tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75113331844707446202024-03-13T04:44:03.217-04:00Mountains but for SeaEric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-65520606037492447182013-05-09T19:56:00.005-04:002013-05-09T19:57:54.182-04:00<b>PLEASE GO HERE:</b> <a href=http://jericlaing.com/>The active book blog.</a>
This site is mostly defunct. Mostly.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-90048802584033561342013-03-01T17:10:00.000-05:002013-03-01T17:10:00.712-05:00SINGULARITIES
Chapter One
Sasha lived alone with three cats she didn’t much care for. She’d never been much of a cat person—or a care for another living person or thing too much for that matter—and so it stood to reason that the cats shared a similar lack of enthusiasm for Sasha. They were cats, after all. All they wanted was to be fed and stroked, usually in that order and both only as the mood struck them.
That they weren’t even Sasha’s was a fact that made it all the more reasonable that none of the parties involved were overly invested in their relationship.
Each morning, and throughout the better half of each night, the cats arrived to be fed or lounge about on the pillows, magazines, blankets, paperbacks and other tattered stacks of Sasha’s crapped apartment. This, cat-like, they pursued as was their fancy. At leisure they came and went through the open window of the fire escape, slipping between a slice in the screen that had been that way since Sasha had begun squatting earlier that year. Those had been the breezy if polluted days of spring with a man-child who had long since slipped out one night—a cat himself—leaving her to never return.
She didn’t know any of the cats’ names. She’d toyed with a few monikers—Dingus, Asshole, and Pester—but after realizing that she was really talking to her ex and absent boyfriend and that the cats cared about as much for conversation as she did or he might have, Sasha let go and just referred to the four of them collectively as Cat.
Twice of late Sasha had kept her window closed to keep them out. Neither of those rebellions had made it a full circuit of the kitchen clock’s hour hand. Once the lock-out had been discovered, the mewing was mad and persistent and in the end sounded like a nunnery of orphaned infants in pain. The young woman, defeated and slipping back to reality from the haze and stupor of another heroin plunge, opened the window to let them in like life itself. They were all she had. She almost admitted as much. Almost.
Lighting another cigarette even as one already smoldered in the ashtray before her, Sasha resigned for the fourth time in so many days that come morning she would finally work up the nerve to visit the old woman next door. The old woman who shared the fire escape. The old woman to whom the cats truly belonged. The old woman whose name might have been Fitzgerald or McGuire. The old woman who had not made so much as a bump or cough in the past two months despite the detail that, prior to her recent silent running, she had been a habitually vulgar and persistently foul-mouthed human vodka filter of the ten a.m. to three a.m. variety.
…
The door looked ajar. It wasn’t. An old building in a bad neighborhood, the door frame had suffered numerous crowbar and cat’s-paws assaults. The man considering the door now, he had been responsible for a few of those previous intrusions himself.
He felt the fool as he gripped the doorknob with a trickle of hope.
Just a girl. Or so his too often truncated thoughts fought, eating one another in a cannibalism of preservation as he let the knob slip away without finding the courage to turn and test the lock. Just a girl. The notion, the excuse that had won-out to bring him this far repeated itself. She need looking after. Ain’t being a creep. A snoop. A pervert. Yes I am.
Yes he was.
He fell back into the stairwell where the overhead fluorescents flickered like distant lightning strikes on open water. Not that he’d ever fared the sea. Excuse my intrusion. There, pressed against the lime green wall that seemed to swell to meet him, he suddenly knew he had been found out.
Or so he’d thought for half a held breath. But the couple was thick, ignorant of everything beyond their groins and mouths. A pair entwined to make one, too busy with tryst, humping in the stairwell corner as if the fate of mankind rested in the success of their fuck. And that last bit would be another case of authorial intrusion excepting for the fact that the man watching thought just that. That, and a few other filthier collages littered his mind as his hand crept to mate with his cock.
On the landing below, where the two pressed as if to push themselves through one another, where the small of her damp back and flat of her taut belly smacked and sucked between the wall and her lover’s flesh, there the sound of their coupling echoed something like a blacksmith’s bellows working hard and mad to stoke the fire. They were neighbors. Married, but not to each other.
The man watching from above leaned as far over the rail as he dared, stealing another glimpse of their commingling even as he closed his eyes. He wondered if their counterparts weren’t off someplace—the laundry room in the basement, maybe—taking advantage of their absence to also make the beast with two backs. Probably. He clenched himself harder at the thought.
She opened her eyes briefly and gasped to catch him spying. Dumb as a child he threw himself back from the rail and clenched his eyes and teeth. But nothing followed. No litany of curses. No screamed accusations. She remained in the moment. What little that had escaped her, her partner assumed was merely the first of her climax. It hadn’t been, but then just as quickly was. The pair shuddered and finished as the blue jeans around the man’s thighs finally fell to his ankles when he let her slip from him, her feet finding the floor as well.
“The Super,” she whispered hoarsely as she stooped quickly to retrieve her underwear from the tile.
She shifted her hiked dress back into place while her lover pulled up his jeans.
“Fuck him,” her partner growled, zipping his fly in flourish. He thought she was voicing concern that the man might be about, not that he most certainly was.
Before thirty seconds more could pass, they were gone, two doors at opposing ends of the hall echoing shut behind them as they went their separate ways.
