Monthly Archives: July 2014
Time to ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW with the DARK DISCUSSIONS Podcast…
This is an alternate poster for the film. On the DVD, there is a special feature in which you can enjoy a preview of several different versions of posters and taglines.
When Escape from Tomorrow—the surreal film Randy Moore guerilla-style in the Disney Parks—was released last year, everyone wanted to know what I thought (I wrote Skeletons in the Swimmin’ Hole: Tales from Haunted Disney World, a collection of ghost stories set in Disney Parks). Now you can find out Read the rest of this entry
“Shitty Almonds” to appear in BUGS anthology
The cover of Great Old One’s Publishing’s BUGS anthology, due out later this year. Cover design by MJ Preston.
My short story “Shitty Almonds” was accepted to Great Old Ones Publishing’s Bugs anthology due out later this year.
I don’t want to spoil what it’s about—Great Old Ones Publishing anthologies always contain a diverse number of pieces on their given topic, so when it comes out I’d encourage everyone to just pick it up—but I will tell you Read the rest of this entry
On my way to Blobfest right now…
It’s the real blob and me, instead of looking scared, looking like a complete moron. Oh well.
As we speak, I’m off to BLOBFEST in Phonexville, PA (Blobfest is Read the rest of this entry
THE SMOKING POET: BAD APPLE sends “shiver of delightful creepiness up and down the spine”; interview sheds light on book’s real locations
The Smoking Poet, which published my short story “Incident at Dark Acres” in its Winter 2010-2011 Issue #17, has given Bad Apple Read the rest of this entry
Marking the Hartford Circus Fire’s 70th Anniversary …
“Everyone had a metaphor. The tent went up like cellophane, like tissue paper, like a fuse. A Roman candle, a sheet of newspaper. It was like tossing a piece of paper in a fireplace, like putting a match to a celluloid collar.” ~ Stewart O’Nan, THE CIRCUS FIRE, Doubleday, June 2000, p. 81
A stand-up discussing the fire outside of the event room.
On July 6, 1944, 168 people died when a fire broke out during a performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, CT. While I am not related to anyone who was there that day (that I know of, at least) and have no connection to it, the tragedy, for some reason, has always interested me.
This year, Read the rest of this entry
Review: Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Radioactivity, the silent killer, stalks more of us than we realize, and nowhere is this more clear than in Kristen Iversen’s stunning memoir FULL BODY BURDEN: GROWING UP IN THE NUCLEAR SHADOW OF ROCKY FLATS (for those of you who don’t know, Rocky Flats was a nuclear weapons plant which manufactured the plutonium “pits” which served as triggers for atomic bombs). Iversen’s gorgeous prose tells us the story of her dealing with all of the secrets in her family against the backdrop of the secrets going on at the weapons plant, and there is seamless transition between the creative and informational narratives (the latter of which is anything but dry or boring, not an easy achievement). What I enjoyed most about the work as a whole, however, was its pervasive irony: Iversen describes in disturbing, sharply-rendered detail wading through irrigation ditches which originated at Rocky Flats, discovering a dead cow with no apparent cause for his condition on the edge of a nearby lake, suffering the losses of neighbors who pass of odd cancers, struggling through mysterious illnesses no one seems to be able to diagnose, and more—in the unaware voice of her youth, so that the reader, who clearly knows what she doesn’t, is left screaming “move away!” “Don’t touch that!” “Don’t play in that water!” Not only could I not put this book down, my nerves were shot at the end of it: this is a real-life horror story, reinforcing the idea that what we don’t know can, indeed, kill us.
Lazy Writer’s Pasta Salad
This is my favorite combo (see below). I make it for Memorial Day, and this year I’ll be making it for Independence Day, too.
Really, this pasta salad is the only thing I can make for your cook-out…I get busy, but I have lots of people over and, especially in the summer, I go to other people’s gatherings. Usually at these things, like most people, I’m asked to bring a side dish.
For years I’ve been making this simple, quick, and inexpensive pasta salad that’s sure to please just about everyone because Read the rest of this entry
