NightWriter

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/20/theater/liamneeson-ehjoe2/index.html

Here are updated details on some new short stories of mine.

"Club Saudade"

If you're not familiar with the word saudade, the Wikipedia definition and article is very good. This story comes with two snapshots I took of the old Bristol Company factory in Waterbury, and is posted now at Horror World: http://www.horrorworld.org/

"Something Small and Gray, and Quick"

This story is included in the anthology Read Your Fears, edited by Nina Ely, available on June 19th from Amazon and Tricorner Publishing. Other contributing authors include Jack Ketchum, Peter Crowther, P D Cacek, Joe Lansdale, Chet Williamson and F Paul Wilson. Proceeds from the book's sales will go to help children at the Johns Hopkins Children's Cancer Center. http://www.tricornerpublishing.com/Books/ReadYourFears.html

"The Woman in the Club Car"

This one is now scheduled to appear in Cemetery Dance #60, which will also include an interview with me conducted by Sam W Anderson. I've always preferred trains to any other form of transport, and have made use of the New Haven line to/from Manhattan since I was a teenager. Years ago, my friend Dennis Ferado gave me an anthology of horror stories set on trains, and since then it was just a matter of time before I got around to writing one myself. This is it, or at least the first.

MAN WITH FLOWERS

The old man, pottering in his garden,

Observes the nodding of the fronds,

Gentle as mist in the slightest breeze.

He has already buried both his wives,

One in a sanitarium, the other

Beneath the azaleas. Since those days

In the other world, it has been all inscape.

Days are measured in a flower's growth.

Season's end -- the brush, weeds and stalks

Are burned. After so long that fire assumes

Awesome dimensions for this man, who sets

It, watches it flare and waits with the sun --

Which outlives him and his plants.

He has become used to this existence,

Simple pleasures -- the last walk through

The poplars on the slope at dusk -- quietly.

Still, his mind occasionally loses track

Of petals, fruit and earth, and falls into

The sea from which he followed his course.

Sea-thunder shadows each uncertain step.

(from In Sight of Chaos, 1971, Turret Books, London)

FRANCIS POULENC

Christ-like....

Mirror-holding guttersnipes, most

Of us flirted with faith

As if

The world yoyoed only on turns of

State and our jazzy jokes.

Gradually

Everyone drifted apart to find

Their own respectability

And realm.

For me, Ferroud's death in Hungary

Proved to be a turning point.

Fanfare

Gave way to litanies, motets, and

Tortured dialogues out on

The far edges

Of the monastery mind, but I still

Shuttled between the music

Of the street

And the sanity of dogma. More than

Milhaud or Honegger,

I grew old

A young man still, a throwback,

Derivative, tracing personal

Origins.

Who is to say what flows on with

The times and what remains

Behind?

Before I die, a couple of sonatas

Must stacatto

Down

The years, reaching even before I

Was alive -- I do this to bury

Myself.

(from In Sight of Chaos, 1971, Turret Books, London)