This Yellow Madness

kiy1955 · at Tuesday, August 23, 2011

"SIN & ASHES is a scathing collection. Jarring and unsettling from the git go, Joe refuses to allow the comfort of standard story structure to interfere with his assault on the reader."

"I'm in love with this man's work. This is not for you if you prefer bland, `normal' horror writing - but IMHO he is one of the most important voices in the genre today (if you can even impose the term `genre' on a style so personal and sincere). "

How does one say anything after a praise like that? Amazing talents like Tom Ligotti, Laird Barron, Ellen Datlow, Paul Tremblay, Simon Strantzas, [and a dozen others! !!] have praised my work, and I was over the moon --still am!! !-- but this is no less humbling.
Pearce is one of hardboiled’s BEST! His novel, STREET RAISED, is a monster! Dynamic, authentic [and HONEST], vivid to a degree where the words fly off the page like bullets and tears, his novel is an “astonishing” showcase of his awe-inducing talent as a writer. The last time a hardboiled debut impressed me this much was Will Beal’s L. A. Rex. That another giant would gift me with this kind of praise, well, it leaves me without words. So I’ll just say, thank you.

Doubt I’ll ever get used to praise and I sure as hell do not want to, but I will confess, it makes all those hours (and the fears) worth it!

His full review of SIN is here:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1QLY6O4C1G8BR/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_asr_u0-JC.1EQKY5N

kiy1955 · at Tuesday, August 23, 2011

"SIN & ASHES is a scathing collection. Jarring and unsettling from the git go, Joe refuses to allow the comfort of standard story structure to interfere with his assault on the reader."

"I'm in love with this man's work. This is not for you if you prefer bland, `normal' horror writing - but IMHO he is one of the most important voices in the genre today (if you can even impose the term `genre' on a style so personal and sincere). "

How does one say anything after a praise like that? Amazing talents like Tom Ligotti, Laird Barron, Ellen Datlow, Paul Tremblay, Simon Strantzas, [and a dozen others! !!] have praised my work, and I was over the moon --still am!! !-- but this is no less humbling.

Pearce is one of hardboiled’s BEST! His novel, STREET RAISED, is a monster! Dynamic, authentic [and HONEST], vivid to a degree where the words fly off the page like bullets and tears, his novel is an “astonishing” showcase of his awe-inducing talent as a writer. The last time a hardboiled debut impressed me this much was Will Beal’s L. A. Rex. That another giant would gift me with this kind of praise, well, it leaves me without words. So I’ll just say, thank you.

Doubt I’ll ever get used to praise and I sure as hell do not want to, but I will confess, it makes all those hours (and the fears) worth it!

His full review of SIN is here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1QLY6O4C1G8BR/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_asr_u0-JC.1EQKY5N

kiy1955 · at Monday, July 25, 2011

"Joe Pulver is like the answer to some arcane riddle: What do you get when you cross one of Plato's Muse-maddened poets with a Lovecraftian lunatic, and then give their offspring to be raised by Raymond Chandler and a band of Beats? His work caters to a literary hunger you didn't even know you had, and does it darkly and deliciously." -- Matt Cardin, author of Dark Awakenings

Some days the inbox has something wonderful [and very humbling] in it.

Thank you, Matt! !!

SIN & ashes [Hippocampus Press]

http://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/fiction/sin-ashes-by-joseph-s.-pulver-sr.

The Orphan Palace [Chomu Press]

http://chomupress.com/our-books/the-orphan-palace/

kiy1955 · at Friday, July 15, 2011

Author’s Notes for SIN & ashes

[[[Remember, Pulver, you don’t like spoilers, so watch what you say here! !!]]]

Sit at desk – hope to hell WORDS show up………….. Tea ~ got to. Smokes ~rough & ready. Was there any doubt? ?? Thinkin’ cap on ~duh? I’ll try… Muse says, “Try hell, Worm.” [flashes whip! !!]

Book’s called SIN & ashes. Knew that before my first collection came out. 1^st time the title flashed across mindspace I thought it would be a tale . . . but then I thought Blood Will Have Its Season is long, so go short w/ the next title. Did.

