Beware The Shadows

Yes, I will be seeing the new Terminator. And yes, I will be updating my Terminator timeline post.

He’ll be back.

It’s finally here.

I know it seemed like it might never happen, but the sequel to the Bram Stoker Award nominated That Which Should Not Be has arrived. Can’t wait to hear what you think.

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher.

“He Who Walks in Shadow hearkens to the classic pulp era of the 1930s and does justice to the Mythos that H.P. Lovecraft and the best of his successors have established. Talley skillfully blends high adventure and black magic against a backdrop of encroaching cosmic horror.” Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

“Talley’s unusual prose style creates an authentic Lovecraftian atmosphere that is further supported by the epistolary format of the novel, which is set in 1933 and is composed of letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles. This is high adventure that strides across the purple field of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.” Donald Tyson, author of Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred

“Talley truly has a way with words, and some of the descriptions left me breathless.” Chantal Noordeloos, author of Angel Manor

“Infusing his tale with both real and weird history (The Russian Revolution/The Tunguska Event), brilliant characters and a real sense of dread, Talley has done something incredible…..he’s not only given life to the Mythos….under his guidance, it is evolving. Highest possible recommendation.” Horror After Dark.

If you follow me outside of these pages, you know that this website is pretty much the only politics-free zone I have on the Internet. My philosophy is that most fans don’t really care what writers, singers, actors think about politics. And why should they? That God gave me the ability to occasionally write a decent scary story doesn’t mean you should care what I think about the corporate tax code.

But if you friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, then you are going to hear what I think. I try to be respectful of everyone, but I am also honest about my views. That has never come back to haunt me.

Until now.

A couple days ago, a fellow author—and at the time Facebook friend—advocated for the death of a politician he disagreed with. The extent of that conversation is as follows:

Him: Death to [politician he doesn’t like]

Me: Death?

Him: Yeah let’s give him their favorite execution cocktail.

Me: That seems…extreme. And possibly criminal.

Him: Not nearly as criminal as the man’s career.

Me: Which includes murder?

Him: Read up on him.

That was it. I shrugged my shoulders and went to bed. The next morning I noticed that my rating on Goodreads had dropped precipitously.  The reason? My fellow writer had one-starred everything I’d ever been involved with—every anthology, every magazine, every book. And just to be safe, he also one-starred everything by anyone named Talley, hitting a sports writer and a mystery writer, both of whom are utterly unrelated to me. All this to punish me for my “support” of said politician.

It was a crazy and pointless thing to do. Other writers rallied to my cause, and eventually the ratings went away. But that’s not what I want to talk about here. The question I have is when, if ever, is it appropriate to take action against an artist with whom you have a disagreement? I think the answer is both never and whenever you feel like it.

First the never. It is never appropriate to rate or review a book you haven’t read. Period. A rating is a message to the people who see it. You are saying, “I read this, and I felt this way about it.” So when you rate a book you haven’t read, you are lying, betraying the trust of the person who sees your review, undermining the entire system of reviews on which the industry relies, and committing literary slander. Honestly, there is little you can do as a reader that is worse than abusing the rating system to make a political point.

But that’s not to say you have to support people you disagree with. Just as life is too short to read bad books, there are plenty of wonderful works out there by people whose political views don’t drive you up the wall.

Having said that, I personally have never employed that approach. I like to be challenged, and reading people who think the same was as I do on everything gets, well, boring. Very boring. And it will make you an insular, narrow minded person to boot. The kind of person that thinks anyone who disagrees with you is evil.

And that, my friends, is nothing short of tragic.

“He Who Walks in Shadow hearkens to the classic pulp era of the 1930s and does justice to the Mythos that H.P. Lovecraft and the best of his successors have established. Talley skillfully blends high adventure and black magic against a backdrop of encroaching cosmic horror.” Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

“Talley’s unusual prose style creates an authentic Lovecraftian atmosphere that is further supported by the epistolary format of the novel, which is set in 1933 and is composed of letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles. This is high adventure that strides across the purple field of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.” Donald Tyson, author of Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred

“Talley truly has a way with words, and some of the descriptions left me breathless.” Chantal Noordeloos, author of Angel Manor

“Infusing his tale with both real and weird history (The Russian Revolution/The Tunguska Event), brilliant characters and a real sense of dread, Talley has done something incredible…..he’s not only given life to the Mythos….under his guidance, it is evolving. Highest possible recommendation.” Horror After Dark.

