A HALLOWMAS tale_GHOST OF GOD

{Courtesy Steve Z Photography}

(Hallowmas begins at Vespers on the evening of 31 October and 

ends at the close of 1 November. 

It is the day that commemorates all those 

who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven.

Beatific Vision 

is the ultimate direct communication of God

to the individual.)

So many different kinds of death hunted us this Christmas Eve all through the French Quarter, I would’ve gotten a headache trying to count them all –

If I already hadn’t had one – to go along with the broken ribs, fingers, and nose.

I looked over at Alice, my ghoul friend. The very sight of her made me smile sadly. The night was somehow better. 

Oh, the fear was still there.

We were going to die.

But seeing her love for me in her eerie eyes said the impossible was possible.

Her ability to turn to mist had been ripped from her by DayStar – but not her love for me or mine for her.

There were some things Darkness could not steal from you -- you had to throw them away yourself.

And I was holding onto her love with both bruised hands.


She sobbed softly, "Our first Christmas together is our last."

I had taken as many blows for her as I could. Wasn’t that what Love did? Sacrifice for the one loved?

My heart ached at the thought of all Alice meant to me, and I knew that love did more, was more.

Love was a magic garment, spun of a fabric so thin that it couldn't be seen, 

yet so strong that even my mother, Death, could not tear it,

A cloak that could not be frayed by use, that brought warmth into what is often an unbearably cold world - 

but at times love could also be as heavy as chain mail.

Bearing the mantle of love on those occasions, when it was a sacred weight, 

made it more precious. While in better times, it caught the wind in its sleeves like wings and lifted you.

Murmuring a prayer for forgiveness, Alice had buried the statue of the Madonna and taken its shawl. 

I had done the same with the statue of Joseph, taking its robe and hood.

We kneeled beside the wooden manger in the St. Louis Cathedral’s courtyard Nativity Scene.

Right in plain sight of the slowly sniffing and scouting horrors prowling for us.

I didn’t even know some of the monsters hunting us. I knew enough to know Alice and I were goners.

Winged Gahe. Starved Amal. Scaled Soyoko. 

And the ghosts, given flesh, fangs, and claws by DayStar, of all the people Alice had eaten and I had killed in self-defense over the years.

I stiffened at the tolling in the distance. I heard the bells, ringing their familiar, mocking refrain:


PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN.


In despair, I bowed my head.

‘There is no peace on earth! God is only a ghost wind tonight. Hate is god now, and the strong worship at its feet. The innocent die. The helpless cry out. Does anybody hear them?’

The night winds became soft words:  

‘You kneel on holy ground and dare to ask that? And you, of all living, should know the reality of ghosts.'

I felt my hair ruffled by icy fingers.   

'Besides, you heard the cries.  You helped. Have you ever considered what Power brought you where Need existed?'

I looked up. A stern priest, a book of prayers or some such in his hands. Alice went as pale as I had ever seen her.

"Pere Antoine!"

He spoke in razored whispers. 

"For my sins in the Inquisition I am bound to this plane. So Friar Antonio de Sedella is now who I am."

I saw the self-hate in his eyes. I saw the same look in Alice's.

The world is filled with broken people.

The tragedy wasn't that people were broken. 

The world breaks most of us. 

The tragedy was that so few were mended. But if we are loved, we become stronger at the broken places.

I looked to the horrors so near. Though Pere Antoine and Alice had spoken low, the creatures had stiffened. To speak again would be to bring them to us.

None of us can ever save himself. 

We are the means of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others can we lift ourselves out of the darkness into the light.

Why not die, letting Pere Antoine know that I believed in him even when he no longer could?

I shook my head and whispered back. "No, before Katrina, you helped me. You’ve helped others before and since."

The winged Gahe spun at my words, and I blurted out, 

"With my last words, I say you don’t deserve to be bound here. You are Pere Antoine!"

