Marshal & Rish Bury . . . The Living??

I remember watching I BURY THE LIVING! at the family cabin alone on a Sunday afternoon last fall.  It's a 1958 horror film about a man (Richard Boone) hired to work at a cemetery with a big map of all the burial plots who discovers that, when he puts a pin in a space, the person who owns that plot dies.  Or do they?

Okay, I'll be honest: until today, I had completely forgotten we had watched this movie, and had it confused with the Daisy Ridley zombie flick that came out a month back.  But not too long ago, Marshal Latham and I did an episode talking about it, and I even did a whole separate podcast episode inspired by it, talking about Stephen King's "Obits," which was also inspired by it.

Maybe you'll be inspired too.  Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 290: Wanna See Something Really Scary?

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.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

If you wanna see something really scary, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Something Really Hairy" Moretto.

Podcast That Dares 50: The Jaunt

Rish performs Stephen King's 1981 short story "The Jaunt." In this dark Sci-Fi tale, a father tells his nervous family how the Jaunt came to be before they take off to Mars.

Note: This episode has been a long time in coming, longer than you think.

You there, to download this episode, Right-Click HERE. 

To support me over on Patreon, click HERE.  You know you want to.  Nobody will ever know.

 Logo by Gino "The Aunt" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 283: All's Well That Ends Well

Inspired by Big Anklevich and Taylor Swift, Rish talks about some of his favorite unhappy endings.

Warning: Spoilers abound!

Timecodes (unreliable)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) - 20:02

Halloween: Season of the Witch - 25:20

Se7en - 28:45

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Normal Again) - 31:05

Pet Sematary - 35:15

The Mist - 37:25

Planet of the Apes (1968) - 38:16

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 42:35

The Descent - 44:44

Also, various Stephen King stories (The Jaunt, Gramma, The Mist), Big Anklevich stories, The Outer Limits, maybe more. 

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

If you want to hear the whole Taylor Swift song, go HERE.

Logo by Gino "All's Swell" Moretto.

(I published this at 7:07 on 7/7)

Rish Outcast 272: The Winter of Our Discontent

Back in 2023*, Rish recorded a sprawling episode, ostensibly about the winter, but much more about writing and sports and being an extra in a Clint Eastwood film, and the MATRIX sequels, podcasting, and Stephen King, "The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving, and WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.  

You know, the usual.

To download this episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support Rish on his Patreon page, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "It's Bloody Summer Here" Moretto.

*He didn't know what winter was!!!!!

Rish Outcast 259: It Knows What Scares You

 

Rish expresses his irrational fear of yellowjackets and relates a recent encounter with one.  Also, he relates a Tale of eBay Horror from last year, pretty much unrelated.  But what things are you afraid of, and why?  

Note: I went through several title iterations for this one, before using the direct POLTERGEIST quote.  Only after I'd edited and published did I find a website where you could download a .WAV of the movie line.  Sigh.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To drive away the insects, support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "It Knows What Chers You" Moretto.

Podcast That Dares 44: Weeds

 Rish presents the uncollected Jordy Verrill story "Weeds," by Stephen King.  Happy Fourth of July!

Download by Right-Clicking  HERE..

Support me on Patreon right about HERE.

Logo by Gino "Meteor S**t!" Moretto.

Podcast That Dares 37: Gramma

After a bit of prevaricating, Rish presents Stephen King's classic 1984 tale "Gramma."

Come give this episode a hug.

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, Left-Click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Diagramma" Moretto.

Blog 6/1

I heard a song playing on the radio as I pulled in front of the library just now that went, "And if I can't be close to you, I'll settle for the ghost of you."  I thought it would make for a pretty good basis for a short story.

Of course, that was before I Googled who sang it.*

Seven or eight months back, Marshal Latham commented that he would like to hear me read Stephen King's "Gramma," a short story from (I think) 1984.  And the last time I was at the cabin, I recorded it.  Today, I had planned on returning to the cabin, and I thought it would be cool if I recorded an episode to go with it.

