COFFEE WITH A WRITER! Frostburg Center for Literary Arts, Saturday, October 3

Hosted by the Frostburg Center for Literary Arts

22 East Main St, Frostbugh

HELLBENDER Preorder!

Although the Collins clan is steeped in Appalachian magic, Henry has never paid it much attention. But when his younger sister dies mysteriously Henry can't shake the feeling that the decades-old feud between his family and another is to blame.

Strange things are happening at the edge of reality, deep in the forests and mountains of West Virginia. Let Jason Jack Miller take you to a place where love is forever even when death isn't, where magic doesn't have to be seen to be believed, where a song might be the only thing that saves your soul.

Jason Jack Miller's Murder Ballads and Whiskey series is a unique blend of dark fiction, urban fantasy and horror. It's Appalachian Gothic, Alt.Magical.Realism, Hillbilly Horror. It's American Gods meets Justified. True Blood with witches. It's Johnny Cash with a fistful of copperheads singing the devil right back to hell.

Order at Raw Dog Screaming Press!

Wild and Wonderful HELLBENDER: Jenkinsburg Bridge

    When the road turned into gravel, I gunned it. The rafting outfitters maintained it because it led to the Cheat Canyon take-out. After a half-mile, most of this spring’s gravel got washed out, replaced again by pocked bedrock and mud.
    Alex didn’t say anything until I pulled up to the old Jenkinsburg Bridge. This was much higher than the bridge over the Big Sandy. The old steel trestle spanned the V-shaped Cheat Canyon quite dramatically. Big pines buttressed each end and a rocky rapid flowed below. Occasional rock outcroppings punctuated the steep, green slopes.
    "Are we crossing?"
    "That was the plan," I said. "You said you wanted a plan, right?"
    "This one doesn’t look as sturdy." She sank toward the center of the Jeep and got real low in the seat.
    She was right. The planks hadn’t seen anything other than foot traffic in years.
    I said, "You never heard that you shouldn't look down if you're afraid of heights?"
    She just stared silently at the river, some eighty feet below.
    "Alex," I said. "There’s no other way." I let the Jeep creep forward instead of waiting for her approval.
After a pause she tried to negotiate. "Just go slowly, okay?"
    I pushed the clutch in and said, "I was thinking faster is better. That way our momentum is forward instead of... You know." I pointed down to the river.
    "Can I walk?" She asked.
    "Alex..." I said, drifting toward the bridge. The sound of trucks coming down the take-out road made my decision for me.
    "No time." I put the Jeep in gear and let out the clutch. "When I get to the other side I want you to drive up the hill a ways. Then that’ll be it. I promise."

CHEAT SEASON

"Some rivers just scare you," Johnny said. “There's one in West Virginia, the Cheat. I've run more difficult water, but there's something about the Cheat that I'm really afraid of. I can't explain it." (Kane 130)

It must be the water in my blood.

After a long winter, it warms and flows a little faster, remembering its ancient course over jagged sandstone ledges through wild mountain canyons. It manifests itself in my dreams first. A rush. A sensation of falling. Suffocating panic. And I haven't been on the Cheat River in fifteen years.

A wave at Decision Rapid flipping a fifteen foot raft end over end.

Upper Coliseum Rapid being altered by high water during the winter of 1993-1994.

A terrible swim at that very same rapid that I'll only tell you about if you buy me a drink.


A dozen waterfalls plunging down the canyon walls at High Falls Rapid after a heavy rain.

The undercut at Teardrop Rapid.

Big Nasty.

That the water in my blood remembers is no surprise. That I still dream of walking down the sandy path to the put-in... That I still dream of paddling like my life depended on it... That I dream of fighting to surface for air that's always too far away and wake up still holding my breath... That's how I know the river will be in my blood forever.

Kane, Joe. "ROARING THROUGH Earth's Deepest Canyon." National Geographic. Jan 1993: 130. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. .

Download Eddie Vedder, University Of California Berkeley, Zellerbach Auditorium, Berkeley, CA, April 7, 2008 (aka 2012, I'm trying not to hate you.)

So, there was about a minute way back in January when I thought I'd put together a post about my 2012 spiritual mentor/guru, kind of like I did with Joe Strummer about this time last year. Having somebody to 'emulate' felt kind of nice, like I could follow a path somebody else laid down since it sometimes felt like I was doing this in the dark. I wrote a little about Strummer's independence, especially during his time with the 101ers, when they had to use improvised mic stands and speaker cabinets because they were flat broke and how that didn't let that stop them from playing.

