections I’ve listed earlier. I guess a book either calls out for its dedication, or it doesn’t…just as one book might beg to have a quote from someone like Dante or Shakespeare start it out, while another wants to jump right into the action.

It might be fun to dedicate a book to some imaginary person, to keep readers – and maybe even wives, past and present – guessing. Writing dedications can become as boring and predictable as writing the same bio page over and over. For one anthology I was in (DARK TESTAMENT), I essentially gave Marlon Brando’s bio and substituted my name for his. Something to break up the monotony.

And why not just thank myself? Hey, I write the damn things. Usually, the wife is just bitching at me to get off the computer so she can use the phone. Yeah. Myself, and coffee. We do all the REAL work.

Anyway, it’s time to zonk out in an armchair someplace in my annual tryptophan-induced coma. I appreciate it if you’ve taken time from your holiday to read my lightweight essay.

Here’s to you.

– Jeffrey Thomas

The first signs of Halloween manifest themselves long before the last day of October, even before autumn has actually begun. Candy and costumes, decorations and other paraphernalia prematurely line the shelves of stores, more out of anticipation of money to be made than of the holiday’s mystical pleasures. But as the days shuffle on and the nights grow progressively cooler, the atmosphere thickens like a gathering fog. It’s a fog still imbued with magic, these many years since I was a trick-or-treater. Now I’m a father, and through the holes of my son’s mask I experience the night vicariously. My son Colin has of course been growing increasingly excited as the days tick by, now with only seven left to go. A final week. I can hear Colin in the bathroom as I write this; it sounds like he’s filled the sink as he likes to do, splashing in it with his toys, giggling away. His love of monsters must be genetic. Perhaps his Creature from the Black Lagoon figurine has drowned another unwary victim.

It’s late, but let him play, just so long as he doesn’t awaken my new wife Hong. I looked in on her a few minutes ago and she has turned in early, her long blue-black hair spread across our pillows. Halloween is a new concept to her, a bit mystifying, a little morbid and uncomfortably scary. Good. That is how it should be. I wish it were so new to me…but again, I can experience that newness vicariously through her.

This is the time of year that I break out my cassettes of old radio plays, programs such as BLACK MASS (a reading of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”) and SUSPENSE (Orson Welles starring in “Donovan’s Brain” and Robert Taylor in the nightmarish “The House in Cypress Canyon”). I savor the warmth of my coffee and the warm smell of a pumpkin spice candle as the chilly air scrapes loose leaves across the outside of my house like brittle ghostly claws. During these final nights, I plan to sit and watch horror movies, hopefully “Night of the Living Dead”, drinking mulled cider, alternating between salty fist-fulls of popcorn and sweet candy corn. I am a horror writer, and Halloween is my holy day. I will renew my vows to my nighted profession. I will commune with the collective imagination of humankind, the wonderfully irrational anxieties we dread but embrace. I will immerse myself anew in the wonders and delicious terrors I was baptized in as a child younger than Colin is now.

I hear Colin giggling in the livingroom. As involved as I am in my writing, a process that always transports me, I didn’t even see him pass by. Unfortunately, he must have woken Hong, after all, because I can hear her moving about in the kitchen. My dog Tia just growled at her, but I call out for her to stop it. The big Akita does that sometimes, when she wakes up from her own nap and sees someone near her unexpectedly. Well, I can’t get angry at the chaos to be expected in my home. It’s something I’ve had to learn to work around. Though I work best when I am alone and the house is quiet, I can’t always have it that way. And like I said, once I really get into the alchemical process of fiction writing, I feel transported…the real world melts away around me.

Halloween achieves a similar effect for me. On that transcendent night, the clinical cold edge of reality becomes as frayed as the hem of a specter’s burial shroud. We can adopt new personalities, formed from plastic or greasepaint, that might reflect or liberate hidden fantasies about ourselves, aspects of ourselves that remain submerged from view on the mundane 364 other nights. And our neighbors, our fellow townspeople, become unrecognizable to us in turn. We become more distrusting of them than we already are. Who knows what sort of face will greet us, the next time we are summoned by the rapping of bony knuckles to open our front door. Oh, it’s all about anticipation, isn’t it? Anticipating what demons will come to haunt our doorstep. What treasures we will amass in the plastic pumpkins we tote like severed heads. The anticipation of these final seven days…

Will this week inspire me to new heights of writing? I don’t know. Even if it doesn’t milk an extra quantity of nectar from my muse, every Halloween I have experienced has nourished that muse, has cumulatively brought forth its many midnight blooms. They are not flowers that open only on that one enchanted night – but they will lift themselves eagerly higher on their stems for the breadth of those precious hours.

No doubt wondering what I’m writing about, Colin is standing behind me now and resting a hand on my shoulder. It is very cold, from his playing in the sink water. I see his reflection in the computer screen and he is wearing the skeletal zombie mask he will don for trick-or-treating this year. Nice try, Colin. A chip off the old block, this kid.

From my stereo speakers, the doomed Robert Taylor says, “My arm is horribly swollen and turning black…”

I hear Hong whispering in the kitchen. Maybe she is talking to the dog. She steps into the threshold to my study. In an attempt to frighten me, she wears the skeletal zombie mask Colin plans to wear this year, her long hair framing its ghastly features. Oh…wait…so there are two masks, then. Very clever, my family, but they are trying to scare a man whose head is filled with scares every night of the year.

Well, my writing spell has been broken, but again, I can’t resent these people whom I love. These distractions are to be expected. But as I smile up at Hong, and come back to the here and now, I recall that Colin is spending the night with his Mom at her boyfriend David’s house. It can not be his cold hand resting upon my shoulder. And my wife Hong…Hong is in Vietnam right now, staying at her father’s house, not in my house tonight, not even in this country.

The thickening fog has closed on my house, churning outside my windows. Those claw-like leaves scrape more insistently. The icy grip tightens on my shoulder, and the figure in the doorway wavers slightly as its black skull sockets gaze at me through its curtains of hair – not sleek and blue-black, but gray and matted, with brittle autumn leaves snagged in its cobweb-like strands.

Halloween has come early this year.

by Jeffrey Thomas

When it comes to brother acts, for me film-makers come to mind more readily than authors. There are Larry and Andy Wachowski (the MATRIX movies), Peter and Bobby Farrelly (DUMB AND DUMBER and the hilarious STUCK ON YOU, about conjoined brothers), the Polish Brothers (TWIN FALLS IDAHO, also about conjoined twins, and the surreally haunting NORTHFORK), the Brothers Quay (brilliant stop motion animators), Joel and Ethan Coen (BLOOD SIMPLE, FARGO), Kerry and Kevin Conran (SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW) and Paul and Leonard Schrader (BLUE COLLLAR, THE YAKUZA).

But my brother Scott and I can still relate to these collaborative brother teams (we’ve always been especially fond of the Schraders, Paul having written our favorite film, TAXI DRIVER). We understand what it must be like for them to work together – conjoining their brains, so to speak. They say twins sometimes develop a secret language that no one else can understand. When that kind of bond takes place between two human beings with creative impulses, a kind of magic can happen. But what shapes the particular directions taken by any human persona? One can’t help but wonder if it’s a genetic predisposition behind the leanings of creative siblings, or if it’s an issue of environment. There are plenty of fine collaborators who are not related by blood. They can still share a secret language…based on films they both grew up with, books and music they were both exposed to. Maybe being brothers just gives two people a shortcut to such a relationship.

(I’ll leave it to someone else to write about the creative bond between sisters, or even parents and their children…except to boastfully relate that my father, mother, sister and brother Craig are all published writers as well.)

Right now I’m proofreading the book PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY, for its imminent release. The futuristic and nightmarish city of Punktown is my own invention, but as early as I conceived of it I was inviting my brother Scott to write Punktown-based stories, too. So while he hasn’t spent as much time in that dark metropolis as I have, he has been acquainted with it for just as long. (An example of his Punktown stories can already be found in PUNKTOWN: THIRD EYE, an anthology for which I also invited a lot of non-Thomases to set stories in Punktown.) Proofing SHADES OF GREY – and I adapted that subheading from one of Scott’s tales – has again made me reflect on that rewarding brother/fellow writer relationship.