So many horrors rushed us that I got sick to my stomach. I edged in front of Alice to take the brunt of the charge. This was going to hurt so bad.

Pere Antoine’s ghost eyes grew wet, and he cocked his head as if listening to words only he could hear, and he gestured, speaking loud:

"This is Holy Ground!"


The Shadowlanders must’ve forgotten that in their lust for our deaths. It bought them their own.

Pere Antoine, the prayer book tumbling to the grass, slapped both hands on the shoulders of Alice and me.

A warm tingle cascaded through me. Reality smeared in spirals of fiery, golden stardust as if God were wiping clean a chalkboard.

Sand not grass was suddenly beneath our knees. Cutting through me was a cold wind that can only be birthed in the desert.

The manger scene was now real.

A young man and a younger woman were looking sheer love at the cooing baby. 

Outside the stable, high in the night sky, rippled sounds that only angels could sing.

My bones were transformed into trilling tuning forks.

Pere Antoine kneeled beside me.

"God is not dead, nor does He sleep. No matter how dark, He always sees you. You are a part of His Heart and thus never alone. Because of their very natures, the wrong shall fail, and those who trust prevail."

The baby locked eyes with mine. 

Eyes clear and echoing with strange wisdom and delight, murmuring that while most of my life I had felt loved by no one, there had been One who always had.

Pere Antoine whispered.

"He wanted you and Alice to have a ‘down home’ Christmas."

The baby laughed a chiming sound of icicles dancing.

Alice reached over and squeezed my hand. "I was wrong, Victor. Our first Christmas together is THE first Christmas."

And impossible thought it was, the French Quarter bells rang all around us:


PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN.
***

If you enjoyed this Hallowmas tale, you can buy the audiobook of BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Bring-Me-the-Head-of-McCord-Audiobook/B00NHUX5KM/

You can listen to it plus 6 other tales of mine, including a chapter from 

HIBBS, THE CUB WITH NO CLUE!

 

WE WANT TO BELIEVE

TODAY ONLY!

If you are an Audible member you can get Ray Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree" for only $1.95!!

     One fateful Halloween night, a group of boys are taken on a journey by a mysterious prankster named Moundshroud in order to save their friend Pipkin’s life. 

     They travel across the world and through history, exploring the origins and influences of Halloween from ancient Egypt to Celtic Druids, to the Day of the Dead.

      It’s both breezy and spooky, like you’re taking a train ride through Halloween country, and Bradbury is the conductor and tour guide.

 http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Halloween-Tree-Audiobook/B005FRO74S


Now, back to our regularly scheduled post:

In this Age of Science, how can people still believe in the Paranormal you might ask.

Go back just 100 years and read what "scientists" believed to be true.  

You will shake your head.

100 years from now, children in schools will look at each other in wonder and say, 

"They believed in silly things like neutrons and id's back then?"


Soon after World War II, 

Winston Churchill was visiting the White House when he is said to have had an uncanny experience. 

Having had a long bath with a Scotch and cigar, he reportedly walked into the adjoining bedroom – 

only to be met by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

 Unflappable, even while completely naked, Churchill apparently announced: 

“Good evening, Mr President. You seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

The spirit smiled at that and vanished.


The ghost of Winston Churchill told me that was exactly what happened.

But then I write these posts in a haunted jazz club!


Three-fourths of Americans believe in the paranormal, and 1 in 5 claim to have seen a ghost.

 Out-of-body experiences are now accepted neurological phenomena.
 The more one reads of quantum physics,

 the more one understands how little he or she truly understands of this complex, mystifying world.

Once 20th century scientists scoffed at those who believe in the paranormal:

"We create beliefs because we don’t like believing that the universe is random"

Now, those who study Chaos Theory know that under the apparent randomness of the universe is a strange order.

The first ghost story dates back to Pliny the Younger in the first century A.D., 

who wrote of an old man with a long beard and rattle haunting his home in Athens.

