My Comiccon Catharsis

It wasn't like a face palm followed by a 'doh!'

It wasn't the clouds opening up and a ray of light shining on me as a chorus sang somewhere out of view.

It was a lot more subtle than that.

It just sort of dawned on me as I sat in the Brick restaurant on Saturday night, having dinner with Jeff and David Marriotte, Jordan Summers, and my wife, when Wil Wheaton came in and David gave him a hug.

What is it? you ask.

Hold on. I'll get there.

Some real highlight moments from Phoenix Comiccon 2012 were having drinks with Ed and Matt Asner, meeting comic artist Billy Tucci, spending quality time with Joe Lansdale, learning from my Jedi Master, Mike Stackpole, shaking hands and spending a moment with Wil Wheaton, seeing old friends, panelling, and just watching the costumes go by.

I mean this was almost too much sensory input.

What was also nice was that my father, my nephew, and his friend were able to come up and share in the experience. Not only were they able to partake in the visual feast of the con, but they were able to see the reunion of most of the cast of Star Trek the Next Generation.

I saw quite a few stars as they sat signing, but I didn't bother them. I had my own business and my own fans to contend with.

On second thought, maybe my catharsis happened when I was on a panel with Janni Lee Simner. We were talking about Dystopian and post/pre-apocalyptic themes in fiction and were agreeing with each other more often than not. It was one of those terrific panels where, although I had no idea what I was going to say, I ended up entertaining and partner-teaching with Janni, so that by the end, people came up telling us it was the best panel they'd attended.

You know, I've been hungry for success for a long time. I want to be great. I want to be top shelf. I want to be read, people to love me, and to be as cool as Samuel L. Jackson. But I think somewhere along the way I forgot that one can attain this while being a nice person too.

Maybe I've been too aggressive.

Who me? Mister Army Man? BTAM his own badself? Aggressive?

I mean, I am a nice person. Anyone who knows me knows that. Sometimes I just don't feel as nice as the next guy. Is it that warrior spirit leaking forth? Is it all the KILL KILL KILL training I've had over the years?

Don't hate me because I'm deadly.

But seriously.

I want to be nice like Mike Stackpole and dispense good advice.

I want to be nice like Ed Asner and his son, Matt, who's a spokesman for autism.

I want to be nice like Jordan Summers, who opens her heart to recently found friends.

I want to be nice like James A. Owen, who's eager to share how to both write and draw.

I want to be nice like the Marriottes, David and Jeff (and M.E.), who are just damn nice.

I want to be nice like Janni Lee Simner, who can't possible have a mean corpuscle in her body.

I want to be nice like Wil Wheaton, who seems to me like a terribly nice guy, who bends over backwards to be extra nice.

I just want to be nice.

Leo Derocher coined the famous aphorism back in 1939, Nice Guys Finish Last.

Bullcrappity.

I don't buy it.

All those nice guys I mentioned above are doing quite well for themselves.

Leo Derocher can go suck my -- wait!  I'm a nice guy, now. At least let me try and be nice for an entire blog.

And if I can make it through this blog, then maybe I can be nice a while longer.

I know what you're saying. You're nice, Wes. Don't be so hard on yourself. Maybe nice isn't the word I'm looking for. Maybe it's something else. I just don't know. All I do know is that I'm going to approach life from here on in a little differently. All those nice people I mentioned above? I'm going to try and be nice like them.

Because in this world, it's possible for nice guys to finish first (and gals too).

And now some costumes for your viewing pleasure...

The rest of the pictures can be found here -- there's 305 of them.

Phoenix Comiccon 2012

2012... Deep Breath... Afghanistan

My last post was January 4th.

No excuses.

I wanted it that way.

I needed a break. I wrote a quarter of a million words in the last six months and needed a break. So I sat back and watched great friend Brian Keene go to Sundance for his knock-em-dead movie Ghoul, my daughter prepare for a career in the Navy, and my wife pull our new house together. I let life stroll by for a few weeks. I read some books. I enjoyed my family. I poked away at a few new projects. I bought Skyrim and am two-handing my way through the monsters and mages who try and stand in my way. It's been a nice break. But I'm about to climb back on that super-charged, techni-colored creation machine and get cracking.

