**Three of my mainstream poems were published in the latest issue of Milk Sugar Literature

Three of my mainstream poems - Just checking; Z waves on the 1:09 bus; Mailbox stomp 442 - were published in the August/September 2011 issue of Milk Sugar Literature.

If you have a moment, and are inclined toward reading life-true verses, check them out. =)

Coldheart Canyon, by Clive Barker

(hb; 2001)

From the inside flap:

"Hollywood has made a star of Todd Pickett. But time is catching up with him. He doesn't have the perfect looks he had last year. After plastic surgery goes awry, Todd needs somewhere to hide away for a few months while his scars heal.

"As Todd settles into a mansion in Coldheart Canyon - a corner of the city so secret it doesn't even appear on any map - Tammy Lauper, the president of his fan club, comes to the City of Angels determined to solve the mystery of Todd's disappearance. Her journey will not be an easy one. The closer she gets to Todd the more of Coldheart Canyon's secrets she uncovers: the ghosts of the A-list stars who came to the Canyon for wild parties; Katya Lupi, the cold-hearted, now-forgotten star for whom the Canyon was named, who is alive and exquisite after a hundred years; and, finally, the door in the bowels of Katya's dream palace that reputedly open up to another world, the Devil's Country. No one who has ever ventured to this dark, barbaric corner of hell has returned without their souls shadowed by what they'd seen and done. . ."

Review:

Coldheart Canyon isn't one of Barker's better works - it's overly long by at least a hundred and fifty pages and its characters suffer from Plot Convenient Stupid Moments (PCSM) from time to time - but it's still a worthwhile read, because few writers can create such grand, century-spanning epics like this. Barker's multilayered story telling is penned in an appropriately lush Hollywood film style, with its beyond-the-norm audacious horrors equally potent.

Even with its flaws, this is a fascinating book that is worth the journey, with its mostly interesting characters, insider's dark take on the Dream Factory and its sometimes transcendant grotesqueries and graces.

I'm glad I read this - once. It's not worth owning, as is most of Barker's other works, but it is worth checking out, if you can tolerate bloat with your read spectacles: to Barker's credit, and to provide a point of comparison, Coldheart Canyon is nowhere near as bloated as Stephen King's post-mid Eighties writing (e.g., any fiction King has published since It).

If you've never read Clive Barker, and are interested in doing so, read one of his other books first, like his three-volume Books of Blood anthologies, or Imajica, one of his many novels.

LZ-'75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin's 1975 American Tour, by Stephen Davis

(hb; 2010: rock 'n' roll memoir)

From the inside flap:

"As a young music journalist in 1975, Stephen Davis got the opportunity of a lifetime: an invitation to cover for a national magazine the sold-out 1975 North American tour of Led Zeppelin, the biggest and most secretive rock band in the world. He received a backstage pass, was granted interviews with band members, and even got a prized seat on the band's luxurious tour jet, the Starship. While on duty, he chronicled the Zeppelin tour in three notebooks, but after writing his article in 1975, he misplaced them. After three decades of searching, in 2005 he finally found the notebooks, on the covers of which he had scribbled the words LZ-'75, and unearthed loads of new information from the tour.

"In LZ-'75, Davis offers an unseen look at a pivotal year in the life of the band that includes lost interviews with canny vocalist Robert Plant and the brilliant guitarist Jimmy Page; information on the rock icon who moonlighted as a heroin dealer; revelations about the identity of the lover Robert Plant sings about in 'What Is and What Should Never Be' and 'Black Country Woman'; a detailed chronicle of each performance from a musical perspective and a vivid account of the band members' extravagant, and often troubled, lives on tour."

Review:

Excellent, near-impossible-to-set-down memoir of life on the road with one of the more hedonistic bands of the Seventies - LZ-'75 is an indispensible companion book to Davis' Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga.

Worth owning, this, if you're a fan of Led Zeppelin or bands of their ilk.

Bestial by Ray Garton

(pb; 2009: crossover sequel to Night Life and Ravenous)

From the back cover

"Something very strange is happening in the coastal California town of Big rock. Several residents have died in unexplained, particularly brutal ways, many torn apart in animal attacks. And there's always that eerie howling late at night. . .

"You might think there's a werewolf in town. But you'd be wrong. It's not just one werewolf, but the whole town that's gradually transforming. Bit by bit, as the infection spreads, the werewolves are becoming more and moe powerful. In fact, humans may soon be the minority, mere prey for their hungry neighbors. Is it too late for the humans to fight back? Did they ever have a chance from the start?"


Review

Bestial is an excellent follow-up to Night Life and Ravenous, one that is better than its predecessors.

Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph, the investigators from Night Life, check out the disappearances and "animal attacks" in Big Rock, at the behest of best-selling horror researcher/author Martin Burgess (also a key character in Night Life).

When they get there, they quickly discover that Big Rock is a bad place to be, if you're not a werewolf.

Garton varies up the plot structure of Bestial, to its benefit: in abandoning the attack/rape/werewolf-out focus-structure of Ravenous (which was a set-up novel), and melding it with the investigative tone of Live Girls and Night Life, he's elevated this 'werewolves in Big Rock' offering to new cinematic, humorous and engrossing heights.

Garton's penchant for reads-like-real-life, open-ended finishes is once again in evidence in Bestial - I have little doubt that another werewolf sequel may find its way to publication soon.

Check this out.

**Dani Harris' Bugged was published on the Microstory A Week site

A new story is up on the Microstory A Week site.

Dani Harris penned this week's story, Bugged, a story about a woman and the curious effect insects have on her.

Be sure to check this short story out, comment on it, if you're so inclined. =)

Marlene: A Personal Biography, by Charlotte Chandler

(hb; 2011: biography)

From the inside flap:

"In the mid-1970s Charlotte Chandler spoke with Marlene Dietrich in Dietrich's Paris apartment. The star's career was all but over, but she agreed to meet because Chandler hadn't known Dietrich earlier, 'when I was young and very beautiful.' Dietrich may have been retired, but her appearance and her celebrity - her famous mystique - were as important to her as ever.

"Marlene Dietrich. . . began her career in her native Berlin as a model, then a stage and screen actress during the silent era, becoming a star with the international success of The Blue Angel. Then, under the watchful eye of the director of that film, her mentor Josef von Sternberg, she came to America and became one of the brightest stars in Hollywood. She made a series of acclaimed pictures - Morocco, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, Destry Rides Again, among others - that propelled her to international stardom. With the outbreak of World War II, the fiercely anti-Nazi Dietrich became an American citizen and entertained Allied troops on the front lines. After the war she embarked on a new career as a stage performer, and with her young music director, Burt Bacharach - whom Chandler interviewed for the book - Dietrich had an outstanding career.

"Dietrich spoke candidly with Chandler about her unconventional private life: although she never divorced her husband, Rudi Sieber, she had numerous well-publicized affairs with his knowledge (and he had a longtime mistress with her approval). By the late 1970s, plagued by accidents, Dietrich had become a virtual recluse in her Paris apartment, communicating with the outside world almost entirely by telephone.

"Marlene Dietrich lived an extraordinary life, and Marlene relies extensively on the star's own words to reveal how intriguing and fascinating that life really was."

Review:

Solid book, much of it in the subject's own words, about an iconic, at-times tempestuous and brave actress.

Worth checking out, if you're a fan of Dietrich's.

Ravenous by Ray Garton

(pb; 2008: prequel to Bestial)

From the back cover

"A corpse gets up and walks out of the hospital morgue. Minutes later, a policeman is killed outside the same hospital... and partially eaten. Something deadly has come to the coastal California town of Big Rock - something that's leaving mangled and devoured bodies in its wake.

"Sheriff Arlin Hurley refursed to believe the wild talk of werewolves. Then a tuft of wolf's fur was found on one of the victims. But there's more than one werewolf on the prowl. It's quickly becoming an epidemic curse passed on not through blood but through sex. As the sheriff and his men set out to stop the spreading terror, they'll learn that many of the old werewolf legends are just myths. The reality is far worse."


Review

Ravenous is a solid, sprint-paced and entertaining moon, fur & fang work, chock full of Garton's trademark sex, blood and violence, shot through with a streak of macabre humor. The action in this novel is just as brutal as that of his vampire novels (Live Girls, Night Life), but the flesh-ripping is infinitely more savage this time out.

Enjoyable, late night, genre-true werewolf read.

Followed by Bestial.

Last Train to Deadsville: A Cal McDonald Mystery, by Steve Niles & Kelley Jones

(pb; 2004, 2005: graphic novel, which "collects the four-issue series Last Train to Deadsville - A Cal McDonald Mystery, published by Dark Horse Comics." Introduction by Tom Jane)

From the back cover:

"When a demonically possessed teen redneck shows up on his doorstep, detective of the weird Cal McDonald hardly bats an eye. After all, in recent history he's battled a brain-sucking misanthrope, sent a perverted corpse-mangler up the river, and squashed a monster conspiracy to take over the world - all with the help of only his living dead sidekick [Mo'lock!] and an unhealthy appetite for intoxicants.