Doctors Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose 

theorize that human consciousness comes from microtubules inside our brain cells, 

and these tubules are responsible for quantum processing (our souls basically). 

Hameroff and Penrose believe when people have a near-death experience, 

all that quantum information leaves the brain, yet continues to exist, 

which is why some people report out-of-body experiences and lights at the end of tunnels.
 

 What do you think?  

Do you have any paranormal or unusual experiences to relate?

CAN HORROR BE FUN?

Mummies have always fascinated me since watching the 1932 version of THE MUMMY on late night TV.

Exotic locale.  Ancient magic invading the present.  Love. Death. Courage.

 

And not everything was what it appeared or sounded.

“Once again...welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.”

- Dracula by Bram Stoker 

My guilty pleasure is 1999's THE MUMMY.  

Guilty from how many times 

I have re-watched parts of it!

Another guilty pleasure is Hildago

The Old West in turn of the century Egypt:

Sandra, my best friend, says I write movies not books.  

Better than movies since there are no sticky floors or irritating cell phone addicts with their bright white screens in the dark theater.

Don't you hate those guys?

So I wrote the movie I wanted to see:

An Old West hero in 1895 Egypt contesting with undying evil

http://www.amazon.com/Death-House-Life-Roland-Yeomans/dp/151877668X/

Take a look at its book page will you?

Do you have a supernatural 

or any other genre movie 

you find fun enough to re-watch?

A HAUNTED HALLOWEEN TOUR OF THE FRENCH QUARTER

The past of a place shapes not only its literature but the very psychic nature of its shadows.

If ever you should go to New Orleans looking for Victor Standish and his ghoul friend, Alice, 

breakfast at Brennan’s,

visit the Aquarium, 

enjoy drinks at Pat O’Brien’s, dine at Antoine’s and wrap your spirit in the jazz at Preservation Hall.

You should continue down Bourbon Street. 

(it got its name not from the drink but from the dynasty)

following the music and revelers until St. Philip where the crowd thins.

{Image courtesy of the genius of Leonora Roy}

 If your sixth sense prickles your scalp, it’s time to chart a new course.

The Soyoko, evolved raptors who hunt in the French Quarter's shadows, may be following you.

One block to your right is Royal Street. 

At this time of night it seems like another world. 

And it is:

Rue La Mort.

If you see a fog-shrouded building of iron balconies and heavy moss, bearing the name, Meilori's,

listen for a young boy's gypsy laugh and an upbraiding British girl's voice. 

Listen closely, if there is gravel in the girl's tones, keep on walking.
 
Alice is growing hungry.

Head instead toward Canal Street in the thick humidity and 

soon find yourself in back of the St. Louis Cathedral.

The large garden behind the 215 year old church is surrounded by an old iron fence, scarred and pitted by the elements.
 
Oh, what stories could this fence tell!

Stories of love and honor, of the duels fought on the grounds it protects, 

stories of betrayal and murder as well, of plans and plots by patriots and treasonous cowards as well.

And how one foggy night down Pirate's Alley, 

Victor Standish ran laughing as Hell hissed at his heels. 

Along its balconies, roof-tops, and streets, Victor raced taunting his reptilian pursuers.

{Courtesy of Stevie Z's Photography}

But that is for him to describe.
 
Pirate's Alley you ask?

Oh, there are spirits there!

Souls from long ago who lived and died in these streets with such passion 

that they refuse to hide in the dusty ruins of the past.

As you push ahead to the end of the fence the air is heavy with a scent of the damp vegetation 

and you will find your skin is wet.

You breathe deeply, swallowing that thick hot air as if you are drowning, 

and you begin to melt into the city itself, the Vieu Carre, the heart of New Orleans.

Look now to your left, up along the side of the Church. 

You have discovered PIRATES ALLEY!

Pirate's Alley is the subject of much legend and lore, some true, and much false.

Pirates Alley, about 600 ft long, and 16 ft wide, is not even shown on many of the French Quarter maps.

