Blackwitch News, Billie Sue Mosiman, Deadheading

Paul D. Brazill’s short story collection, ROMAN DALTON – WEREWOLF PI, is now available from Blackwitch Press. The book was formatted by Craig Douglas at Gritfiction, has a striking cover by Marcin Drzewiecki and was edited by Miscandlon & Lewthwaite.

“When a full moon fills the night sky, Private Investigator Roman Dalton becomes a werewolf and prowls The City’s neon and blood soaked streets.”

At Amazon (US)

and

Amazon (UK)

For more on Blackwitch Press

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Edgar and Bram Stoker nominated author Billie Sue Mosiman reports that she has just finished a new novel, THE GREY MATTER, and is preparing a collection entitled SINISTER – TALES OF DREAD. Keep an eye out. It’ll be published in both paperback and digital formats. Below is the cover artwork for SINISTER:

Billie Sue Mosiman’s blog/e-store is HERE

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On a Personal Note:

I am getting back into the swing of things after a little break. My story “The House in Sky” will appear in the upcoming book DEADHEAD MILES, due Oct 1, 2013. I’ve written some crazy shit, but this one takes the cake.

I’ve prepared a new crime short called “Chicken: A Wellesport Story” for Amazon. My eldest, Dharia Meadows, handled the cover. Out in the next week or two. This is the lead title of a planned series. I have Wellesport stories going back to my first sale ever ($50! Let’s go to Chilis!), as well as unpublished tales and a novella I am currently working on.

I’m also awaiting word on an e-book to be published this fall, DOWN BY THE SEASIDE. Equal parts oldschool Noir and Lovecraftian Horror.

–Walter

Blackwitch, Belinda Frisch and Pick-Up

UPCOMING:

Paul D. Brazill, author of Gumshoe and Guns of Brixton, has announced the impending launch of BLACKWITCH PRESS. In addition to the titles mentioned, he plans to publish Roman Dalton—Werewolf P.I. and Exiles: A Charity Anthology.

For news and related links: BWP

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Belinda Frisch’s last book, Afterbirth: A Strandville Zombie Novel, blew me away. She is hard at work on a Medical Thriller called Fatal Reaction and shooting for an October release date. From the author:

“Paramedic Anneliese Ashmore’s routine shift takes a startling turn when she answers the call she was never meant to hear—a call to a crime scene where her sister, Sydney, is the victim of an overdose suicide.

The evidence says otherwise.

In the midst of a heated divorce, motive implicates Sydney’s husband and mistress, but while the police focus on the single lead, Ana investigates others.

A mysterious business card and a chain of e-mails between Sydney and her surgeon’s office set Ana on a search for answers about her sister’s recent diagnosis and the life-altering treatment that saved her. The body count rises as Ana closes in on the truth, and on the man of her dreams.

With the help of Dr. Jared Monroe, an unhappily married physician with a bit of a crush, and Dr. Marco Prusak, the biggest detractor of County Memorial Hospital’s new organ transplant program, Ana uncovers a ring of greed and corruption, and exposes the fact that Sydney’s medical treatment may have been the catalyst for her murder. Unfortunately for Ana, she may be next.”

You can learn more about Belinda and her work at: BELINDA FRISCH, AUTHOR

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OFF THE SHELF:

Pick-Up, by Charles Willeford, is as dark a crime novel as I’ve ever read. Not due to an overload of violence, profanity or sociopathic behavior, but on a much deeper level. Willeford mined the sediment at the low point the human heart. What he uncovered for this book, first published in 1967, was a month’s worth of existential hell.

The story opens with a down-and-out protagonist by the name of Harry Jordan serving a chili dog to a sailor at closing time. A woman named Helen Meredith stumbles in and Harry is enthralled. Helen is beautiful, drunk, penniless—since she can’t remember where she locked her purse—and just rolled into town without a plan. Harry covers her tab, then buys them a couple drinks. He urges her to go home. Helen refuses. Harry finds a hotel for her and bids her goodnight. Chapter One ends: “On the long ride home I decided it would be best to steer clear of a woman like Helen.” But you know damned well he won’t.

