Til the Last Hemlock Dies

Billy Graham

2012-02-02T18:30:00.004-05:00

I saw this piece of art online years ago and copied it.

The work is by a comic book artist who I recall from the 1970s. His name was Billy Graham. Yeah, tough act to follow, right? But he had a unique style and I really dug the stories he produced for the Warren horror magazines of my youth. He was one of the better artists to work at Warren once they stopped paying the kinds of rates that kept the likes of Ditko, Williamson, Crandall, etc. at the company.

He went on to work at Marvel Comics illustrating LUKE CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE. I think he started on the title inking over George Tuska's pencils and eventually took over the book for a time. According to Wikipedia, he died in 1999. I have no idea of the cause of death. He was a very talented fellow.

Found Photos

2012-02-01T06:43:00.006-05:00

Back in 2003 I was just getting my old hiking wanderlust rekindled. One of my first trips back to get into finding the old solitude again was a quick car-camping trip to the Smokies in November of that year. I ran up to the Park alone with my two-man tent and a few supplies and camped at Elkmont. I only did a couple of hikes before heading back home, but I had to get back up to the high country again.

I stumbled upon these photos on disk. Taken back in the day before I had a digital camera. These were with my old Canon 35mm film camera. Among the last photos I took with that camera, I'm sure.

One thing that I'm not sure of is the month I took the hikes. But I didn't get them developed until November of 2003.

Red spruce along the Alum Cave Bluffs Trail.

One of the views that drew me up there.

Peregrine Peak along the Alum Cave Bluffs Trail. When I was younger I always wanted to bushwhack to this peak and climb it. Now I'm not so sure I could handle the attempt.

Myrtle Point on the top of Mount LeConte.

"Editornomicon"

2012-01-31T21:54:00.005-05:00

Here's a story I wrote long, long ago. It never saw print. For the first time on the Internet. This is a pared down version that I submitted to a couple of flash-fiction markets after failing to sell the original (longer) version:

EDITORNOMICON

by

James Robert Smith

Perry placed her hands atop the manuscripts. Upon her desk, four pillars of envelopes: 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches on a side, twelve inches high. She edited APPALLING, The Magazine of Horror; and she had finished the latest issue and had to return these 200 stories: rejections. There were some authors she had counted upon to deliver the effect she always aimed for, but who had not made the cut, this time.

This was the effect for which she was searching. Editing was an art form, but she'd never crossed the line that would satisfy. Critics praised her. It was only that she, Perry Hagopian, had never been satisfied.

She'd done it: a wonderful, terrible achievement.

She had the combination of fiction for which she had always searched. She had eliminated her editorial and all advertising. That had meant the budget would be strained, but she had made the printer's bill. She had what she wanted: the perfect issue.

Perry had a story from Cain Warner, the contract in her desk. It had been one of the last things he had signed for he'd died the day after it had been posted--alcoholism, they said. Perry heard the news before the contract arrived. He was one of her favorites, but she had held the contract to her and breathed a sigh. His novella was the core, the anchor.

There were three posthumous stories. One arrived from the author's mother, a letter informing Perry that the writer (a youngster named Cynthia Packard) had committed suicide the year before. Cynthia's mother had found the manuscript in an envelope addressed to APPALLING. I want you to see this story, her mother had written. I couldn't understand my daughter, but she wanted you to publish this. Perhaps you will like it. Indeed. A story of enormous anguish, and she was thrilled with it. This would put Packard's sad name on the genre's map.

She had a story by the late Manuel Manfred. His agent had contacted her saying that he had located an unpublished story from Manfred and that he thought her magazine would be the place for it. It was.

The remaining were by three regulars. She knew them all. William took his pain and squeezed it through his pen: a dyslexic, he couldn't use a keyboard. With effort, he wrote his stories a letter at a time, in block print, checking each word. His manuscripts broke all rules, but his first cover letter had touched her so that she had read the story. All of his stories had been wonderful, and this one was the best.

Conrad lived nearby. He was a sad man, engaged in a painful relationship with an abusive lover. Once, she had seen him with his eye blackened and his lip swollen. A man such as Conrad could have his pick of lovers, and she couldn't understand why he would put up with the one he had. But it must have made his fiction powerful. Her pulse raced every time she read one of his stories. Poor Conrad.

Finally, Terrance. He wrote television; such a waste. But who could refuse that money? Perry had met him two years before. The writer of popular shows, she was surprised when he had approached her. "I have some stories," he said. "They aren't appropriate for many markets, and I was wondering if I could send them to you." How wasted he was on television. "I hardly have time for my own writing", he'd said.

The stories filled the magazine. All expressed operatic pain. She had saved herself the back cover: At last, it read, and her autograph. She had paid the printers, the magazines were on their ways to distributors and shops and subscribers. On her lap was a copy, the cover glistening, reflecting a light she could only think of as evil.

Outside, Perry's husband was banging on the bolted door. It would take him a long time to break in. He had noticed his gun missing. She didn't want to go out that way, but realizing she'd finally done it--well, it was time. To jigsaw such a work of consuming depression: this was her masterpiece. And the final act was to tag her death. How could anyone read those works and refuse what they demanded?

The struggle was over. Still, she was curious how many deaths would be spawned by the readings. The poor miserables, once they realized, would have no choice.

Perry examined the chamber. Time to finish editing.

Bang

THE LIVING END

2012-01-30T14:10:00.004-05:00

When there is no more room on your bookshelf,

buy the Kindle version of THE LIVING END!

"Finally! A zombie novel with brains, as well as guts!"--T. Watkins.

Interview with James Robert Smith (by Billie Sue Mosiman)

2012-01-28T17:47:00.007-05:00

I have another author interview appearing on the Internet. This one conducted by novelist Billie Sue Mosiman.

You can read it here.

My Favorite Waterfall

2012-01-27T17:11:00.004-05:00

This waterfall (it has no name) was pretty much my favorite one of the day. It was below Yucca Falls and was part of an extensive series of slides and cascades that led down to this pretty darned spectacular view. I think that if you climbed the slope on the right you might be able to find a spot where you could see more of these slides and cascades as a single piece.

In this video are Boone the Dog, Jack Thyen on the right, Andy Kunkle on the left, and Johnny Corn at the highest point.

Eye

2012-01-26T19:32:00.005-05:00

The actual eye of one of the world's largest birds. Much as I imagine the eyes of Titanis walleri to have looked in my novel, THE FLOCK.

My agent tells me that I'll probably get edit notes on the sequel THE CLAN very soon. It'll be good to see the book make its way toward publication.

GPS

2012-01-25T17:08:00.001-05:00

Brenda Wiley made this GPS graph of our hike on Sunday. You can see why we were all so tired by the time the hike was done. We gained, lost, regained, and lost again quite a lot of elevation. Some of the slopes were extremely steep, and there were some off-trail stretches that were really sketchy. I wouldn't suggest this kind of hiking for everyone.

This waterfall actually has a name, apparently. We've been told that it's called Yucca Falls. I don't know why that name was applied.

Yucca Falls.

Choices

2012-01-24T16:53:00.001-05:00

Between my day-job and my writing job I have hardly any time to myself. That is, I don't have much time to pursue my hobbies and other interests. Even my reading time has suffered in the past few months because I stay so busy with my two jobs.

One of my hobbies that has suffered quite a lot because of this is my love of the outdoors. There are not many things that I enjoy more than hiking and backpacking. But in the past year I have not had a lot of time to engage in those pursuits. The past two weeks I have pretty much forced myself to go hiking despite having a couple of writing deadlines hanging over my head. Fuck it. I had to get out of the house and out from behind the keyboard for at least a couple of days.

That's the difference, I reckon, between the kind of writing I did in my youth and the kind of writing I do now as an older man. Back when I was young I wrote on 100% enthusiasm and inspiration. Now I write on a pure work ethic and a solid knowledge of how to create a story. The difference between the two is that one was a pursuit of fun and the latter is the work of a learned craft.

But as much as I love writing, I have to get away from it from time to time. I think that I'll be hiking more this year than I did last. It's either that or drive myself completely stir crazy sitting here in the office every day after I get home from my day-job, and spending my Sundays typing away at this keyboard while my pals all climb mountains or wander around in the wilderness hunting for waterfalls. Too many hikes missed with friends, and too many camp-outs and canoe trips missed with my wife.

The forests and rivers are calling. I'll listen to them more.

Secrets of Table Rock State Park

2012-01-23T08:11:00.011-05:00

I went hiking yesterday with some friends. Andy, Jack, Johnny, and Brenda. Johnny Corn had suggested that we head over to Table Rock State Park in South Carolina. He'd recently been given detailed information that there were several recently discovered waterfalls in the park that were off trail and largely unknown to virtually all park visitors. We would have to do some bushwhacking to see each of these waterfalls, so the hike would be a strenuous one.

We used the Palmetto Trail to access the park. The terminus we used was in the campground section of the park which was surprisingly completely vacant. There's a large parking lot at the trail head that we used and soon we were heading up into the high country.

South Carolina's northwestern edge is very mountainous and the Blue Ridge Escarpment rises abruptly here. The elevation roars up from a few hundred feet above sea level to over 3,400 feet in a brief distance. This sudden increase in elevation produces conditions that have been conducive to a vast and varied ecosystem. It also is one of the most conducive for the creation of waterfalls. The area is packed cheek by jowl with, quite literally, many, many hundreds of top-notch waterfalls.

We were there to seek out seven of them. Seven that not many visitors to the park are likely to see, and six of which not many visitors to the park have ever seen.

I'll be posting images and video of our quest to find these waterfalls over the next few days.

This is the first waterfall we visited. We used an obviously well-known if unofficial trail to access it. The trail has had no engineering at all other than people using the most logical route to the base of this very high waterfall that plunges down the escarpment in a series of big plunges. The total height of the falls has to be close to 200 feet.

Another of the falls. This one was about 18 feet tall. Very pretty. It was the first of the five that we visited that required a full-on bushwhack to visit. There is no trail at all to these final five waterfalls. You have to go completely off trail and pick your way through the very rugged and lush terrain of this high southern land. The going is rugged and, at times, frankly dangerous.

This enormous waterfall lay just below the one in the previous photo. It is amazing to think that the park hides waterfalls such as this one. Places that most park visitors will never see and never even suspect.

I really liked this waterfall. It was farther below the one in the photo above. The river rushes down a kind of staircase. A total rush of sensation.

I think this one, the most easily accessible, is known locally as Rainbow Falls. There's a well trod but unofficial trail leading from the Palmetto Trail to the falls.

Interview with James Robert Smith

2012-01-22T05:41:00.004-05:00

I'm heading off to go hiking today. Mainly to check out some very hard-to-find waterfalls in upstate South Carolina.

Until then, enjoy this interview with me on the website blog of author Jeffrey Thomas!

Interview with James Robert Smith.

HISSMELINA!

Taking a Break

2012-01-21T15:18:00.005-05:00

I'm going hiking tomorrow. I need a break from writing. The stress is really getting to me.

Photo of me by Andy Kunkle from last week's hike.

Taking Stock

2012-01-20T22:56:00.004-05:00

I spent the past day recuperating from work. Walking so many miles a day is getting hard on me as I get older. It takes most of my time off just to rest up for the return to the physical labor. My writing time is suffering because of this.

I am planning on a day hike to see a new waterfall I've never visited. I'll be joining friends for that on Sunday, giving me Monday off before I head back to the grind on Tuesday.

Until then, a little promotion for my new novel, HISSMELINA.

HISSMELINA
By
James Robert Smith.

One Last Look

2012-01-19T17:02:00.002-05:00

One more series of photos of Tanawha and the Boone Bowl.

More than with other southern peaks, this particular spot did look to me as if there was some Pleistocene glaciation going on here. The sub-peak from which I took this shot even reminded me of the Lion's Head on Mount Washington in New Hampshire where I once took similar photographs. If any can find definite signs of glacial striations in the bedrock in the headwaters of Boone Fork, that should close the book.

