Friday Links: Starting Spooky Season Early Edition
"In all the stories and all the movies, there's human footprints walking along, becoming wolf prints at the end. In the heaven of werewolves...just new grass..." - Stephen Graham Jones, 'Mongrels'
Here’s the thing about loving/working in horror: it’s always spooky season. I like to say my two genres are “horror” and “Chicago,” and I was reading a bunch of Chicago books the last few weeks because I’m working on edits for a Chicago novel. Here’s the thing, though: I can only handle so much nonfiction at a time. Plus, we’re watching The Changeling, and my wife keeps glancing over at the horror shelf, and I’m all like WANNA READ SPOOKY BOOKS TOGETHER, so here we are.
Speaking of spooky, your Vine update: Thursday was Chapter 15: “Christina The Astonishing Part Three.” Brendan and I sincerely hope you had as much fun reading Christina’s miraculous undeath as we did writing it. Today is another that we had a great deal of fun with—so much so, there was jealousy about who got to read it on the podcast (listen to the podcast!)—Chapter 16: “Manifest Destiny.”
What I’ve Been Reading Lately
It’s shocking, how much I love werewolves, compared to how little werewolf content is in my personal canon. People ask me for werewolf book recommendations and I bring shame to myself. Well, this book was recommended to me—I think by my dear friend Adrian Sobol—a few years back. To-read lists being what they are, it’s taken awhile to get there. Boy oh boy was it worth the wait. I knew from page one. Hell, I started taking notes for a werewolf novel I’ll eventually write by page three. I’m talking, of course, about Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones.
Our narrator, between the ages of eight and 16 at various points in the book, is an on-the-run nomad with his aunt and uncle. They in Texas, Arkansas, “it’s all one Carolina, isn’t it?,” Georgia, and Florida at various points. They’re not rock stars, though—they are a family, one whose patriarch dies in chapter one. The narrator, whose non-werewolf mother died in childbirth, flits in and out of school, while Darren and Libby take trucker job after car wash attendant job to scrape by.
There’s lore here, which is fun. Werewolves don’t have as much known lore, the same way vampires have Dracula vs. Anne Rice vs. Twilight rules or zombies have Romero vs. 28 Days Later rules. Towards the end of the book, some questions are cast at the lore we just read, which is fun. It’s refreshing to read not just about poor werewolves (as opposed to, say, wealthy vampires), but also about werewolves who shift at will but aren’t tortured by their own monstrousness. These are werewolves who kill, yes, and there is some will-they will-they shift drama, but for the most part? These are outlaws. People living on the fringes. I wasn’t glued to the page because I wanted to see if these melancholy brooders could find peace or to see if they could kill a few cops/villagers on their way to their own fiery death. I was glued to the page because Who Gets To Survive In America? Can this family be included?
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you peruse? This Klipa Trio set from Goodstock Music is a very fun trip. Wholly new, but shades of Miles’s Sketches of Spain or Coltrane’s Impressions—at least in terms of chord colors. May Alpert’s bass playing here is absolutely wonderful.
It’s been a while since I’ve read and a poem and thought “Anthem. Creedo. Declaration of purpose. Reason for living.” Well, here we are. Late to the party, but loving the hell out of Alina Pleskova’s “Sacred Bath Bomb,” published in American Poetry Review.
Chicago Public Schools enrollment is stable for the first time in a decade, Reema Amin from Chalkbeat Chicago reports in Block Club. This is early data, and who knows if it even says anything significant or is a one-year blip. But still, CPS enrollment is stable. That’s worth celebrating!
Creaturefector on sharks! This one examines the relative skittishness of whale sharks, the benefits and bummers of ecotourism, and has lots of pictures of whale sharks’ silly, gaping mouths. A pull quote, even though Defector is worth the subscription: “How much wonder exists in a guaranteed whale shark experience, where you and many other floatie-clad swimmers bob around a whale shark that is being fed like a goldfish in a bowl? Is that seeing nature, or a simulation of it?”
You want a quick flash that will take you places you did not expect and it’s frankly probably too early to be going to anyway? Of course you do, you want “Salt” by Avitus B. Carle in Milk Candy Review.
I link to this author a lot, but aw hell, they always get me. Check out “Procession” by Kathy Fish in Swamp Pink.
What’re you still doing here? Go read Vine! Subscribe to the Vine newsletter! Listen to the Vine podcast!
If you’re a service worker, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If you are a werewolf living a nomadic life on the run and you’re working the night shift at a lube station somewhere because it’s a job you can get without having a social security number, may you especially clean up in tips this weekend.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris