Brother Lowdown and The Tiger’s Spring

•February 8, 2013 • 2 Comments

BrotherLowdownCover

In Brother Lowdown three people with dark pasts meet as a drifter called Brother Lowdown comes to town in search of someone from his past.

Simon Brith, a detective known for his intense reactions to females finds himself unlikely savior to Terra Donlevy, a cosmetics heiress who eschews anything feminine and harbors a violent abhorrence of most men. The oddly beautiful but twisted Brother Lowdown targets both Simon and Terra in his terrible need for justice.

Brother Lowdown is free this month: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/227039

“Brother Lowdown is a taut read. Move over, Thomas Harris, you’ve got company.” -Robert J. Ray, Author of the Matt Murdock series

 

 

TheTiger'sSpringCover

“And their revenge is as the tiger’s spring,

Deadly, and quick, and crushing.”

                            Lord Byron, Don Juan

The Tiger’s Spring: After the events in Brother Lowdown the wary, wounded Terra shuns the trappings of wealth and chooses to live a simple life in the country with a security system and dogs to keep her safe.  A certain element becomes attracted and for protection Terra relies heavily on Simon Brith, the troubled homicide detective who has made a habit of rescuing her, but things are changing between them and she senses that Simon on his road to wellness is going to need more from her than she can comfortably give.

Simon does want more but Terra stalls at every turn, frustrating him almost as much as the latest case he and his partner Dan Cox have pulled. Someone is killing men and dumping their bodies in a windbreak. Dan worries when known misogynist Simon zeroes in on tall, exotic Ivory Pandeen, who shows up and claims to be an unwilling accomplice to the murders.  Ivory is exquisite with her black hair, dark eyes and long legs and if Terra Donlevy attracts one kind of man, Ivory attracts another. All of them want something they shouldn’t from these two women and a few are going to be surprised to find out just what they receive.

 The Tiger’s Spring is a free Kindle download the weekend of February 21st and 22nd.

The Art Of Animation, Rob Kaz

•November 19, 2012 • 3 Comments

The Art Of Animation, Rob Kaz.

I found this on Tumblr.  Who didn’t love Disney when they were a kid? This illustrates part of the why.  Look at the warmth in each frame.  Talk about magic.

Henry Miller Riffs on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky (Film)

•November 4, 2012 • Leave a Comment

“The flame of the spirit…”

Biblioklept's avatarBiblioklept

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All Hallows Eve & Odd

•October 31, 2012 • 1 Comment

 

My grandmother used to send the best cards on Halloween.  None were quite this old, but the ones with moving parts thrilled us.

Now for some vintage fun: 

Apparently if you look in a mirror at midnight and make  a wish on Halloween you see the face of your true love…

 

 

 

Evidently, these two decided to go as pumpkin guts. 

  Every year ghost gangs cause damage to thousands of sheets all across America.

 

       

 

That is one hard working apple peeling that can spell ‘kiss’.  

 

(All images were snagged from Google images from pages claiming to be royalty free.  If you see one that’s not let me know and I’ll yank it.)

Because Brooms are more than just for sweeping…

•October 2, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Because brooms are more than just for sweeping…

newworldwitchery's avatarNew World Witchery - The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft

I recently helped out on a project for a local folklorist looking for information on broom lore, and wound up with easily twenty pages of notes on the topic from a wide variety of sources. I thought that today I would share a few of the commonly held beliefs regarding brooms, as well as look at some of the most unusual practices surrounding this wonderful household item.

