BooksofJobe.com

Ramblings about live performance

During my teens/twenties, I went to a lot of live events. Mostly concerts—I had (and may still have somewhere) a collection of ticket stubs that would impress even the most avid concertgoer—but other random performances, too. Stand-up comedy, magicians, even an old-fashioned circus freak show.

And it wasn’t just big arena shows or “professional” level performances. One of the coolest things I remember from a trip to San Francisco was all the street performers, especially a teenage drummer/percussionist who played on a makeshift drumset consisting of nothing but empty buckets—and it was absolutely incredible.

After joining the full-time “adult” workforce, nights out became less and less frequent. Since I moved to the Midwest eight years ago, I’ve only been to a couple of concerts, and the last one was not long after we moved out here. Luckily, that’s changing in 2015.

One of the most impressive non-concert performances I’ve ever seen was Cirque du Soleil’s “O” at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It was the kind of mind-melting experience you’d expect from Cirque, with the added element of an enormous pool, with many of the tricks incorporating water in some way. It was absolutely astounding—I still remember it like it was yesterday, some ten years later. When it was announced that a touring production of one of Cirque du Soleil’s newer shows, Varekai, was coming to town, the opportunity arose to give my wife a killer Christmas present, and—who are we kidding?—one I would enjoy as well.

I’m not going to give you a complete play by play of the whole show because a) I’m lazy, and b) that’s boring, but you generally know what you’re in for with those folks: lots of incredibly lean and/or muscular (and often times rather small) people hurling themselves through the air or flipping and tumbling around the stage in costumes that look like Dr. Seuss on mushrooms. One character wore a helmet with a lightbulb screwed into it—a look that reminded me of an odd mix between DEVO and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Cirque-Du-Soliel-4347 — No wonder the bottled water at the arena was so expensive—it was dosed with LSD.

There was dancing, gymnastics, acrobatics, a surprisingly good live band that played music that sounded like something out of a psychedelic renaissance faire, laugh out loud comedic relief, and it was all wrapped into a two hour long package that ran like a well-oiled machine. I can’t presume to speak for my wife, but between the show, the very good seats, and the fact that we lucked into extraordinarily good parking (and free!), I had a blast. It was a great night.

And that’s the point I’m taking my sweet time meandering to—part of what made it so great, so special, was the fact that it was a live performance. I used to go to so many concerts, so many other kinds of shows, that I took it all for granted. Seeing people performing, regardless what kind of performance it was, became no big deal. Well, that’s wrong. It is a big deal.

Watching people perform makes me happy. Someone is (generally) doing what they love, and it’s hard—for me, anyway—not to get caught up in it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a sold out arena or a dive bar or a sidewalk or a swanky Vegas lounge, it’s all good.

That being said, I will be experiencing performance of the sold out arena variety this September, thanks to five minutes of boredom on Thanksgiving weekend and a stroke of luck. Behold:

Won from my local radio station via Facebook, can you believe it?

For the first time in probably two decades, I’m going to a (probably, by then) sold out arena to see a major rock band. The ironic part? It will be probably three times the size of Cirque du Soleil in terms of the crowd, with a fraction of the production value. It’ll be (aside from the lights and maybe some lasers or something) some guys standing on stage rocking their asses off. I can hardly wait.

So I guess what this all boils down to is a smidge of advice—if I’m presumptuous enough to think any of you want, need, or will heed it: go check out somebody doing something live. It doesn’t have to be packed into a sea of thousands of people, or require tickets that cost as much as a utility bill. Go see a local band at a bar. Check out a comedian. If you’re lucky enough to be able to, go check out a sketch comedy or improv troupe. If you see somebody standing by the bus stop playing a guitar, listen to a song or two. Just appreciate the act of someone performing.

*Looks down* Hey, how did I end up on this soapbox?

Tell me what some of your favorite performances are—are they concerts, plays, comedians, or something else altogether?

