A Texan and a writer for the pulps in the 1930′s, Howard is best remembered for having created the character of Conan The Barbarian, represented to the public in one good movie and two abyssmal ones (and a TV show barely worth mentioning). He also created King Kull, Breckenridge Elkins, Bran Mak Morn, and my personal favorites, Solomon Kane and Cormac Mac Art.

Howard was a writer with an unsurpassed ability to churn out visceral, kinetic action. Consider this passage from his ultimate Conan tale, The Hour of The Dragon -

“By Mitra, it is the king!” swore Tarascus. He cast a swift look about him, and laughed. “That other was a jackal in his harness! In, dogs, and take his head!”

The three soldiers–men-at-arms wearing the emblem of the royal guards– rushed at the king, and one felled the squire with a blow of a mace. The other two fared less well. As the first rushed in, lifting his sword, Conan met him with a sweeping stroke that severed mail-links like cloth, and sheared the Nemedian’s arm and shoulder clean from his body. His corpse, pitching backward, fell across his companion’s legs. The man stumbled, and before he could recover, the great sword was through him.
Conan wrenched out his steel with a racking gasp, and staggered back against the tent-pole. His great limbs trembled, his chest heaved, and sweat poured down his face and neck. But his eyes flamed with exultant savagery and he panted: “Why do you stand afar off, dog of Belverus? I can’t reach you; come in and die!”

Or this, from one of my personal favorites, the weird western The Horror From The Mound -

Through darting jets and licking tongues of flames they reeled and rolled like a demon and a mortal warring on the fire-lanced floors of hell. And in the growing tumult of the flames, Brill gathered himself for one last volcanic burst of frenzied strength. Breaking away and staggering up, gasping and bloody, he lunged blindly at the foul shape and caught it in a grip not even the vampire could break. And whirling his fiendish assailant bodily on high, he dashed him down across the uptilted edge of the fallen table as a man might break a stick of wood across his knee. Something cracked like a snapping branch and the vampire fell from Brill’s grasp to writhe in a strange broken posture on the burning floor. Yet it was not dead, for its flaming eyes still burned on Brill with a ghastly hunger, and it strove to crawl toward him with its broken spine, as a dying snake crawls.

Howard never lived to see his own legacy. On June 11 Howard left his mother’s deathbed, went to his car, took a .380 Colt automatic from the glove box, and shot himself in the head. He was thirty years old.

I really believe had he lived he would not be much more well known and highly regarded than he is among the public at large. Had he had time to develop his craft, I think he would be as prestigious an author at Cormac McCarthy whose own hypnotic, violent prose is at least as affecting

Anyway, happy birthday, Bob.

MIDNIGHT

by Robert E. Howard

Red leaned his elbows upon the table and cursed. The candle guttered low. The bottle was empty, and a slow fire coiled in our brains–the fire which devours and consumes and destroys but never leaps into full wild flame.

I looked at Red with bleared eyes. He hid his face in his hands. He was thinking of a woman he knew. The cards, greasy with handling and stained with whiskey and candle tallow, lay scattered between us. The desire for gambling was gone, and there was no more whiskey.

“Cheer up, Red,” I said. “Listen–I’ll tell you: Somewhere in the world the sun is coming up like a red dragon to shine on a gilded pagoda; somewhere the bleak stars are gleaming on the white sands where a magic caravan is sleeping out the ages. Somewhere the night wind is blowing through the grass of a mysterious grave. Somewhere there is a gossamer sailed ship carving a wake of silver foam across the dark blue of the Mediterranean. This isn’t all, Red.”

“Oh, Christ,” he groaned, reaching for the empty bottle, “I wish I had a drink.”

The net profits for this endeavor are slated to go to charity, in particular Project Literacy http://www.project-literacy.org/, a very worthy cause dedicated to raising the awareness of and more importantly, erradicating adult illiteracy.

Over 86 authors are slated to appear, including D.L. Snell (of Snell’s Market Scoops), William F. Nolan (legendary creator of Logan’s Run), and oh yeah, yours truly.

My contribution is a vile little tale called The Wrath of Benjo, about a very lonesome, very angry, very hungry tsukumogami, which is a neat little critter from tenth century Japanese folklore.

Tsukumogami

I’ll post the usual commentary about it once the thing premieres in a couple months. I’ll be at WHC as well at the Damnation Books table, so anybody’s going uh….I’ll be there.

Here’s a link to DMB’s announcement with a more complete list of authors. You can also see Mike’s great cover in all its gory, inky detail.

Happy to have my name alongside so many talented folks.

http://www.darkmoonbooks.com/Slices_of_Flesh.htm

Happened to read something I thought I’d share, in the hopes that some lonesome driver in the ether might happen across it here at DT and take heart from, not for what’s said, but by whom.  I don’t like to print big quotes, but screw it. If it turns out somebody owns the rights to this, well they shouldn’t. All parties involved are deceased and I don’t think much of people who make their living off of dead relatives or ride their surnames to a comfortable existence. However I’m legally bound to say I’ll abide by such drivel, so drop me a line and I’ll take this down if it turns out I should.

But I won’t like it.

-EME

“I feel inclined to talk about myself tonight and I’m not going to apologize about talking about myself because it’s not in my line.

‘Verily a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.’ I find it so. I have progressed beyond the average man to the extent that people’s belief is not absolutely necessary to my life and living but not to the point where I am absolutely indifferent to flagrant skepticism. I realize that there is really only one person in the world who really believes that I’ll never amount to a damn at the writing game and that person is myself. The trouble is that comparisons, when the trouble is taken to draw them, are so inifitely to my discredit. Here am I, with seven years of hard work behind me and only some twenty five stories, articles, and rhymes marketed to show for it. Here am I, slugging away at a cheap, little known magazine which may already be bankrupt, weaving fanciful and impossible tales and absolutely unknown outside that magazine’s limited clientele. When compared to the clever, intelligent and gifted writers of today who have already reached their zenith, I admit there is little to my favor.

But what few people seem to realize is that these men served their apprenticeship just as I am serving mine. Their work is the finished article — mine the crude, groping handiwork of the beginner. Seven years of hard work — but how many of these demigods reached the pinnacles in seven — or ten, or twenty. Many, I grant you, leaped into fame with much less labor than I have already done. But they were geniuses. I am not a genius, neither am I clever, educated, or especially intelligent. But I have faith in myself and a capacity for work. What I am writing now is less than nothing in the long run, even though it represents my heart’s blood. The world is not interested in heart’s blood, but Success Accomplished and nothing else. The toil, the sweat, the torment means nothing. What the world wants is perfection and of what lies behind, men reckon little.  A man may toil a lifetime, toil like a giant and perform the deeds of unthoughted heroes, but if he does not succeeed, as the world measures success, all his labors and hardships go for naught and he is a jest and a by-word, soon forgotten.

