Thursday 3 May 2012

My Fond Memories of Michael Louis Calvillo

Michael and I at the 2009 Stokers in Burbank, California. Nate Kenyon and Alexandra Sokoloff are on my left.


     As with many of my horror friends, I first got to know Michael online. We first met in person at the 2008 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. I was in a hurry to be somewhere when he stopped me in the hall to introduce himself. In my haste, I shook hands with him and Michelle and then stormed off to my destination. I felt rude and figured he must have felt that I’d brushed him off. So, I joked with him about that story every time I saw him since, and he always laughed and assured it that it was no big deal.
     That was the first of many meetings in various cities across North America and Europe that I had with Michael. We noted and fancied the fact that we had hung out in so many different places, whether we had gone out for dinner or hung out in the hotel bar at a convention. This taught me the value of camaraderie among horror professionals.
     His and Michelle’s 2009 visit to Buffalo is probably my favorite memory of him. He and Michelle had been in New York City and had taken the train to Buffalo to catch up with Greg Lamberson while he was shooting Slime City Massacre with the intention of flying back to California. So, we planned an evening out, and wouldn’t you know it, we actually made it happen. I picked them up at their hotel and took them into the city. Chicken wings had been brought up, so I took them to Buffalo’s landmark Anchor Bar. Michael picked up the bill, which he might have regretted after seeing my voracious appetite for chicken wings!
     The Buffalo visit was special to me because it was the chance to see a good horror friend away from a convention. By that I mean that it was an additional visit with someone I see just once or twice a year.
     Another amusing memory came at the 2010 Word Horror Convention in Brighton, England. I’d attended a panel that Michael was on and he approached me before it started with his camera and asked me to take some pictures of him bestowing his wisdom to the masses. So, I took a couple of normal ones and then signalled for him to flex his muscles and pose-down Hulk Hogan style! And he did! In fact, he did it for so long that the other panellists began to notice and had a What the hell is this guy doing? look on their faces. I really wish I had that picture otherwise I surely would’ve used it in this post. I looked for it everywhere.
     Horror people are a tightly-knit bunch, and I know we all took it hard when we learned that Michael was sick in December, 2010. I saw Michael at the Stokers in New York in June, 2011 and was thrilled that he had made the trek to the convention. My only hope was that he could walk away with the Stoker. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
     During that same convention, Michael spoke of his pitch sessions with agents. I knew he was lucky to be alive and was amazed that he was still shooting for big publishing deals. Then it dawned on me that he was doing it because he hadn’t folded up his tent and that he wouldn’t allow things to be over until they were truly over. He offered inspiration to me that weekend that I’ll never forget.
     I last saw Michael at the 2012 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City—in the same building where we first met face-to-face. He’d had surgery and was again fortunate enough to have made the trip. I thought he looked better than he had the last time I’d seen him and I wondered if he would be a miracle.
     Then came the evening in which I learned that Michael passed away. I encouraged others to honor Michael by picking up one of his books. I downloaded As Fate Would Have It for my Kindle. Reading it brings on some of the pain, but letting his words live on is one way of making the man himself live on for generations to come.
     I’ll close by summing up some final thoughts about Michael: I can say a ton of kind things about him with no hesitation because they’re all true. I never heard him say anything bad about someone. I never saw him in anything short of a pretty good mood, and that includes the time he was sick and likely in a lot of pain. As cliché as it sounds, the world needs more Michael Calvillos.
     Peace out, Michael.

The Corporation by J.F. Gonzalez (Book Recommendation)

      We’ve all had bosses that we thought were evil. Let’s face it. J.F. Gonzalez, on the other hand, takes it to an entirely different level in The Corporation. This novel was originally published in limited edition by MorningStar Press and has been re-released as an e-book by Midnight Library.
     This novel follows Michelle, a new hire for Corporate Financial Corporation and her doctor boyfriend Donald. Their experiences exemplify all the evils of Corporate America, some of which don’t strike me as much of an exaggeration. You’ve probably known someone who has been screwed by insurance companies just as badly as certain characters in this book. And you’ve certainly had a boss that treated you like a mindless worker drone. The reality of these supposed exaggerations make them that much more poignant, that much scarier.
     The Corporation is written very much in a Bentley Little vein. Had it not been for certain J.F. Gonzalez hallmarks, you could have hidden the author’s name from me and I would have said “Hey, Bentley Little’s finally moved on from the Southwest!” I’m also reminded of Gary Frank’s Institutional Memory (Medallion, 2008).
      At any rate, I recommend this book to just about any horror fan. Might be a turn off if you happen to be a corporate suit, the president of the Newt Gingrich fan club, or a union buster or something. Go check ‘er out

