Expecting Better

I think it’s become pretty clear by now that I have a really broad interest in horror. Good, bad, and horrible, I like it all. For me, it’s all about whether I have fun with what I am watching or not. It’s about whether what the people were trying to do and did do allow the movie, book, television show, radio drama, whatever to work.

As much as I love it all though, I do see a need for better, and do crave better from time to time.

There is a time for the easy scare and there’s a time for the slow build and there’s a place in the world for both but it’s kind of like eating candy compared to eating a salad – you may love the candy but every once in a while you should eat a salad or you’re going to get sick.

The horror genre is sick.

Sure, there are always going to be pockets of inspiration, ingenuity, and intelligence, but take a walk down a video store aisle or browse some online and you’ll see an ocean of horrible stuff. And when I say horrible I mean specifically the cash-in stuff that solely exists to feel on the flesh of a successful franchise. Sure, there are other bad entertainments that are poorly made, poorly conceived and then there’s stuff that is just bad, straight up bad. To varying degrees everything serves a purpose and there’s a potential audience for everything, so it isn’t for me to cast lightning bolts down from on high.

BUT…

We should expect better sometimes.

We should want more sometimes.

As much as I have enjoyed many of the horror remakes, and like zombie tales, and get down with a good ghost story we should expect more. We should want more than what is popular. We should want better than the churned out mass consumable. It’s a shame to see the horrible stuff that gets funded when so many interesting things get ignored. And in the end it’s up to us to make sure that good stuff, when we find it, gets championed. That gets the word out.That’s the joy of Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and all the other ways we get the word out. That is the glory of that stuff, the ability to get and pass information.

Again, so much revolves around taste that I am not going to tell anyone that the TWILGHT series of books or movies are bad because it isn’t my place to do it, but I can tell you that if it isn’t your cup of tea there are movies like NEAR DARK that are a wonderful alternative. Same goes with everything out there. Sometimes the alternatives are obvious and right in our face, like a classic film from the past we never really gave much thought to but which is waiting to be re-discovered, and other times these things are just out of the public eye. Ah, but that’s the fun of being a fan, isn’t it? When you really get down to it, it’s the discovery, the search, and it’s finding those gems that you had never found before and that is what we have to do, and to keep doing.

When you first become a fan of anything there is a long time where you’re learning about your new passion, the good, the bad, all of it. And as you get deeper into that new passion you develop a taste for some things over others, and that’s how it is with horror. We all love what we love, and it’s great that we do love it. Just as it’s great to get into a friendly (note the word friendly here) debate over the merits of our taste. Whatever our taste though sometimes we need more, we need better. We need to seek out things that will challenge and excite us and renew our passions so they don’t stagnate. Because once your passion stagnates it dies.

We need to expect better. We need to look past the obvious, past the remake, past the sequel, past the mass production to see what else is out there. We deserve it. We deserve it because as much as we love what we know, sometimes it is only when we challenge what we know and love that we discover new reasons to love it.

We deserve better.

Let’s find it.

It’s a Perfect Time for a Good Scare

Looking for some great new stories? Check out the Masters of Macabre contest, give the stories a spin, and see which you like best. http://mastersofmacabre.wordpress.com/

The best part is that YOU get to pick the best story.

Awesome.

Check out the link and the great stories.

c

New Fiction Coming Your Way

Not only do I have a new book out -Noches De Corazones Negros but I also have a new story going online on Thursday, September 15th on Horroraddicts.net

The story is part of their Masters of Macabre contest and the audience chooses which story they like best.

I think mine is a pretty fun tale. You need to check it out. My good friend Mark Eller did the reading and it should be great.

Hope you like it.

 

Movie Shorts

Darn these movie shorts are riding up on me.

Shark Night

Good, ridiculous fun that is utterly brainless and knows it. Great crowd movie. Makes me feel like an ‘uncut’ version is waiting in the wings to be released on video. Hmm. Make sure to watch after the credits. WOW!

6.5 out of 10

 

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark

An amazing remake of the scary original. Great atmosphere, fantastic scares, and very solid acting. And yeesh are these things nasty. A big, weird plot hole in the middle of the film but it’s sort of like a fairy tale in and of itself so I forgave it.

8 out of 10

 

The Reef

Very good shark movie set in the real world. Very grim, very nerve wracking, and very good. If you like shark movies you’re gonna really like this one.

7.5 out of 10

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

If a new movie in a long running series I have no interest in can captivate me then they’ve done something right. Great digital work. Great acting. One of Summer’s biggest surprises and best films.

8 out of 10

 

Red State

See, you watch this and then get all sad that director Kevin Smith is going to quit directing. A very uneven film but wow is it dark, nasty, and good. A totally unexpected film and really solid movie. I love a lot of his comedies but man I wish he would have tried something like this years ago. Some great acting on hand here.