But I’ll succeed if I live, in my eyes and according to worldly standards. And when I come to the end of the trail, if I have lost, I can say that at least I never whimpered for sympathy in my work. And if I win I can say I made it absolutely on my own with never a helping hand and that I owe nothing, not one damned thing, to anyone. Still, it sometimes rasps that I should be condemned utterly for what appears under my name today.  No one judges George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, or Jack London by what they wrote early in their youth when they were struggling up the long ladder and neither will I be judged by my earlier efforts, when the dust has drunk my brain and my dreams.

But God, the utter futility of it descends on the soul of me like a thick fog through which I can see no light. Surely, for by the time I have gained the heights of success I will old and hardened so by life that the taste of success will be as dust and ashes in my soul — a man without hope, without joy, and without friends….

….The emptiness of success I know –though I have never tasted it– is a reality for always through the cheers of the mob will come like a writhing serpent the memory of the jeers of the mob when I worked and sweated pure red blood. And I will always think: you uplift me now, but you scorned me then, and where is the difference? For I am now and I was then, and then I built the cornerstones and the foundations, and now I stand on the spire and where is the difference? Damn you all. That’s what I will think in the days to come; but now I must bend my back to the cornerstones and foundations and make them firm so that my spires may rend apart the stars and all the world may see the glimmer of my skeleton against them when I stand on my spires at the end.

Year by year, day by day, hour by hour, the steel pierces my heart and my brain and I grow harder and harder and less human. Oh God, for the gift of satire and malediction to make men cringe and writhe and curse. God, for the power to sit in my study and send out spears of hate and vengeance to shatter the brains and blast the souls of men.

Let it be. I am a fool to say all this stuff, but I see I that I have not yet learned the first necessary truth of life — to lock up in the heart and the soul all truths and dreams and visions of dreams. Each time a man opens his heart he breaks his armor and weakens his battle might.’

-Robert E. Howard, October 1928, from Glenn Lord’s Selected Letters.

My gift to you is, first three readers to send an email to emerdelac (AT) gmail.com get a free e-copy of Merkabah Rider 3: Have Glyphs Will Travel in .epub, .mobi, or .pdf.  Just state which you prefer. I’ll post on here when I get enough responses. (GIVEAWAY’S OVER, FOLKS. Thanks for looking – hope it was a happy holiday.)

Now on with the rest of the shew….

I like reading the thought processes and inspirations behind stuff I read by other authors. Joe R. Lansdale did this for his High Cotton collection, prefacing each story with a short bit about how it came to be. When I wrote for Star Wars I did something like this on the official blog, a sort of key to the easter eggs and references I put in the story for fans, something guys like Dan Wallace and Jason Fry still do on there.

Anyway, I’ve done one for each of the Merkabah Rider books, and it being Hankukah, felt like time to sit down and whip up one for the latest installment, Have Glyphs Will Travel, which came out at the beginning of December.

These might be partly spoiler-ific, so if you haven’t read the book yet, you might hold off and come back later.

Still here?

OK.

In Episode 9, The Long Sabbath –

Really not too much homaging in this one. The critters the turncoat riders put in the hapless adjutant and his scout are meant to be Mythos spawned of course, but they’re my own creation, sprung from me reading about the phenomenon of kamikaze ants and their last ditch method of defending their colony from invaders.

Exploding ant traps an enemy worker

Cattle stampedes are the most harrowing, violent danger I can think of for an old-time cattleman, from what I’ve read and seen. The stampede scenes in Lonesome Dove and Red River have always stuck with me. The only thing I could think of worse than being in one was being immobilized in the middle of one.

There is one extra-Rider allusion. Abe Lillard, the Rider’s best friend from San Francisco, is meant to be the half-Jewish son of Tommy Lillard, a character portrayed by Harrison Ford in a western that was a huge inspiration for The Merkabah Rider series. I would assume Abe was named for Tommy’s best friend.

Avram Belinski (L) and Tommy Lillard (R)

In Episode 10, The War Shaman –

Lots of history easter eggs in this one. It’s actually my favorite of the book as it was clearest in my head from start to finish and includes a cameo by some of the greatest of the Chiricahua Apache warriors, a people whom I have an unadulterated admiration for.

Goyaala is Geronimo of course, and stuttering Juh (pronounced ‘whoa’ if you were wondering), Vittorio and the warrior woman Lozen are all real individuals. Lozen’s purported seeing Power and the chant she uses to activate it was documented as well. As a matter of fact, all the named Apache are taken from historical record, even the outlaw Bedonkohe, Inya.

Faustus’ extra-dimensional origins have been delved into by me in an earlier post here….http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/merkabah-rider-author-notes/

Of the various stories he mentions as being real, of course the whaler with the Indian figurehead is the Pequod of Moby Dick, the boy with the sword from the stone is intended to be Arthur, and the thirteen heroes with two hearts between them, well, you don’t need a ‘doctorate’ to know ‘who’ that is.

Thirteen heroes (eleven pictured) with two hearts between them.

The company of cavalry Faustus, the Rider, Belden and Kabede meet on the road are commanded by Adna Chaffee, who was an actual Civil War veteran and later became a General, seeing action in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and the Phillipine Insurrection.

Tom Horn

Riding along with him is the famous German scout Al Seiber, who was General George Crook’s chief civilian scout during the Geronimo campaign. Tom, the boy accompanying him, is Tom Horn, the infamous range detective later hung for murder in Cheyenne,Wyoming (perhaps unjustly) and portrayed by Steve McQueen in the titular movie. Togo-de-chuz and his ‘kid’, the Apache scouts Seiber mentions as his preferred companions, were real Apache scouts, the ‘kid’ being Has-kay-bay-nay-ntayl, later known as ‘The Apache Kid.’

The Apache Kid was an interesting character who was a longtime friend (and very nearly a surrogate son) of Seiber. When a drunken scout killed his father, the Kid retaliated and became an outlaw.  He surrendered to the Army and was sentenced to a year in Alcatraz and later Yuma Territorial Prison, the latter of which he is one of the only known escapees from. He and three others overpowered some guards and fled into a snowstorm, never to be seen again. One of his pursuers was future author Edgar Rice Burroughs, then a member of the seventh cavalry!

The Apache Kid

Nacozari and the Moctezume Mining Company are both real, but the existence of the Apache stronghold of Pa Gotzin Kay is debatable. It’s tangled up with the story of the Lost Adams Diggings, a legendary gold vein, also the inspiration for MacKenna’s Gold. I’ve moved it from the traditional location of New Mexico.

Oh there’s lots of Lovecraftian stuff in this one as well. Misquamicus of course, also the subject of Graham Masterton’s great Manitou series of novels. I’ve made him a sort of endless being, on par with his brother, and tied him into most of the major Native American doings from the dawn of recorded history and on that I could find, from the early treacheries of Cortes to the Maroon rebellion in Jamaica, where I had read some of the captive Indians involved in the burning of Providence, Rhode Island had been shipped off as slaves, and I imagined Misquamacus would have found work to his liking. The Sand Creek Massacre was one of the worst acts of genocide enacted by the United States against the native populace. It was actually the basis for the original weird western stories I wrote in high school, some of which evolved into Merkabah Rider.

