As promised, here is the second Lethal Chamber track from Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, courtesy of my insanely talented brother, Kurt Hauser. It’s called “Washington Scare.”
I love how this one starts a little slower and then breaks into the full, up-tempo, punk rock chaos.
Give it a listen and let me know what you think!
Though I’m not quite ready to give you details yet, I can say that the next project is underway. We undertook a big household move from northern New York state to central Pennsylvania over the past month, and we’re only just now reaching the point where we are surrounded by more order than chaos (at least inside our house). I’ve finally been able to devote more consistent mental space to moving that WIP along, and let me tell you, that feels good. In a couple of weeks, I think I’ll be able to start reporting word counts.
This Saturday I have my next reading. I’ll be at the Bucknell University Bookstore Barnes & Noble at 3pm reading from Memento Mori. Later in August, I’ll be at NecronomiCon in Providence, RI, and then in October, I will be at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthuchuCon. I’m lining up a couple more events immediately after that, and I will announce those here as soon as I can.
I have no doubt that authors have different wishes for their work, and that sometimes they have different wishes depending on the work. Maybe for the first (solid) book, you just want it published. Maybe you’re looking for fame and fortune (“and everything that goes with it…”). Maybe these three sort of go without saying.
I had one more or less secret wish for Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows: I hoped that it would move some readers to make art. It’s a novel about the power of art to influence the audience and also the power of art to inspire other artists. So, whether it was fan art, fanfic, or something else entirely, it didn’t matter.
Well, here we are.
My brother, Kurt Hauser (KFH, if you’re nasty), has gifted us with a gritty, thoroughly punk rendition of Lethal Chamber’s “Past the Fates,” the lyrics to which Billie Jacobs lovingly copies into her zine, Final Grrrl #5.
Crank it!
Lethal Chamber, “Past the Fates”
Right?!
I can smell the beer and sweat and smoke now.
More to come!!! In the meantime, let me know what you think of this one.
The sign says “Author Signing Today.” The woman says, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Last Wednesday was my first public reading from Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows. It was held at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, California and hosted by Ross Lockhart, my publisher at Word Horde. I’ve done a lot of “readings” before in the form of academic conferences, so you might say that I have a particular set of skills. And yet, it’s different when you’re reading from your own novel, or reading your own poetry.
This reading came together fortuitously, because my partner and I were vacationing nearby with a couple of our friends. The four of us showed up at the book store after a nice dinner in Petaluma and were immediately greeted by Ross and shown around the store. I grew up with a mix of corporate (B. Dalton and Waldenbooks) and independent booksellers (Thackeray’s in Toledo, OH), and my heart has always been with the independents. Copperfield’s is obviously the kind of place that can engender that kind of love and loyalty. I would proudly shop there regularly, if we lived nearby. If you get a chance to stop in, I would highly recommend making sure you head into the basement (Copperfield’s Underground) for the used and rare book experience.
Right at 7:00pm, we gathered at the back of the shop, which was already set up with podium and table for the book signing that would come after. A few people were already seated, and a few more came and filled in seats as Ross introduced me and then I stepped up to the mic.
And it went well! Of course, I had hemmed and hawed for a while about what to read. A reading like this shoots for 10-15 minutes, which is maybe six or seven pages of this book. That makes it tricky. I chose an early scene from C.C. Waite’s memoir of Tina Mori, which only required a minimum of exposition to set up. I was sort of surprised that the piece read so well, but the audience was there for it and reacted just as I hoped they would.
I love that in this photo it looks like my glasses are fake costume specs.
The Q&A afterward was lively and interesting. It was a mix of people who had read the novel and those who had not, so we all did our best not to get into the weeds or spoil anything. Luckily, some great questions allowed me the opportunity to get philosophical and talk about the weird and the numinous and the symphony of horror and Robert W. Chambers. I was a happy author!
My tongue sticks out when I sign books.
The book signing portion was a bit mind-boggling, honestly. It was a wonderful out of body experience that was simultaneously terrifying and glorious. Those excellent questions kept coming from the very thoughtful listeners and readers who had come that evening.
Dillon Beach, not far from Bodega Bay where Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) is set.
As I said, we were out there primarily because we were on vacation, so let me share the Alfred Hitchcock double feature section of our vacation from a couple days after the reading. First, we drove to Point Reyes Station and then headed up the coast to Bodega Bay, where The Birds takes place. We didn’t stop, but we did get out a little further on at Dillon Beach. There were actually more people on the sand that day than this photo seems to indicate, and the birds were not at all aggressive. Yet.