But it rained the whole weekend, and got down to the forties here (which meant it was in the twenties there, and/or snowing), and my brother thought the cabin road would be muddy and fairly impassable.  So, I decided not to go down, but met my cousin for lunch, went to the store, and then drove back home.  Later on, though, when the temperature rose to the mid-seventies, I thought, Well, that makes it the mid-fifties at the cabin, so surely the snow would melt and the mud would . . . what, harden?

I asked my mom if I should take my car or borrow my dad's truck, and she practically forbade me to go, returning me in a sentence or two to about thirteen years old, adding, "But of course, you can do what you want, if you won't listen to me."

So, instead of driving down there, I opened my recording files of "Gramma" from last November, and started editing them.  And the story was just so good that I wished that I'd been a grownup and gone down to the cabin anyway, so I could record an episode for it and ask the musical question, "Could I ever write a story as good as this one?"

And it made me wish that I wrote all the time, way more than I do, kind of like The Alien does, and I could just challenge myself to write a story inspired by "Gramma," in much the same way King was apparently trying to write a story inspired by the HP Lovecraft mythos when he penned "Gramma."

But instead, I came to the library, and will do what I can with the hour before it closes, working on "Balms & Sears" again, creeping lethargically toward its end.

Writing or Exercise:  Writing

*I assumed it would be BTS or the Jonas Brothers or Blackpopcicle or something, not suspecting the truth would be far darker: Justin Effing Beiber.

Podcast That Dares 28: Suffer the Little Children

After a bit of hemming and hawing, I'm going ahead with my presentation of Stephen King's short story "Suffer the Little Children."  Enjoy.

Download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon right about HERE.

Logo by Gino "Suffer The Oversized Children" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 203: Steve King Already Did It

So, in this episode, I talk about a Stephen King story that's eerily similar to a couple of mine, and then present the lengthy poem "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Early Middle-Aged Mariner" Moretto.

June Sweeps - Day 515

There was road construction on the way to the cabin today.  Oh, it's been going on the last month, with a little stretch with only a single lane, but this was way more ambitious today, miles of it, and when the traffic stopped . . . it really stopped.  The guy in the truck ahead of me actually got out of his vehicle and walked around, either to check his rig or to stretch his legs, killing time, and I rolled all my windows down and shut off the engine and just hung out, thinking.  I didn't have anywhere I needed to be, and no worries as far as time went.

But something even more unusual happened during the drive today.  I was passing by some fields, when a bunch of little yellow objects started hitting my car.  I thought it was bees for a moment, but then I splattered a few of them on my windshield, and I realized they were grasshoppers--hundreds of them, all flying or jumping beside the highway.  Because my windows were open, a couple of them actually made it into the car with me, and I took a picture of one (this one dying) on my pantleg as I drove.  When I got to the cabin, I cleared a couple more out of the back seat (alive), and from the well below the windshield wipers (dead).  

It started raining before I got up the canyon, and the temperature dropped from the nineties in town, all the way down to the fifties up here.  I'm actually wearing a jacket while I type this, which I figured was preferable to making a fire (it's forbidden right now anyway because of the drought and the wildfires, but also, I can't build a fire that doesn't go out to save my life).

One of my goals for June was to get my story "Waffle Iron Man" published, and since it'll be July when I come back, that's not going to happen.  I did sit down, though, and do the cover art drawing today (something I've meant to do for three months now).  I saw last week that my nephew had some crayons, so I brought a sheet of paper up (a single sheet, since I figured it didn't have to look very good), and sat down to do the art.

It's supposed to look like the work of a child, and so I used my left hand to draw it, but the damned crayons were all worn down so that none of them had any points, and that made the art look really light, and hard to photograph.  So I went over it again, "sharpening" two or three of the crayons on a napkin, this time with my right hand.