A deformed Misquamacus in the future, from 'The Manitou'

Misquamacus’ dealings with the Billington clan of New England are documented in Lovecraft’s The Lurker At The Threshold, where his devotion to Nyarlathotep and conjuring of Ossodagowah are both mentioned.

 The supernatural aspects of the bad guys who side with Misquamacus are mostly my own invention of course, though the Pawnee did at one time practice a somewhat infamous human sacrifice ritual, and the Tonkawas did believe they were descended from wolves. Any misrepresentations are of course my own fault, but I make no apologies portraying skinwalkers in a negative light.  I don’t think any Navajo would take issue with it.

 The Rider’s likening his claustrophobia to the various mental afflictions of an old friend from his yeshiva in San Francisco named Aloysius Monkowitz is a shameless (or perhaps shameful) allusion to a probable ancestor of a certain neurotic modern day San Francisco detective with a similar name of whom I’m a fan.

Aloysius Monkowitz's famous descendant.

In Episode 11, The Mules of The Mazzikim

This is another one short on easter eggs, but there are a couple.

The scalp the Kwtsan Indian tries to sell the Rider on the bridge going into Yuma is the scalp of Joe (John Joel) Glanton, the leader of the band of vicious scalphunters hired by the Mexican government to collect bounties on Apache Indian scalps in the 1840’s and vividly portrayed in one my favorite novels, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or, An Evening’s Redness In The West. Glanton and his gang took over the ferry over the Gila River at Yuma and regularly robbed and extorted crossers. They were later slaughtered by the Kwtsans on that spot.

The Rabbi Belinski the Rider mentions as having overseen his bar mitzvah was the aforementioned Tommy Lillard’s best friend, a rabbi who once undertook an amazing journey across the west to deliver a Torah scroll to San Francisco.

The lawman, Marshal Books, who arrests the Rider is the same ailing Books (or perhaps the brother of) who years later has it out on his birthday in an El Paso(or perhaps Carson City) saloon with several of his nemeses.

Happy birthday, Books

In Episode 12, The Man Called Other

Every aspect of Yuma Prison I could realistically portray I did, from the color of the cots to the processing of prisoners, to the rings in the floor and The Dark Cell. I visited what’s left of the place last year and the museum that sits on the site. Judge Berry was real, and the warden of the time was the real guy, Captain C.V. Meder (though not the acting warden, obviously).

In Episode Thirteen, The Fire King Triumphant

The title of The Fire King Triumphant is paraphrased from the headline of the Tombstone Epitaph (‘The Fire King Reaps A Harvest’) about the May 1882 fire that actually swept through the town of Tombstone. It really did start in the outhouse behind Tivoli’s as depicted. If you get yourself a street map from the time, I’ve done my best to keep the layout of the story true to the town.

W.W. Spates appeared in the last book, and I talked about the inspiration for him. His colleague, the linguistic expert Warren Rice is intended to be a younger version of the silver haired linguist who accompanied Harry Armitage in The Dunwich Horror.

 China Mary, the shrewd entrepreneur with ties to the Chinese Benevolence Society (or tong) in Tombstone, was a real lady, as was her Can Can Chop House. The word her man uses to describe the amorphous beasties in Lepsy’s barrels is hundun, which does mean dumpling, or wonton, but also refers to a legendary faceless, formless beast from Chinese folklore. The hundun is primordial chaos, a lump of flesh or thunder egg from which creatures of reality are born, or a featureless creature lacking the seven openings which mark humanity.

hundun

The villain of this story Lepsy himself is a reference to a ghost story from Dudleyville or Pinal, Arizona. Lepsy supposedly did hire Chinese workers and burn them as remuneration. When a sheriff and his posse went after them, Lepsy did the same for him. In the canyon where these crimes supposedly occurred, you can see scorch marks and smell burnt flesh.

Camillus Sydney and Mollie Fly did own the photography studio in Tombstone at 312 Fremont Street. On October 26 1881 the Gunfight at the OK Corral took place in the alley between his boarding house out back and the next house over, and it was inside his place that Ike Clanton and Sheriff Johnny Behan took cover.

Fly and Mollie both took photographs in their studio and abroad, Mollie being one of the most prominent female photographers of her time. Fly took the famous photos of the Billy Clanton and the McClaurys in their caskets. Fly also accompanied Crook to Canyon de Los Embudos in 1886 and took pictures of Geronimo in the field – the only photographs of Native Americans actively engaged in resisting the US government.

Mollie Fly took this picture of the CS Fly studio as it burned for the second time in 1912.

Finally, Moon Fugate and his peculiar pigmentation condition are a reference to the famous Blue Fugates a hill clan from Hazard, Kentucky, born with methemoglobinemia or met-H, a genetic blood disorder which results in blue skin.

The Blue Fugates of Kentucky

That’s about all this time out, kiddies. Whew!

Soon, news about the final chapter in the Merkabah Rider saga. It’ll be something special.

Don’t forget the giveaway.

Happy holidays, whichever holiday it may be, and good new year on you.

-Hasta pronto,

EME

This one’s a short one-off adventure. The Rider is roused from sleep on a westbound train through the desert by a tearful fellow Jew, who explains that the corpse of his recently deceased mother, bound for their ancestral home in California, has been seriously desecrated while resting in the forward baggage car.  The man asks the Rider to sit watch with him over the corpse to prevent any further desecration, and the Rider agrees, sensing the hand of a malign supernatural force.

The idea for this one came from my good friend Jeff Carter, who sent me this fascinating LA Times article on professional shomrim, Jews who watch over the bodies of the dead prior to burial

- http://articles.latimes.com/1992-09-14/news/vw-647_1_dead-bodies

Tradition calls for an observant Jew to be buried typically within twelve hours of death (partially because embalming is not allowed), though according to the article, some modern day shomrim pull twenty four to forty eight hour shits. During this time, a sort of spiritual watchman is placed over the body, usually not a relative. The shomer is expected to read Psalms and recite prayers over the body.

This was another example of a title popping into my head and the story growing around it, like “The Damned Dingus” in Merkabah Rider 2: The Mensch With No name.

I just really liked the title ‘The Shomer Express.’

As for the monster/menace, it was originally supposed to be a vampire (the mother was going to rise as a bloodsucker), but this felt kinda passé to me. Maybe I’m just sour on vampires right now. I wound up looking up that other, less celebrated corpse worrier, the ghoul, and I’m glad I did, because the Arabic traditions of ghouls or ghilan are pretty dang interesting.

Ghilan can assume the shape of any creature they’ve just eaten, for instance, and they prefer to lure desert travelers in the form of a coyote or a jackal.

This was a fun story to write. My Dad is a serious model train enthusiast. He’s building a sprawling HO scale representation of the Santa Fe railroad circa the 1940′s in the basement of my parents’ house in Indiana, complete with tunnels, waterfalls, and representations of various towns with businesses named by me (Little people can stop in for a bite to eat at ‘Damiani’s Italian Ristorante’).

Not my dad's set, but you get the idea of what he's shooting for.