The Red Church by Scott Nicholson (Book Recommendation)





I usually hate books that feature cops of any kind. Usually. And I'm particularly turned off by those that have their own series. Again, that's my normal stance, and it's just a matter of taste. There are just too many of them. Frank Littlefield in Scott Nicholson's The Red Church has me turned around on the topic.
Archer McFall, the descendant of Wendell McFall, returns to the Appalachian church where his great grandfather was hung. He also believes himself to be the second son of God, born of a virgin, and longs to defame Jesus Christ himself. And he has followers. Nicholson tackles the topic of religion in an astonishingly unique way that will appeal most to readers with open minds concerning . . . well, everything. If you're easily offended by the notion of someone else calling himself the son of God, even in a fictional scenario, then the book won't be for you. The book asks questions without making the reader think too hard. Most importantly, it is different from the same-old, same-old.
The book is chock full of ghosts, monsters and personal demons. The writing is elegant, moves along swiftly, and is probably best read while unwinding in bed, except you probably won't be sleeping for the amount of interest in this book. I stayed up late twice to finish the book. I downloaded The Drummer Boy, book #2 of the Frank Littlefield series because I knew I'd want to see that, too. In fact, I plan to check out more of Nicholson's extensive list.

Disclosure: I paid to download this book for my Kindle. The author did not request a review.

Interview with Joe McKinney



There seems to be quite an uprising (if you’ll pardon the pun) in zombie fiction and related media. Any guesses as to what triggered this?

Well, we’ve had zombie fiction for close to 200 years now, if you allow voodoo-inspired zombies into the discussion.  Most of us though mean the Romeroesque shambling corpses (or some variant thereof) when we talk about zombies, and that of course goes back to 1968 and the original Night of the Living Dead.  If you limit the discussion to just that kind of zombie, what you see is a genre that has lurched forward on the strength of a few powerful pieces, gaining significant ground every decade or so on the strength of some watershed book, story or movie.  There was of course the original Night of the Living Dead, heavily inspired as it was on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend.  Then, in 1989, you had John Skipp’s landmark anthology, Mondo Zombie.  But the current trend, I think, started with Brian Keene’s The Rising.  There has been a steady stream of powerful zombie fiction ever since, with a few high water marks, like Max Brooks’ World War Z and Robert Kirkman’s still-going graphic novel series The Walking Dead.  Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, especially in its TV incarnation, has probably done more than any other work to popularize the zombie.  But why these works captured the public’s imagination is another question entirely.  And the answer, I think, has to do with the zombie being a wholly original and unique monster, a monster tailor-made for today’s world.  Yes, I know the zombie is just a revenant, same as Dracula or Frankenstein’s creature or the legions of ghosts haunting Victorian literature, but the zombie is nonetheless unique.  Not in its form, mind you, but in its plurality.  Unlike all previous horror tropes, the zombie comes at you in waves.  One zombie is a snap to kill.  But legions of them, coming wave upon wave, those are impossible to fight.  Plus the zombie is a blank.  Not only is one zombie a nameless face in a crowd, but as a hook to hang a metaphor, it is also a blank, waiting for any clever idea to give it purpose.  Put those qualities together and you find a monster that today’s world of mind-numbing labor and constantly streaming information naturally gravitates toward.

Until vampires sparkled, so many vamps seemed alike, and the same can be said about zombies. What do you do to set your walking dead apart from the pack?

In my Dead World series the zombies are actually living people who have been infected with a variant of hemorrhagic fever called the necrosis filovirus.  Other franchises, such as the 28 Days Later series, have gone this same route, but unlike in those films and comic books, the disease I’ve created follows a fairly well-developed pattern.  Stage I zombies are those who are recently infected.  They experience an absence of pain, and near complete depersonalization.  They are, basically, identical to the shambling undead corpses of most of the zombie stories out there.  But as the disease takes its course, the zombies lose that sense of depersonalization.  In other words, they retain their relentless aggression and need to infect others, but they slowly start to get their sense of self back.  The result is a smarter, and highly unpredictable, zombie.  This is where my zombies differ from the pack.  And it also allows me to discuss issues I find important, such as the nature of justice and the rights of the government to protect the populace through unconventional means.
Zombie stories tend to be plot-driven. What do you do to create believable and sympathetic characters amid the chaos?
Way too many zombies amount to what I call survival porn.  In other words, the main concern seems to be to show characters that clean weapons the way porn stars rub themselves in lube.  The characters are prepared for the worst, and they make all the right decisions.  Zombies go down like paper targets, and we the reader can only stand back, dazzled by the kill shots the way porn aficionados thrill over money shots.  The zombie hunters in survival porn know what it takes to survive and they do it well.  Some great zombie fiction has come out of this survival porn movement, including Day by Day Armageddon, which is one of the finest zombie stories ever told - but that’s not what I do.  I don’t write characters that have all the right answers.  I write characters with conflicting senses of what’s right.  Characters with families, with shortcomings, with emotional baggage.  Those are the characters that interest me, and that’s what I write.