Photo with text.

Random Photos

2012-01-18T06:54:00.007-05:00

It's sad to consider, but this past hike might very well be my only chance to have seen an actual snowfall this winter. The problem with global warming is that bad, now.

My hiking companions clamber up a steep section. Boone the dog (came up with me), followed by Andy and (other) Bob.

Fallen tree covered in dry snow.

Winter visits us (briefly).

A brief glimpse of the way things once were. Poof!

Some videos I took on Tanawha:

2012-01-17T17:43:00.006-05:00

Following are some video clips that I took on the hike on Tanawha. I was impressed with the mountain. More so than I have in past visits. This was actually my first real exploration of the peak. I've been a number of times but either spent my hours there muddling around the base of the mountain in the drainages hunting for waterfalls, or around the tourist crap near the summit (which I hated).

I plan to go back again. I may try to camp on the mountain overnight the next time I visit it. There's a shelter near Calloway Peak that I might use. Now that the area is a state park, hiking and camping there is at no charge. When it was still owned by the Morton family, you had to pay to hike the trails and to use the campsites scattered throughout the wild forest. These days there's only a permit system in place, but no charge. For now, at least.

On the trail, alone, at about 5600 or maybe even 5700 feet elevation.

The famous Boone Bowl, showing what might be the possible location of a localized glacier from the last Ice Age.

The Boone Bowl as seen from Storyteller Rock. You can also see Calloway Peak just poking above the ridge line.

Tanawha

2012-01-16T20:33:00.007-05:00

I hiked up Tanawha today. It's popularly known as Grandfather Mountain. Once a kind of amusement park, it's now one of the state's newest state parks. Part of it is still operated as a quasi-amusement park, but most of it is kept in a wild state. I need to head back and explore some more of the trails again.

One of the main reasons I went was to settle my own curiosity over whether or not the peak ever birthed a local glacier. After viewing the formation on the mountain known as "the Boone Bowl", my impression is that this feature was indeed created by a glacier. It has most of the hallmarks of a glacial cirque. I can't prove it, of course. But that is my impression.

I'll post more information tomorrow...

On one of the lower peaks of Tanawha. The highest point far behind me is Calloway Peak, the tallest bit of the mountain (5,946 feet above sea level).

This was from another clifftop view lower on the mountain. Looking up at what I think was, at one time, a glacial headwall.

You can see the aptly named "Boone Bowl" formed from the left to the right of the photo. I can easily envision a southern glacier having formed here at the height of the last Ice Age.

More Details Emerge...

2012-01-15T03:31:00.007-05:00

Still trying to put things together for a long backpacking trip in the Weminuche Wilderness in Colorado. I have to change out some annual leave. If I can finish doing that, I'll be spending two weeks hiking, backpacking, and scrambling in the biggest wilderness area in Colorado. I don't want to find myself at the end of my life having missed out on seeing what remains of this nation's natural beauty.

Following are some shots of places I hope to see in September of this year.

San Juan Mountains.

One of the peaks we may try to bag on the backpack.

Some of America's real high country.

The Day We Found Cairo

2012-01-13T06:26:00.002-05:00

As I've told before, we found our cat Cairo when we were camping in a state park in West Virginia. We were near a fading old town called Cairo. There's not much left of Cairo, only a few old buildings that used to be some stores and a bank and which are no longer either. We stopped at a county park where there was a combination visitor's center and shop. It had been raining.

Inside the shop, Andy saw a box of kittens that had been left out in the rain and which the proprietor had brought in so that the kittens would not die of exposure. One of the kittens pretty much leaped into Andy's hands, and we were stuck.

We took her home with us and named her after the small town: Cairo. I have never seen a kitten take so immediately to humans and to mesh so instantly within a family. She's now our biggest and heaviest cat. And quite happy, thanks.

The rainbow over our campsite before we headed out for the day. A premonition?

The old bank building in downtown Cairo. No longer a bank, of course. The oil fields played out a hundred years ago.

The county park building on that rainy day someone left a boxful of kittens there.

Andy discovers Cairo in the box. We were suckered then and there.

Cairo settles in for a ride.

Fast asleep in Andy's arms.

At peace with her new family.

Holiday

2012-01-12T06:25:00.002-05:00

Dr. King's Birthday is coming up:

Proofing the Manuscript

2012-01-10T16:53:00.003-05:00

I got the proof edition of HISSMELINA today. The book came out better than I'd hoped! Just gorgeous. Stephen Price at Book Looks Designs did an outstanding job of typesetting!

The book should go live in trade paperback format in a few days. Hopefully sooner.

Until then, you can still order the Kindle Books version, of course.

Meself just home from work, perusing the newly arrived proof copy.

As I post this the book has gone live!

You can buy the trade version of HISSMELINA here!

Book Trailer for HISSMELINA.

2012-01-09T06:57:00.001-05:00

And here's my second book trailer. It was a little more difficult to produce than the first one. But I'm happy with the way it turned out.

HISSMELINA, a novel of modern Lovecraftian horror by James Robert Smith.

My First Book Trailer

2012-01-08T07:52:00.002-05:00

I did a book trailer for THE LIVING END. My first attempt at creating one. I'll follow up with trailers for my other books:

HISSMELINA Goes Live!

2012-01-06T20:59:00.008-05:00

My newest novel, HISSMELINA has just gone live on Kindle. It's also available on Smashwords, etc.

The trade paperback will be available very soon. Basically as soon as the proof is approved as print-ready!

I think I've talked about the book's history here before. HISSMELINA was my first good novel. That is, I'd written novels before, but this was the first one where I had reached a point where I knew what I was doing. More than that, I'd created really good characters. My heroes were flawed--not completely good, of course, and filled with doubts. My villains here are not completely evil. Almost no one thinks of themselves as "evil", and I went out of my way to make sure that my antagonists were human.

The book attracted the attention of a major league agent when I was a young man and he came very close to selling it on two occasions. Alas, the deals could never be finalized and I was cut loose from the agency. But I'm not the type to give up. I'm the fellow who once sold a story that had been rejected for almost twenty years before it finally saw print in a major anthology. If I see merit in a work I keep at it.

So it was with HISSMELINA. I rewrote it a number of times, ending up with the manuscript that you will read if you purchase the book from Amazon in either of its formats. After almost three decades of journeys through various agents' doors, editor's hoops, and many revisions, at last it sees print.

"Smith writes with a brisk intensity that goes for the throat." Scott Nicholson, Liquid Fear

HISSMELINA

2012-01-06T06:38:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm in the home stretch of seeing my novel HISSMELINA in print. Ebook and trade paperback format. I'm hoping that today will see it available at Amazon.com and then at Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

In Elijah, high in the Carolina mountains, police officer Frances Jennings is drawn into a mystery involving several missing persons and the return of local matriarch Hester Keener. While Frances battles city fathers over her position as Elijah’s first female officer, her boyfriend is seduced by the power that emanates from The Crag, the peak that dominates Elijah, by his attraction for that place and for Hester’s young heir. What dark forces are at play? Who, or what, is the twisted form called "Hissmelina"? Frances peels away the layers of darkness to find an answer she may not wish to know.

Continuing My Impressions of Martin Goodman and His Nephew

2012-01-05T06:48:00.003-05:00

Martin Goodman's company was just a few short months away from changing itself and the entire industry when these books came out. By this time, FANTASTIC FOUR had already been out for a few months. Sales figures for that book were already in and it was obvious that by aping the superhero craze going on over at DC that Stan Lee had made a good choice by allowing Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to create superheroes for the company.

Still, the horror and science-fiction titles were still going on as before and the company was maintaining their publication with the huge inventory of stories that had been accumulated. But within the year each of the horror and sf titles would be given over to superhero features to take advantage of the ballooning sales figures enjoyed by FANTASTIC FOUR and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Lee and Goodman knew they had a real winner on their hands with the resurrection of the costumed heroes.

In a matter of only nine more issues, TALES OF SUSPENSE would be given over as the flagship for Kirby's new creation, Iron Man. But even so, with the heavy backlog of horror and sci-fi stories, the newly christened Marvel Comics would still be publishing weird stories as backups to the new superhero stories leading the way.

But never again would Marvel make their monthly sales quotas on the backs of aliens and monsters. From the moment Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four, and The Mighty Thor, and The Avengers, and The X-Men, and The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man; and after Steve Ditko created The Amazing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange...from that time onwards it was superheroes that would make Marvel the most successful comic book company in modern times. It would be the intellectual property of Ditko and Kirby that would fuel Marvel--property that was essentially stolen, the true profits never going to their creators.

Less than a year after these books appeared, if it wasn't a superhero, it probably wasn't going to sell well anymore. (Or well enough to be given a chance.)

With Kirby and Ditko and company doing the art and mainly even the writing of most of the output, it was left to Stan Lee to tweak the dialog and write the titles and name the characters his artist/writers were creating. But I get the distinct impression that often Lee was tossing plots to the real creators of the books, and that as often as not he was lifting them from the pulps he must have had access to, and from the waning radio drama shows, such as Arch Oboler's LIGHTS OUT series. LIGHTS OUT, especially, seems to have featured the same silly kinds of plots and base emotions on display in Goodman's comics. Lee must certainly have been the culprit in lifting those themes from other sources.

One HELL of a great Kirby cover. And his interior art is just as good. However, the name given to this critter is one of the more unfortunate Stan Lee ever concocted: OOG. Oh, well. Stan Lee loved his vowels.

This cover was a departure for both Kirby and Marvel's general output during this period. This one has no garishly colored alien, nor some gigantic creature from the bowels of the Earth. Instead, it's a ghost menacing a cowering man.

Charles Grant Back in Print

2012-01-04T01:00:00.008-05:00

The new ebook/trade paperback process of disseminating fiction has brought us the reappearance of a writer who has been missing from the shelves for a while.

Charles L. Grant was an accomplished author and editor . As a young man I enjoyed his work as both. His anthologies to this day fill an entire bookshelf in my office, and he was one of the most effective short story writers I have encountered.

When his health began to fail his output seemed to dwindle (logically), and after he died his presence pretty much faded completely from the publishing scene. This was a shame because his work was influential to so many of us who were learning how to create fiction. At this best, there were few who could match him for sheer imagination and for an uncanny ability to create atmosphere.

I have missed seeing Grant's name on the shelves at bookstores. So now his widow and some of his former editorial associates have managed to get his work back out in front of a new generation of readers. I thoroughly recommend everything they're laboring to bring to light once again.

TALES OF SUSPENSE #24 Interiors

2012-01-03T06:47:00.001-05:00

The more I look at these pre-hero Marvel comics, the more I'm impressed with the way the basic pieces of what was to come had been put into place. You can see the master of the Silver Age comic book industry honing his craft to a degree no one has ever been able to match; Jack Kirby was truly THE KING as he came to be known. Most of the cover art was his during this time, and probably half of the comic pages being produced for Stan Lee was being created by Kirby. If he wasn't actually penciling much of it, he was laying out what he couldn't get around to penciling, and so guys like Don Heck, Steve Ditko, and Paul Reinman, and the rest just had to fill in the blanks.

These days this is considered a forerunner of Ant Man. But actually that's one hell of a stretch. In this story it's not the man who is shrunken to the size of a bug, but rather a man who finds himself in a world populated by enormous insect people. But the collector's market will make all kinds of claims when it comes to pricing a book. I'm just glad I have a decent copy of the issue now.

Don Heck doesn't get nearly the credit that he deserves. He excelled at delineating stories with atmosphere. I'm not being glib here just because this is one of his common uses of fog effect, but because he really did a good job of creating a sense of wonder, of mystery, of impending doom, or of fantasy: whatever the story required. I think it's because he was working alongside artists like Kirby and Ditko and Sinnott and (later) John Buscema and Colan that his efforts fell in the shadows of those vast popular figures.