The State of the Jobe Address

Way back in the day, when I was a young, spry booksofjobe.com and my wife and I first started sending out Christmas cards, I used to try and write little personal messages in them. Nothing major, just a couple of paragraphs on how my wife and I were, and some questions about the recipients—how they were doing, what was new in their life, etc. My efforts were sporadic at best, but the intention was good.

As time went on, however, the messages became less and less frequent, until they pretty much just petered out completely. This year a crazy idea occurred to me: what if I had the ability to write a sort of a general Christmas letter, updating family and friends on the goings on of me and my family, and post it in some central location where everyone could read it at their leisure (the fact that it’s after Christmas notwithstanding)…hey, wait a minute…

It’s been a pretty eventful year around BoJ HQ, for better or for worse. New job, hospital stays, published stories, writing a freakin’ novel, holy smokes! Okay, let’s break it down:

New Job: I ended the relationship with my previous employer and started working for my county’s Emergency Communications department—i.e., 911. I never would’ve guessed I’d end up doing anything like this, but man, is it ever a blast. It’s not for everyone, and not for the squeamish, but I absolutely love it. I work with a—mostly—crass band of sarcastic misfits (who know that’s a compliment), and I actually look forward going to work every day (well, okay, most days, who am I kidding?). I start training next week for Fire/EMS dispatching, with Law Enforcement dispatch down the line. It’s a little stressful, a lot rewarding, and to the coming year all I can say is: bring it on.

Hospital stays: For my wife, it’s been a year of doctor’s appointments, procedures, prescriptions, pokes, prods, and of course, one nerve-racking hospital stay. I’m not going to rehash it all right now—you can read a little more about it here if you don’t know what I’m referring to—but we end the year on a more hopeful note than we imagined we would a few months ago. The news we got, while not exactly good, wasn’t as dire as we were led to expect. She will still need surgery someday, but ‘someday’ means (with proper diet, exercise, seemingly constant doctor visits and a plethora of medications) a decade or two, not the near future. So, it goes without saying that was a bit of a relief to hear. That’s not to say every day is full of unicorns eating glitter and pooping rainbows, but it’s a hell of a lot better outlook than we had over the summer. All in all, things could be a lot worse.

Writing: Last but not least, there’s the writing, which, lest we forget, is what got this whole ball o’ wax I call a blog started. I ended 2013 resolving to, among other things, get a story published in the coming year, and I managed knock that one out of the park by getting 5 stories published this year (along with 26 rejections, but that’s beside the point). The feeling you get when someone tells you they want to publish something you’ve written is kind of hard to describe—rewarding, validating, and a relief are words that come to mind—but what’s strange is how quickly you move on to the next thing. A story got published? Awesome, on to the next one, it needs a home, too.

I’ve started submitting my new stories to markets that are harder to get into, so the rejections are really going to pile up, but that’s okay, because possibly the most important thing that happened with my writing this year is that I gained a small semblance of confidence. I still wonder if all the thousands upon thousands of words I write amount to little more than a steaming pile of poo, but I keep writing anyway. You know that saying, ‘dance like no one’s watching’? It’s kind of like that—write like no one’s reading. It’s been put more eloquently by others, ‘write for yourself,’ ‘write the kind of stuff you’d like to read,’ etc., but the gist is the same.

And that’s probably a good attitude to have, because have I mentioned I finished the rough draft to a goddamned novel? I’m super proud of it, which is good, because lord knows if anyone will ever read it (in an officially published form, anyway). I’m also *this close* to finishing a second one, so next year I hope to have not one but two completed novels to send out into the big scary world to try and get published. Wish me luck!

One strange thing about having a blog: I literally have no idea who’s reading it. Don’t get me wrong, I know a few things: I know roughly how many people look at it, and in what country they reside, and I do know who a few of you are, but that’s about it. So if you took the time to read this blog, now or ever, thanks.

Feel free to hit me up, here or on Facebook, and catch me up on what I may be missing that’s new and important in your lives. And may your new year be filled with whatever it is that makes you happy. Unless what makes you happy is something really weird or illegal, in which case, c’mon, get your shit together.