Wisely so, for many tourists have walked down its foggy length at night never again to be seen.

If it is so dangerous at night, why do tourists dare this avenue?

The sight of the alley at night is unforgettable:

Every surface is covered with moisture giving a shine and a reflection of the dim lights ahead along your path. 

On your left, St. Anthony’s Garden, 

on your right, the old Fleur di Paris hat shop faces Royal St. 

with its beautiful window display that brings to mind a more elegant time.

But further along, you discover that a plaque on the wall of one of the Creole houses identifies this 

as the residence of the great William Faulkner, indeed, the very house where he wrote his first novel "Soldiers Pay."

And should the Soyoko find your scent pleasing, you may find "Unwary Tourist Pay."

Or you may find salvation in the form

of the legendary undead Texas Ranger,

Samuel McCord, the man with the blood of Death in his veins.
 

The Lafitte brothers were no strangers to Pirates Alley.

They came to New Orleans about 1803 the year of the Louisiana Purchase, at 24 and 26 years old. 

Soon they went about with the Creole gentlemen of town and were seen in the streets and coffee houses.

Jean Lafitte spoke several languages and was educated. 

A familiar sight on these streets, people would regard him with curiosity, and whisper the word PIRATE!

In reality, Lafitte considered himself a Privateer.

Of course, smuggling had been going on in the city for 50 years before Lafitte,

and it eventually became the main business, 

but soon, Lafitte and his band of Baratarian Pirates controlled black market commerce and all transactions went through the brothers.

Goods were sold openly in Pirates Alley and eventually it became so congested 

that the "vendors" were allowed to display their goods inside the garden behind the iron fence.

The locals would walk along outside and money and goods were passed through the fence, giving rise to the expression

"Fencing stolen goods"!

We imagine that the brothers made regular charitable "donations" to the church for this convenience.

And should you walk this alley at night, 

keep your eyes over your shoulders. 

Sometimes Alice the ghoul grows hungry. She, too, looks for donations ... of human flesh.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SCREAM

Many like being scared.  This is not new. 

 But it is on the rise.

On a hormonal level, 

the fight or flight reflex releases hormones that give us a subtle rise.  It can be addicting.


Your favourite slasher flick could actually help you shift the pounds ...

Research has shown that the spike in adrenaline levels that we experience when watching horror movies 

actually increases the metabolic rate (that’s how much energy the body uses).

 You could burn up to 184 calories watching The Shining!

On a psychological level, 

there is an appeal to vicariously experience, the forbidden, the bizarre, or the dark.

Creepy stories allow us to release the pent-up frustrations and angers which society says we must bottle up.

It is thought that the effect of being able to “survive” a scary film could actually have a positive impact of mental health, 

and experiencing fear in that controlled environment may actually equip you to deal with frightening and stressful situations in the future.

If you’re always fighting a cold around Hallowe’en,

 then there’s even more good news as some surprising research 

has shown that horror movies may actually boost your immune system.

The “fight or flight” response to danger kick starts white blood cell production in anticipation of healing wounds and fighting infection.


HAVE YOU EVER ASKED YOURSELF WHY SCREAMS ARE SCARY?

Scientists believe it's because there’s nothing else like it in all of human communication. 

 The frequency of a scream varied wildly compared to normal speech,

 fluctuating between 30 to 150 hertz, giving it a quality that scentists call its “roughness”. Turns out, the rougher the sound, the scarier it is.

 This is the same reason why sirens and alarms modulate up and down, it makes them unsettling and difficult to ignore.

It has to do with the warning calls of primates, 

signalling when danger is near, which are basically the alarms of the animal kingdom.


THE SCIENCE OF SCARY MUSIC IN SCARY MOVIES

 Composing the perfect scary music is a science as well as an art and has a surprising amount to do with the yellow-bellied marmot.

Say what?

 Daniel Blumstein, an expert on animal distress calls, found that baby yellow-bellied marmots would scream when they were being caught.