I admit I don’t share my Dad’s unabided love for railroading, but it’s an admirable hobby with a really cool and impressive looking end result, and writing this story I got to talk back and forth on the phone with him over the technical details of an 1879 steam engine and passenger train, which was a lot of fun, since he could even tell me the seat colors (yeah he’s that much of an expert) and whether or not the smokestack had a grate inside to keep a body from being stuffed down the pipe.

So thanks, Dad, thanks Jeff, and if you’re interested dear readers, The Shomer Express will be pulling into the station at the end of this month in print. Ticket holders can already board the ebook train on Amazon….

http://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Reflex-Legends-Monster-ebook/dp/B0069U1F4A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321893832&sr=8-1

To evoke the old Zebra/Lancer/Bantam paperback collections of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane  and Conan, the novels are presented as collections of standalone but sequential novellas. The series currently consists of two installments, Tales of a High Planes Drifter and The Mensch With No Name, both available in print and ebook formats on Amazon.com.

This year will see the release of Have Glyphs Will Travel, the third book in the series. Included are five novellas, detailing the Rider’s dealings with extra-dimensional angels, zombies, turncoat Riders, the wrath of the Demon Queen Lilith, Navajo skinwalkers and Native American shapeshifters, fire demons, a future instructor at a certain infamous Massachussetts institution of higher learning, and his greatest enemy.

Here’s an exclusive taste of what’s to come.

In this excerpt from one of the five novellas, The War Prophet, the powerful Native American mystic (and the Rider’s old acquaintance) Misquamacus has gathered an army of vengeful warriors from various castout tribes in an effort to unify them against the white man’s encroachment and depradations, all under the power of his dark magic.

Seeking to add the might of the Chiricahua Apache nation to his own, he has called their greatest leaders to a secret meeting high in the Sierra Madres, where he has made them a tempting offer. Turn away from their traditional religion and embrace the dark gods of Misquamacus and the white nation will be rubbed out….

*

Many of the frightened rurales were cursing, wide-eyed, shaking their heads. Many more were praying. Some were even kissing crosses that dangled from wooden bead rosaries around their necks, tucked into their dirty shirts so that the Lord did not see the terrible things they did, but so that He could be gotten to in a pinch if needed.

One Mexican among them, an old vaquero on his knees, was laughing. The Rider saw Mendez, the corporal. He stood bewildered, hands snatching at the empty holsters on his belt.

“They are for you, my brothers!” Misquamacus hollered above the din of the jabbering Mexicans, his voice powerful, resounding off the great rock walls. “Do with them what you want to do!”

And they did.

Almost as one body the Indians fell hungrily upon the cringing Mexicans like a great mouth closing. Some gamely fought back, but they were unarmed and outnumbered and quickly dragged down. Not a single bullet was wasted. Those with rifles came at the rurales with the heavy butts of their weapons, dashing skulls open at a swing. Stone axes whistled and sunk into pleading faces, and were drawn out to scatter brains and teeth and then fall again. Knives flashed, passing through scalps pulled so tight they came free in the bronze fists that held them with a single swipe and left glaring patches bereft of hair and flesh, the faces of their howling victims swiftly vanishing in a curtain of blood. Machetes swept off hands and fingers interlaced in desperate prayer.

Big Anger and his Pawnees straddled their victims and worked vicious arts with their knives, slashing away age, race, and sex, leaving behind only meat, indiscernible from a butcher’s wares. Organs leapt into the air like hats on New Year’s Eve.

The Rider/Piishi saw Slim Ghost and the skinwalkers walking among the dead and dying with curved knives, stooping to extract eyes, hearts, livers, fingers, genitals, even twisting free bloody bones, all of which they stuffed into their hide satchels, for later use in their foul practices, no doubt.

The Ishaks and the Tonkawas fell wholly upon their kills, burying their faces in the cavernous wounds they ripped open with their fingers. Piishi’s digestive system reacted with violent disgust at their display, and the Rider put the back of his hand to his lips and swallowed rising bile as Moon Cloud and Bloody Jaw wrestled over the bloody corpse of a fat rurale. One end of a rope of intestines twisted in-between each man’s teeth, the two of them snarling at each other like wild dogs. Indeed, they looked very much like animals. Their eyes grew wide and black , and they seemed hairier than before. Their ears elongated, sharpening in elfish grotesqueness, and their teeth were suddenly pointed and jagged, wolf-like in their gory mouths, extending in some kind of perverse, ravenous arousal. They were changing before their very eyes, something in their doing bringing out their true, inhuman natures, until Bloody Jaw was more wolf than the black hide and cowl trappings that hung from his bulky, misshapen shoulders. Moon Cloud matched his bestial visage.

The Rider looked through the massacre and found Goyaałé. The Bedonkohe war chief had made his way to the still laughing old caballero, and hoisted him to his feet. He raised his bloody knife to end him.

“Goyaałé!” The Rider called in as loud a voice as he could manage, which was considerable, given the acoustics of the canyon.

Goyaałé heard, and paused to look. A moment’s searching and he found the source.

“Look!” The Rider yelled, pointing to Moon Cloud and Bloody Jaw.

Goyaałé followed the indicatory gesture and his lip curled when he saw the two transformed chiefs. He let the old caballero fall and backed away. His eyes flitted all around the killing ground, and he saw the other Ishaks and Tonkawas changing into wolf-beasts.

The Rider watched as Goyaałé rushed through the crowd and found Lozen and Vittorio. He snatched the rifle from Lozen’s belt.

Before she could react, he levered it and fired it into the air.

It was a startling sound, and every man and woman stopped. Even the hairy beasts that had once been Indians raised their elongated doggish muzzles from the bellies of their kills and regarded him with feral eyes.

Lozen moved to take the rifle back, but Goyaałé said something and pointed.

Lozen and Vittorio saw.

All the Apache, their attention momentarily lifted from their bloody work to the two leaders, followed their shocked gazes and saw.

And as one, just as they had closed upon the Mexicans, they now recoiled and withdrew. Not a single Mexican was still alive.

“What is this, Mis-kwa-macus?” Vittorio yelled, pointing to the wolf creatures. “What are these?”

“They are the Rugarou Ishaks and the True Tonkawas. The last of their kind,” said Misquamacus. “Just as I told you.”

“They are monsters!”

The blood spattered Apache voiced their agreement with angry and frightened shouts.

“Not so! Not so!” Misquamacus yelled over them. “They are your brothers, ready to fight the white man at your side. Does Usen not teach you that the beasts are your kin? Do you not emulate the ferocity of the puma and the cunning of the beaver?”

One of the skinwalkers was nearby, and Goyaałé rushed at him without warning and cut his satchel from his shoulder with his knife, then shook out its grisly contents on the ground, where all could see them. The shriveled fist of a child rolled out among the fresh trophies.

“Usen does not teach us this!” he called.

“You have said that we must turn from Usen to defeat the white man,” Vittorio said. He pointed to the transformed Ishaks and Tonkawas. “Is this what happened to them when they turned from their god?”

