The Road to Hell
I keep intending to be a good website owner, but I never do. I’m not even going to promise to keep it up this time, but I’ll make an effort. Add it to my daily routine or something. There’s just always so much happening and I have both too many and not any words to say about it. I suppose it’s inevitable that details of my life will leak into a blog, if I actually start keeping a blog, but for now let’s just leave it that my family is currently planning to leave the United States at some point in the next few years, and we’re keeping the return date as a TBD.
In lighter news, if you like stomach snakes or time-traveling frying pans, I have a couple of older reprints to mention. You can see my story “What We’re Having” in The Chorochronos Archives, an anthology of time travel stories, and my quite ancient tale “Gastrophidia,” the key that got me into one of my favorite webzines of the time (Ideomancer), is now available in Grandpa’s Deep-Space Diner.
“Hiking Tours of the Abyss” at Tales to Terrify
My short horror piece “Hiking Tours of the Abyss” is now available in audio at Tales to Terrify. You have nothing to fear except Fear itself. ;-)
“Systems” at Kaleidotrope
A new year, a new story publication. “Systems” is now available at Kaleidotrope, including a Table-of-Contents Fellowship with A.C. Wise(!) .
The frogs are dying and the crows are up to something amid ecological and societal systemic collapse. Get your hammer and get back to work.
This one had a long journey. I wrote it years and years ago, and it has killed at least two prior venues (in that they accepted it for publication and then went under). Let us hope Kaleidotrope’s collection of horseshoes, witchy stones, and rabbit’s feet suffices against the curse. I am happy to finally share the story with a wider audience. Hope you enjoy!
Good Intentions
I like how I said I’d try to do more blog posting and then disappeared forever. But, my friend, if you did not already see that coming, then I have terrible news about how things will operate going forward. But! I intend to continue making the attempt. The end of last year was… pretty wild. My spouse finally got their top surgery and had a few weeks of recovery where they couldn’t move their arms; I had several bouts of my various dumb chronic nonsenses; the child got vaccinated at last and is prepping to go back to school the physical place next month; and I got a dream gig that turned out to be operated by absolute nutbags and which I am glad I did not muster up the social energy to post about on my website before it went kablooie.
At any rate, I have continued to watch, listen to, and read things, and I will attempt to talk more about which ones are good. I will also try to, you know, just like be present? As a human being? Occasionally?
Movie Review: Midnight Mass
This show was highly enjoyable, start to finish. It's more or less a seven-hour movie; more like a UK-style "season," resolving a plot slowly over the full timeline rather than focusing on beats within each episode. That means, of course, that there are slow moments. It takes a little time to get rolling, but I, at least, don't consider that to be a flaw. I love how contemplative the show it, how it takes the time to establish place as well as character.
The show's real strength is the actors; there is a lot of close-up work and subtle facial expressions, and everything is conveyed with clear intent, almost artifice. The show works a lot with camera angles and framing, as well, to add nuance to simple conversations. It is the first show or movie I've seen focused on a charismatic preacher that managed to have the preacher actually feel charismatic and charming.
The plot is a good old-fashioned one. If you're a horror aficionado in the slightest degree, there will be no surprises for you, but it's executed extremely well. Most writings I've seen have cited its strong Stephen King influence, and boy howdy that is not wrong. Everything feels extremely vintage King, both for good and for ill. Bev Keane, in particular, seems like she missed the bus to The Stand or The Mist. (I love Bev. She's been waiting her whole life for a monster to serve, and she's *so happy* to finally find one.) Characters are also prone to lengthy monologues on the topics at hand, reminiscent of King's long asides in narration. It all fits together, however; as I said, the spirit of the theatrical and the staged infuses the show, and as long as you're willing to roll with that, you'll enjoy your time on Crockett Island.
On a broader note, one thing that I personally appreciated a great deal is the show's full-throated endorsement of agnostic (if not outright atheistic) secular humanist values. So often a show that deals in death, sacrifice, and religious themes ends up wishy-washy at best, going for a "oh gosh we must believe in something, mustn't we?" vibe. Here, the atheistic view of life and death, as elucidated by Riley Flynn, is taken as a firm positive stand rather than a negative or null result, and Father Paul is at his most convincing and sympathetic when he engages with the existential problems (and is at his most flawed and frail when he lapses into his blind faith).