Running up to that novel, Pic is on a blog tour, and today he is stopping off here with an essay called “Recurrence” that I believe you will find an excellent read. One day some enterprising publisher needs to do up a collection of Piccirilli essays. Maybe sooner rather than later.

And now I’ll shut up and let you get to the good stuff.

Recurrence by Tom Piccirilli

I have dreamt a dark dream of endless corridors and doors.  It’s the recurring theme of my nightmares: hospitals, hotels, schools, apartment buildings, halls without number, an overwhelming sense of being lost.  I am among the crowds stuck in narrow passages.  Strangers mill and push and press against me.  Sometimes among them are lost friends and dead family members.

We all know that our dreams are symbolic, but I think this recurrence, taken as a whole, is somehow a metaphor for my writing.  My dreams are my subconscious mind continuing to write through the night.  It’s that much a part of me.  It won’t turn off, not even in REM, not even for a nice morning sex fantasy dream.

It makes sense.  The halls are plot lines, the doors choices for how a story moves from A to B or A to P or D to Q.  If you walk into one room you’re not walking into another.  If you’ve made one choice you haven’t made the other.  The symbols are clear but not very helpful.  I’m envious of those authors who claim that they wake up with fully formed stories, and they just hop onto their desk chair and type it all out, easy as apple pie.  Whatever my unconscious mind is doing, it ain’t doing that.

And it should.  It should know me by now.  It has the raw material for the stories, it has my memory, my fear, my hope, my horrors.  Shouldn’t my brain know itself?  Shouldn’t it shoulder some of the load?  Why am I doing all the work while it just throws metaphor around all night long?  It shows me my dead Uncle Morris wandering around my high school and I have to make sense out of that?  I have to turn it into plot, into characterization?  I think my subconscious has fallen down on me.

I wonder if it’s genetic.  My mother used to have a recurring dream where all the dead would pull up in front of the house in a bus, and beckon her to get on board.  She’d whine and mutter in her sleep in a voice that was hardly recognizable.  At least that ain’t happening.

But still, it makes me wonder, what the hell is going on inside those rooms?  Why am I stuck in the hallways?  Why doesn’t anyone give me the keys?  So I can move from suite to suite night to night.  Why isn’t my mother there?  What the hell has Morris got to say to me?  He never talked to me when he was alive.  Or hardly ever.  He didn’t like me.  He didn’t seem to like anybody.

Maybe tonight the hotel staff will find me.  And give me keys and offer up complimentary drinks.  And send up a masseuse, and show me where the hot tub and swimming pool are.  And when I’m done I can check out and push past the revolving door and make it out onto the street.  And the throng of foot traffic won’t be dead and won’t be related to me.  And instead of a bus a taxi will pull up, and I’ll give the driver an address and we’ll pull away from the curb and into another story, fully written, with plenty of drama and action, but with something new added.  A happy ending.

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty novels including SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, THE COLDEST MILE, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN.  He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Learn more at: www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com

Time keeps on a steady pace and I go even longer than usual without posting anything here. But hey, I did finally get around to adding a title.

Not a whole lot to be reporting right now. My story “She Don’t Eat No Meat” is in the latest issue of NEEDLE , along with a whole host of other stories by other writers you should probably be reading if you aren’t already.

Shotgun Honey is now more than a year old. Kinda hard to believe. Ron Earl Phillips, Sabrina Ogden, and Chad Rohrbacher are the best cohorts a guy could hope for. So much so, in fact, that I’m taking a backseat over there and they’re piling in behind the wheel.

Speaking of Shotgun Honey, there’s an anthology in the works. Guidelines are RIGHT HERE. Be sure to follow them since failing to do so will send your submission spinning into the reject bin, no warning shots, no second chances.

And believe it or not, I think that has us all caught up to the here and now. So, I’ll see you all here in another five months. Or maybe sooner.

I’ll try for sooner, so hang around.

Today at Shotgun Honey we’ve got a trio of micro fiction pieces from Peter Farris.  Last month, Pete sent over a submission with the pieces that make up The Day Traders, saying he’d been inspired to do these ultra short stories by the art of Raymond Pettibon.  For me, the mention of that name instantly brought to mind Black Flag and all the Pettibon art that band used on singles, flyers, and album covers.  I opened the file and read the stories and thought, “Oh yeah, Pete nailed it.”. And now you can check them out for yourself.  If you happen to be unfamiliar with Mr. Pettibon’s work, you might want to take a few minutes to get familiar.  It’d be well worth your time.

Next up, I’d like to thank everyone whose work has appeared at Shotgun Honey, whose work is slated to appear, and all the folks who’ve submitted their stories for consideration.

Finally, a huge thanks to everyone who reads the site.  You folks make it all worthwhile.  I appreciate it.

We’ve got a great month coming at Shotgun Honey, and we’re already looking forward to a great New Year.  So, keep reading, keep on submitting those stories, and trust in us, we’ll deliver.

With both barrels.