Wave Break: Horror, Nostalgia, and Some Cat Photos
In lieu of a new story, here's me hemming and hawing about nothing
This is another Wave Break, where I update you on what I’ve been reading, writing, and generally screwing around with.
I’m James Kislingbury. Writer. Podcaster. General layabout. This is the Sea Wall, the official home of my fiction, as well as whatever stray bits of non-fiction that fall out of my head. You can also follow me elsewhere by following this link.
You can also read the archives for the low, low price of a five bucks a month (or $45 a year), and— believe me— I’m worth it.
Anyways, it’s been a goofy couple of weeks. Or months. I’m not really sure anymore, so let’s get to it.
It’s been a slow month for my fiction. Between moving, going to school, and generally being a naredowell, it’s been hard to find the time for it.
That said, I wrote a kind of tribute to Bob Newhart. If you don’t know who Bob Newhart is, he was an accountant-turned-comedian who got famous in the 1960’s playing a sort of uber-straight man. A square to end all squares. He had two long running sitcoms (back when that was a big deal), which culminated in one of the greatest series finales of all time.
Business at the Aztec also came out this month. It’s another brief sally into the world of the West Coast American dirtbag. It’s got everything a body could want in a piece of fiction— car stuff, gun stuff, and hyperspecific local architecture. It’s also, technically, a part of a larger story cycle about the particular kind of sun-burnt induced madness you get here at the far edge of America.
As you’re reading this, I am working on another short story (one that’s spun completely out of control, length-wise). I won’t tell you what it’s about, but it’s inspired heavily by Unprotected CCTV, a Twitter account that posts nothing but exactly that.
And since I mentioned him, here’s a Bob Newhart sketch that’s been stuck in my head for over twenty years.
Speaking of writing, I’ve had to start a blog for one of my classes. A real calorie burner for me, you can understand. If you want to read about me as a film collector, you can read that here.
You’d think not having a job would be conducive to me reading more. You would be wrong. In spite of everything, my reading has slowed down to a crawl. I’ve only managed to read two books in the past couple of months.
From the Belly (Emmett Nahil, Tenebrous Press)— I wish I liked this book more than I did. The premise is strong: Queer nautical horror from an indie artist. That’s right up my alley. Unfortunately, the novel itself didn’t grab me. There’s something here, for sure, but whatever it is never surfaced for me.
I think the stumbling block I had with this book is that it doesn’t take place in the real world. To me, if you have a story about curses and old gods and magic, if its set on Earth, you understand the tension because these things don’t exist for most people. In a fictional world, that isn’t true, because maybe they do? Because I don’t know what the rules of this made up world are, it’s difficult to gauge just how frightening the proceedings are supposed to be. We know that witches aren’t welcome in our world, but we just have to take your word for it.
This would all be a minor quibble if the story worked for me. As it stands From the Belly feels more like a premise than a full-fledged tale. It’s a lot of people stuck in one place, chained to their inevitable fate. There are no real twists or revelations. Instead, it’s this long plunge into the deep. That can be appealing on its own, but in this case, it didn’t. It’s a shame.1
If I write any more it might sound like I’m ragging on it and I’m not. Books like this deserve to be talked about. They deserve a shot. The literary world is very small and, unlike with somebody like Stephen King, you might actually be able to impact this author’s career personally. We need to do better about accessing new and independently made art, even when the work itself isn’t perfect. What’s more is Nahil did something a lot of people only dream about doing: Wrote, finished, and published the fucking thing.
Vagabond Omnibus Vol. 3 (Takahiko Inoue, Viz)2— I’ll be honest with you, I don’t remember who any of these people are. There’s a couple reasons for this. One is within the story itself. There’s a time jump and people change outfits and careers, so it makes some sense that I lost track of them (I think with a side character like Matahachi, you’re also supposed to lose track of him). The other thing is that I’m dumb and I read the second omnibus volume months ago (years ago?). Basically, I brought this on myself by reading a complex work with a large cast of characters and made it worse by being dumb as hell.
I mean, an epic cast of characters in a work of epic literature, who could have seen that coming?
What’s interesting in this volume is that Musashi’s arc isn’t so much a ramp so much as it is a spiral. He is constantly learning and unlearning things, progressing and regressing, as he follow his destiny (or gets sidelined by it). It’s an intriguing approach, because as much as it threatens to become a sitcom (where the character returns to a baseline after the resolution of that week’s episode), it feels more like Inoue is playing around with both the structure of manga stories (ie: Our hero’s power level will constantly increase, while his opponents, somehow, become more and more elaborate and intense) and with how being a human works. Our power level doesn’t always increase. We don’t always become better people. Sometimes we get drunk and wrapped up in dumb bullshits. Sometimes a major victory is followed by a major loss. Life goes on.