Once again I have to be impressed with the power of Ditko's talent. He often opened up the telling of a yarn with an image that wrapped up the tenor of an entire story within a single panel.

TALES OF SUSPENSE Revisited

2012-01-02T13:51:00.006-05:00

Returning to the cover gallery of my collection of TALES OF SUSPENSE, I present here the covers for numbers 21, 23, and 24. At this point Marvel Comics was hurtling toward a change that would render the science-fiction and horror titles moot. As soon as Stan Lee unleashed Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to create a superhero line, all bets were off. Both of these men had been waiting all of their professional lives for a chance at such a gig.

In the case of Jack Kirby, he'd never stopped creating new versions of the old costumed hero. He was so imaginative that some of his costumed heroes didn't even wear costumes! But no one outside of Kirby himself had the slightest idea of what the man was capable if only he could be given the chance. Around the time of the year after these issues appeared, Goodman's company was walking a fine line between existence and dissolution. Goodman probably didn't mind all that much, but his nephew's career was in jeopardy. Lee needed to take a great big chance, and in the talents of Kirby and Ditko he had everything he'd need to recreate his uncle's company, thereby assuring his own professional standing and his regular paycheck.

In fact, though, the guy had no idea at all what was about to happen.

A typical Stan Lee name for one of Kirby's monsters. Lee had probably been watching Disney's THE SCARECROW or the Hammer film adaptation of the same character and decided to take Clegg's name and transform it into something catchy.

This is a really effective cover. You don't see many covers like this one. Looks to be Kirby layouts with Ditko finishes and inks.

This book has become something of a monster on the collector's market. Some consider it a kind of prototype for what became one of Marvel's principle superhero characters, ANT MAN. But Ant Man proper appeared in issue # 27 of TALES TO ASTONISH, a companion magazine of TALES OF SUSPENSE. In that issue, the hero of the story was specifically Henry Pym who went on to become first Ant Man and then Giant Man (and then Ant Man again) in the pages of TALES TO ASTONISH, and THE AVENGERS, and many other Marvel superhero titles. The character of Ant Man/Pym was wholly a creation of Jack Kirby (of course) based on any number of diminutive heroic costumed characters from other publishers (DC's THE ATOM, and Quality's DOLL MAN, etc.).

Christmas 2011

2012-01-01T02:20:00.006-05:00

I realized that I didn't post any Christmas photos this year!

Here are a couple.

Cairo kitty enjoying the mess of paper and boxes Christmas morning.

A couple of days after Christmas.

I have always enjoyed Christmas. I admit that it's not nearly as much fun as when Andy was a child. Not having a child around to enjoy the season with makes it a lot less appealing. Also, the nature of my hideous job keeps me from having much in the way of leisure time around the holiday. I work all through Christmas and rarely have any time off during the entire month of December. Thus, I never have any time to slow the heck down and savor the days.

Alas.

Still, I like Christmas and often try to let the season linger a bit. Last year I tore the tree down on December 26th. This year, we're going to let it stand until January 2nd.

Pulp Art

2011-12-30T17:25:00.004-05:00

The following art is from an old western pulp published by Martin Goodman, the same fellow who published Marvel Comics. He was publishing comics when this pulp came out, but I've always been struck at the difference in pure quality of art in pulps as opposed to art in comics.

I have my favorite comic book artists, but few of them went to the trouble to create individual scenes with the skill shown here in this single illustration. I won't even go into the pure superiority of most pulp covers over comic book covers. It could be that pulp artists were paid a lot more money than comic book artists and thus were able to devote more time to each piece of art. I can't say, as I've never delved into the details of the history of each art type in opposition.

At any rate, this illustration was for a Max Brand novella published at some point by Martin Goodman's outfit. I'm amazed at the skill the artist shows, despite the fact that he was toiling in an art form produced for a publication only held in slightly higher esteem than comics.

From the signature, I assume this was done by Boris Bjorklund, known for illustrating western pulps. He died in 1978.

Boone Bowl, Part Deux

2011-12-29T07:02:00.003-05:00

My pal Andy Kunkle, (who has logged about ten jillion more hiking miles than I have), sent me this photo of the Boone Bowl on Grandfather/Tanawha.

Looking at that, I rather do think that it is, indeed, a glacial cirque. I'm wondering where the glacial moraines would be. I don't think it would be difficult to locate them by looking at some topo maps or, perhaps, scouting around points where a terminal moraine would have been located.

If there was a local glacier there, it looks like it was a rather big one. Far wider than some of the other glacial cirques I've seen on eastern mountains.

Bottom line is, I think it really is evidence of a localized glacier that once flowed here in North Carolina!

Photo by Andy Kunkle.

Localized Glaciers in the Eastern US

2011-12-28T07:24:00.002-05:00

Here in the eastern USA there are some signs of localized glaciation, mainly in New England. Of course almost everyone is aware of the huge continental glaciers that once covered much of North America and which is now isolated in Greenland on our continent.

Katahdin, Maine's highest summit.

What has always intrigued me are the smaller local glaciers that were left behind when the huge ice sheets retreated. As the higher elevations of New England were revealed from beneath the melting ice, there were still some areas just high enough and just far enough north to have localized glaciers that spilled off of some few peaks, creating glacial cirques and leaving behind glacial moraines and making tarns on some of the high ridges.

The first place I ever went that had obvious signs of local glaciers was Mount Katahdin. The rivers of ice that carved out the enormous gulfs and soaring cliff faces are long gone, but if you know what you're looking at, it's obvious what forces created these features.

I've now hiked in several eastern glacial cirques, including some on Katahdin in Maine and two on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. These peaks stand 5,268 feet and 6,288 feet respectively, and so were able to retain local glaciers for a long time after the retreat of the continental ice sheets that had covered the north.

Here in the South there is almost no sign of localized glaciation. But although the enormous ice sheets never reached this far toward the equator, some of the peaks should have been able to spawn some local glaciers. After all, there are many peaks here in Tennessee and North Carolina and southern Virginia where elevations approach or exceed 6,000 feet above sea level. Surely conditions should have been right for local glaciers on some of these peaks.

Arrows indicating the two most obvious glacial cirques on Katahdin (from this perspective). Known locally these days as 'Gulfs'.

However, in my reading and research I have found that only one spot has enough evidence for such a local glacier. And that spot is on Grandfather Mountain (aka Tanawha) here in North Carolina. Grandfather/Tanawha is considered the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At 5,964 feet above sea level, it's not even in the top 20 highest peaks in the east. However, it just misses being an official "sixer" and looks more like a peak in the Sierras than one on the Blue Ridge. If any southern peak could have spawned glaciers, it seems that this would be it.

Today, there is a formation on the mountain called "the Boone Bowl". This bowl was likely carved out of the mountain by a small river of ice that formed below the summit and etched its way down the slopes, creating the enormous natural amphitheater the locals call "the Boone Bowl". I hope to be able to go there and scout it out in the next few weeks, and produce some photos that indicate some similarities with the glacial cirques I've hiked on Mount Washington and Katahdin.

We'll see.

Possible view of the "Boone Bowl" (Photo copyright by grouchomark)

Tales of Suspense #20 Interiors

2011-12-27T12:05:00.003-05:00

Zowie!

This is one of my favorite Kirby covers from the pre-hero Marvel period.

Here is what the the production of the early Marvel bullpen looked like as the teams were coalescing, waiting for the day when Marvel would make the move to go toe-to-toe with DC Comics in the creation of new superhero books.
Most of the monsters created by Jack Kirby made a single appearance. He wrote and illustrated hundreds of such stories. But every once in a while he would go back to a creature he'd created before, or perhaps there was enough fan reaction (generally in the form of sales) so that Stan Lee would ask for another story featuring one or another of Kirby's monsters. So it was with Colossus. Kirby seemed willing and able to revisit this monster with this yarn: "Colossus Lives Again"!

Kirby would often break up a story into parts or chapters. He'd end with something of a cliff-hanger or story break, and continue the tale with a unique chapter title. He excelled at imaginative ways to delineate a story by way of text and balloons and sub-titles. Here we see him at work with this gimmick, but without as much flash as in some of his stories.

Don Heck was generally called upon to do one of the stories in the sf and horror books. But in this issue it was Dick Ayers who got the job. Ayers was one of Stan Lee's go-to journeymen. He was mainly an inker, working with just about everyone who did pencils for Goodman's outfit. But sometimes he was given a job to pencil. This one was just such a situation.

A typical and absolutely wonderful Ditko title page. He excelled at these things. Every time I open one of these pre-hero Marvels I find myself wondering if Ditko was perhaps challenged by the older and frankly more talented Kirby. Did he use the other man's work as a kind of goal, or a bar against which he might measure himself? I sometimes think so, and at times he met and exceeded that bar.

I love this last page. The story is one that I can see appealing to Ditko. The mindless masses too stupid and incurious to grasp a chance when it comes to them. One sees the wise, bearded philosopher-king at the end. That last panel is intriguing, too. It pre-dates both Roger Dean's and AVATAR'S airborne islands.

The Bullpen Develops

2011-12-26T10:51:00.012-05:00

From what I've been able to gather, historically speaking, about Martin Goodman's overall publishing business is that it was almost always marginally profitable. And since his nephew, Stan Lee, was in charge of running the day-to-day operations of that publisher, it was his job to ensure that the bottom line was in the black and that it stayed that way as often as possible.

I've also read that Goodman constantly held the very real threat of corporate dissolution over Lee's head. If he couldn't make a decent profit from the business into which they'd both ended up, then Goodman would close down his company, sell off the intellectual assets of same, and retire. This would have left the young and ambitious Lee out in the cold. He'd always been at the editorial helm of the company and the roof over his head, the food in his stomach, and the clothes on his back depended on keeping Timely/Atlas/Marvel/etc. on an even keel.

By the late 1950s Goodman's company was basically one that published comic books. The day of the adventure pulp was gone and the corporation was almost exclusively sustained through comic books. And since there were not many chances to merchandise the dormant superheroes that lay within the Goodman vaults, it was left increasingly to Stan Lee to figure out how to keep the titles selling in enough numbers to maintain Goodman's position on the newsstands.

The pressure to accomplish this must have been maddening.

As I've touched on previously in my brief essays, Lee was a careful and adaptable editor. He would scan the publishing world to see what was moving and do his best to copy it. Under his ministrations, Marvel/Atlas was NEVER an innovator. Not once in all the days of his work through this period did Goodman's company set the standard or create a wave. Lee was forever peering over his neighbor's shoulders to see what they were doing right and aping it.

Thus, in the very late 50s and into 1960 he had his formula down. He had three reliable artists producing most of his work. Jack Kirby would produce almost all of the cover art and--what seems to me--roughly half the artwork of the science-fiction and horror comics that were keeping the company floating and Martin Goodman relatively happy. Steve Ditko followed closely behind Kirby by offering up some of the covers and his share of the interior artwork and stories. Don Heck, a very under appreciated journeyman comic artist was the third part of this able triumvirate that Lee had set up to run the company smoothly.

As Marvel's sales continued to stagnate despite this clever and successful combination of talent, the stories flowed out of the Marvel offices. All the while, Lee cast his net wide, trying to figure out how to increase sales and keep his uncle happy. What he didn't know was that he had the basic die cast. Kirby and Ditko especially were primed to produce the most amazing eruption of creativity the comic book business had witnessed since its great days of the war years. Sitting in the fertile imaginations of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko was the basis of the most profitable comic book company to emerge from the Silver Age of comics. The Marvel Universe was stirring behind the gates of Kirby's and Ditko's minds, waiting to be unleashed. DC Comics providing the impetus by reviving the almost dead superhero genre, and Stan Lee was just the man to copy it.

And he had his bullpen ready.

The menace of METALLO! Descending to Earth by way of the legendary skyhook! Kirby could knock out a great cover like this without even breaking a sweat.

