Nate is READING: Cameron Judd, The Phantom Legion
LISTENING TO: The Druidcast (www.druidry.org)
WATCHING: Braveheart (yet again)
First, some stuff: I’m no longer updating the Benrik blog because I’ve quit doing the Tasks for this year. Next year I’ll attempt the next book, but until then . . .
I’m also going to try and update this blog every day, and to make sure that the entries are actually coherent instead of just the random musings of a madman, which is all we were going on before.
As y’all know (I’ve told you enough), I’m serializing my urban fantasy novella, Ghost Dance, on another WordPress blog. Chapter seven (in which Linda kicks some more ass, the true nature of Ol’ Scratch is hinted at, and Linda’s father has shenanigans) was posted just the other day. If you like mythology, folklore, the north Georgia mountains, or any of the various subdivisions of fantasy, I suggest you check it out. It can be found here: http://authorofghostdance.wordpress.com/
And now, onto the meat of today’s entry:
The other night, in a fit of what may have been temporary insanity, I wrote the following letter to Brian Keene of http://www.briankeene.com:
Brian Keene
P.O Box 281
Craley, PA 17312
Dear Mr. Keene,
You can call me Nate. I just turned eighteen in December, I’m an aspiring novelist (amongst many other things), and I live in Mississippi. You may remember me; I used to post on the Keenedom, but I had a bit of a “fanboy moment” (sorry about that . . .) and decided to quietly make an exit; I’m not much of a forum guy anyways. I’m writing you because the other day I picked up The Black Train by Edward Lee at my friendly neighborhood bookstore and it reminded me of how much I like paperback horror novels (I’ve been moving more towards classics these past few months); as soon as I got home I randomly picked The Conqueror Worms off of my bookshelf and devoured it in just a few hours. It’s not your best, out of what books of yours I’ve read, but it’s still very good and I enjoyed it even more upon the second reading.
I remembered seeing a P.O box on the contact page on your website and it occurred to me that I haven’t gotten a letter in the snail-mail in years, so I decided to send one off. I haven’t been following your blog since my silent departure about a year ago, so I hope that things are going well for you and you have my condolences and good wishes if they’ve been less than awesome. I look foreward to hearing from you just as soon as you find the time and/or money for stamps; I’m not going anyplace. I wish you the best of luck; so long as you keeps on a-writin’ them there books, I’s gonna keep a-buyin’ ‘em!
Sincerely,
Nate.
P.S.: I’m a little short of funds right now, but as soon as I can spare fifty bucks I do plan on subscribing to the newsletter. If it’s half as great as the other stuff you’ve written, that’s chump change.
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As some of you may or may not know: Brian Keene is a totally awesome horror writer. He was born in Pennsylvania sometime around when Brian chased the Dane (he falls into the “not as old as my dad but still alot older than me” demographic) and still lives there to this day. He’s the author of such celebrated titles as The Rising, City of the Dead, Dark Hollow, Ghost Walk, Terminal, The Conqueror Worms, and many, many others. I found out about him a couple of years ago through a History Channel special on zombies and was hooked immediately. I cumbered around on his forum for a little while until the aforementioned “incident”; since the place had never been to my liking anyway, I ducked out all silent-like instead of making a big stink because I really respect Brian Keene and didn’t want to piss him off too much or pollute his forum with aimless griping. (Since then I found out they banned me, which thought was weird since nobody’d mentioned it before I left; I reckon that once it became clear I’d sodded off, they figgered it didn’t matter.)
