Dagger Key and Other Stories

I don’t know what it is that brings me back to Griaule. I hate elves, wizards, halflings, and dragons with equal intensity. Maybe it’s because I saw a list once of fictional dragons ordered by size and mine was the biggest. And the stories are fairly popular. It makes me think that I might make a career of this, writing stories about the biggest whatever. The biggest gopher, an aphid the size of a small planet, a gargantuan dust bunny. Anyway, the next story in the Griaule cycle or whatever it is will be “Beautiful Blood,” which will be published by Night Shade Books in ’08 and details certain unusual properties of the dragon’s blood. And the last story, a short novel of approximately 60,000 words, will be entitled The Grand Tour, and will be included with the other stories, collected in a single volume.

Unlike the majority of my stuff, there’s little autobiographical material in “Liar’s House”, the exception being that the sketch of the hotel’s owner is based on one of my old landlords, a man who surely will have his own special boutique hell. God bless you, Mr. Weimer, wherever you are. When it comes time for you to pass, I’ll be there with itching powder and a ball gag to make certain your last moments are a joy.

Dead Money

For a long time now, I’ve intended to revisit the materials of my first novel, Green Eyes, and the female protagonist of that novel, Jocundra Verret.

“Dead Money” is the result. I had wanted to put a poker game into the novel, but Terry Carr thought it would break the continuity of the narrative and I see now that, as was his habit, Terry was right.

Occasionally I play poker at a local card room. I never win much, never lose much, but I like the game and the environment, and I could easily lose a whole lot more if I let myself go. There’s a guy who comes into the card room who sometimes uses a cane, sometimes not. I have no idea if he’s a good player or bad, but he’s the model for Josey Pellerin in the story. I’ve never exchanged a word with him, so I have no idea what he’s about, but he looks cool in his black cowboy hat and shades, and I’ve imagined various sinister reasons for his condition.

Some relationships are like self-inflicted wounds. Jack’s relationship with Jocundra is like that—he knows it’s going to be bad for him, but he goes ahead in spite of that and, though he reads innumerable signs along the way directing him to desist, he continues pursuing it to the bitter end. Obviously, many people have this same propensity. For my part, show me a woman who’s a psychological wreck and, better, doesn’t know she’s a wreck and, better yet, has a prescription for anti-depressants, a trouble-plagued, ongoing relationship, and bursts into tears every few minutes…hey, I’m there! I assume that this signals some sort of mental problem, but why fix it if it ain’t broke? I’m considering having T-shirts printed that bear the legend, “You’re Beautiful—Just Shoot Me Now”, and business cards that say…Well, never mind.

Enough of matters sub-textual.

The Seminole Hard Rock Casino and Hotel in Hollywood, Florida is one of God’s most egregious errors. I recommend you spend a night there if you ever get down South Florida way and are, like myself, an aficionado of the grotesque and love the smell of terminal despair. Perhaps the International Conference on the Fantastic could be moved there—it might liven things up. Judging by the chests of the waitresses, hostesses, and pros who populate the place, there must be a silicon mine nearby. Look too closely, you could lose an eye. Gaping old men with ghastly complexions teeter on the bar stools; old women with leathery tanned skin, heavy gold bracelets adorning their liver-spotted wrists, lounge by the pool like alligators who have put on a human guise, their cold eyes tracking the cabana boys. It is home to mutants of every imaginable stamp. Aliens could land on the grounds and people would believe it was a publicity stunt. After a while they’d embrace those nine-foot-tall green beans with eyes and fangs as part of their natural surroundings. Seriously, folks.

The Seminole Paradise. Check it out.

Dinner at Baldassaro’s

My stories often begin life with, not an idea, but a phrase or a sentence, often not part of the opening, though in this instance it was. This particular sentence (“Giacinta had a beautiful sneeze.”) originally was in a story set in present-day Havana, concerning a CIA agent recuperating from a broken hip in his Havana apartment, stoned on painkillers, who is alternately keeping tabs on the progress of an operation and remembering his days in the Canal Zone and a young brother-and-sister whom he caught gleaning the high-security dumpsite. That story has been stewing in my pot for many years, and I’m beginning to doubt it will ever be done; so I lifted the sentence and used it to open the present story.