Rish Outcast 154: Touching the Other Side

This is my Halloween episode, and thanks to two mishaps, I'm lucky to have gotten it to you at all.

Mishap number one was that, due to my craptop living up to its name, I had to substitute "The Night Clerk" with "Touching The Other Side."  You'll meet Natalie Whitmore next Halloween.

The other mishap was that I had to run to the cabin today because it has been unseasonably cold, and my brother (who is out of town) was worried the pipes would freeze.  I drove down there with my brother-in-law, and we discovered the toilets and pipes filled with ice.  So, we underwent the lengthy process of thawing everything, flushing the water from said pipes, and putting anti-freeze in them.

When I got home again, it was time to take the kids trick or treating,  but now that that's done, I can finally get this show out there.*

So, "Touching the Other Side" is a new story concerning a certain haunted building in Idaho, and I hope you dig it.

Happy greatest day of the year!



Spookily download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE.

Creepily check out "True Ghost Encounter" HERE and/or HERE.

Unsettlingly become a patron on my Patreon HERE.

Terrifyingly thank Gino Moretto for the logo (and cover) HERE.

*Another reason to support me on Patreon . . . those guys got it days ago.

"Murder Maze" Available On Amazon

I can't believe I pulled this off.

In fact, maybe I won't write this blog post until I get an email stating that the story is out there, and that I succeeded.  I'd hate to jinx it . . . again.

So, let's start again.  I can't believe I pulled this off.

I got the idea for "Murder Maze" while volunteering to work in an outdoor haunted house (a haunted field, really) on the coldest mid-October night in a century.  To keep warm--and occupied--I made up a story, during the long stretches waiting for the haywagon loaded with surly kids to come my way again.

The next day, I challenged myself to write the story through to the end, edit it, and actually publish it before the end of the month.

Not sure how great it is, but it actually got done, and that's pretty great.

Go ahead and check it out AT THIS LINK.

Carnage Indoraptor

So, after my successful Venom-saurus (and unsuccessful Venom Hulkbuster), I decided to go back to the dinosaur well . . . this time with a take on Marvel's Carnage.

Carnage was a spin-off character of the Spider-man/Venom franchise*, and his first appearance was this:

And unlike Venom's many transformations, Carnage's modern appearance is still really similar, like this:

In other words, he hasn't changed all that much since he was created.  Of course, once the movie comes out, that'll no longer be the case.

Shudder.

So, after Venom, I wondered which dinosaur to do in the Carnage style.  I thought initially, of grabbing a smaller T-Rex (there's one at Target with a baby Rex that's a good size), but I didn't have one handy.  I also thought of using the Carnotaurus, since it has a name that's so similar.

But I didn't like the stubby arms or the super-compacted head.  No, what I needed was a dinosaur like the Velociraptor, that looked like a predator, but wasn't as big as a T-Rex (in the same way as Carnage has always been depicted as thin and wiry, unlike Venom's huge bulk).

And lucky me, the main dino from FALLEN KINGDOM, the Indoraptor, can be found on the cheap.**

And since I had done the Venom paintjob without realizing I'd want to document the process, I made sure to take plenty of pictures for this one.

So, here's what he looks like right out of the package:

It's an excellent design and a great toy (there is a slightly larger one that makes noise that was a Target exclusive, but I never bought one of those--or found it for cheap).

There's something vaguely (or not-so-vaguely) human-like about the design, especially the arms, which have an almost Carnage aspect to them anyway.

The cheap red paint that I used kind of looks bad, but the way the black seeps through it kind of looks good too, in an actual reptile kind of way.

You could almost stop right there, just leaving the head, belly, and tail black, but I wanted to at least do the spider justice.

Then I discovered that Carnage, unlike Venom, Anti-Venom, Agent Venom, Lady Venom, Agent Anti-Venom, Monster Venom, Baby Venom***, Venomhorse, Chupacabravenom, Grannyvenom, Old Man Venom, Monkeyvenom, and Gilligan Venom, doesn't have a spider symbol on his chest.

Instead, he has black ooze all throughout his body.

Much like you do.

So, I just drew them on with a Sharpie.  It should have looked terrible . . . but somehow, it didn't.

