Some of you may have heard about the serious flaw in PHP that was discovered last week, which meant that a great many websites are potentially compromised. What is PHP, I hear some of you asking. It stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, using the longtime standard recursive acronym structure programming geeks have developed over the … Read more
Although there’s lots of crime going on in Die Famous, the story is really about 29-year-old Savannah Cody, her lover Eddie “Nickel” Terhune, and their son, Alford, who is twelve in 1937. Eddie was a handyman on Wendell Cody’s farm when he got 16-year-old Savannah pregnant. The Terhunes were legendary bootleggers, so there’s no chance the Codys would welcome him into their fold—even if Cody, a former detective, enjoys a private stash of their finest whiskey. Eddie tried everything he could to appeal to Savannah’s prim and proud mother, to no avail. After she had the baby, Savannah went to be with Eddie, leaving Alford in the care of her parents. She and Eddie had dreams of saving enough to buy a home where they could raise their son. Eddie, working as an itinerant mechanic, supposedly wasn’t aware that the cars he was fixing were stolen, but that didn’t stop him from being convicted for being part of a car theft ring. He spent five years in prison, which may or may not be the source of his nickname. Savannah, who visited him frequently, saw how incarceration was changing him, making him harder. His reputation as someone who was obsessed with maps made him a favorite for charting escape routes for criminals planning robberies. The book is set in the depression era, when Gangsters like John Dillinger became folk heroes for taking money from the bankers who farmers and other poor folk see as villains. After he gets out of prison, Eddie joins up with Al Brady and his gang. Brady craves the kind of notoriety Dillinger achieved, with a stated goal of making Dillinger “look like a piker.” His gang started out by robbing grocery stores and gas stations, then graduated to bank and jewelry store heists. Savannah followed … Read more
Craig Johnson is known for his long-running series of novels featuring Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire, but he has also created some shorter works, including a few novellas and some standalone short stories. Subscribers to his newsletter are treated to a seasonal short story each December. These tend to be lighter, more sentimental works, appropriate to the season. His second story collection, Have Courage, brings together a dozen of these seasonal tales, as well as a previously unpublished novelette. A couple of the stories are set in the days when Longmire was a rookie deputy under Sheriff Lucian Connally, while others are more contemporary. They are generally whimsical, as is the case of the man who comes up with a unique way of trying to deter neighbors from stealing from his woodpile. On the other hand, some are designed to tug at the heartstrings, as in “The Perfect A,” which deals with a Basque shepherd who once had an epistolery relationship with the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini. Walt is an honorable man, always willing to see the best in people unless they give him a good reason to think otherwise. The other people living in and around Durant are equally neighborly, such as the store owner who donates bags of food to the family of a young boy who attempted to rob her place for the staples required to make a Christmas dinner. The boy has “improved” his vocabulary by reading old pulp crime novels. In the same story, Walt is left in charge of a bottle of sourdough starter that dates back a century and a half. This is not the sort of thing Longmire should be responsible for. Other stories include a feud over some antique porch chairs, a Christmas Eve standoff in a church, a man who … Read more
Had I ever seen Pet Sematary on the big screen before? I can’t be sure. It was released in April 1989, when I was living in Zurich. I saw a handful of movies when I was in Switzerland, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of them, and it probably wouldn’t have still been playing … Read more
This blog article contains information of a medical/personal nature. If that doesn’t interest you, please feel free to click away. Pop quiz time: What do Bill Bixby, Dan Fogelberg, Björn Borg, Frank Zappa, Ken Howard, Johnny Ramone, and Winston Churchill all have in common? Answer: Their deaths were attributed to prostate cancer or complications from … Read more
Horror stories can invoke a wide range of emotional responses. They can, of course, scare, terrify, or shock. They can, however, also disturb and unsettle, create a sense of unease. Most of the stories in Nat Cassidy’s debut collection are guaranteed to leave readers feeling profoundly unsettled. That’s not to say they won’t also frighten you and maybe even gross you out at times. The collection opens with the novella “Rest Stop.” A heartbroken musician named Abe makes the unfortunate decision to stop at a remote gas station for snacks in the middle of the night while driving to visit his ailing–and unpleasant—grandmother. Although there are other vehicles in the parking lot, the store appears abandoned. Even the cashier is AWOL. Abe goes to the bathroom but, when he tries to leave, the door is locked from the