It doesn't look perfect--not like I wanted it in my head--but it'll have to do.  I had considered asking Big or Gino to get their sons to draw it for me, but I hate to be beholden to others for this stuff, and it's doubly-hard to ask for help when I know I can't do the work for myself.*  In retrospect, I might have asked one of my nephews to do the art for me, or at least to write the lettering, so that it looked more like a kid did it, but I wanted it to look like I wanted it to look, and you know, I'm going to say that it looks fine and move on.

I also set a goal of going on a hike every month this year, and I didn't actually do any hiking in June, unless you call traipsing around the lake and the nearby hills the last couple of weeks.  I told myself I could at least walk to the top of what I like to think of as the "Sound of Music" hill behind the lake, where the melting snow runs down in little streams to feed the lake.  But today it was raining, and when I went up to the lake to either walk around or sing a song (I had two possibilities in mind, but have neither one memorized), it was just so cold and windy (and dark--even though the sun goes down around 8:45 or 9:00, it was already dark by seven) that I didn't want to try.

Yes, it doesn't look rainy here.  But that's because I took this picture tomorrow.

Sit-ups Today: 100

Sit-ups In June: 3242

I continue to write the long-form Lara Demming story**, and this one is largely sans Holcomb.  It's been delightful to write so many of these in such a short time, but I do wonder if I'll ever go back to the "Dead & Breakfast" series (and my friends Natalie, Mason, and Meeshelle), or to the COVID-inspired outpost story I got about halfway through at the start of the year, or the Will Choner sequel that I started and abandoned.  Of course, there's always "Balms & Sears," and it's funny, I looked at a blog post from 2018 that mentioned that story, and that I was getting close to finishing it then.  So sad.

It's so sad that I can't see things through to the end.  But it's also so sad that I can't stay focused on one thing, or motivate myself to finish old stories, or put out the ones that I have finished.

I've been reading Stephen King's latest collection, "If It Bleeds" here at the cabin, and the most recent story I read was actually three short stories bound together in three acts, but King tells the story backwards (with the first part telling the death of this character Chuck Kranz, the second one about something that happens in his adulthood, and the third one about his childhood).  I don't know how one comes to the decision to tell a story backwards like that, except that King has been doing this a hell of a long time (I've been writing every day for five hundred days, but imagine if I'd been doing that for twenty, thirty, forty years . . . how many tales would I have old?), and he has to keep himself entertained somehow.

Push-ups Today: 50

Push-ups In June: 3633

I went upstairs to do some sit-ups just now, and afterward, I "rewarded" myself by going out on the upper deck, high up among the trees, and gazed out into the darkness.  It was kind of glorious, but because of the cold (I'm still wearing the jacket), there was almost no sound out there, no crickets, no birds, no bugs.  I did hear an owl once, which was kind of baleful, and at one point, I heard something moving down below, in front of the cabin, but too dark to see.

It should have been pretty terrifying, but there was a sense of safety being way up on the third floor, knowing that unless whatever it was was supernatural (and hey, don't rule that out, come on), it couldn't possibly get to me up there.

And there went June, kids.

Words Today: 1393

Words In June: 26,209

*I remember working on the TV series "House M.D." in about 2005, and I played a patient in a wheelchair, that another extra playing a nurse (this one a regular, featured extra) pushed around the hospital.  We did take after take, and I kept apologizing that she had to wheel me around, saying stuff like "If I'd have known you'd have to push me for two hours, I wouldn't have super-sized my meal last night" and "Okay, next take, I'll wheel you around in this thing," thinking I was amusing, and finally she said, "Why don't you shut the hell up and let me do my job?"

It was surprising and harsh and made me think I wasn't taking my "acting role" seriously, so I shut up and let her do her job.  I think I saw her two or three times again after that, every time I worked on "House," and always steered clear, as though the sour bitch would remember me.  But when I watched through the series, years later, I sure remembered her, every time she was on screen.