He found that people found music with more non-linear chaotic characteristics more frightening. 

He also found that the music was more likely to be disturbing if it went up in pitch as opposed to down, 

something that he was able to link to his expertise in animal calls, 

as the baby marmot’s scream gets higher the more frightened it is.

Basically, the reason why the soundtrack to PSYCHO is a work of genius is 

because it awakens the Mama Marmot in us all.


CAN YOU BE SCARED TO DEATH?

 Ah, yes

 Because fear basically elicits your fight, flight or freeze response, you get a huge dump of adrenaline in your system. 

This slows digestion, dilates the pupils, increases blood flow to the muscles, quickens breathing 

and it is what causes your heart to go like a race horse.
Unfortunately, if the old ticker isn’t in top shape 

then this stress can actually cause damage to the heart and even cardiac arrest.


 SO WHY DO WE LIKE TO BE SCARED?

It's all about being able to separate fiction from reality in the "fear from a distance" that is a horror movie.

The brain is a complex organ but the body is relatively simple. 

Exciting and stressful situations release the same chemicals, namely adrenaline, dopamine and endorphins,

 it is the context in which these are released that dictates whether or not we enjoy them.

SO DO YOU ENJOY SCARY MOVIES? 

WHY ARE THE KARDASHIANS SO FAMOUS?

It is a question that has long 

puzzled me.

Last post, Ann Bennett wrote that many today mistake notoriety as fame.

When you think Kardashians, 

you think selfies, Twitter, curvaceous bottoms, cosmetic surgery, clothes, spats or money.

Inane nonsense. But it’s the stuff they’ve made millions from.

Kim markets her image.

 Robert Kardashian, her father, was a LA lawyer in the OJ Simpson case. 

She attended pre-school with Paris Hilton. 

Her 14th birthday party was held at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. 

With no singing talent, no acting skills, and only her body and her predatory strategy, Kim has gone far.

Nick Lachey claims Kim Kardashian alerted paparazzi to their movie date in 2006 in bid to get famous.

 Kim Kardashian's rise to fame began in 2007 with a "leaked" sex tape starring Kim and rapper Ray J.

In a Paris Hilton-esque turn of events, her sex tape with Ray J was leaked in February 2007,

 and her reality show premiered eight months later. 

In fact, one of the first episodes chronicles her dealing with the leak. Coincidence?


Kardashian is now married, and a mother, and has continued to be sexually outrageous.

 Her husband, rapper Kanye West posts highly sexual photos of her on Instagram. 

He also raps about her sex tape, bragging about their lifestyle:

 "Eat breakfast at Gucci. My girl a superstar all from a home movie."


At least, Miley and Justin release music albums.

What do Kim and her sisters do but release revealing photos of themselves on Instagram? 

Is the Kardashian fame the Halloween Trick that has lasted years?

Or are they a reflection of our warped system of values?

What do you think?

ARE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES BECOMING MORE OFFENSIVE?

A few decades ago, the limits of outrage were grotesque masks of politicians. Nixon and Reagan were favorites.

 The question of what’s edgy vs. what’s offensive can be tricky.

 Among this year’s most outrageous costumes are the “Foxy Megyn Bloody Tampon”

 (based on Donald Trump alleging that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly

 had “blood coming out of her wherever” after the first Republican presidential debate) 

and the “Lion Killer Dentist Halloween Costume” 

(a bloody dentist’s smock and plush severed lion’s head).

 When it comes to distasteful, last year’s do-it-yourself “Robin Williams” costume, 

with belt hung around your neck, tops the list. (Williams killed himself in August 2014.)

Of course, there is the current controversy over the Caitlin Costume based on the Vogue cover.

 There have certainly been viral moments this year that deserve some wink-and-nudging.

 But that doesn’t mean you have to dress up as the awful ones, 

especially if your costume involves 

cultural appropriation, mocking real people who are in distress like the Syrian refugees, or plain old racism. 

