Tag: #nerdinabarwithabook

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I’m starting out the year with a few anthologies I’ve been pretty anxious to read. I’ll read simultaneous with novels and other books.

Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, edited by Jonathan Maberry, is going to be great. I became a Weird Tales fan in the late 1980s, when Weird Tales was part of Terminus Publishing and under the helm of George H. Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt, and Darrell Schweitzer. The magazine covers were beautiful and lavish, and I can see some of the illustrations with my eyes closed. Weird Tales in that era introduced me to some of the best writers in horror at that time. I can’t wait to dive into this 100 year retrospective and forecast, edited by Jonathan Maberry, who is absolutely a perfect choice for this. (He’s also the editor of the current iteration of the magazine.

I brought the book with me to Route 51 Brewery, where I enjoyed a Pumpkin Ale, easily the best of its kind in the region.

I just finished Stories We Tell After Midnight, vol. 2 edited by Rachel A. Brune. I’ll have to get volume 1 now. It’s a Crone Girls Press publication. Support indie horror publishers and get this book! Seriously, the founders are terrific people who were very welcoming to me at my first horror con. After-midnight nightclubs, nursery rhymes gone awry, dating while cannibalistic, becoming part of an all-too-real movie premiere—and more.

I had this book with me just after Christmas at my favorite dive bar in Union County, Fuzzy’s, while starting out the night with an Angry Orchard.

I’m a little bit fixated on the Appalachians right now. I’m always low-key into that region but driving through a corner of it on the way home from Scares That Care / AuthorCon last spring poured fuel on the Appalachian-love fire. So I’m ready to tear into Tony Evans’ Better You Believe: A Collection of Horror. Also, I plan to attend AuthorCon IV in St. Louis in October. I don’t have a book yet, but I will have a manuscript by then, I hope.

I started reading this one at Blue Sky Vineyard, where my wine of choice that day was Seyval.

Read horror! Share your #nerdinabarwithabook!

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So…. I usually do NanoWriMo Flash with Nancy Stohlman. I will be checking in there. I will also be joining my mentor-in-flashing, Meg Pokrass, with her 300 words or less stories.

But… as of not even five minutes ago, I signed up for the novel version. Because it’s about damn time.

So, real quick. I read The Whisper Man by Alex North at The W in Du Quoin, a place I am pre-disposed to like because it is a horse facility. No horses in sight (except for a chestnut mare in a disagreement with a dog, glimpsed briefly in a back pasture), but still, the place gots good vibes. I was fireside with a flight of fall cocktails. Pictured is a cider and brandy combo.

Truly chilling book. A serial killer with a little tinge of supernatural. And about how crime and trauma affects people in our society, calling to some in a gruesome way. Also, families and love and trust.

I tore through The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon. Characters in McMahon stories are so damn believeable, relateable, even—even when they do strange things. Like become obsessed with a cursed spring that grants wishes and cures ailments. This is a story about sisters, generational inheritance, curses, blessings, and the importance of being very, very careful what you wish for.

It was right before Halloween. Tim had a basement gig—but it was a cool basement, and only a little bit haunted. That’s a Skrewball Russian sitting between my book and the Tito’s. Cool backdrop, eh?

As always, read more, and read more horror. And now I need to get my NanoWriMo set up. See ya’ round!

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When I travel, I like to read a book set where I’m going, or by someone from that area. Hence, Drowning Ruth, a novel set in rural Wisconsin west of Milwaukee—the debut novel by Christina Schwarz.

It’s a story about tragedy unfolding from a secret—a secret that required lies and subterfuge to keep hidden, and one that literally had its keepers precariously balanced on thin ice. It’s also about sisters, family, parents, children, gossip, friendship, love, mental illness, and finding one’s place in this wild world of expectations and reality.

It’s also about adoption—which I did not know when I picked this book out to read.

But how very appropriate to my travels in Wisconsin and Michigan!

I shall have more to say later. And I’ve said a little bit previously. But my recent journey was a visit home, to my birth families.

I started reading Drowning Ruth at Toonie’s in Bellaire, Michigan. The brew is a local from Right Brain Brewery (Traverse City, MI)—Northern Hawk Owl Amber Ale.

That is the lighthouse at Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It’s as good a symbol as any of the amazing adventure of visiting my long lost sister, and meeting four siblings I never knew. I’m not posting their pictures here yet, but may in future.

Before I met my “Up North” Michigan family—my maternal siblings—we stopped at Seven Bridges Natural Area in Rapid River for some rushing water therapy. I soon discovered that my maternal cousin was quite familiar with the area and found solace there herself. It’s nice to have things like that in common.

This is a 450-foot dune that comes with a warning. If you go down it and can’t get back up, expect to pay $3,000 for a rescue. I did go down it as a teenager. The beauty was so astonishing, it actually hurt my heart. The blues of the water, the gold of the sand, the solitude of being so far away from people up top, the challenge of the climb back up… Then, I made the climb in 45 minutes. I think these days I’d take closer to the average 2 hours. The Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes are visible from the top of that dune. One of my very favorite places in all the world.

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It shouldn’t be so fun to read about a vengeful spouse stalking her family from beyond the grave. But it is. A ghost seeks revenge, zombie curse, whodunit all rolled into one novella. I’ve called JG Faherty the Master of the Mashup before this, and it’s an appropriate title. Don’t ever think one of his books will be simple and straightforward—there’s always a surprise. Death Do Us Part is a fun read. For true terror, turn to his latest three novels.

That’s a flight of semi-dry wines from Von Jakob Winery & Brewery, and that beautiful vista is from their large back deck.

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan is the first book of a trilogy—which I didn’t know when I nabbed this one from the local Barnes & Noble. Glad to see it, though, because of course I want to know what happens next! I’ve seen this one compared to Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and I get that. The Last Werewolf  takes a philosophical approach, as we understand that we are reading Jake Marlowe’s journal and following along as he faces the extinction of his species at the hands of The Hunt—and what that means for him personally. Wait till you meet Talulla and Cloquet! These two breathe a new vitality into the story, as they are meant to. Nothing in this book is a mistake, read it closely. Don’t worry, you’ll love it.

When I could tear my eyes away from that beautiful Pope County scenery at Shotgun Eddys, and when I wasn’t listening to my beloved, favorite singer-songwriter Tim Crosby, I was knocking back a couple of Stags and reading about Marlowe’s wild world. A good combination.

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