**I did a word count just now (the one thing that still works out here, even if there's no internet), and it's at 16,258 words--which is less than I have for the month.  Still, if I consider that I'm halfway done with the story, that's not quite novel-length at all.  Which is fine.  Age ain't nothin' but a number.

May Sweeps - Day 460

You know, if I had just fallen asleep last night without having written, this would all be over and I'd be free.

I act as though, if I miss even a single day, that I will never write again.  And maybe that's as it should be.  I feel I'm just going through the motions now, no longer inspired, no longer driven, just 

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 561

In just three days of extra work (and five minutes of waiting for a vaccination), I read all of Stephen King's new book, "Later."  I really ought to do a whole podcast about it, because it was kind of a bizarre read.  First of all, it was published by the Hard Case Crime imprint (of Titan Books), which specializes in putting out pulp detective novels and hardboiled mysteries, both vintage ones (by writers like Erle Stanley Gardner and Donald Westlake) and new ones (by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins).  King put out a book years ago (2005) called "The Colorado Kid," which was his attempt at emulating the mystery novels of old, then he put out another one (in 2013) called "Joyland," which was quite good (and was more of a Coming of Age-type story--with supernatural elements--than a mystery or crime novel).

This one, though, had no business being put out by Hard Case Crime, and it has this pulpy, sexy cover that deliberately misrepresents what the book is about.  In short, it's about a boy who sees ghosts, whose stressed and overworked single mother parent, discovers that her son has this haunting ability, and comes to believe it.  In other words, it's about 98.4% the plot of THE SIXTH SENSE.*

And it's pretty solid, and fairly underwritten (something you can't say about Stephen King works in decades).  It all ties up in the end, but leaves room for a sequel (although I found the ending to be the weakest part--something King critics bring up over and over again).  And it reminded me, in a fairly obvious way (if you've read the book), of my recent story "My Friend of Misery."  

I can't complain enough about the cover to the book, by the way.  I absolutely hate it, the way I hate things like "Look What You Made Me Do" by Taylor Swift or WAR OF THE WORLDS by Steven Spielberg (pieces that I loathe by artists that I love).  There is an international version of "Later," and its cover is, oh, I'd say about two hundred and thirty-five times better than the domestic one.

The book in no way makes me want to hurry up and write a sequel to "My Friend of Misery," but it did remind me that Brielle Montrose is still out there, and her brother's friend is now her friend.  And I like the possibilities of that, and the idea that I can catch up with her some day, if I decide to.

Push-ups Today: 167
Push-ups In May: 667 (shoot, one too many)

The spatula is my favorite utensil.  What's yours?

Words Today: 1010
Words In May: 3724

*And right off the bat--and a couple of times afterward--the story comes right out and says, "Yeah, yeah, this is like that Bruce Willis movie.  Except this is real."  And that didn't bother me in the slightest.  Yet when Ernest Cline did it in his book "Armada," which is a variation on THE LAST STARFIGHTER, but mentioned in the book that "Hey, this is like what happened in that old movie, THE LAST STARFIGHTER," I wanted to kick him in the chicken giblets.  I guess that makes me a hypocrite.  Or just a human being.

August Sweeps - Day 203

No blog post today.  I spent a lot of the day moving everything out of my Uncle Len's house and onto trucks, then unloading that at his storage unit.  It was only ninety or ninety-two out, but by the afternoon, I think everybody was praying to Shiva "Let me die."

Now the evil of Kali take me, of course.

As far as everything else goes, I got a lot of food in me, did my run (there was somebody standing out in the front yard of the house where I saw the ghost, but it was a man and he seemed to be gardening or looking for worms*), did some sit-ups, and even though I didn't start until ten-thirty or so, I still got a thousand words written on this new Natalie Whitmore story.  She got to her photoshoot, and is warned about bears (which was inspired by a sign I saw while waiting for someone to text me back yesterday, telling people what to do if attacked by a bear).  