“I offer you the death of the white man and the Mexicans for all time,” said Misquamacus. “I offer you a thousand nights like this one, with your enemies beneath your knives. With the power of my god, I can snatch the Great Father in Washington from his house and bring him to us. I can pull the rails out from under the iron snakes and fling them into the air. I can put my hand over the soldier forts that rise like ugly boils across all the land and send you in to cut their throats in their beds. I can turn the weapons of the enemy against them, make their ponies burst into flame between their legs, turn their bullets to raindrops. I can geld the white man and seal up his women. I can make it so your children will never know those people but from the stories told around your fires.”

“Who is your god that promises us these great victories, Mis-kwa-macus?” Goyaałé demanded. “It is time you told us.”

“Yes,” said Vittorio. “Who is your god that is so great but would bother with us?”

In answer, Misquamacus raised his arms for silence.

Slim Ghost and eight of the skinwalkers went to the base of the stone and knelt in a circle. They upended a series of small black pouches from their satchels into their hands and closed them into fists. Colored sand ran through their fingers, and with measured care they began to let the sand fall in ordered patterns on the bloody red earth. It was wondrous to see them work, ten men making a large vaguely circular picture, each acting independently, and yet their labors taking on a unified pattern, as if they possessed one mind, one vision. Silently, and without pause or consultation, they worked, forming mystic shapes and figures incomprehensible to outsiders and yet obviously inspired. As they worked, the colored sand drank up the spilled blood beneath, darkening in color where it fell.

The others watched them restlessly. The sun sank, and campfires had to be lit. All this was done in silence. No one dared to interrupt the skinwalkers’ work.

When it was at last finished, they rose as one and returned to the ranks of their people, and a mesmerizing sand painting lay before the stone on which Misquamacus had stood the whole time, observing. Red and blacks and blues dominated the work, and there were dancing feathered figures, moons, stars, and geometric patterns. To the Rider, only a few of these seemed somewhat familiar, some of them not unlike the diagrams found in the Book of Zylac. Yet all were distinctly Indian in their interpretation. Central to the painting was a strange faceless humanoid shape of black sand.

Misquamacus removed something from his satchel then, a polished mirror fragment, the size of a man’s head. He placed it in the center to the sand painting, over the center shape.

Then, before their eyes, that black shape began to grow oily and to boil like hot tar.

A lump rose from the center and took shape, congealing into a man-like form, carrying the fragment of mirror with it. Steam rose from the thing, as if it was hotter than the cool mountain air around it. When it had completed its unnatural birth, it stood nearly eight feet tall, like an earthen statue, black, with bumpy skin, like a flayed corpse, faceless but for the smooth mirror.

The Rider/Piishi recognized the same being they had seen in Misquamacus’ wickiup.

The Dark Man.

Black, foul smelling smoke, like the oily stench of a machine fueled by corpses, pouring from around the edges of the thing’s mirror mask, billowing unnaturally around the figure, never rising, cloaking it in a greasy fog.

The Ishaks and Tonkawas fell to all fours and pressed their jaws to the earth like submitting hounds. They sent up a bone chilling baying and howling din, so terrible that the Apaches clamped their hands over their ears to hear it. The Pawnees put their foreheads to the earth, and even the skinwalkers knelt and bowed their heads. The Apaches moved away, frightened of the thing.

Misquamacus turned and went to his knees, arms still above his head in adoration.

“Behold Tezcatlipoca! The Dark Wind. We are his slaves. Nyarlathotep!”

Merkabah Rider 3: Have Glyphs Will Travel

Coming December 1st from Damnation Books.

Pick up the first book here –

http://www.amazon.com/Merkabah-Rider-Tales-Planes-Drifter/dp/161572060X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319039930&sr=8-1

]]> http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/an-excerpt-from-merkabah-rider-have-glyphs-will-travel/feed/ 2 emerdelac pawnee_morning_star_ritual_1_936cbd56c8e7a92cb7005fd188f8cbab 0301_011401 werewolf_article Lozen04 Geronimo%202mirror sand-painting skinwalker2 MERKABAH RIDER-HAVE GLYPHS_Erdelac__edited-HEALING http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/dont-forget-your-masks-the-greatest-halloween-movie-ever-is/ http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/dont-forget-your-masks-the-greatest-halloween-movie-ever-is/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:01:38 +0000 emerdelac http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/?p=694 ]]>

Halloween III: Season of The Witch is the greatest Halloween movie ever.  In terms of the holiday and in terms of the series.

Yeah, I said it.

Time to go to guns.

Why’s it the best in the series?

We have Jason Voorhees, we have Freddy Krueger, the other two top tier 80’s horror icons. Now in layman’s terms, I would liken Jason to Sylvester Stallone and Freddy to Arnold Schwarzenegger. One guy was the silent kill ‘em all type, the other sure killed ‘em all but always made with the snappy puns.

Michael Meyers is the Jean Claude Van Damme of horror. What does he bring to the table? Well he looks like Schwarzenegger, he talks worse than Stallone, and he can do the splits. IE, Nothing. He’s just not as interesting to watch. Jason’s mask is cooler, his motive is more compelling (just why is Michael Meyers indestructible anyway?), and Meyers shares his name with the guy who played Austin Powers. Oh and Freddy? He’s got a great look, a signature weapon, and he can enter your dreams. Forget about it.

Uh...anybody down there? It's me. Mike.

He's comin' home tonight...YEAH BABY!

I know there’s a lot of love for the original Halloween, I know it was innovative in terms of mood and editing and invigorating the slasher genre and all that, but I’m gonna say it now. It’s just not very interesting. It’s a lot of stalking and cheap jump scares and glimpsed stabbings without any rhyme or reason. Psycho without the Janet Leigh subplot, or the great acting, or Hitch to pull it together.

Now I’m not knocking John Carpenter. The man is responsible for movies that are beloved in my home. Big Trouble In Little China. The Thing. Escape From New York. Christine and (see where I’m going?) Halloween III: Season of The Witch.

I know, I know, he barely had a hand in this one. Just produced and did the (awesome) score.

I maintain that had this movie been released simply as Season of The Witch and not under the Halloween series banner, it would not have been so venomously panned, so perennially derided by Michael Meyers fans, who believe me, are an angry lot when they wanna be. Nope, the Halloween series moniker actually sullies this movie.

The Night NOBODY Came Home

It’s the quintessential Halloween movie.

How can I say that?

‘Cause it’s like a really good Christmas movie. It takes place during the season, it’s decked with all the trimmings you’d expect, and indeed, the holiday is an important part of the plot. Finally, it leaves you with a feeling appropriate to the season.

But this is Halloween, not Christmas.

Does it take place during the holiday? Check. It’s even in the title, champ.

 Does it feature all the tropes and idioms we associate with Halloween? Let’s see, kids in masks getting candy? Check. Masks that kill them actually, so double check. Spookie movies on TV? How about (in a really cool self-reference move) Hallo ‘Michael Meyers’ ween itself? Spooky black magic type stuff? How’s a charmingly sinister toy company CEO whose actually grand poobah of an international witch cult bent on enacting an ages old mass child sacrifice using freaky magically charged chips of one of the Stonehenge triptychs in kids’ masks on Halloween night grab ya?

Uh…check. And is the holiday itself integral to the plot? We covered that already. Does it leave you with a feeling appropriate to the season?

