A Mother’s Day Ghost Story

When I was a kid, my mother used to joke that because I loved ghost stories so much when she died she was going to come back and say “boo” before taking off to explore the universe.  Over the years between child and adulthood, she must have promised me this at least two dozen times.  Then we’d laugh and I’d ask for another ghost story.

One night in the late 90s, I was struggling with a looming deadline. It was only eleven pm and I was exhausted but determined to get my third wind and keep going until at least two in the morning, as usual. That’s when I looked up from the computer screen and saw my mother.

She was standing in the doorway across the room, wearing a dress I’d loved when I was a kid and her hair was the curly deep red she’d been so proud of back then. She was smiling and her hand was up in a wave. Her mouth moved, saying one silent word. Then she faded away.

Like my mother, I’ve always been  aware during the hypnogogic/pompic states, which occur between waking and sleeping. Some call it a sleep disorder, but she taught me to enjoy playing in this phase and we called it “seeing pictures.”  I knew that’s what had just happened and immediately got up and popped a couple Excedrin for the caffeine buzz. Then I went back to work.

At midnight, my sister called. Our mother had passed away at eleven pm, when I’d had the “waking dream.”

And suddenly I knew.  The word I couldn’t hear was “boo!” Mom had kept her promise.

I went out in the backyard and whirled and twirled, calling goodbye, happy she was finally free of her failing body, free to travel, as she’d always said she would, but already missing her. I still do, but I’m still happy for her, too.  Bye, Mom, you were and are the best mother a kid could ever have.

New TT FB Page

I just started a fan page on Facebook. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.  https://www.facebook.com/tamarathornebooks?ref=hl

Toasting Harlan Ellison

When I was a teenager, Harlan Ellison was my hero. I loved his stories and his prefaces to those stories. I delighted in his antics, and thought there was nothing better than going to listen to him speak at LA colleges.  Much later, after I was published, he invited me to his home after a book-signing at Dangerous Visions.  His house was every bit as amazing as he claimed, adorned with Nixon-era gargoyles and full of a lifetime of writing. And he was every bit as feisty and quick in private as in public.

I celebrated him in “Toasting Harlan Ellison,” written for the Cemetery Dance horror poetry collection, The Devil’s Wine, edited by Tom Piccrilli.  This is the first time it’s been seen anywhere else.

 

Toasting Harlan Ellison

Come all ye young writers, bring ale and cup,

And I’ll tell you a tale that will make you

Proud of the profession that you have embraced:

The story of Harlan, a man with no

Fear and no hesitation;

He threatened producers with painful

Red bricks and dead gophers in boxes,

He scared them so badly, he shriveled their

Cocksureness and shocked them to bits

And Harlan, he said, “You ignorant

Men, you illiterate fools!

You should all drown in stinking

Harlequin  Romances and bunny-soft words,

You deserve nothing more than to be blinded by

Visions of danger and stories with pluck!

Your problem is that you don’t give a

Damn!” he finished and returned to his art,

And settling down, he let a great

Thought through his mind pass

And cried, “I’ll write what I want and you can all kiss my–”

But everyone knows that Harlan’s a

Hard man to fetter and cannot be mastered!

Here’s to you, Mr. Ellison, you’re my favorite

Bastard!

(c) Tamara Thorne 2003-2013

Playing it Close to the Breasts

There’s a strange little something in the works on the side. It was begun as a way to warm up each day for vampire work, but it’s taken on a life of its own, going from flash fiction chuckles to snickery short. Now it’s approaching horrifically giggly novella-length, and it’s not done yet. It will appear in e-format well before Candle Bay is in print. And there’s a surprise attached, but for now, I shall say no more.

 

FOOD AND SEX

I was sitting at my keyboard working on my new book and trying to ignore my hunger pangs when Jerod Scott stopped by to tell me he’d just posted an erotic poem on his blog, JSA Scribes.  Well, now I’m thinking about food AND sex, so I thought I’d share a poem I wrote a few years ago for an anthology called Devil’s Wine. Now that I’ve gotten this off my chest, I can go back to vampire sex!

 

HOT BURGER LOVE

 

Wendy’s so hot and juicy tonight.

“You want the works?” she asks, licking her lips.

Smiling coyly, she studies me.

She is fresh.

I am hot.

I nod.

She smiles then drops her gaze and asks,

“Jack’s in the box?”

“Not yet,” I reply. “He’s still in the bag.”

“Home of the whopper,” she murmurs

as she unwraps my package.

I can feel the salty heat steam forth as she pulls my offerings free.

“Super-sized,” she admires.

“Oh, darling Wendy,” I whisper as she offers me briefly a perfect white breast, “You’re so hot and juicy.”