Coming May 22. Pre-order here.

Coming May 2015.

Don’t miss it! Join my mailing list today.

I’m a little tardy in posting this, but it was recently announced that Limbus, Inc. II is a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Anthology. The Stoker Award is the most prestigious award in horror, and perhaps even more impressive, of the five nominees in Long Fiction, three are from Limbus.

We are deeply honored to be able to bring a little joy–and terror–to people’s lives, and I can’t even describe how happy I am for everyone involved.

Limbus Inc was the brainchild of the late, great Anne C. Petty. Our horror family has suffered a lot of losses over the last few years–more than our share, if you ask me–and we dearly miss Anne. We wouldn’t have had Limbus II without her, and I am so glad that we were able to offer such a fitting tribute to her memory.

Order Limbus, Inc. II here!

We are in a Lovecraftian renaissance, and there are a lot of people who are writing Lovecraft these days. But while you can find a thousand short stories and anthologies set in the world of the mythos, it’s not so easy to find full-length novels. And if you do find them, it’s really hard to find a modern take on the Great Old Ones. And that’s why Red Equinox by Douglas Wynne is so refreshing–it does both, and it does them brilliantly.

If you are a fan of Lovecraft, Red Equinox is a can’t miss.

5 Stars for this early favorite for the 2016 Bram Stoker Award.

This whole writing thing occasionally leads to surreal experiences. A week ago, I spent a couple hours in a rundown cemetery with a Washington Post reporter and a photographer and this was the result. As many of you know, I work in politics, where people find themselves in the news all the time. But I’m not exactly used to it, so I feel pretty blessed to have the opportunity to share a bit of my story with the world. Anyway, it’s a fun–and frankly hilarious–article. I hope you enjoy it.

Sen. Rob Portman’s communications director is the antichrist.

More accurately, Caitlin Conant (née Dunn) is the namesake of the antichrist in her co-worker’s latest work of horror fiction. In reality, she’s quite nice. “I wanted her to be important. I wanted her to be a major character,” says Brett Talley, 33, who, in addition to being Portman’s speechwriter, is an author of three published horror novels and two “true ghost” stories.

Stop.

If you haven’t experienced Serial, stop whatever you are doing right now, and go listen to the first podcast. Just give it a chance. I have a feeling you’ll be hooked.

What is Serial? Here’s how they describe it on the website.

Serial is a podcast where we unfold one nonfiction story, week by week, over the course of a season. We’ll stay with each story for as long as it takes to get to the bottom of it.

We’ll release new episodes every Thursday morning.

With that said, on to the discussion and the spoilers.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. Time off, family, food, it’s the best. But here’s the problem. These days I live in Washington, D.C. My family is in Alabama. Which means I have to travel. Now, that’s fine normally. Direct, relatively cheap flights and all. But on Thanksgiving, everyone is buying on the same days, and flights are normally $7-800. So to avoid that cost, I drive.

This year, I actually took the Amtrak Crescent line down—18 hours. It was nice; I wrote a lot. I digress. For the return journey, I rented a car and hit the road. But a 12 hour drive is kinda boring, especially when you do it alone. Normally I listen to a book on tape, but this year a friend on Facebook suggested I check out something called Serial. He said it would make the hours melt away.

Never has anyone been so right.

This post is directed at those of you who have listened to Serial and are caught up. After 9 episodes and 6 hours or so, I’ve got some thoughts, and I want to share them. As someone who is both a lawyer and a horror writer, I feel as though I have at least some sort of special insight. Or maybe not. That’s up to you to decide.

The following is based entirely on the podcast up to this point. I haven’t googled the case; I haven’t looked beyond the show. For all I know, there’s new evidence that has come out that will be revealed in the future that totally undermines my view. That’s the fun.

So here goes.

In my view, Adnan Syed did it, and there was plenty of evidence to convict him.

This will probably come as a shock to some of you. While Sarah has done an amazing job maintaining an unbiased approach to the case, it’s hard not to feel as though Adnan was wrongfully convicted. Some of that is as a result of how Sarah initially describes the evidence; “thin” is the word I believe she uses. But far more influential is Adnan himself. He just doesn’t seem like a guy who killed somebody, certainly not in premeditated fashion with his bare hands. I know it irritates Adnan when people tell him that the fact he seems like a “nice guy” makes them think he didn’t do it, but that’s really the strongest factor influencing us. And I also think it keeps us from seeing the evidence squarely.