I’ll definitely be there for volume four. . . I just need to keep track of the characters for the next time. . .3
I’ve also started reading Cuckoo, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s sophomore novel. Pretty solid so far. Not enough to say anything substantial about it, but I can say that Rosie is digging the hell out of it.
I finally started watching Killing Eve. Is this show good, does it get better, or if every episode like this, because, man, I really don’t know about this one.
I’m also six episodes into The Terror. I’m really hoping these guys make it. . .
Recently I stumbled onto concept art from Kuon, a survival horror game from the early 2000s. As a big fan of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, it got me wondering if I had missed something. As it turns out no, but I was on the right track, because both Kuon and Sekiro share the same developer.
This lead to me watching videos of games from this era. Part of the reason is nostalgia. I’m trying to relive that era in some way, to remember what it was about those games that effected me so much, and trying to apply some of that energy to my own work. Another part of this is, looking at this art, at these creatures, it’s making me wonder what did I miss?
What little treasures are squirreled away in the past, hidden behind small print runs and ROMs and fan translations? It makes me wonder why people keep coming back to these games after all these years. It makes me wonder what I can do in my own work.
This is the video I watched. This particular channel (Dungeon Chill) focuses almost exclusively on old, weird RPGs and horror games, which is to say, the exact subject of my current obsession.4
Anyways, there’s just something about revisiting a place you’ve never been to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to wrap up watching this video:
I went and saw Alien: Romulus. It’s rock solid and is exactly as competent as an Alien movie needs to be in 2024, which is about as damning as it is complimentary. The strength of the Alien franchise is that, for better or for worse, they were always distinct statements from the director and always managed to move things forward or move them in a different, more expansive direction. Romulus, instead, looks to the past and attempts to recreate what made this series good instead of doing something different (complete with pointless callbacks).
In short: I dug it. I’m just not sure how long that enthusiasm will last outside of the damaged mind of an old Alien fanatic.
Also, watch out: Strange Shapes, a fastidious and fetishistic examination of the Alien series is back. . . kind of. Anyways, make sure to put it in your RSS feed just in case.
It is with some shame that I must report that I still follow Warren Ellis.
I’m bringing him up not as some excuse to self-flagellate, but because I was struck by this blog entry of his. He talks about why he keeps a web log and what the purpose of doing so in 2024 A.D. is. He also introduced me to the word zibaldone, which I like and am certain to use in my own writing just as soon as I finish this entry.
Anyways, Warren Ellis, that slime can still write.
Lastly, an apology: I’ve been taking too damn long with my big Akira Kurosawa run.
It’s been a wild couple of months. Exacerbating my own laziness is the fact that I moved last month and started start school today— shit. Really? Today. Fuck. Anyways, it’s really tamped down on my ability to get this done. Also, the fact that so many of them have been stinkers has not helped. Still, the blame falls squarely with me. I will endeavor to do better. . . And hope that the next couple of movies aren’t as soul-suckingly dire as The Most Beautiful (spoiler alert for the second installment, I guess).
That’s that for now. Don’t forget to subscribe, even if it’s for free. I like it when people read my stuff. This seems like a much healthier way to get my views across than Twitter, which these days has all of the pleasure of a voluntarily contracted blood disease.
Like I said, new stuff on the way. Talk to you later.
Oh— and here’s one more cat pic for the road.
Now that I think about it, it is not dissimilar to Butcher’s Crossing. Both are period pieces suffused with a sense of inevitable doom (one much more so than the other). They were also both lacking in any serious wrinkles in the plot. It felt more like the stories just kept on happening until they ran out of words. Again, that’s a choice and can have its own appeal, it just didn’t in this case. . . And now that I think about it, Butcher’s Crossing should have had a curse or something in it.
I’ve been drilling proper APA into my head over the past week or so and, I’ll be honest with you, staring at this title is freaking me out. Almost got me going to my reference book to double-check whether you gotta italicize the volume number or not. . . yeesh.
Because it’s a work of historical fiction (and a sort of adaption), Vagabond has a dramatis personae in the back (which I completely forgot about until I was done). I wish more books would do this. James Ellroy does this (even if it’s never alphabetized) and it’s always handy.
Recently a dear friend of mine made the argument to me that I am autistic. I don’t if that’s true or not. What I do know for a fact, though, is that people do not care about WWII armored warfare like I think they should.
Rosie can read she just doesn't like to do it in front of people. Also, I loved Killing Eve but I get how it's not up your alley. Alan and I finished The Terror in like, a week. We would have finished it in 2 days but life got in the way. Prob the best horror series about isolation.