The two hook up again, Helen moves in with him and so begins what can only be a doomed relationship. Helen is an unrepentent alcoholic who has left her husband. Harry is failed artist/art instructor trudging through life, working odd jobs for spending cash, which he blows on whiskey and cigarettes. What follows is a headlong descent into a nightmare of mutual- and self-destruction. It is a bleak narrative, but gripping throughout. Willeford’s style is quick and conversational. His vision is uncompromising. There is violence, to be sure; though I’ve grown calloused to how it’s usually presented these days, the sudden nature and stark brutality of violence in Pick-Up shocked me, one incident almost causing me to set down the book. There is also a murder (or was it?) that seems fated from the outset. Most of the story, however, deals with the manic interior struggle of Harry Jordan, his clutching at glimmers of hope through a rising tide of futility.

I hold with the opinion that Noir is not so much about crime as it is about losers. Pick-Up takes that notion a step further, giving us the tale of a man who ultimately loses by winning.

Available at Amazon (US) HERE

–KH/WRC

Two Reviews: Guns of Brixton and Cutter’s Deal

by Walter Conley

This month, I’ve had the pleasure of reading two new kindle offerings from Byker’s “Best of British” line: Guns of Brixton, by Paul D. Brazill and Cutter’s Deal, by Julie Morrigan. I’ve been very impressed by this imprint so far–to the extent that I may fake British citizenship to submit something to them.

GUNS OF BRIXTON, by Paul D. Brazill

The moment I saw Guns of Brixton advertised, I knew I had to buy it. I’ve been a fan of Paul’s short stories for years and read this in a single day. It was nice to see him flex his literary muscle in a lenghthier format. All of the trademark Brazill qualities are present: the stripped-down narrative, cinematic visuals, sharp characterization, laugh out loud dialogue, nods to pop culture and noir influences. GOB moves quickly, pinging back and forth between characters, locations and events. It was a joy to read and, as always, I look forward to whatever the author has coming out next.

Guns of Brixton is available from Amazon HERE.

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CUTTER’S DEAL, by Julie Morrigan

Cutter’s Deal, by Julie Morrigan, is a bad dream of a book. I mean that in the best way possible. It is a dark, tragic story from a universe where nothing and nobody can be trusted, not even one’s self; where the value of a life is determined solely by what another can reap off it; where a glimmer of hope is maintained despite the all-but-certain knowledge that it will prove futile; where evil is not a concept, but an all-encompassing and infusive spell that binds everything together.

The author does a fantastic job of shifting viewpoints, through brisk first-person chapters that feel as intimate as mouth-to-ear confessions. The characterization is superb. It is the cast, in fact, with their varying strengths and weaknesses, who drive this tale.

Morrigan doesn’t need a bag of tricks. She is a first-rate storyteller. You don’t notice how adept she is because you’re riveted to what is happening. I like how she just sets this up and lets it play to its true and inevitable conclusion. Throughout the book, I had a growing sense of unease, of fate closing in on the protagonists–but still couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

I am a lifelone fan of Noir. Too often, I think, the label is misused as a blanket term for all things related to crime. Julie Morrigan not only gets it, but writes Noir as finely as anyone since the genre’s inception.

Cutter’s Deal is available from Amazon HERE.

RASL: A Review

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by Walter Conley

What do you get when you mix factual history, fictional history, Native American legend, arcane symbolism, quantum physics, romance, a mad genius, natural disasters and occult conspiracy theories?

RASL, the latest offering by Harvey and Eisner Award winner Jeff Smith (creator of BONE), incorporates all of these things and more. The tale is built upon the mysterious legacy of Nikola Tesla, an inventor so far beyond his time that it’s not hard to believe he came from another, far more advanced one. It follows the adventures of a present-day scientist named Robert Johnson, nicknamed RASL. RASL has carried forth the work of Tesla to a discovery which, in the wrong hands, could potentially destroy universes. He sabotages the project and flees with the information needed to replicate his findings. Where does he flee? To parallel worlds—a plot device that allows Smith to really stretch boundaries. Pursuing him is a sinister, lizard-faced assassin employed by the shadowy government Compound, the group backing RASL’s experimentation. This man, Agent Crow, also possesses the means to drift through parallel universes. He catches up with RASL and delivers an ultimatum: hand over the notes they seek or he will follow RASL and murder everyone he cares about.