After all. I have a deadline this year that's much earlier than the rest of them

July 2012 I've been given an all-expenses paid trip to the grand resort called Afghanistan, where I'll wear the finest in body armor, carry the coolest personal weapons, and try and keep my head down for six months. Although I might be able to pen a few words when I'm there, I'm not going to plan on it.

So I gots to get my stuff done.

This is what I have planned so far--

BLOOD OCEAN hits the streets on Valentines Day. I'm going to begin a push for this, so I hope you all are ready to make a few phone calls.

SEAL TEAM 666 is turned in. I'm awaiting edits. Looks like we have an official cover. This book is going to be HUGE. Too bad it's going to be released when I'm in Afghanistan. Gonna make it a bitch for you to get one personalized.

GHOST HEART - YA Novel co-written with Yvonne Navarro. Cover by Vincent Chong. Published by Dark Regions. Hopefully ready by WHC.

THE LOUP GAROU KID - Third Book in Vampire Outlaw Trilogy. Published by Bad Moon Books. Hopefully ready by WHC.

Comic Books - I have several projects going. We're hoping to have BLIGHT ready for Phoenix ComicCon so we can shop it around. We're still looking for an inker/letterer, so apply within.

Animated Project - I'm contracted with Pulp Gamer to help conceive a special animated adult show. Still working on the scripts and back story for this. NFI.

Blight as drawn by Nick Diaz

Short Stories-

War Cthulhu story due in March.

C. Augest Dupin murder story due in September (which means July). This will be my first co-written story with Yvonne.

Psycho story due in March.

Novella due to Dark Regions in September (which means July)

Novella due to James Roy Daley ASAP.

Appearances -

BLOOD OCEAN book signings are being arranged as we speak. I was going to do them, but Abaddon said that they'd like to arrange them for me, through Simon and Schuster. More later.

Feb 4 Appearance - Sierra Vista Public Library
Mar 10 - 11 Tucson Festival of Books

Mar 29 - 31 World Horror Convention Salt Lake City

May 24 - 27 Phoenix Comiccon

Some of the authors scheduled for Phoenix Comicon

If there are any other requests, I'll consider them. But my Spring is tight. I have a trip planned with Yvonne for she and I to spend time together before I go. I hope to fit that in around her birthday.

That's all for now.

And it goes out with a BANG!

And it goes out with a BANG! 
or
How to Make a Bad Review Good!



I got another Publishers Weekly Review today.

This is my third review from them.

They loved Scarecrow Gods.

They loved Multiplex Fandango.

To say that they love Blood Ocean would be stretching the meaning of the word past any credible elasticity. In fact, I think they hated it. Why do I think they hated it? Using critical thinking and my knowledge of the English language, comments such as 'tolerable prose,' 'shallow world-building,' and 'repellent' have led me to believe that they indeed hate it.

But the clincher was the closing line. The result is a throwback to horror's unpleasant past, from which most readers have long since moved on.


Ahhh.

Feel the hate.

Embrace it

But what does it mean?

Before we can answer that, here's the entire review, lifted from their site.

Blood Ocean

Weston Ochse. Abaddon, $9.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-907992-87-2

A plague has left the City on the Waves, a ragtag community of decaying ships in the Pacific, isolated and desperate. Kavika Kamilani sets out to find the killers of young drug-runner Akamu. This quest will cost Kavika his closest friends and family, shatter his world, and cast a terrible light on the secret power structures in command of his tiny community. Stoker winner Ochse writes tolerable prose sabotaged by shallow world-building. The novel begins promisingly enough but soon descends into displays of cliché and violence. A plot predictable to anyone familiar with Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron is married to antiquated social and sexual conventions; the fate of a transsexual character is particularly repellent, as is Ochse's decision to describe the Korean characters as cannibals. The result is a throwback to horror's unpleasant past, from which most readers have long since moved on. (Feb.)

Reviewed on: 01/02/2012

So again, what does this mean?  In my opinion, it means that the reviewer didn't get it. Although this falls under the PW umbrella, everyone who works for them has their own personal tastes. Blood Ocean is a cross-genre book, embracing both horror and science fiction. Clearly the reviewer is a science fiction reader. Blood Ocean was probably handed to him or her and he sat back with a glass of Chianti thinking about what a fun time he'd have with a science fiction book-- after all, he compared the plot to Norman Spinrad instead of Ed Lee, Brian Keene or Jack Ketchum.  By the second chapter he experiences the first of many horrendous physical occurrences that is standard fare in today's horror. And the badness increases. exponentially. A lot of bad shit happens to people in this book. It is, after all, called BLOOD OCEAN. 