Another typical story of this era of Goodman's company. Kirby would produce his three-part opening story, hand it in to Stan Lee who would concoct one of his goofy names for the monster. GOOGAM! I'm sure it's ready and waiting to be optioned as merchandise and films! Maybe a cartoon! (But Jack Kirby won't get any credit, and his heirs will be left empty-handed.)

Over the years, Marvel vacillated between covers with word balloons and those without; those sparse with balloons and those pregnant with them. This one seems unique. Just one word balloon, but very text-heavy for a comic from this period.

Continuing Cover Gallery

2011-12-25T21:39:00.007-05:00

Continuing the cover galleries I've been posting, the following are three more front cover images from my recently acquired run of Marvel's TALES OF SUSPENSE. More great Silver Age sweetness from the likes of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck.

Typical cover from Jack Kirby. It was during this period through the late 50s and early 60s when Kirby was producing art at a truly uncanny rate. I've heard that there have been comic book artists who have been as productive as Jack Kirby, but I rather doubt those claims.

More great cover art from the King. I'm wondering who inked this one. If you know, leave a message here.

Stan Lee by and large dialogued the stories after the artists completed writing, plotting, and drawing them. He was a real card when it came to names. Alliteration was his middle name. But he also seemed to enjoy recycling character names, as he would later do with this monster. "Elektro" would later turn up as the name for one of Steve Ditko's villains, Electro, in the Steve Ditko plotted/written/illustrated/imagined masterpiece, The Amazing Spider-Man.

HORROR FOR THE HOLIDAYS

2011-12-24T17:35:00.001-05:00

I got my contributor copies today! Great Christmas present!

New and Improved

2011-12-23T07:38:00.004-05:00

Busy working, exhausted from my day-job, trying to finish a new novel. I've had no time at all to do proper blogging.

Here is a short video of places and people:

Ladies, Why Do You Put Up With Us?

2011-12-22T07:33:00.003-05:00

This is the version of my monster video I originally wanted to post. Had a hard time matching photos to audio.

Tales of Suspense, Covering Previous Territory

2011-12-21T06:50:00.002-05:00

By the time TALES OF SUSPENSE was an entrenched title at Martin Goodman's publishing outfit, the art team assembled for the book was also well established. Stan Lee was always searching for artists who could produce the work in a timely manner and who also had a certain style that would appeal to the fans. In Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Don Heck he had managed to assemble such a reliable team. I think Lee was always looking for someone like Joe Maneely who had died in such a horrible manner some years earlier. Maneely could draw anything and do it well and on time. He was the glue that held the books together and Stan Lee had him exclusively for a time. Just before Maneely's untimely death he was getting ready to head out for greener pastures, wider exposure, and richer pay checks. His death had been a major blow, especially to Stan Lee who had come to depend on him.

Well, it didn't take him too long to land several more artists to fill that creative void. Jack Kirby in particular was a workhorse unlike any other the comics industry had seen. I've read that in one year he produced well over 1,200 pages of penciled pages. This is a phenomenal pace, especially when you understand that he was also writing most of the stuff that was credited to a certain someone else. Most of the monster and sci-fi comics that Goodman was publishing were held up by the three guys editor-in-chief Lee came to depend upon: the already mentioned Kirby, Ditko, and Heck.

Often joining in to add to that triumvirate was Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers and a host of other artists who later filtered into the Marvel offices as the small company grew into a publishing juggernaut. But in those early days it was mainly Kirby, Ditko, and Heck.

I already had a copy of this issue (#5), so I'll sell off the lesser of the two books.

This was another book I kept trying to nab on Ebay but always failed to get. There's something about the cover that I really like. It's not the monster--Kirby created some really striking monsters and this isn't one of them. I think it's just the construction of the scene that appeals to me.

I've never run across this book before, so it's going to be fun to see what's inside. I'll post interiors of some of these books after I've read them and gone through the tales.

Monster Romance

2011-12-20T17:41:00.002-05:00

I put this post up and it vanished! What the hell?

I'll try again.

Steve Ditko Pre-Hero Marvel Jackpot

2011-12-19T08:11:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite comic book dealers is Earl Shaw. I like buying from him because his prices are almost always more than fair (when compared to the larger market), and he never forgets a want list, even if he's just carrying it somewhere in the back of his mind.

So it was that he knew that I was out for lots of issues of the pre-hero Marvels that I've written about here in the past. But this was a really large chunk of what I was looking for, and was--for me--a major outlay of money. Especially considering that this is the holiday season and I was already buying a lot of stuff for gifts.

But this was all for me and I caved and worked out a deal to get them.

In all, I landed 55 issues of books that I mainly needed. A few were duplicates of issues I already have, but I'll sell those off on Ebay and use the money to buy other books. So without further comment, here are some of the scanned covers of books I picked up yesterday at Rick and Dave's Charlotte ComiCon.

TALES OF SUSPENSE #1. I had tried to buy this book a number of times on Ebay in the past couple of years. But I was always outbid. Heck with that. Now I have the issue, albeit in lower grade. But that's okay, because most of the issues I'd previously bid on were in about this same condition.

TALES OF SUSPENSE #3. All of the single-digit issues of Tales of Suspense are tough to find and even harder to win in auction. This one is a very good addition to my collection.

TALES OF SUSPENSE #4. I'm now only missing one out of the first ten issues of Tales of Suspense. And I'm sure I'll be able to land a copy of that one (#2) within the next few months.

Klingons and Budd

2011-12-18T20:11:00.003-05:00

Now that takes GUTS! My old pal Budd Root whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a Klingon lass while her significant other stands to his right. Brass cajones like cannonballs.

Charlotte Comicon

2011-12-17T19:24:00.005-05:00

I'll be at the Charlotte Comicon tomorrow!

I always have a blast at the show, the best comic convention in the Charlotte area!

While there I'll be selling and signing copies of:

THE LIVING END: A Zombie Novel.

and

THE FLOCK!

Restoring the American Pleistocene Environment in the East

2011-12-16T07:01:00.003-05:00

Someday I would love to see as much eastern land as possible restored as closely as possible to its Pleistocene glory. A complete restoration is, of course, impossible. This is due to the fact that so many of the plants and animals that formed that dead ecosystem are gone forever.

No matter what you did, you could never bring back things like Mammoths, mastodons, glyptodons, megatherium, saber-toothed cats, etc. Those animals were completely wiped out by the advance of humans who crossed the Bering land bridge and spread across two untouched continents killing off a huge percentage of the large mammals they encountered.

But there are the surviving Pleistocene animals who can (and should) be restored to their former ranges.

Already the elk has been brought east again. True, the eastern elk is actually extinct, but the variety that now roams the forests in the Midwest, in Pennsylvania, and now it North Carolina is so close as to be almost indistinguishable from the type eradicated by the advancing Europeans. It would be nice to see them living in all of the eastern forests again.

A bull elk that I photographed just a few weeks ago in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Another creature that could be returned, but which probably will not be (as long as humans can be brought to bear against them) is the American bison, commonly called the "buffalo". These creatures once lived from coast to coast and inhabited every land type except for the wettest swamps and the deepest, driest deserts. And, once more, the type that once lived here in the east is completely extinct. The last woodland buffaloes in the east were hunted down and eaten in Kentucky in the late 1700s. Since then, there have been no bison here in the east.

But bison could be restored to eastern forests. There are similar animals who could easily adapt to our forests and once more inhabit them. The main barrier to their restoration is, once more, human opposition. Bison are very big animals (largest native land mammals in North America) and can sometimes be quite aggressive. Convincing easterners that our wild lands would be better off with bison than without them would be a tough sell. I think the nearest free-ranging bison to our eastern lands are in Oklahoma where the locals have learned to tread softly and understand the risks.

An almost free-ranging bison herd at Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky/Tennessee. (Not true free-ranging since the borders of the area are policed against their movements.)

In the northeast, one animal largely missing from the scenery is the woodland caribou. There are still some extant in Canada, and I've heard rumors that some have been seen in Maine forest just south of the Canadian border, but those might merely be cases of wishful thinking. However, the animals are not extinct and could be returned to the forests of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont if only some effort were made to protect enough habitat to allow them to find the area once again attractive.

An eastern woodland caribou in Newfoundland.

A huge piece of the ecological puzzle that could be restored are our extant predators. And chief among these are the Grey wolf and the mountain lion. Other than some brief and singular appearances from time to time, there really are no mountain lions remaining in the east outside of the small pocket of the animals that have survived in Florida. Allowing the mountain lion to return to the east and exist here unmolested would be a relatively easy thing to do. The hard thing would be to control the mad hysteria of the eastern humans who have grown accustomed to living in a world without such large feline predators.

The true eastern cougar is extinct. But western types could flow right into the old ecological niche with ease.

And, of course, wolves are the bane of the corporate greedheads who rule us all. To sustain healthy wolf populations you need lots of true wilderness, and true wilderness means that the lands encompassed as such cannot be exploited by mines, by drilling, by timbering, by urban sprawl. The filth who profit from the degradation of our lands always find it easy to loose their mindless rabid tools, the hunters and gun-humpers and ATV fans who scream like the spoiled brats they are when anyone champions the aim of returning the Timber wolf to its native range.

A Great Lakes timber wolf. It's only a short distance from the Midwest to the East. Let's allow them to return home.

Coyotes have been able to move back into former Timber wolf range and partially fill the ecological niche that the wolf filled. But coyotes aren't wolves and can't really do the same jobs that wolves did. And that job was to curb the growth of the vast herds of whitetail deer that fill the east from the deepest forests to the very edges of our urban areas. Many forests in the east cannot grow properly because of the sheer numbers of hungry deer who browse constantly and prevent the growth of native trees and plants. Deer are largely uncontrolled and their numbers threaten our native ecosystems here in the east. What is needed is the return of the wolf and the mountain lion.

I would love to be able to go hiking and backpacking and trekking in a restored eastern forest habitat that included woodland bison, elk, wolf, and mountain lion. Maybe one day this will happen. My suspicion is that it could happen, but only in the absence of humans. The humans will definitely go away at some point. When that occurs, I have to hope that our elderly Pleistocene friends will have survived to once again roam where they have been excluded for far too long.

For now, if you want to experience scenes of Pleistocene flora and fauna, there are precious few places where this can happen. I was lucky enough to go driving and trekking in Yellowstone National Park last year. There, the Pleistocene megafauna are still around--what remains of it, at any rate. You can stand on hilltops and see bison and bighorn sheep and elk and mule deer and pronghorns and wolves and grizzly bears and (if you're lucky) mountain lions and lynx. There are also great opportunities to see what's left of our Pleistocene pals in a number of places in Alaska, Montana, Idaho, and in several of the Canadian provinces. Hell...there are places where the wolverine still roams. But here in the eastern USA, such things are only the dreams of those of us who wish to see even a portion of the biological health restored to our lands.

RESTORE, a movement to create a new National Park in Maine, restoring the Pleistocene flora and fauna as closely as possible. Of course corporations and gun-humpers and four-wheel/snowmobile fuckheads will fight to ensure that it never happens.

Monster Romance

2011-12-15T23:25:00.002-05:00

Just because.

Mysterious Traveler Interiors

2011-12-15T00:15:00.010-05:00

Good ol' Ditko!

I said that I'd try to post some interior shots from my latest acquisition to my Ditko collection, so here they are. I've picked out some striking images for review.

TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER is classic stuff. The stories are all told from the point of view of The Mysterious Traveler. He's merely a foil, a dour character who recounts with impassive tone the things that he has observed. This kind of thing would appeal, I think, to the Objectivist tendencies of Mr. Ditko who was, I have been told, already under the influence of Ayn Rand's twisted philosophies by this time.

I was interested to see several things in this book. First of all, the inking is different from one story to the next (all penciled by Ditko) and I have to wonder if he inked them all himself, or if the pages were handed off to others to be inked. Or it could be just that Ditko wanted to experiment with various inking styles so that he could convey differing emotions from one story to the next. It's hard to say, since I don't have the critical eye, nor the knowledge of Charlton's artist stable at that time to say one way or the other.

