THIS IS A HORROR BOOK is a wild, goofy ride full of spookiness, satire and pop culture references and I wanted a trailer that reflected that. I hope you enjoy!
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THIS IS A HORROR BOOK drops Jan. 1! To celebrate, I'm throwing a release party. Details below. I'll be reading along with fellow writers of the spooky and surreal, John Dover and G. Arthur Brown. We will have books for sale and even live accompaniment by musician Mike Doolin. Bonus: The venue is a large bookstore with a super cozy reading room.
Time: 7 p.m. Thu, Jan. 24 Place: Another Read Through, 3932 N. Mississippi Ave., Portland, OR 97227 Admission: Free All ages, but material may be unsuited for innocent-eared children Hope to see some of you there. I made a trailer to celebrate the release of my first book! I hope you check it out and get a laugh out of it. I'm trying to cure the world one bro joke at a time and having fun with it. It's official. My first book has been released! You can get it in both print and Kindle editions. Check out what Weirdpunk editor Sam Richard called "the weirdo surreal Saturday morning cartoon your parents never let you watch." You can get it here. Book trailer coming soon.
Just back from KillerCon, I get a preview of the cover for my first book, BODYBUILDING SPIDER RANGERS AND OTHER STORIES. Don Noble nails what I secretly had in mind. This collection marks the beginning of my journey into the stranger corners of fiction writing. It's got buffed spider mutants, Catholic churches in space battles, murderous centipedes and Victorian social media experts. Watch for it in the next month or so from Rooster Republic Press!
THIS IS A HORROR BOOK will cast a chaos magick spell upon the world with an official release date of Jan. 1, 2019! Get a jump on the mayhem by pre-ordering your copy now! Before I drop the links, check out the cover by artist Joel Amat Guell: From kung fu sorcerers to killer bunnies to creepy Internet users at your local library, THIS IS A HORROR BOOK has all the horrors of this world and beyond. Click here to order from CLASH Books and here to order from Amazon.
Help me out, good people. Spread the horror! --Charles Austin Muir and the CLASH BOOKS librarian The image below is from a movie called The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It's a good movie. It has nothing to do with "The Ghosts and Mrs. Muir," which I wrote yesterday. For some reason I'm fascinated by address stamps and advertisements in old paperbacks and comic books. I could quit speculating and call or write to these businesses -- "please send me your catalogue, Al" -- but confirming their most likely long-dead status isn't the point. I like the shadow they leave, and the notion that maybe they're still doing commerce in some other dimension. That shadow, it seems to me, is related to the one cast by the various entities that have written to my mom since she died. Being the one handling her estate, I feel her phantom in letters like the one her hospital sent -- where she went to the ER the week she died of breast cancer -- reminding her to schedule a mammogram. But maybe she too continues to exist in some other dimension where dead bookstores and mail-order toy retailers still thrive. That anyway was the premise I started with when I wrote what is maybe a garbled sort of poem. If nothing else, the Fingerhut story is true. From The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. The Ghosts and Mrs. Muir
by Charles Austin Muir Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, God took you through the gates of Heaven Sept. 4, 2015. Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, the Sisters of Holiness Health System Business Office notes that you owe $2,390.41 for medical services provided in July and August. Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, the Sisters of Holiness Health and Services informs you that you may wish to schedule a mammogram in 2016. Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, the Department of Motor Vehicles will suspend your driving privileges if you do not show proof of liability insurance. Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, we hope you will call to renew your subscription to Senior Health Ways Magazine. Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, we would like to update your listing in Our Lady of Devotion Catholic School Alumni Magazine. Because you matter, Mrs. Muir, your son Charles drank another bottle of wine last night. Because you are a ghost, Mrs. Muir. You matter. O.J.’s Books and Records in Milwaukie, Oregon, matters. Says so in purple ink on the flyleaf of my pocket-size edition of Samuel Beckett. Call for more information. (“This line has been disconnected.”) The Book Palace in Wenatchee, Washington, also matters. Says so in black ink on the title page. Send for full catalogue. (“Return to sender.”) Jeff matters. He mattered to Bob, anyway, who hoped Jeff would enjoy this edition of Samuel Beckett, according to the inscription dated Christmas Day, 1975. Then there are the Wilkinson’s. They ordered coiled elastic shoe laces from Fingerhut in 1995. Seeing as my dad was Fingerhut’s number-one customer, I took the coupon, lodged in the crease between pages 139 and 140, and mailed it. I hope Fingerhut followed through. Imagine Fred Wilkinson’s surprise when he opens a package containing coiled elastic shoe laces. He forgot he had wanted coiled elastic shoe laces in 1995. Or maybe it was Emma Wilkinson who filled out the card and forgot to send it. Do Fred and Emma still share the same address? Or has one of them continued on elsewhere, like Mrs. Muir? In the same dimension where Jeff is enjoying Samuel Beckett. Where Bob is purchasing Beckett from O.J.’s Books and Records in Milwaukie, Oregon, or The Book Palace in Wenatchee, Washington. Where Mrs. Muir is scheduling a mammogram and saving her driving privileges. Where Our Lady of Devotion Catholic School Alumni Magazine updates her listing and Senior Health Ways Magazine tells her how to keep her brain sharp. Where everything that happened is still happening and everything that didn’t happen is happening and everything that hasn’t happened yet is happening. Only Fingerhut is constant. Fingerhut the god, the fountain that keeps on giving. Repository of hankering for coiled elastic shoe laces. The tidal pull that brings Fred Wilkinson and Charles Austin Muir together, or Emma Wilkinson and Charles Austin Muir together, one remembering Emma, one remembering Fred, one remembering Mrs. Muir, all of us in the now and/or some other now, not remembering Emma or Fred or Mrs. Muir but staying or visiting with them perhaps, yet still wanting something, still wanting something. Grey Matter Press has created a gorgeous website for the release of its anthology PEEL BACK THE SKIN. The website features teasers for each story and an author's gallery (hover over each picture and you can read a short bio). Check it out:
http://peelbacktheskin.greymatterpress.com/ Also, for no reason except as maybe a Throwback Thursday, here is a picture of me in what was to be a creepy video short that never materialized. I do kind of look like I peeled back the skin, I guess. This was in 2013 at my brother's studio in Seattle. A few pics. First, that time a couple weeks ago when we went to a geekfest at the Aladdin Theater celebrating The Gilmore Girls. Cool thing, Keiko Agena, who played Lane Kim in the show, was in the audience. I guess she recently landed a role in Grimm. And for anyone who has wanted to read David Foster Wallace but isn't sure where to start, here is a tip from the staff at Powell's Books. I'm thinking of starting with Oblivion, and even that looks like intellectual boot camp. Here is a hole in front of our house. For no reason at all it makes me think of Stephen King shouting, "Meteor shit!" in Creepshow. The reason for the hole is we had our water main replaced over the weekend. Waiting for a city inspector to approve the job (and hopefully shout "Meteor shit!" first). And here is the cover to PEEL BACK THE SKIN, a horror anthology from Grey Matter Press. Each story will examine the notion of the human being as monster. The lineup is a sort of Dream Team of bestselling and award-winning authors, including Ray Garton, Lucy Taylor, Yvonne Navarro, Jonathan Maberry, Tim Lebbon, and -- the inclusion of which thrills the geek in me -- Graham Masterton, who has written a ton of horror fiction including The Manitou. I loved both the book and film adaptation starring Tony Curtis and Michael Ansara. That's just a sample of the super-accomplished people in this book. The reason I post this is that I'm in it. PEEL BACK THE SKIN will include my long-ish short story, "Party Monster." Watch for it in June.
