Just in time to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller, Rish talks to Marshal and Big about movies that scared them.
What scared you?
Flicks mentioned include: THE SHINING (1980) CREEPSHOW (1982) PET SEMATARY (1989) A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) JAWS (1975) PHANTASM II (1988) THE RING (2002) AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.
Months ago, Big Anklevich got it into his head to help me publish a real, physical book with my stories in it (Female Protagonist, still available HERE). And he suggested I put reference to a couple more at the beginning, if it would help motivate me to get them out there. Then he focused on his own work for a while, and released an absolutely astounding amount of material (no exaggeration, he probably put out as many stories in 2024 as I have in the first ten years I was publishing on Amazon).
But now, he's gone back to my drying well, to help me get my second physical book out, a collection of the first five "Lara & The Witch" stories ("Like A Good Neighbor," "You're In Good Hands," "Made Just For You," "The People We Touch," and "Here To Help"*). He even created a couple of cool illustrations to put in there, like this one of a snowglobe with a witch in it from the end of "Made Just For You."
It took half the year to get the second one done, but here we are, through very little work of my own. He helped me find a couple of inconsistencies (like Lara's age and eye color), and created this cover for me, which I am quite happy with:
I'm leaving this on here, but Big noticed a weird colored line going through the title and immediately sent me a corrected version. I hadn't noticed...and likely never would.
Still, I must have missed the line about beggars not getting to be choosers, because I asked for about a hundred changes to it, until not only Blocked my number, but took me off his family blog mailing list (something he never, ever does).
But here we are, a second physical book under my belt, and strangely, after sending the files to Amazon, they were ready and up for sale the same day, something that wasn't the case just this past summer.
So, "Lara & The Witch: Volume 1" is available to purchase on Kindle, in Paperback, and crazily, in Hardcover. If you like it, there are more where that came from.
...and watch an episode of a show for little, little kids!
The last "Delusions of Grandeur" episode we did was inspired by watching Alfred Hitchcock's movie NOTORIOUS, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, and in reading about that, it said that an episode of "The Clone Wars" was a total homage to it. So, I volunteered to watch an episode of that show*, the one called "Senate Spy" from 2009. And yes, there are definite parallels there.
Just as we were going to record, however, the great James Earl Jones died, and we spend a few minutes talking about his masterful addition to the Star Wars experience. Check it out HERE.
*It's not the only episode I've seen, having watched the last story arc of the series at the 2022 Star Wars Celebration . . . but it was the first bad episode I saw.
I've only got a few days to organize my story for the Journey Into Journey Illustrated Edition contest, and I'm really dragging my feet. The story itself is finished, though 70% of it is in one document and 20% is in another one.* I need to get it all together, format it, and read through it from soup to nuts to get it in as good a shape as possible before I submit it.
It's hard to motivate myself, though. This free afternoon, I am in charge of picking my nephew and his friend up from school, and afterward, I'll go rot my brain at Jeff's house watching horror movies, but right now, I could sit down and go through it without any interruption . . . and still, I type this instead. Sigh.
A rare image of a deadline in the wild
It's funny how the brain works, how it can self-sabotage, especially now, in the home stretch, where I've actually done all of the hard work (the coming up of an idea, the nailing down all the pertinent details, and the actual writing of the thing). It could be, typing it out like that, that my brain doesn't work at all.
*Yeah, that math is right. I'm worried that I misplaced a section of the story when I took it to the library the first time to format it and get it organized. The second time I took it to the library, I discovered that the older version of the file had bits in it that the newer version did not, which leads me to believe I accidentally emailed the wrong version to myself when the library was closing that night.
Over at the Outfield Excursions podcast, Marshal Latham and I talk LISA FRANKENSTEIN, the 2024 teen Eighties reimagining of the Mary Shelley tale, starring Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse.
One of my favorite horror movies of the new century was JENNIFER'S BODY, written by Diablo Cody. Yeah, I know that everybody hates it, but a lot of folks love the Star Wars Prequels, so there. Anyway, Marshal suggested we review the newest Diablo Cody-written Horror-adjacent film, LISA FRANKENSTEIN. And now, the shoe's on the other hoof.
During my run tonight, I listened to the following video on YouTube:
Long story short: the unanswered question of who sang The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet has finally been solved. A German band, Fex, only together from 1983 to 1985, recorded the song, performed it a few times, and then went their separate ways, not reuniting until November of 2024. Turns out that the track was not called Like The Wind, but Subways of Your Mind, and one of the members has both a live recording and a demo version to offer as proof that they're the long-lost band behind it. After learning (after years of mystery) that hundreds of thousands of people (this video has 169K views, and a similar video by a disheveled dude called Whang! has 258K views*), the original songwriter reunited with the band, performed an acoustic version, and has been inundated with press and interview requests.
I have to admit that a couple of days ago, when I heard the mystery had been solved, I was hesitant to watch the Professor of Rock video about it, because the destination is (nearly) never as good as the journey to get there. But tonight, on my run, I went ahead and played it, and it turns out, I was wrong. I found myself surprisingly moved by the end of this road, and felt pure, unselfish joy that these former bandmates have found an odd class of success forty-one years after recording this song. And I hope they put out records, sign autographs, appear on late night talk shows, go on tour, and put out new music, like every hit band gets to do . . . but usually decades after releasing their hit.
Are there groupies that will sleep with band members didn't find success until they were nearly seventy?