I hope I didn't put the poor reviewer into therapy.

Also, and I can't say this for sure, but I think it's true, this is the first Abaddon Book, maybe the first Afterblight book, to be reviewed by Publishers Weekly. In the world of Afterblight, Abaddon created an entire world that was built on the dystopian premise that things we've outgrown and overcome have come back to haunt us as we fall back into our base needs, desires and beliefs. In the world of the Afterblight, we homogenize ourselves out of fear of others. We look at those who are different and are afraid. We are scared of anyone who isn't us... and for good reason, in the world of the Afterblight, what is unfamiliar will kill you.  

The reviewer claims I use cliche. Really?  At the end of the world when everyone is trying to survive, they're going to turn on the others and keep to their own kind. Is this cliche? Or is it how we'd view the reality of it?

So, what should this jamoke do about the review? I'm certainly not going to hide it. Other than what I've done, I don't really feel a need to explain it. So instead, I'm going to use it as a marketing point.

How's this: "BLOOD OCEAN, a book so horrific and real that Publisher's Weekly found it repellent and unpleasant."

Or what about this:  "BLOOD OCEAN, a throwback to everything you love about horror."

Or maybe this:  "BLOOD OCEAN, a book so violent that Publishers Weekly became angry at the deaths of it's many characters."

I really think this was a problem with reviewer expectations. And it's hard, you know? I get it. Dystopian books are normally science fiction fare and not horror. The reviewer probably felt tricked. He or she actually things the horror reading and writing community has moved away from violence. Shhh. Don't tell Clive Barker or Ray Garton that. For god sakes, don't allow Ketchum or Lee to come anywhere close to this spicy tidbit of knowledge. They'd be devestated, as would we all.

It's clear that science fiction reviewers don't like blood, gore and violence. Take zombie novels for instance. Who do you think reviews them? Zombie books, which are almost entirely caused by science, are reviewed by horror reviewers. I mean really? Are these horror books? Or are they science fiction books?

See! This is what happens when you mess with genres.

Oh yeah. I haven't ever read Norman Spinrad, but I think I will now.

Also, there's something I'm going to watch for this coming year. Two of my friends have books coming out from major houses. Both of them are as equally dystopic and violent, if not more so, than Blood Ocean. One is a zombie novel that is sure to be reviewed by a horror reviewer. The other is just a nasty dystopian novel, sure to be reviewed by a science fiction reviewer. I'm curious to see how they fare.

And one last note on the idea that horror has an unpleasant past. Unless they're talking about the crazy cover art of the 1970s and 1980s, I'm not aware of any unpleasant past. In Brian Keene's Keynote Speech for AnthoCon 2011, he talked in depth about the history of horror. He takes us all the way back to 1796 and brings us forward through the first, second, third and fourth waves of horror. The New Weird. Then next generation. he talks about it all, and as a chronicle of the horror genre, there is none better than this speech. 

But he does talk about the 1990s. 

Some say horror died in the 90’s, but this is patently untrue. Horror as a marketing category to be stamped on the spine of a book certainly died, but the stories and books and readers were still there. From 1991 to 1995, the most prominent mass market horror publishers were Zebra Books and the Dell Abyss line. Zebra was your traditional mass-market pulp house, cranking out novels with garish covers. Dell-Abyss was a little different. Started with the mission statement of getting away from the traditional horror of King, Koontz, and Straub, Dell Abyss was to publish more cutting-edge horror, and for a while, they did. Then the whole thing came crashing down, leaving folks like Brian Hodge and Kathe Koja homeless. Meanwhile, over at Zebra, authors weren’t getting paid on time. Zebra collapsed, too, which left authors like Rick Hautala and Ronald Kelly scrambling. (Credit Brian Keene)

If this is the unpleasantness to which the reviewer was speaking, then yes. It was damned unpleasant. But this had nothing to do with violent prose. If that were the case then there would be no Girl Next Door or Night They Missed The Horror Show. This had to do with marketing strategies and production.