Sleep, who needs it?

Subway is a nefarious band of lowly olive hoarders. This really doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but I have to get it off my chest. With all the meats and cheeses they have that you would think cost them so much more, how has the simple black olive come to be the most valuable ingredient under their roof?

They put, like, six little rings on a footlong, and only a few more if you ask for extra. Maybe they’re regulated by the fearsome Black Olive Mafia (BOM, for short), and are only allowed one olive ring per two inches of sandwich, or risk severe fines and penalties. And you don’t want to piss off the BOM.

Anyway, moving on…

I did have one piece of writing-related news I forgot to mention in my last post: my short story Of the Beholder is being published in the horror anthology Robbed of Sleep: Stories to Stay Up For, Volume II, which is out in e-book format TODAY! (and coming soon in paperback) RoSV2 features 19 authors and is edited by Troy Blackford. I’m thrilled to be a part of it, and I really like the story included for a couple of reasons:

1) It was the product of a writing prompt, which I had never thought of as a way to produce a good, viable story. I saw prompts just as a way for people to get over writer’s block and nothing more. I know now I was wrong.

2) I rewrote, edited, revised, and ultimately finished the story while I had a lot going on in my life, both personally and professionally. I had become incredibly unhappy at my job and was deliberating the pros and cons of looking for work elsewhere, and this was around the time my wife spent 3 nights in the ICU. Working on the story provided me with both a distraction from my problems and a release of frustration.

During the writing of this story I realized that writing was more than just something I did in my spare time. It had become a part of me and who I was—I realized I need to be writing to be happy (although for a few years writing was replaced by making music, so maybe I just need a creative outlet), and that’s around the time I really tried to kick myself into high gear in regard to my productivity, with mostly positive results.

I say all that so to say this: check out my story, Of the Beholder, in Robbed of Sleep: Stories to Stay Up For, Volume II. It’s an awesome assortment of scary stories told by some really talented writers. Besides, sleep is highly overrated anyway, don’t you think?

Don’t call it a comeback! No, seriously—don’t.

Ah, December. The temperature plummets, people stop complaining about Christmas decorations being out too early and start complaining about Christmas music being played too often. It’s a special time, and it feels like the time is right to return to my friends here in the blogosphere (Blogtopia? Blogopolis?). Yeah baby, I’m back!

So, what can I tell you about my vacation from blogging? Well, I stayed true to my word and wrote like a freakin’ bandit. I mentioned before I went away about the opening of the vomit hatch; said hatch has stayed open and the vomit speweth forth like a geyser (you’re welcome for the visual).

I can’t call the (sorry to say) as-yet-untitled novel I was working on completely finished yet, but it’s close—I’d say 85-90%. Mostly just some minor tweaks here and there, quintuple checking for typos and punctuation errors, and then I think we’re cooking with gas. I put it aside while I figure out a solution to my printing dilemma—i.e., I can’t print right now—and to get some much needed feedback from eyes other than the ones in my head, and then I think I’m popping the cork on some champagne and celebrating the completion of my first novel. With any luck, it will be finished (and titled!) by spring.

In the meantime, as I said the vomit hatch couldn’t be closed if I tried, so I let it flow. I had started a novel that I had to stop to do some research (a wiser man may have done the research before starting the novel, but I digress), and decided to dig back in. Instead of picking up where I left off, I decided to start over with a complete rewrite and currently stand at 21k words. I’m anxious to tell you about how I’ve kept up my incredible (for me) word count, but not now. Next time.

I’m still having a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to what to do with the blog. Between how much I’m writing and my work schedule I’m not watching as much TV (enjoying Gotham, on the fence about this season of American Horror Story), and movies only here and there (finally saw World War Z—liked it but it seemed a tad anti-climactic).