A photo of the actual rediscovered demo tape.
I have a (very small) connection with the song in that, since 2020, I've been using Subways/Most Mysterious Song as the theme tune to my fiction podcast (The Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name), both because I really enjoy the song and got a little thrill of knowing I could never get in trouble for using it, not in a million years (the version of the song on my computer is from September 2019).
So now, I wonder: should I keep using it? And if so (of course I'll keep using it), should I use the newly-released, clearer-lyrics version or just the original, tinnier recording? And should I retire the bit where Fake Sean Connery says, "The theme is The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet. If you know who sings it, then you are the only one."?
*Turns out, his video is much more in-depth, talking about the details of
how the band was tracked down, and how close it came to being discovered
over the years, with no luck. I discovered two things: that there's a
reason Whang's coverage is the more popular of the two, and that I have
serious mental problems that explain why I became so emotional watching
the coverage.
But let me play amateur headshrinker for a moment and
say that, in a world as shitty as this one, with so much injustice and
greed and hatred and indifference . . . people have to take their
victories where they can, even if they're just happy for somebody else's
success, or that an unanswered question has now been answered.
I finally achieved the goal I set back in September*, for getting the audiobook of my novel "Balms & Sears" to sixty percent.
As of yesterday, I've now got forty-two of sixty-three chapters recorded, which puts me at the glorious number of 66.66666 percent done. I know someone out there is proud of me.
*Crap, I just looked, and Mephistopheles help me, it was August.
I set two stupid goals for this month that I have been trying not to blow off: writing every day and getting my novel "Balms & Sears" to 75% recorded.
On the first goal, I have BARELY managed to write every single day this month, though the other night, I was falling asleep and I asked myself, "Was there something I was supposed to do today that I didn't do?" I had remembered to exercise, so I figured I was in the clear, but then I thought of my writing goal, and wrote three anemic paragraphs . . . which may not be great, but still counts.
I split another chapter in two last night, which brings the total to sixty-three, and I have thirty-eight done. By my math, that puts me at 60% finished (which is almost exactly six hours long). If I manage one more chapter every other day this month, I'll finish the whole audiobook, not just my goal of 75%.
It is exhausting, though. B&S is the longest thing I've ever written, and I am simply not cut out for this sort of thing. There are too many characters and too many subplots and I can't maintain it all, much less keep track of continuity. Nope, when this is done, I'm going back to short stories and the occasional novella, thanks.
After a wait of more than a month, Rish answers more questions from listeners*, including insight into the Cheesy Street Chalupa, and presents a short excerpt from his forthcoming novel "Balms & Sears."
*Questions from Rob Broughton, Keith Teklits, Marshal Latham, Letruvia Kambatta, and Brian Saur.
If you'd like to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.
Because of Archive.org's problems, this episode was delayed for weeks. To avoid this, come support me on Patreon HERE.
Where I live, every Tuesday is garbage day, the day you take out
the trash. It can be a chore, but it has to be done. And this
particular Tuesday is special, for a not-entirely-unrelated reason.
Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, especially when I'm going to look for a
photo of Ricky Chapman from the semi-infamous SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2 to use in this
post.
But no joking matter is how I feel on
this Tuesday, knowing it's Election Day, and how, in a few short hours,
the results will start coming in, and--I'm being realistic here--a few
days from now, we'll get an official declaration as to who won the
Presidency. It has been with dread and disquiet I've spent the last
week--a week that should be filled with the light joy of celebrating all
things spooky and make-believe, instead of all too real. But hey, I
voted, and I can only hope that enough good people did too, regardless
of how inconvenient it can be, or how insignificant it can seem.
It's
a little thing, to cast your ballot and (if you choose) wear that fun
little sticker, but if enough people do it, it becomes not so little a
thing.
The only guarantee regarding this election is that Trump is going to declare victory no matter what the results are, and that future generations will ask us about it. Whatever happens, I have to believe that there are more good people than bad, and that, even with my myriad, seemingly endless faults, I can number myself among them.
So, at the end of each month, I tally up how much I've exercised, much like I used to do with my word count.* My goal for 2023 was to Exercise 200 Days, and my goal for 2024 was to Exercise 222 Days. These are achievable goals (last year, I managed 249 days, which is not at all bad), and one of the few things I've managed to do this year is keep up with my exercise goals, mostly running. On Halloween, I went on an extra long run, because one of the neighbors had put up a fog machine in their yard so I ducked down the cul de sac to check it out, and when I got home, I added up how I've done for the year so far.
Not sure why I didn't save orange for October.
So, as of October 31st, I'm at 251 days of exercise for the year, which means that not only have I already achieved my goal, but I've already beaten last year's total, with two months left. Not too shabby. I guess Big Anklevich and I are alike in at least one way.**
*In November, I've set the goal of writing every single day . . . but the trick is, I didn't say how much. So if I write three words, I'm counting it.
**Or two, if you count our love of dogs, and understanding that cats are cold, sinister things.
Okay, that's not exactly true: Archive.org has mostly come back, and all my previous episodes should be available. For the last few days, I was unable to log back in, but today I managed to, and I can access my files (which means you can too), but I still can't upload anything new.*
So, that leaves us where we were last time. No new shows can go up on my blog, but you can always go to my Patreon to check out new shows, which will keep on happening, regardless of the backlog on my regular feed. Sorry about this, but tis what tis.