The bank of lights continued fitzing and fritzing above the Super as the undeniable odor of their sexual congress reached him. Or maybe the building just always stinks that way. He looked back down the hall to Sasha’s door. Just a girl.
Feeling his breakfast returning in a bad way, and suddenly needing to purge his lungs as well, he turned away and climbed the stairs far more quickly than usual, desperately seeking out the roof and rain.
…
The piano in the apartment upstairs from Sasha’s usually came to life twice daily. In the mornings it began around ten and then resumed again about the same time in the PM. Both sessions tended to run an hour or so and consisted first of scales and a few other drills for fifteen to twenty minutes before the unknown pianist dove into music. Sadly, this was without exception merely the same three melodies played over and over again with very little variation except for the misplaced note here and there as he or she struggled to improve. Sasha didn’t recognize the music and judged by the less than catchy merits of all three that they might be the pianist’s own compositions.
It was just after ten in the evening. Sasha was awake. Restless and swollen-eyed, she sat at the window, one haunch propped on the sill as she smoked, braless in a ragged t-shirt and panties, gazing blankly out into the gloom, thinking of nothing, being nothing. The piano upstairs began as if on cue. Within a few minutes the plinking was obscured by the growing approach of sirens. A police cruiser arrived first, the strobe of its emergency lights painting Sasha’s pale scrunched face red and blue, red and blue. The wail of sirens followed, arriving with the pair of fire trucks fast on the cruiser’s tail.
The piano went silent. Footsteps crossed the ceiling and stopped directly above Sasha. The window above ground open as the person there spoke. Whether what was said was meant for another or merely a lonely aside, Sasha couldn’t say. The words, garbled and unclear and muddled by the sirens’ continued caterwaul, went unanswered or unheard by Sasha. It was an androgynous voice, she caught that much; an effeminate man or a masculine woman. As the silhouette of her neighbor wavered along the rails of the fire escape overhead, Sasha leaned back to conceal herself.
Into the shadows of my hovel. Like a mouse, she thought, moving her cigarette to conceal it as well behind her bare thigh. Or a rat. She let slip a silent exhalation of smoke.
It was late in the year and the one tree outside Sasha’s window looked like a piece of scenery, a lie of the eye made by stagehands too lazy to festoon it with leaves. This will do, they’d said. It’ll pass from the third row back, she mused, looking past the bare spindly branches to study the men below as they clambered down from their rigs and made preparations to do whatever it was they were going to do.
The tree was dead. Not that the season mattered; the tree had been dead for three years gone by now. For that matter it was about as much as a stage piece. The last bird she’d seen had made purchase there two years into a past that felt as alien as a stranger’s dreams. The feathered husk was nestled in the crook of the trunk’s roots come morning.
Sasha had even made the discovery. Dead tree and dead bird. Evolution winding down. Time eroding like soap under a hot tap. What she would have given for a warm bath.
The stranger above went back to the piano and began a tinny, wandering refrain. Finally, something new. Thank god for inspired fool.
She lingered at the window, playing witness as dead as the tree between them as the men set charges to drop the now clearly burning building—how had she not noticed the fire before—imploding it to contain its fiery contagion. She was impressed that they worked with very little conversation. She finally, slowly, almost regrettably, abandoned the window to seek the cover and comfort of blanket and bare mattress just as she knew at last she must. Nestling and thinking herself that dead little bird, she wondered if her windows would shatter with the blast.
They did.
The city burns by rote.
Chapter Two
The cityscape was a wasteland. The work of long dead architects without so much as an apprentice to carry on. It was a study in decay. From the residents’ ruined language—a mishmash of English as diseased, rotted, and dying as mouths that produced it—to the refuse piled and spilling at every turn between so many crumbling walls that seemed now to serve no other purpose than to showcase scrawling scripts of graffito indecipherable. The people reeked--both the living and the steady stream of corpses that swelled and burst in the light of each new day. The light that the rats no longer feared.
Another fortnight or two of carpet-bombings would be an improvement; do it some good; would be heaven-sent, Sasha thought as she picked her way home through the gauntlet of unyielding shoulders.
At sidewalk level nearly every window was broken behind rusted security bars. At some point along each block—sometimes twice or even three times and on both sides of the street—husks of what once were automobiles sat on blocks or rims, their remnants stripped bare and what remained usually torched for whatever reason. Certainly not to conceal any crime. No authority existed any longer to bother with such mundane concerns. And so they sat rusting ubiquitous and permanent enough to serve as landmarks now. Which worked out well enough, since street signs, for the most part, were no longer to be found, as well.
“Take a left at the burned-out red Toyota and go three blocks until you see the pile of wrecked pick-ups and the overturned flower van. I’m just across the street. Apartment 5G. Fifth floor. But the G is missing. And don’t bother with the buzzer—doesn’t work. Then again, neither does the lock in the lobby so it doesn’t matter.” All this Sasha would have explained if ever she had a reason. She hadn’t. As an afterthought, she might have added, “Don’t even so much as whisper on the stairwell around the second and third floors. You do and you’ll set the dogs off.” Tossing in yet another, deeper aside, “I hate those goddamned animals. And I hate their dogs, too.”
Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-25149884482850574472012-12-31T13:30:00.005-05:002012-12-31T13:30:52.805-05:00Petition the White House......to Act on Gun Laws.
