"Wet Dog Perfume" on Tales To Terrify

This week's Tale To Terrify podcast starts off with a story of mine, "Wet Dog Perfume".  Check it out and let me know what you think.  Scott Couchman puts in a wonderful performance.

Mage II review on Black Gate

I posted my review of Mage: The Hero Defined today on Black Gate.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Corn Productions 20th Anniversary Show

Corn Productions (located on 4210 N. Lincoln, here in Chicago) is putting on a comedy show featuring sketches from their twenty-year history.  It's hosted by the drag mother/daughter team of Tiff & Mom.  Long-time Corn fans will know that these two can talk about the weather and make it funny (and, probably, offensive).

One of the sketches that's been hand-picked from the Corn vault is a piece I wrote for the Seven Deadly Sins show five years back.  It kind of threw me to realize that it's already been five years since that show ran, as well as to realize that the sketch was well-received enough to warrant a revival.

The show runs Saturdays, starting July 14 and going through August 18.  You can learn more about the show at the Corn Productions website.  As always, if you check it out, let me know what you think.

House of Black Wings review on Black Gate

I posted a review of House of Black Wings on Black Gate today.  It's a great independent horror movie filmed right here in Chicago.  If you see it, let me know what you think.

Shadow Swans by Laura Thomas

OK, so odd couple stories are nothing new.  Holmes & Watson.  Oscar & Felix.  Burt & Ernie.  Mulder & Scully.  Gilgamesh & Enkidu (look it up).  There's something that resonates in these sorts of pairings, the idea that we often need to cooperate with people who are seemingly our polar opposites in order to discover new aspects of ourselves.  So on the surface, the tale of independently wealthy Ruby Cooper befriending homeless Credenza R doesn't seem like anything new.

But the best pairings of this sort occur when both members are odd, extreme in opposite directions.  Laura Thomas wisely casts Ruby not as a worldly-wise everywoman, but rather as a Howard Hughes-ian style recluse who spends her spare time in an otherwise abandoned building crafting hummingbirds from garbage.  It is, therefore, completely plausible that she would befriend a homeless woman.  Likewise, Credenza isn't some naïve runaway living off the streets, but a clever survivor belonging to a homeless community just as valid and complex as any society to which the average reader might relate.  While both women struggle with their own unique problems, we are never presented with a platitude about how one or the other lifestyle is the "right" way to live.

The story begins with a chance encounter between Ruby and Credenza on a subway platform.  Credenza has never left the tunnels beneath the New York subway system, due to a severe allergy to sunlight (which may or may not be psychosomatic), and so employs Ruby to make shopping trips for her.  After several such trips, Ruby finally dares to follow her friend back to a vast community of homeless people who live far beneath one of the wealthiest cities on Earth.  Perhaps inspired by Ruby's daring, Credenza finally works up the courage to take on a journey of her own.  However, her journey doesn't take her to the surface (as most readers might predict), but rather further into the tunnel systems, into a secret network of shelters whose ultimate purpose is disturbing to both women.

It's probably inaccurate to classify Credenza and the other subterraneans as homeless, since we see repeatedly that they have not only manufactured shelters with lighting and plumbing; but that their community has its own laws and means of enforcing them.  Each of the characters introduced has his or her own backstory and it would be easy to imagine Laura Thomas returning to this setting to tell further tales of Ben, Ghostface & Ali or Leopold the conspiracy nut.  The community she describes is based off the real-life communities existing beneath New York (which don't officially exist).

As a whole, I enjoyed this book, although there were elements which seemed to ring false (Ruby Cooper is a twenty-two year-old millionaire social network designer who shows no interest in computers or social networking).  The second half of the story presents an adventure setting normally reserved for post-apocalyptic fiction, but which is likely to actually exist in one form or another beneath the streets we walk.  This is the first novel by Laura Thomas and I will certainly be watching for future work by this promising new author.

You can order a copy of the book here and here or a copy of the e-book here and here.  You can also go the Shadow Swans website to learn more about the book and its author.

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things review on Black Gate

Just posted my review of Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh on Black Gate. It's recently been re-released as a deluxe hardcover and I'm hoping Ted Naifeh makes a lot of money off this amazing series of comics.

The Burnham Society review on Black Gate

My review of The Burnham Society, a podcast series hosted by Made of Fail Productions, went up on Black Gate today. Check out the review and let me know what you think. Or forget what I have to say about it and just go to The Burnham Society home page.