“Laird Barron’s FOREWORD”
S.T. asked about the foreword.
bEast: “Well, in you win the grand prize-land I’d have one by Laird.”
S.T.: “Why don’t you ask him?”
bEast: “I’d hate to bother him. Man’s a giant. You don’t bother the masters.”
But I did. And he did. [insert BIG YAYyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyY! !!] And I sailed over the moon! !! I mean c’mon folks, it’s LAIRD BARRON! !!
{When he emailed it to me I read it about 10 times in a row! You would have too! !!!!!!!!!! !}

“Love Her Madly”
Rock ‘n Roll heaven, nope & NO! !! Ain’t! More like Hell – extra damnation. Janis and Phil Ochs soaked in pain and tears, that, sure as shootin’, ain’t heaven . . . So Morrison would be there . . . BAM, that’s the tale. Jim comes back from the dead. I had one note for this tale – Morrison comes back from the dead. LA noir. WHY? ??
For all of 5 minutes this was going to be a novel J

“She’s Waiting”
Just wanted to do FANGSsssssssssssssssssssssss! Sharp ones. Muse asked, “What REALLY hurts?” Typed . . .

“First There Is A Mountain…Then”
My note said there’s a man sitting on the edge of a bed in a cheap motel room. He’s been drinking . . . I hear Dave Alvin singin’ ‘bout they come and they go. And that was that. Just added some BLOOD.
[This one came out fast.]

“In The Desert Even the Air Burns”
Simple. I love the desert! !! It’s clean and the facts of life are stated right upfront. You see bleached bones you know what yer getting . . . I was listening to Dylan, thinking about the West [where the sun sets] and my friend Alanna [Mistress of the Yellow Chamber] and missing people [and places] . . . This is another one of my sitting alone at night just letting my mind drift texts . . . I never know where they are going . . . I leave that to the Muse.
[As a rule I’m never happy w/ my stuff. I kinda of like this one.]
[Imagine you have to wait 54 pages for Pulver to drop a King In Yellow tale on you . . . Yeah, weird things DO happen……….]

“Even Night”
A poem I wrote back when I was working on the 1^st draft of Nightmare’s Disciple.

“Crow In Trick Town”
Another old thing I penned back when I was working on ND. Came to me as I listened to Jack Bruce. I’ve always wanted to look at Crow again . . . What else has he been up to?

“When the Deal Goes Down”
Everything is vampires and zombies these days, so I try to play w/ them from time to time. But I’m not a big fan so mine come out a little different . . . Puttered w/ the idea of a whole series of tExts w/ this character roamin’ ‘round FIXING things J

“Devil’s Got the Walkin’ Blues”
Desert. Serial killer. Starting to be a theme in this collection… Cellars scare me, so a song on my playlist kicked this one into gear . . .

“Dead ’Round Here Tonight”
I don’t care for zombies – maybe once in a blue moon in b-movies. When I want Mindless Ones I turn to Dr. Strange. I love ghouls. Wanted one to like FRESH meat. Thought about shopping in a meat market…

“The Delirium of a Worm-Wizard”
Another 10 year old tExt. The darkangel, Michael Cisco used to come to Bob Price’s Kalem Klubs and always blew my mind w/ his FANTASTIC readings. I really wanted to up my game and try my hand at “Language” in this . . . I wrote part of this on the roadside [of the NYS Thruway] coming home from Bob’s after a KK… I read it at a KK and Cisco praised it. I was vEry happy!! !

“As the Sun Still Burns Away”
I read a screenplay by the director of the BRILLIANT[! !!] AM1200, David Prior, got me thinking . . . Another desert, another female lead, some whisper of la Llarona, dead babies . . . Cody Goodfellow says, “While everybody else in horror is still aping the shallow visual palette of cinema, Joe Pulver calls down a storm of psychotronic nightmares charged with the evocative depth and relentless pulse of the Devil's music. This isn't a book that wants to be a movie. This is a drug disguised as a book. ”, well, this is one of the few times I tried to think film…
Yes, for 10 minutes I thought this could be a film J

“Caligari, Again”
I never tire of Cal! !! Never will”. There were to be 3 pre-Holstenwall texts, this is #2 . . . #3 is in some file somewhere J

“Long-Stemmed Ghost Words”
Yes, again one for Alanna. Dylan got me thinking . . . Tats on pale skin, cloth and shears, Carcosa, just had to wander that way! Might have been voodoo or witchcraft, or just the sound of her voice . . .