More so and more so, it seems it is the fearful and madmen who most vocally argue the right to bear arms. The longer the debate goes on, I am beginning to find a sickening irony in my beloved nation’s claim of being a melting pot. We are becoming a stew of mad fear…a meal of no nutritional value in this regard.
I can see the side of those who do not want to change the gun laws in the US. Further, I can concede understanding how gun advocates see our most recent tragedy’s outrage as knee-jerk and reactionary.
It is a sad day in our grand experiment when the actions of a solitary madman can lead us to throw away the very rights and privileges that helped found our nation. I see and appreciate that. I’m the last who wants liberty to give way to fear, to wake to find us falling overs ourselves in some panicked dash from potential danger, and this so much so that we trip blindly from the independent spirit that saved us once from tyranny only to flip headlong into the unknown arms of legislation that could be nothing more than another briar patch of oppression.
At the same turn, I am too broken, too angry now, to idly watch on as fools arm themselves to the teeth against threats imagined. I will not remain silent as my flesh and blood may be falling deeper into harm’s way as a result of a neighbor’s fear and delusion. I will not trust John Q. Public next door over my elected government. Dysfunctional as that government may be at times, it is not nearly as capable of being as damaged as a single man, a man such as the one who just an hour from my home killed all those children the same age as my own boy who was enjoying his day in kindergarten that morning as were those sons and daughters at Sandy Hook.
This single event, this solitary madman, he has struck now one time too many.
In this hour I know who I fear more and who I trust more. I fear the fool with an arsenal. I trust my government. Or, at least, I’m trying to.
I want to see us, as a nation, find a compromise. Legal and reasonable gun ownership for those citizens that prove they are worthy and capable of holding that power and privilege.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/immediately-address-issue-gun-control-through-introduction-legislation-congress/2tgcXzQC
Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-59937176309056138072012-12-17T12:25:00.006-05:002012-12-17T12:27:01.557-05:00<a href="http://bit.ly/U4iv3N ">KIRKUS REVIEWS</a> did me the honor of naming my novel Cicada among their "Best Indie Books of 2012."
So of course I'm going to mention where you can find it on Amazon:
<a href="http://amzn.to/I86ela ">CICADA</a>
Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-31084088688643742162012-10-16T19:39:00.000-04:002012-10-16T19:39:11.286-04:00Fellow author and friend of the blog, Winston Emerson, who I can't praise and recommend highly enough, is running a Kickstarter campaign to...well, just read for yourself <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/581741348/the-object-book-one-official-release-and-local-boo">here.</a>
Please do check it out and throw some support if you can. He's a helluva talent and the new project, The Object, is exceptional. Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-11359125229930013262012-10-12T11:08:00.004-04:002012-10-12T11:08:58.114-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiAdsAOx5p50y3Dd1SeLgzyhIDxoWqWUjhlAc46pxWV-7rduBb9fzh8VvIC9Mimyd7GEPhlI4mxNOO2Jp3bPw-irUYXyCmsztnJ8R_-0Mkwm_p3d1MDZXxuxpjxCdlykCv3hkQarfm_P8/s1600/TCMM+Front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiAdsAOx5p50y3Dd1SeLgzyhIDxoWqWUjhlAc46pxWV-7rduBb9fzh8VvIC9Mimyd7GEPhlI4mxNOO2Jp3bPw-irUYXyCmsztnJ8R_-0Mkwm_p3d1MDZXxuxpjxCdlykCv3hkQarfm_P8/s320/TCMM+Front.jpg" /></a></div>
Available now on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Crooked-Mans-Mile-ebook/dp/B009PBCONG/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350049976&sr=1-3">AMAZON</a>.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-85792528021531741292012-07-07T15:51:00.001-04:002012-07-07T20:20:23.349-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqM681ZF4eGap3GktMTSEL-rvH7EXFWndVRGc5a7mXvvSpywMLC_BHiYIWMyzUjIEP_5RAkCcuVxOPoYnB_sOuyWnXc3lGJW7lEIm2CSY9CF7wB3vPvoDbB4rBwjfuNItkk9hfODFySs0/s1600/THE+NIGHT+WATCH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqM681ZF4eGap3GktMTSEL-rvH7EXFWndVRGc5a7mXvvSpywMLC_BHiYIWMyzUjIEP_5RAkCcuVxOPoYnB_sOuyWnXc3lGJW7lEIm2CSY9CF7wB3vPvoDbB4rBwjfuNItkk9hfODFySs0/s400/THE+NIGHT+WATCH.jpg" /></a></div>
Murder, sex, magic, and ancient Rome.
A serial killer preys upon those who are truly the most dangerous game…the gladiators. As the killer collects macabre trophies, it falls to the Prefect of the Night Watch to end the madness.
But this is Rome, where blood spills like wine, and dreams…they are all too often nightmares.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Night-Watch-Eric-Laing/dp/1475127510/ref=la_B007TYOAV0_1_4_title_0_main?ie=UTF8&qid=1341690654&sr=1-4">Available here</a> and also on
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Night-Watch-ebook/dp/B008I4J1RI/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1341690779&sr=1-6&keywords=j+eric+laing">Kindle</a>.
Edited by Dan Hauer
danhauereditorial.com
dlhauer@gmail.comEric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-85999061522255397902012-04-18T09:36:00.004-04:002012-04-18T09:39:57.070-04:00New SiteI have a new site which will serve as a virtual billboard for my novels. So then, I'll be keeping it nice and clean. I hope you like and will help me spread the word!<br />
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<a href="http://jericlaing.com/">J. Eric Laing</a><br />
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Also, I have parted ways with Night Publishing and will be striking out on my own. Here's wishing all my friends at Night wonderful success.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-17325002530045155352012-03-25T14:57:00.003-04:002012-03-25T15:02:03.231-04:00Cicada named New and Notable!Thank you, you amazingly insightful folks at Kirkus!<br />
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<a href="http://www.kirkusreviews.com/lists/new-notable-indie-releases-march-2012/?page=1">HUZZAH!</a><br />
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Now, who does a fella have to buy lunch for to get one of those lovely circled stars? No appettizers, two rounds of drinks, but not too top shelf. I'm still aspiring over here, after all.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-36702277322063534862012-03-17T11:20:00.000-04:002012-03-17T11:20:31.565-04:00The WIP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7DHtz6o_nrMnwh-KlG8GFu7ZhZvyrtYf_DIn0gbMladLZMoAHT1oomUfWxFLPFPVse9sT9bIM_gSMDIY6AAEvu8ubkZTw9Gxi27db23xmd3igwYi4ms3BJvMDrCI9ehLFc0UTAimFDU/s1600/TNW+front+cover+master+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7DHtz6o_nrMnwh-KlG8GFu7ZhZvyrtYf_DIn0gbMladLZMoAHT1oomUfWxFLPFPVse9sT9bIM_gSMDIY6AAEvu8ubkZTw9Gxi27db23xmd3igwYi4ms3BJvMDrCI9ehLFc0UTAimFDU/s400/TNW+front+cover+master+2.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Blood, sex, magic...and Ancient Rome<br />
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A serial killer hunts the streets of Ancient Rome preying on what is truly the most dangerous game...the gladiators. As the killer collects macabre trophies, it falls to the Prefect of the Night Watch to end the horror. <br />
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Coming this summer!Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-88929708412273876442012-03-10T00:50:00.005-05:002012-04-13T09:23:47.510-04:00Seeping closerThe details are done...oh, but there was a lot of devil in 'em.<br />
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My second novel, Seep is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seep-Mr-J-Eric-Laing/dp/1475009798/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334323335&sr=1-4">HERE!</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPsw7Z_g0l9kriRZKet1MG_EnUNGR5mjo9HLON3d-knGTPLRJ6BMGcHgY9KQrxszgMBUK-pVwpV8VspMiybKcVuAoghSflN57Uzu2hPFAN0-QhX_PMxPH2a20tszzFxzoMLbcHkMHZLc/s1600/Seep+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPsw7Z_g0l9kriRZKet1MG_EnUNGR5mjo9HLON3d-knGTPLRJ6BMGcHgY9KQrxszgMBUK-pVwpV8VspMiybKcVuAoghSflN57Uzu2hPFAN0-QhX_PMxPH2a20tszzFxzoMLbcHkMHZLc/s400/Seep+7.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Special thanks to S.C. Thompson for assisting with the cover art.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-50349922485544951412012-02-02T19:48:00.003-05:002012-02-15T09:33:59.101-05:00My Kirkus Reviews ReviewCICADA <br />
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Tragedy befalls a small town in the 1950s Deep South when the Klu Klux Klan’s arrival coincides with an unraveling of long-held family secrets.<br />
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A suicide gunshot rattles the humid air in this bleak but often beautifully crafted tale of cultural strife in the Southern town of Melby. During one particularly sweltering summer, the Sayre family tries to cope with the stifling heat. Since the childhood death of his brother, farmer John Sayre has held a terrible secret, one that comes to bear on his marriage, his status in town and his relationship with his young son, Timothy. [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] Frances Sayre fears her husband has taken up with the Klan, [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS]. Her discovery, Buckshot’s secretiveness and the increasing boldness of the town’s bigots and its reprehensible minister all sit heavy in the uneasy, oppressive heat. The cicadas incessantly hum in ominous chorus. Everyone is being watched: [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS], the gravedigger sees visitors to the lynched man’s grave, the mockingbirds eye the old family cat in the last hours of its life. The town’s animals, wild or domesticated, play as big a part as any of the well-drawn characters in the tragedy. Nature’s cruelty—and occasionally, its beauty—foreshadow and echo the townspeople’s wicked acts. Only beautiful Cicada remains a mystery. Like the female cicada, she causes the frenzied men to buzz and drone around her in hopes of attracting her bewitching affection.<br />
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Be sure to read this steamy Southern noir in the A/C.<br />
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<a href="http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/j-eric-laing/cicada/#review">See the whole shebang here</a>Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-85013508505359157182011-12-01T10:46:00.014-05:002012-04-17T20:59:09.360-04:00The Eagle...er, book...has landed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEippIZb596PuSm0Iobcgzg7i-2NJ7_XA903H3i2b2tGw0c0np-6d8742X-V_h65yTR03Hd7RLJ13jOmMiG_UausRoHghgqm4D5GVvbxgHEEL7LR4F4ATOr-Iy5QiCXEc0l8OV8hd18gyE0/s1600/Cicada+-+Eric+Laing+-+full+A5+cover+for+Amazon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="294" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEippIZb596PuSm0Iobcgzg7i-2NJ7_XA903H3i2b2tGw0c0np-6d8742X-V_h65yTR03Hd7RLJ13jOmMiG_UausRoHghgqm4D5GVvbxgHEEL7LR4F4ATOr-Iy5QiCXEc0l8OV8hd18gyE0/s400/Cicada+-+Eric+Laing+-+full+A5+cover+for+Amazon.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Special thanks to Julie Rey for my wonderful new cover. © Julie Rey Photographies [www.juliereyc.com]Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-73878860590125783352011-04-29T11:52:00.003-04:002011-04-29T11:54:44.875-04:00The MC DreamsHe walked the beach alone, this man. As he made his way--destination as unknown as origin--he troubled his mind for his own name. This only for a short while, however, before caving to the realization that he’d none. No name. Nothing. No true recollections, just a scattering of disjointed thoughts and images that made no sense. Either the wanderer had been a blank slate to begin with--not very likely--or there was something of him somewhere along the way behind him but that path was lost now. He couldn’t be certain either way. <br />
