Revenge of the Bachelor

Ayako is heading to Tokyo for a week. As I’ve said before, the official story is that she’s going on an accounting business trip. Unofficially, I suspect she’ll be there to prevent a Godzilla-worshipping cult from using a stolen Russian nuke to set off a Mt. Fuji eruption that will resurrect their angry, rubbery god.

I will miss her desperately, but am more confident in my ability to maintain the basic living standards of a homo sapien this time around. After all, I made it through her previous two week absence without a hitch, other than briefly developing scurvy (I ate a few bags of Skittles and was fine). This time she’ll only be gone a little over a week, which probably isn’t even enough time to come down with a 19th Century maritime disease no matter how poorly I manage my own existence. I anticipate that the number of raccoons and feral cats nesting in our apartment when she returns will be small. Puny. Not even enough to really comment on, other than the smell and the need to get a rabies vaccine.

In other words, progress.

The Monster in the Web at the End of the Woods

I’m pleased to announce that I have a new story in the April 2012 Issue of Underneath the Juniper Tree, entitled The Web at the End of the Woods. There’s also an awesome illustration (see above) by the Filipino artist John Federis. You can read it here: http://issuu.com/underneaththejunipertree/docs/april_2012/28

While my previous four stories in Juniper Tree have all been Mab Ipswich tales, this one is different. It’s set in Japan and is more straight up horror, and features an older, darker, more terrifying character of mine. It’s related, somewhat, to my in-progress YA novel Kumiko’s Web. And those of you who are fans of my Japanese Monsters entries will like this one, because it showcases what I think is the most terrifying Japanese monster of all time: the Jorogumo!

Read it and shiver!

Anti-Magic

Saturday night, as if attempting to destroy my fragile efforts at keeping my life together while my wife is off infiltrating the secret volcano layer of a clan of space ninjas, HBO ran a marathon of the first season of Game of Thrones. Like a 15 year old metal head in 1989 staring at album covers in the record store in the part of town that likes to think of itself as the bad part of town, I was immediately transfixed by the dragons and boobs before me. I watched four episodes before pathetically going to bed, just as Daylight Savings Time kicked in and, like a dark wizard, stole an hour of time from a sleeping world.

Even though I’ve read all five of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, and seen most of the first season of the show already, I watched again. The show is transfixing, absorbing, just like the novels, in part because the fantasy world in which it’s set is so well realized. Martin’s world is an easy world to step into and get lost in; except, unlike Tolkien’s Middle-earth and Rowling’s Hogwarts, it’s a world you don’t ever really want to visit.

If I suddenly woke up in a bed in the Shire or Gryffindor Tower, I’d be ecstatic. Wizards! Elves! Magic! But if I woke up in a bed in a grimy brothel in King’s Landing (grimy brothels seem to constitute something like 67% of the buildings in Westeros), I’d probably start screaming and begging any sorcerer or deity I could find to send me back to the real world before getting knifed for my boots. Martin’s Westeros, you see, isn’t just a fantasy world with a bad part of town. It’s a fantasy world that is the bad part of town.

I’ve only encountered one other fantasy world I’d never, ever want to spend any time in, and that’s China Mieville’s New Crobuzon, specifically as written in Perdido Street Station. An ancient, decaying steampunk police state, New Crobuzon is a fantastically realized nightmare world. To give you an example: in New Crobuzon, there are giant, omnipotent, insane spider gods called Weavers that exist in multiple levels of reality at once and will sometimes randomly eviscerate passersby for the aesthetics of it. And they are among the more benign residents of Mieville’s dystopian nightmare metropolis.

If I woke up in New Crobuzon, I’d just start weeping softly and wait for one of the many unimaginably horrific trans-dimensional monsters in the city to come and lobotomize my soul with its slime-dripping mandibles.

Martin’s world and Mieville’s world come from very different fantasy lit genres (epic fantasy vs. weird horror), but I can easily imagine New Crobuzon sprouting up in the Victorian future of Martin’s medieval Westeros. It’s not just because both worlds are realized and described in such breathtaking and disturbing detail as to make them seem as real as the worst parts of Detroit. It’s not just because their authors have names comically appropriate for fantasy (how could a man named George R.R. Martin NOT end up being an epic fantasy writer? And how is “China Mieville” NOT already the name of a character in a China Mieville novel?)

