Wednesday, March 27, 2024

The Person Falling Here Is Me?

I have been REALLY good to go to the library these past two weeks.  I ought to give Big Anklevich the credit or blame, since he just keeps writing and publishing and, I dunno, swinging from the monkey bars at the school playground without being afraid to look down.

Today, I was sitting at one of their little cubicles, typing away (or dorking around with A.I., or answering inane questions for eBay*, or reading about James Clavell's time in a Japanese POW camp, etc.), when I caught a whiff of something considerably foul.  It was the smell your clothes can get if you soil them, then forget to throw them in the wash (you know what I mean by "soil").  I've met homeless people before that smell like that, but I feel bad saying so.

Anyway, there are often lots of homeless folks here at the library, since they can come in out of the cold or rain (or sunshine, I guess) and sit around until the place closes, and hey, I take advantage of this place myself, so I'm totally not judging), but I looked about me and didn't see any around.  In fact, I didn't see any other people around.  So what was making that smell?

I couldn't tell, but I stood up and looked around the cubicle, looked down on the floor, and there was nothing.  Nobody else was sitting nearby, and I didn't see anyone walk past, trailing a stench behind them.  

It occurred to me that . . . jeez, what if it's me?  I've smelled bad a time or many, so I put away my laptop and went straight to the bathroom, just in case.  In the stall, I smelled my shirt, I smelled my shoe, and I did that thing where you scoop at the air around your butt to draw the bad smell up into your nostrils.  I checked my shorts too, you know why.  But nothing.  

Was it me?  If so, why hadn't the smell followed me into the toilet stall?



I went back to my desk, puzzled.  I figured it might be the area I'd been sitting in.  Someone may have, you know, stained the floor there below the cubicle, and it wouldn't hurt to sit someplace else.  So I did.

I started typing again (or more likely, surfing the internet, stupidly spending my very last moments of youth, like I was a teenager sleeping until one in the afternoon), and before too long . . . I smelled it again.  It wasn't as bad this time, but it was definitely there.  Nobody was around this cubicle either, and I really did suspect that it was me: For some reason, I smelled like a corpse that was found at the bottom of an outhouse.

It upset me quite a bit.  I'm not a vain man, quite the opposite, but except for my "buddy" Mark, nobody had ever told me I stunk before.  At least not since I was a kid.

I didn't wait for the library to close, but went straight home, meaning to shower away the funk, but when I did, the smell was totally absent, not even on my socks.  I sniffed the seat of my car too, and there was nothing.

So, who or what was it?  I've mentioned before that the library has a reputation for being haunted (one of the librarians approached me as it was closing--I HAVE to have blogged about this--and told me, "Oh, it's totally haunted."), so I suppose . . .  Nah, come on.




*"When you say that it's new, do you mean it's unused, or you took it out of the package and then put it back in when you decided to sell it?"

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Stay Away, Don't You Invade My Home

Today we've got a new cover for "Who Can It Be Now?" one of my personal favorites, as I wrote it for my ailing uncle, who is no longer with us.

If you recall, this is the tale I told of a recovering addict, who goes to his friend's cabin in the woods, only to get a knock at the door in the middle of the night.  There's a little girl there . . . who can't come in unless invited.


Initially, I drew a picture of a girl looking through a doorway, then took a photo of the cabin door to frame the image.  Admirable, but it never really worked, bringing the total of successful covers with my drawings on them to, um, zero.

But now, with A.I., I could ask for a pale blonde girl standing in a doorway, and get, well, something closer to my vision (in this case, looking in a window).  As usual, it took dozens of iterations to get something I liked, including this image, that Big preferred to the one I picked:

I added orange to the eyes, which is subtle, but effective.

Ultimately, I went with this one, because it was a bit less terrifying, and more vulnerable (as well as looking more like a painting you'd have on an Eighties paperback).  To each their own, eh?

Just occurred to me that there's no question mark.  Hmm.

It's hard to pick my favorites among my stories, but this is one that came out feeling pretty much what I intended (plus, my Uncle Len seemed to like it).  You can check it out HERE.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Every Week Is Library Week

I was going through old covers to my stories, including this one from "Library Week," and when I went to replace it, discovered it had never been published in the first place.


Actually, that's a pretty good cover there . . . just needs a better logo.

So, "Library Week" was a story I wrote in L.A. about a man having his kids for the weekend, taking them to the video store, then punishing them by a trip to the library, where his best pal Max works.  Funny thing is, I've spent countless hours in a library since then (more than a thousand, by my math), and probably, jeez, less than a day in video stores.  A different world, I guess.