I went on my run, and decided to name the love interest guy after two of the singers I heard during that stretch: Marc Cohn and Don McLean.  Naming characters is pretty fun.  Natalie Whitmore, for example, was named after James Whitmore, who played Brooks in SHAWSHANK.  Or maybe she wasn't; I don't remember at this point.

So far, the story has jack squat to do with ghosts or hauntings, but I don't really care anymore.  I'm pretty set in my mind that the first day I miss writing in a row, I will never write again.  And good riddance.  What has it ever got me, these many, many, many hours of writing?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In August: 3970

Words Today: 1426
Words In August: 22,301

*Probably making sure the place he buried his wife or daughter was good and undisturbed, when I happened to jog by.

March Sweeps - Day 60

Being a writer is something of a lonely pastime (or profession, I suppose). Unless you're fortunate enough to collaborate with another person (and I have only two or three times ever), it's just you and the blank page or notebook, making your own decisions, thinking your own ways out of predicaments, sharing your minor triumphs just with yourself. So, in that way, nothing for me has changed between the end of March and the end of February (or January, or December).

 Except that I do it in my car instead of the library now.

As I think I mentioned on Monday, I (all-too-briefly) spoke to someone who is going out of her frigging mind being unable to go out and socialize like a bunch of grim grinning ghosts at a midnight spree.  Apparently, seeing her family and her friends who come over and her pals at work is like a genital cuff, and not in a good way, and though I don't necessarily sympathize, I don't want people who are unhappy to be unhappy, so there's that.

As of now, we are not yet on lockdown.  So, there's a blessing to be counted.  My cousin in Las Vegas did get a positive test for Covid-19, and his sister is currently in quarantine.  I offered to try and figure out some way to do a virtual karaoke activity over the internet with her, but I don't think anybody else is as excited about that.

Oh, except for my niece.  I called her today . . . and holy Raquel Welch in a Smilodon thong, she actually answered the phone.  Cathexis is stuck at home alone (or at least today she was, as her boyfriend was at work), and seemed to be going quite stir crazy.  Crazy enough to talk to me for a while.  She said she would be happy to do karaoke with me, and told me that, once movie theaters open again and return to normal, she'd like to go see ROCKY HORROR at the indie theater where I took her to see THE ROOM.  She's still never seen the movie, even though, like me and her mother before her, she knows all the songs (my sister and I saw it at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles, at a midnight show, where we had giant Vs painted on our faces and were sexually harassed by a bunch of strangers up on stage along with anybody else who had never seen the movie before).

I told Cathexis that, if we ever do karaoke together, we should do There's A Light (Over At The Frankenstein Place) together, and she said we would.  The idea of that brings me right up to the barrier between what I'm feeling now and happiness.

I didn't get much writing done today, but it's only twelve, and maybe I'll do another chapter of the Lara Demming book, and see if that inspires me.  Problem is, I've completely filled up the memory card on my recorder, and the only way to free up space is to delete something.  So, my intention was to edit a chapter, then delete it from the recorder, so I could record a new one.  But I started surfing the net, and you know how it goes--boom, an hour's gone.

Oh, I got to one of those nasty sentences I stole from Stephen King in the book.  In "The Stand," the part Big and I always talk about is when King has Stu and the other survivors go their separate ways as they head to Vegas, and writes, "And none of them ever saw Stu Redman again."  I remember reading that for the first time (1990, it was), and it hitting me like a ton of bricks, that King would give away the ending like that, and so brazenly, so dismissively.  And it cast a shadow over the rest of the book, knowing Stu would not survive . . . it's something I love Stephen King for to this day.*

Well, I did it in Chapter 8, and just edited that bit.  I wonder how well that part works in the story, and I'm reminded of talking to someone who absolutely hates stuff like that in people's writing.  Pretty sure it's Big Anklevich, since he's the only one I would've talked to about books.  It might bother people reading my story, or it might not.  But it unbothers me, if that's a word (and it's not).