What is the single worst misconception about zombie fiction?

That it is all uniformly low brow.  I hate that.  There seems to be a sense that Lovecraftian fiction, or ghost stories, or other forms of psychological horror are somehow intrinsically superior to zombie fiction.  That’s bunk, of course.  Good fiction goes beyond the framework of its genre’s convention.  That’s why James’ Turn of the Screw and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are more than simple ghost stories.  That’s why Nick Mamatas’ Move Under Ground is more than Lovecraftian horror.  And that’s why so many noteworthy mainstream fiction novelists, such as Colson Whitehead and Joshua Gaylord, have started writing zombie fiction. 

How do your books cater to the movie buff audience?

I rehearse every scene I write many times before I ever put it down on paper.  The result, I’m told, is something akin to a cinematic approach to fiction.  I guess that qualifies as catering to the movie buff audience.  That said, I think there is a sort of democratic nature to the zombie genre.  Unlike other genres, zombie fiction has embraced every significant form of media - be it film, novel, short story, nonfiction essay, blog, whatever - on a more or less equal footing.  Zombie fans seem willing to accept their monster drug of choice in just about any form they can get it.  Like all zombie fans, I love zombie movies, and so, yeah, I toss in a few nods here and there.  Anybody who reads Apocalypse of the Dead, for example, should be able to spot zombie film references by the dozens.  Also, I recently wrote a short story that contains my answer to Fulci’s shark vs. zombie fight scene.

Let’s talk about your background with the San Antonio Police Department. How have hard facts weaved themselves into your work? Do they ever create stumbling blocks that force you to take liberties?

Well, that runs pretty deep throughout my fiction.  I make it a point not to write about cases that I’ve been involved in directly, but being a cop has been such a significant part of my life that it can’t help but surface in my fiction.  Readers of Dead City and Flesh Eaters will definitely see this.  And of course my police experience has led to some frustration on my part when it comes to reading reviews.  I can’t tell you, for example, how many times I’ve read a review that gigs me for having my zombies (who are living people, remember) walking around with their guts oozing out of their bellies.  How could living people do this, they ask, as though they’ve caught me in some sort of terrible oversight.  I have a strict policy of never responding to reviews, so I can’t tell them that in my role as a cop I have seen people walking around with their intestines in their hands.  I have seen people walk away from gunshot wounds to the face.  I have seen people survive car crashes that slice open the skull.  Every weekend, the cops in America’s biggest cities shoot somebody with an AR-15, only to have that person run away with wounds to their chest.  These things really do happen, and I put them in my zombie fiction.  I can’t help it if some readers have trouble believing the damage the human body can withstand.

Your collection, The Red Empire, is a departure from the zombies that have branded your name. How challenging was the experience? Any plans to return to foreign waters?

Well, yes and no...at least as far as the challenging part is concerned.  I am best known for my zombie fiction.  That’s certainly true.  However, zombies are only one corner of my literary interests.  I have written extensively in the crime fiction and science fiction genres, for example.  I have published literary mainstream fiction, plays, screenplays, essays, history articles, newspaper articles on cooking and even travel pieces.  The Red Empire and Other Stories was composed of non-zombie fiction for a reason.  It was meant to showcase the strong police procedural element that runs through my horror fiction.  And as to my plans to return to these (non)foreign waters...you can count on it.  In fact, I’m already under contract to do just that.  Here in the near future readers can expect to see novels that have nothing to do with zombies, and even a few that have nothing to do with horror...though horror will has always been my first love and will always be the comfort food that brings me back for more.  No worries there.


In what direction do you think zombie fiction is headed?

Two directions at once, I think.  On the one hand, there has been a glut of zombie fiction lately (nearly all of it horrible) that will probably pull the reputation of the genre further down into the abyss of the self-published trash heap.  This is an inevitable result of the democratic nature of zombie fiction that I mentioned earlier.  But on the other hand, select examples of the zombie genre will carve new paths.  Some of these will be in film, some in novels, some in other modes, and through these, the zombie genre will survive.  It will continue to lurch along, much as it has done for the last 45 years, much as it does now.  We will see long stretches of nothing special, then someone will come along with a truly spectacular work that revitalizes the genre.  The zombie is here to stay.  You can’t put that genie back in the bottle.  But its fortunes will move along a lot like a wave from here on out.  We will have high points and low, the good and the bad.