The sheer scope of this book is impressive. RASL covers the aforementioned ground through 472 pages that never flag or disappoint. Smith plots intricately and with great care, jumping from world to world, back and forth through time, playing with identity, memory and reality, employing all sorts of narrative techniques in a seamless display of viruouso storytelling. The suspense doesn’t let up for a moment. In fact, I read the entire volume in a single afternoon.

The stark, spare quality of the artwork only intensified my compulsion to find out what happened next. Characters and locations are often just distinct and suggestive enough to flourish in the reader’s imagination. At points, especially toward the end of the book, it takes on the qualities of a nightmarish hallucination. On page 28 of the copy I reviewed, there is a single panel that has RASL glaring out at us from a barstool—an image so powerful, inferring so much, that it remained with me for the duration of the read.

Remarkable, too, is the classic noir feel Smith gives to the entire piece. There are scenes, quips and philosophical pronouncements worthy of Cornell Woolrich. The violence is sudden and brutal, wheeling across the page. And the anxiety generated is palpable, every turn, every unlit corner, fraught with the possibility of danger.

RASL is a mind-bending read that demands your involvement and pays off in a big way.

For more information, or to pre-order the book, go to boneville.com

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From the official press release:

Columbus, OH (June 25, 2013) RASL, the first major work from cartoonist Jeff Smith since his award winning BONE series, will be released to the book market in September by
Cartoon Books. The critically acclaimed tale of a dimension hopping art thief was serialized in black & white comic book form from 2008 to 2012. It will now be collected in a single volume for the first time, completely edited, expanded, and in full color.

Years in the making, Smith began thinking about RASL as early as 2000. After wrapping up BONE in 2004, Smith spent two years, part of it in the Sonoran Desert, researching
locations and studying String Theory. The 472 page hardcover graphic novel is available for
pre-order at all comic shops and online bookstores.

[Above is a teaser image released by Cartoon Books which may not represent the final cover. –WRC]

Spacehair

While lunching at International Space Station-2AQ, I overheard an astronaut from Brazil talking about a small, nearby planet where there was almost zero gravity. He claimed that its inhabitants function as we do on earth, but with special modifications to anchor things down. They wear shoes which permit them to walk normally. Clothing also drapes with a built-in gravitational effect. Their hair, however, is allowed to drift as if they are in space.

I abandoned my scheduled mission to venture there.

I am happy to report that the residents are always in a good mood. How could they not be, with spacehair? I’ve been AWOL for two months now and have yet to witness a single argument. Whatever direction I turn, I find myself in a giddy living-sculpture museum.

I have decided to remain here for the rest of my life. You may collect your spaceship, if you so desire; it is intact and located in the main hangar of the planet’s space port.

Thanks and please make no attempt to locate or contact me,

Katharine Hepcat

See Me Now

The new song, “If You Could See Me Now,” is up at Bandcamp.

A few years ago, I picked up a CD that contained front porch recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell. While I was playing along, in one of Fred’s open guitar tunings, I stumbled upon the riff that I use for the Intro/Chorus. The part behind the verse is a staple of Fred’s, which he employed often. I wrote the lyrics earlier this month while I was smoking on the back porch of our house in VA.

I recorded the drums in the spare bedroom (we call it the Music Room, although it also houses boxes full of every comic book, short story and poem of mine I’ve kept throughout my life). The drums are set up in a back corner. I laid my Sony handheld digital recorder on a box on the opposite wall, at about the height of the snare. It’s a small room with bare walls. The drums were bleeding into each other and echoing strangley, so I laid a thick American Indian blanket over the front of the drum set to deaden it. The beat is almost a skewed Polka. As basic as you can get, but a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Everything else, I taped at this desk. I placed the recorder on the edge, then sat about two feet away from it, which forces me to be a little restrained in my singing and playing, but the result is clean and true and more intimate-sounding this way.

First I did the main guitar part–intro, thump during the verse and chorus–with the KH custom (a guitar I got free when I purchased a silver-plated trumpet). I plucked the descending riff to keep it messy and slightly out of time. For the thump, I played the bottom three notes of the open chord, doubling the root note with my left thumb on the low E string.