I’m still reading steadily, but I don’t really have much interest in littering the blog with book reviews of every single book I read. I may still post the occasional review for any book that really rocks my world, but otherwise I’m thinking of posting little micro-reviews on Goodreads, so if you utilize that particular facet of social media and haven’t done so already, friend me on the double, buster!

(On a side note, no review, but I just finished 11/22/63 and thought it was pretty superb. I would point to this book for people who don’t like Stephen King and suggest they maybe give it a shot; it’s something special.)

And what else is new? The website, for starters. I don’t know how apparent it is on mobile devices, but I gave the site a much-needed facelift and reorganized the menus. Also, most exciting of all, I added a few of my stories! I became increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that I’m a fiction writer and had none of my fiction available to read, so I did something about that. There’s now a drop down menu with some of my flash fiction for you to peruse at your leisure, so if you haven’t read ’em before (two were on the blog previously, the others are the ones I got published this year—the rights reverted from the magazines back to me, so I put them on here), give ’em a look.

That’s about it for now—just sort of an awkward wave hello (after all, awkward is what I do best) to let you guys know I’m back in the saddle. It’s really good to be back. So, how have you all been?

And Now, For a Brief Intermission

It’s hard for me to believe it’s been 20 months (almost to the day, coincidentally) since I started the blog. I’ve taken it seriously and I think it’s done wonders both for my writing itself and my mental state while trying to find my footing as a struggling author. The friends I’ve made and support I’ve gotten from WordPress and beyond has far exceeded my naive expectations when I sat dumbly in front of my computer in February 2013. That being said, it’s time for a wee little break.

It’s nothing serious, no big departure, just a little break. And believe me when I say, it’s not you, it’s me.

See, here’s what happened: when I started the blog, I was still figuring out what I was trying to do with my writing (something I’m still trying to figure out, but that’s beside the point). Even though I’d finished a novella and thought (god help me, I really did) I was ready to try and get it published or self-publish, I still had no real idea what I was doing. I was like the monkey they say you could sit in front of a keyboard and eventually it would write Shakespeare—except instead of Shakespeare it was a mediocre-to-poor kidnap/torture thriller.

But I really wanted to get after it and make things happen, and so I forced myself to jump in with both feet and start blogging. As I did so, I realized how far behind I really was. I was nowhere near ready to publish anything but blog posts, and I decided the best thing to do was stick to a strict schedule and keep at it. I’ve tried my best to crank out at least one post a week and, with a few exceptions, I’ve done a pretty good job of doing just that. I was using the blog as a crutch to hold me up and keep me writing while I tried to hone my skills and strengthen my story-telling muscles. There were ebbs and flows, but I kept at it.

Then I hit a patch a couple months ago where I felt dead in the water. I had drafts of short stories that I didn’t know how to finish, and longer projects that I couldn’t wrap my head around. I finally decided on a project to make the first novel and went to it, writing about 16k words before the new job and life caused me to stall out a little bit—then I got stuck again.

I went into the comments on one of Chuck Wendig’s posts and whined about how I felt stuck and couldn’t seem to make myself put words on the page. I received a comment back from author Kay Camden (link to her awesome website). It was simple, succinct, and to the point:

“Stop thinking. Start writing. Open the vomit hatch. Let it out.” (NOTE: DO NOT GOOGLE THE PHRASE “VOMIT HATCH.”)

That might not sound like much, but it was exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it (sidenote: what is it about vomit as a metaphor for writing? it’s so oddly fitting). I said to myself, You know what? She’s right. What the hell are you waiting for? And so I kicked myself in the ass and started typing. In the two months that followed, I proceeded to knock out about 50k words and finish the rough draft. Not exactly the Tasmanian Devil behind the keyboard, but as productive a stretch as I’ve ever had.

And the best part? It’s hasn’t really let up. I wanted to let the story breathe a little before I jumped into edits and rewrites, so I turned to three unfinished short stories and have made tremendous progress with those, finishing two and hopefully wrapping up the third in the next few days. By next week I should be ready to tackle the second draft of the novel.