Don't get me wrong, I have many personal acquaintances from Seton Hill and Pennwriters who have gone down a path to publication, and I'm not trying to paint myself as a maverick, or whatever. But this is the first time I'VE done it. When I formatted my eBook there wasn't anybody to consult because nobody I knew was really doing eBooks. When it came time to get a real book cover I didn't have anybody to discuss it with because that's the kind of thing a publisher takes care of, not the writer.

So knowing that guys like Strummer made mistakes on their path made me feel like the mistakes I made were okay too.

This year I was leaning toward Eddie Vedder as a guy to 'emulate.' Pearl Jam has been around for 20 years, and they did a lot of crazy things that were motivated by a strong personal ethos. They fought Ticketmaster (and lost) and tried to organize their own shows at non-Ticketmaster venues. They ended up being a band that put their fans first, and built a very loyal following by doing so. I guess ultimately I liked that they worked hard, and that it paid off in a way that let them pursue the music they wanted to pursue.

But in the end, this is really just a post about how shitty my year has been so far. On January 3 a kid flew around a blind corner and nailed us, putting our car up on a guardrail and causing a lot of body damage. Then the following Monday my doctor called and said I had polyps in my gallbladder and I'm going to have to have that plucked out. Spent the remainder of the month in pain, afraid everything I ate was going to make me sick. 

So, Eddie, what do you say? How do I tackle this one?

On June 30, 2000, Pearl Jam was playing the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Nine fans were crushed or suffocated as the crowd surged toward the stage. The band cancelled the rest of its European Tour and retreated to America. A few months later they started a North American tour, prompting Vedder to say that "...playing, facing crowds, being together—it enabled us to start processing it."(Not that my situation is comparable, by any means.)

But it was good advice. So I'm back in the new book. Tallying a new word count. Reading and researching like I haven't done in years.

Download the show at Sugarmegs.

Eddie Vedder
University Of California Berkeley, Zellerbach Auditorium, Berkeley, CA, April 7, 2008


Walking The Cow-(Daniel Johnston)
Around The Bend
I Am Mine
Dead Man Walking
I’m Open
Man Of The Hour
Setting Forth
Guaranteed
No Ceiling
Far Behind
Rise
Millworker (James Taylor)
Goodbye
Satellite
Drifting
You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (Lennon, McCartney)
Here’s To The State (Phil Ochs)
Trouble (Cat Stevens)
If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
Parting Ways
Forever Young (Bob Dylan)
Porch
Society With Jerry Hannan (Jerry Hannan)
Growin’ Up (Bruce Springsteen)
Lukin
No More
Arc
Hard Sun With Liam Finn, Ej And Jerry Hannan (Gordon Peterson)

More Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!

      Even though sun fell at my back, the sky ahead was still thick with rain. Through the scent of wet concrete and stinky neoprene I could smell my mountains.
      My Appalachians.
      For better or worse, like how a dog belonged to its fleas.

      All this happened as the sun slid across the sky and dipped toward Canaan Mountain on the other side of the valley, four or five miles away. It was a circus of pink and gold that lingered the way that only a summer-bound sunset can.

     "That’s why I’m here." He took an old pistol and a box of rounds out of a shoebox and threw them into the pack.
     I had to look away. "Ben...."
     "For snakes. Let’s go." He tossed the old pack over his shoulder.

     By the time we hit Seneca Rocks the sun was halfway into its trip to noon. Shadows stretched out from the mountains, hiding coolness in their breeches. At the climbing school guides sipped coffee and stretched their ropes. Ben pulled right up to the porch. Tourists lingered by their cars, as far from the guides as was proper. The stoners were slack-lining, their gear littered picnic tables. One had dreadlocks and a shaggy beard. I could smell weed as soon as I got out of the Jeep. Say what you will about raft guides, but at least they got wet once a day.

     We strode over the gashed earth where skidders and bulldozers had torn through the soil. Past smoldering piles of ash that used to be tsuga canadensis, kalmia latifolia. Indian pipes, whorled loosestrife, and flowering raspberry were little more than smoke signals now. A first-hand account of the destruction.

Download Hellbender for you Kindle at Amazon.com or for other devices at Smashwords.com.

HELLBENDER is here!

Here it is in the Kindle store http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006AHKFRU

For other eFormats try Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106486

I've also made Hellbender part of a bundle with The Devil and Preston Black for a special price on Amazon and Smashwords.

HELLBENDER Less than 24 hours until the brood hatches!

Get your Kindles ready, because they ain't going to be the same after this. Are your Nooks waterproofed?

The eVersion and a bundle are ready to go live first thing tomorrow morning, so you'll be able to jump right into HELLBENDER, or start at the very beginning with my man Preston Black in a specially priced bundle. All I can say is you're going to get dirty.

Hellbender Scrapbook.