“When the Moon Comes to Call”
My friend Stan [Sargent] and I were on the phone talking about music - as we often do. After our conversation I put on a Miles cd that lead to Sha and thoughts of simmering jazz in a club.

“After Reading Michaux’s “In the Land of Magic”
Something I penned for Cisco… Man’s a genius! !!

“The Walking Man Walks”
After a nap where I dreamed Tom [Ligotti] and me sat in a park. We talked about serial killers . . . I rarely remember my dreams [wish I did!], but we talked about Man On Fire and Jim Thompson and frolics, so I tried to get part of it on paper.

“Silent No Longer”
Another old thing from my ND days. Bob asked me to be the music reviewer for “Crypt of Cthulhu” and I had half a thought of starting a column w/ this tale . . . Didn’t.

“The Maiden of the Pines”
Yep. This be an old one. I don’t really recall it [common for me – I write ‘em and move on. Often people mention a title to me and I have no idea what the thing was about w/out getting filled in.]. Was in a file and S.T. liked it so we put it in.

“Last Year in Carcosa”
Started w/ watching Last year In Mareinbad [love it! !!]. I had an image of a gun under a linen napkin and just typed from there. Only thing I knew going in was the beach was Carcosa and I wanted to play w/ The Dynasty in Carcosa as part of play.

“Scarlet Obeisance”
Bob [Price] said he wanted to do The Tindalos Cycle. I penned this for it. Everyone loves Cthulhu, I sure don’t. When it comes to Mythos beasties I love Chaugner Faugn, so I tried to say I love you to Robert Bloch again! !!

“Rendezvous Under Shadow Bridge”
I was toying w/ thoughts about a tale w/ a night watchmen in it. Thought I might make it all daily “reports”. One night I was putting away some books, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and a couple of Ligotti tomes, and began to wander what Bohren & Der Club of Gore covering Bill Evans might be like – [I do that kind of thing a lot]. This is what popped out.
Good or bad, it’s one of my “one take” numbers.

“in front of an empty house in dead city”
Sometimes I just putter, think Sonny Rollins up on the bridge, play and see what comes out. This is one. Let’s call it woodsheding.

“Ain’t No Love on the Street”
Written around the same time as “ifoaehidc”. More woodsheding. Yes, I do that a lot!

“Perfect Grace”
Grace Jones. I had just seen her new video for “Corporate Cannibals” and was blown away. This is what popped out after viewing it.

“Kynothrabian Dirge”

“The Exorcism of Iagsat”
X-mas morning a fax from Bob listing 11 “titles” from the SUB-Mythos [as discovered by Will Murray]. He wanted me to come up w/ spells and litanies to go w/ the titles. I thought you get to play Dr. Strange for the Mythos – ran w/ it! !! They were fun to write! These were in Bob’s THE BOOK OF EIBON [Chaosium][They were also translated into Japanese]

“Lonesome Separate Ways”
A Steve Earle tune came on I started typing . . . And just kept wandering.

“Just Another Desert Night with Blood”

I’ve never been in the desert but I dream about it. Cactus, sand, more sand, quietude. It comes in different colors, it has a different language. It’s like an itch. One day I’ll discover its contours until then I’ll just keep walking in the sand.

“After Death”

Can’t say I remember much of this. Had a few scraps of poetry. Started typing, just to see where it would go.

“I Often Dream of Words”

Watching some Eno videos on YouTube, skipping around. Fragments started talking to me. Watch for a few minutes. Made a few poetic notes, then typed as fast as I could.

“Forever Changes”

I haven’t looked at this since I wrote it. When I write I enter what I call The Zone. It’s the bedroom of a 16 year old kid that just got a new guitar. I’m that kid, often it’s just me sitting there riffing, going where the notes, words, wanna go. There’ll be some piece of music playing, in this case it was Love Forever Changes and I just wanted to see what forever changes meant. A different day in The Zone it would have meant something completely different.

“In the White Walls of Silence”

I originally wrote one Caligari piece, a prequel to the film, and thought I’d keep going. Caligari is one of my oldest and most favorite Horror inspirations. Wanted to write five or six Caligari texts. If I remember correctly, this was the third. It’s dedicated to Robert Bloch and also inspired by Bloch. Whenever I deal with murder I take Bloch’s heart out of the little jar I keep it in and put it in my chest. And I let it sing to me. Pretty sure, one day I’ll return to Caligari . . . Perhaps many times. Bloch will be there w/ me! !!