 I tried to recreate the white eyes I did for Venom-saurus in exactly the same way.

So, this is the finished product (with a few more lines throughout):

I am really happy with it (and my nephew took it to school for Show & Tell).

And here are my two Symbiote-sauruses together:

Carnage has always had tons of tendrils and wisps coming off him, so I think I could use a glue gun to do that on a future one (if I do one), as well as making a longer tongue for a Venom.

There's also a white symbiote, called Anti-Venom, which might make for an interesting repaint.

To be continued . . .

*Amazing Spider-man 359, in 1992.  By this point, I had stopped reading the comics, but I do remember the first comic I saw him on (Amazing 361, which I bought out of curiosity).

**For now.  Dollars to donuts, it'll sell for thrice that price by Christmas.

***Wow, there really is a Baby Venom.  I thought I made that up.

"Last Lunch At Charburger" Available At Amazon

I wrote a story (sort of) about my relationship with Big Anklevich in 2017, after he moved away and left me to raise our kids on my own.  Or maybe it's not about that at all.  Regardless, it's called "Last Lunch At Charburger," and I finally got around to making it available, if you're curious.

I've got an audio version I recorded, but after Big gave me some notes on the story, I wonder if I should bother editing it, or should record a new version.  We'll see.

Anyway, if you wanna to find out what we ordered for our titular Last Lunch, go to this Amazon link and check it out.

Char thee well.

"Touching the Other Side" Available on Amazon

I set a goal for myself, at the beginning of the month, to actually publish two stories . . . the opposite of what I usually do.  Here's the first, "Touching the Other Side," a sequel (or possibly prequel) to 2016's "True Ghost Encounter."

That's right, it's another story for that imagined anthology, "Dead & Breakfast," about a place up in Idaho that is reliably haunted one night a year.  In this one, we meet Jamie Iglesias, a television medium, who makes his living speaking to the dead.  What happens when he goes to Shady Pines Bed & Breakfast?

Well, you know what happens.  But here's THE LINK over at Amazon anyway.

One down . . .

Rish "Bred & Wreckfast" Outfield

Oh, and here's the preliminary cover I created for the book:

Cross over, children!  All are welcome!

*Later, I got an idea for a third one, and challenged myself to write, edit, create a cover, and publish a story all in the same month.  I've got two more days to get that done.

Venomized Hulkbuster

Not content with just my Venomized T-Rex, I got the idea of a follow-up . . . a Venomized Hulkbuster Iron Man.

Luckily, I had a couple of the cheapie Titan Hero movie Mark II Hulkbuster figures:

Only now, looking closely, do I realize how much it sucks.

But ah well.

So, above is the figure right out of the box.

I started in on the black.

I considered leaving the gold as-is, but ultimately, it didn't look very good.

You can see that I left the red in a vaguely spider shape.

This was the almost-finished product:

But I don't personally feel like my Venom Hulkbuster looked all that impressive in the end, and I never even finished it.

So I kept thinking.

How about Carnage?

To Be Continued...

I Narrate "Before The Wind" By Abigail Hilton

As she is wont to do, Abigail Hilton continues to employ me to narrate her audiobooks.  The newest, "Before the Wind," is a collection of short stories set in her Panamindorah universe, each focused on a character (major or minor) from the books.  It's the fourth such collection, with no end in sight.

This one includes the stories, "Bad Blood," "Blockade Runner," "Save Yourself," "Play Date," "Queen in the Daylight," "Say Please," and "Fly," most of which are performed by me.

If that sort of thing's your bag (baby), just scoop it up over at Audible now.

Also, you can read her excellent short story "Fly" (with your eyes, not your ears) on her blog right here.

Rish Outcast 153: Fire & Blood & Rish & Outfield

In this show, I talk about George R.R. Martin's "Fire & Blood" book, and its many detractors.  And I try to understand the man himself.

If you'd rather download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you'd rather the show not disappear after Halloween, support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "Byre & Flood" Moretto.

Venomized T-Rex

In 2008's "Old Man Logan" mini-series, there were about three pages that featured our heroes fleeing across the Mojave Desert, pursued by a Tyrannosaurus that had been "infected" by the Venom symbiote.  It was kind of a throwaway moment, but it sure stuck with me.  I hoped that Hasbro would make an action figure of it, combining the favorites of dinosaurs and Marvel Comics.

