This Friday past, a friend and I took a little roadtrip through Parry Sound and North Bay. Besides the melting snow and a fistfight between a pair of Nippissing students, we saw an exorbitant number of young women pushing baby carriages. We started counting them, the way you might count punch-buggies on the highway, but after we reached fifteen the game turned from something amusing to just plain sad. Small-town Ontario, kids. The real story.

I have the first sunburn of the spring, having spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon on a patio in front of Second Cup. I was gently ribbed about my new color on the radio show later that night – but I think they’re just jealous.

Mostly finished my review of Shriek of the Mutilated, a movie that’s about as good as the title suggests. In the (sometimes wise) words of Deadbeat Curtis, it’s “not as good as Satan’s Blade or Invasion of the Blood Farmers. But hey, trash is trash.”

Truer words, yada, yada, yada.

Ian

Had a good time on the radio show last night, and received plenty of good feedback from friends and colleagues who have been listening. Most agree that I’m finding my ‘radio voice’ )which will hopefully make them want to keep tuning in week after week).

Also, I got to plug my Dreamcatcher review that will be appearing in the next issue of Rue Morgue.

Next week, among other things, we’ll be talking about The Mothman Prophecies, a very interesting, multi-layered UFO case that was the subject of a movie that was released last winter — a movie that was largely passed over by most people; something I hope to remedy via my review of the new DVD that will be hitting stores in May.

Speaking of movies, my actress friend (or are we using actor now?) and I watched a nice romantic movie on Friday night — The Way We Were, starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand. My first thought was, Wow, two hours of my life I’m never going to get back. Then I decided I was being a bit too critical for a movie that many consider to be a classic. Not a better effort, though maybe I need to have lived in that time to really absorb the whole effect. Not much really happens, you see, until the end, where we see the only real conflict between the two main characters, and by then the movie is over. All in all, it felt like two hours of build up with no time for any follow-through.

In writing news, after being inundated with war coverage, I’ve come to realize there are a few words and terms I will never be able to use in any of my writing:

regime
embed
weapons of mass destruction
shock and awe

CNN is steadily decreasing my …. um, collection of words … um, what’s that word …?

Ian

Sold my first book today. It’s about a group of sexually charged monsters on a crosscountry roadtrip. There’s Lucinda Belle, a vampire who sucks just about everything (and everyone!); Roxanne Pox, a mummy with a thing for sailors; and Lesley Gore, a werewolf who thinks she’s, yes, Lesley Gore.

The book is called Vampirella, Queen of the Desert, and will be released later this year by Harlequin Press.

Ian