“Mother Stands for Comfort”
Sat with a paper and a pen and watched the Q6 film Din of Celestial Birds. Just put words on paper. Didn’t think about it. Didn’t correct it. Ran a spellchecker through it. Done. Not the first time this has happened. I’m betting it won’t be the last.

“Blow Wind Blow”

I love names. Places, people, names want to tell me stories. Ionesco. That name wanted to tell me stories. Thought I might use this character in a whole series of texts. I don’t ever want to talk about him. He just walks. Sees a problem, fixes it. For this one I wanted him to meet people that had been changed by darkness and I wanted to see how he would fix them.

“8’s & Aces”

Plank and the Belldog. Wanted to use them as characters for a long, long time. To me they’ve always been gravediggers. Wondered what happens to gravediggers that are dead. Thought, ah, they turn into ghouls, can’t steal from the grave, at least you can have dinner. Then I wondered what happens when the meal hasn’t laid down and died, yet.

“A One-Way Fare”

Derrick Hussey is my publisher and a friend. Spent many a happy hour on the streets of New York, walking around with him. Mostly we’d go to bookstores and record stores. Came home from NYC one night with a few CDs I had bought in the city. Looking at song titles words started popping into my head. Didn’t have a story in mind, just a bunch of words from song titles. I wrote them down on a piece of paper. They were in no real order. Decided it was a map, but it looked like a puzzle, so I typed until I connected the dots.

“Don’t Look Back”
John Lee Hooker. Sonny Rollins. “Maggie May”. All in my head at the same time. What does it mean? Only way for me to tell is type. I did. This is another one of those I typed it, I ran a spellchecker through it. Then it goes in the “done” pile.

“Long is the way and hard . . .”

Hubert Selby, Jr. big influence. Huge. Dog eat dog world, you bet your ass. But when I thought about it, came out “Cain eats Cain”. Little Mott the Hoople and a couple of lines of poetry . . . Don’t know what else to say about this one. Parts of it I loved. Parts of it I wasn’t sure of. But when I kept going back and looking at it, it seemed done . . . I often write these things pretty quick, then spend half an eternity deciding what they look like on the page. As I don’t “see” a lot of my work as stories, but texts or poetry of some stripe, it’s critical to me how they look on the page. This is one of those that came real quick and then I spent days with the layout.

“huddled in rags in a Kingsport alley . . .”

I have a friend in London. Julia. Lovely lady! !! She reads poetry. I think of her as a siren. She has a gentle, alluring voice I could listen to for hours, yet she reads some of the darkest literature that has been written. I often wonder what dreams haunt that gentle voice. I wanted to write something poetic and dark just for her. This piece began with a line of poetry I had written, but had not used ‘Little but the noise of the moon survives’. I could hear her whisper that . . . I typed, searching for darkness . . .

“Dead Ends and Empties”

I almost never outline. A line of poetry occurs to me or the tone of a piece of music sets me off and from there I type, drift, just to see where the words go. This one was just that. Me typing, to see where the words wanted to go.

“Sharp Fangs + Blood = Murder”

I was thinking of my best friend Bob Price and his collection of short stories. I couldn’t get the word blasphemies out of my head. Every time I heard the word or thought it, I thought it came out as a howl. I could see the face, sharp fangs, spittle, that equaled blood to me. Robert Bloch taught me blood equals murder. So that was it. Sharp Fangs + Blood = Murder. No plot in mind, just typed. After about a page or two I thought this one needed a soundtrack. As I recall I spent a couple of hours looking for the right song. Found it. U2. Then I typed like hell.

“Saint Nicholas Hall”

Nearly 20 years ago I used to go to Bob’s house for KaLeM Klubs. Cisco was one of the writers who was often there. He’d come in with his new tales and read. I’d sit in awe. Years ago I was going to do a King in Yellow anthology. Sadly that didn’t happen, and for that book I had asked Cisco to write a King in Yellow tale. He did. Wrote one I think is brilliant, worthy of the canon. I’ve always wanted to write one back, a thank you. There’s no way I can ever walk in the field Cisco walks. No one can. This is merely my humble tribute to one of the very best writers of Weird Fiction we have ever had.

“Funeral in a Hate Field”
When I was a teenager, I loved Sword & Sorcery. Conan. Kane. Elric. Lieber! !! Loved Sword & Sorcery!! ! Since I’ve begun writing I often think about writing a Sword & Sorcery tale. Thinking about Lin Carter one night I began I paragraph, thinking this would be my Sword & Sorcery tale. Didn’t have a plot, thought like Conan I’d just see where my wandering took me. This one is very short, but it’s where the darkness took me. This isn’t what I had envisioned as a S & S tale, but it’s one of the few things I’ve written that I am actually happy with. One of these days I might write a “real” S & S TALE until then, this how I see S & S.

“An Orange Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick”
Rules? I guess they’re good things, but not in literature. Literature is about passion. It’s about getting sweat and blood on the page. Anyone with half a brain isn’t going to write a prequel to Caligari, or a sequel to A Clockwork Orange . . . Brain? I don’t think so. Rules? No.

So, I’m watching A Clockwork Orange and again it occurs to me how much I love the words, the language. As someone who is always searching for words, I thought what a great field to play in. When I was 13 or 14 I read A Clockwork Orange. I loved it. I didn’t know there was a glossary in the back of the damn book. But when I got to the end and found it I thought it was amazing. Sitting there, watching that film, I remember reading the book and wishing the glossary was in front of it. And as I sat there, the muse said you have to, have to, use some of these words. Yep, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Just wanted to say, in my fashion, THANKS, AB! !!

“Engravings”

S.T. asked me to contribute to a book called Black Wings. I was half in a panic thinking about it. I was a needle stuck in a groove. What the hell can I write for that? He wanted Lovecraftian, but he didn’t want tentacles. And he didn’t want those names. All I kept thinking about was Nyarlathotep. He’s a trickster. So I wanted to start in one place and move to another. Rain’s a place. The desert’s another place. To get from A to B you either walk or drive. I decided to drive. Somewhere in the middle of the first page I asked myself the question, why. Then I typed until I found the answer.

“The Last Few Nights in a Life of Frost”

I love Jack O’Connell. Love! He walks on water! !! After reading one of his short pieces online I couldn’t get parts of it out of my head. I tried and I tried and I tried, but like one of those songs that won’t go away it stayed there. The only way to get rid of it, was to make a story out of it. There’s two versions of this story. The first one I named the character ST, not S.T., and when he read it he said I have some place I want to use it, so he thinking people would think ST was S.T. he asked me to change it. So ST became LT and he used it. As I’ve said, I don’t normally like my stuff. This one I do.

“Epilogue for Two Voices”
No one can or should pen the KIY play. So here’s my thoughts on a KIY “PLAY”. ‘nuff said!

“To Live and Die in Arkham”
Most of the time I think I’m done with HPL and the mythos, then half of some idea hits me and say, no. But usually it won’t stop talking to me and I have to type it to get rid of it. For this one, I wondered what Arkham looked like if you were from the wrong side of town, if you were Selby or Bukowski . . . So I walked away from the finely manicured lawns of Miskatonic University just to see what life on the bottom looked like and to see what it thought of those who lived privileged lives.

“The Last Twenty Miles of Wandering Again”
So I’m playing David Crosby’s “Cowboy Movie” and some Dylan tunes and I have a few images that I’d come upon in a nap that afternoon. I’d already used Morrison as a character so I thought, what about Dylan? And if we were pards where might we roam? Carcosa, naturally. Why? Who the hell knows. But I spent a few hours having fun, finding out.

So, I guess that’s the “uncorrected” look at SIN & ashes. I wonder if S.T., somewhere down the road, is going to want to annotate SIN? If he does, maybe this will help J

yer bEastie JUNE 2011

kiy1955 · at Thursday, July 14, 2011

Multi-award winning editor, ELLEN DATLOW called SIN & ashes "a deliciously varied and ambitious collection." and included a text from it in her widely-acclaimed THE BEST HORROR of the YEAR 3.

kiy1955 · at Thursday, July 14, 2011

Ross E. Lockhart bought a tale from SIN & ashes for his upcoming THE BOOK OF CTHULHU [SEPT Night Shade Books]

kiy1955 · at Saturday, July 09, 2011

SIN & ashes as an EBOOK will be - "format release will be Adobe eBook (EPUB) which can be viewed on a boatload of devices" . . . Coming to the E-world in 2 weeks! !!

