Where Michael McDowell Lies...

I had a dream last night about Michael McDowell, the author of Cold Moon Over Babylon, a book long out of print and virtually forgotten.

Right now, Mr. McDowell lies in the cold, cold ground. He's been there for more than a decade.

Thirty years ago, he was on a roll. The Amulet. Cold Moon... Katie. Gilded Needles. The Elementals. Toplin. Many more, too. Some horror. Some historical. He wrote screenplays before his death (from AIDS), including Beetlejuice, and contributed to Tales From the Darkside.
 
His publisher, Avon, serialized his Blackwater books. There was one a month for six months. It was a brave idea that didn't succeed, unfortunately.

A few years later, Stephen King's publisher serialized The Green Mile. This time it worked.

King himself said of the writer: "He's the finest writer of paperback originals in America."

My dream was a simple one. I could see McDowell in his grave. He hadn't rotted. He was dressed in handsome Southern garb. He was bearded. He stared without blinking at the coffin lid. I was trying to dig down to him with a long, square shovel, but the ground was too dry to assist me. I don't know what I would have done had I reached him, but I was awfully depressed by the fact that he was dead and his books were dead, too. I guess I'm determined to play some part in  resurrecting his reputation and his books.

I despise seeing true talent go to waste, just as I despise seeing the untalented accorded the adoration of easily persuaded morons.

McDowell was the finest of writers. Cold Moon Over Babylon, the first book I read of his, made me uneasy and anxious. It also excited me. That was one of McDowell's talents. He could scare and excite you at the same time. There was a deep sensuality to his language that had nothing to do with sex, but had everything to do with mood, time, and place.


Consider this from the 87th page of Cold Moon...

The slow spin, gentle sway, and smooth inexorable rise continued until the delicate bare feet skimmed the water. Gradually, then, the revolutions subsided and the figure hovered lightly on the surface of the river. It turned deliberately toward the Larkin farmhouse on the northern bank of the Styx. The eyes opened, but behind the gray lids was a flat infinite blackness, blacker far than the muddy Styx in the shadow of the rotting bridge. Those terrible eyes were without surface; the lids opened directly onto noisome void and nonentity, and the black holes were fixed on the darkened window of Evelyn Larkin's bedroom.

While you read these words,  Michael McDowell lies beneath us. Still. Prostate. Calcium-depleted. Above him, in a stratosphere of  mud and slush, beyond a loamy island of crawling things, his legacy has begun to fade.

That makes me sad.

The Toy Shop Tragedy

Have you ever felt sorry for a book? -- or a book's hard working author?

I have.

I still feel sorry for The Toy Shop and its author J. Robert Janes.

Take a good look at this cover. Study it and learn... learn how not to sell a book.

Pretty fuckin appalling, isn't it? It's another winner from Paperjacks, a long gone Canadian publisher. This strange little company didn't publish shit, but they sure packaged it that way.

They put out several novels by Mr. Janes including The Hiding Place, The Third Story, and The Watcher.

They also published one of my favorite horror novels ever, Eric Higgs' The Happy Man, a book I covered on this blog way, way back when Jesus was a grasshopper.

 The first edition of The Toy Shop came out in '81, via General Publishing,  in the midst of a horror novel boom. Bookshelves were top heavy with the stuff back in those days, and there were at least a dozen publishers -- Fawcett, New American Library, Pocket Books, Ballantine, St. Martin's Press, Avon, Zebra, Pinnacle, Dell, Charter, Jove, Popular Library -- cashing in and jostling for shelf space before boom turned to bust. Paperjacks released the book's second edition in a still-horror-friendly market in '84. 

I bought The Toy Shop because the cover art was so odd -- a picture of a rag doll with another picture, a face, pasted (badly) on top of it. Was this supposed to look amateurish? Was I missing the point?

I felt great sympathy for J. Robert Janes because writing books is damn hard work and he was being short-changed in the marketing department. If you do manage to get something published, its a little miracle. Unless a writer has lots of of devoted fans, he depends on cover art to attract some newbies (who or what was this going to attract?) The hope is, the potential punter will find the cover art enticing enough to want to flip the book to read the blurb on the back. If they don't want to do that, you're shit out of luck.

Not the best of blurbs. Not the worst, either.  A toy shop you can't trust. "Daddy's Secrets" (not hard to figure what those are). Nosy neighbors disappearing. Terror, sex, and innocence. And "innocence"? It's an abstract that doesn't quite fit with terror and sex. I get what they're trying to say, but it's awkwardly put.    

The front cover blurb isn't any great shakes, either: "Daddy, Mommy, Madness, Sin, Here We Let The Terror in!"

