Jason Talks Writing Horror at ALA Annual Show
Jason Offutt to appear on Coast to Coast AM
Getting a call in the early afternoon asking me to talk about my books between 2 and 4 a.m. CST in 12 hours is great when it’s from Coast to Coast AM. See you all tonight (Wednesday, July 14 for you PSTers). You can listen pretty much anywhere.
The Harbinger of Death Gave Me the Finger
This first appeared in June 2013 during a short semester teaching abroad in London.
The raven bothered me. Walking through Highgate Cemetery in the late afternoon with a small group of students looking for the graves of one of my favorite authors (Douglas Adams), and some guy named Marx (not Groucho, the serious one who worried more about the fate of the proletariat than he did of proper beard maintenance), a raven’s caw split the stillness of this ancient, vine-covered final resting place of roughly 170,000 people.
I froze and looked around. Nothing.
The raven, an intelligent, three-pound creature marked by legend to signal the end of the British Empire if the flock left the Tower of London (only about six are left there), was really, really close. But, scanning the heavy deciduous canopy that loomed over about 53,000 gravestones, this black bird, as big as a small dog, was invisible. Was it even there at all? This was the only time the harbinger of death cawed during my trip to the cemetery and I got more nervous with each step.
Then my chewing gum crunched. “Ouch,” I said, spitting gum into my hand. Bits of silver dotted the green glob. Are you kidding me? I stuck my tongue into the hole in my tooth just to be sure. I lost a filling?
At the caw of the raven, a vital piece of oral hardware popped out, opening my jawline to infection and, what was worse, giving me an extreme sensitivity to all the beer I planned to drink while in England. I was 4,290.5 miles away from my dentist. Problems with teeth, much like problems with your private parts, aren’t things people worry about when they’re away from home. Travelers are more concerned with pickpockets and having to talk to French people.
At that moment, I did what any British person would do in this situation; I went to the pub.
The cemetery sits atop a steep hill in the Highgate area of London as most things there do. Of course, some things also sit at the bottom of a steep hill. The pub we found was somewhere in the middle. Set back from the street, the Whittington Stone looked a bit more modern on the outside than most pubs I’ve been to, although that might mean it’s less than 500 years old. Inside, it captured the dark wood, and friendly “welcome and get politely drunk” atmosphere British pubs are known for.
The Whittington Stone pub is named after Richard Whittington (1354–1423), a merchant, four-time Lord Mayor of London, and epic champion of the lower class who founded a hospital for unwed mothers (it’s unknown if he helped them get their start), funded drainage systems for the poorer sections of London, and founded a charity that still exists. The “stone” on this hill is where he sat and heard ringing from Bow Bells Church six miles away; apparently 400 years before the Internet that was a pretty big deal for poor people in East London. A weatherworn statue of Wittington’s cat, a legendary mouser, sits just up the street from the pub.
Getting the hang of all this pub business (this was only a couple days into our journey), my students and I found a table, wood with a brass number at the end, and grabbed a menu. One of the many great things about pubs is what they do with their menus. Most pubs post menus outside so you don’t have to go in to realize you’ve made mistake and need to be somewhere else. A chalkboard marquee set up out front took the posted menu’s place, offering shepherds pie for £5.99, a pretty cheap price for dinner in London. Considering I’ve spent a pound more for just a hamburger (albeit a proper hamburger), £5.99 was right in my price range. The menu inside one-upped the marquee. It boasted a two-for-£7 deal my students took full advantage of.
My students ordered barbecue chicken, fish and chips, and one of them decided it would be best to flirt with the barmaid.
“What are you going to eat, Offutt?” one student asked.
Me? With fish and chips, a beef sandwich, and the chalkboard shepherds pie all looking delicious, I played with my tooth hole.
“Beer,” I said. “I’m going to have beer.”
Lots. The best part, I didn’t have to chew. Wait. That was the second best part.
Running into a quasi-medical problem so far away from home in 2013 isn’t like it was in 1847, or even 1987. I took advantage of the six-hour time difference and cell phone technology and called my dentist.
“There’s a product called Dentemp,” he said. “It’s a temporary filling. Get that and I’ll see you when you get home.”
In 1847, a traveler with a tooth problem may have died an agonizing, oozy death. Today I just went to the chemist (pharmacy) and got the British equivalent to Dentemp, Toofypegs (a name I assume people at an ad agency came up with while high on nitrous oxide). I was going to be fine. As for the rest of the trip—I survived my trip to England without an oral infection.
Screw you, raven.
I Hate Cormac McCarthy
Author’s note: This piece is based solely on my opinion. If you agree, great, if not, that’s cool too. I hope we can still be friends. Everyone has different tastes. For example, one of my wife’s favorite novels is, Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” I have not told her I wrote this for the simple fact that I’m not stupid.
As an author, I should never hate on other authors. It’s bad form. Hey, gang, we’re all on the same team, fighting the same fight, suffering the same setbacks, and celebrating the same victories. I love the writing community I’ve discovered online because that’s what we’re all about. We either know where other writers are and want to help them over their hump, or they know where we are and want to help us for exactly the same reason.
So, I would never talk shit about another author, especially one who’s won a Pulitzer Prize. I’ve honestly said since I pecked my first story into a Macintosh 512K at the only newspaper in 1987 that would give a job to someone as inexperienced as me—if I ever win a Pulitzer, I’m wearing it around my neck on a big gold chain 24/7.
Damn right, that’s what I would have done.
I’ve moved on from that. I’m here for my fellow writers who need a digital hug, or (hopefully) a literal kick in the pants when it comes to making their writing better. I love you all.
Except Cormac McCarthy. Fuck that guy.
McCarthy won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished fiction by an American author for his post-apocalyptic novel, “The Road,” even though authors have written about that kind of thing for years and no one paid them any attention. John Hillcoat directed the 2009 movie based on “The Road” that starred Viggo “Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings” Mortensen, Robert Duvall, and Charlize Theron.
What a great cast. I nearly went to the theater to watch this movie, but like I try to do with every film based on a book, I stopped at the public library to read “The Road” first (support your public library, folks).
Hey, gang, I have a question. Have you ever slogged through “The Road”? Come on, be honest. If so, good for you. You have the kind of strength to actually survive the post-apocalyptic hellscape America will become soon enough. However, that wasn’t me.
The same year McCarthy won the Pulitzer, Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love,” came out (and white-trashed so many American kitchens with those words painted on barn wood), as did “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “Water for Elephants,” Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects” (Flynn can write. Damn, can she write), and another post-apocalyptic work—which is highly more entertaining than McCarthy’s—Max Brooks’, “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.”
McCarthy can’t hold the jocks of these authors. They create characters, they paint a scene with something other than dirt and plants described in the depth of a surgeon discussing a recently-freed bowel obstruction, and they do not—I REPEAT, DO NOT—write shit sentences like this:
“He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.”
Wait. What? This is the kind of faux-poetry nerds get beaten up for writing in junior high school.
I’m fully convinced people say they like McCarthy’s work only because others have said they should. You want to feel like garbage at an intellectual dinner party, say you don’t understand the appeal of Cormac McCarthy, and twenty people will start lecturing you on how you failed to understand the deeper meaning of “Blood Meridian” that made such a violent book so goddamned boring, or the fact that Cormac really would know how to use a fucking quote mark if he thought it necessary, thank you very much.
Dear Pulitzer Prize committee: Never consider me for your award. I’ve seen what you think is good, and it ain’t.
Introspection From a Night at the Pub
This first appeared May 30, 2013 during a short semester teaching abroad in London.
It’s interesting what kind of insight you get about yourself when it’s through the eyes of someone who thinks you’re a bit silly, by which I mean they know you’re American.
The Warwick Arms is a friendly sort of pub (I’d like to think they all are). The warmth as you walk in is welcoming compared to the ever present cold rain that falls on London an average of 160 to 200 days of the year. Yellow tungsten lights glow on a wall of liquor bottles behind a polished wooden bar that spouts taps of UK beers like Fuller’s London Pride and Guinness Stout. Barmaids fill pint glasses of these room temperature beers by cranking hand pumps, no American Co2 set-ups here. Traditional British food like meat pies and fish and chips dot the menu, as well as a long list of Indian food.
But the most interesting part of any night at the pub is the locals.
“He was a piece of shit,” a man in a blue delivery uniform I’d soon discover was named Tom said to a gentleman in a tweed jacket (I’m not making that up) named Bob (I’m not making that up either). Both gentlemen sat on stools next to me at the bar.
Tom referred to British-born Michael Adebowale who brutally murdered British military drummer Lee Rigby near the southeast London Woolwich barracks in London May 22. Like Adebowale, his accomplice Michael Adebolajo was a convert to radical Islam. Witnesses say the men butchered Rigby with a knife and meat cleaver on a city street.
Bob took a pull of an amber lager in a tall, thin pint glass and sat it onto a Fuller’s London Pride coaster on the bar. “These were not smart boys,” he said. This was two days after the attack.
I took the dark black pint of Guinness the barmaid handed me, and turned toward Tom and Bob. “I doubt the American media has given this story more than a mention,” I said.
“Why’d you say that?” Tom asked.
Glad you asked, Tom. As a print journalist and current university journalism teacher, I feel I’m in a good position to criticize the media, and the American media is notoriously bad at covering its own country, let alone what’s going on overseas.
Like any good American, I didn’t realize I’d be wrong.
“When I came into town a couple of days ago, the front page of ‘The Metro’ (a free daily newspaper provided to the London Underground) was about the tornado in Oklahoma,” I said. “If a tornado hit a city of the same size here, the American media might not have mentioned it.”
“And why should they?” Tom asked. “There’s 300 million people there in America. There are 62 million people here. Why would they care?”
I didn’t expect that. The American media has faults – many, many faults, like the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo. When I drove to Canada in 2011, anyone who discovered I was from Missouri brought up a tornado that destroyed Joplin, Mo., months before. They seemed genuinely concerned. That same year, Tropical Storm Washi struck the Philippines killing more than 1,000 people. Can’t say I heard of it at the time.
“Say you’re in the middle of Utah,” Tom continued. “Why would you care about someone from Britain or from Kyrgyzstan, or even know where it is, you know?”
That made sense. But still. “Then why was the British press in Oklahoma?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of us over there,” Tom said. “More than you’d think.” Then he turned back toward Bob and resumed their conversation.
Sipping my inky black stout I thought Tom made a good point. Maybe the America-centric nature of the U.S. media isn’t because Americans don’t care about the rest of the world, it’s because, well, we really don’t care about the rest of the world.
“You’re not talking to me.” Bob’s voice grabbed my attention. He was in the middle of a story. “Piss off. My food’s getting cold.”
Bob howled in a belly laugh, and Tom joined him.
“Where you been so far?” Tom asked, turning back toward me, leaving Bob laughing at his own story.
“Today I went to Borough Market.”
Tom shook his head. “No, no. Burah. Burah Market. It’s spelled like that, though, isn’t it? Borough. But it’s pronounced Burah. You pronounce it Burr-oh.”
For an American, pronunciation in London is rather confusing. “I noticed that with the Thames (Tims) and Gloucester (Gloss-ter),” I said.
Tom nodded. “That’s because you Americans pronounce things phonetically. Which makes sense. With us, I don’t know. It’s hundreds of years of this. That’s just how it is.”
He drained his pint glass and motioned to the barmaid for another. “Where else you going over here?”
I smiled and said, “Stonehenge.” Maybe the most iconic 5,000-year-old structure on the planet, right up there with the Great Pyramid. It’s mysterious, something every school child reads about, or at least remembers from the first “Ice Age” movie, and I was going to hop on a bus and stand next to it in a few days.
“Stonehenge?” he asked, his voice rising a bit at the end. “You want to see a bunch of rocks?”
“Uh, yes,” I said.
“You do know they’re just in a circle, don’t you?”
Just another night at the pub.
Book Review: Temple of Conquest
Telep is a cliff climber, higher in the caste system of the land of Eveloce than one of his trade should be, other than his mentor Caleb, who has served the upper tier of the secluded mountain country faithfully. When Caleb suffers an injury no climber can return from, he is forced to leave Eveloce, and take with him his daughter, Ell, the woman who holds Telep’s heart.
Unbeknownst to Caleb or Ell, Telep follows them outside their beloved homeland into exile, determined to be with his love again. When Telep enters parts of the world he’s only heard stories of, he finds Caleb and Ell working for a people whose drive to expand their land’s boundaries is equalled only by their desire for vengeance on the mysterious people who live beyond.
In TEMPLE OF CONQUEST, author Mark Broe creates a rich fantasy world different than any I’ve dipped my nose into. It’s a world of distinct kingdoms with distinct people, distinct traditions, and distinct goals. From the erudite people of the mountain kingdom Eveloce, to the ship and bridge builders of the West Isles, to the miners and refiners of the southernmost South Nexus, and beyond, each culture is unique and believable, the people Broe populates them with doubly so.