And we may be adding my complete "Author's Notes" to the E-release . . .

kiy1955 · at Saturday, June 25, 2011

For my guest blog at SheNeverSlept I've typed up my "Author's Notes" for SIN & ashes . . . Perhaps S.T. will find them of use when it comes to the "corrected" version of SIN :-D

Here's the link

http://sheneverslept.com/newsandreviews/archives/5516

kiy1955 · at Friday, June 24, 2011

just sent my guest blog for SheNeverSlept.com to Sarah . . . Tore up a few attempts then settled on a "Author's Notes" for SIN. I was lucky enough to win a 2010 NIGHTMARE AWARD for SIN from SNS, so I thought I'd shared some of the behind the scenes of SIN . . .
My post will be up sometime this weekend. Drop by and look behind the curtain . . . If it causes you to yawn, don't blame me, yell at the editors . . .

SNS [and their rave review of SIN] is here

http://sheneverslept.com/newsandreviews/archives/4164

And my books are here

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-S.-Pulver-Sr./e/B002U41JRC/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

kiy1955 · at Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Grim Reviews just gave (my 2nd Hippocampus Press collection) SIN & ashes a very, very nice review and now they've posted about the upcoming release of my new novel The Orphan Palace. TOP is coming from Chomu Press in October.

http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/joseph-s-pulver-announces-new-book.html

http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/review-sin-ashes-by-joseph-s-pulver.html

You can find SIN and my other books here on my Amazon "author page"

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-S.-Pulver-Sr./e/B002U41JRC/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

kiy1955 · at Friday, June 03, 2011

"There are few weird horror collections that can vacillate between subtle terrors and visceral apocalypses without becoming wildly unbalanced. Now, though, the horror community is joined by Joseph S. Pulver's latest collection, Sin & Ashes, a sizable nightmare gallery published by Hippocampus Press that accomplishes this rare feat. By some indeterminate black magic, Pulver successfully dishes out the grotesque, the chilling, and intellectual dreads by short story and poetry, without losing his foothold on readers' unsettled reptile brains."

That's the opening paragraph of the review . . . Funny how you can find yourself doing the happy dance and humbled at the same time . . .

http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/review-sin-ashes-by-joseph-s-pulver.html

kiy1955 · at Saturday, January 15, 2011

Here's a few excerpts from my new collection SIN & ashes...

After Reading Michaux’s “In the Land of Magic”

The night is ice

& full of eyes. Winds that will not cure speak of November.

There are no white halls in the hostelry. The tin ceilings are low, the

carpets an exaggerated foliage of blunt faces. The wallpaper is sick

with the smell of twilight spreading endlessly.

Even the shadows rot.

Up forty-one stairs that whisper like migraines to a door closed on

the rumors and fragile madness of the stiff warblers outside. Behind

the stained and chipped panel with the tarnished knob and the loose

bolt that passes for a lock, the smallest rented room. Below, the Tavern

of Ruin, where time & dreams happened a long time ago. Sitting

on the edge of the bed where a restless thousand have disintegrated, a

curled figure in threadbare clothes

—his consciousness no more fluent than a haze of aimless dust—

gazes at a flat spot on the wall where a soft avalanche of hollowness

reaches out. The man named Uphill isn’t paralyzed, simply too empty

to move. Lost to his ordeals in the abyss he’s even forgotten the little

secrets children consider run-of-the-mill, forgotten all phenomena

not terrible . . .

(C) 2010 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

8’s & Aces

No whiskey. No days at the track these days . . . Pool in the backroom

of O’Connell’s Grill, no.

No pussy.

Crusin’ all those nights, up and down the strip in the souped-up

Chevelle—hopin’ for easy and cash and speed and surprise parties

with dancing and honey and big comfortable summer with bells and

the top down and everything in the whole god-damn world placed at

their feet . . .

Misadventure ringing, lost that map.

Outta laughs . . .

They wander ended story to story run its race. Simon Bartholomew

Wormwood . . . Annabelle Buck . . . Starling, Snow, Cotton Fulton

II and Case and Joris and Porfats and Polliards and Barretts and

Burgess and Estrada . . . and 137 others. All have reached their destination.

Many were not whole when they got there . . .

Plank and the Belldog steal from the Lord. They get born, live for

a time and come here in the end.

