It · Was · Already · Broke · When · I · Got · Here

If you've been a reader of my Cedar Hill Cycle for any length of time, then you know that it's based on my my hometown of Newark, Ohio (specifically, the Newark I remember from the late 60s and 70s) -- which, I'd like to point out, never had a homeless shelter, so when I created Cedar Hill, I gave it one.

Well guess what? If you will go and read this story from today's Newark Advocate, you will discover that not only is the city building a homeless shelter, it is building it almost precisely where the fictional one in Cedar Hill has been located for the past 20 years (click on this link and the one that follows, please): http://tinyurl.com/yzjfh8u

...weird scenes inside the gold mine this morning, folks.

... send them my way around 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. I'm going in spinal surgery (sort of the surgery of last resort) to correct the problems I've been having related to the nerve, tissue, and bone damage in my left leg that has all but dictated the course of my life for the past 4 years. This is easily the most anxious I've ever been about surgery. Something about strangers poking around at the base of my spine ... I dunno, maybe it's just me :)

If it works, I'll let you know; if it doesn't work, Lucy will be the one letting you know.

That was a joke.

Seriously, send a few spare good vibes with my name on them into the multiverse tomorrow morning; it would be sincerely appreciated.

My good friend Chris Conlon (Thundershowers at Dusk, Poe's Lighthouse, Starkweather Dreams recently appeared at Horrorfind where he gave a reading from his latest poetry collection and had time to sit down for this surprisingly good interview. (I say "surprising" because, if you've ever conducted an interview at a con -- especially one while sitting in the dealers' room -- then you know how difficult it is for either the interviewer or the subject to remain focused, articulate, and heard. Both Chris and the interviewer do a bang-up job; so without my babbling any longer, here 'tis):

Meet Author Christopher Conlon from Gore De Vol on Vimeo.

Having recently parted ways with my publisher (so, yes, the 6th and concluding novel of the Cedar Hill Cycle is now, for the moment, homeless) I find fewer and fewer things make me smile these days, but the following made me laugh so hard I almost fell out of my chair. Hope you get a chuckle or two out of it, as well (You'll need to click on it for full-size):

This comes courtesy of my and Lucy's good friend, Jonathan Reitan, a wonderful human being who was diagnosed with HIV 2 years ago; I made no alterations to his letter: why try to improve upon heartfelt perfection? I urge you to make a donation, and to feel free to reprint this post anywhere you feel it's appropriate.

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Dear Friends,

Every 9 ½ minutes a new HIV infection occurs in the United States with 1.1 million people in the U.S. currently living with it.

I became one of those people almost two years ago (Sept. 19, 2007) and until we have a cure, it has been my mission in life to raise funds for HIV prevention as I never want to hear of another friend of mine contracting the disease.

On October 11th, more than 10,000 of us will come together in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon with the goal of raising $350,000 for services provided by Cascade AIDS Project to prevent new HIV infections, care for people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS, educate communities to eliminate stigma and advocate for immediate action in combating the pandemic.

Please help me reach my goal of $1,000 by making a donation today; any amount helps! Just stop and think how quickly we blow $20 for an unhealthy lunch, tickets to a bad movie, or the amount we spend for our daily coffee drinks or a few cocktails on a night on the town and think about how that $20 can be put to good use...$20 buys 50 safe-sex kits that are distributed all over Oregon and SW Washington!

Follow This Link (http://tinyurl.com/AIDSdonation) to visit my personal fundraising web page and enter your payments right there with a credit or debit card (it's SO easy!). If link does not work for you, please email me back and I'll help you out. You can even donate in the name of a lost loved one or as a business owner...your name will be displayed on my page for the world to see.

Your donation will make a difference in the lives of individuals and families affected by HIV and AIDS.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,

Jonathan Reitan, aka
Jonny Woo Foxx, Mr. Gay Oregon '09-'10

I, along with Elizabeth Massie, Jason Sizemore, G. Cameron Fuller, Brian J. Hatcher, editor Michael Knost and Lucy Snyder, participated in a mass signing at the Border's Books in Barboursville, West Virginia this past Saturday for the official release of Writers Workshop of Horror. The event went quite smoothly -- thanks in no small part to the bookstore staff, all of whom were courteous and frighteningly well-organized -- and the attendance was, well, something of a shock: at several points over the course of the 2-hour event, the line for signatures wove through the entire store, once even almost spilling out onto the sidewalk!

It was a terrific time, start to finish -- and on case you weren't able to make it, here's a link to some video from a local television newscast:

http://www.boomboxradio.net/boombox/PlayerSetup/Players/WOWKTVPlayer.aspx?FileId=208663_wowk

I'm honored to be one of the Featured Authors in the just-released issue of Black Static #12. Peter Tenant's "Case Notes" section features a 7-page article about myself and the Cedar Hill Cycle, including capsule reviews of the first 4 novels and a longer review for the latest, Far Dark Fields (see book trailer in post below). The article is the most in-depth piece anyone's yet written about the cycle (there's also an interview with me), but there's a certain paragraph that just floored me, and I wanted to share it with all of you:


"The Cedar Hill cycle of novels, novellas and short stories, is one of the finest achievements of recent horror fiction, to my mind equalled in scope and ambition only by King's Dark Tower sequence. Author Gary A.Braunbeck's work demonstrates to the sceptic that genre can address serious metaphysical and philosophical concerns, while at the same time the stories are filled with a simple human compassion that illuminates each piece of the great puzzle he is painstakingly assembling. Like all the best writers, whether in or outside of genre, Braunbeck engages the intellect and the emotions, forcing us to think, challenging us not to feel."


Color me flabbergasted.


Black Static (formerly The Third Alternative) is a superb dark fiction magazine published in England (It can usually be found on the magazine rack at Borders). You can find more info -- including subscription information -- here:


http://ttapress.com/blackstatic/currentissue/

BTW: it looks as if I'll have some Cedar Hill-type news next week

At last, here it, courtesy of the terrific John Palisano (www.johnpalisano.com) and company. Fangoria will be hosting this, as well, and a smaller version will be going live on my own website later today. I think John did a fantastic job of capturing the tone of the novel -- of the entire cycle, in fact -- in this. The actors all did a splendid job, and I am humbled by the finished film.

I'll shut up now. Here it is:

Writer, Friend, and Filmmaker John Palisano ( http://www.johnpalisano.com/ ) is currently filming not so much a book trailer for my new novel as a mini-movie reflecting the Cedar Hill Cycle thus far. It will have music, real actors, dialogue, cuts, cross-fades, and maybe even a montage or two -- if you know John's work, then you know it's going to be quite something. (Make sure you check out the films on his site!)

In the meantime, he's been good enough to put together this short "teaser" trailer. I wasn't expecting anything like this, so it came as a lovely surprise: