Year: 2010

20th century ghosts

I couldn’t ask for a better anthology of contemporary horror. And it’s a generous anthology, too. Fifteen stories (sixteen if we include the hidden short story in the Acknowledgments), all of them written and constructed with superb skill. Gorgeous language, with author Joe Hill settling with the subtle instead of the hysterical. Not hurrying, not resorting to cheap tricks.

I was so happy to have gotten my hands on this book. “Best New Horror” is a self-reflexive delight, “Better than Home” heartbreaking, “Last Breath” simple and spooky, “My Father’s Mask” a disorienting tale of masks and made-up games.

“Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead”, starring a pair of extras in a George Romero film, is surprisingly sweet. I was convinced Hill could make any subject work, because he even made “Pop Art” work – work so well it could bring tears. And “Pop Art” is about an inflatable boy. (Seriously.) The anthology has some body horror (“You Will Hear the Locust Sing”), some vampires (“Abraham’s Boys”). “The Widow’s Breakfast” is a story told through the eyes of a hobo. No ghosts here, but my, what fantastic construction. The collection closes with an engaging novella, “Voluntary Committal”, which you just have to read.

All of the stories have heart. That’s what most horror writers forget. You need the heart, to make the horror more devastating.

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

20th Century Ghosts

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), 100 Bullets

new!Showbiz Lengua, Our Story Begins, PGS Horror and Christmas issues

trick or treat at the office

Styling by Almi, props from Lawrence. Candy and biscuits and ice pops from the three of us!

Happy Halloween!

Lights out!

BEDLAM.

Ate Malou’s daughter! Ang cute!

<3

one for usok #2

From Paolo Chikiamco of Rocket Kapre:

The wait is over. Be here on November 3, 2010 for the launch of the second issue of Usok, the webzine of Fantastic Filipino Fiction. Three all new stories, each with a custom piece of art by some of the best digital painters in the country, with a cover by CG Pintor founder K. Lapeña. Please spread the word!

Table of Contents:

100% of Me by Kate Aton-Osias

Elsewhere by Eliza Victoria

The Widow and the Princess of the Dwende by Elaine Cuyegkeng

Artwork by K. Lapeña, Mark Bulahao, MJ Pajaron, and VN Benedicto

The artwork, as always, is fantastic.

While waiting for Nov. 3, you can always visit the site. Look around. Paolo’s got interviews, news, articles, stories (check out Usok # 1), everything spec fic. :)

* * *

I’ll be celebrating my 24th birthday on Nov. 1 (woo-hoo!). I’ll be offline for more or less four days, starting tomorrow. Will be spending time with family. Enjoy the weekend! :D

storm of swords

Toward the end we see Sansa standing in snowfall, creating a replica of Winterfell from the white, white field. From the book’s beginning to this scene is a gripping tale of conspiracy, lies, bloodshed and war told through the eyes of ten characters. Many beloved characters die, alliances shift, and powers are given and taken away.

This novel is more than a thousand pages long, but Catelyn Stark strikes a deal with Jaime Lannister, Robb takes a wife from a lower House, Joffrey takes the hand of a Tyrell, wights attack the Watch, Jon falls in love with a wildling, Daenerys Targaryen builds up an army to take Westeros, and the Starks and the Tullys go to the Twins for the wedding of a Frey – and you just have to keep on reading.

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

now reading: The Spooky Art

now reading: 20th Century Ghosts

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), 100 Bullets

new! Showbiz Lengua, Our Story Begins, PGS Horror and Christmas issues

a trip to the hospital, weekend games

I had vertigo in grade school. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, to be precise, though of course I didn’t know it was called that. (I didn’t have Internet, then. Ha!) I’d get the dizzies if I lay on my side, or if I tilted my head up and down. Sometimes even when I lay down flat on my back. I would have to elevate my head with pillows when I sleep, and try very hard not to move. It faded away after a week or so.

I had the dizzies again on Sunday, and I still had it on Wednesday night, along with an excruciating headache that crawled down my forehead. I didn’t want to go to a hospital, and I was so sure it would just fade away like last time, but Jaykie was worried, which got me worried, so on Thursday morning I asked him if he could drive me to St. Luke’s.

I’ve always thought St. Luke’s was the shiny building in the middle, so I went straight there with my Medicard. Alas, outpatient clinics are in the more rundown buildings on either side of the shiny building. I went to Medical Arts first (“Strange term, Medical Arts,” Jaykie said), and was told to go to the PET building right across. So off I went to the PET building. I was told to go to Room 713.

Room 713, I was sure, was empty and locked. I waited some more (Jaykie was still parking). Finally I asked the busy Room 711 for directions. Apparently I was in the North part of the building. The Medicard room is in Room 713 also – but Room 713 SOUTH.

The world was spinning – literally – and I could only think, Which smartass sumbitch thought of giving the same room numbers to both wings?

(Actually, now I’m not sure. Maybe I was waiting in the South wing when I should have been in the North wing. The point is I was in the wrong wing standing in front of the same room number. You get the drift.)

So I went to Room 713. I said “vertigo” and I was referred to an ENT doctor in Room 812. There was a line, of course. The wait took TWO HOURS. I mean, wow. We were able to eat lunch in the middle of it. (I kept apologizing to Jaykie; waiting sucks.)

BPPV was the diagnosis, and I was told to move instead of avoiding the vertigo-inducing positions. “You’ll notice that the dizziness disappears.” She recommended three hearing exams: pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry, and brainstem auditory evoked response.

