OFF TO ARCANA IN ST. PAUL AT 8AM

Leaving for the Orange Line at 8AM. Then on to the Blue Line to get picked up by Paul Dale Anderson at the Rosemont stop. He and his late wife Gretta published 2AM. Then Roger Dale Trexler, who published my collections FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT and I CAN'T COME CLEAN, will meet us in Rockford and then it is I-94 all the way to St. Paul. Hopefully I'll sell some books.

Clickers Forever

Cover by Dave Kendall. My memoir, as well as a few others, will be illustrated by Jesus and Cathy's brilliant daughter, Hannah. I hope this book sells a bunch. Edited by Brian Keene, the young fellow kind enough to invite me to write something.

My Name Is Ozmandius, uh, look upon me and, um despair...something like that

The book is finally out in all forms. Hardcover, trade paperback, and its been wireless for a few months. I'll be at Arcana in St. Paul next weekend, my first convention in a decade. Roger Dale Trexler will be picking me up and we shall then travel to Rockford to pick up Paul Dale Anderson. I haven't been to Arcana in years, and I'll talk more about it in future posts. But, anyways, here's the book. Buy it or recommend it. As always, my thanks to David Wilson and Crossroad Press.

Press Release Photos?

I wrote up some content to send to the various managing editors and Richard Chwedyk is looking it over to try and polish it up. He reminded me, of course, to add copies of the book cover and a few photos of me to each email. Which one works best?

The Old Damen Avenue Police District: soon to be demolished

Got off the bus at 23rd to take some photographs before Bad Grammar Theater. Hopefully some of it will still be standing at the beginning of October.

BAD GRAMAR THEATER: 01 SEP 17

While on my way to Brendan Detzner's Bad Grammar Theater, I got off the bus at 20th & Damen and took photos of the old Damen police station as it was ready to be torn down.

Odessa & Twin Peaks

I couldn't make the connection to why the setting was Odessa near the end of the final episode. I went the old-fashioned way before the Google machine and called the Odessa Public Library last Monday.

The guy at the info desk was a fan of the show and was surprised to hear I was calling from Chicago. We talked a bit about how I was a writer and back in the day I would often call the morgue for information on lethal doses of strychnine, common things like that.

He told me about the jackrabbits and we both knew of Jackrabbit's Palace on the show, and then he remembered to tell me about the crater and the Stongehenge thing as an afterthought. I told him I would use his name in a future story and send it to him.

RAPID TRANSIT: VOLUME ONE now available in hardcover, paperback, and wireless RIGHT NOW, GUYS!

Available from Crossroad Press. Foreword by David Niall Wilson.

Dead Timelines and Alternate Timelines: Welcome To My World(s)

I'm not going to write much here about the finale of TWIN PEAKS. I'm going with what I wrote on Sunday night, the starting point. Which ended up being the film FIRE WALK WITH ME, not the original show. (Which makes sense, since I've mentioned being unfamiliar with the show prior to S3.)

I do believe there are multiple realities. I dream them, and I am often not crippled. So to extend that idea, I also feel as if there are dead timelines. Ghosts walking a certain distance, dancing, snoring on the couch,, all quiet and all repeating everything as if it is a loop of silent film. Not a collapsed timeline, but a dead one.

Laura Palmer screams in FIRE WALK WITH ME. In the finale, Dale Cooper saves her from being murdered, and changes the timeline. I want to call it a now-dead timeline, in the sense that David Lynch and Mark Frost are so cool with ghosts and spirits and David Bowie as a teapot. It would explain the multiple images and blurred images seen throughout the eighteen episodes.

The show ends with Dale Cooper as "Richard" and Laura Palmer as "Carrie Paige". Cooper asks what year it is (are they past the viewing audience's year?), Laura hears her mother, Sarah, saying her name in the darkness of Laura's old bedroom. Palmer/Paige screams and it is the scream we hear from FWWM. That is, Sheryl Lee can still scream pretty damn good. So. My thoughts.

From the point that Cooper changes history in 1989 until 2013 or 2017, the timeline is dead. Not until Laura Palmer screams at the end of 318 does the timeline become alive again.

In reverse. The ghost images at Jackrabbit's Palace, Bing looking for Billy at the R&R and the customers changing position. The scream recreated the timeline, but altered it. All the characters still exist, but some may have different professions, different fates. Different names.

I'm still thinking about that last minute before the credits because I know damn well there are other realities. What year is this? Part of me angry because I am as much in pain as I was when the show and film were aired. My life hasn't changed in that respect. I've aged. So that is what gave me nightmares on Labor Day morning. Awake yet asleep, going to bed at 4AM and waking at exactly 6:45AM. What year is this? At least Laura brought it back with the bookends of her screams.

"It's always better at the starting position."

I'm just keeping this post quick. It isn't related to MY writing, but it is to writing in general.

I never watched TWIN PEAKS S1 or S2, as I was still recovering from my getting hit by the car in March of 1989, just a few weeks after Laura Palmer was murdered on the show. Maybe some of it was psychological, I don't know. I did see the film FIRE WALK WITH ME in the theater, buty remember little about it. So I've been engaged in the 16 episode S3, and it is David Lynch and it is confusing, but there's always one line that can mean anything and everything.

Like John Locke on LOST when he says "Everything happens for a reason."

When arm-wrestling some thug in Montana, BOB keeps bringing both the arms upright, and states twice that it is always better at the starting position. So I'm just throwing it out there. Props to Greg Tramel and Mike Olsen for helping me understand a lot of things from the original run.