Rereading Scott’s stories for this book has been a thrill almost as strong as reading them for the first time. Sometimes I think Scott evokes Punktown more effectively than I do myself; at least, I too often catch myself saying, with envy, why didn’t I think of that? For many years, everything we wrote was done so with the other in mind as our particular audience. After all, we weren’t published yet – we were our only assured audience! But also, I think it has to do with the way a singer might single out one face in a crowd that he can more directly perform for. Trying to ever impress each other, and in an amicable way ever outdo each other, I’m sure helped Scott and I to up the ante and better our skills. And there were the added bonuses in this sharing of each other’s work, like writing a humorous page of a particular story and sneaking it in with the rest, so that it would start out innocently enough before it dissolved into nonsense and gave itself away as one of those prank booby-traps. We have consciously and sometimes less consciously cribbed each other’s ideas. We’ve had long, animated conversations about each other’s current novel-in-progress. When particularly animated, we used to take to pacing the floor as we spoke, back and forth in opposite directions or around and around each other if the room was large enough, as if our foot motions helped generate our thoughts, like twin hamsters running in twin wheels to power some bizarre machine. This is a trait I gave to two brothers whom I made the protagonists of my most recently completed novel, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS – and only Scott would have recognized that characteristic, had I not just shared it with you now.

The odd thing is, we have only once collaborated on a story in the literal sense; that is to say, putting both our bylines on a single story. That was the story ORANGES AND APPLES, which was a bonus feature for a lettered edition book entitled NETHER: IMPROPER BEDTIME STORIES. NETHER combined my erotic horror collection HONEY IS SWEETER THAN BLOOD with Scott’s erotic horror collection SHADOWS OF FLESH. The way we approached this story was for one to write a few pages, then email it to the other for his few pages, and then back again, improvising the plot as we went along. I still had another few pages to go when I felt that Scott had brought the story to a point that was hard to go beyond, so I decided to end it there and then. But recently, when we were invited to contribute a story to Brian Keene’s anthology IN DELIRIUM, we changed the title of the story to APPLES AND ORANGES and I managed to balance the story out with a final section of my own after all. It was a fun experience, but direct collaboration has never been something either of us has been fond of, so it may never be repeated. As into each other’s work as we are, ultimately we are too into our own work to invite the hand of another, however much that hand might share genetic material. But Scott is welcome to visit Punktown again, whether I am currently staying in the city or not, any time he desires. He’s a citizen there, too. His very disturbing story PULSE (itself a conscious homage to TAXI DRIVER) makes buying PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY worthwhile all by itself, in my opinion.

Down the road, another book of ours called THE SEA OF FLESH AND ASH will be released. This one found its origins in the notion of both of us writing a novella inspired by the same piece of art, in this case a digital painting created by the talented Travis Anthony Soumis (who did the cover for PUNKTOWN: THIRD EYE and the cover and interiors for PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY). But besides this image figuring into both of our stories, there are other little similarities however wildly different the novellas are. Both stories focus a lot on their New England settings, and both involve extradimensional travel, things we didn’t realize until we had finished and read the other’s story. We both put a lot of our own personalities, our tastes and interests, our own experiences, into our work…and of course we better than any friend or fan can distinguish between what is real and what is invented, when reading each other’s stuff. Though Scott lives in Maine now and I in Massachusetts, and we see each other and speak on the phone very seldom, the effect we’ve had on each other’s art is ongoing. If I have any talent at all, again it’s because I was trying to give him a good story to read. Or make a better story than the last one of his I had read!

Now, Scott and I have very different visions, don’t get me wrong. I lean more toward horror with SF influences, or SF with horrific elements, whereas he favors dark fantasy, horror often set in the Victorian area or thereabouts. His style is unlike mine; more blatantly poetic and idiosyncratic. We have our own distinct identities. But we find it hard to stop rubbing elbows, even when we’re doing our own thing. Scott and I have often appeared in anthologies together, such as LEVIATHAN THREE, OCTOBERLAND, STRANGEWOOD TALES, DEATHREALMS, THE DEAD INN, and THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES XXII. I’m too lazy to go look through my stacks of magazines; we’ve been in plenty of those together, too. I hope the trend continues. I like to think that coming upon an anthology in which we both appear, Scott’s fans
will check out my work, and vice versa.

Getting back to movies and brother partnerships…back in the 80′s, primarily, Scott and I used to make our own video movies together. We’d get very passionate about them, and there were certainly brotherly spats (I was amused when watching a featurette on SKY CAPTAIN to hear how the Conran brothers would fight on the set…though presumably not with the violence of the group Oasis’ obnoxious Gallagher brothers). I think making those home movies, inventing props and settings on the spot, creating our own fantastical makeup effects on fantastically nonexistent budgets, and playing 90% of the roles ourselves, was the most fun I’ve ever known creatively. Sure, these home videos are so raw they’re probably unwatchable to anyone but ourselves, even though several take place in Punktown, so the Coens need not worry about the competition. But we came up with ideas that later on I would work into some of my written Punktown excursions. And mainly, we cemented a bond…and celebrated a process…and played in the sandbox of creativity together.