One thing that I can say is that I'm really happy to have been able to add this book to my collection.

Ditko is well known for using the human eye as a motif in his work. Here we see that even in the mid-1950s he was already getting a lot of power by using this gimmick.

Ever true to his individualist tendencies, Steve Ditko managed to get his name featured in many of his stories and covers. It was important to him--unlike with many other artists of this period--to let the fans know who was creating this singular work.

The dour, emotionless Traveler as narrator. Just the facts, ma'am.

Ditko had a stable of interchangeable physical types that he used often over the course of his career in mainstream comics. Faces and forms that conveyed a certain kind of personality. This one, a precedent to the character we later knew at Frederick Foswell from The Amazing Spider-Man.

The character of "the old fool" was a deceptively simple display of Ditko's talent as an artist. Only someone with a great understanding of anatomy and physics could have so simply illustrated an old man bent by toil and years in so effective a manner. You can also see why this story would have appealed to a guy like Ditko and made him expend perhaps just a little more effort than Charlton's low page rate would justify. Here we see the individual as wise, while the masses are nothing more than a mindless mob: this attitude is the template of the fascist mind.

I have the impression that Ditko inked this one, but it's a lot different from the simpler style used in some of the other stories in this little volume. Once again, the comic art fan cannot be but impressed at the brilliance of Ditko when it came to putting emotion and power into each and every panel of a simple story.

Bunny Rabbits!

2011-12-13T18:39:00.005-05:00

Who doesn't like bunnies?

One street on my route has free-ranging bunny rabbits. I asked some of the residents about it and they told me that once, many years back, another resident released some domestic bunnies. They went feral and now the neighborhood is home to a large breeding population of them.

They're "wild", but allow you to get close. Of course the locals feed them so they're accustomed to people. I suspect that some of them are the result of cross-breeding with the native cottontails because they look like enormous Eastern cottontail rabbits.

I see this one almost every day. He's classic domestic bunny configuration and coloration. He's really friendly and totally relaxed around people. I often see him with his mouth stuffed with tufts of grass that I assume he carries off to a secret location to cache away for a rainy day, or else to line a nest.

Most of them look like this. Really big, like domestic bunnies, but with coloration more like the Eastern cottontail rabbit. I figure they're the result of cross-breeding between the two types.

TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER

2011-12-12T19:42:00.004-05:00

I picked up a copy of TALES OF THE MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER #6 for my Steve Ditko comic collection. These have been hard for me to land, so I was really happy to get this one. I'll post some details and interior photos tomorrow, if I have time.

Old Growth Memories

2011-12-11T14:19:00.002-05:00

I'm reminiscing now about hikes, since I'm holed up here at home for the holidays. I really am going to take some time off in January and/or February to go hiking.

The following photos were all taken on a bushwhack hike I made with my pal Andy Kunkle in late May of this year. We drove over to the Pisgah National Forest near Old Fort, North Carolina. This particular section of forest was the very first plot of land to be declared National Forest property. Hiking in, you can tell why it was chosen. For reasons of chance and topography, large patches of forest here were never logged, or only selectively logged. Much of Mackey Mountain and the surrounding ridges and coves are home to old growth forests. These days, the forests are mainly hardwoods, but up until very recently there were also big expanses of grand old hemlock trees here, also.

And the biggest of the trees remaining are poplars, also known as the tulip tree (for its springtime blossoms). In fact, the Yellow poplar/Tulip poplar is not a true poplar at all, but is instead closely related to the magnolia family. Tulip poplars grow pretty fast for a hardwood, they grow straight and tall, and they reach impressive size for an eastern tree. While they're no match for the truly huge monster trees of the west such as Jeffrey pines, Redwoods, Sequoias, cedars, and such, they are among the largest species here in our half of the continent. Only cottonwoods and sycamores and and buckeyes and (formerly) hemlocks rivaled or exceeded them in volume.

Today, if you're out in a southeastern forest and you encounter a grove of very large trees, more than likely that grove is of Tulip (or yellow) poplars.

It was in search of just such groves that Andy and I headed up into the watersheds at the foot of Mackey Mountain/Green Knob in the Pisgah National Forest. We hiked up the steep slopes and indeed we located the big trees that we were told were there. I love walking around in classic southern Appalachian cove hardwood forests. While there, you are surrounded by life, by green, by fresh air and rich soil and clean water. If you're lucky, you'll spy some wildlife in these forests, but even if you find yourself alone there, you'll be richly rewarded for the exertion.

Big tree Bob at the base of a huge poplar near Old Fort NC.

Andy Kunkle dwarfed by a monster poplar.

A towering hardwood along the watershed.

The forest floor is alive with all sorts of flora and fauna.

The earth, like a leaking sponge, gives up the fresh water it has filtered.

One tiny human amidst Nature.

Sensoria

2011-12-10T19:08:00.004-05:00

I'll be appearing in March at CPCC's Sensoria 2012.
They asked me for a brief bio to post here and there in some of their publications. So this is what I sent them:

Bio

James Robert Smith was born in Georgia in 1957. Currently he lives in North Carolina with his wife and son and three cats. He works full time in his day job as a laborer and in the evenings as a published author. He has sold more than sixty short stories to a host of magazines and anthologies. Smith has also written for various comic book publishers, including Marvel Comics. His first novel, THE FLOCK, was published in 2006 by Five Star Books and reprinted in 2010 by Tor/Forge Books. The film option to that book was picked up by Don (TRANSFORMERS) Murphy through Warner Brothers and is making its way to the screen. His second novel, THE LIVING END was published in 2011 by Severed Press. His third novel, THE CLAN (a sequel to THE FLOCK) was also sold to Tor Books and is forthcoming later in 2012.

Upcoming novels and collections include HISSMELINA a Lovecraftian horror novel set in the mountains of North Carolina, FOUR FROM MANGROVE a collection of sword and sorcery tales, A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS a collection of Smith’s horror stories, and THE LOST CHILD a novel of the supernatural (also set in North Carolina).

His websites can be viewed at www.jamesrobertsmith.net and www.hissmelina.com and http://tilthelasthemlockdies.blogspot.com/.

Taken in the Pisgah National Forest on a hunt for old growth forests. I got hit really hard with poison ivy on this bushwhack. Which is my fault for not wearing the legs on my convertible pants. This was in the very first block of forests ever created for the National Forest system we now know. It protected a large expanse of old growth trees on and around Mackey Mountain. Of course the hemlocks are now all dead due to the invasive hemlock wooly adelgid, but the hardwoods are still there.

Stir Crazy, Stir Crazy

2011-12-09T19:36:00.011-05:00

Whenever I can't get away to the mountains or down to Florida to swim and paddle in one of the glorious freshwater springs, I tend to get really, really stir crazy. I've never made it a secret that I don't like crowds and I don't enjoy living in a city. I can only stand so much, and then I can't stands no more.

So for the past few weeks I've been daydreaming constantly about getting loose from Charlotte and into the woods. One place that's on my list of probables is one of the parks Carole and I most enjoy:

Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. Recently, it was announced that this area is now under consideration as for National Park status. It will be called (if it happens) The High Allegheny National Park. Of course energy corporations and timber companies will fight it to the death. They will do anything and everything--up to and including murder (of that I have no doubt)--to keep this dream of a new National Park from ever becoming reality.

But if any place in the eastern USA deserves National Park status, it's this area. Let's hope it comes to be.

In the meantime, I'm thinking maybe a January or February trip is in order. And hopefully, as this past February, Carole and I will encounter deep snow and we can go sledding on the sled run inside the park.

We'll see.

Embiggen these photos, but especially this one. Taken from the western end of the park.

Self-portrait at Lindy Point, this past February.

Very close also to Lindy Point.

What Miss Erosion and Mr. Gravity do to the mountains.

This the Blackwater Canyon Lodge where we like to stay. Carole standing on the other side of some friendly does who are obviously into pandhandling.

Bears Do What They Do

2011-12-08T20:43:00.005-05:00

I love photos like this one. (It's from a Pennsylvania newspaper's photo contest.) This illustrates how animals are all independent with unique personalities. From everything I've read and heard, bears love bird seed. If it's left around they will eat it. This particular black bear decided to take the whole feeder with it to a private place to dismantle and consume the innards. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as if there will be much to enjoy by the time it hits the woods.

Today's Mailbag

2011-12-07T20:59:00.006-05:00

Since the latest flurry of publicity for me and for my work as a writer, I've gotten mail from a number of different sources. Two that really thrilled me today were from Bubbie Fatt of B. Fatt & Lazy Movie Reviews, one of the funniest sites on the Internet. And I got one from my Congressional Representative, Sue Myrick.

B.Fatt emailed me because I post at the site and he was touching base.

Sue Myrick because of the recent newspaper article about me. As it happens, I do write to her often, to try to get her to vote on legislation the way I want. No luck there, so far, but she and her office have always been responsive and civil. Which puts her in the company of the most responsive legislators whom I've routinely written over the years. I could always count on a response from the following elected officials:

Senator John Edwards.

Senator Jesse Helms.

Representative Sue Myrick.

Which brings me to a story about Rep. Myrick:

I used to deliver mail to a World War II aviator named Captain Killen. (Great name for a military character, and yes I filed it away for future use.) His wife had recently died and he was having trouble transporting her body. Forgive me, as I've forgotten some of the details, but either she had died while they were visiting in Italy or had died here and her wish was to be buried in Italy. Either way, he was having fits getting her body transported from point A to point B.

One day after he had told me of this difficulty, I was delivering mail to him when he stopped me to talk (as he almost always did). "Guess who I was just speaking to on the phone?"

"Who?" I asked.

He had gotten in touch with Representative Myrick. She knew, of course, where to go to get this done for Capt. Killen, but on this she needed some extra help. She needed someone with some clout, and she got it. So Captain Killen had a conference call that included himself, Congresswoman Myrick, and the late Senator Ted Kennedy who was able to get the final piece of the puzzle to fit to get the body of Mrs. Killen to its final resting place.

So there it was: he'd just gotten off the phone with one of the best known elected officials in North Carolina, and one of the best known in the nation. The two had put their heads together to help out this World War II veteran in his time of need.

That's what I call bi-partisan cooperation.

Thanks, Cap'n Killen!

Writing Zombies

2011-12-06T23:11:00.006-05:00

Well, here I am knee-deep in zombies. I thought that it would be a while before I wrote another zombie novel, but...well, zombie happens.

The new books--a trilogy--will be much more traditional zombie novels. Lots of gun-play and gruesome battles.

I'm having a good time writing the initial volume and the words are flowing along. I'm hoping to complete the first one within the next few weeks.

This is the best zombie makeup I've ever seen. Subtle, but really chilling.

Until I deliver the new books, you can still find my original zombie tome, THE LIVING END at your favorite online bookseller.

People Ask the Darndest Things...

2011-12-05T18:25:00.006-05:00

Soon after I sold my first novel I'd get requests from folk I know--and sometimes from strangers--asking me to help them write a book. No shit. As if I don't have enough to keep me busy as it is. Mainly they were in the category I'd always heard about but never thought I'd meet:

I'll come up with the ideas and you do the writing.

Right.

Now, I'm not listing these people within the very small group of other writers with whom I've collaborated. That's another issue entirely and worth a long essay in and of itself. But that's not what I'm talking about now.

After I'd sold my next novel and then a third these people kept popping up. I know why they pop up, but I can't explain why they would suppose I would find that their ideas could be as intriguing to me as the ones that occur to me without their input. I reckon it's their egos at work. Or maybe they're just dense. I can't say, exactly.

When the news broke that I'd optioned THE FLOCK to Don Murphy and John Wells through Warner Brothers, things got even worse. People I hadn't spoken to in years phoned me up to tell me that they, too, had a great idea that would make a fantastic movie. And sometimes before I could object or turn the conversation they would commence to telling me their great idea in all of its glory (not!). Adults would act like adolescents, spilling out ridiculous tripe as if it were spun literary gold. I would sit and listen or, if I was on the phone, I'd get back to what I was doing, checking from time to time to see if they were still babbling. Sometimes this would go on for a LONG time before I could cut myself loose.