It’s because both Westeros and New Crobuzon are infused with a deep suspicion of, and even antipathy towards magic.

The Silent City

photo courtesy of Ayako Miki

Ayako’s flight for Seoul left at 7:00 a.m. this morning. This is a reasonable departure time, but with air travel the way it is these days, a reasonable departure time usually translates into a completely insane waking time. In this case, 3:30 a.m.

Now, for a long time in my life, waking up at 3:30 a.m. was morally unacceptable. Being awake at 3:30 a.m. was fine, but only if I was ragingly intoxicated and sitting in the booth of a 24-hour taqueria telling everyone who would listen (and many who wouldn’t) why Emily Bronte was totally the sexiest Bronte and the stupid people say it was Anne are just moronic morons who eat garbage for their food because they like garbage.

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve come to appreciate both the subtle eroticism of Agnes Grey and the quieter watches of the night. There is something deeply calming and content about being awake before the rest of the world, driving through empty, darkened streets that feel both abandoned and private; this secret, silent city left only for you to witness and explore.

After Ayako went through security to catch her flight, I drove home, the sky still dark but for a full, shining moon and the electric starlight of distant skyscrapers. When I got home, I thought about going back to bed, but decided to stay up instead. I fixed a pot of coffee and sat in the living room, watching as the sun rose, the city struggled to life, and the day unfurled itself brilliant and bright as a butterfly’s wing.

Enter the Bachelor

Ayako is going out of town for two weeks. She has a new job and for that new job, she is doing a lot of international travel. South Korea and Singapore this month. Japan and the Netherlands next month. Ayako is a CPA and I have two English degrees, so to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what she does for a living except that it involves math.

Also, to be totally honest, I’m not completely sure I believe Ayako when she claims to be an accountant, because I’m not sure why an accountant would need to travel to such exotic locales so frequently for work. The only other person I know who does that for work is James Bond, so it’s entirely possible we’re in some sort of True Lies/Mr. and Mrs. Smith plot here, and I am the hapless, bumbling husband, totally unaware that my wife is an international super-spy until the day I get gunned down by The Russians. I am confident enough in our love, though, to feel sure that Ayako would avenge me with brutal and unrelenting violence, so there’s that.

Whatever her reasons, Ayako will be out of town for two weeks. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if she’ll be in Singapore to inspect financial documents, or (more likely) to prevent an ancient and powerful ninja clan from building a Space Laser. What matters is that I will miss her dearly for those two weeks. Also, I may self-destruct, just like the mission briefings Ayako probably gets in her secret underground lair.

Living with another person, you see, forces me to be a decent human being. It’s not just that I’m sharing my life and living space with someone whom I love deeply, it’s also that my actions and decisions will usually be known to another person, a person who both loves me deeply and also does not at all take me seriously. For instance, if Ayako comes home and all I have eaten for dinner is a bag of chips, then she will understandably look at me, and the crumpled bag, askance. However, if Ayako is out of town, then there is no possibility of future shame to prevent me from eating a bag of chips for dinner, or breakfast.

Now, before I self-deprecate too much, let me say that I generally am pretty good at keeping it together and being a responsible, reasonable human being. Until she got the new job, I did the lion’s share of the housework, since Ayako’s hours, especially this time of year, were insane and mine are pretty normal. Laundry, dishes, floors, trash, dusting, were my arena, and we usually more or less split the cooking duties. I am all over that business.

But with Ayako gone for two weeks, that all goes out the until-now very clean window. There will be nothing stopping me but my deeply underdeveloped and futile sense of shame from spending my evenings eating an entire large pizza and watching the endless run of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on ABC Family, with commercials, even though I have the damned DVD five feet from me but am too lazy to get it. In other words, nothing is stopping me from doing that and that is already my plan for Friday evening. I put it on my calendar.