I am a man of few clichés.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, big boy,” she cautions.

She takes away her succulent breast

and bends to examine my provisions more closely.

First she investigates my buns.

Plain, the way I know she likes them.

No sesame seeds. (They get stuck in her teeth.)

And then she moves on to the meat.

“Mmm,” she says after a long moment. “Cheese. And extra mayo.”

Embarrassment pinks my cheeks like rough rose petals.

I take my whopper from her hungry hands and quickly wipe off the extras toppings.

She looks surprised that I would do this.

“You deserve a break today.” I tell her.

Wendy’s eyes glisten with appreciation and she bends to her supper.

After a moment, I ask, “Do you have the in and out urge?”

But she only shakes her head and mutters,

“Don’t bother me, I’m eating.”

© 2003, 2013 Tamara Thorne

Hot Burger Love originally appeared in The Devil’s Rain, edited by Tom Piccirilli

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Game of Thrones as Played on Facebook

A quick break from book-talk because this made me laugh uncontrollably and anything that does that deserves a big old nod. This is how the season 3 opener would have gone had it taken place on Facebook.  Genius!

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SERIAL CHAT: THE RITUALS OF WRITERS

Being a writer isn’t a choice. It’s a condition and those of us afflicted are intimately acquainted with the suffering we were born to endure. Because our tortured lives are lived in the service of our art, we strive to sacrifice our very souls at the altar of literature for the sake of presenting the world with the beauty of our pain.

Today, we have decided to share with you the burdensome joy of our oft-flailing endeavors to create for you, Dear Reader, the finest, most insightful fiction our poet-souls can spew forth.  We shall reveal our rituals and our deepest secrets so that you may understand what all writers go through every day of their tormented lives to give the gift of verseful prose and to keep the word-thirsty demons of our condition at bay and our sanity at least partially intact.

TT: So, Jerod, I used to use heroin to spark my imagination, but that wasn’t quite elegiac enough, so now I make my own absinthe. Not only is it a staple of great literary tradition, I also find the color green clarifying and provocative and it allows me to maintain both creativity and beauty in my life. Do you have a similar support system?

JS: I gave up absinthe when my liver protested too much. I replaced that sweet nectar by the very bonnet Laura Ingalls Wilder wore when she was compelled to write her Little House on the Prairie series. It still brandishes the magic of long ago, which really was beneficial when channeling Sterling Bronson in Beautiful Monster. http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Monster-Mimi-A-Williams/dp/1615727752/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1364789288&sr=8-17&keywords=beautiful+Monster Tamara, what attire do you don to conjure up your tortured brilliance?

TT: I dress as a Union gunnery officer, circa 1864, because after all, isn’t writing a war with words?  Words are my rifle, my computer is my sabre and rattling it is my life.  I’ve worn this outfit for all my novels except Moonfall* when I found it necessary to dress in a full Felician nun’s habit, complete with the garters and holey leggings of the Benedictine monks.  Do you perform any rituals to enhance your performance?

JS:  I believe that to get to the creative depths of our souls, we must maintain the precarious balance of each of our universes by creating and destroying in equal portions. That being said, my rituals include but are not limited to breaking furniture, smashing mirrors, throwing champagne glasses into the fireplace, watching I Dream of Jeannie reruns, and animal husbandry.

No, but seriously, my real rituals are far less spectacular than any of those.  I like to wear electronic nipple clamps while I’m slaving over my work. There’s something about the power juicing through my body that I believe adds an adventurous edge to my writing. I also center myself by counting the hairs on the back of my left hand.  There are many hairs and this helps me find inner peace. It’s my Zen moment of the day and I always look forward to it.  Do you have any rituals, Tamara?

TT: I do, but none as interesting as yours, I’m afraid.  I keep a framed signed photograph of a young Samuel Clemens over my computer.  It’s been handed down in my family since he presented it to my great-great-grandparents, Chester and Sarah Bellham as a wedding gift in 1859.  (They were traveling after their wedding on the very first steamboat he piloted after receiving his license.)  Each evening, at the end of the working day, I close my computer and light a votive candle kept on the little altar below the portrait.   Then I choose thirteen ants out of my husband’s ant farm and hold them, one by one, over the flame with long tweezers until they crisp while I recite these lines partially from Tolkien:

Cut the cloth and tread the fat!

Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!

Pour the milk on the pantry floor!

Splash the wine on every door!

Hubba hubba shebop shebop

Hobbits, don’t let my new book flop!

Those lines have spoken to me since I was ten years old in ways I can’t begin to explain, even to myself. Perhaps it’s merely silly superstition, but I believe that these small sacrifices aid my creativity.