In the old lives they robbed graves for gems and jewels and rings

and bodies to sell. In this incarnation—after a night, many, many

years ago, of drunken missteps—they steal from graves. They skip the

gems and jewels, pass on the rings or just throw them out, they’re after

bodies. Dinner.

No bones to gnaw on in the casket of Sarah Joris. Plank spits at

the moon for enjoying the defeat.

“I eat one of yer old boots if you hadn’t burned them last winter,”

The Belldog said.

“Reanimated in the odors of death and twenty years on I still

have to hear about them shitty boots.”

(C) 2010 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

huddled in rags in a Kingsport alley . . .

(for Julia)

The ebb and flow of lips twisted by gin . . .

Wounded tongues . . . Drifting, whispering . . . Needing more . . .

Fingers snarling with lust . . .

No hiding places . . .

Crying things that cannot sleep . . .

Mouths haunted by vice . . .

Ships that glide on currents of blood . . .

A drunken musician swallows a gutter of degenerate urges. Its

sunless silence severs the prayers from his open mouth . . .

There are no hiding places . . .

The scent of pleasures burning . . .

In their bridal chambers, new corpses lie bent by the dirty kisses of

blackness . . .

There are no hiding places . . .

The sea is rising . . .

Kingsport’s dark sky answers no questions . . . Its frozen breast of

rust is the flag of the bleak . . . Swollen beaks from the rim of death,

drape change over the scarecrow-husks hiding in the sludge of madness

. . . Wind, scraped with ghost static, delivers rodent eternities that leak

blackened colors . . .

Kingsport and all its voiceless boundaries of rain and scaffolds of

assassin-shadows are mad things. Its winter mouths—nests of blackblack-

black, cold as the ice of oblivion-eroded dead mother poems—visit

the throats

(C) 2010 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

Engravings

Straight rain. Mean and murderous. Its eyes screaming for blood.

Denver faded three hundred miles back. Three hundred miles of

wet asphalt back . . . It could have been a thousand . . .

Rain. Mean and murderous—Engraving the world with sheets of

thorns. Rain. Screaming like the Old Man on a gin bender. Screaming

like the Old Man before the belt and the fists.

Thirty years back . . . Or it could have been yesterday.

This run was supposed to end in the desert, not in a ditch. But

the clock pressed. Tick-tock/tick-tock. Like a boss with eyes that

only said FASTER.

He needed coffee and a pack of smokes. Maybe some eggs and

toast . . . And something other then this Bible-thumping Forever that

poured out of the radio. A nice sexy waitress—not some upper-class

package with radar eyes searching for money, but earthy—knowing,

with blue eyes and a big butt that swayed. Not unkempt and worn,

but nice and maybe with a little extra. And she would wink all-sexylike

when she refilled his coffee.

Rain—full throttle, carrying violence with each slap. Like the Old

Man crossing the hardwood floor.

For the last fifty miles or every step he’d ever taken.

Broken. The knobs wouldn’t work. He couldn’t turn the fuckin’

radio off or down. The wipers working overtime, fighting off this

wallop of darkness.

He should pull over and wait it out. But he needed a smoke and

needed to be warm. Wanted . . . Wanted something to look at that didn’t

hurt his strained eyes. Wanted to hear something—someone other than

Rev. James Theodore Ellison’s promise to heal you if you sent him

money. To be healed by money. That’s what got him here.

(C) 2010 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

kiy1955 · at Friday, January 14, 2011

At SheNeverSlept.com

http://sheneverslept.com/newsandreviews/archives/4164

SIN & ashes is up for BEst of the YEAR!! !!

I happy-happy PLEASED 'bout dat! !!

when it gets to voting, please Vote like you mean it! !!

kiy1955 · at Sunday, December 12, 2010

my new collection SIN & ashes is up for pre-order at Hippocampues Press.

http://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/fiction/sin-ashes-by-joseph-s.-pulver-sr.?zenid=f30466bcc7812c895eb84628809e3dee
Other bits:

almost done w/ a draft of my LENG tale -- been a long time on this . . .

just finished a new tale called "kristamas at an exibition" -- massively fractured poetics on acid for this one.

kiy1955 · at Wednesday, December 08, 2010

SIN & ashes has just received the following review. To say I'm delighted and humbled falls way short of understatement.