The slide parts were done with a black DG-11E Fender acoustic/electric I bought seven or eight years ago to play in the band at my wife’s church in CA (where I also ended up playing fiddle, mandolin and drums). I used a glass slide on my ring finger. This guitar didn’t sound all that great when I picked it up and it’s very thin when amplified, but is mellowing nicely and I like how the slide came out. Plus, I routinely beat the shit out of it with my right hand when I’m playing Blues and it’s held together for me.

Last came the vocals. I usually record them with the main guitar part to keep things as live as possible, but, since I had to play drums and two different guitar parts, I waited until everything else was done. Once again, just me hunched at my desk with the handheld in the same place.

One take for everything. No real planning and the fuck-ups stayed in there.

I uploaded the tracks as mp3s, converted them to wav files with Cakewalk’s Audio Creator, then mixed and rendered them with Audacity (free editing software that I absolutely love so far). All I did was adjust the volume and put the barest possible amount of Echo on my voice, to contrast it with the absolute dryness of everything else.

Here’s a link to the free download:

SEE ME NOW

“Tiger Prints” Demo

We have a demo of “Tiger Prints” up at Bandcamp now, free to hear and/or download. Link below….

The lyrics are about a roadtrip I took earlier this year and are posted with the song. The music came about, as it often does with me, from an open tuning. In this case, I’d tuned a guitar to G or “Spanish” tuning, as they used to call it: an oldtime set-up employed by artists like Charley Patton. The guitar itself is tuned not to G, but somewhere around a Db. That’s just where the song ended up. I don’t worry too much about details like that. Songs find their own tempos and tunings and I follow along. As Frank Sinatra remarked, during a session for his landmark album with Antonio Carlos Jobim, “No, it’s a good tempo. It’s the only way you can do it. You have to hang with it.”

To record “Tiger Prints,” I took the guitar and a digital handheld into my kids’ bathroom and performed the song straight through. I set the mic a couple feet in front of me, about mid-level between the guitar and my mouth. I didn’t test anything. I just played it as I thought it should sound. There’s something about recording a song in mono and one take that I love. Most of the work that really influenced me was recorded at fields, porches, store fronts, street corners, hotel rooms, festivals. It’s more heartfelt, spontaneous, intimate and alive than anything you hear on the radio these days.

Once I had the basic track, I sent it to Janelle Rene out in CA. A friend of hers, Derek Jablonski, helped record the back-up vocals. I suggested a single delicate harmony and that’s exactly what she delivered. My wife, who inspired the song, thought it was beautiful. I mixed the two tracks, adding the slightest possible echo to Janelle’s voice to offset mine, which was so clipped and dry, then rendered it in three different audio formats (Myspace uses mp3’s, Bandcamp prefers wav or flac).

Next up, I think I’ll try a more upbeat song, adding drums to the acoustic guitar (still no individual mics on anything). Driving music. I’m hoping it will have something of that 1950’s Sun Records feel to it.

Here’s a link to the “Tiger Prints” demo….

TIGER PRINTS

Feedback is welcomed and you can find us at facebook, myspace and katharinehepcat@gmail.com .

–Walter

Nebraska: Part 1

This morning, I mixed a pair of guitar parts for a song called “What the Heart Allows,” which will probably end up in the VA to WY set. Nylon string (a little Fender CG7 I got as a trade). Stripped down and very laid back. I should have it completed next week.

Below are the working lyrics for “Nebraska,” the first song I wrote for VA to WY. It’s possible they could change on the fly, as I sing them–the benefit of performing your own material and being able to edit on sight–but they should be pretty close. (I once had to read a whole screenplay to someone and made unannounced corrections as I did so.) I have the music, although nothing’s been recorded yet beyond the simple chord progression.