Of course there are many instances of witches riding broomsticks in art and media, but of course brooms were only one of the preferred methods for nocturnal transportation to Sabbat rites. Other mounts included pitchforks, stangs, goats, and eggshells (and even the occasional human being fitted with a magical bridle, in the cases of alleged ‘hag-riding’) (The Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft, Bailey: 23-4). Brooms served magical folk for more than hobby-horses and transport, though. In European culture, broom magic goes back…

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Reaching the Deadline

•September 23, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Just for kicks and giggles:

Deadline approaching, he sat down Monday, looked up briefly on Tuesday when he heard what sounded like a sonic boom, but didn’t leave his desk until late Thursday when the annoying repeated beeping of a garbage collection truck took him to a window, where he saw military gear and Haz-mat suits on the street instead of garbage men. He went outside and saw bodies in plastic being removed from neighboring homes. He called out, lifted a hand, and heard a bored someone on a bullhorn say, “Great, there’s another one that thinks it’s still alive.”

Review of Vivienne Again

•September 17, 2012 • 1 Comment

I promised a review and here it is.  :)

Writer-director Kim Garland grew up around the funeral home business and whatever dark imaginings and morbid fantasies that spring to mind from the association are evident in her first short film, Vivienne Again where the shy, wounded newly employed Vivienne (Erin Fritch) is attendant to the funeral of beautiful young Sophie (Christina Brucato) and finds her attention drawn to three strange men dressed in grey, one of whom seems overly curious about what happens to Sophie and when.  What occurs next has to be the nightmare of every person who ever stood beside the body of a dead person in a coffin and when the shock subsides a mystery begins to reveal itself.  We learn the curious man in grey is Jed (Scott William Winters) and that Sophie isn’t the first dead body he’s left lying around.  But he’s back for her now and Vivienne finds herself driven to act, even ‘pushed’ into involving herself.  Then it’s her turn to become part of the mystery while the beautiful Sophie vanishes.  Yes, you’re left with more than one question as the credits roll, but you also want to see what’s next.  At least I did, and when I read that Kim is already working on the second part of what is to become a trilogy of stories about the world Vivienne stepped into, I knew I had more to look forward to.   Deal Travis In will be Kim’s answer to the mystery of the men in grey and will no doubt be as skillfully written and directed as I found Vivienne Again to be.  A very impressive first effort for Hell’s Kitchen’s Kim Garland.

Where you can see the short:

Upcoming Screenings

FilmColumbia Festival

October 17-21, 2012
Venue TBD (Chatham, NY)
> Screening: Details still to come.
* Select cast/crew (tbd) may be in attendance.

Hosted by The Chatham Film Club and Crandell Theatre, FilmColumbia offers film buffs an exciting long weekend of film screenings and meet the filmmaker events.

In their twelve year history, FilmColumbia has screened many films that have gone on to garner industry and critic awards and nominations. This year’s selections will introduce audiences to an outstanding group of new films before they are released to the general public.

Flyway Film Festival

October 18-21, 2012
Venue TBD (Pepin, WI)
> Screening: Details still to come.
* Select cast/crew (tbd) may be in attendance.

The Flyway Film Festival was founded in 2008 on the beautiful shores of Lake Pepin in southwestern Wisconsin.

The Festival highlights feature and short films, and hosts visiting filmmakers, panel discussions, a Kickoff Gala with food, filmmakers and live music. All in an intimate and interactive environment along the banks of the Mississippi River.

Big Apple Film Festival

November 14-18, 2012
Tribeca Cinemas (New York, NY)
> Screening: Details still to come.
*Writer/Director Kim Garland will be in attendance.

The Big Apple Film Festival screens a variety of specially selected films from the New York City independent film community, as well as additional selections from across the country and around the world.

The festival includes New York City premieres, interactive panel discussions with industry professionals from the New York City film community, honorary award presentations to individuals who have played an influential role in independent filmmaking in the New York City area, networking parties and events, as well as a closing night awards ceremony in which awards will be presented for achievement in filmmaking, screenwriting and acting.