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It was of no consequence. Being alone as he was there was no one to tell his name to, no one to ask anything of him. The knowledge was almost liberating. Almost. Excepting for the fact that it was also disconcerting.<br />
<br />
The dun beach was a wide swath and fell away both before and behind, lost on each horizon without discernable change or landmark. To his right a crest of rolling dunes and nothing more. <br />
<br />
He was moving along the water’s vacillating edge, and despite the looks of it--dark grey and swirling and churning in angry motion as if mirroring the overcast sky above--it was not cold as he would have expected. He paused. Over his bare feet the sea washed and then pulled away, eroding and shifting the sand beneath his soles and toes in its retreat. In that moment of looking down to observe the foam-flecked water, he caught that he was naked. The wind pulled between the gaps of his thin thighs and tickled his groin. <br />
<br />
Curious. He didn’t recognize his body. It wasn’t that it didn’t appear to be his body, but more that he couldn’t be certain if he knew it as his own or not. These might have been his arms. The hands that cupped his crotch might have been familiar. Perhaps. And yet this skin, these cold toes and sore gums might have been a stranger’s. All he felt with a certainty was that in this place, in this moment, it was the shell of flesh his mind inhabited. This was his place for now. <br />
<br />
He looked back up the beach then, to confirm he was indeed alone, only to find he was not. Far off in the distance--far enough that they were hardly more than amorphous silhouettes--a handful of mysterious figures stood atop a dune. He could not discern if they faced him, but the man’s nakedness made him nervously suspect they did. But more than that was the accompanying dread that crept into him even as the next wave took hold of his feet, eroded his footing. Somehow he was aware of their intentions; these strangers meant him harm. They meant to make death.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-80720110655820150692011-03-31T16:47:00.006-04:002011-04-01T10:18:18.938-04:00The OptionThe knuckles hidden beneath the knight's gauntlets were white, much like the breath that escaped his lips in quick succession as though a dwarven smith worked feverishly the bellows within. His heart too seemed part of that forge, pounding like hammer on anvil, the blows resounding in his ears. Held out before him was his great sword, entwining gold dragons blooming from the hilt as pommel guards. He had always fancied the sword thanks to those dragons.<br />
<br />
Now, as the great black wyrm rose up, gathering the coils of its body about it, swelling and shimmering obsidian scales, and with teeth each the size of long swords that cracked together while claws clacked upon marble in great chipping assaults, the knight wished he’d never even known the word 'dragon.'<br />
<br />
To run was futile. There was no turning one’s back on a beast such as this. The knight would stand his ground. He would mount his feeble offense. Perhaps he might cause the serpent a wound before he was rent in two, before acid reduced him to a bubbling mass of goo upon the hall’s marble floor.<br />
<br />
The bold man’s prediction proved accurate. Even as he screamed and rushed the dragon, he was met by a stream of viscous red. Turning his head away, he met the foul creature’s assault with shield. But the steel of the legion was no match for the dragon’s fetid spit. Like boiling water meeting spun sugar, the shield as well as the better portion of his arm evaporated away in a red mist.<br />
<br />
The knight fell to his knees. His sword clanked onto the marble. He fought to bring it before him. He could not. The great wyrm opened wide slathering jowls and reared back to take him in whole.<br />
<br />
And then the world froze.<br />
<br />
A large black tile appeared in the air between them. Upon it were words rendered in gold lettering which read: ‘Resume, New Game, Options, Credits, Quit.’ A golden arrow appeared next and moved over the word ‘Options.’ The tile changed once more and among new words the phrase ‘Immortal Mode’ was chosen followed by ‘Resume.’ The large black tile blinked away then as suddenly as it had appeared.<br />
<br />
The knight was restored. Shield and arm both made whole once more. He rose from his knees and roared. His was a mighty voice and the strength of it rippled the air before him causing the creature to wince back in both pain and fear.<br />
<br />
The knight rushed. The great wyrm lashed out. Claws were cleaved away as it did. More red spit spewed from its throat. But this time the foul discharge was displaced by shield and armor. This time the knight stepped in and drove his blade until the golden entwined dragons on its hilt were one with the scales over the flailing beast’s pierced heart.<br />
<br />