What do you think?

WHAT FRIGHTENS US_THE LISTING HOP

http://bish-randomthoughts.blogspot.com

The rules are: 

Sign up, grab the banner and make a list.
Keep your list to between 5 and 25 items. 

You can list whatever you feel like (except for adult type content.)
 
Post on October 26 and visit fellow participants. 

 

WHAT FRIGHTENS AMERICANS MOST 

1. PUBLIC SPEAKING

2. BLOOD/NEEDLES

3. CLAUSTROPHOBIA 

4. STRANGERS

5.  BUGS, SNAKES,& OTHER ANIMALS

6. HEIGHTS

7. CLOWNS

8.  DROWNING

9. FLYING

10. DARKNESS

11. STORMS

ON A POLITICAL NOTE --

Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to have a fear of clowns. 

They are also significantly more likely to fear bugs, snakes and other animals, 

as well as blood and needles. 

Democrats are slightly more likely to be afraid of ghosts.

{Based on the Chapman University Survey on American Fears) 

In what order are those in your ranking of fears?

COMING SOON!

{Covers and interior thanks to the genius of 

Heather McCorkle}

Before Indiana Jones ...

Before Allan Quartermain ...

There was ...
           Samuel McCord

Join the cursed Texican as
 
 He clashes with the last survivor of an extinct species in the Missouri of 1848.

He communes with the Spirit of the Earth in the Hawaii of 1866.

He is betrayed into the hands of the British government in 1895 Cairo.

Thrill to his escapes from ancient death traps in the ruins of the lost city of Tanis.

Match wits with him
 
As he duels grey aliens and seeks to decipher the mysteries left behind 

by the aliens who were the basis for the gods of Ancient Egypt.

As he seeks to save the world and his marriage from the monster that is the eternal beauty, Meilori Shinseen …

The Empress of a race from beyond the stars
           … and his wife.

DOC SAVAGE had no wilder crew to back him up than does Samuel McCord –

Mark Twain … Oscar Wilde …

The genius Nikola Tesla …

The undead Ada Byron, creator of the first computer language in the 1840’s.

And the incomparable She Who Devours, the model for the Sphinx …

Empress Meilori Shinseen … McCord’s beloved wife.
 
And the probable Destroyer of our world.

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE

WHAT WAS YOUR SIREN'S CALL?

What draws us to write?

It is a solitary sojourn. Most of us will never receive world acclaim ...

nor do we expect it.

What then propels us on this journey?

 
What swept you up when you first started to read for yourself? 

How often do you find a book which conjures that same spirit within you now?

Not often I would wager.

I believe we write to create that world which spellbound us into reading in the first place. 

What voices called out to us then? What lessons did they teach us?

For me the voices were:

Magic,

Horror,

and Otherworld Beauty

These three sirens dominated my solitary reading of choice during my high school years. 

And their voices can be heard in the background of all that I write.

Like the three fates, they weave the tapestry of my unconscious muse.

As a young child, I wandered alone into Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY. 

In junior high, I joined the League of Five and group reading with BEAU GESTE and DR. FU MANCHU. 

In high school, I was alone again in my reading, open to any influence that caught my fancy.

The authors of those years were my unknowing mentors in how to write well. 

And oddly enough it was an artist who led me in the land where they all dwelt : Frank Frazetta. 

And he painted the first road sign on my path to becoming a writer:

1) OTHERWORLD BEAUTY WILL HAUNT YOU, BRINGING YOU BACK TO THE BEGINNING. {AND DON'T FORGET THE EYES.}

EERIE #23 : THE EGYPTIAN PRINCESS
 http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Egyptian-Princess-cover-art-for-Eerie-23-and-Creepy-92-Posters_i12892297_.htm

When I spotted the cover to EERIE#23 with Frazetta's "Egyptian Princess" in a used book store, I was spellbound. 

Yes, she was clothing-challenged. But it were her eyes that ensnared me. 