If I was lucky they wouldn't want to tell me too much about their great idea, but instead would ask me to put them in touch with my agent. Or to give them the phone number and email address of the producers who'd optioned my novel.

I'm telling you that I'm not making this stuff up. It happened and it continues to happen.

These guys--most of them are men, but a few are women--would tell me about how they were tired of making their living doing whatever it is they do, and that they want to get into the big money by selling their ideas to Hollywood.

Oh, well. I guess I shouldn't complain. This does mean that I have reached a modest level of near-success that makes me the target of the pained desperation of some poor souls. That's why I'm just generally quiet when they do this embarrassing thing. I try not to let on what fools they're making of themselves and how much of my time they're wasting. It's all rather sad. I try to explain to them that there's nothing I can do to help and that I'm not going to put them in touch with agencies or producers or screenwrights, and that I can't help them write anything myself because I'm far too busy with work that's all mine.

It happens.

How about this? I'll come up with the ideers, and you do the writin'!

Congaree National Park, February 2009

2011-12-04T20:18:00.011-05:00

I thought I'd post a few photographs that I took while on a field trip with the folk from the Native Tree Society back in February of 2009. On that day we visited the Congaree National Park to view a number of the National champion trees that grow within that park.

I'll let most of the photos speak for themselves. I downloaded them at full resolution, so click on them to see them at larger, more detailed size.

When we started the hike, the temperature was well below freezing. I strongly suggest that any visit to Congaree National Park be in cool or cold weather, as the mosquitoes and ticks are vicious and in the billions there.

Between a big tree and a bigger tree.

This forest is astounding. One of the finest tree canopies I've seen.

This one is a world champion.

As we headed out from the day-long hike, we had occasion to use a fallen giant as a bridge across a body of water.

One-week only Sale!

2011-12-04T00:51:00.006-05:00

One-week Christmas season promo on my novel, THE LIVING END. Grab an ebook version of it for only 99 cents!

Horror novelist Joe McKinney had this to say about the book:

Not since Philip K. Dick have I a read an author who so convincingly paints the social milieu of his story's world. Plus, he gives us zombies. Bravo! Your book blew me away. --Joe McKinney, author DEAD CITY

THE LIVING END: A Zombie Novel by James Robert Smith, author of THE FLOCK. From Severed Press.

Joe Dodge Lodge

2011-12-02T20:20:00.007-05:00

Way back in 2007 Carole and I traveled to Maine and New Hampshire. The main part of our trip was so that I could climb Mount Washington with Sam Baucom, the husband of one of Carole's best friends, Bobbie Baucom. Like me, Sam is an avid hiker, but since he also runs marathons he's in a lot better shape than I am.

While we were in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, we stayed at a place called Joe Dodge Lodge. We don't have many places like Joe Dodge here in the South. The Lodge on Mount LeConte is similar, as is the Len Foote Hike Inn. However, Joe Dodge is a bit more civilized than those places, in that you can access it via auto.

Carole and I totally enjoyed our stay there. The rooms are very basic...but after a long day's hike, they're more than adequate for a tired body. The best thing about the stay is the food. Meals are mainly served family style in the huge dining room and the quality of the food is exceptional. They also serve vegetarian meals for those who don't eat meat. I wasn't into the whole vegetarian scene when I was there, but the next time we go I'll have plenty to choose from at meal-time.

And we will return. We had such a great time that we want to stay once again at one of the lodges run by the Appalachian Mountain Club up there.

This is the dining room at Joe Dodge. Separated by a short walk from the main part of the lodge.

And the main lodge with the White Mountains looming on the skyline beyond.

Our basic room at Joe Dodge Lodge.

Since our southern peaks don't have a tree-line, you don't see any scenes like this one south of the Mason and Dixon Line.

How Anthologies Work

2011-12-01T19:30:00.007-05:00

For some reason I've never quite figured, the way many publishers handle anthology payments is that they pay the editor the entire funds budgeted for the book, and the editor pays the creators for each story. This is not always the case, but often.

Subsequently, because the publisher has treated the editor as a kind of sub-contractor on the project, any royalties earned are forwarded to the editor who is then obliged to send a pro-rata share to each author, depending on the percentage of the book contributed by each author. For instance, if it is established by contract that an author will receive 10% of the royalties earned because his story encompassed 10% of the anthology, then if the editor is given $2,000 to disburse among the contributors, that author would receive $200 in royalty payments.

Some years back I sold a story to the anthology CHILDREN OF CTHULHU published by Del Rey Books and edited by John Pelan and Ben Adams. For whatever reason, of the two editors, Pelan was given control of the purse strings on the book. I was initially paid for my story, but have to this date never received a penny earned in royalties. This despite the fact that the book is still in print after a full decade and seems to be a perennially good seller for Del Rey Books. I've inquired to find out why I've never received any royalties, but no good answer has been forthcoming.

Of the two editors of the book, the only one I speak to is my pal Ben Adams who has always stayed in touch with me. He, too, has never seen a penny out of the anthology's royalties, despite being the co-editor. I've been told that all such funds are forwarded elsewhere. Del Rey has never bothered to clear this up with me, so I have no idea where. Neither does Ben. I've never been able to get in touch with John Pelan about it.

I have only co-edited a single anthology in my days as a writer/editor. That was EVERMORE for Arkham House Books. Before her death, I was told by April Derleth (the publisher) that she thought she owed us some royalties, but she never made that clear. Since her death I've not heard from the folk who are in charge there now. I was happy when Arkham House actually cut each check for the authors in that volume, so I assume they'll do the same when (and if) the book earns out royalties.

Other anthologies of which I have been a part have paid out royalties regularly and with perfect accounting. Especially when I sold to anthologies handled by the late Marty Greenberg.

Will I ever be made aware of, or receive royalties from CHILDREN OF CTHULHU? Who knows?

Ridgepole Mountain

2011-11-30T18:15:00.012-05:00

Years and years ago I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail to get to a point where I could bushwhack to the summit of a mountain named Ridgepole Mountain. The old story when I was a kid was that Ridgepole Mountain was originally supposed to have been in Georgia. That is, the northern boundary of Georgia was to have been struck slightly north of where in ended up. However, the local Cherokees were in an agitated state and the surveyors tasked with marking the northern boundary were afraid to proceed, so they just picked a convenient spot and called it the northern boundary of the state.

Therefore, as all good little hiking Georgians from the days of my youth would say, WE WUZ ROBBED!

Robbed of what?

Well, apparently we were robbed of some 5,000-foot peaks. That was the buzz along the trail when I was a kid. If only those surveyors hadn't been such scaredy-cats, then we'd have some fivers in my native state. And I would always think about what would have happened if Ridgepole Mountain had become our highest point. Instead of Brasstown Bald having a road carved onto its slopes and all the way to the summit; instead of Brasstown Bald having its top leveled and a huge brick and concrete visitor's center lodged on its high point, then all of those crimes would have been committed against Ridgepole Mountain.

And what is Ridgepole Mountain now? It sits in the middle of a relatively enormous (by eastern standards) wilderness. There is nothing built on its summit. There are no roads gouged into its flanks. It sits in a sea of green, just one more 5,000-foot mountain surrounded by other 5,000-foot mountains.

Hiking on Ridgepole Mountain and the surrounding untouched wilderness, I'm always very happy that those Cherokee braves scared off those European surveyors.

Off in the distance there is Ridgepole Mountain. I took this shot from a mountain called Pickens Nose, named for the Revolutionary War general, Andrew Pickens (whose life served as the fictional basis for the character in the film THE PATRIOT). In real life, Pickens was a stealer of Cherokee land and killer of that nation's people.

This was, as near as I could figure through line of sight, the actual summit of Ridgepole Mountain. There is no visitor's center here. No road. No cars, no trucks, and other than me that day, no people. Just a great southern hardwood forest. It also has the highest bear population density in the southeast.

I found this really excellent campsite on the way to the bushwhack to Ridgepole. It's not far off the Appalachian Trail. Another neat feature of this campsite is that just a few feet away is a sheer cliff that plummets many hundreds (maybe over a thousand) feet.

Just beyond those shrubs is the edge of the cliff. Since I was all alone, that was as close as I dared go.

For contrast, this is what could have become of Ridgepole Mountain if it had ended up in Georgia instead of North Carolina. If it had been Georgian territory, it would have been our only 5,000-foot peak and would be ruined, as the summit of Brasstown Bald is ruined...

Instead, this is the extent of the engineering done on the slopes and ridges of Ridgepole Mountain. You can thank the Cherokee warriors of many generations gone...

Some Old Hike Photos

2011-11-29T19:35:00.008-05:00

All of these photos were taken, I'm pretty sure, in 2005. I did a lot of hiking in 2004 through 2005, all of it solo. Back then I didn't know anyone else who hiked or backpacked and so I took a lot of such trips by myself. Sometimes Carole and I would camp at a nice National Forest campground and she'd stay at the campsite while I climbed mountains or wandered around hunting for waterfalls and big trees.

I took this self-portrait on the last camping trip we went on without our travel trailer. The evening I took this, a big black bear came into our campsite and dismantled it hunting for food. After that, we vowed to get a hard-sided travel trailer, which is one of the main reasons we ended up buying our Casita. (I think the name of this waterfall is Mooney Falls. Near Standing Indian Campground in the Nantahala National Forest here in North Carolina.)

This was taken near the summit of Whitetop Mountain, the second highest mountain in Virginia and one of the few peaks in that state to stand over a mile in elevation.

This is my Sound of Music pose. This was taken in late November and it was hellishly warm that day. About 80 degrees even there at about 5400 feet above sea level.

Nantahala Lake. Not really a hike, but a paddle. Carole and I took the canoe out on the lake. This was on the same trip when the bear raided our camp.

I took this one on what I like to term: The Hike that Nearly Killt Me. This is on a patch of the Black Mountain Crest Trail. It's probably the toughest trail in North Carolina. I've hiked it a number of times, and every time I do it I end up in bad shape. Leg cramps, sore joints, exhaustion. On this trip I did the trail in halves by camping at Deep Gap in the middle of the trail, but the second day was a hike out to the northern terminus, then back to the Gap to pack up my stuff, then out to the southern terminus. I thought I was gonna die by the time it was over.

Mah Blawg

2011-11-28T19:29:00.007-05:00

It's difficult for me to do a blog on writing when I'm actually too busy doing that. I took on a project with a deadline, so that is going to severely limit my time blogging. I'll try to figure a way to work it into the mix.

I'm also unable to add much to posts about new hiking and camping destinations because I haven't had the time to do either of those things. When the new year dawns I'm going to take a few days to hit the trails.

So here are a couple of photos from December of 2009. That was the last time that Carole and I drove up to Sparta NC to buy a fresh Christmas tree from a tree farm. We haven't put up a tree in a while. It's just not the same with no child around.

On the way back to Charlotte we stopped at Stone Mountain State Park and I hiked up the climber's trail to the base of the cliff where I could get some photos of climbers scaling the cliff face. One guy was an instructor and he was trying to teach some chick how to climb. Maybe it was his current girlfriend and he was making an attempt to get her into his hobby.Or it could be that she was just interested in climbing and had paid for a climbing lesson. Whatever it was, one thing it wasn't was going to fly.

Here's a shot of the instructor and his female student. I could hear them clearly from my post where I scrambled up the rock face by way of friction climbing. When it got too steep for that I just stopped and took photos of the climbing parties (there were several). The teacher was trying like heck to get the girl to just stand the fuck up. She would not, could not do it. All she could do was crouch there hugging the granite face. She just was not a good candidate for technical climbing.