My late friend Mike (RIP, buddy) once compared writing to having a fever (there it is again—writing as a kind of sickness), where you’re consumed by this need, this compulsion to get the stories out of your head and onto the page. I never really felt that way. I mean, I have stories to tell and all that, but I could go a day without writing and be just fine. Two days, even. Hell, a week. But once I opened the vomit hatch I haven’t been able to close it completely since. Every spare minute I have I want to be writing, rewriting, or editing, or it’s time wasted. Don’t get me wrong, I still watch my TV shows and movies; I still read my books. But you know what I mean.

I have Vomit Hatch Fever.

All of which brings me back to this dear, sweet blog o’mine. There have been more than one occasion in the last year and eight months where I felt like I had run out of things to write about, and I would manage to pull a post out of thin air and make my self-imposed weekly deadline. Lately it feels like all I’ve been writing are book reviews, and to be honest I’m bored with that. Couple that with the fact that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), when many writers (and bloggers) are strapped to a chair with a coffee IV and a catheter (possible slight exaggeration) trying to meet the challenge of writing 50k words by the end of the month, and it just seemed like a natural time to take a little break so I can focus solely on writing and recharge the blogging batteries.

So this will be my last post for a while, probably until the beginning of December. I’m going spend November knee deep in semicolons and em-dashes, with piles of unnecessary commas littered about like punctuation shrapnel in the Great Writing War. Whenever I think of something that would be a good idea for the blog I’m going to jot it down so I have things to write about when I come back, and I have a feeling the site is due for a bit of a facelift, so things may look a little different when you visit next.

Any of you that want to keep in touch outside of WordPress and haven’t done so already, feel free to send me a friend request on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

I hope to come back revitalized and full of great posts. My biggest fear? That you wonderful readers will find another insecure, socially awkward writer to follow in my absence, and when I confront you about it, sitting in the glow of your screen reading that other person’s blog, you cry out defensively:

I’m finally finished (by which I mean I’m really not even close to being finished at all)

A little over a year ago (okay, it was 06/17/13, I got curious and looked it up) I wrote a post proclaiming I’d finished the rough draft of my first novel. I won’t/can’t go back and read it because it will make me cringe too hard, but I remember not feeling the sense of pride or accomplishment I thought I would or should.

There were a couple reasons for that: the story’s word count was simply too low for it to be considered a novel, as it was solidly in novella territory, but I also just didn’t like the way the story turned out. It was a good idea, and one I’m itching to rewrite in the near future, but that first draft was mostly unusable crap.

I mention all that because after writing still another rough draft that was novella length (one that was much better and will take significantly less to make it into a something workable), I finally have a legitimate rough draft of a legitimate novel. And you know what? It feels pretty good.

It’s a rewrite of a novella I wrote maybe a year and a half, two years ago. I was proud of it then, and gave it to a couple people to read. Their opinions were unanimous—what I thought was a cool cliffhanger ending to the story left them coldly unsatisfied. “It stopped right when it was getting good,” one of them said.

So I went on to other things and kept writing, but the story burned in the back of mind constantly (as all unfinished stories do), until finally I had an idea that I thought might work. Then a few months ago I got to it and started writing, which has left me where I am now—with just over 65,000 words of raw mass. A giant hunk of clay, waiting to be formed into a bizarre-looking ashtray. Or, as Mr. Eloquence Chuck Wendig calls first drafts, a big vat of vomit with a bunch of legos in it. So now begins the task of sifting through the vomit and snapping bricks together.

And it’s not like all the short stories I’ve been writing don’t count for anything—on the contrary, I still have a handful I’m trying to get done and at no point will there never be an end to writing them. They’re fun, after all. But there’s something about knowing I wrote an honest-to-god book, you know?

So now the real work begins. Fleshing out characters, fixing clunky dialogue, shrinking plot holes, all that junk. It’s going to be hard, but I’ve already come this far, too late to stop now. The editing (and continued writing on whatever project I pick next) will continue to eat into my blogging time—if you haven’t noticed, I’ve been fairly inactive on here, and that’s likely to continue, at least for a while—but I’ll get into that with my next post.

