Terror in the Red Rum

Are you ready for a night of terror in the Red Rum?

Join six local horror authors at Black Cat for a night of dark tales to get your bones chilled in time for Halloween. Up-and-coming dark fiction author Sonora Taylor (Little Paranoias, Without Condition) brings together area authors to read, drink, and shiver in the Red Room; including Rob Blackwell (The Samhain Chronicles, the Soren Chase novels), Sawney Hatton (Uglyville, Everyone is a Moon), John Edward Lawson (New Mosque City, Discouraging at Best), Jessica McHugh (Rabbits in the Garden, The Darla Decker Diaries) and Sheri White (Sacrificial Lambs, Tales from the Crust). Books will be available for sale. The event is FREE to attend. Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain!

—from the event description

Terror in the Red Rum is a FREE one night only show in the “Red Room” of the Black Cat nightclub in Washington, DC. For more about the authors, and the Black Cat, visit their event page at http://www.blackcatdc.com/shows/tales-for-halloween.html. For directions, parking, and all other information visit http://www.blackcatdc.com/information.html.

Check out the event page over on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/1347490528740932/ to ask questions, let us know if you can make it, or heckle us in advance.

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Raw Dog Screaming & Dog Star Books at Bucket O’ Blood!

Looking for independent bookstores to support? Do you live in the Chicago area? You can find a fresh supply of Raw Dog Screaming Press and Dog Star Books releases at Bucket O’ Blood Books & Records in Chicago. From our horror offerings to our science fiction adventure to our postmodernist novels and everything in between, they have a select of stock that represents the full scope of what our company has produced over the last 16 years. I especially recommend The Blood Poetry by Leland Pitts-Gonzalez, Meat Puppet Cabaret by Steve Beard, and Nightly Owl, Fatal Raven by Jessica McHugh. Research Bucket O’ Blood Books & Records online at http://www.bucketoblood.com/index/index.html for their events calendars, directions, and more. Want to see RDSP and Dog Star authors appear in person at Bucket O’ Blood? Let the staff know!

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By the way, do you link the featured image for this post? It’s a spooky photo I captured while on a walking tour of haunted locations in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I’ve recently made it possible for you to purchase a print (or other product with this image on it) in my photography store at https://johnlawson.zenfolio.com/p364850120/ece93aa02. That way you can make the Halloween season last all year just by keeping this dark image near you!

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From the trade paperback edition of SuiPsalms.

Also just in time for the Halloween season, and to celebrate the recent Dark Poetry Day, my fifth poetry collection is available at a discount. Here’s what internationally renowned critic Gabino Iglesias had to say about this collection:

“Packed with a variety of texts that stretch the definition of poetry to the breaking point, SuiPsalms is honest from the beginning…In a standardized world, Lawson’s work is the equivalent of a juggling octopus jumping out of your morning coffee… While there is enough death and darkness to argue this is horror poetry, the book’s diversity makes classification impossible.”
—Gabino Iglesias for Black Heart Magazine

You can support independent bookstores at the same time by purchasing through the Indie Bound network of indie stores. Just click on the banner below!

Or, if you prefer Amazon, you can get the discount price at http://amzn.to/2fmrVY6. A brief reading guide to the book can be downloaded free of charge at https://bizarrowriter.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/suipsalmsguide.pdf.

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Note: the above are affiliate links, meaning I receive a small percentage of any money you spend at the retailers after clicking through the link. It’s fairly standard for authors to employ affiliate links for their books, but I use this extra money to help finance my efforts in publishing other authors.

Which brings me to the “offer unlike any other I’ve ever shared” promised in my previous post. This is also an affiliate link. It’s for my musical project, Rage Inducer, which I’ve been mentioning since late 2015. Maybe you’ve even seen the free demo versions of songs I’ve posted around the internet on sites like ReverbNation or Drooble. There was even that video for the song “The Lustful, Wrathful, and Sullen” I released almost two years ago.

The first official Rage Inducer single to FINALLY hit stores and streaming sites is “Popular Mechanics of Genocide” and you can find it on Amazon and Deezer, with many others such as IHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play coming soon. You can also watch the official music video with lyrics below.

But first: a very enthusiastic SHOUT OUT to everyone who as supported me over the years! THANK YOU.

In my next installment you’ll get a free download, info about how to take part in another event, and everything you need to become the holiday season’s coolest gift-giver.

Sexy Violence, or: Parallel Campaigns of Terror

Violence is something I don’t think you should have to endure, or be injured or killed in the attempt to avoid. So I shared the above meme with the intention of flipping the perceptions on certain types of violence, and how that violence is frequently excused away.

Not everyone will agree with me, and I encourage disagreement. I think everybody should be able to post their opinions on their personal social media pages; I might be annoyed when I see this, but it’s their space so if I disagree I can just take my attention elsewhere.