We’ve worked hard, in the years since we were each other’s only fan, to get our books out there, to win readers who wanted to read us again. But to this day, I’m sure, nobody looks forward to a new book by one of the Thomas Brothers more than the other brother does. In a way, no matter whom I actually dedicate a book to, each one is dedicated to him.

(A final note: check out Scott Thomas’s latest collection, WESTERMEAD, from Raw Dog Screaming Press. It will make you shiver, and cry, and laugh, and make you wish you had a brother if you don’t already.)

This morning I finished reading John Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN. Prior to this, I was familiar with its central characters of George and Lennie only through those cartoons we’ve all seen in which a big doofus mouse and a little smart-guy mouse get themselves into various troubles. A coworker taking a writing course began discussing the book with me, and gave it to me when he’d finished with it. Prior to OF MICE AND MEN, I had only read THE PEARL by Steinbeck several years earlier. I now have to rank him among my favorite authors.

Some writers – and readers – scorn the notions of subtext, deeper meaning. They dismiss such concerns as pretentious. Literature only fills your lungs with dust when you crack it open. Stories should read like movie scripts, pared down to the bare moving parts. The clean, stark skeleton sans the cumbersome flesh. Novels should play out like a video game; a spare plot stringing together endless scenes of action. But I don’t find fault with entertainment for entertainment’s sake. It’s why I prefer reading – and why I write – fiction instead of nonfiction. I like to mix it up, though. I’ll read a couple of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels with their flashing swords and scantily-dressed red-skinned women, then move on to something like Nabokov’s PALE FIRE. It’s all good to me. It’s the rich buffet of creativity. Sometimes I’m in the mood for peanut butter and jelly, and other times I want the filet mignon. Hell, I love peanut butter and jelly! To use another analogy, my taste in books is like my taste in films. Give me APOCALYPSE NOW, then give me AUSTIN POWERS. As long as I’m engaged. As long as it keeps me watching to see what happens next. Then, later, over my filet mignon, maybe I’ll ruminate on the movie’s meaning or maybe I’ll just chuckle remembering a funny line.

But I do savor complexity. Layers upon layers of it. I feel I get more bang for my buck that way. Whether it’s in rich, poetic, or idiosyncratic prose…or in the story’s symbolism, theme, message…or in an evocative atmosphere, a setting that comes alive for me…or any combination thereof. Thomas Hardy’s TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES could very well satisfy merely as an engrossing soap opera were it not for the deeper strata that elevate it to a higher form of drama. But you don’t have to know that the changing of the seasons are used to externalize Tess’s psychological state. You don’t have to know that the pool at the start and end of OF MICE AND MEN represents the Garden of Eden, or that the coyote and dog mentioned in the first scene echo Lennie and George. LORD OF THE FLIES works exclusively as a drama and an adventure story without one having to know what the Beast is all about, what Simon embodies, and so on. Read just as dramas, these stories are as moving or exciting as anything penned without a thought to subtext. That’s the important thing. The story itself is sound, and captivating. There is more there to enhance that story and enrich the reader, just below its epidermis, but only if the reader cares to linger a little longer. To me, this is the best of both worlds. I like video games, too. But I’ll stop after killing all the zombies in the room to soak up the beautiful details of that room, which some team of artists labored so passionately to create. And speaking of zombies: if you want to watch DAWN OF THE DEAD purely as a horror flick…damn, it’s one of the best! But if you also want to appreciate its sly observations on American consumerism, I call that a two for one sale.

OF MICE AND MEN is told in a very stripped-down style. It’s more a novelette than a novel, too. It’s the meaning that gives it its weight. And it has the weight of a collapsed star, compacted into a small and dense mass. But first and foremost, it’s a entrancing study of friendship and alienation, of dreams and reality, of cruelty and compassion, of…mice and men. Steinbeck’s THE PEARL has similar weight, the body of an iceberg looming beneath the slim but gripping adventure story that is its glittering tip. A more powerful ending to a novel is hard for me to imagine. These two novels can make you cry. They can make you outraged. They can quicken your pulse as you watch the shadow of inevitable doom stretch closer. So much for the dustiness of literature.