I felt for Telep, as the woman he planned to marry, and her father, were taken from him and cast into a less civilized part of the world (at least that’s what residents of Eveloce are led to believe). I felt for Caleb as the better life he’d struggled to earn for his daughter is destroyed by the pop of a safety strap. And I felt for characters I met deeper into the book (no spoilers, man). Broe not only fleshed these characters into people I could see and hear, he created an emotional attachment from the character to the reader.
Detail of the expansion from South Nexus into the wilds beyond kept me flipping pages to see how these people were going to accomplish the loftiest goal their world had ever seen. Broe’s world building made sense, the different motivations of Telep, of Caleb, and project leader Ep Brody and his brother, the angry, bitter Ep Salo, made sense. And the essential profession of Telep and Caleb made sense. Broe is a rock climber, and used his expertise to make me feel I was alone on a cold, hard cliffside. I also enjoyed the battle scenes. I’m not sure Broe’s battled mythical beasts, but he gave a good picture of it.
Telep’s motivations after a pivotal moment in the story could have gone a few different ways, but I believed it when Telep was too strong to quit. As I finished the last bits of TEMPLE OF CONQUEST I understood the temple, the people of the temple, and how much I wanted to see more of them. Not that the book needed to continue, because that story was over. There seems to be more stories in this world to tell.
TEMPLE OF CONQUEST is a fun, fast read, filled with danger, politics, and good old-fashioned human feelings. I recommend this for fans of fantasy and adventure.
Mark Broe is a rock climber, writer (yeah, those two were obvious), and sound recordist from Michigan. He wrote the first draft of TEMPLE OF CONQUEST during a two-month trip to Guyana. You can find TEMPLE OF CONQUEST at Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Camcatbooks.com, and the book website, www.templeofconquest.com.
‘An Interview With Sci-Fi Author Jason Offutt’ — Hey, That’s Me
Review: The Brass Queen by Elizabeth Chatsworth
Constance Haltwhistle, a headstrong young woman of unruly hair and suspicious tendencies, has a problem. More than one, really, such as the law demanding she marry someone respectable or lose the family estate, an error with a sausage delivery to the king of Sweden he’s not happy about, and the damn cowboy. Yes, the cowboy was definitely a problem.
Haltwhistle is the Brass Queen, an arms manufacturer in a steampunk Victorian England. She has been in control of Haltwhistle Estate since her scientist father, the Baron Haltwhistle, disappeared. Whether he be treasure hunting in Africa, or China or on another world is anyone’s guess.
Photo credit: Sam Chinigo
The night of her coming-out party is a disaster, complete with an airship, a kidnapping, and the appearance of the cowboy J.F. Trusdale. Is all of this connected? Does Constance find a husband? And what happens when royalty comes to town?
THE BRASS QUEEN is the debut novel of author Elizabeth Chatsworth, and is a dizzyingly fun romp through a world where modern conveniences are run by steam, and all our characters are run by hijinks and shenanigans. Palace intrigue, spies, and Prussian polo, THE BRASS QUEEN has a lot to offer, usually through a veil of cheeky humor.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the rules of Prussian polo,” author Chatsworth writes, “there are only seven hundred and thirty-seven, so it’s much easier to understand than cricket.”
Constance is irresistibly flawed. Brilliant, beautiful, self-centered, and endowed with serious trust issues. The man she butts heads with, J.F. Trusdale, is a mysterious, rustic American who’s a bit of an embarrassment to Victorian British society. These characters gel, even when they try not to. The twists in the plot kept me eagerly flipping pages to see just how the Brass Queen handles herself in this world of royal backstabbing.
Much like its namesake, THE BRASS QUEEN is funny, smart and smooth. Chatsworth’s writing style is tight, light, and easy to read. Even the secondary and tertiary characters are fleshed out, the villains believable and truly, truly unlikeable.
The book, however, isn’t without a weakness or two. Chatsworth shows the reader a picture we’d like to see painted into a little more clarity. For one example, Chatsworth makes a point—more than once—that a character in Haltwhistle’s employ is an accomplished boxer, but we never see him box. This is in no way Chekhov’s gun, but the mentions made me expect he and the cowboy Trusdale (no small man himself) to square off.
No matter, I thoroughly enjoyed the fast-moving, humor-filled THE BRASS QUEEN, and I’m sure fans of steampunk will love it as much as I have.