I don’t actually know what the hell is going on with this photo. I assume David Lynch is to blame.
From Dillon Beach, we pressed on to the Armstrong Redwood Forest (reminiscent of the redwood scene from Vertigo), where I took this picture. I honestly don’t even know what’s going on here, but I love it and don’t feel a need to question it too closely. We made it out of the forest and eventually made it home to Lewisburg. Or did we?
Now that we’re home, we’re able to take advantage of a real treat here in Lewisburg. In the summers, the gorgeously restored art deco Campus Theater runs a free Hitchcock program. Tonight is Psycho, and you can bet we’ll be there.
I have something amazing to share with you, but it has to wait just a little bit longer. I know, I probably shouldn’t tease you like this. I can’t help it, though. You’ll see another post in a couple of days, and I guarantee you it will be worth the wait…
Memento Mori is a book I would not have written if we had not moved to Potsdam, New York in 2012. As I wrote in the real acknowledgments for the novel, the story came partially as a result of delving into Wes Craven’s history in Potsdam while he taught at Clarkson College of Technology, before he became a filmmaker. But it’s also true that the geography and architecture of the North Country were key to the development of the novel.
Many, many locations from the North Country found their way into Tina Mori’s tale. Potsdam became Red Stone, a reference to the Potsdam red sandstone that, along with timber, drove the early economy of the town. I want to share with you the inspirations for some of the locations in the novel. If you’ve read the book, I’m sure you have images of these places in your head, and I don’t want to displace those at all, so I hope you’ll take these in the spirit they are intended.
Bayside Cemetery Gatehouse
The impressive cemetery gatehouse where Tina and C.C. go to meet with Dr. Holly is actually the Bayside Cemetery gatehouse in Potsdam. It was built in 1901 entirely of local red sandstone from a design by Edgar Josselyn and currently is listed on the National Historic Register. I fell in love with this building the moment I saw it. Not long after we moved to town, Clarkson University took over a long-term lease of the building and started casting about for possible uses. I wanted very much for it to be used as housing for an artist-in-residence program, but admittedly this isn’t really Clarkson’s bag (it’s a well-regarded STEM school). The small rounded door to the right of the photo is the door through which Tina and C.C. enter the house.
Fort Montgomery on Lake Champlain
The North Country has a lot of great places to visit, as long as you don’t mind road trips (90 minutes to Lake Placid, 90 minutes to Ottawa, two hours to Montreal, about three hours to Burlington, VT). On our way to Burlington, the bridge between New York and Vermont over Lake Champlain at Rouses Point sports a view of the early Federal fortification of Ft. Montgomery (or Fort Blunder) north of the bridge on the western shore. This is the fort where Tina and C.C. witness the ritual that becomes so key to the overall story. The fort is currently private property (it’s for sale, if you’re interested), so I haven’t been in it, and I think that actually adds to its mystique for me.
A North Country Barn
Tina Mori’s arc in the novel is bookended by two barn parties. At the first, she sees several films by Maya Deren that convince her that what she really wants to do is direct. The second, in the same barn, is where she premieres her masterpiece, The Dragon’s Teeth. The North Country is dotted with barns in various states of repair and use. You’ll find collapsed barns, rugged old barns mostly in use for occasional storage, and brand new barns (usually Amish) being put to their full range of uses. Barn parties are still a thing in St.Lawrence County, whether for weddings or Halloween parties or whatever. I got the idea for it in the novel from the party that was thrown after the successful screenings of the student film that Wes Craven helped to make at Clarkson in 1968. This isn’t that barn, but you get the idea.
Additionally, one of my astute readers has pointed out to me what he thought were fictional references to the Java Barn, a local music venue on the campus of St. Lawrence University. Though the echoes seem to be spot on, I had to admit that I had never heard of the Java Barn prior to him mentioning it. Synchronicity.
Barnum Pond
One of Tina’s films, The Stairs, takes place at Barnum Pond in the Adirondack Park, not far from Saranac Lake. Barnum pond is one of those pristinely gorgeous spots that came to characterize the Adirondacks for me. As you take a wide curve in NY State Route 30, the trees fall away and this lovely pond stretches away toward two low peaks beyond the western shore.