“Nebraska”
by Walter Conley

Nebraska is a hardass state
Greys and browns that look like greys
Trees don’t flinch in wind
That’s strong enough to rock the car

Smokestack fingers tear the sky
Hitching metal to the clouds
One-horse towns flare up and die
Like gutting signal fires

(chorus)
Think I’d like to live
I’d like to live
Like to live here when I die

Back when cowboys went by pistolmen
North Platte natives rode this land
Bows and hearts were broken
And the river coursed with blood

Now this bloodless prairie wants a soul
No one gives and nothing grows
Those who went before us
Cannot speak, but only cry

(chorus)

Women slumping at the till
Coffee on a 12-hour burn
A smile and “Come again”
You tell them “Yeah” and it’s a lie

Omaha to Bushnell Flats
One hard track to pull you through
Tires fray and daylight fades
Upon the endless rise

(chorus)

copyright© 2011WalterConley

Tiger Prints

This past April, I moved my wife’s father from Virginia to Wyoming.  Just the two of us in the rental van.  Not much talking.  Too much driving, smoking and gas station coffee.  I did it to get him 2,000 miles away from us and that’s all I choose to relate on the subject.  When I got back, I started to write songs about the experience.  The first was “Nebraska,” which I have yet to post.  The second was “Tiger Prints,” the lyrics of which are included below. 

Out in WY, at the house of my new step-mother-in-law, I was put up in the basement.  Or put down in the basement, however you’d care to view it.  I had a full-sized living room, bathroom with a shower, laundry room, computer room and bedroom decorated for a young girl, complete with canopy bed and wall-to-wall animal pictures.  One of the prints, a close-up of a tiger, was beside the bed, the animal staring at me as I fell asleep. 

The phrase “head down and trembling” is from the novel THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, by Forrest Carter.  I’d bought a copy at Goodwill for the plane ride home.

I’m working on a full-length version for download.  There’s a sample–one verse and chorus–at the KH myspace page: “Tiger Prints” audio clip

The lyrics are below….

“Tiger Prints”

Britt, I sit and think of you
In my little basement room
Tiger prints on the wall
Why don’t you call?

Pushed too hard to make this place
Half a week in two long days
Driving your old man
To his second chance

(chorus)
Well, there’s still so much to do
Head down and trembling
I sit and think of you

Truck is empty, theirs again
Ticket in my hand
Hours in the air
I see you everywhere

Touch down hard, don’t feel a thing
Ice melts on the wing
The line forms patiently
And I know you are there for me

(chorus)
Nothing left to do
Head down and trembling
I sit and think of you

*Copyright ©2011WalterConley

Sky Music for Street Dancing

Whatever it is, it’s that….

“Well, now, you know what I’m talking about.  I don’t know how to explain myself, but anyway, whatever it is, it’s that.  You know, it’s got to be that.”  –Speckled Red

KATHARINE HEPCAT is a dream I’ve had for a very long time.  I have been playing music since before I could speak, with any instrument I can get my hands on.  I spent holidays banging away on my grandparents’ organ; squeaked my way through woodwind concerts in the school band; learned TV themes on a friend’s bass; played guitar and sang a little in junior high and high school, mostly Heavy Metal and a kind of pre-Grunge Grunge, with a killinger attitude than you later got from MTV; performed standard and spur-of-the-moment blues at keg parties–alone, at first, then inevitably with a chorus of drunken and hilarious ad-libbers by the end of the night; sat in on drums, guitar, mandolin and fiddle with a church band (they call them Worship Teams, but they’re really bands in almost every respect); busted out old-time songs on banjo and fiddle in parking lots, much to my family’s embarrassment; picked up some horns and a piano and studied jazz like I’d never studied any style of music before….

Now I’m back on the string instruments.  Other instruments will be involved, but I’d like KH to be about music that can be performed anywhere, whether or not there’s an electrical outlet nearby. 

I have gradually been stripping my life down to what is essential–that goes doubly for creative arts.  Story takes precedence over everything else for KH.  As a writer of poetry and fiction, I don’t want the reader to notice how smart or eloquent I am; I want him to care about what’s happening to the point that he forgets I’m even there.

The roster for KH will change, depending on who I can get to join me.  I love to collaborate and everyone’s invited.  I’ll post lyrics here, as well as links to related pages and audio.  While the focus will be on original songs, I’ll also include public domain works that have inspired me throughout the years.

My earliest memories are of dancing on my parents’ bed to Johnny Cash and the “Cabaret” soundtrack.  The joy I experienced back then has stayed with me, a kind of life-sustaining musical bloodflow.  My hope is simply to give some of that feeling back.

Walter Conley