     The smell of the spruce had ignited crazy dreams all night long. They weren’t memories though. I knew because the dream-forest was more climactic than any I’d ever seen. Spruce trees, three hundred feet tall and ten feet across at the base, rested on a bed of humus so thick I nearly sank. Laurels dense enough to confound a team of trackers kept intruders at arm’s length. The laurel hell went off in all directions, like a green quilt. When I opened my eyes, I expected to be in the center of a large, primeval forest, the kind of place that died long before I was born, but the old green was gone.
     Killed by axes and steam trains.

"Belsnicklers came to our farm every Christmas, dressed in sackcloth with coal dust all over their faces. Scary sons of bitches. Us kids had to just stand there while they threw candy on the floor. If we fidgeted they whipped us with switches. I've even seen elder spring from the frozen ground on Old Christmas Eve—"

The remains of an old brick pump house sat between us and the mine. The old machine house looked rough, but it still had four walls and most of its roof. Red dog and ash from old coke ovens paved the yard all around it.

HELLBENDER Creepin' up on ya.

Today I locked down the formatting for the Smashwords Edition eBooks. Kindle's next. Witches, whiskey and revenge--you ready?

HELLBENDER Coming Monday, November 21!

"And this was how shit like this always went down. Late at night. Middle of nowhere. Not a credible witness in the bunch."

Henry Collins HELLBENDER

HELLBENDER draft finished!

From HELLBENDER:

     My words were rooted in these hills, carried on the backs of the Irish farmers who followed the Potomac southwest instead of crossing the spruce-covered ridges of the Allegheny Front. My muscles formed from climbing white oaks and boulders, from hauling firewood. The mountain rivers that flashed through narrow canyon walls, over boulders and under high railroad bridges, flowed through my veins. Laurel brakes nestled beneath Pottsville sandstone ledges were my nursery. Sad fiddle tunes, played by old-timers beside a dying fire were my genetic code.
     In these mountains I’d seen things that Alex would never believe: floods, rockslides, forest fires and blizzards. One time I saw a bear defend her cubs from hunting dogs while I hid in the upper branches of an old oak. Later, on that same trip I saw a blacksnake swallow her young when a hawk flew over. One time, near Smoke Hole I found a cave where thousands of bats roosted, then came back a year later to see that the Forest Service had barricaded its entrance to protect them. When I was really little I saw West Virginia’s last confirmed cougar trapped and beaten on the plains above Red Creek. The musky smell of its urine as it pissed itself had made me cry.
     From a clearing on Spruce Knob I spent weeks watching two comets, Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake, as they streaked sunward in a cycle of rebirth as old as the solar system. Then on a backpacking trip to Roaring Plains I saw the sky strangely empty of planes and contrails for three whole days, only to return to a world much different than the one I had left.
     In my short life dead rivers had struggled back to life, the orange-stained rocks are the only reminders of a time when nothing would live there. In my short life mountaintops disappeared, bulldozed into tender streams. None of this could I have seen from anywhere other than here.
     And I couldn’t prove most of it.

TRILOBITES Breece D'J Pancake

I don't know why I'm posting somebody else's short stories here. Maybe it's because he's a writer too few people know about. I suppose if I say I'm 'curating' the story it's a little less odd. He's a West Virginia writer, a true representative of Appalachia, and his sad success mirrors the tragedy many of us in Appalachia face--reward comes only with great personal loss.

I may have posted this before, but Kurt Vonnegut said, about Pancake, "I give you my word of honor that he is merely the best writer, the most sincere writer I've ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good. You and I will never know."
from The Atlantic Monthly

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/77dec/pancake.htm

The Atlantic Monthly | December 1977

Trilobites

"I see a concrete patch in the street. It's shaped like Florida, and I recollect what I wrote in Ginny's yearbook: 'We will live on mangoes and love.'"

by B. D'J. Pancake

.....

open the truck's door, step onto the brick side street. I look at Company Hill again, all sort of worn down and round. A long time ago it was real craggy, and stood like an island in the Teays River. It took over a million years to make that smooth little hill, and I've looked all over it for trilobites. I think how it has always been there and always will be, least for as long as it matters. The air is smoky with summertime. A bunch of starlings swim over me. I was born in this country and I have never very much wanted to leave. I remember Pop's dead eyes looking at me. They were real dry, and that took something out of me. I shut the door, head for the café.

I see a concrete patch in the street. It's shaped like Florida, and I recollect what I wrote in Ginny's yearbook: "We will live on mangoes and love." And she up and left without me—two years she's been down there without me. She sends me postcards with alligator wrestlers and flamingos on the front. She never asks me any questions. I feel like a real fool for what I wrote, and go into the café.


Read the whole thing here: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/77dec/pancake.htm