I can still hear his calming voice as he tried to coax her to stand up so that they could continue the climb. He was very patient and very calm. All I wanted to do was scream up at her, "STAND THE FUCK UP! JUST STAND THE FUCK UP AND YOU CAN WALK TO THE NEXT FUCKING LEDGE YOU FREAKING SISSY!"

Zombie Time

2011-11-27T18:52:00.010-05:00

I had considered writing a sequel to THE LIVING END. I still have it plotted and I may write that novel at some time. Its title is THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH, but I have so many other writing projects on my desk that I can't see my way clear to work on that one just now.

In addition, I signed a new contract to produce three zombie novels. These will be something a lot different from my own vision of the zombie trope. They're grounded firmly in the Romero-esque world of zombie fiction, which to my way of thinking is the only way to treat zombies.

Some authors have produced stories and films where zombies aren't dead, merely infected with a disease. That's not my take, at all. Others have produced the undead as super-fast so that they're like Olympic sprinters with a bad attitude. That's not my take, either.

And, of course, there are those who have zombies that eat things other than living humans, that develop the ability to reason, that come back to life within instants of having been infected and killed. That ain't my idea of the basis of a zombie tale, either.

George Romero and John Russo laid down the rules back in 1968, and I'm stickin' to those, even if their creators veer from them from time to time. The zombies are all but mindless. They're slow and implacable and can only be stopped by destroying their brains. If you're bitten by a zombie, you might have a few days, but you're going to get very sick and you're going to die. And no matter what kills you, unless your brain is destroyed, you're going to come back as a zombie, too.

Those are the rules.

Look for my three-book series (written as Robert Mathis Kurtz) coming soon.

They'll Steal My Ideer!

2011-11-26T19:07:00.006-05:00

Many is the time I've heard young (or new) writers worry about the submission process.

"They'll steal my idea!"

You'd be surprised how many writers (or, actually, wannabe writers) worry about this. There are a lot of things that young writers should worry about, but this is very low on the list of such things. Grammar, punctuation, plot, ability. These are things that they should worry about.

That said, in the many years that I did submit my work, I suspected that one of my plots was stolen (at a comics company), and one was all but confirmed as stolen (at a magazine). I'll just talk about the one for which I have the most evidence. (And, no, I won't name any names. It's water under the bridge, even as pissed as I still am about it.)

Back in the 1980s and early 90s I was writing like mad. I would rarely go a week without writing a new short story, and I kept the Postal Service busy in sending out my manuscripts to magazines and anthologies far and wide. (This is one thing that I do really like about the digital age--online submissions.)

There was a particular market that I was often trying (without success) to crack. It was a horror magazine and I really wanted to get my name on their contents list. I would send stories there with some regularity. I'd heard that they had a new first reader/assistant editor who was also a writer, so I sent him one of my stories. It had a neat plot that boiled down to this:

What if everyone in the country who owned a gun was suddenly overcome with the urge to use it to shoot someone, anyone?

I've always had difficulty with titles for my stories and struggle as I might, the best I could come up with for this one was "One of These Days". I sent it out to the mag, specifically to the new assistant editor.

After a while, the story was returned, with a note from the assistant editor (I still have it). It read, "This one is pretty good, but it lacks a certain impetus, so I'm passing."

Fair enough. Unlike many other writers I've always appreciated the time an editor takes to read my work even if they don't accept it for publication. I've always had a thick skin that way. You really need that to be a writer.

Well, imagine my surprise when, a couple of months later, I get a copy of the magazine. In it, there's a brand-new story by that very same assistant editor. That story's basic premise? If you guessed 'what if everyone in the country who owned a gun was suddenly overcome with the urge to use that gun shoot someone, anyone?', then you are correct! To add a very special insult to the injury was a note on the editorial page by the publisher explaining how the author/assistant had come to the publisher with this great new story that was so good that the publisher delayed the deadline to include it in the issue. I'm positive it was written about a day or so after he put my own story back in the mail to me.

Shit does happen.

Putting Together a Collection

2011-11-24T21:22:00.006-05:00

After HISSMELINA hits the Internet via trade paperback and ebook versions, my next project is the fantasy collection, FOUR FROM MANGROVE.

For years I have been publishing short stories all based in, or around, an iron-age city-state called Mangrove. So I took what I consider to be the finest four short stories and collected them for publication in a single volume.

The four stories that I selected were: "A Child of the War God", which is set the earliest in the one thousand-year history of Mangrove; "Deadly", another one in an earlier version of the nation; "One Curse, One Blessing", which was the first Mangrove story that I ever sold and which was always my intent to expand into a novel at some future date; and "The Krang", the most recently written of the quartet and which takes place in what I consider to be the height of that state's position as an empire.

Early on in my days as a writer I wanted to compose mainly fantasy fiction. This was, of course, part of an urge to try to achieve something like the emotions I felt upon reading the works of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Karl Edward Wagner. But in the days when I wanted to work in that format I always had a literary agent. And each time I would mention the subject to my agent (whomever that might be at the time) I was dissuaded from pursuing the matter because "fantasy is a hard sell". And they'd steer me back toward horror. (Yeah, I know...LOL!)

And so, of course, this has led me to the conclusion that the ebook format could very well be the liberating influence that so many writers have concluded. The verdict is still out on that matter, in my opinion. I won't have my first ebook reader until Santy Claus arrives at my house on Saturnalia. However, it has released me to finally place my fantasy fiction (at least some of it) out there in a format other than a single short story sold here or there over the course of many years.

Along with Howard and the likes of Karl Wagner, Frazetta inspired my love of fantasy fiction.

Two New Anthologies...

2011-11-22T19:15:00.007-05:00

Here are the covers of two upcoming anthologies that contain stories by James Robert Smith. I'm really excited about seeing both of them in print.

HORROR for the HOLIDAYS is edited by Scott Aniolowski and will be published by Miskatonic River Press.

THE DEVIL'S COTTAILS is edited by Jason Brock and William Nolan and contains stories by some of the greats of horror fiction. I'm especially excited to see a story in it by Ramsey Campbell. This is the second anthology this year that I have shared with the great Mr. Campbell. (I was also in DEAD BAIT2 with him.)

Colorado in 2012?

2011-11-21T21:39:00.008-05:00

I got invited to go on a two-week backpacking trip in Colorado in 2012. Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to get it done. One thing about the trip is that, of course, Carole won't be able to join me for the major part of it. She kayaks, and camps and walks some trails with me, but will never backpack. It just ain't gonna happen.

At any rate, the place we'll be hiking/climbing is the San Juan Range in Colorado. For sheer volume, it's the biggest mountain range in the state. Not the highest, but the biggest by land mass. It does, of course, have several "fourteeners" (mountains over 14K feet in elevation) and we plan to bag a couple of those, maybe more.

Part of the San Juan Range. (Image by Jack B.)

Well, I'm still trying to figure it out. I need to get the time off from work and buy a few things that I don't have in my backpacking stuff. But I'm going to do what it takes to get out there. Our animals are all going extinct, our wilderness is shrinking, our air and water grows more fouled each year. If I want to see these relatively unspoiled places either before they're gone or my life is over, I need to get cracking.

View from Windom Peak. Image by Josh Hansen.
(This one is on our list to climb.)

Lilly and Cairo

2011-11-20T22:17:00.008-05:00

Over the years I became a cat person. Yeah, I started out loving dogs, but then I grew up. Being a mailman makes me even less a fan of dogs. I really like cats. I don't hate dogs (well, not anymore), but I just prefer cats.

Here are two of the cats who live with us:

This is Lilly. This photo was taken soon after we brought her home.

And a more recent photo of Lilly relaxing on the couch.

Andy found Cairo. I took this photo within minutes of her discovery (and adoption by us) in Cairo, West Virginia where we found her. What has amazed me always is how smoothly she adapted to being with us. She acted from the very first moment as if she belonged with us. She never cried or ever seemed surprised or alarmed. It was as if this was the way it was supposed to be.

A more recent photo of Cairo. She's very big and very fat now.

Cairo and Lilly on our new couch (which we had covered with sheets while we were teaching them to leave it alone).

Adventures on Ebay

2011-11-19T17:03:00.008-05:00

I landed a copy of Panic #10 via Ebay. This was the first comic I purchased since a crooked dealer tried to rip me off there. I had bought three copies of Panic from a fellow I will leave unnamed for now. The books had been graded at "VG", which means very good. When the books arrived they were flaking, coming apart, two of them had detached covers, and the one that still had its cover attached was because the spine was heavily taped. I, of course, immediately demanded a refund which he did not want to grant. Hilarity ensued.

I have to say that Ebay was really good during this minor tussle. They demanded that the dealer in question refund my money and they even took a portion of it from him and added it back to my Paypal account, the remainder to be refunded as soon as I returned the worthless books, which I did.

This latest issue I got (from a more reputable dealer) is classic Harvey Kurtzman material. I will assume that he did the layouts. Much of the material seems to have his hand in evidence. But the bulk of the book was illustrated by Will Elder and Jack Davis, both of whom did their usual exceptional work. Davis, in particular shows his talent, but I have to think that Elder was filing off the edges of his art here--I think that while Kurtzman and Gaines intended Panic to be pretty much a carbon-copy of Mad, they were making some minor moves to tone down the harsher aspects of the humor of Mad in favor of appealing to a wider audience...or at least a slightly different audience. Unlike Mad, the last few issues of Panic received the Comics Code Authority approval. But obviously the sales were not up to Mad's level and the title was snuffed out.

PANIC #10.

Working!

2011-11-17T23:52:00.005-05:00

I'm neck-deep into a new project. Just now I'm going over the proofs of the manuscript for HISSMELINA. I hope to be done with those in a day or so and soon after that the book will see print.

Until then, mucho busy!

HISSMELINA

Coming soon from

MONSTER BOOKS

Childhood Reading

2011-11-16T06:24:00.001-05:00

All of us who write are, of course, influenced by other writers. And as far back as we were able to read some writers stand out.

For me, the writers of my childhood who helped put me on the path to being a writer are still foremost in my mind. Some authors were suggested to me by my parents, but I think the ones that I enjoyed most as a kid were the ones who I discovered on my own. And so, here is a list of the writers who amazed me and fascinated me and actually made me want to convey my own thoughts into passages to be read by others.

Jim Kjelgaard is one who I recall as an effective and insightful writer of children's books. He wrote about things that I enjoyed even when I was very young--the outdoors and the creatures who share the Earth with us. His style was very stark and no nonsense, but there was sometimes a softness to it that appealed to me. His novel that stands out the most and which I never forgot is FIRE HUNTER. Herein he tells the story of a primitive caveman who--in bouts of brilliance and good fortune--discovers how to make fire, to make throwing sticks, to domesticate dogs...Kjelgaard in a display of pure brilliance put into the lives of one prehistoric man and a single prehistoric woman shows how we might have made the initial technological discoveries that set us apart from the other animals. And may I point out that Mr. Kjelgaard did this decades before Jean Auel followed him.

Kjelgaard did it first.

I've written about Ernest Thompson Seton before, but I can't go too many years without mentioning him. More than any writer, his work had an enormous effect on me. Here was a man who had actual respect and compassion for our fellow creatures. He showed me that things such as prairie hens and cottontail rabbits and yellow dogs and powerful grizzly bears had feelings and emotions and personalities the same as people. I'm not sure how I found his books, but the first one I read was BIOGRAPHY OF A GRIZZLY. Here was a tale about an animal whose life was packed with misfortune and wealth, with pathos and joy, with danger and triumph. Here was a bear with a name--Wahb! I followed Wahb from birth to death, and not a sentence was anything less than amazing to me. I went on to read everything I could find by Seton, collecting and hoarding the novels and collections. Not a day goes by that I don't reflect on the lessons I learned from reading his books.

"Wahb smashed his skull with a single blow."
In addition to being a great writer, Seton was a masterful artist--considered one of the finest wildlife artists of his day.