"Cal knows that the mulleted mook on his porch isn't anything to worry about. But the sex-crazed succubus the poor, horny kid summoned in a love spell gone wrong - she's a problem. Especially now that she's turned the entire male population of the kid's hometown into a throng of murderous monsters who are willing to do whatever the she-beast desires. As if that wasn't enough to deal with for a day, an even greater evil rears its head when Cal's girlfriend starts hinting at commitment. Demonic possession? That Cal can handle. . . but a demanding girlfriend? Cal's definitely over his head this time."

Review:

Niles' humorous, flip-scripting homage to horror and noir is just as exemplary and engrossing, if not more so, than its predecessor, Criminal Macabre: A Cal McDonald Mystery.

The reason for this improvement lies not only with Niles, but also with his change of artists: this time it's Kelley Jones, whose classic-with-new-influences work I prefer to Ben Templesmiths' too-murky/sketchy style, who brings Niles' shadowy, sometimes icky visions to vivid life. Also, I'm an admirer of any writer/artist who avoids a 'sophomoric slump' in their work - Niles has not only done that with Train, but his expansion on his characters' personalities opens up fertile avenues for future Cal McDonald stories.

Wonderfully EC/Creepy-esque and chuckle-worthy read from Niles and Jones; and, again, worth owning.

Followed by a at least five other Cal McDonald graphic novels, as well as three Cal McDonald novels, all penned by Steve Niles.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith

(pb; 1983: non-fiction)

From the back cover

"Patricia Highsmith, author of Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Found in the Street, and many other books, is known as one of the finest suspense novelists. In this book, she analyzes the key elements of suspense fiction, drawing upon her own experience in four decades as a working writer. Among other topics, she talks about: how to develop a complete story from an idea; what makes a plot gripping; the use (and abuse) of coincidence; characterization and the 'likable criminal'; going from first draft to final draft; and writing the suspense short story.

"Throughout the book, Highsmith illustrates her points with plentiful examples from her own work, and by discussing her own inspirations, false starts, dead ends, successes, and failures, she presents a lively and highly readable picture of the novelist at work..."


Review

Reading this is like having a practical and logical, friendly chat with an ego-eschewing writer who's had a wide array of writing experiences, good and bad, and is willing to share them with us, the reading audience.

Excellent read, not only for the above qualities, but for the fact that Highsmith, like any smart writer, acknowledges that each author's process and style is individual - a fact that she notes a few times in Plotting.

I'd recommend this book to writers of any genre, because much of the advice Highsmith offers, as far as publishing and preparation is concerned, applies to most, if not all, writing genres.

Worth owning, this.

Criminal Macabre: A Cal McDonald Mystery, by Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith

(pb; 2004: graphic novel, which "collects the five-issues series, Criminal Macabre - A Cal McDonald Mystery, as well as a short story from Drawing Your Nightmares, published by Dark Horse Comics." Introduction by Rob Zombie)

From the back cover:

"Recently relocated to Los Angeles, hard-living investigator of the weird Cal McDonald finds himself in police custody, implicated in a case that's beyond bizarre - even by Cal's standards.

"Cal has seen it all, done it all.. . shot, stabbed, killed, maimed, drank, snorted and smoked it all. Yet nothing he could injure or ingest could prepare this occult private dick for the unimaginable weirdness that confronts him when he's called to investigate a local vampire sighting, and finds himself smack-dab in the middle of a monster summit. Never in the history of the weird have monsters willingly joined forces before, which signals to Cal that something big and nasty is brewing under the sunny skies of Los Angeles. Add a seemingly random rash of murders and institutional break-ins to this mad monster mash, and you've got one of the ballsiest horror stories you'll ever lay eyes on. Lock and load - it's time to see what's up with all this Criminal Macabre, the latest graphic-novel adventure from the creative team that brought you the break-out hit comic of 2002, 30 Days of Night.

Review:

Inventive, noir- and horror-veracious work that playfully flips the script on those genres while paying homage to them.

I love the writing, the pacing, plotting, occasional plot wrinkles and the strong, unintentionally quirky characters (e.g., Mo'lock, a friendly ghoul); the artwork is servicable (aside from the wow-worthy bright red/orange/splash-page-ish action scenes) - I'm not a fan of Templesmith's artwork, though it suits the story (up to a point) and isn't entirely off-putting.

Worth owning, this.

Followed by Last Train to Deadsville: A Cal McDonald Mystery.

**MorningAJ's Earwig was published on the Microstory A Week site

A new story is up on the Microstory A Week site.

MorningAJ penned this week's story, Earwig, a tale about a prison inmate and his unfortunate habits.

Be sure to check this short story out, comment on it, if you're so inclined. =)