All three exams had to be taken in the main building. Shiny! I had to wait in line in the cashier to get a receipt for the exams, but at least (and I kept reminding myself this to suppress vertigo rage) I didn’t have to pay.

The audiometry exams were simple. A technician puts an earphone over your head, and everytime you hear a sound, no matter how soft, you raise your hand. Then the technician reads words to you, and you have to repeat the words back to her. Took twenty minutes, and I was able to get the result right away. (Left ear had mild senso – something. I didn’t bother to figure out the graphs.)

I couldn’t take the BAER the same day, so I had to go back early the next day. Torrential rains, and I had to go back so I could have my nervous system checked. Argh. Here I was made to lie down, and a technician attached electrodes (electrodes! like in Fringe!) on my head and inserted earpieces in my ears. I was made to listen to clicks and whirrs for an hour. I was told to relax, but come on. Anyway, I did my best. I certainly couldn’t sleep.

(I got the results from fax today. More graphs, but everything looked fine.)

Jaykie downloaded a PDF reader on his PSP so I could read my ebooks. Now I want a PSP. LOL.

We had tequila on Friday. Though it gave me incredibly painful stomach cramps at two in the morning, it cured my vertigo! Or so I think.

* * *

We went to the OGM on Saturday. Had fun. Played Incan Gold (where sometimes you win if you decide to run away – I don’t like the values this game teach LOL!), Senators (I won!), Dixit (lovely French game where you are handed cards with surreal imagery – I. LOVED. IT. I would buy that fucking card game! Though I don’t get the name.), and Werewolf, which unfortunately we had to end before we could finish the game because it was getting late.

Realization: What I need in the OGM is a constant game partner who can play some lousy boardgame with me while Jaykie is in RPG. Heh. Anyone? Yes?

* * *

This morning is foot spa day! My soles were scrubbed raw, and now my feet and my toenails are happy.

* * *

I need time to re-write a story for an editor who is kind enough to want it for publication. AGH GIVE ME TIME WHY IS IT SO HARD TO WRITE NOWADAYS.

* * *

Dear Universe,

I want to go home on my birthday. Please don’t let me spend my birthday with the first floor flooded.

Thanks.

Love,

 

lucky

Rape is the one violent crime I know that leaves a victim broken, and blamed. Who would dare say to a murder victim’s body, If there’s only one guy who did it, and you didn’t manage to get away, maybe you wanted it? See how ridiculous and heartless it sounds? But with rape victims most people don’t think twice. It depends on the gender of the victim, don’t you think? I’ve never heard anyone say to a male rape victim, Maybe you were being provocative or Maybe your shorts were too short or Was your shirt too revealing? or If there’s only one guy who did it, and you didn’t manage to get away, maybe you wanted it.

“It sucks being a woman,” author Alice Sebold says at one point. “You always get smashed!”

Alice Sebold was raped during her freshman year at Syracuse University. She begins her book with this scene, her description unflinching, clear-eyed, straight to the point:

He began to knead his fist against the opening of my vagina. Inserted his fingers into it, three or four at a time. Something tore. I began to bleed there. I was wet now.

It made him excited. He was intrigued. As he worked his whole fist up into my vagina and pumped it, I went into my brain. Waiting there were poems for me, poems I’d learned in class: Olga Cabrai had a poem I haven’t found since, “Lillian’s Chair,” and a poem called “Dog Hospital,” by Peter Wild. I tried, as a sort of prickly numbness took over my lower half, to recite the poems in my head. I moved my lips.

It was awful and filthy, and it was hard to read. It was definitely harder to write, and I admire Alice Sebold for her bravery.

Despite all the violence and the tears, this one scene stuck with me:

“I’m not going to attack you, Dad,” I said. “I want you to tell me why you don’t understand, and I’ll try to explain it to you.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t try to get away,” he said.

“I did.”

“But how could he have raped you unless you let him?”

“That would be like saying I wanted it to happen.”

“But he didn’t have the knife in the tunnel.”

“Dad,” I said, “think about this. Wouldn’t it be physically impossible to rape and beat me while holding a knife the whole time?”

He thought for a second and then seemed to agree.

“So most women who are raped,” I said, “even if there was a weapon, when the rape is going on, the weapon is not there in her face. He overpowered me, Dad. He beat me up. I couldn’t want something like that, it’s impossible.”

When I look back on myself in that room I don’t understand how I could have been so patient. All I can think is that his ignorance was inconceivable to me.

It was inconceivable to me as well.

I hope every man gets to read this book.

He began to knead his fist against the opening of my vagina. Inserted his fingers into it, three or four at a time. Something tore. I began to bleed there. I was wet now.
It made him excited. He was intrigued. As he worked his whole fist up into my vagina and pumped it, I went into my brain. Waiting there were poems for me, poems I’d learned in class: Olga Cabrai had a poem I haven’t found since, “Lillian’s Chair,” and a poem called “Dog Hospital,” by Peter Wild. I tried, as a sort of prickly numbness took over my lower half, to recite the poems in my head. I moved my lips.

“well?”

Interesting. I don’t even remember using this service.

This popped up in my Inbox today:

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Thursday, October 19, 2006, and sent via FutureMe.org
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Dear FutureMe,

Have you won a Palanca already? Have you published a book?

Are you happy?

Well, 2006 self: 1) Yes. 2) Yes. (Though Jeremy’s Magic Well was published after winning a contest. I suppose that still counts, haha.) 3) Yes.

The girl who wrote that letter back in 2006 was very lonely and unsure of her talent, but at least she had hope.