Friday Links: Monsters in the Night, Vatican Exorcism Courses, and The Silence

All you've got to do is make it to the weekend.  Here's what happened during those days you hoped to fast-forward through to get to today:

• We learned about an exorcism course taught by the Vatican: "The tenth annual course on exorcism has gotten off to a bang in Rome, with a full house of 170 students eager to learn how to recognize and fight demonic possession.  Sponsored by the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy and organized by the Sacerdos Institute, the weeklong course titled “Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation” is taking place at the European University of Rome from April 13 to 18."
• Jim Mcleod himself reviewed Tim Lebbon's The Silence at Ginger Nuts of Horror: "And yet the  narrative isn’t even the bravest or strongest part of the book.  It is Lebbon’s characters that really make this book stand out.  In particular that of our heroine Ally.  You see Ally has been deaf ever since a car accident, living a a world without sound it is up to her to lead her family to safety.  Ally’s character could so have easily been a gimmick, however Lebbon has clearly got into the mind and soul of our heroine.  She is a believable character, flawed, and human this isn’t your all action hero."
• At Taliesin Meets the Vampires, Taliesin took a second look at The Tomb to determine if it was a vampire movie or not: "I remember watching this Michael Staininger directed film back in 2009 when it was released. I couldn’t remember too much about it however. I knew, of course, that it was loosely based on the Poe story Ligeia but couldn’t remember why I had thought, as I watched it, that the potentially vampiric story was not vamp."
• Nev Murray had an exciting announcement at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!
• John Kenneth Muir took on the 1975 film The Ultimate Warrior: "The film’s great virtue is its sense that mankind will endure. That fatalism can be outlived. The final scene -- set outside the confines of the de-humanized City -- promises a re-birth of hope, and an end to the fatalism that reduced man to selfish barbarian.  But of course, such catharsis can only arise after a particular brutal confrontation between Brynner and William Smith -- local warlord -- in a subway car."
• Sean Eaton presented us with his typically trenchant analysis at his invaluable R'lyeh Tribune: "[Clark Ashton Smith's] Monsters in the Night is an interesting blend of fantasy and science fiction.  Smith imagines a contemporary setting that includes werewolves and vampires as well as unspecified monsters of more recent creation.  He seems to imply that there are traditional monsters in the country side and “newfangled” ones in the cities—all of them equally lethal."
• Terrorphoria gave us some good news about horror on Blu-Ray.
• Here, I talked about the cartoons my son and I watch, discussed writing about grief, and celebrated the publication of my short story Hold On.

Illustration by Tom Sullivan for Call of Cthulhu's S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters.

Hold On Is Live!

I'm pleased to announce that my short story Hold On has been published by Liberty Island.

It's a bit of a departure, as it doesn't involve the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural: Hold On is a human story about marriage, parenting, and loss in the not-too-distant future, when America's illegal immigration issues come to a head.

I teased Hold On a little here.  Go give it a read and tell me what you think.

Loss and Grief and Writing About It

This is a terrible story.  The Andrade family has my deepest condolences.

On the loss of his son Julian, San Antonio police officer Jose Andrade said, "It's very difficult; it's the hardest thing I think anyone can go through. I think it's the hardest thing in life. I don't think there's anything harder."

Before I became a parent, I could understand this in a detached, almost academic fashion. After all, I've been familiar with grief.  We've all lost somebody.

Now that I'm a dad, I don't think I could ever understand the breadth of the Andrade family's loss, and I pray that I never have to.

I've talked publicly about adoption before, here and elsewhere.  In those pieces, I've touched briefly on our failed adoption, where we took the baby home, cared for him for a night and a day, and got a call from the agency that the birth mother changed her mind and decided to parent instead.  The details of that experience are too personal to put in writing.  It was extremely difficult, even life-changing, and not entirely in a good way.

But it wasn't the same as the death of one's child.  I suspect it's not even close.

I did reference that experience in my novel The Blessed Man and the Witch.  To illustrate one of the symptoms of a strained marriage, I had my protagonist Hector deal with something similar.  It became a triggering event in his past, and the implications of it have stretched into the novel's sequel (which I'm still writing).  This is not to say that it is the defining moment for him; after all, he's as complicated a figure as any person, and as such is subject to many significant experiences.  But it did mark him and push him in a certain direction.

On Thursday, April 16, my short story Hold On will be published on Liberty Island.  Unlike my other material, it doesn't deal with the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural in any way, though it is set in the near future.  The story addresses themes of marriage, parenting, and loss within the context of America's current illegal immigration crisis.  As always, the intent is to tell a good story, not proselytize, and I believe I've done that with Hold On.

Sometimes, losing someone doesn't make you stronger.  The cracks don't always get repaired.  And the universe doesn't just stop when you're grieving, even though it should.