I hopped on the microphone for another hour or so, and recorded Chapters 18 and 19.  There was one bit that I felt worked really well--me attempting to turn this quaint little kiddie magic book into a horror story.  I hope that works too.

By the time I finished recording, it was after two-thirty, and I hadn't gotten many words written at all.  Talk about going out like a lamb.  Sigh.

Words Today: 375
Words In March: 39,627

In other words, I wrote just a few words under what the Hugo Awards would qualify as a novel in the month of March, but that's 8,356 words less than what I wrote in February (which, in my defense, was my most productive month ever, and one with an open library in it).

But also, in my sixty days in a row of writing, my grand total is 87,579.  That's almost ninety thousand words--way more than I get in a usual year. 

And it ain't over yet, is it?

Rish Outfield, last day of March

*If you've read the book, then you understand what I mean by that.  It's similar to when I told my friend Jeff that (the great) Christopher Lee was playing the main bad guy in the Lord of the Rings movies.  And Jeff said, "No, he's playing Saruman.  He's a one of the wizards like Gandalf--he's a good guy."  And so, when Saruman turned evil in the movie, I was not prepared for that at all, and I don't know if I ever thanked Jeff for saying that.  Even if I had, there's no way he'd remember that now.

My Favorite Part of "Pet Sematary"

Some people just never learn.

Here I am, sitting down to read the bit I love/fear the most from Stephen King's novel "Pet Sematary."

If people like this, maybe I'll do it more often.

Rish Outcast 155: The Shawshank Rishdemption

This is the episode where I talk about Frank Darabont's 1994 Stephen King adaptation The Shawshank Redemption. These are my thoughts and comments and there are probably spoilers.

Well, get busy listenin' or get busy dyin'.



Download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE, if that's your thing.

Support me on Patreon HERE, or am I being obtuse?

Logo by Gino "You're Damn Right" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 149: The Reaper's Image

In this one I put out the last of my Stephen King audio readings, "The Reaper's Image." It's a 1969 story that later appeared in the "Skeleton Crew" collection.

It's good stuff, but why is it my last one? Well, go ahead and listen, kids.



Just download the show by Right-Clicking HERE.

Just support me on Patreon by going HERE.

Just say no! 

Logo by Gino "The Kiwi's Image" Moretto.

March Radness - Day 19

So, I didn’t write yesterday.  It wasn’t like I ran out of time (I sat at the computer after two am, staring at a blank screen), it wasn’t like I forgot (it occurred to me time and time again throughout the night that I still hadn’t written), and it wasn’t like I have any excuse (yeah, I’m still in pain in my ribs for some reason, and seasonal allergies have started up, so I’ve sneezed—excruciatingly—several times today and yesterday). 

I simply chose not to do it. 

I was not inspired.  There was nothing I wanted to write.  And I didn’t do it.

So, where does that put us?  Have I failed?  Am I a failure?  Should I stop now and say that all is lost?  Or should I simply shrug and write twice as much today?

I was reading about Stephen King in the 1980s yesterday (it’s where I got the quote in Saturday’s post) and how insanely productive he was during that decade (one year, he put out five books . . . FIVE).  But he was big into drugs and alcohol at that time, and he felt like the cocaine and booze helped fuel him creatively, giving him a drive to work more and more, even if he was aware they were vices to keep secret.  And when, at the end of the decade, he finally kicked those habits, and stopped drugging and drinking . . . what he was most afraid of* came true: he couldn’t write anymore.

He moped around and felt uninspired, and couldn’t quite give a damn about the work, and pretty much decided he was going to have to retire.

Well, I wasn’t that bad yesterday (or today), but I don’t want to write.  I have nothing burning inside of me, itching to break free onto the page, as I have a time or two in the past. **

I’m now sitting down in the library (the homeless guy has not shown up yet . . . but he will), and I have to decide if I’m going to be a Writer (capital W) or just a mere blogger, podcaster, and pervert.