And my encounter with her made me quite a few dollars lighter. EERIE #23, even back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth, was a collector's item.

From that moment on, I noticed eyes: 

weary ones , dull ones, evaluating ones, and those who were black windows into the nothingness that lived in the souls of those who possessed them.

As I began to write, I realized eyes could be the shorthand definition of the characters owning them. 

I noticed that when the eyes of strangers boldly met mine, it often meant the same thing as when Nixon proclaimed, "I am not a crook." 

I started counting my silverware.

But back to Frazetta. 

His art was vibrant, moody, and on-fire all at once. 

His paperback book covers led me to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and even to H.P. Lovecraft. 

And those three authors sketched the second sign post:

 
2) HISTORY IS NOT WHAT WE THINK - THERE IS MYSTERY AND MAGIC UNDER THE TOMBSTONES.
 
UNDER THE PYRAMIDS by H.P. Lovecraft (with Harry Houdini)
 
My hands went into warp speed when I saw the Frazetta cover emblazoned with that title. 

Frazetta. Harry Houdini. Wow. 

I didn't know this Lovecraft fellow, but I had to see what kind of supernatural trouble Houdini had gotten into in his Egyptian travels.

And I wasn't disappointed:
 
The first sentence: "Mystery attracts mystery."

I was hooked. 

Then, came the terrible imprisonment within an ancient, dark pyramid. 

The clever escape and the final glimpse of horror:

"The Great Sphinx! God --

that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before . . .

what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?

Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—

the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its leering lips in the unsuspected abyss,

fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged . . . 

that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus . . . the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore paw. . . .

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."
***
From Frazetta, Burroughs, Howard, and Lovecraft ... I learned how history can be made alive and alluring ... and supernatural. It is a lesson that stays with me still.

 
3) ROGER ZELAZNY'S LORD OF LIGHT:

 
Perched in the used bookstore shelf right next to a Frazetta cover of a Conan novel 

was the book that was to teach me that prose could be beautiful and evocative without being stale and stiff. 

I picked up LORD OF LIGHT and read the first paragraph :

"His followers called him Mahasamatman, and said he was a god. 

He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.

He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. 

Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Therefore, there was mystery about him."

{It is no accident that my own hero is called Sam.}
 
Mystery. Evocative imagry. I was hooked.

I became his student -- through his books, his essays, and his poetry.

Some of his words:

"No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words."

"For you see, the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse."

"I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words,
 
beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is
something to hold back the shadows."

"There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living."

"Occasionally as an author, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, 

a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -

you just don't know which.

You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. 

Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.

Trust your demon."
 
"I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, 

and write three sentences. 

It seems to get the job done. I've written a lot of novels."

And Roger Zelazny led me to this quote by Ernest Hemingway 

years before it made its way into the latest PREDATOR movie:

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

 
THE SIGN POST MARKED DIALOGUE:

I have the eye-aching habit of writing long posts, so out of compassion for your eyes, 

I will leave that sign post to another day.
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And here is a glimpse of the Frank Frazetta Museum. 

His wife was the custodian of it. She died in 2009 after a year's valiant battle against cancer.

The children started savagely fighting over the paintings. Sigh. 

Charges of burglary and theft were lodged against Frank Jr. by the rest of the family on March 2010. Matters were solved on the surface. 

But it proved too much for Frank, mourning the loss of his beloved wife of forty years. He died the next year on May 10th.

{In early 2000, he suffered a series of strokes, losing dexterity in his right hand. 

The champion that he was, he taught himself to paint with his left. 

The painting of the warrior fighting the Mastodon in the arena towards the end of the clip was done with his left hand.}

One of the prizes on my wall of Movie Memorabilia is a Frazetta lithograph of a bear 

{I like to think of it as Hibbs, the bear with 2 shadows, on a bad day} signed by the artist himself.
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{The Frank Frazetta Estate owns all rights to Frank Frazetta's sketchbook.}