The wyrm withered and fell dead. The large black tile appeared once more above the triumphant knight. This time reading: ‘You Are Victorious! Play Again?’Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-48809476109660280312011-03-14T14:40:00.000-04:002011-03-14T14:40:56.096-04:00AnticipationThe old man waited for the mail to arrive this day, same as every day. Not too many days left. The window was closing. It wasn't the mail in general he waited on. He waited, sentry-like on the front stoop, an old soldier prepared for the arrival of one very specific letter. It was almost ten years to the day in coming. No, he calculated as the afternoon waned, this <i>was</i> the tenth anniversary. Oh how apropos if it should arrive today of all days. <br />
<br />
The woman who had replaced the man before her brought her little jeep to a gravel grinding halt, skidding up to the weathered tin mailbox like a ballplayer stealing third. The mail went in with a resounding 'thunk' and she and her jeep were off. The man she'd replaced used to wave. No matter. Just something to mutter about in the amble down the drive to the box. <br />
<br />
Yes, a letter. Not a bill. Addressed by hand! His wrinkled fingers quivered as he drew it nearer to the thick of his glasses. Ten years to the day! To the day! He knew it would come! And here it was.... <br />
<br />
No. Not his letter. Wrong address.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-64705453626589655582011-02-02T10:46:00.002-05:002011-02-02T10:53:32.141-05:00The fine folks over at <a href=http://eightcuts.com/>eight cuts</a> have a new exhibition up entitled Once Upon a Time in a Gallery. It was my honor and pleasure to contribute my short story <a href=http://eightcuts.com/eight-cuts-gallery/once-upon-a-time-in-a-gallery/after-dark/>The Littlest Dream.</a><br />
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I hope you'll spend some time wandering the virtual shelves to enjoy all the wonderful gems eight cuts has put on display. <br />
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Be warned, however, some links NSFW.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-58883433390240174512010-12-24T10:11:00.002-05:002011-01-24T15:19:00.036-05:00Serial?I wasn’t top of the line at anything; just another run-of-the-mill schmuck. But every lowdown Joe has to pay their rent on the first and so my shingle read, ‘Gumshoe.’ A shitty enough name only slightly better than attorney at law, some would probably say. But for my money it was a moniker with moxie in a trade that was right up my alley. Besides, the good folks with the state bar had said my solicitor days were kaput. So the wet paint outside my door read in simple block letters, 'Gary G. Abernathy, Gumshoe at Large.' I thought it clever enough. And to the point. Let the other private dicks go all New Gothic or Courier New with their gold-embossed ‘Private Investigator’ for hire titles. We all got our angles. <br />
<br />
Tuesday. The only thing good about it was it was one more day down the calendar; a fat, double crisscrossed X past Monday. Alright, it had two things going for it; it wasn‘t Monday, and I was on the job. First call in two weeks, if you don’t count collection agencies and my landlord, that is. <br />
<br />
It wasn’t my first time being summoned or otherwise finding myself at a landfill. Fact is, of the nine major dumps in the tri-state, I was intimately familiar with ten. Dirty diapers and the rest of the disposal of humankind, to include the disposing of humans in a fashion quite unkind. But even being that hip to the tune, as soon as I topped the heap, I knew I was in the stink like never before. <br />
<br />
The Betty Boop who’d called this meeting, a Park Avenue hooker I’d known in passing but never gotten around to knowing professionally, was reclining among last week’s news and banana peels with her best eleven o’clock dress hiked up to her pretty little neck along with a necklace of piano wire. Fashion to die for. And the good boys of the city’s finest, well, the poor, purple-lipped minx must have called them, too. Otherwise, how the hell else could they have been there snapping photos ahead of me. <br />
<br />
It didn’t come as a complete surprise. I’d been set-up before. Late for the dance and left leaning against the wall until the lights clicked on. Fine and dandy. I was bored. So let’s let the great bronze gates of Hell swing wide, we had a quorum: a corpse, a chump, and just enough cops to trample us both. <br />
<br />
“Hey, nickels for brains, how about letting a buck buy into this game,” I hollered a bit too loudly to get their attention. Maybe it was that or the decomposing naked prostitute, but two of the eight on hand went for their guns. Thankfully, I slipped and landed on my keister with two empty palms in the air before any lead started zipping down range my way. <br />
<br />
“Gary! Detective Gary!” <br />
<br />
If only the rookie who’d leaned in to help me to my feet could have eaten another tuna melt to add to his foam-fleck parade. How could a man’s breath beat out the rotting refuse of the teeming masses? A riddle for the ages. I turned my face from his. Bad idea. Blood and semen. I closed my eyes and shot the loudmouth in the head to shut his gob. Okay, not really. If only. But as I found my feet my hand found a severed finger in it. Top notch detective work. The rookie’s mouth was agape and so I deposited little Betty’s lost pinky in it.<br />
<br />
The crime scene was officially contaminated.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-87924793021032187512010-10-09T10:18:00.003-04:002010-11-02T11:29:12.066-04:00The WIPOLDFANGLED<br />
<br />
Chapter One<br />
<br />
Grisly. Horrific. Baffling.<br />
Those were the grave adjectives the nightly news anchors sprinkled throughout the top story of the eleven o’clock broadcast. The hype was appropriate for a change. Another bizarre serial murder had taken place in New York City. For lack of anything so exciting locally to report--and thanks largely to the media sensationalists down in Portland--the Big Apple’s recent killing spree had for past few weeks been the all the talk in Minnowauk. Carl Petnoy was oblivious to the late-breaking report, however, and napped through the entire segment in the comfort of his Barcalounger. <br />
“Be safe,” the bottle-blonde live on the scene in Chinatown cautioned before sending it back to the studio. <br />