outside. Trapped in this small room for most of the story, he is besieged by venomous critters falling from the ceiling. Then someone starts slipping cryptic notes under the door and the lights go out. He is being spared from whatever horrors are taking place in the convenience store, but he’s left with nothing but his thoughts to comfort him and he has a vivid imagination, fueled by horror stories his grandmother told him. He has emotional debates and arguments with her in his mind, as well as with his bandmate/best friend. The real horror begins, though, when he discovers the door is no longer locked. He emerges to confront a monster of Biblical proportions, forcing him to engage in an epic battle for his life. The story covers the widest possible range of emotions, with the stress level turned up to the max. This one will stay with you, for sure. Two stories have a common motif, the “meet cute” scenario. … Read more
Jenny Kaplan achieved overnight virtual celebrity for a stream-of-consciousness article she wrote for the publication where she works. In it she describes problems with her relationship with a man who developed mental health issues and her decision to terminate her pregnancy. When a group of incels targets her, threatening violence, the magazine’s owners cave to the pressure and fire her. Her former editor, ashamed for failing to stand up for her, gives her a freelance assignment to help bridge the gap. It’s supposed to be a one-day outing to a small town in Pennsylvania to profile Mia Wright, a celebrity influencer who has monetized the “trad wife” concept by creating videos about her seemingly ideal life now that she has adopted an insular, antifeminist lifestyle on Black Swan Farm with her husband and numerous children. Black Swan is a working farm, and her myriad fans clamor to represent and sell the products the farm produces. Even those who fall behind financially because of the burden associated with being part of this multi-level marketing scheme remain her most devoted cheerleaders and supporters. They all want to be Mia, or at least associated with her, even though many of them have never gotten to meet her. While researching Mia’s videos before the interview, Jenny detects something no one else has noticed before. They almost always involve a mishap, ranging from a dog knocking her over so she drops a carefully prepared meal to “accidentally” cutting or burning herself. Mia’s earliest videos, which did not gain much traction, did not feature such incidents. Once they started to be a regular part of her videos, Mia’s viewership accelerated. After carefully analysis, Jenny is convinced that Mia is deliberately staging these incidents, making her determined to expose Mia’s duplicity. No one—including Jenny’s sister—wants her to … Read more
Before I dive into this remembrance of my interactions with Dan Simmons, I want to acknowledge that he openly expressed troubling and offensive opinions, including political rants in Flashback. Some say he was radicalized by 9/11. Other say his opinions changed—or he felt more open about expressing them—after a serious head injury in 2014. I … Read more
Today, Lividian Publications, operated by Brian Freeman, announced the publication of my debut novel, Ghost Inn. The book has been over twenty years in the making. It had its genesis at Necon in 2024 when Ginjer Buchanan, then an editor at Berkley, gave attendees the opportunity to write proposals for a shared-world anthology series she … Read more
It’s amazing to consider how little we really know about someone like William Shakespeare, arguably one of the most famous writers of all time. No letters from him survive. There are few verified examples of his handwritten signature. Many administrative records and documents have been lost to time. On the other hand, modern-day artists are creating troves of material detailing the minutia of their daily lives. Handwritten letters and private journals are preserved in literary archives, and public social media posts by and about people are available to anyone who wants to find them. And, suppose that at some point in the future all current encryption methods are defeated, giving a researcher access to every text message and email sent and received by the subject. Such is the case for Thomas Metcalfe, a literary scholar and researcher who lives a century in our future. His world is vastly different from ours. The global warming crisis has borne out the most pessimistic predictions, leading to floods and famine and wars (some nuclear) between neighboring countries over precious resources. A misfired atomic bomb exploded in the middle of the Atlantic, its shockwaves causing cataclysmic flooding on both sides of the ocean. America is now cut off, embroiled in internal wars by rival tribal leaders. The United Kingdom, where Metcalfe lives, is an archipelago. Oxford is completely under water and travel within the country is expensive and dangerous. Air travel no longer exists. However, thanks to the Nigerian internet, electronic communication persists and, with it, access to nearly endless documentation related to the late 20th and early 21st century. Metcalfe’s research involves a renowned poet by the name of Francis Blundy, favorably compare in his time to Seamus Heaney and whose reputation is still strong in 2119. Some of the luster of his … Read more