But they never did.

Unfortunately, the ONLY product I've ever seen for sale based on this image (which was later given some backstory in the comics as being a T-Rex from the Savage Land that attacked Venom, and was inadvertently combined with the symbiote) is this ridiculously overpriced statue by Sideshow Collectibles:

That sucker would run you around $229.99, if you bought it before that price doubled.

But the thing is, I like the IDEA of a Venomasaurus much more than the actual design of the thing. You see, this is what Venom looked like in his first appearance:

He was basically the black Spider-man costume uit on a hugely muscular body, with a great McFarlane grin. THAT'S Venom to me, since I was there at the beginning (in the same way that certain shots in the Star Wars Special Edition's smirking ghost Anakin Skywalker, for example, strike me as offensively wrong, even though they have now existed longer than the original*), and I remember how captivated I was by that first issue, Amazing Spider-man 299.

Later, Erik Larsen started drawing him with fangs and an oversized tongue, and by the time Venom hit the big time with his own title, he was constantly drooling green goo and his skin was dripping black tar like a melting candle. This is what Venom looks like today:

But none of those images are quite as displeasing to me as the Venomized T-Rex. There's just too much white, too many tendrils, too much alien, and not enough Venom OR dinosaur.

So I decided to try my hand at making one myself.

I found a big T-rex on clearance at Target (this one is called the Bite 'n Fight Tyrannosaurus) for about half the price they were when they were new.  While I don't regret buying it (in fact, I wish I'd bought several, since I'd like to try different ones), the mouth on Bite 'n Fight is always open, while this one:

(The Thrash 'n Throw Tyrannosaurus) has a mouth that is closed in its resting state, and only opens when you press the tail.  Your mileage may vary, though.  They're both mostly the same figure, in shape and size (although Thrash 'n Throw is more expensive, by several dollars . . . even on clearance).

This one is brown rather than orange, but they're both great figures.

There are various sizes of the world's most famous dinosaur, ranging from fairly small (and cheap) to the Super Colossal Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is an amazing creation of artistry and beauty . . . and is also surprisingly cheap.

I MIGHT do another one in the giant scale, just to see what happens.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures of the work-in-progress, because I didn't imagine it would amount to much (I didn't even think to make a blog post about it until over a month had passed--and I started on the sequel).  But I did send Big Anklevich this picture, while I painted and watched "The West Wing."

I wish I had taken some, when it was brown and black.

Despite the way Venom has evolved over the years, I wanted to make it look like Venom did in 1988, only on a dinosaur.  So I did the best I could--and found that the spider symbol is really hard to replicate.

Here's the final product:



I did go in and put some green drool around his teeth and jaw, though I COULD go all-out and use hot-glue to make it really runny.

I'm really happy with it.  I only wish the photos could come out as well as the figure did.

Rish Outfield

*Guess this is only true of the original "Special Edition" changes.  Sebastian Shaw Anakin Ghost: 21 years (1983-2004), Hayden Smirking Anakin Ghost: 15 years (2004-2019)

Rish Outcast 152: Pigeons From Hell

In this episode, I share Robert E. Howard's famous Horror story "Pigeons From Hell."

I talk about Howard, audio narration, and my choice of how to present this story, specifically a certain word contained in the original text.  That word.



Download this filth by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon by Left-Clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "Kiwi From Hell" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 151: Radio Ga Ga

This episode, I present my short story "Radio Ga Ga."  And then I apologize for the title.  A lot.

I also talk about the movies TROLL 2 and SHUDDER ISLAND.  A little.



Care to download the episode directly?  Right-Click HERE.

Wish to support me on Patreon?  Left-Click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Killer Queen" Moretto.

Happy October!

I need to upload the next episode.

In the meantime, I went to the local thrift store and found . . .

A Tor Johnson mask!!


I was thrilled, because I've always wanted a Tor Johnson mask ("always" being, since 1997 or so when I first saw PLAN 9), and it was only five bucks.

I put it on, and promptly changed my mind.

The inside of the mask smelled like Tor Johnson may have died wearing it.  Sigh.