With OF MICE AND MEN completed, I’m reading two books now. My book for breaks at work is J. G. Ballard’s HIGH RISE. My book for home is an original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET novel.

I have my buffet plate in hand. Give me some of that there filet mignon. And I might just come back for seconds on the peanut butter and jelly.

– Jeffrey Thomas

Greetings from Bien Hoa, Vietnam!

I’m writing from the living room of my in-laws, and frankly, trying to determine what I should talk about this month. But there is no shortage of things to say about this, my second visit to Vietnam – it’s more a matter of what specifically to do with all that raw material. And this reminds me of my first Storytellers Unplugged essay, having to do with the subject of writing of what you know. I’m overflowing with images and impressions of Vietnam, just aching to find their way into a nice fat novel…but that novel hasn’t formed yet, despite several stillborn (and sometimes near lunatic) possibilities. With a Vietnamese wife, and more trips to visit the in-laws in my future, that novel is an inevitability. But for now, my impressions of things Vietnamese have been limited to shorter works like the forthcoming novellas THE SEA OF FLESH and CLOSE ENOUGH – and presently, to this essay.

It’s unfortunate and unfair to think of Vietnam solely as the location of an American war, since it’s a country with a history that long precedes it (try to search out anything about Bien Hoa on the internet and you’ll pretty much find yourself limited to war-related sites), but the horror writer in me can’t help but rub its hands together in glee at those things we Westerners might find strange, exotic and grotesque. For instance, my in-laws do not live in squalor, but one must accustom oneself to showering with geckos clinging to the bathroom walls (hey, they eat the bugs), chattering and flicking their tails at each other in reptilian morse code. This week I was nearly run over by a motorbike when crossing a street (city streets swarm with bazillions of them), and nearly mauled by a deceptively cute black bear that reached imploringly to me through a hole in its cage; luckily its sudden swipe was ill-timed, launched a second before it could sucker a lame-brained tourist into stroking its formidably-clawed paw. But what is exotic to one man is mundane to another. Vietnamese don’t look twice at the hordes of dragonflies constantly swimming in the air above the heads of bathers on the shore of the South China Sea, and think nothing of handling live prawns as big as small lobsters, with long blue arms and pincers that can grip your finger pretty damn hard (yes, it’s terrible seeing them cooked live, but no worse than what we do to the aforementioned lobsters). Commonplace or not, it’s all pretty magical to me. I don’t doubt at all that I would have conceived my city of Punktown (featured in books I’ve written like, oh, PUNKTOWN) in quite a different way had I been exposed to cities like Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Dalat, Bien Hoa, or Seoul, Korea for that matter, before constructing it in my mind, based more on my impressions of Worcester and Boston, Massachusetts. And however fantastical I have tried to make that imaginary city…well, it sounds trite but it’s true that reality is often more bizarre and fascinating than the strangest things we try to dream up in our imaginations. Real cities are built brick by brick from the imaginations of millions; a lone, humble fantasist can’t compete with that.

There has been one blatantly horrific attraction I’ve experienced, designed to be so. At a place called Suoi Tien Resort, which is more of a surreal theme park, one part historical and three parts breath-takingly tacky, my wife Hong and I ventured into the equivalent of a Vietnamese walk-through ghost train ride, situated inside an immense dragon head, from which reverberated an eerie and, to me, indecipherable voice. Inside, we witnessed a kind of trial by mannequin, with the soon-to-be-damned kneeling before glowering judges or demons. Descending into the bowels of Hell, Hong clinging to my arm (heh heh), we encountered day-glow skeletons and tombstones, and scene after scene of the damned in their torments. As in a movie like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the low production values only made the terrors more effective; a week before coming to Vietnam I took my son to Disney World, and the admittedly wonderful technology behind the Haunted Mansion just doesn’t have the same unnerving effect as seeing these figures in their blood-splashed white pajamas, each one’s face obscured ala THE RING in long black hair, undergoing tortures that are hard to make out, inflicted by demons even harder to make out (though I vividly recall one demon dipping a figure in and out of a vat of sizzling fire, and another using a tremendous saw to split a man’s head down the middle).