I expect that, by the time Ayako returns from her “business trip,” the apartment will be in a state of affairs normally only associated with Ankor Watt and freshmen dorms. The windows will be gone. Pizza boxes and unidentifiable debris will be strewn (a word I don’t use lightly) across the floor. The toilet will be held together primarily by duct tape. The stove will be held together primarily by the solidified and radioactive orange remains of an Instant Mac-and-Cheese making attempt gone terribly wrong. There will be squirrels, raccoons, and at least three different species of bird living with me in the ruined shell of our home. The TV will be on QVC, and the volume will be turned all the way up.

At best, I will be able to prolong this personal descent into human ruin for a few days, but with Ayako gone for two weeks, it’s an inevitability. I already feel guilty, and I feel bad that Ayako will have to deal with that after getting back from a tough two weeks of infiltrating and destroying an international criminal syndicate.

It’s hard out there for an international super-spy, but sometimes, when you’re married to me, it can be even tougher when you get back home.

Mab Ipswich Vs. Principal Goblinson

It’s a big week for the Wickedest Witch in Wyrm. A shiny new Mab Ipswich iPhone cover is in the mail and on its way to my grubby claws.

And my latest Mab story, Mab Ipswich Vs. Principal Goblinson, came out today in the March Issue of Underneath the Juniper Tree.

It includes even more stunning artwork from Marcela Vargas, who did the illustrations for my previous Mab story, including the one on that iPhone cover. It’s the darkest and scariest Mab story yet, so click on through for chills and thrills!

Mab’s Magical Merchandise

I know that for most of you, oh my loyal tens of readers, after you finish reading a Mab Ipswich story in Underneath the Juniper Tree, on this blog, or just in your dark dreams, your first thought is, “that was so much better than Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.” The second thought is, “I wish I could share my love of Mab with the world while simultaneously protecting my smart phone from damage.” Well, readers, your strange, disturbing wishes have come true!

Marcela Vargas, the talented artist who did the amazing illustrations for my story The Monster and Mab Ipswich in the UTJT February Issue, has an online store where you can get prints of her work, along with iPhone/iPod cases and covers, laptop covers, t-shirts, and even hoodies.

One of her works currently available as a print and upper-torso/electronic device cover is the main illustration done for my story. It shows Mab walking to school with her Yedoese Omukada monster on a leash, surrounded by flying homework dragons (if you don’t know what those are, click the links above and read the story!)

So, if you’d like Mab on your wall, smart phone, iPad, iPod, laptop, or chest (and who wouldn’t), head on over to the Little Miss Machete Store, and drape your life in monsters and Mab!

In the Writer Spotlight!

Underneath the Juniper Tree, publisher of 3 of my Mab Ipswich stories so far, has put me in their Writer Spotlight this week. Check it out to learn more about my inspirations, my writing habits, and my dreams of ancient East Asian piracy.

The Monster & Mab Ipswich

The wickedest witch returns!

I’m pleased to announce that the February Issue of Underneath the Juniper Tree is out, and my short story The Monster and Mab Ipswich is in it! You can check it out here (http://issuu.com/underneaththejunipertree/docs/februaryissue/45) on pages 44-53! The story also features 3 amazing illustrations by Marcela Vargas. You can see more of her work on her website.

Read, scream, and enjoy!

Ghosts in the Machine

Underneath the Juniper Tree has published my terrifying (and true!) story about my haunted Japanese cell phone on their website. You can read it here (and I apologize in advance for any chills received): The Ghost in the Machine.

Every word of it is true. I’ve shown the photos to a few people and they have all reliably been freaked out by them. Because the photos are freaky and I don’t have any logical explanation for them (which doesn’t suggest that one doesn’t exist, just that I haven’t found one yet).

I am not a particularly superstitious person and despite my career in writing witch-centric literature, I am also not particularly prone to belief in ghosts. Having worked in the tourist trade in old cities like Charleston and Williamsburg, I’ve spent a lot of time in reputedly haunted buildings and houses, often after hours and at night. I’ve never seen a ghost, nor felt myself in one’s presence. I’m not convinced that ghosts exist. But I still can’t explain the photos of that gray face in my old cellphone.

I believe, in the end, that there is a logical, earth-bound explanation for them, but I doubt I’ll ever discover it. Either way, the photos are proof of one thing for sure — the world is a mysterious place, full of dark corners and niches, and inside those dark corners and niches dwell dark things we cannot explain.