"Here"? Does that make any sense to you?

Wouldn't the correct -- no, smoother -- word be "Now", as in "Now We Let The Terror In!"?

 Zebra Books used to get roasted for their artwork -- unfairly, I feel. Sure, the art rarely connected with the story, but it was eye-catching and slick (see below!).

This nonsense -- The Toy Shop art -- is just drab and uninspired.  

Perhaps I'm pissing up the wrong pole? The Toy Shop did earn a second printing in November, '84, after Mr. Janes had released The Third Story (my favorite of his) and The Hiding Place. Had the cheap little rag doll composite attracted readers for the same reason it attracted me? Was its anti-aesthetic an engine of persuasion?

 An internet search reveals that Mr. Janes has written fourteen novels, was born in 1932, and is Canadian. That explains the Paperjacks and General Publishing connection (was Paperjacks an arm of General?). I'm curious about The Watcher, and must start upending every second hand bookshop between here and Ontario to find a copy. It's not like I need more obsessions, but another one won't hurt. The writer, it appears, was a mining engineer and teacher before turning full time wordsmith. He had this to say about writing:

"If anyone tells you that this is fun—forget it! It is lovely sometimes to be able to write every day. There are the highs and lows as in any other job. But it is absolute hell most times."

Despite the cover art, the pure horror work of Mr. Janes (as opposed to his crime/detective work) remains curiously entertaining, and twisted in just the right way. If you know what the right way is, you'll know it needs no explanation.   

I remain in sympathy for The Toy Shop.

This woman's face is featured on the front cover of two Janes books.

Was she the Alfred E. Neumann of Paperjacks?

Enquiring minds would like to know.

Zombies On Mushrooms

Hugh B. Cave, a master of pulp, was born in 1910 and cremated in 2004.

He wrote over 1000 short stories and more than 35 novels.

After WWII, he lived in Haiti for a time and wrote Haiti - High Road To Adventure, an acclaimed non-fiction work on the subject of voodoo.

In '79, Avon Books published Legion of the Dead, a rip-roaring paperback original. Its focus was voodoo-created zombies long before zombie fiction became a virtual genre of its own in the early 21st century.
Although a horror novel, Cave incorporates a lot of meaty, well researched business about the country's militia and the genocide of its people. Zombies, fueled by exotic mushrooms, are being enlisted to help in the overthrow of the corrupt President. Against the grain of Romero-inspired zombie lore, these undead critters are not dependent on human brains or other body parts.

The novel's hero, Cary Connoway, is not dissimilar to most men. He throws good judgment out the window when the vagina calls (and who can blame him). After traveling to San Marlo for some much-needed rest and recreation, he becomes embroiled in the undead coup d'etat. Although most guys would get themselves onto the first plane at the first sight of a shambling corpse, Carey's intensifying affections for the beautiful native girl Juna are stronger than the undead threat.

In a gloriously lurid sequence, our hero opts to pursue the kidnapped princess of his loins into a godforsaken cave:

"I'm going back there," he said to Sebastian and Decano when night came again.

"Cary, be reasonable," the poet begged. "What can you hope to accomplish?"

"I can find her!"

"If she is still alive, they have her. And if you try to take her away from them, they will have you, too. We are just no match for them yet."

Getting laid is at stake, so Cary isn't swayed.

"I've got to know what happened."

They did their best to dissuade him, but he would not listen, and in the end they went with him to the cave entrance. There the poet said: "You are a brave and loving man, Cary. God go with you. And Sebastian said: "I will ask the loa to keep you safe, amigo."

If God had been aware of Cary's true intentions, he may have decided to bail out of accompanying the adventurer on his subterranean pussy hunt. Buckets of luck, which one could attribute to divine intervention, come Cary's way, nevertheless, and he achieves his goal.

Legion of the Dead bubbles with invention and the writer's love of the absurd. After the zombie terror has been contained, the following exchange, in true Scooby Doo style, occurs:

"Without any food, my zombies will die. Really die. It will happen soon, too, because they are in need of food now, and would have been given their ration long ago but for the trouble you have caused us." He paused. "Their odor is less strong, you may have noticed. I was on my way to feed them when I discovered you just now."

Another character elaborates:

"They (the zombies) need very little, you see...This small bagful of the dried mushroom powder would have sustained them all. But, as you can see, it is gone. Gone forever, along with all the powder stored here for the future use and all the growing mushrooms from which the powder is prepared. All gone. Forever."

Unfortunately, Hugh B. Cave, who died at 94, is also gone forever.

But his brilliant pulp legacy lives on without the help of mushrooms.

Hugh B. Cave with writer/editor Stephen Jones