Well, this isn’t the only intentionally horrific attraction I’ve been to in Vietnam, but I was trying not to get into the war. Still, it’s hard to shake images from the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, where one can see fetuses deformed by Agent Orange preserved in bottles…blown-up photos like that of an American soldier holding up in one hand the upper half of a tattered corpse, a big grin on his face as if he’s displaying a prize-winning trout…and a gun-toting (and also smirking) mannequin of a US soldier, rather comically exaggerated with his large pointed nose and the cigarette butt hanging out of his mouth as a hut burns in the background (I’ll bet he used that butt to start the fire). My outrage at the horrors of war (inflicted by BOTH sides) didn’t prevent me, however, from eagerly paying extra to fire live rounds from an AK-47 and M-16 on the grounds of the famous Cu Chi Tunnels (and if you want to experience horror, try subjecting your big American body to five minutes crawling through one of those!). It’s pretty crass and ironic that you can come out of the exhibits at the War Remnants Museum and buy souvenirs made from rifle shells, but hey, people have to eat. At this museum last October, I bought a Vietnamese/English dictionary from a guy who’d lost multiple limbs (he offered me a stump to shake) and an eye to an American land mine; talk about a guilt trip.

And getting back to eating — can I scare you with some of the things I’ve consumed? No, not dog, though the washed-out mongrels here don’t look so furtive and distrusting for nothing. I’ve drunk rice wine from a bottle in which a dead cobra was preserved (good for the libido, I’m told) and a cool drink made from the saliva of birds (they use it to hold their nests together). Squid, deer, pig tongues…mmm. Actually, Vietnamese food is fantastic, and my stomach has pretty much behaved itself — but the horror to top all horrors is to rush into a bathroom and realize there’s no toilet paper to be had, though you might get lucky and see some scraps of newspaper wrapped around the dispenser’s roll (as elsewhere in the world, the Vietnamese use water instead, but it’s a bit disconcerting to have to resort to).

Ah yes…earlier this month, Disney World, and now Vietnam. The brain reels from the input. In a hallucinatory fusion of the two, in the four days Hong and I stayed in beautiful Dalat, I would see a garbage truck coming around that announced itself to citizens with trash to dispose of by playing, without cease, “It’s a Small World”. It is, indeed! That in itself might keep people from visiting Vietnam…but I am made of stronger stuff. Ahem.

I’ve filled notebooks with these experiences, and taken countless photos. It’s all so vivid. It’s all waiting to be put into service…

Will the inevitable novel, hefty enough a box to contain this treasure of souvenirs, be gratuitous in its detail, actually overburdened with my impressions — a travelogue masquerading as a fiction? I hope not. I hope, instead, that my enthusiasm for the subject, the locale, will be translated into an exciting STORY, first and foremost. But I hope that my enthusiasm will become infectious. That it will make the reader feel they too have whipped down a Saigon street on the back of a motorbike, or walked across the red volcanic soil of a Vietnamese forest. Behind me, my nephews (who take pleasure in saying “hello” to me in English several milli

on times a day) have been playing with clay, modeling sword-wielding figures and menacing snakes. Now, the clay is in my hands, so to speak. Waiting for the shaping to begin.

– Jeffrey Thomas

Last week, one of my regular customers had seen a posting of mine somewhere that I was eager to read John Wyndham’s “Midwich Cuckoos,” as I had never read it before despite reading countless books which undoubtedly used “Midwich” as their inspiration. Being a kind and wonderful soul, the customer dropped me a used paperback of it.

While the book only took me all of 4 hours to read, it blew me away. Clocking in at a lean, mean 180 pages, “Midwich Cuckoos” basically had its hooks in me within 10 pages of the start, and didn’t let go for even an instant until the final words.

As I put the well-worn paperback on my bookshelf, I noticed how many of my very favorite horror novels come in at under 200 pages, and many times a lot lower. Given how today’s horror paperbacks all seem to use 300 pages as a bare minimum, it makes me wonder how many classics may never have made it to publication. Books that include:

• John Wyndham’s “The Day of the Triffids”
• Ira Levin’s “The Stepford Wives”
• Robert Bloch’s “Psycho”
• Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″
• William Peter Blatty’s “The Ninth Configuration”
• Thomas Disch’s “The Genocides”
• Jack Finney’s “The Body Snatchers”
• Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend”
• Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”
• William March’s “The Bad Seed”

There’s also countless truly fast, fun joyrides of novels that, while they may not be considered classics, pack a ton of horror punch into less than 200 pages. On the bookshelf in front of me right now are such thin under-200 page volumes as:

• Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Drive-In”
• Ed Gorman’s “Nightmare Child”
• Stephen Gilbert’s “Willard”
• Charles L. Grant’s “the Dark Cry of the Moon”
• Tanith Lee’s “Sabella”
• Thomas Tessier’s “The Nightwalker”
• Bernard Taylor’s “Moorstone”
• Guy N. Smith’s “Crabs”
• Al Sarrantonio’s “Campbell Wood” and “The Worms”

You get the idea.

