Category Archives: Nostalgia

WHERE’S WALDO? – A Guest Post by Jack Ketchum

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Today I have a special treat for me, and for readers out there — a guest blog post from friend and mentor, Jack Ketchum as stop #2 on his I’m Not Sam Blog Tour! Enjoy!

 

So what’s disturbing? What’s troubling, emotionally or mentally?

Loss is, for one thing.

The novelist Michael Chabon wrote, “if you can still see how you could once have loved a person, you are still in love; an extinct love is always wholly incredible.”

I agree.

I’ve been going through some old files lately, actual paper files, excavated from the deep recesses of the bottom drawer of my four-door filing cabinet in my dark walk-in closet, trying to impose some order on what’s inside, separating unfinished fragments of manuscript from notes to myself, story ideas, letters, lists and throwing out the by-now undecipherable stoned maunderings of my youth — there’s a flake of something in my soup, I wish I had a dock to sit on.

It’s an interesting thing to do, this kind of housekeeping. Like looking at snapshots of your brain.

This is your brain at twenty-five. This is your brain at forty.

I’ve been separating the letters into two piles. Letters to and from other writers and more personal letters, from people you‘ve never heard of, although if you’ve read me and then went through the latter pile, you might just recognize a few of them as thinly-disguised characters in my stories.

But in this latter pile are love letters.

Letters that still have the power to make me smile, or bring tears to my eyes. Or both.

Because while I think that Chabon’s statement is true, that love never goes extinct, it’s also true that in most cases and to many varying degrees, the object of that love has gone out of reach. Has married or moved away or even died. Cannot be touched.

And to be unable to touch a loved one and yet still remain in love — that’s a very great loss indeed.

In I’M NOT SAM, Lucky and I wrote the following…

“I think of Sam and me at the amusement park in Kansas City years ago, before we were married, the way she kissed me from a bobbing horse when I managed to grab that brass ring.”

Sometimes, in a letter, in a memory, you can almost feel that ring, and taste that long-lost kiss.

…TO BE CONTINUED…

 

I’M NOT SAM by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee can be purchased from CemeteryDance.com and SinisterGrinPress.com. For more info about the author, please visit http://www.JackKetchum.net. or follow him on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/JackKetchum
Check out our contest giveaway at http://www.jackketchum.net/im-not-sam-contest/

And here’s our I’M NOT SAM 2012 Blog Tour Schedule. Have fun!
Tour Stop 1: 9/10 at http://www.Litreactor.com
Tour Stop 2: 9/11 at http://www.marysangiovanni.com/
Tour Stop 3: 9/12 at http://www.BrianKeene.com
Tour Stop 4: 9/13 at http://www.Bookgasm.com
Tour Stop 5: 9/14 at http://www.tompiccirilli.com/

New Keene, Gonzalez, SanGiovanni Bookstore

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Just letting folks know that BK, JG Gonzalez and I opened a bookstore section at the York Emporium.  Basically, we want to 1) make available our books, including signed, limited editions, collector’s copies, lettereds, etc.; 2) Drive more traffic to the York Emporium, because Jim Lewin, its owner, has always been incredibly supportive of local authors; and 3) Get rid of the surplus of books that the three of us have.  Please consider checking out the store.

For a more complete description and store information, check out Brian’s write-up here.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Post

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Just a quick couple of thoughts:

I noticed that For Emmy‘s sales went up on Amazon. I wonder if that’s connected to my appearing in Little Miss Zombie’s 50 Kindle Horror Books Written by Women. It’s a great list, and I’m honored to be appearing on it with so many women I like and admire.

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The Hollower is now down to about 20 copies; I can’t say when or if the trilogy will be appearing in paperback or digital, so if you want them, my suggestion is to get them now.

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For those following the abhorrent recent actions and sad downward spiral of Dorchester Books, BK has some new information on his website.  It is most definitely worth reading, not just for Leisure and other Dorchester authors, but for all writers.  My advice: know the publisher.  Talk to the authors who work with them.  And also, make sure to work into your contract a reversion clause, if possible.  Three years, five years, in writing, whatever the terms — make sure you KNOW who gets what, and for how long,

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I’m working on a new novel, as yet untitled (but it’s supernatural) and a novella which, in a change of pace for me, will not be supernatural.  So far, so good.  For inspiration, I have also been trying to catch up on my reading, starting with books and short stories I should have read long ago, interspersed with anthologies, at least, of today’s top horror fiction.  It’s really renewed my excitement of writing through a sense of nostalgia for a time when, essentially, I was just a fan.  I tend to think that never goes away, being a fan first and a practitioner second.  Being a fan makes you an avid reader, and makes that reading, which is as much a part of writing as inhaling is a part of breathing, an enjoyable thing and not work.  Writing is the work.  It’s freakin awesome work, it’s the best work on the planet, and it’s fun, but it is work.  It takes time and patience and persistence of learning.  But when you write something that makes you feel the same elation, maybe even the same nostalgia as when you read your old favorites — you write for that.  Always.

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Part of my reading has been old TZ Magazine issues (BK thoughtfully completed my collection by buying me the entire run for Christmas one year, and I love them).  I enjoy reading the interviews (this issue had one with Robert Bloch) and the short stories, seeing the editors talk about Stephen King almost as if he’s the new kid on the block they’re all proud of, reading the affable and humorous tones in the book and movie reviews.  There’s a part of me that kind of wishes I could have had a chance at submitting to/getting published in this magazine, alongside these greats.  I wish I could have met people like Robert Bloch, Karl Edward Wagner, etc.  I guess I want to be ageless and timeless and have enjoyed the history of commercial horror fiction as much as the present and future.  What I do find funny about reading through these old magazines and anthologies is that there were the same complaints and dramas then as there are now; like the old saying says, as much as things change, they stay the same.  There’s something kind of comforting in that; I guess when you’re in the midst of such a revolutionary time — tech-wise, war-wise, medicine-wise, society-wise — it’s nice to know publishing has, as evidenced by editorials, always been on the brink of explosion/implosion/annihilation at the hands tentacles of rabid pygmy sharktoctopi.

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Guess that’s all for now.  Go out and enjoy the beautiful day. 🙂