JS: That’s amazing, Tamara. I do the same thing, but I didn’t admit it earlier because I didn’t want PETA to go after me.  I do it a little differently. My altar includes a painting of Stevie Nicks and a tambourine, which I shake vigorously before sacrificing my ants to her. After the sacrifices have been executed, I look up to the Stevie Nicks painting and recite the following lines three times:

“Just like the white-winged dove…

Sings a song, sounds like she’s singin’

Ooh, baby, ooh, said, ooh…”

 

TT: Why Stevie Nicks?

JS:  Why Mark Twain?

TT: Good point.  We all contend with our private demons in our own ways.  Jerod, they say no book is written by just one person, so tell me what role your wife plays in your writing life.

JS: She lies. She tells people I’m a plumber because she’s very embarrassed, but in private, she’s quite supportive, going so far as to help me count the hairs on the back of my hand to help me focus. I couldn’t do it without her because she’s a far keener mathematician than I.  What of Robert Damien?  How does he cope with your literary mistress?

TT: Threesomes.  Well, Jerod, in closing, what advice would you give to new writers?

JS: As a natural born writer, you’re surely already hanging on to life by the thinnest of threads, so my advice to invest in plenty of anti-depressants, read books such as The Story of O by Pauline Réage, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, and of course, The Back Passage by James Lear. Also, find a good luck charm – worry stones. It’s nice to have something to rub whilst pounding away at your work, and according to ancient legend, worry stones are also good for your circulation depending on the vigor of your worry. Additionally, porn is good because it clears the mind, but make sure you have a keyboard cover.  Exercise.  Kegels are great because you can do them right at your desk and the keyboard cover also comes in handy. Also I glue leather elbow patches to my Lycra Spandex unitard and carry around a meerschaum pipe because it makes me look literary. I advise all new writers do something similar. Think like the writer — BE the writer! What’s your advice, TT?

TT: I advise always taking writing very, very seriously. There’s no joking around when it comes to being a Published Author.  This is a business, damn it, and you must be a professional at all times. Make sure, as well, that your subtext is well thought out and inserted consistently so that people will know just how brilliant you are–and obviously, you must be sure there are always many deeper meanings in whatever you are writing. Thinking like Camus is excellent for romance writers, and I recommend Nietzsche for humorists, but the cant of any serious philosopher will fit the other genres.

Any more to add, Jerod?

JS:  Yes. I agree one hundred and seven percent.  You must take your art as seriously as you do every breath you take. Each move you make and each claim you stake in writing is important. You don’t put on the red light. Just write. Write like the wind. And remember, I’ll be watching you.

TT: One last question, Jerod. However did you get the original Laura Ingalls Wilder bonnet?

JS: eBay.

*You can find links to Moonfall and all of Tamara’s other books at the all new and ever so exciting http://tamarathorne.com

ConDor 2013

I’ll be at ConDor in San Diego tonight and Saturday.  Mysterious Galaxy will be there with my books on hand. See you there! http://www.condorcon.org/html/mainmenu.html

An interview with QL Pearce

Jared Anderson has just posted a fabulous interview with children’s author (and my BFF) Q.L. Pearce.  Q is famous for her Scary Story for Sleepover series – the lady writes a mean ghost story and will have you nervously looking over your shoulder no matter what your age!  Check it out at http://jsascribes.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/author-interview-ql-pearce-2/

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A reader just stumbled across this piece I did for a SoCal newspaper a couple Halloweens ago.  These are all haunts located in places that have inspired many of my novels in one way or another.  (There’s some false info here too, under the Mission Inn: it was not used as the exterior of Buffy’s school in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But it just oozes with hauntings, anyway!)

The Inland Empire’s top 13 ghost stories

Tamara Thorne, Correspondent

Posted:   10/28/2010 04:17:18 PM PDT

Fallen leaves of liquidambar skitter across lawns, bright dots of orange and yellow in the growing darkness. Crackling, cackling, they herald a chill breeze carrying the warm funky scent of burning pumpkin. You, aged 8 or 80, stand on the sidewalk, filling your senses with Halloween.

Distant shrieks and shouts tell you the nearest trick-or-treaters are at least a couple blocks away. Excitement sparks the air. It’s All Hallows Eve, and you’re staring at the big old dilapidated house across the street. The one everyone says is haunted. You wonder, as you always have, if you were to go inside, would anything happen?

That’s the question for which I’ve been driven to find answers all my life, and there is no shortage of haunted places in the Inland Empire. You name it, we’ve got it. I’d love to tell you about a baker’s dozen of my favorites.

Read the rest here: http://www.sbsun.com/living/ci_16460426