“Good advice,” her hair-plugged male cohort seated behind the news desk agreed. <br />
Twenty odd minutes later and the telecast was wrapping-up. The Channel Seven bobble heads briefly revisited the night’s top story in closing, once more promising new details as the story developed. Then, like flipping a switch, they tossed aside their overly-rehearsed gravitas in exchange for a final bit of chirpy banter before they were played off with a blaring orchestral score. <br />
As was all too often the case, Carl startled awake to the consequences of having left the television’s volume up while he dozed. The musical crescendo threatened to trigger his tinnitus. If that happened, the result would be a warbling screech in his ears that would leave him dizzy and imagining a drunken and tortured electronic song bird caged in his skull. Thankfully, however, this time he was spared. <br />
He clapped violently to turn off the television. Too many claps. The living room lights blinked out instead. A pain shot through his forearm. He was elderly. Pain was usually shooting somewhere. He ignored it. <br />
Carl tried clapping again to restore the lights only this time to kill the television as he’d originally intended. Unfortunately, the soft glow of the antiquated cathode ray tube--which, as the sole source of illumination, had painted the room in pastel blues--suddenly popped off, leaving Carl abandoned to the dark. He mumbled. A curse first for Thomas Alva Edison and then another for electricity in general before finishing off with a little something for “the clever monkey” who’d unleashed the clapper upon the masses. <br />
An angry, sputtering round of applause from Carl’s thick hands intermittently flicked the television and lights off, on and then off again. He clapped again and kept at it until he had things in order. Yes. Television off. Lights on. Bushy eyebrows arching in a moment of satisfaction, it was time for Carl to rouse himself and finish getting ready for work.<br />
Carl grasped the threadbare plaid arms of his Barcalounger with both hands and began rocking both he and it back and forth. Things moved slowly at first, but Carl quickly built up momentum, like a child pumping a swing. Then, in a single, Herculean, wind-producing dismount, the old gent grunted free and teetered upright on his stocking feet. <br />
“Oops. Sorry, dears,” he apologized, waving a palm at the baggy seat of his burgundy polyester trousers. “Lima beans.”<br />
He stood for a long pause--spine as curled as a question mark--and then puttered off towards the kitchen. Two more soft poots of gas propelled Carl Petnoy on his way and he muttered more apologies following each outburst all while continuing to fan the mildly polluted air in his wake. It was of no consequence; there was no one present to accept the old man’s mea culpa. <br />
The bathroom routine was practiced if not swift. Dentures were retrieved from their soak, shaken partially dry and gummed into place. A comb was run seven times through Carl’s bristle of porcelain white hair, which proved seven times more than needed. For the past eighteen years his appearance had presented more scalp than hair. He was already showered and clean-shaven and his adult diaper still snug and dry. “A thanks for small miracles,” he said after sticking his hand down below to confirm as much. A quick pass with the nose hair trimmer--first to the nostrils and then to the ears--and he was finished. He paused briefly to consider his reflection in the mirror. This elicited a grunt connoting something between dissatisfaction and approval. <br />
His shoes and shoehorn dressing stick were neatly arranged at the single folding chair of the dining room table. Seven days a week he wore his solid black track shoes with white, knee-high athletic socks. Carl preferred the running shoes for comfort, but told his co-workers, as well as anyone he believed had noticed--strangers even--that they were appropriate in case his “duty” called upon him to “sprint.” The old boy hadn’t so much as half-heartedly jogged a hundred feet in the past seven years--on the job or off--and even on that last occasion he’d still failed to beat the rain home. <br />
Although they certainly didn’t require it, Carl had purchased a bottle of black liquid shoe polish and was in the habit of polishing his work sneakers in the mornings after returning home from his shift. Out of the box, the shoes had been adorned with white racing stripes. He’d considered trying to remove them but worried this might endanger the shoes’ integrity. Instead he applied the polish to them. After several weeks of this, Carl had managed to dye the stripes a dingy grey. He told himself they looked fine and that no one was the wiser.<br />
From the bedroom closet Carl donned a burgundy polyester blazer that matched his pants. He unclipped the black tie fastened to the lapel and after several tries got it under the collar of his white linen dress shirt, crooked, but in place. This was followed by another quick inspection in the hall mirror. Carl’s eyesight was too poor to catch the salt and pepper sprinkling of nose and ear hair sullying his dress shirt. He nodded approval. <br />
Using his sleeve he unnecessarily buffed the silver badge adorning the blazer breast pocket, as was another of his habits. The silver electroplating had begun to flake away for some months now as a result. Ironclad Security, the badge read in a horseshoe of letters corralling a screaming eagle. The regal bird of prey clutched a pair of lumps in its talons which were meant to be a quiver of arrows and a shield. <br />
“Ready or not world, here comes Petnoy,” Carl announced, retrieving his lunch pail from the refrigerator.<br />
As he headed for the front door he blew two kisses, one for each of the photographs kept side by side atop the television in sterling silver frames. One a study in black and white and dull grays, and the other more recent, but yellowed and faded in color. They were wedding day portraits of Carl and his former wives. The first vanished mysteriously from his life and the second taken from him by cancer some twelve years gone by.<br />