The Dilly Wagon
This last location is more of an inspiration. It doesn’t show up in a thinly veiled way, like these other locations. The Dilly Wagon was an early-1960s drive-in restaurant that was the creation of Charles Weinstein of Potsdam. The restaurant had two things that set it apart: its signature Dilly Sauce and its Conestoga wagon design. When I stumbled across this bit of Potsdam historical lore, it stuck with me. I have a soft spot for diners and drive-ins and these post-war hold-overs. However, instead of going with the wagon, I chose to create the Barnstormers aviation-themed restaurant where Tina gets a part-time job. It’s the same general idea, a gimmicky greasy spoon, though Barnstormers is an eat-in roadhouse.
Those are some of the locations in the novel inspired by real-life spots in Northern New York. Were they a whole lot different than you imagined them to be?
A big part of Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows is issue #5 of the zine Final Grrrl created by Billie Jacobs. As I’ve written elsewhere, Billie’s voice in the zine is in many ways the farthest from my own, and so it was the one for which I had to do the most research. I want to share with you a little bit about what I found when I set about fleshing out Billie’s background.
Billie’s passion is horror movies. That’s what fills her thoughts most of the time. When her imagination or her creativity is sparked, it’s usually in relation to horror. That desire for thrills and chills is what fuels her reactor’s core. It provides energy, but it doesn’t entirely translate into identity.
As more and more people around her expected her to fit in somewhere, whether or not they had specific ideas about where, Billie resisted most of the conventional cliques. They didn’t want her and she didn’t see herself with them, even though she felt a desire to belong somewhere. She finally found what she was looking for when she came across a copy of someone else’s Riot Grrrl zine at her uncle’s copy shop.
Riot Grrrl is a musical movement rooted in punk aesthetics and driven by feminism. It began in the Pacific Northwest and in Washington, D.C. when young women began forming bands that would allow them to perform and express themselves in ways that they had seen young men doing . Many of them had been going to punk shows for years, but they didn’t feel like they belonged. They often found themselves relegated to the back of the venue. As Riot Grrrl started to build momentum, bands like Bikini Kill would often announce from the stage, “Girls to the front,” emphasizing that their shows were places where women were fully empowered to rock out.
More than a type of music, Riot Grrrl also encompassed a vital streak of political activism that focused on feminism and especially on protecting girls and women from abuse, but it quickly grew to include additional concerns like racism, homophobia, and ableism. Some of this growth was a reflection of the diverse interests of the women who made up the movement, while other aspects of it only grew after some members pointed out the shortcomings of the movement. For example, Riot Grrrl’s message and image were resoundingly straight and white at first, and it took some time for those who were viewed as leaders to recognize how that messaging could exclude some people who wanted to contribute. All of this activism was carried out in the form of loosely organized chapters where members could meet up for mutual support and planning, but more crucially it took place through the mail in the form of zines.
My go-to sources for Riot Grrrl history and aesthetics were two books and a documentary (in addition to a lot of listening to songs by Riot Grrrl bands and reading lyrics).
The Riot Grrrl Collection is a fantastically designed full-color collection of zine material, posters, and other printed ephemera from the movement’s heyday. This book gave me a crystal clear picture of the kinds of things that Billie would have been reading after she sent her $1 off in the mail to get a back issue of Girl Germs or the latest copy of Bikini Kill. It also comes with a fascinating introductory essay by Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre.
To get a better understanding of the bigger picture, I read Sara Marcus’s Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. This book lays out the history, personalities, accomplishments, drama, and eventual decline from the peak of the Riot Grrrl movement in the mid-1990s, around that time that Billie puts together issue #5 of her own zine, Final Grrrl. If you’re interested in more than just the Wikipedia entry on Riot Grrrl, then this is perhaps the best consolidated resource.
But for a more complete sensory immersion in Riot Grrrl, I recommend Sini Anderson’s 2013 documentary The Punk Singer. This doc focuses on the story of Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of Bikini Kill, as the spine of the film, but it also manages to establish a lot of the context for the wider movement. Most important for me, it presents the sights and sounds of Riot Grrrl together, most often through the voices of the women who made it happen. It’s fascinating and compelling, and I highly recommend it as a place to start, if you find yourself wanting to know more about Riot Grrrl.
Of course, there’s a ton more out there. In particular, I recommend looking into the amazing archiving and teaching work being done by people like Dr. Alana Kumbier. Alana and I knew each other in graduate school, and I’m fairly certain her work is where I became aware of Riot Grrrl zine culture in the first place. She has been involved in researching and supporting archives of zines and other ephemera, particularly related to queer communities and producers (like QZAP – The Queer Zine Archive Project), and she has co-taught courses on Riot Grrrl and zines.