7.5 out of 10

Super

In the year of the superhero we needed some reminders that not all of the people wearing capes are good…or sane. A ridiculously funny and wonderful take on superheroes this was another movie that took me by surprise at how darn good it was. A wonderful companion piece to Kick Ass, though this is way darker and way funnier.

9 out of 10

Grave Encounters

In this fun mix of Blair Witch and House on Haunted Hill (the remake) we get the found footage of several wanna be ghost hunters and the misfortune that befell them during an investigation. Great build up, great atmosphere, and wonderful use of sound. Things get dodgy toward the end and some of the choices I didn’t agree with but an overall fun and solidly scary movie.

7.5 out of 10

Chasing The Dream

Dreams are tricky little thin. It isn’t that they are slick, or slippery so much as they are like the air around us – we cannot see them but without them we die.

Sure, the death of a dream won’t necessarily kill us, not the day to day us, but it kills a vital part of us. It kills the hope that pulls us through the darker times. Dreams, even the silliest and loftiest of them are the things that drive us when there seems little in life that can shine in our hearts.

Dreams and hope are vital to being a human, and vital to life itself.

And if there is one thing I have learned over the course of this year it’s that the worst thing that can happen to you is not to lose your dream but to give up on it because it is the easiest thing to do. And the heck of it is that the people around you, no matter how supportive they are, how loving they are, can never realize how much a dream means to us because it isn’t their dream, and if it isn’t their dream as well then it can seem a passing fancy, easily forgotten. Once you give up on a dream though, give up on it while there’s still life to it, that sick feeling will never leave you. That sick feeling will be a phantom heart beating beside your own heart, reminding you what could have been.

For me, dreams have always been in abundance. They were in abundance but I let go of a lot of them because I talked myself out of pursuing them. I talked myself into the negativity and doubt. In the last few years I have been lucky enough to live long term dreams. I have always wanted to paint and now do, hell, I have sold art, imagine that from someone who gave it up at eighteen after being told he was no good? I wanted to put more books than my first, Back From Nothing, out, and have. I ran into someone at a comic con who inspired me to look into self publishing seriously and that was how I found Create Space. I had always wanted to get my work out in the world and so I began doing comic cons, then a horror con, then art shows, and while I am sure not getting rich I am selling books and art to people I don’t know, which is huge for a person with as much self doubt as I have. And there have been other dreams, some large, some small, but there are always other dreams.

But there was the Other dream. The bigger one.

I have always wanted to write and be a writer but that’s not so much a dream. Publishing was the dream. And sure, I want to find a traditional publisher and an audience and all that but that is a long shot that I don’t get too hung up on and it relies on too many people to happen. Writing I could do, people or not, it was something else that was gnawing at me, deeper. Well, two things but this, friends, is about ONE of those two things.

I have talked about it before at length so I won’t repeat myself but the idea of bringing a convention, a HORROR convention to Flint has been in my head since the ’90s. I have lived in this area my whole life and while there have been a few comic conventions, and a couple funky media conventions there has never been a horror convention. I wanted to do that. I wanted to bring that to Flint. Not just to Flint though but to this whole region. Ah, but it’s all about money, brothers and sisters, it’s all about money. Without the money the dream cannot live.

But it wasn’t just money, it was doubt.

I didn’t believe in myself or my dream so it sat on a shelf and gathered dust.

Sometimes that’s a very good thing though. Dreams need, at times, to let their roots sink deep into you so you can’t get rid of them so easily. And sometimes the dream is just a little too big for you so you have to grow into them. That was the case with the convention. I needed to grow into it. I needed to do more cons, see how they are done, see what I liked and didn’t like. Had to do events, put together and work on events so I got used to what went into it. I had to sit on the dream and ALMOST forget about it until it was time.

Now is the time. I had more coming back to me in my tax return than I ever had before and took that extra money and used it as the seed to build the convention. It was time. I had waited long enough.

And that was the start, the re ignition of that spark. That was the beginning. After that, well, it’s been a hell of a trip. I have wished several times I had documented this thing because sometimes I don’t believe it and believe all that has happened and that we are still where we are. Maybe after the con I’ll give a better account of it all. Maybe.

Maybe not.

I can say that I find myself extraordinarily lucky to be where I am, less than two months away from the convention. With the support of an awesome girlfriend, great friends, and the trust of a lot of people we are rolling right towards a dream I have had for some fourteen or more years.

Wow.

I am scared at what might be coming next but can’t wait to see. And ya know the best thing about dreams? The best ones, when you live them, lead down a hundred different paths, and at the end of each one is another dream, and that is a heck of a thing.

http://www.flinthorrorcon.com