I don’t have the answer yet (and it’s taken me 797 words to say this).

Am I broken?

Rish

*Indeed, it seems he was more afraid he wouldn’t be able to write than that he would lose his family for the binge drinking and gazillion dollar coke habit.  Which is interesting.

**For example, in the summer of 2016, I got this idea for a sequel to “Like A Good Neighbor,” wherein Lara Demming and Old Widow Holcomb’s story continues.  I was driving up to the family cabin, and the question came to me: What happens after Lara’s spell on the witch no longer works?  Does the witch just kill her?  Does she refuse to teach the girl more? 
And the answer that came was, No, she doesn’t kill her.  And no, she doesn’t stop the teachings. 
But why?  What possible reason could there be for continuing?  And then I thought, Maybe she doesn’t know herself.  Maybe she enjoys being a teacher.  Maybe she likes the neighbor girl.  Maybe she continues the training because she’s missed having a family . . . and keeps her ability to stop at any time in her back pocket, for when she might need it. 
On that summer day, I was so excited to tell this story, and I raced to the cabin, where I would (for the first time) have no one around and almost nothing to distract me as I worked my own brand of witchcraft. 
I delighted in writing scenes where the girl is forcing Holcomb to teach her something, but we know that the spell is broken, and Holcomb is not under her control, even if Lara doesn’t know it.  I wrote that, and dropped clues that Lara is slow to pick up on (you may have noticed that every child in my writing, unless they are villains, are average or below average in intelligence . . . and I don’t give a melting diarrhea popsicle if folks have a problem with that), and then got the idea for where the story could go. 
The fun of the LatW stories is that Holcomb is evil.  She may have her regrets from her past, she may have feelings for the cute little neighbor girl, but she’s still a creature of the night.  Abigail Hilton had put in my head that, if Holcomb had once given up her child for the first Pendant of Espindola, then what did she have to give up for the next one?  And the answer came to me (or perhaps Abbie originally put it out there): well, Lara, of course.
So, I knew where the story was headed.  And the point I’m trying to make is (beyond just not wanting to write and preferring to blog instead) that I felt afire with creativity and inspiration, and was happy to be a writer, and happy to be alive.
And I never finished that story.  I never got past the point where Lara is beginning to suspect, so she commands Holcomb to do something ridiculous, and Holcomb does it to throw her off the scent (which, obviously, was fun to write).  But I could finish it.
I should finish it.


Okay, if you’re still reading this, then I guess madness takes its toll.  So listen, not for very much longer, as I reveal that, as soon as I typed the little Lara and the Witch bit above, I opened up a new document and started typing a scene that would happen after the falling out between Lara and Holcomb.  I didn’t know where I was going with it, but it was fun, and it counts as writing.

And I guess I'm back in business, boys.  And girls.

Words Today: 1,517
Words Total: 14,317

March Vladness - Day 17

Today is Sunday, and with the library closed and the traditional list-as-many-figures-as-I-can* activity in the evening, it's a bit harder day for me to write during. Sometimes I'll get my oil changed on a Sunday, and take my magic notebook into the waiting room with me. Sometimes I will take a chair out back, if it's a sunny day, and write or read in the shade of the Spruce there. Of course, my big escape is the family cabin, which is still unapproachable and snowed in at this time of year (I asked my brother about it today, as I did the last time I saw him--sadly, it's one of the few topics of conversation between us--and he said he thought it would have ten feet of snow around it even in May).

But I'm sitting on my bed, with the smell of Corn Nuts in my nostrils (I dropped a AA battery off the bed a minute ago, and reaching down there to find it, inadvertently tore open a bag of Corn Nuts, which are still scattered all over the carpet down there.**

I really want to be a writer. A successful writer, sure, but a good writer more than that. I read the work that really good writers create, and they stay with me (I keep thinking about Robert Sheckley's "The Store of Worlds" and how much that spoke to me, even though it was years ago that I heard it on Drabblecast, to the point where I wish I were a staff writer on Jordan Peele's "Twilight Zone," so I could see if we could adapt it for the show***), and I want my own work to do that for someone else. Then I think about how, even if I manage to write every day this month, and even if I manage to finish that abandoned book ("Balms & Sears"), I may never put it out there, where it can reach (or not reach) an audience.