 Visit the web page http://www.vivienneagain.com

Kim Garland is Kicking Ass

•September 11, 2012 • 4 Comments

Kim Garland - Manhattan, NY Meet Kim Garland, New York filmmaker.  I first came across Kim on Twitter and was struck by her incredible energy and drive to excel at her craft.  Her enthusiasm for her ideas is contagious as is evidenced by her many friends and followers.  Sometimes you run across someone who you just know is going to make their dreams happen, and in a way that makes the rest of the world sit up and take notice.  I believe Kim is one of those people, and I can’t wait till she’s a big time director and I can go begging for her to take something of mine and turn it into a film.  Keep your eyes open for her, folks, because she’ll definitely be coming to a theater near you soon.    :)

Vivienne Again poster

Kim’s first short VIVIENNE AGAIN premiered last May at the New York International Short Film Festival and has been an official selection at:

FilmColumbia Festival

Dragon Con Film Festival

HollyShorts Film Festival

Here’s a clip:

Her second short DEAL TRAVIS IN is the second of a planned trilogy of short films set in a world first seen in VIVIENNE AGAIN.

Deal Travis In (short film)

Visit Kim’s pages and check out her filming adventures in Hell’s Kitchen, where she brings ideas about death to life.

http://eepurl.com/pmFaX

@Kim_Garland on Twitter

http://www.facebook.com/KimGarlandFilms

Things that inspire horror authors

•August 20, 2012 • 2 Comments

The latest things to have inspired the stirrings of grotesque tales in my head.

First, based on a true story: The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Weisz. Seriously.  Who needs zombies when you have these soulless, emotionally dead, greedy, rutting jerks to live and work beside every day in life?  I’m going to write a story in which I deal with them as nature intended.

Second, the Lindbergh case. I may have read about it before (who hasn’t, right?) but it took seeing certain elements involved played out by actors in the film J. Edgar to whap me with the overwhelming sense of just about everything in this case being seriously off.  This of course sent me to the internet, where I read and clicked, clicked and read everything from the nanny’s original police statement to this most illuminating of articles in Yankee Magazine where they make what I perceive to be a serious case for this having been an inside job, pulled off by someone right there in the house.

http://new.yankeemagazine.com/article/who-killed-lindbergh-baby

And from YouTube the series In Search Of presents its case:

 

And then there’s this story, which makes a statement in so many ways about ‘us’ as a species.  When I saw the picture I immediately thought of the movie Freaks, which awakened us to the injustices endured by unusual, physically malformed or just plain different humans that 99% of us will never actually encounter.

According to the articles on two paranormal sites the creature in the video was wounded by someone who didn’t know what he was looking at, so he shot it. (So many tales on the internet begin this way.) The thing fled back to its hiding place where there were apparently one or two more, and the shooter and his friends tracked it there. The wounded thing attacked, presumably to protect its family, and the shooter killed it.  Real or hoax, I’ve already written several stories that could have been inspired by this unfortunate video and will likely write another, just to deal with the shooter in a way nature probably didn’t intend.

Richard Burton agrees with John Steinbeck

•August 2, 2012 • 1 Comment

You may recall my earlier post (Feb 2012) relating John Steinbeck’s contention that authors should be read and not seen, and how often we find ourselves disappointed when the actual author of stories we love come nowhere close to what we have imagined.  Yesterday I stumbled on a 1980 interview by Dick Cavett with the elegant, achingly eloquent Welsh actor Richard Burton saying, “I wish novelists would not put their pictures on the back of books, because you read a book which is perhaps absolutely fascinating, and it’s shall we say one of these espionage books…and you read the book and you’re absolutely gripped by it and then there’s a picture of the chap on the back and he’s a febrile old man, bald as a banana, about seventy-five years old, and you know that it’s all kind of wishful thinking on his part and he’s pretending to be James Bond.”

I rest my case.

You’ll find the footage I mention around the 7:00 mark in the video. Before the mark he talks about meeting Greta Garbo, writing in a diary, writers being largely inarticulate people on the whole (which made me howl in recognition of myself) a hilarious story about Humphrey Bogart, and after watching I looked for the entire interview just to hear more of that incredible voice.

Video uploaded by BigCountryJASon on youtube.com

Gotta love it.