This is the updated cover art, where I combined (as poorly as always) two different images to hopefully make a creepy one, and (expertly as always) Big put in a nice logo.

I was going to post this a couple of days ago, but when I went to publish the story on Amazon, my Microsoft Word semi-crashed.  I say "semi" because only "Library Week" went down, the other files stayed open, and the error message Not enough memory to save, do you want to recover file ws3421_tilde)? appeared on the screen--not something I had seen before.

Well, I had created the file years ago, and saved it just that morning, so I hit No.  And suddenly, Library Week was gone--I mean, the whole document was gone from the hard drive.  It still showed up in Recent Files, but when I clicked on it, I got a File Not Found error.  So, I had to go into my old 2005 folder, remove the original file, open it and reformat it for Amazon . .  and then I had to rewrite my Author's Note, which, as you know Bob, always takes longer and never feels as fresh or genuine when you're writing it a second time.  

A bit like life, isn't it?

Check it out HERE.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Rish Outcast 274: Ten Thousand Coffins I

At long last, Rish presents the first section of his Sci-Fi/Horror piece "Ten Thousand Coffins."

Onboard her colony ship, Medtech Brook Lisst finds a sleeper pod that has become a coffin . . . but what will find her?

As always, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

And of course, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.  They've already got Part II!

Logo by Gino "Ten Thousand Kiwis" Moretto.

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Adaptation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery

 A few years ago, I wrote a fun THING/Who Goes There? homage called "From Another World" to run on the Dunesteef (actually, That Gets My Goat).  It was a little audio play with me, Big, and Bryan Lincoln voicing characters (seems like we had another voice on there too, but those three were the main trio*) who were on a space outpost that had been invaded by beings from . . . out there.

The worry was: what if one of those had gotten in there with them?

Anyway, I wrote it to finish off our 2014(?) "13 Nights of Halloween" podcast marathon, and I think it turned out, if not great, then at least pretty darn good.  Also, I entertained myself by naming all the characters after actresses I liked (Phoebe Cates, Cybill Shepherd, Jane Seymour, etc.), so I might have a bias. 

And then it drifted off on the ether, like all the sketches I write do.

Until 2020, that is.  Big Anklevich got it into his head that, if he adapted it into a prose version, then we could sell it, over on Amazon or on Etsy or something.  He suggested that I do it, but I wasn't going to get to it for months (if ever), so he took the initiative, and eventually put out the adaptation on the podcast.


If I recall, both Big and I reprised our original roles, which I had written for us anyway.  Instead of Bryan Lincoln, our pal Gino Moretto voiced the captain.

"They came from outside the gate, from the Wasteland."

Anyway, I guess I took offense at him doing something with my story, I dunno, because I said I wouldn't publish it myself, and he said, "You know, if you don't, that's kind of like spitting in my face."  

Walter E. Disney, that gave me pause.  I've been spit on before, and I don't really recommend it out of hand.  So, guess I gotta figure out what my version will be, and whether Amazon will even let me put it out.

Well, Big's put it out on Amazon now, so if you're curious about "From Another World (Taylor's Version)," check it out HERE.


*Turns out, it was Renee Chambliss.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

You Deserve A Break This Winter

During the pandemic, I was writing a lot, and one of the pieces I wrote was called "Winter Break," a tale about a group of young people who go up in the mountains for a weekend, and after encountering a rock from the stars, begin behaving strangely.

After searching far and wide for an image of a meteorite lying in the snow, I had A.I. make it for me, and along with Big's cool text, is probably my favorite cover yet.

For this story, I need all the help I can get.  Check it out HERE.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Marshal and I Fear "Premature Burial"

I mean, don't you?  If the answer is no, then we should end our vacation right here.

Over at the Outfield Excursions podcast, Marshal Latham and I talk about Roger Corman's THE PREMATURE BURIAL, a movie he tried to do on his own, without American International Pictures (and hence, he couldn't afford Vincent Price in the lead).*  Of course, when he shopped it around, the studio that bought distribution rights was, you guessed it, AIP.  

Anyway, based(ish) on Edgar Allan Poe's story of the same name, this 1962 flick tells of Guy (Ray Milland), who is terrified of being buried alive, and the woman who tries to reason with him.  There's nothing to fear in that, right?  Check out our review HERE.

*There were seven films in the Poe cycle, and Price starred in six of them.

Monday, March 18, 2024

(NIGHT OF THE LEPUS reference)

In my plug yesterday for the Tales To Terrify episode "The Prairie's Song," I mentioned NIGHT OF THE LEPUS, the 1972 turkey made by a film crew that was used to doing Westerns, starring Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley, and Paul Fix (who both played the Chief Medical Officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, by the way).  