In the meantime, I need to find some hip boots or some waders or something: I’ve got to go looking for legos in enough vomit to fill a kiddie pool.

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (1991) — If anyone needs me, I’ll just be in the shower until Halloween

I’ve mentioned before my disdain for books that are slow going out of the gate. My patience is short if something doesn’t happen right away. If American Psycho’s reputation hadn’t preceded it, I may have given up on it as I read 40, 50, even 60 pages in and nothing of note had happened yet. However, knowing there was a lot coming down the line, I stuck it out and kept reading. Man, am I glad I did.

I saw the film version a long time ago (so long ago that it was in theaters), and I didn’t remember a lot about it. One thing I did recall was some people calling the book ‘unfilmable.’ I never really got why until I read it. This book—the tale of Patrick Bateman, a yuppie Wall Street serial killer—is freakin’ crazy.

First, the good news: once you’re far enough into it, this book is completely captivating. It’s a bit like watching a train wreck—you may not want to look (read), but damn if you can’t take your eyes away. It takes some time to get there, but once it does it sucks you in like few books I’ve read do. Even though there are really no likable characters in the book, you still find yourself fascinated by them.

Now the bad news: it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s a good book, but only if you can stomach it. Sex, violence, animal cruelty, all described in incredibly graphic detail. I would put it just slightly below The End of Alice on the skeevy scale I just made up. Which makes it all that much stranger to say, yes, it’s a really good book—you know, that one with the torture and cannibalism? Yeah, really good.

And while it’s not necessarily every reader’s cup of tea, I would recommend any writers out there read it, just to see how far Ellis pushes the reader. The narrative is kind of all over the place. One chapter has no real beginning or end, there are chapters devoted to 80’s pop music, and at one point in the height of the action it jumps inexplicably from 1st to 3rd person, then back again a couple pages later. It’s actually quite amazing what he does with this book.

It takes you on a ride, and whether you like it or not—the ending leaves you with more questions than answers—you won’t soon forget it.

Just in time for Halloween!

Just a quickie to let y’all know issue #2 of Jitter Magazine hit newsstands today (do any of you have newsstands where you live? I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen one in person, other than at an airport—inquiring minds want to know!), and features my short story Randy’s Bad Day, as well as 18 other stories and poems from the world of horror.

Perfect timing, really. Get yourself in the Halloween spirit—read yourself some scary stuff and get your spook on here:Jitter Magazine #2.

(Did I really just write ‘get your spook on’?)

A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (1993) — I’ll Try Not to Gush

Since I started reading a lot again a couple of years ago, I’ve read some pretty good books. Even a few really good books. But I hadn’t read one that really floored me, leaving me in awe of what a brilliant piece of work it was. Until now.

A Simple Plan tells the story of three men in rural Ohio who find a plane with $4.4 million (along with a dead pilot) at a crash site in a snow-covered nature preserve: there’s Hank, the mild-mannered accountant whose first instinct is to give the money back; Jacob, Hank’s older, alcoholic, loser brother; and Lou, Jacob’s best friend who also just happens to be up to his armpits in debt and is the first one to suggest that they should split the money.

Hank (being the de facto smart one in the group) decides that he will sit on the money for six months while they wait for the snow to melt and the plane to be discovered, then watch the news for reports of the missing money. If, after the six months is up, no one seems to be looking for the loot, they split it up three ways and all become instant millionaires.

See? Simple.

Needless to say, it doesn’t take long for the shit to hit the fan and their simple plan to go out the window. In my head while I was reading, I wondered what the worst case scenario was—how bad things could possibly get. Everything I imagined as the worst possible outcome had already happened by the halfway mark. That left me engrossed in the book in a way I haven’t been since I was a kid, reading Stephen King books late at night on my bed. At one point near the end, I found myself on a lunch break at work reading while I walked to the restroom. I just could not put this book down.