So when did mass market paperback publishers decide that horror readers didn’t want to pay $5 for a short novel? I’ve heard the arguments made that it’s not economical to publish short books — and yet, you often find under-200-page books in the romance, western, and young adult genres. (In fact, the world would be a much worse place if Robert Cormier’s countless works of genius never got published because they rarely crack 200 pages).

If the United States has 15 or 20 million people willing to shell out $5-$10 to see “The Ring” in the theater for 90 minutes, are we so sure we can’t get even 1 out of every 500 of them (a 40,000 copy seller) to shell out $5 for a killer horror book?

I’m not suggesting that authors chop down works to make them shorter. I’m not suggesting that books are too long. Or even that people don’t enjoy long books.

But I AM suggesting that some works just naturally fall perfectly into the short range, and just because it provides 4 hours of reading instead of 6 or 7 hours of reading doesn’t necessarily mean readers will reject it.

And they may be more eager to embrace it specifically BECAUSE of the short length.

I LOVE paperback books that are slim enough to fit in the back of my jeans pocket (remember when most books could do this?) I love picking up a book where I know that for better or worse, I’m going to be in the thick of the action within a half hour of reading. Sometimes you WANT a short but breakneck stomach-turning, spine-shaking roller-coaster ride. We don’t pay less money at the movie theater to see a 90 minute zombie movie than a 180 minute war movie.

My suggestion? Some New York publisher needs to take a little money — not a ton — and experiment. Try a line of short horror novels and advertise them as such. Advertise them as a roller-coaster ride of horror that fits in your back pocket. Charge a buck or two less than usual to get the ball rolling.

Leisure’s done an admirable job of finding creative ways to get some modern horror novellas out there. Douglas Clegg’s phenomenal “Purity” (possibly the best horror novella written in the past decade) was a bonus added to the paperback release of “Nightmare HOuse.” Leisure released a collection of Tim Lebbon’s novellas called “Fears Unnamed.” They got Jack Ketchum’s stunning short novel “Red” into print with a bonus novella tacked on to thicken out the book a little.

But why not release these books on their own? Let’s acknowledge that I’m probably not the ONLY one with a short attention span. Let’s just try it in the mass market and see if it’s something people have been waiting for.

The small press has been doing an amazing job with novellas and short novels. The past decade alone has seen Cemetery Dance, Subterranean Press, Bloodletting Press, Necessary Evil Press, and more produce profitable, critically-acclaimed novella lines. Go after some of those works by authors like Douglas Clegg, Gary Braunbeck, Ray Garton, Edward Lee, Mark Morris, Lucy Taylor, Nancy Collins, Poppy Brite, Thomas Tessier, Tom Piccirilli, Jeffrey Thomas, Kealan Patrick Burke, Patrick Lestewka and more, and get them into the mainstream. Give it a creative, targeted ad-campaign PROMOTING the short-shock factor and see what happens.

The risk factor is small. And the upside may be huge. These are great, great works — modern classics every bit as deserving to become household names like “Stepford Wives” or “Body Snatchers.”

It’s fun to dream what you would do if you ever won the lottery. One of my dreams (and this will tell you just how particularly sad my own fantasy life is) is to start a mass market paperback line focusing on modern classics of horror between 100 and 225 pages.

I want to be able to go to some of today’s underrated, incredibly talented authors and say “You know that mind-fucking terrifying novella you wrote that you can’t find a market for? That market has arrived.”

The short horror novel — it’s an art form I’d hate to see go by the waysides simply because publishers fell into a habit of assuming that readers only wanted longer books.

Here’s hoping I win the lottery. But just in case that doesn’t happen, here’s hoping a New York publisher picks up the slack. Either way, the horror world will be a much better place for it. And my guess is that, ultimately, whatever publisher tries it first will have a much better bottom line to show for it as well.

– Matt Schwartz