I've always been careful about writing violence in my fiction. Nancy Goats, a novella about a
young gay man who gets abducted by a group of mixed martial artists worried me the most. But when friend and fellow author Hal Bodner read it and emailed me how much he loved it, I knew I'd found the balance. I try and find this balance in all my work. I knew BLOOD OCEAN was going to be violent. Just look at the setting. It's Mad Max on water, for heck's sake. Freaking Violent. People die. Some revert to cannibalism. Other people try and do things that no man or woman should ever suffer. 

Badness happens.

But I guess badness only happens in horror fiction.

So if you want violent, character-driven fiction, then BLOOD OCEAN is for you. For as long as horror reviewers like Paul Goat Allen read, review my fiction and put me on the list of 'extraordinary writers,' then I know I'm doing it right.

So here's my favorite blurb of the three:  "BLOOD OCEAN, a throwback to everything you love about horror." Which is yours? Do you have a better one I can use?

Yeah. That should do it.

Have a Happy New Year's people.

Looks like it's going to be a damned good year!

The Art of Evacuating from Fires

The Art of Evacuating from Fires.

I should be good at this. I've done it now four times.

My Parent's Home

The first was during my wedding reception to the incomparable Yvonne. We were married in Deadwood, S.D. beside the graves of Wild Bill and Calamity on a scorching hot dry day in June 2002. An hour later, after we'd changed and almost had a dance, fire sprung up in Grizzly Gulch, causing the evacuation of about 30,000 people, including everyone at my wedding. We never did have the reception. We left all the food and booze behind. I know. Tragic.

My second evacuation came a year later. It was October in 2003. Reggie Bannister, friend and acclaimed star of the Phantasm Movie franchise, had invited me to participate in a horror extravaganza he and Gigi (his wife) had planned. Myself, Brinke Stevens, Angus Scrimm, and several others traveled up past Twin Peaks to Crestline. The local bookstore had dozens of copies of Appalachian Galapagos. We were in for a great weekend. We had drinks and dinner that evening and woke up to a conflagration. The two fires, Grand Prix and Old, converged into one raging firestorm with a cloud as big as Kansas rising above the pine forest. We evacuated along a highway called The Rim of the World.  Fire actually licked at the wheels of my car as it sped between hungry flames and a thousand foot drop above San Bernardino. That was scary.

And now this.

The Monument Fire.

Compilation of great photos

Compilation of some stunning videos

We evacuated once after seeing the line of smoke and burning homes march our direction, then thought everything was okay and de-evacuated. That's a new word, by the way. De-evacuate: To naively return to your residence when you think the fire is no longer a danger.

Yeah. And we packed for a day and a half. Yvonne, using tetris algorithms, packed two carloads into each car and we sped away. Then we returned Saturday night, woke up Father's Day morning and unpacked the car. The mountain chain beside us known as the Huachucas was barely smoking. It just had to be over.

By 1:30 the mountain had exploded. We walked out of the grocery store with Father's Day dinner fixin's in hand and rushed home. Had we been ten minutes later, we would have had to leave the dogs for four days, including our blind one in the crate. She wouldn't have survived it. Ashes were falling on our home. 40 mile an hour winds pushed a yellow cloud over our home. Sheriff cars with loudspeakers begged us to leave or else burn. We decided to Re-evacuate. That's a new word too. Re-evacuate: To frantically flee after de-evacuating prematurely.

Monument Fire Father's Day Night

So what does one take when re-evacuating? Here's a short list.

• Comic Book Collection
• Tax Records
• Eleven socks
• Fourteen T-shirts
• Two Pair jeans
• Seven Pair underwear
• Elvis Jacket
• Elvis Blanket
• Vitamins
• Blowdryer
• Bram Stoker Award
• Blackhawk .357 Magnum single action long barrel
• Computer
• Miscellaneus box of books including my own and those I couldn't live without which included Joe Haldeman's War Stories and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (Latter personalized)
• Sunglasses (Not my Elvis ones)
• Can of tuna
• Box of Bling (Jewelry)
• Dop Kit
• Netbook
• Four bottles of wine
• Two hats
• Family Photo album
• And that's about it...