A lot of violence supporters come around to my space on the various social networks, though. The above is from Google+. As time goes on the thought matures within me that our tolerant behavior tends to fuel the poor behavior in others–more so in offline relationships face to face, but that’s another blog post entirely–so it falls to us to not confuse being reasonable with being permissive, and in so doing tacitly condoning things. More to the point: violence advocacy online has real world consequences, and can’t be ignored when it enters your sphere of influence. So, if we are to have these public discussions, why not make them public for real, not just locked away on some secure social network where impact is limited? I view it as my job, so here I am doing my job…

“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
—Isaac Asimov, Column in Newsweek (21 January 1980)

I have seen the notion floated on the Internet that part of the targeting of French culture is terrorist perception of the society’s “decadence” (derived in part from the attackers’ statement: “The targets included the Bataclan theatre for exhibitions, where hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice”), including the immodest dress of the men and women. Let’s look at that. If you are traveling in the Middle East even men are advised to wear loose fitting, longer clothing–pants and a shirt with sleeves. That’s one thing; it’s how their society operates. How about extremists on the fringes of that society? Looking at the religious extremist government of the Taliban—far more representative of the region’s terrorist organizations than Islamic governments—even athletes were arrested and punished for attempting to wear shorts during soccer matches (anybody else remember interviews with relieved Afghan citizens playing soccer in shorts after the USA invaded?).

This is exactly what you are agreeing with when you dismiss violence directed against women as a result of their apparel. Furthermore, the existence of that violence is all too often used to also justify violence against children or other men. You are in agreement with the most repressive of the religious extremists who will harm at random. Contemplate that if you have expressed any concern about the incidents in Paris or elsewhere.

Or you can insist that whatever arbitrary hypothetical you conjure be treated with the gravity of real world violence, reveling in others’ inability to outpace your make-believe with attempts at reason…all with the knowledge that by cultivating conditions for random violence in the world while you yourself exist in the you are supporting random acts of violence against yourself and those in your life. Also known as: the thigh bone really is connected to the hip bone.

You see, I understand it feels comfortable to be in an insular environment where you aren’t confronted by unexpected thoughts or actions. It’s natural to prefer it. I know I do! Yet, I’m convinced it’s our business as adults to challenge ourselves, because the insular environment is to the mind what outer space is to bodies: spend enough time there and you grow weak from loss of muscle mass, frail from loss of bone density, squirrelly from lack of broad human contact.

Don’t worry; I challenge myself more harshly than I do others. In addition, I’m cognizant of the fact I’m almost 7 feet tall and almost 300 lbs. The “it’s nature/might makes right/size hierarchy” approach means you condone megafauna like me either torturing, killing, or robbing you with impunity (because I can’t stop myself when I see you, so stop making me see you unless you want these things to happen). Devote some time to meditating on that one. Unless, of course, you are larger than me.

As for the classist–and potentially bigoted–nature of the comment left on my post pictured above, well, coming from an impoverished urban area (“ghetto”) I can assure anyone who holds those perceptions:

1. Violence there isn’t as it is portrayed in the media.
2. If you are a stranger coming to the hood with lots of obvious money people will assume you want to buy drugs or something–anything–else and will try to sell you whatever they can. If this fails they might get angry, but violence isn’t too likely. You grow accustomed to being on the wrong end of privilege in those places and only mess with people who seem more or less within your socioeconomic range, because police won’t care as vigorously about people who share your socioeconomic strata. Your car might get messed with, though.
3. Folks in the hood might be more scared of you than you are of them; if they don’t get near you they can’t be accused of impropriety and injured, killed, falsely arrested, or even just hassled by authorities.
4. …why am I treating hypotheticals that would never transpire seriously?! Back to the blog wrap-up…

For my part, I long ago adopted a do-not-engage policy for those who jump into discussions with knee-jerk reactions/declarations that they will reject any viewpoint other than that which already resides in their minds. Instead I write blog posts; it is my hope you have enjoyed this one. If so, please consider showing support by purchasing Cog by K. Ceres Wright or Ana Kai Tangata: Tales of the Outer the Other the Damned and the Doomed by Scott Nicolay. My own books are available free to Amazon Prime members or through the Kindle Lending Library.

Other posts of mine you might enjoy are:

• That Thing Between Your Legs and It’s Role in Serious Literature
• Men in Horror Month
• Teapot Weather Forecast: Category 5

To aid your digestion of this article please listen to “Solvent” by Skinny Puppy.

Wholesome Terror Pre-order

COMING 10/22/14 Pre-order at Amazon

The sheer terror of hope has been dissected and repackaged as standard rhymes, experimental verse, and other poetic forms in order to rendition the reader blissfully numb. These are poems that contain elements of eroticism, satire, political commentary, and horror wherein the reader need not wonder how many times can Lady Lazarus be resurrected after waterboarding, because they find themselves acting as her proxy in this endeavor. Wholesome Terror is a savage, hydrophobic dog of a book curled up with the reader’s throat comfortably within reach.

Looking for a poet who hasn’t been dead 150 years to share your Halloween with? Try this book in Kindle format now!