“Good night, my darlings. I shall greet you on my return in the morning.” <br />
Lastly, Carl gathered up his wallet, keys, and flashlight from the foyer table, and, after momentarily blinding himself in checking its beam, he holstered the heavy-duty, high-intensity Maglite to a chrome ring on his belt. With that, and whistling a meandering rift of Coltrane loud enough to wake the neighbor’s dog if not the dead, Carl was out the door right on schedule to make it to work ten minutes early, as always. <br />
It was a seaside town. A resort of sorts for the middle class. A summer perennial whose bloom was the Minnowauk Midway, a six block stretch of ocean boardwalk complete with a cavalcade of carnival games of skill--mostly rigged--running alongside several rickety, heartburn and vomit inducing thrill rides. There was the neon-armed and madly spinning octopus, the Mind Blender rollercoaster, a beloved merry-go-round, the Rumpus Room, which was four walls and a floor of inflated space for children to careen off of one another, a dilapidated but still open for business House of a Thousand Horrors, which had maybe two good scares and another two dozen hokey attempts, and the grand centerpiece, the Minnowauk View, the largest Ferris wheel to be had in all of the state of Maine. At the wheel’s apex a couple could see all the way to tomorrow. Or so the sign at its base claimed. After sixty-seven summers of operation the number of marriage proposals made atop the Ferris wheel numbered perhaps in the thousands. Carl Petnoy’s had been two of them.<br />
Carl was the boardwalk’s night watchman. Graveyard shift. Midnight to eight, five nights a week. He’d held the charge of night custodian for nine years. On his off days he could often be found there as well, but only in the summer, and only in the late afternoon. On those busy dog days he would prop his opened trumpet case at his feet and busk for small bills and loose change. He kept his playing low lest his tinnitus flare up, although sometimes he had to cut his playing short when it did regardless. It had ruined his jazz playing days. Not that his musical career had ever taken off. But there had been a time when his music had brought him fulfillment. Memories now. Figments haunting the gloomy recesses of his mind, fading with each passing day, and, like so many other aspects of Carl’s long life, best forgotten. <br />
There was no need for his flashlight nor even the streetlamps as Carl made his way down the sidewalk to get to his job. The moon was sufficient illumination on this night. <br />
Pausing briefly to better appreciate it, the old night watchman was instantly reminded of his mother. The moon was as big and bright as one of her prized white china dinner plates, or so he mused. In a few hours time, before his shift was finished, its transit would see it inch along the dome of the heavens to where it would be obscured by the horizon. For the moment, however, there it looked down on him, what his dear departed mother would have called the egg moon of spring.<br />
Rabbits, she’d explained to him when he was but a tow-headed, skint-kneed boy, were driven mad by the egg moon, jinxed with a compulsion to pluck it out of the night sky and hide it away. This lunacy was brought on in part by the egg moon’s abundant light. Light which made sneaking out from their warrens to nibble midnight snacks of dew sweet clover, or more importantly, to mate, quite dangerous. But far greater than any practical reason, rabbits were compelled to catch the moon because of a curse put upon them by the very first witch who’d ever lived. Aracha was her name. And hers was a curse bestowed upon all rabbits after their king had been caught teasing the old hag’s familiar, the wolf. <br />
Of course the bedeviled, earth-bound hares could never steal the moon--no matter how desperately they tried--and so many a spring night would find the normally wary and wily creatures witless and unawares, dancing circles on their hinds in the silver moonlight, forepaws scrambling in vain to snatch the egg moon down from her high station in the firmament. This, Carl’s mother had explained matter-of-factly, was also why wolves, foxes, coyotes, and all other manner of canines, especially loved the full moon and sang their howls, yips, and bays in praise and thanks to it. <br />
As Carl reminisced on childhood eves sitting crossed-legged at his mother’s feet while she crocheted and spun those and other fantastic tidbits, the old boy couldn’t help but let slip a wry smile. His mother, a clever Scottish woman, had always possessed a knack for making the dreary, humdrum world come alive with magic and wonder. Her name had been Ellsie Anne Topp and Carl’s Father had borne his bride back to her family’s ancestral home among the Shetland Isles when she’d left the world behind some forty years gone by now. That would mark the last Carl would see of his father as well. <br />
“Soon, ma-maw,” Carl sighed to the egg moon, “I’ll see all of you very soon. Of this I’m sure.” And then he continued on his way.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511333184470744620.post-43587270499328618642010-09-28T11:41:00.014-04:002010-09-28T12:01:05.087-04:00Strobie StudiosStrobie Studios<br />
The good folks over at Strobie Studios put together a wonderful book trailer for my novel Seep.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.strobiestudios.com">Strobie Studios</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pejNNcccgU">Seep Trailer</a><br />
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I couldn't be more pleased.<br />
<br />
To read Seep in its entirety, you can find it here on Authonomy:<br />
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<a href="http://www.authonomy.com/books/21591/seep/">Seep</a><br />
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My many thanks to my fellow Authonomite, Scott Strosahl, and his very talented team at Strobie Studios. Well done, all.Eric Lainghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099905886849512886noreply@blogger.com0