Less Than Pulp, Issue 46

New Novel Announcement, Being More Social, Mini-Book Reviews

Addendum: Last week, I mistyped that author RC Hausen was one of the panelists during the creepypasta chat I moderated at the Ghoulish Book Festival. I meant to type LP Hernandez. Sorry about that!

I.

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be close to a quarter of the way through writing my novel Barn Door to Hell. Is that the first time I’ve said its name in this newsletter? I think it is! Because of where I’m at in the book and the momentum behind it, I’m more than comfortable formally announcing it. It’s a crazy violent, cosmic horror siege novel, similar in tone to Pandemonium and Snow Angels, and it will be a full-length novel. That means its final word count will be somewhere between 70,000-90,000 words. Think something that would’ve been published by Leisure in the 2000s or Zebra in the 1990s. I’m so excited to share it with you, so expect lots of updates.

II.

It's been a good couple of weeks mentally, socially, and creatively. The upward climb in mood began with AuthorCon. I've long thought of myself as introverted, and I do still very much enjoy alone time, but I don't know anymore. The energy I've gained from being around people all month has been powerful. Sometimes I wonder if I’m a wounded extrovert, that is “someone who is naturally outgoing and sociable, but who has experienced a traumatic event or a difficult situation that has caused them to struggle with their social interactions. They may feel overwhelmed or anxious in social situations, and might find it difficult to be as outgoing and open as they were before.”

It might be something worth exploring.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that I’m drinking much less alcohol, finally becoming the strictly social drinker I’ve long aspired to be, as opposed to someone who can’t relax until he’s had a couple tallboys of Lone Star. I’m also working out more—nothing crazy; bodybuilding isn’t the goal, so much as simply keeping my body moving. The trouble with this writing life is that it can be very sedentary.

III.

The weekend after the excellent Ghoulish Book Festival, my pal Scout Tafoya came to stay with us for a few days. He was visiting Austin for a wedding and needed a place to crash. Scout is a filmmaker and a critic. His video essay series The Unloved (a regular feature on Roger Ebert’s site) reexamines movies that were at best ignored and at worst outright loathed. His work is the epitome of what I mean when I say that being contrarian can sometimes be a good thing. Over the past decade, he’s looked at the likes of Alien 3, Survival of the Dead, Lords of Salem, and Last Action Hero, arguing that there’s something to love in these oft-maligned works of art. I highly recommend checking him out. He’s also got a Patreon I’d be remiss not mentioning.

Scout is someone I can listen to talk about movies for hours, and lucky for me, that was something I got to do while he was here. We watched the recent slasher movie Sick on Peacock. Written by Kevin Williamson (the go-to screenwriter for teen horror in the late 1990s) and directed by John Hyams (whose Universal Soldier sequels are masterclasses in action cinema), it’s a tightly paced, smartly written slice of horror and suspense for the COVID era. It shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Hyams’ work how expertly he composes every shot. There’s an intimacy to his camerawork that makes every scene feel like you’re witnessing something intensely personal. Check out Sick and his other stuff if you haven’t already.

We also watched an odd little film called Hellbender on Shudder. Made by a collective known as The Adams Family, it follows a mother and daughter who live in the woods, play in a band, and have witchcraft in their ancestry. It’s a very strange film and kind of clunky, if I’m honest, but by the end, I was glad I watched it.

We later met up with Scout’s father (crime novelist Dennis Tafoya) and caught Evil Dead Rise in the theater. I’d been waiting for that one, and it was totally worth the wait. I considered taking an edible beforehand, but I’m glad I didn’t. That would’ve been just a little too intense for my stoned brain. Scout and I left the parking lot so excited by the film’s relentlessness that we went back to my house and re-watched Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead from 2013. The franchise doesn’t have a bad entry. After five movies and three seasons of a TV show, that’s quite a batting average!

While Scout went to the wedding, my son and I went camping with a few of the neighborhood parents and their kids. It was at our usual spot in Marble Falls, TX, right on Lake Travis. The kids got in the water, while the adults drank beers and chatted. We roasted marshmallows and ate some delicious food. Best of all, we burned cedar, so the mosquitoes stayed away.

In the tents, the kids slept hard. They even slept through the two owls hooting at each other across the wilderness and the pack of coyotes that went yip-crazy sometime around 3am (spooky!). Both sounds woke up all the adults, so it wasn’t just me.

This was our third year in a row camping here, and it’s become one of my favorite things to do. We always say we’re going to do it more often, but we only ever end up going the one time. Maybe 2023 is the year we correct this.

IV.

I blazed through Laurel Hightower’s Below and read Conjuring the Witch by Jessica Leonard. Both were titles I picked up at Ghoulish.

Below is the sort of novella that makes me wish we still had a show like Masters of Horror on the air. It’s a fast-paced, single-sitting read about a woman traveling alone who encounters none other than the fabled Mothman, and it would make an excellent 40- or 50-minute episode of an anthology TV show.

Conjuring the Witch is a brand-new folk horror novella with a modern twist. The writing style reminded me of Angela Carter. It especially picks up in the last 40 pages or so, which had me nodding along and saying, "hell yeah!"

Speaking of Ghoulish matters, Max Booth III and Lori Michelle hosted the grand opening of the Ghoulish Bookstore in Selma, TX just outside of San Antonio. I was fortunate enough to attend, along with a ton of other friends and fellow authors. I read an excerpt from Snow Angels and heard readings from LP Hernandez, Grace R. Reynolds, and the always-awesome Wrath James White. Other people read too, but I was unable to stay the whole time and missed a few readers. The turnout was crazy good, and I’m super-happy for Max and Lori. It’s a cool little space, and I look forward to doing more events there. It’s the ideal place for local horror fans to come discover their new favorite read.

V.

Jean and I are currently watching Yellowstone from the beginning for the first time. We dig it, but it’s a more deliberately paced show than we’re used to, so it’s not something we feel compelled to binge. Also, even though we’re almost through the first season, I’m not quite sure who I should be rooting for. These are some seriously flawed characters. And yes, you want your characters to be flawed, but they also need something to balance those flaws. For examples of this, I can point to Tony Soprano’s charisma and Walter White’s (initial) motivations for entering the meth businesses. Still, there is a lot going on both on and under the surface that makes the show compelling.

VI.

Lots of new subscribers this week. I think it’s because I’ve been somewhat active on Substack Notes. (Notes is basically this site’s answer to Twitter, which seems to have entered the Myspace phase of its lifecycle.)

Regardless of the reason, I'm grateful you're here. If you enjoy this newsletter, you can support it by grabbing my most recent book or checking out the podcast I do with Jeff Burk. The show has a Patreon where you can hear bonus episodes and read exclusive essays by its hosts.