The first fantasist I read--even before my mom showed me books by Ray Bradbury--were the Dr. Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting. Here was a series devoted to a man of learning who could, quite literally, talk to the animals. From the moment I read the first line of the initial book I was captivated. Here was pure fantasy, not the more realistic material I enjoyed by other writers, but flights of fancy. And, as with Seton, the author also illustrated his own work with drawings wonderful enough to please any kid who found them. I found the first Dr. Dolittle book in the school library the first day of the third grade and I continued to check them out until, at last, I finally outgrew the stuff. But I never forgot it, and those tales hold a special place in my memories.

Good old Dr. Dolittle. Hugh Lofting was the first writer I ever overdosed on. I finally reached a point where I couldn't stomach one more Dr. Dolittle novel. I must have blazed through about seven or eight of them before they lost that initial charm.

Another writer who grabbed my attention was Evelyn Sibley Lampman. And, of course, it was her best-selling novel THE SHY STEGOSAURUS OF CRICKET CREEK that stopped me in my tracks when I pulled the book down from the shelf. Wonderfully illustrated, it told the story of a talking stegosaurus discovered by a pair of kids out hunting for fossils in a western desert. Ms. Lampman was another one who had a way of speaking to kids. And more, she taught me that there were other human points of view than those I heard each day there in my Decatur Georgia neighborhood. Some people lived on ranches in the big sky country, and some kids were Indians who lived on reservations, and not everyone spoke English and listened to Dixie as if it were the national anthem.

Sometimes a wonderful kid's novel is perfectly paired with a terrific and talented artist. So it was with THE SHY STEGOSAURUS OF CRICKET CREEK (art by Hubert Buel).

This illustration astounded me when I was eight years old. It still does...

Autumn Hike Videos

2011-11-15T06:36:00.001-05:00

I thought I'd post various videos that I took on some hikes from this Autumn. Some of the forests I hit were particularly beautiful this Fall. That's the way it happens--sometimes the conditions just line up to produce some great Fall color and forest scenes.

In beautiful West Virginia.

Hiking down from Buzzard Roost in the South Mountains of North Carolina.

On Buck's Knob, the highest summit in Kumbrabow State Forest in West Virginia.

The loop trail on the summit of Gaudineer Knob, West Virginia.

On the trail from the top of Seneca Rock.

Fall colors, high relief, and cute little kids jibber-jabber!

On Mill Creek, Kumbrabow State Forest, West Virginia.

Buffalo Lake

2011-11-14T07:48:00.005-05:00

Once again, I've been too busy to post a new blog for a couple of days.

So here's a photo of one of the spots we visited in West Virginia on our latest trip. Lake Buffalo is an isolated public lake inside the National Forest. Despite one of the two routes leading to it being blocked, and the only option being a tortured detour, there were quite a few people there fishing when we visited.

It would be well worth another visit, next time with fishing gear.

Click to embiggen.

DAW'S YEAR'S BEST HORROR

2011-11-12T06:54:00.005-05:00

When I was a young man learning how to write, one of the publications that I looked forward to every single year was THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR published by DAW Books and edited by Karl Edward Wagner. DAW no longer publishes a year's best collection of the finest horror stories, and of course Karl Wagner has fled this mortal coil. Anyway, who was going to try to fill Wagner's shoes at the helm of DAW's year's best collection every year? It would have been a really tough act to follow.

Wagner had a truly unique way of looking at horror fiction, and no one who collects this material has equaled his ability to choose the finest of the works of short fiction to be published each year. And, of course, the industry itself has changed. Almost all of the magazines are gone, and even the little fanzines and micro-zines have, like Wagner himself, faded into oblivion.

I really miss that yearly collection. More than anything else from the days of my youth, I miss that volume that would hit the shelves every year. I'd go to the bookstores and check every week until it arrived. I have every single one of that series. Including the six that preceded Wagner's arrival, mostly edited by Gerald Page. Mr. Page did a good job, too, with some memorable hits in his own tenure at the editor's desk. But nobody topped Wagner.

I miss DAW's Year's Best Horror. And I miss the professional presence of Karl Wagner. I wish they were still with us.

Alas, time passes. And everything, and everyone, eventually heads for extinction.

Two of my editions of DAW's YEAR'S BEST HORROR. I have them all.

Eagle Rocks, Smoke Hole Canyon, West Virginia

2011-11-11T09:48:00.007-05:00

On one of our days in West Virginia the weather was so bad we just decided to go for a long drive. One of the places I had missed on all of our trips there was the Smoke Hole Canyon. There are a number of National Forest sites along this canyon, and I'd heard that it is an extremely impressive formation, so I really want to give it a look.

If you have old National Forest maps and information about the place, some things have changed. For instance, some recreation areas and campgrounds had been flooded out so many times that the Forest Service felt it best to let Nature have Her way with the landscape in those spots. So some campgrounds listed no longer exist. However, there is still one exceptional National Forest campground at the far end of the canyon.

The canyon itself gets its name from rising mist, and not actual smoke. The day we were there we witnessed clouds and vapor climbing from the steeps sides of the canyon and toward the peaks and into the skies. So it's well named.

One spot we stopped for a bit to admire was Eagle Rocks. It's not named for the bird of prey, but for one William Eagle who, at the age of fifteen, enlisted in the Continental Army and served in four regiments, including at both Valley Forge and Yorktown. He lived to a very old age and is buried on the Potomac River below the Eagle Rocks which bear his name. His grave is marked by both an historical marker and a headstone and is well tended. A great place to spend the ages.

Eagle Rocks. I'm wondering how hard it would be to climb.

The historical marker at Eagle's grave site.

William Eagle's grave. Well tended even today.

Near the headwaters of the Potomac River in the Smoke Hole Canyon.

Seneca Shadows Campground

2011-11-10T07:09:00.008-05:00

To get back to our latest West Virginia adventure...

After we left Kumbrabow State Forest, we traveled over to the Seneca Rocks area to get a spot at the Seneca Shadows campground. It's a National Forest campground but is no longer administered by the National Forest and is instead leased out to a private outfit. This generally means a reduction in services and I was sad to see that this is the case with Seneca Shadows.

When we arrived there was no one on duty anywhere. The signs instructed us to pick out a campsite that had not been reserved (sites that were reserved were posted as such) and then go to the campground host to pay. So we picked out a site, set up our trailer and went to the host site. Even after some time, there was no one at the host site. About an hour later we returned to try again to pay. Finally, a very, very, very elderly couple emerged. Apparently they'd been there the whole time but are so hard of hearing they didn't perceive the knocks on their trailer door. We gave them our site number and prepared to pay. However, they informed us that the site we'd chosen had been reserved but that they hadn't had time to mark it as such. We'd have to move.

Fuck.

So we went back to the site, put everything back in the truck and hooked up the trailer. Then we went to the site they told us was vacant and available. Imagine our surprise when we found it occupied. About that time the very, very, very old fellow arrived in his truck to tell us that he was mistaken. To make it up to us he offered us a site with full hookups at the base price--water, electric, and sewer. We didn't really like the site all that much, but we took it for the convenience of having full hookups, and the view of Seneca Rock from that spot was impressive.

And that's where we stayed for the remainder of our trip. I can't really recommend Seneca Shadows. Since it's been handed off to a private company it's not run all that well. It was hard to find employees for help and some of the facilities were not operating well--leaking pipes, dirty bathrooms, etc. I wish the National Forest would revoke their concession and put public employees back to work.

The best thing about our campsite was the view.

Be sure to click on these photos to see them in greater detail!

This is a major rock climbing destination. They say it's one of the best places to learn the sport of rock climbing.

These guys are amazing. I don't want to involve myself in the sport, but I admire those who engage in it.

Grand View of the Black Mountains.

2011-11-09T18:14:00.004-05:00

One of the things we discovered when standing at the cliff top just at the summit of Buzzard Roost was that we were rewarded for our long climb with a unique view of the Black Mountains, the highest range of peaks in the eastern USA. You can see pretty much most of the Blacks from this spot, albeit from a great distance. Still, it is one of the best spots I've found to be able to see the range from end to end.

Looking past Propst Mountain we could see the Black Mountains. From Celo Knob (on the far right) to Potato Hill (far left).

A telephoto stitch of the range. Click to embiggen.

Another Bushwhack in the South Mountains!

2011-11-07T21:19:00.021-05:00

For some time I have been trying to locate the highest peak in the South Mountains of North Carolina. I had read in a number of places that the range reached a height of 3,100+ feet. But whenever I'd search topographic maps, the highest peak I could find was just a shade under 3,000 feet. My pal, Andy Kunkle, finally realized that the confusion arose over a single Internet mention of the 3,100 foot mark. We quickly discounted it after researching the facts.

And the fact that kept coming up was that the highest peak in the South Mountains is a summit called Buzzard Roost, which is 2,980 feet above sea level at its highest point.

Andy, Jacky Thyen and I had tried to reach Buzzard Roost once before. We found a great waterfall (Sally Queen Falls), but failed to reach the high point of the range. This time Andy figured he had a better and shorter route mapped out for us, so we decided to give it a try. The team on this trip was me, Andy, and Bob Johnson. Jack opted out due to his holiday-period sideline business of selling toy Hess Trucks--this keeps him ultra-busy until Christmas time.

I met up with Andy here in town, then we drove to Morganton where we hooked up with the other Bob and then we drove to one of the new sections of South Mountains State Park. This spot is the old Broughton Hospital Reservoir (also known as the Clear Creek Reservoir). It will, in time, be the location of a new campground and cabin area for the park. For now, there's just a road, the lake, and lots of forest to explore.

We followed an old logging road for a while and when that finally vanished in the woods, we just followed the map, bushwhacking through the forest and climbing ever upward toward what we hoped would be the summit of Buzzard Roost.

Heading out from the car, we could see the dam that creates the lake, with the mountains beyond.

Above the lake was Buzzard Roost (on the right) and Hickory Knob (left). Although Hickory Knob actually looks a tad higher from this spot, it's about twenty feet shorter.

As we hiked through the forest we were reminded that Fall was still in full throttle here in the lower mountains of North Carolina.

Andy and Boone pause for a photo opportunity.

This time of year, the forest floor is often as beautiful as the trees above.

Golden as the sun.

We were pleased to find a great cliff just at the summit of Buzzard Roost. And what a wonderful view! We could see many of North Carolina's major mountain features from this overlook.

Looking down the 1700 vertical feet we had climbed, we could see the reservoir far below us.

This is the actual highest point of the South Mountains. The rubble summit of Buzzard Roost.

I was also surprised to find a healthy grove of the increasingly rare Carolina hemlock growing above the cliff on Buzzard Roost. These show no signs at all of adelgid infestation and could be saved with the application of the right insecticide.

Andy and Bob with a fallen oak behind them and some of the Carolina hemlocks around.

Andy took this one of me on the way down the mountain. The terrain was really tortuous, but this likely had made things difficult for the timber barons to rob the mountains of its old forests. We saw many big trees, including this impressive oak.

Andy standing beside the giant poplar.

Not quite straight down, but Bob and I both had more than our fair share of tumbles on the trip back to the base of the mountain.

Password Achieved!

2011-11-07T19:40:00.004-05:00

Success!

An old friend--Mark Rainey--helped me recover my password! Buy some of his books!

Still Struggling

2011-11-07T13:58:00.004-05:00

I'm still working on fixing the password problem.

Until then, here's a link to the Charlotte Observer feature article about me by Pam Kelley:

We're on a road to nowhere...

Lost Password

2011-11-03T18:21:00.006-04:00

I've been unable to log in to my blog for a few days. Due to my son using my desktop computer to access his own files. Oh, well. My password was lost and I couldn't recall it and didn't write it down. Regaining it has proven to be a real pain. Fortunately, it's still saved on my laptop, so I can log in there.

Until I recapture it, just a brief set of photos of Fall colors. These were taken on my postal route today. The route is very long and pretty tough, but the neighborhood where I work these days is thick with old trees. There's that, at least.