The Brass Queen is a 448-page steampunk novel available at CamCatbooks.com and all major online outlets.
Jason Offutt is the author of sixteen books, including the novel So You Had to Build a Time Machine from CamCat Books. He teaches journalism at Northwest Missouri State University.
Honors for ‘So You Had to Build a Time Machine’
The Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition recently named my novel SO YOU HAD TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE a 2020 TOP NOTABLE 100 BOOK.
That’s bitchen. Check it out.
#amwriting #amreading#sciencefiction #WritingCommunity#books
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
Whose book is one of the American Book Fest’s best books of 2020? This guy’s. #americanbookfest #amwriting#WritingCommunity #scifi #scienceficiton
End transmission, over and out
Author’s note: This, as you’ll find in three paragraphs, is the last essay from my 29 years of writing a weekly newspaper column. It is not, however, the last humor column I’ll write. One will pop up every once in a while in this space for you subscribers, so don’t go anywhere.
Well, folks, this is it.
I’ve written a weekly humor column for various newspapers since 1991; that’s 29 years, which is longer than Gen Z has been alive. Gen Z. I have no idea what that means. General Zod? Generic Zantac? Given that generation’s propensity to stare at their phones instead of, oh, I don’t know, traffic, I think I’ll go with Generally Zombies.
I spent way too long on that joke. When I get in this mood, my wife often frowns and says, “you’re not funny.” I always respond the same way, “I have a stack of awards that say otherwise.” Those awards read, “Best Humor Column.”
Why, you’re asking, is this idiot talking about himself? You’re right, I shouldn’t be. The No. 1 rule I tell my opinion-writing students is never write a column about your column. I’m breaking that rule for the first time in 29 years simply because this is my last one.
When summer 2020 ticks off the calendar, so will this weekly essay. I’m finished. Jason’s column will be no more, non-existent, kaput.
Thanks for sticking with me this long.
Since this is my last chance to babble at you, here are a few topics I almost wrote entire columns about but thought better of it. Be warned, my kind and faithful readers, there are reasons I stopped myself.
Random Texts With My Wife
My Wife: My bath today was a baby wipe.
Random Conversation with Our Children
The Boy: *Yawns during homecoming parade*
Me: Are you tired?
The Boy: Yes.
Me: Well, you weren’t up half the night with a baby like I was.
The Boy: You know what you did. That’s your own fault.
Random Texts with My Wife
Jason: I forgot the list. What do we need from the store?
My Wife: Ice cream.
Jason: That’s it? Ice cream?
My Wife: Yes. Something with chocolate chunks in it.
Jason: What about milk?
My Wife: There’s already milk in ice cream.
Jason: I meant do we need milk? You know, for our children.
My Wife: Yeah. Get some eggs, too. And bread.
Jason: Do we have anything to eat at home?
My Wife: No. That’s why you’re buying ice cream.
Random Conversation with Our Children
The Girl: What’s for breakfast?
Me: Rocks and sticks.
The Boy: That’s better than what Mom cooks.
Random Events With the Baby
When a child is born, parents take it easy on them, at least the first few weeks. They have to be a month old before we even start thinking about tattoos. And smoking? No way. Not until kindergarten, young lady, and that’s final.
The first time we took our baby (now almost 6) out of the house, we were prepared for almost anything.
Have you ever gotten a newborn dressed to go into the late October air? The typical wardrobe consists of a onesie, PJs, some kind of sweater, a Kevlar vest, thermal Antarctic explorer pants and a coat made out of a bear.
Everything went well. My wife turned around to talk to the baby during the drive, even though at a couple of weeks old the baby’s conversation skills were lacking.
That’s not entirely true. The baby knew when she opened her mouth Mom would stick a boob in it.
When I parked, the baby started crying. My wife exhaled slowly.
“I wasn’t going to get her out.”
Putting a newborn into her snowsuit and strapped into and out of her rocket chair takes longer than when Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins got strapped in to go to the moon.
“I’m still not,” she said.
Then my wife did something so unexpected, so uncharacteristic, I had a hard time knowing what was real. She undid her bra, leaned into the backseat and breastfed the baby still strapped into the car seat.
I’d never been more in love with her.
Well, that’s it. I should have ended my last column with a poop joke, but my wife said that was tasteless. I thought she realized you all knew me by now. If you want to read more, you can subscribe to my website. I actually update it, sometimes.
As always, thanks for reading.