FROM SA:

SIN & Ashes, the new collection of short stories by Joe Pulver Sr., is a heady blend of rock ‘n roll, sex, death, and insanity. Inside its pages Pulver offers us a dance through the ribbons of his mind. And we accept, because there is something about his vision of a world, so dark and yet so vividly colorful, that is impossible to resist. Each word is delivered in that uniquely poetic style of his, giving us a glimpse into the seedy underbelly of urban decay and rural despair; daring us to consider if it is really human nature that has brought us so low or if otherworldly hands from Carcosa or R’lyeh might have played some role in our downfall.

He opens with Love Her Madly, then barrels ahead like a loosed bull through a land of serial murderers and revenge and cold, cold torture. The tension ebbs and flows as the pages turn; sometimes bitter and terse, other times graceful and melodic, but in every vibrant phrase you sense a hint of something dangerous and feral, just waiting to snare you. Like the slightly too-sweet smell of fruit just before it begins to rot, his words, even when they are breathlessly beautiful, teeter on the edge of lunacy and depravity.

It’s an effect that is hard to duplicate but that just makes it all the more impressive.

The overall style of SIN & Ashes brings to mind the prose of Poppy Z. Brite. The imagery in the fantasy tale Crow in Trick Town specifically conjures memories of her work in Wormwood and Drawing Blood. It isn’t everyone who can fabricate metaphors for sounds or textures or tastes and tell us how they look or hear. That’s the realm of poetry, not storytelling, yet Pulver blends the two disciplines with expert finesse. He has a talent of giving a single word a myriad of meanings, which makes it hard to return to our reality of concrete and glass, where everything is as it looks.

Unfortunately it IS only a book and it, like everything else that is physical, can only go on for so long. However, he leaves us on a high note with a delicious closing tapestry of rock n’ roll and Robert Chambers. Fans of both will be left with such an inspiring thrill of excitement that it will ensure the next installment Joe Pulver Sr. will be met with rabid book lust.

JP

http://strange-aeons.com/

kiy1955 · at Friday, November 12, 2010

Carcosa-Berlin Express… Cold black night… Blues roarin ‘like the grey Hulk on a STOMP!! !

Getting’ close to finishin’ a new one… odd how some come so hard…

3 books between now and JAN/FEB and it seems weird waiting on word of cover art, etc., but that’s publishers. You sign on, they get the contract and they forget yer email… or so it seems at times…

Working on cleaning on the desktop… NEEDS IT!! ! Bad… Looks like I have a lot done this year…

Only have 5 “active” tales on the desktop now… And one “collection” file that needs to go to pub… That said, I now have 44,000+ words to choose from for NIGHT BEGETS… One more and I’m done…

I’m still wondering about agents… Do I? Should I? W/ the new novel [TOP] ready to go, curious what could happen…

OOPS… 3 more need to be tended too… Then, finally, I can get back to next novel… I want to putter w/ this one bad…

I’ve decided the next collection after SIN & ashes and NIGHT BEGETS will be called Portraits of Ruin… Planning on putting a couple of old things in there – original versions w/ my wEir~D layouts and fonts [want them to see print in the form they were intended/envisioned – especially my 1st “Caligari”!! ! – which almost made it into SIN & ashes, but we yanked it due to page count considerations][also delighted Nightmare’s Disciple will contain Bob Price’s introduction, which was not included in the 1st release due to page count considerations as well. It will also have a NEW “Foreword” by Bob looking back! As he was Dr. Frankenstein on this tome, it’s nice to see his "then & now" lab notes!!]…

There’s a few other things in the works, but I’m still not allowed to talk about them…

Next time I’ll update the list of tales I have coming in 2011, so far… just need to organize the list…

Hope yer all warm & WELL...

Well, there's the King in Yellow pointing at the new desk in the Nightmarium-Berlin... guess that means more WORDS... [maybe he'll let me shave and shower 1st?? ?]

All my bEastly best! !!

Joe

[may need to change the soundtrack... "early!!!" Weather Report seems a good bet! !!]

kiy1955 · at Saturday, October 09, 2010

The stunning cover for my new collection, SIN & ashes is by noted surrealist J. Karl B.

I'll have more to say about him later. For now go here and discover wonder! !!

http://homepage.mac.com/photomorphose/virtual2a.html