Maggot’s Day in Bosstown started like any other. The Bosstown Fudge factory’s purple ramparts shadowed the mephitic rush of Scum River. Rain slicked the shacks along the riverbank and beaded cobwebbed eaves. Mist wreathed silver fingers around pillars and town clock. The gas stations—once doors to Elsewhere—stood deserted. Townspeople stayed in their homes. Children munched on marshmallow fudge, root beer float fudge, peanut butter and jelly fudge, cotton candy fudge. For a limited time, they could request white chocolate fudge with pretzels and candy corns. No dentists worked in Bosstown. The strongest teeth were in the shattered windows of Bosstown Fudge’s forgotten rivals. In the cemetery, the graves whispered. Doors to Elsewhere, ajar. Promise of promotion if you put the time in. Till then you hunkered down and stuffed yourself with the Boss’s yummies. # Charlie sipped coffee at the stainless steel table. The cold sludge tickled his gums. He’d been staring at the blackened pane screening out Scum River for over an hour. The peeling window film in front of him took on the whimsical improvisations of an abstract painting. The instant mix burbled in his gut. A generator kicked on. It thrummed in a low register, then stopped. Charlie tried to work a jingle around the sounds, something cheerful without being absurd, but his mind was as blank as the peeling window film screening out Scum River. Next to his notebook a dried coffee stain ringed a pornographic magazine. Rubbing his overalled belly, Charlie stepped onto the second-floor catwalk. Sometimes he did his best thinking wandering the factory. His steps rang on the steel grating high above the so-called Pit, where the Smellmouths salivated in the dark. Their glandular secretions—which gave the fudge its psychotropic properties—played a scent repertoire from the mouthwatering to the macabre. No one knew if the smells were purposeful or related to some autonomic function. The fetor from below dug at scabbed memories. Charlie was in Smear Alley again, painting sexually suggestive flowers on the wall of the Marquis Club. The Boss could send him back there—or somewhere worse—if he failed to devise a catchy jingle by tonight. The Boss controlled the Smellmouths. And the Smellmouths made the fudge that controlled Bosstown. “Bosstown’s got that Maggot’s Day fuuuudge…” Charlie snapped his fingers and turned back. His subconscious tended to cough up the goods once he stepped away from his notebook. Over his clattering footfalls the Boss droned from the Pit: “Have you come up with the jingle yet, Charlie?” (The voice hinted of doors to Elsewhere) “Have you come up with the jingle yet, Charlie?” Slimy sounds in the darkness. They sounded like wet farts. Charlie halted. Apparently his Muse had prompted him too late: The air grew rank with the stink of his mother’s death last year, a mixture of unswept rooms and rotten fruit as she labored through her death rattle in the bed by her television. (Cancer and television—Doors to Elsewhere) Charlie had pushed the Boss too far. He had been patient, letting Charlie go through the motions the last six months. But Maggot’s Day was the most important day of the year. He wasn’t going to let the festival be ruined by a grieving jingle maker. With mounting intensity he drove into Charlie’s sense memory, conducting the Smellmouths through their cruel, pungent symphony. “The jingle, Charlie…” “I—I have it, Boss. The hook, at least.” “This is your chance to move on. I know it must get lonely up there.” Charlie wiped his eyes. “It does, Boss. Worse than Smear Alley.” “Sing to me.” Charlie sang. # “Bosstown’s got that Maggot’s Day fuuuudge,” fluted from children’s mouths all over Bosstown. Grownups rubbed warmth into achy bones and peered out front doors. Along the riverbank rain-bent shacks sagged in the shadow of the Bosstown Fudge factory. Scum River twisted past the factory’s purple ramparts. On the second floor, on a stainless steel table next to a notebook and a girlie magazine, stood a half-drunk mug with the words ARe wE HAvIng FudGe YeT? A generator kicked on. In the Pit, the darkness sighed. |
AuthorWriter of dark and weird-ass fiction. Keeper of weird-ass dogs. Archives
December 2018
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