Oh hell yes.

Because it’s scary (what’s scarier than the impending, grotesque death of millions of children?), it’s got a cool John Carpenter score, and it’s fun. It’s fun as hell.

How’d they get this giant triptych over to America without anybody noticing? Well, the bad guy just says you wouldn’t believe the amount of trouble it took. That’s the only explanation we get. But come on, if you watched this much of it, does it really matter?

Oh yeah, and who’s the hero? Who’s the George Bailey equivalent in a Halloween holiday movie from John Carpenter? Who’s the would-be savior of little children everywhere? Tom M.F.’n Atkins. An odious, tail chasin’ surgeon whose kids ignore him and who knocks back the sauce in nearly every scene.

I dare anybody to watch the video below and not be humming the jingle all day…..

Seriously, you need to re-think your avoidance of this movie. Go to the video store or get it offa Netflix. I almost guarantee it’ll
be available. I won’t be hoarding it, ‘cause I own it. Love this movie.

And I’m not the only one.

http://www.watchthemagicpumpkin.com/film.htm

Happy Halloween, y’all.

Some say print is dead, but this is the time when the dead walk. Shambling off the shelves come tentacular extraterrestrial monstrosities by HP Lovecraft. A little further from the north are slews of nameless unutterable nightmares courtesy of Stephen King. Maybe Clive Barker’s got his hooks in you, or Graham Masterton. Maybe you’re a Twilight fan (and if you are, my condolences at the untimely passing of your taste – haha). Can I recommend some Richard Matheson, or some old fashioned terror tales by Poe or my personal favorite, Ambrose Bierce?

Yours truly has a couple scary books out. I’m the only ‘Erdelac’ on Amazon right now, so go and take a look.

But enough with the shameless plugging.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to curl up with a book (or have a book curl up with you), every year I update my holiday movie viewing lists, and it’s time once again to resurrect the old Halloween Repertoire, new and improved.

So what am I watching this year? Well I always watch stuff from this list, and am slowly introducing my like-minded daughter to some of the tamer entries. So far we’ve watched Brides of Dracula (her choice), Night of The Demon, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Giving Troll and The Haunted a try tonight.

Also, every year my buddy Jeff Carter hosts an evening of horror themed blacksploitation movies. We kicked off the inaugural year with the classic Blacula, and have moved through it’s sequel, Scream Blacula Scream, Blackenstein, Sugar Hill, and The Thing With Two Heads.

Up this year its Bernie Casey in Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde –

and either JD’s Revenge or The Beast Must Die.

Claire Bloom and Julie Harris face the terror of The Haunting

My favorite ghost stories – The Haunting (original), The Others, The Sixth Sense, Kwaidan, Poltergeist 1 and 2, The Shining, Stir Of Echoes, The Changeling, The Crow, The Screaming Skull, The Orphanage, The Entity, Dark Night Of The Scarecrow, The Ring.

Devils/demons and diabolical witches can be found in – Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Exorcist III, The Sentinel, Angel Heart, Night Of The Demon, The Devil Rides Out, Hellraiser, Black Sabbath, The Craft, The Believers, Cast A Deadly Spell, The Omen 1 and 2, Suspiria, The Skeleton Key, Masque Of The Red Death, Pumpkinhead, Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch, The Evil Dead, Constantine, The Pit And The Pendulum, The Gate, Child’s Play.

Vampires get your blood racing?

'We keep odd hours.' Severn in Near Dark

Let me suggest – Near Dark, The Lost Boys, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Todd Browning’s Dracula, The Hunger, Blacula (yes Blacula – it’s awesome), Kolchak The Night Stalker, Vampire’s Kiss, The Brides Of Dracula.

If the homicidally deranged are your bag, you can’t top – The Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Bad Seed, Audition (Odishon), Psycho (original), Misery, Halloween 1 and 2 (I also liked the remake of 1), Friday The 13th Part III, Silent Rage, Pin, Magic, Frailty, Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, House Of Wax (original), Se7en, Peeping Tom, Silence Of The Lambs, Deep Red.

David Naughton and Griffin Dunne beware the moon.

Werewolves are a sadly under-represented pack of beasties. I like – Wolf, The Wolfman (both Lon Chaney Jr and the remake), Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman, An American Werewolf In London, Ginger Snaps, The Curse Of The Werewolf, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, Silver Bullet, Dog Soldiers and for a switch, Wolfen.

If you like your yucks with yuks, these horror/comedies are a good bet – Shaun Of The Dead, Zombieland, Fright Night Parts 1 and 2, Student Bodies, Saturday The 14th, Dead Alive, Tremors, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Love At First Bite, Evil Dead 2, The Ghost And Mr. Chicken.

Bela Lugosi as zombie master Murder Legendre in White Zombie

Zombies anyone? I likes ‘em slow, bitey, and numerous. – Dawn Of The Dead (original), Night Of The Living Dead, Land Of The Dead, Survival Of The Dead, Zombie, White Zombie, The Serpent And The Rainbow, Sugar Hill.

If you like your terror from beyond the stars – Village Of The Damned (original), Body Snatchers, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (70′s), Alien, Aliens, Phantasm, Predator, Event Horizon, The Thing, The Call Of Cthulhu, Horror Express, Lifeforce, Attack The Block.

It's as good as you've heard it is, bruv.

If, like Chunk, you hate nature, these will get your fur up – The Killer Shrews, Alligator, Pirahna, Night Of The Lepus, Arachnophobia, Kingdom of the Spiders.

Halloween For The Kids – It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!, Monster House, The Halloween Tree, Monster Squad, Mad Monster Party, The Garfield Halloween Special, Disney’s Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Eloise’s Rawther Unusual Halloween, any of the recent Scooby Doo Movies.

Some gems that just don’t fit anywhere else – Creature From The Black Lagoon, Trick R Treat, Christine, Pan’s Labrynth, Creepshow, Nightbreed, Fiend Without A Face, The Fly (both the original and the remake), The Fly II, Carrie, The Other, Trilogy Of Terror, Monkey Shines, Todd Browning’s Freaks, The Descent, The Mummy (Original), The Manitou, 28 Weeks Later, Grimm Prairie Tales, Ravenous.

In the words of my biggest junior high crush, “Unpleasent Dreams!”

Dusty Duck

But he hasn’t stopped there. Besides forays into comics and horror fiction, he’s also making headway as a screenwriter now.

Und now, on mit der probing qvestions!

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I think I always wanted to be a storyteller—but the decision to be a writer took a little longer. I remember growing up and telling these sweeping war epics with my G.I. Joes. I’d have dialogue, cliffhangers, slam-bang action, heroic sacrifice. Of course it was all on my couch with no one around to appreciate it but me, but I still wanted to tell a story. As a small child, I wanted to be a Disney animator. In my adolescent years, I considered being a comic book artist. After high school, I largely put aside my drawing and wanted to focus on making movies. When that proved too expensive, I at last decided on converting my movie concepts into prose. Not that I’ve given up on film and comics, but right now novels are where I’m at.

 What made you decide you wanted to write horror specifically?