Sigh.

So, this may entertain you (it may entertain me if I read it a year from now), but my nephew got a new scooter for Christmas, and today was a nice sunny day, so he took it out on the street to ride around on it. It's the kind of scooter you push with your foot, not the electric kind (or I might not be typing this now), and I was jealous to see him speeding along the sidewalk on it. So I borrowed it. I didn't even ask him if I could use it, I just picked it up after he was done with it and tried to get it going as fast as I could down the street, thinking, "See, I'm not so old after al--" I hit a pothole or a crack in the sidewalk, and the damn thing just stopped, tipping forward, and sending me plummeting onto the pavement. I caught myself with my hands before my face could hit, but my chest hit the handlebar as I went down, and I felt something Pop. Then, I just knelt there on the road, sort of absorbing my crash, and a passing car (undoubtedly coming home from church) decided to toot its horn, just to let me know they had seen my "stunt."

I've been in a kind of low-level pain all day since then, and when I sit, stand, or lean over to pick something up, I feel an unpleasant sensation in my chest not unlike singing I'm Just A Girl last night. I haven't been beaten up in a while (more than half my life, actually), but this was a nice reminder of what that used to feel like.

I did end up sitting down at the end of the night and jotting down a few words, including--　

Alec decided he needed to talk to Ana, before he did anything else. If she was anything like he was (and he recognized that she sure didn't seem to be), she would carry her guilt around with her like a backpack filled with cinderblocks. He wanted her to know she wasn't alone, that now that they were in each others' lives again, that they could be in each others' corners. Stuff like that.

"Could I sit down somewhere?" he asked, indicating the house (which he had still not been invited inside). "A couch or a chair. Or a floor with carpet maybe?"

Perhaps he was laying it on too thick. He really did feel awful, but he was used to it, and was aware it would pass. He was like a guy who worked with wood shavings all the time and his fingers had toughed up to where, when he got a sliver or a cut, it barely drew blood.

"Yes, yes, of course," Matthias said, and he stepped up beside him, like he was going to take Alec's arm, but shied away at the last moment, merely pointing him in the direction of the house.

--but it wasn't a lot of writing, and it was rather obligatory, almost as if I was forcing myself to do it to meet some kind of resolution.

Tomorrow will be worse.

Words Tonight: 377
Words Total: 12,800

*I have discovered (or perhaps somebody else pointed it out, and I agree with it), that Sunday evening is when the most people are available to bid on items on eBay. Just like the heyday of network television, when millions of families gathered around the tube to watch, it seems that, it you want your eBay item in front of the most eyes possible, Sunday night is the time to do it. My goal tonight is to list between thirty and fifty figures. Last Sunday night, I only managed about ten.

**I did eat one, and found it soft and stale, which leads me to believe I didn't tear OPEN the bag, but merely spilled the contents of an already-opened bag I had forgotten about. Lovely, no?

***I also keep thinking, since there's a movie remake coming out, of King's "Pet Sematary," and how impactful it was for me. And still is. I think of Jud Crandall saying, "It's only a loon, Louis," when they hear the noises in the forest, and then Louis, all by himself, hearing something huge and ghastly out in the dark and Jud's words coming back, "It's only a loon." And it just gives me chills. At the same time, King hated that book, and regretted its release. "If I had my way about it, I still would not have published Pet Sematary. I don't like it. It's a terrible book, not in terms of the writing, but it just spirals down into darkness. It seems to be saying nothing works and nothing is worth it, and I don't really believe that." (USA Today interview, May 10, 1985).