So that's four times now. Four. FOUR! I've had to do it three times more than most people ever have to do it. For many of you, I just took your turn. I've now done it so that you don't have to. So if you ever think you have to evacuate, think about it for a moment. You might find that I've already done it for you. So kick back, relax and watch other people's stuff burn.

Special thanks to my parents for letting us take over their home and for allowing our dogs to sleep in comfort and coolness. And thanks to my father in law for protecting my comic book collection. As Brian Keene will attest, I have some seriously rare books.

And most of all, thanks to the firefighters for saving our home.

My Life in Comics - Where I Leap Into the Fray

I've loved comics ever since I can remember. After about the age of five, I always had comics. I remember driving across country and stopping at a Stuckeys in Iowa and convincing my mother to buy bags of pre-packaged comics. My mom was always good about that. She didn't care if it was a comic, as long as I was reading. In fact, I went to the grocery store with her specifially to get her to buy me comics, Cracked and Mad Magazines. We needed apples, I got comics. We were out of bread, I got comics. I tried to get her to buy Heavy Metal once, but that didn't work out. Darn.

My bud Brian Keene and I have talked about this for years. We're both Silver Age Comic nuts. I love old Fantastic Four, The Defenders, and Avengers. I grok the Inhumans, Silver Surfer and Namor (this is when he was impetuous, arrogant and an anti-hero). I dug the hell out of Marvel Team Ups and What Ifs. Remember those? What if Doctor Doom was a member of the Fantastic Four? Stuff like that. They were big in 1978 when I spent the summer with my grandparents.

I went through the 1980s not buying or reading, for that matter, any comics. I'd joined the Army and was literally knee deep in dirt and alligator shit for a decade. I returned to comics during the big wave in the early 1990s. I was able to be a part of the Image evolution. Along with traditional super heroes, they had a comic called Pitt. Remember that? This one sort of changed my idea of comics, that they weren't only about heroes. That got me into Cerebus and The Sandman. I discovered Vertigo and started to really pay attention to all the different companies and what they had to offer.

Then I discovered The Preacher and the writings of Garth Ennis. Then Warren Ellis. And with Warren I discovered that art can be ART, and was inspired by Ben Templesmith (Fell).

During this time I was writing. Learning my craft. I've won awards for fiction and screenplays. I even had a short story printed in the back of about a dozen different IDW comic books. I have projects stacked on top of projects stacked on top of projects. I have three novels and a short novel due tomorrow. Yet comics are still my love. I think about them. I read and reread them. Lately I've been enjoying Brian Keene's The Last Zombie and Joe Hill's Locke & Key. Both books combine tremendous story with stimulating art.

Now I can't draw, but I can write a tremendous story. I'm damn good at that. So after the World Horror Convention this year I decided why not try my hand at comics. I need something more than a story in a comic book. I need to be able to create the entire comic book.  So I've done three things:

One. I've partnered with artist Russel Dickerson on a project called Killing Time. He hasn't worked on comics much either, but he's a terrific artist who is coming into his own. Killing Time will be a webcomic provided page by page. Probably a full-paneled page once per week once we get going. The story of Killing Time is based on the short story 'Tarzan Doesn't Live Here Anymore' from my new short story collection Multiplex Fandango. We're targeting that the first page will be available sometime in July.

Two. I created a 4 script arc for a new mini-series called BLIGHT. It's a slipstream, steampunk, horror comic. Imagine of Locke & Key meets Preacher, then this would be their love child. Like most of my work, Blight takes place along the Mexican Border. I'm very excited about this. Of course the only problem is that very few people in the comic world know me. There are a few joints I can submit this to cold, but the chances are slim. The chances get much better, as do the places where I can submit this increase in volume, if I have an artist-writer team. So, in that light, I'm now searching for a comic artist with experience who wants to partner with me on Blight.  If you know one, or if you are one, shoot me an email at westonochse@gmail.com with the subject "Blight Artist." I'm a hard and fast worker.

Three. I've pitched Dynamite Comics about one of their owned projects. I'd love to breathe new life into it and resurrect it. I've definite ideas. Now to get my foot in the door.

So there you have it. I didn't step, slide, shimmy or skip into the fray. I freaking leaped.

Now to see what I can do there.

Weston Ochse
Tarantula Grotto
Sonoran Desert