One thing that bugs me about some books is that they strike me as too “writery.” There’s a term for it; it’s called “purple prose”—when an author is overly descriptive and wordy. Scott Smith is the opposite. Like his other novel, the similarly excellent 2006 horror story The Ruins, his writing is very straight forward in a way that never gets bogged down with unnecessary description. And since A Simple Plan is written in the first person, it really felt like the protagonist was sitting there talking directly to you, telling you the story.

Part of the brilliance of the story is the way things seem to unfold organically, gradually getting worse and worse, and the characters reacting accordingly then rationalizing their actions. Hank—and Hank’s pregnant wife—become masters at rationalizing the things they’ve done. It makes you wonder how far normal people can be pushed under extreme circumstances.

Of course, it should go without saying this book is not for everyone. There is A LOT of violence, sometimes quite graphic, and if that’s not your cup of tea you probably won’t like it. In some ways it reminded me of the films Fargo or Very Bad Things, albeit with a much more serious tone.

For me, though, it was a brilliantly told story with an ending that, while not exactly a ‘twist’ ending, you don’t see coming. Once you read it, however, you wonder if any other ending could fit so perfectly. It’s a gut-wrenching conclusion to a story that might make you second guess if you’d ever be tempted enough to think about keeping found money.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (2007) : A Rock ‘n’ Roll Ghost Story

Ghost stories tend to be hit or miss with me. A lot of times I don’t get into them, but if one manages to get its hooks in me, I’ll usually love it. Joe Hill managed to do the impossible and create one that’s smack dab in the middle of the road.

Judas Coyne—not his real name—is a semi-retired, world famous rock star, along the lines of Ozzy, with a taste for the macabre. He has a vast collection of items related to the occult, voodoo, and witchcraft, so when Jude, as he’s mostly called, is alerted to an online auction claiming to sell a haunted suit, he buys in instantly, no questions asked. When the suit arrives (in a heart-shaped box, as suits do), it doesn’t take long before Jude starts seeing the ghost of a creepy old man dressed in the suit and swinging a pendulum-shaped razor blade hanging on a chain. From there so begins the journey to find who the old man is, why he’s haunting Jude, and, as things escalate, how to stop him.

The book starts like gangbusters. Sometimes ghost stories—and haunted house stories, for that matter—go for the slow burn, building anticipation until there’s a grand reveal. With HSB, Joe Hill gives us the ghost in the first few pages and we’re off to the races, which I really appreciate. I like books that just kick right off without any mucking around.

The ghost is/was a hypnotist, and has a strong power of suggestion, putting thoughts in people heads in an attempt to influence their actions. There’s some excellent creepy imagery tied to this, in the first half especially, including a scene involving Jude’s girlfriend watching a snuff film with a gun in her mouth that made my skin crawl. Once we hit the midway point, however, the book falters a little.

Jude and his girlfriend, Georgia/Marybeth, head out on a road trip (with his two dogs, who play an important role) from Jude’s home in upstate New York down to Georgia, Florida, and ultimately Louisiana, in an attempt to stop the ghost. There are some pretty decent moments throughout the second half, but nothing that matches the scare and creep factors in the first half.

It was interesting to read a book with fairly contemporary rock ‘n’ roll references—Rancid, Anthrax, and Trent Reznor are all mentioned in the book, among others—but it seemed to me he was trying to hard to work the whole ‘heart-shaped box’ in there. It felt almost like he’d thought of a good title, one that referenced a popular song (by Nirvana, if anyone didn’t know) and fit the rock aspect of the book, then tried to force it into the story whether it worked or not.

Part of me is glad I read this after reading Hill’s superior last novel, NOS4A2. If I’d read HSB when it first came out, knowing—despite the name change—that it was the debut novel from Stephen King’s son, I’m sure I would’ve been a lot harder on it. But reading it now, knowing what the author is capable of, it’s easier to accept HSB for what it is: a really good—but not great—way to spend a few hours creeping yourself out.

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