Anyway, if you've listened to the story, you may understand why I referenced NOTL, but even if you don't, I came across this disturbing bit of trivia about the making of the film.

Director William F. Claxton told his female lead, Janet Leigh, that there was a part for her two children, if they wanted to be in the film, and she refused, saying that she in no way wanted her kids exposed to horror films, even in the making of them.  

I found that pretty amusing, since one of those two kids was Jamie Lee Curtis, who remains THE Scream Queen, today, and forever.

Rish Narrates "The Prairie's Song" on Tales To Terrify

Once again, the Tales To Terrify podcast has given me a story to perform, and while I appreciate their thinking of me, did you ever see the 1972 classic NIGHT OF THE LEPUS?*  Apropos of nothing, I'm sure.


Anyhoo, "The Prairie's Song" tells the tale of one Leland, who travels across Kansas to homestead a plot of land, which will be legally his if he can manage it for five years.  But as soon as he sees the thick grasses, and hears the whistling of the wind across it, he is unsettled, all alone out there.  But IS he alone?

The story was written by Emily J. Weisenberger and can be found AT THIS LINK.

As I've often observed, every new project offers new challenges, great and small.  This one was the character name Justicia.  Unfortunately, I pronounced it differently practically every single time, giving different sounds to both the J and the U, but never the -cia, which I suppose I never did get right.  But it's not a name I've ever heard before, and my brain kept interpreting it as a Spanish word, so . . . sorry?



*Well I saw it, and it scared the shit out of me.  It scared the shit out of every man in America!

Sunday, March 17, 2024

What's Troubling You?

So, you may remember my story "Troubled Child," one I wrote for a Journey Into... contest years ago (the Journey Into Journey contest).  I had to write a story using the title "Troubled Child," and incorporating two lines from the song in there.

What I wrote was about a baby that was drawn toward people who were sad or suffering, and you know, it was pretty good, considering the contest stipulations.  I may never win one of those Journey... contests, but you can be sure I'll keep trying.

So, I went ahead and made that available for purchase, encouraged by Big's prolific output recently.  You can check it out HERE.


This is the cover Big made for me last year, that I just got around to using this week, but what I'd really like is to get an image of a baby or toddler reaching toward somebody in a wheelchair.  I see it in my head, but I wasn't able to get a cover generator to do that for me.  

Now that I've been doing this for a couple of weeks (give or take ten years), I sort of wish I'd thought to put "A Short Story" on every one of these covers, to warn people that's what they are.  I'd hate for somebody to buy one, thinking it was a novel, only to discover that I'm not a novelist.  Ah well, maybe next life. 

Saturday, March 16, 2024

It's Easy M'Kay (Threepio)

Hasbro, the toy company, is renowned for doing cheap repaints of their figures, in order to maximize a return on investment.*  Often, these are extremely lame or ill-advised.  But sometimes, like with the various Prequels clones, or the assorted droids, it's not only expected, but encouraged by the fans.

A very minor character in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (technically, an extra) is K-3PO, a white protocol droid killed during the attack on Echo Base.  Or "killed," if you want to be that guy. 


It's a figure that would be very easy for Hasbro to do (in their 6 Inch line), but one they never have bothered to make (there's also a red protocol droid called U-3PO that I'll set my sights on later).  So, when I saw a very cheap C-3PO for sale a few weeks back, I scooped it up with a quick repaint in mind.

Unaltered TFA figure
Three weeks later, I finally finished it.


The above pic was my first try, using one white paint on one arm, one on the other (the pearlier white did not coat at all, so I ended up using the other white, then doing a recoat in the pearly, almost glue-like white).


I did the whole upper half, and I thought it looked pretty good (still do, even though when I used that same white on a different figure, it looked like I had tried painting the darn thing with a piece of chalk).

This is the whole thing painted white (first coat).  Am I taking too many pictures?

And here it is with the second coat.

I took a picture of it with all the paint covered, including the stomach, but the flash was on and the photo's unusable, but here's one I took out in the snow with my Mandalorian repaint.

(I realize the snow looks fake)

And here's the finished product:


Big thinks I need to do a black or grey wash, to bring out the detail, and he may be right, but I'm not sure it will work in this case.  In the past, I've used an oil-based wash that is essentially paint thinner, and I worry it will just undo the white paint layers I've laid on.  I could experiment with another item, but in the meantime, I'm happy with my K-3PO.

Which means Hasbro will announce one tomorrow.

*The molds from which their figures are made cost a fortune, so if they can reuse them over and over again, the toys become exponentially cheaper to produce the more they do it.