(NOTE: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS)
Excluding Sympathy for the Devil and Unhappy Endings (an article collection and a short story collection, respectively), I’d order those books of his I’ve read from best to worst as follows:
Ghost Walk
The Rising
Dark Hollow
Ghoul
The Conqueror Worms
City of the Dead
Ghost Walk is my favorite for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it’s exactly the right length to tell the story. Keene is a very verbose writer, and it seems like in some of his books (especially the last two) he’s mincing words; Ghost Walk is without a doubt the slimmest volume listed. Second, the mechanical execution is flawless; I got a real The Great Gatsby vibe while reading it, by which I mean that I didn’t see a single wooden phrase, dying metaphor, or poorly-chosen word in the whole thing. Third (and perhaps most important of all), it’s the only end-of-the-world-is-imminent book listed where the humans (er, human, in this case) manage to thwart the Thirteen. The others are full of ass-kicking (zombie upon zombie upon zombie gets wasted in The Rising and City of the Dead, and the scene in The Conqueror Worms where carl kills Behemoth made me almost as happy as in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when Friar Tuck piles all those heavy sacks of gold in the bishop’s arms and is all “And here’s thirty pieces of silver, to pay your way to HELL!” shoves him out the window), but in the end things always turn sour for our heroes (except in City of the Dead, which as a sort-of happy ending; at least, as happy an ending as can be expected). Ghost Walk doesn’t really have a happy ending either, but the world gets saved and the evil monster dude gets thwarted.
The middle ones all have their ups and downs. The Rising is epic, not just long but really epic (of Stand-like proportions), and the characterization and description are beautiful, but it’s Keene’s first novel and has all the faults one might expect in a first novel; the language gets a bit choppy in places, for instance, and I think he really screwed the pooch on the ending (hint: he never intended to write a sequal). Dark Hollow and Ghoul are both personal favorites of mine; both are tragic, brutal, and humorous in just the right ammounts and places, and both revolve around awesomely horrible monsters (Dark Hollow is one of the only books I’ve read that made me really honestly lose sleep; if you’re a man, or if you’re a fan of Bill Hicks’s Goatboy sketch, I reccomend reading it with the lights on). The Conqueror Worms we’ve already discussed.
I put City of the Dead at the bottom of the stack because it’s much too fat; it has all the same qualities that made me love The Rising and with fewer of those first-novel flaws, but it seems to just go on and on and on forever with no tangible hope of a happy ending (sort of like being trapped in a videogame you know you can’t win). But all of the good qualities far outweigh the bad, and if you don’t mind a good long yarn (and a bit of a shaggy dog story, let’s be honest) I highly reccomend it; if you enjoyed Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, you know what I mean.
So enough about that crusty old bastard. Let’s talk about ME!
I finished reading William Golding’s The Inheritors the other day; I enjoyed it, though it was kind of sad. Today I cracked open The Phantom Legion by Cameron Judd; I loved The Shadow Warriors (the first book in the trilogy) and I can’t wait to see what happens in this next volume, plus I really need the inspiration for the Overmountain man story I’m trying to write.
I picked up a couple of printed-on-dead-trees job applications from stores, and I’m about to start filling out an online one for the Books-a-Million at the mall here; looks like my trip to Canada this summer will be a go! I don’t need much cash, as I’ve got no qualms about eating spam-and-ketchup sandwiches and sleeping in my truck for a week or two. The most expensive thing will probably be gas.
After a bit of deliberation, I’ve decided that, yes, I will go to community college. I feel like an elitist ass for objecting to it for so long, but the truth is I only want a college degree so I can get my teaching job; anything I could learn at some fancy-pants expensive-as-Hell university, I could teach myself at a public library. So what does it matter if I get said degree from a community college?
I’ve hit a little bit of a roadblock on my writing. I can’t wait for ScriptFrenzy (www.scriptfrenzy.org) to start so that I can get all of these ideas for my Song of Roland stage play out of my head. I’ve decided that once I get my hundred pages for ScriptFrenzy done, I can start on this awesome new novel idea I had; this commitment is important, because I have a bad habit of throwing all my energy into a new project for a week or two and totally burning out. This new idea was inspired by Forbidden History, an anthology of fringe-science and fringe-history essays put out by the folks behind Atlantis Rising magazine; not to say too much, but it involves cavemen. Thus my reading Golding’s The Inheritors, and placing Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear next in my stack after Phantom Legion.
I’m going to try and put most of my energy into finishing Parcel O’ Rogues (a zombie novella that is without a doubt the most politically-charged thing I’ve ever written) and the sequal to Ghost Dance. Said sequal will be called Houses of the Holy, and if I splice it with Ghost Dance, well, I’ll have myself a complete novel! I’m hoping that Dr. Pus (http://libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com/) will be interested in it.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
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