I’ve always been a fanboy, no doubt. I don’t think I chose to be that way, it just chose me. I was hardwired for the fantastic for whatever reason. But, as much as I was attracted to the weird, I never could get into hard science fiction like the other fanboys I knew. Star Trek never did a thing for me. I’ve never read Heinlein (I know, I know). I think it was about high school that I realized I was more of a horror fan. Why? In sci-fi, even in fantasy, you have to go somewhere. If you want to be where the action’s at, you’ve got to get on a space ship and go to some distant star system. Or you’ve got to go to the future, or travel to a mythical realm. But, being a broke kid living in a small Southern town, I wasn’t going to go anywhere. I wasn’t even going to go to college. But in horror, the excitement comes to you. You’re living your quiet life, then a werewolf jumps out of the bushes. You’ve got to face it; you’ve got to run or fight. That base characteristic of horror really appealed to me because anyone can become the star of a horror story. It’s just a matter of timing and some bad luck, perhaps :p

But, as I’ve said in other places, even as a little kid, I was subconsciously drawn to monsters. I wouldn’t realize this until much later in life, but all my favorite super heroes had a tinge of the supernatural or monstrous to them. All my favorite movies did, as well. I suppose all little kids love monsters to a certain extent, but my love never went away. Monsters—horror—gave me a way to face my real life fears. It’s a powerful cathartic release and I’m a pretty tightly wound guy. I need that.

How would you describe The Coming Evil?

Pure awesomeness.

 Okay, I’ll elaborate a little bit. The Coming Evil Trilogy—begun in The Strange Man, in stores now, and continuing in Enemies of the Cross, on sale in February—is the story of a small town under siege by a demonic horde led by the enigmaticStrangeMan. The first one to encounter the Strange Man is Dras Weldon, a twenty-two year old college dropout. His is a life of horror movies and video games, lived selfishly without any thought to those around him. When the Strange Man sets his sights on Dras’ best friend Rosalyn, the town loser has to grow up and discover what it is he believes in, in order to fight the Strange Man. That confrontation culminates in Book One, and Book Two is the aftershocks of his dramatic stand and how it impacts those closest to him. War is coming and no one can hide from it. But are there enough good people left inGreensboro to fight the devil?

To the chagrin of my publishers, I describe The Coming Evil Trilogy as a Christian Horror epic. Those are my two passions and they collide here, full force. It’s an exploration of my faith—almost a journal of my own spirituality—and it’s a B-movie monster extravaganza.

So, you know, pure awesomeness :p

What’s the plan for the series? How many installments?

It’s a trilogy. My publisher and I have got a special little surprise to go along with that trilogy, but I’m not ready to formerly announce it yet. I’ll be announcing it later next year. I always loved the Back to the Future trilogy and wanted to make my own three-part story, so that’s what I set out to do. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’ve got ideas for other books in The Coming Evil series but I suppose that’s up to God if I ever get around to writing them. They would be all-new stories with (mostly) new characters. We’d explore new corners of the mythology and see what bogles lurked there. Rest assured, though, that the story of these characters will be wrapped up in Book Three of The Coming Evil. I like cliffhangers, but at the close of a series, I like the lion’s share of my loose ends to be wrapped up. I need that closure. I want readers to walk away from the trilogy feeling really satisfied with where it ended, and if that’s all I ever get to write of The Coming Evil mythology, then so be it. It stands on its own.

You probably get this a lot, but you told me once you’ve gotten your fair share of flak attending horror conventions because of the Christian subject matter in your series. I’m curious about this because although I toy with it a little, there’s a definite monotheistic slant in Merkabah Rider, and it has turned a few reviewers off. Why do you think it is that some people don’t like their chocolate in their peanut butter, and what do you say (or wish you could say) to those detractors?

Well, it’s tough. Horror, by its very nature, explores good and evil, the divine and the profane. The Exorcist has got some hardcore pro-Christian elements! I don’t think horror fans have any problem with a little “power of Christ compels you”, or a fundamental belief that there’s one God, or that there’s a devil. Faith is not the enemy, here. Plus, you don’t have to believe any of that stuff to write it. Holding up a cross to repel a vampire is just a horror trope, by this point. But, when, as an author, you start showing that you actually believe in one God or Christ or whatever in real life, then people start to slowly back away from you.

Where I got into trouble was that my book goes deeper than the religious imagery and trappings of mainstream horror and we start talking about Jesus. We start talking about what the Bible actually says. Look, Jesus is a controversial figure, even now, two thousand some odd years later. I get that, totally. People just don’t want to talk about him. They get all sweaty and nervous and—even most Christians!—are waiting for the conversation to be over. I’ve been accused of hijacking horror as just a vehicle to spread my propaganda, which I find insulting. Every writer has a message that they’re trying to convey. Every human being has a worldview that guides their living. I’m not going to deny that I believe in Christ and that, in a book about monsters, I’m going to talk about how faith in Christ is your weapon against the devil. That’s the mechanics of my story. My demons are ripped right from the Bible, so naturally the way to fight them has to come from the Bible as well. That’s the “mythology” I’m using here. Beyond that, though, I’m writing a book about the Church. Sometimes it’s a celebration of the Church—a lot of times it’s an indictment of her shortcomings. But the majority of my cast are Christians dealing with struggles that Christians can relate to. They deal with doubt, faith, despair, hope, anger, mercy, rebellion, and restoration. They’re going to talk about Christ and how He relates to them and their struggle. That’s a part of their natural lives; that’s a part of my natural life. If I was writing a book about cancer survivors, we’d talk about cancer. If talk about cancer offends you, I don’t know what to tell you—that’s the nature of the book. It’s not my intention to write a preachy story to get people in a church pew. I’m trying to communicate my own faith journey openly. I don’t want to sugar coat anything in my book—not the horror aspects, not the “God” aspects. I’ve got to be true to myself. Some people are going to love that, some people are going to hate that. I’m naturally a kind of guy who wants everyone to like him, but that’s just not always going to happen.

What about on the flip side? Do you have to defend your horror work to people in your church, or Christians in general? What do you say to them?

I got a little resistance from some of the Christians I knew initially, but as they got to know me better and what I’m trying to accomplish, they’ve become very accepting. The Christian reviewers who have read The Strange Man have run the gamut. I mean, no one’s called me “blasphemous” (I’d probably get more sales if they did :p), but a few of them thought the book was too dark or scary or gory or intense. A few months ago, I was the featured book for the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. At the time, I was told that I was the scariest book that ever made the rounds in their tour—which I take as a huge compliment! I’m hoping when Enemies of the Cross is released in February, I can return and see if I top my record

Who are some of your inspirations in both the Christian and secular communities?

I think, as far as writers go, one of the Christian writers I respect the most is Eric Wilson. That man is open and honest about his life—both the good and the bad—and he’s got a real heart for reaching out to the kinds of people that most “typical” churches shy away from. He’s got street cred, man, and he’s living it as well as writing it. And, really, I respect that about any Christian—writer or not. I’m looking for genuine people. There are so many bad examples of “Christians” plastered all over the news, but then I see some of the people of my own church. The world, at large, will never know their names, but I see them taking care of children, I see them going on mission trips to build homes for low income families, I see them feeding the homeless in soup kitchens, counseling young mothers. I see them reaching out. They’re not perfect. They struggle and they fall sometimes, but they are there for each other and they really want to just lead simple, hardworking lives and do something worthwhile with the time God has given them. The media won’t talk about them, but those guys are Christ’s legacy. Sometimes there’s a temptation to water down the faith aspect in The Coming Evil so I don’t offend anyone or so I can get more mainstream sales. But then I look at their hard work and sacrifice and it emboldens me. I can’t be ashamed of my faith when I look at them.

 Back to writers: I would be kicked out of the horror fanboy club if I didn’t mention Stephen King. Ray Bradbury. Richard Matheson. I really love John Carpenter movies. Steven Spielberg. Lovecraft is always great. And I’m hooked on author Bob Freeman. He’s like the prose version of a 1970s occult movie or a Hammer flick. I love it.

 You’ve had some success as a screenwriter as well. Anything you want to plug in the pike?

Yes! As a matter of fact my first movie is shooting as we speak! In quite the departure from my usual fare, it’s called Amazing Love: The Story of Hosea. I wrote it with Christian filmmaker Rich Christiano for the family film market. It’s a sweet little story about a church youth group going camping. They come from different backgrounds and don’t always get along. Their youth leader—played by Sean Astin no less!—tells them the Old Testament (I love the OT) story of the prophet Hosea, who was called by God to love an unfaithful woman. It’s a story about forgiveness and understanding and all those warm, fuzzy things. It’s very safe entertainment, designed to draw the same types of crowd that movies like Fireproof and Courageous do. It’s directed by Kevin Downes, who incidentally stars in Courageous. We’re looking at seeing it released early next year. Sadly no monsters in this one. Maybe next time.

What advice would you give to a screenwriter or writer just starting out?

Quit. If you can’t quit, then don’t quit. The writing business, to me, has always been like a game of Jenga. You’ve got this tower of blocks and the goal is to take the blocks from the bottom and stack them on top. You want to see how many blocks you can stack on top before the whole thing comes crumbling down. That’s not the writer part though :p The writer part is that, when you go to move a block, you test it first. Because of the distribution of the weight in the tower, some blocks are wedged in and you’d be a fool to press it, because the whole thing is balanced on it and it’ll just fall over. You want to find a block that’s already loose. Then you can easily slide it out from underneath the weight and lay it on top. But you have to test them. You tap, tap, tap at each block until you find one that moves. That’s writing. You tap each story until one starts moving. Then when you want to get published, you tap each publisher. Some are locked in solid and will not budge. Don’t fret. Just keep tapping until you find one that moves. Besides, as the weight shifts, some of the blocks that were solid before become pliable. It’s all about timing and seizing the right opportunities.

I would say to write from your heart. I would also say finish. So many people talk about being a writer and say they want to write. But writers write. More than that, they actually finish a story. Finish a lot of stories. Just write it until the thing is done. Worry about if it’s good or not later.

What was your favorite Halloween costume ever?

My mom made a homemade Wizard of Oz scarecrow costume for me one year, using yellow yarn for straw. It was pretty rockin’. I think I was in a parade that year?

What’s the worst thing you ever got in your candy sack? What was the best?

Anytime I get Whoppers or Butterfinger, I make a “yak” face. No good. Best thing would probably be gummies of some sort. My kid and I wrestle over who gets the gummy eyeballs.

What bit of horror scared you the most as a kid? What scares you now?

Two things: Well, okay three things:

Chickens. My uncle chased one for me to pet and it was running and sqwaking and going ballistic, and by time he caught it, I was terrified.

The fictionalized Joan Crawford from Mommy Dearest. No joke, that was my “monster in the closet”. I lived in fear of Joan Crawford busting out of my closet with her cake makeup on shouting, “No more wire hangers!” I have never watched that movie, but I caught a commercial for it on HBO when I was a wee boy, and was traumatized.

Peeping Toms. I had a deathly fear (still do, a little bit) of someone watching me through my bedroom window. I actually had a couple neighborhood kids do that to me as a prank when I was a child and I was scarred for life. Coupled with that is the nightmarish scene in the amazing movie Lady in White, where this creepy old woman is watching little Frankie sleep. Yeesh. I’m still fearful of looking out the window at night, dreading that I might see something staring back at me.

What scares me now, well not to be put a damper on our fun talk here, but losing my kids. As much as I was afraid growing up, I didn’t know real fear until I had children. Something happening to them is by far more horrific than anything I could cook up in my mind.

What are your Halloween plans?

I really want to dress as Dracula this year! Like, old school Bela Lugosi Dracula. A cheap cloak from Wal-Mart, some fake fangs, and a flimsy plastic medallion if I can find it. I’m really excited about it! I’ve never been Dracula before.

Halloween is a big deal in my family. We always bring out a mixed CD of spooky songs to listen to while we dance around the house, putting up our decorations. On Halloween night, we play the music from a stereo in the window so all the kids can listen while they trick-or-treat. I’ll put on a classic Universal Monster movie on the TV so that, when folks come to our door, they can catch a peek at a good old fashioned monster movie before they go on their way. My wife usually stays behind to pass out candy for awhile, and I’ll take my daughters door to door. Our goal is to be outside as long as possible. After the trick-or-treating is done, we’ll come back and sit on the steps and enjoy the night, watching all the kids in costume until everyone goes home.

Halloween really doesn’t get any better than when you have kids. And when they’re little, it’s like you don’t have to pick just one costume – you can pick as many as you have bods to throw ‘em on! I don’t want to say it was the reason I had kids, but I won’t say it wasn’t a factor either. 

Thanks to Greg for stopping by DT to chew the rag. Don’t fail to visit his blog over at http://thecomingevil.blogspot.com/ to keep up with his latest news.  He’s also been a good enough egg to let me take over his space for a couple days, and I’m going to give away some .pdf copies of my short Lovecraftian blues story The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues over there, so if you missed reading my ramblings, take a gander.

For those stopping by this space though, I’ve got one copy of Merkabah Rider 2: The Mensch With No Name, specifically for fans of the series. Drop an email to EMErdelac(TAKE OUT THIS NO SPAM MESSAGE IN PARENTHESES)@gmail.com and tell me the Rider’s true name in the subject field.

On October 7th well before sundown on the Day of Atonement (big day in the Rider universe) I’ll toss the respondents’ names in the old kippah and send one lucky dog a signed copy of book two.  

Read a bit about the book here – http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/merkabah-rider-2-the-mensch-with-no-name/

Hey, and let me just say for a minute….authors depend on readers and the buzz they generate among each other, whether they’re working under a big house name or duking it out in the indie press field. So please, not just with this giveaway, but in any book you read….if you like something, tell people! Tell ‘em on Goodreads, tell ‘em on Amazon, or whatever forum you frequent – tell your friends and family or your book club or the guys at the comic shop or LGS. Spread the word! It’s the best thanks an author can get.

Ah glick ahf dir!