But let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start with what we know.

There’s one fact that seems to be indisputable. The show has danced around it, but they’ve never said it explicitly. Let’s lay it out now.

One of three things happened in this case. 1. Adnan killed Hae. 2. Jay killed Hae. 3. Jay was intimately involved with Hae’s death, possibly with Adnan’s involvement.

How do we know this? Well, whatever you think about reasonable doubt in Adnan’s case, there is NO doubt that Jay was involved. He simply knows too much. He knew how she was killed. He knew how she was buried. He knew where the shovels were that buried her. And most importantly perhaps, he knew where her car was.

Try and imagine a reasonable scenario where all that is true and Jay isn’t involved. Maybe he saw Hae get kidnapped, and instead of helping her, he followed the killer around as this person murdered Hae, dumped the car, and then buried the body? Then he used this knowledge to frame Adnan, presumably over Adnan’s friendship with Jay’s girlfriend, Stephanie? And he did all that while spending much of the evening with Adnan?

That seems unlikely.

Which begins what will become a reoccurring theme in this post—irritation with the Innocence Project (IP).

Now, IP is a great organization that does great work, but much of what is said in relation to Adnan’s case seems like nonsense. It wasn’t a serial killer. It wasn’t Don. It was Jay or Adnan. Period.

Let’s walk through the triumvirate of a murder case—motive, means, and opportunity—and see what shakes out. Consider Adnan first.

1. Motive—From the very beginning, the prosecutors’ theory of the case—that Adnan killed Hae because he was heartbroken, jealous, and felt betrayed—is presented as unrealistic. Everyone from Sarah to Deirdre with IP acts as if it is absurd. “People break up all the time,” Deirdre says. Now, that’s true. People do break up all the time. They also get caught cheating all the time, get in fights all the time, insult each other all the time, have money troubles all the time. And 99 percent of those times, they don’t kill someone because of it. But those 1 percent… The depressing fact is this—the vast majority of people who are murdered in this world are killed for stupid, selfish, irrational, petty reasons. In fact, if you ever hear a cold blooded killer’s motive and think, “Yeah, that sounds about right,” take a good long look in the mirror.

So yeah, jealousy and the break up seem like perfectly good motives to me. Sure, Adnan didn’t seem like he was all that upset about it. But what do you expect? Do you think someone who was so embarrassed and so jealous about something that they would kill another person would let anyone else know just how badly they were hurt? Or would they bury it deep and then strike?

2. Means—Hae was strangled. No one seems to doubt that Adnan was capable of doing that. But to me, it goes a little deeper than just that. Whoever killed Hae did it with his hands. Think about that. Think about how personal that is, how violent, how much hate and anger it must take to do something like that. And the entire purpose of the crime was the murder. Hae wasn’t raped; this wasn’t someone covering up their crime in the heat of the moment. This was someone who wanted to feel the life fade away, who wanted to look in her eyes when she died. That has ex-boyfriend written all over it.

3. Opportunity—This is the element we really spend most of our time on, from the very first episode. When Sarah is laying out the case, she says it all turns on those 21 minutes after school got out at 2:15. Under the prosecution’s theory of the case, Hae was dead by 2:36. Could Adnan have killed Hae in those 21 minutes? I’m pretty convinced he could not have, and the alibi evidence that Asia provides seems to confirm that, indeed, he didn’t. But let’s consider the possiblities for a second. Why do we think that Hae was killed at 2:36? The prosecution seems to just pull that number out of the air, based on a phone call to Adnan’s phone, supposedly from a pay phone at Best Buy. Yet by this point in the podcast, no one still believes that 2:36 is the right time. Sarah speculates it may have been closer to 3:30.

This, in my view, is devastating to Adnan’s case. If Hae wasn’t killed at 2:36, then Asia’s alibi is worthless. Moreover, Adnan’s assertion that it was impossible to get out of the school quickly enough to kill Hae in 21 minutes also becomes irrelevant. Adnan’s two best arguments fall away.

There’s something else interesting about this question of timing. If Adnan did kill Hae, then he knows that the prosecution is wrong. And if he could prove that without giving away the fact that he knows it because he was killing Hae at a different time, then it might well be his get-out-of-jail-free card.

But if she was killed later, then there is no reason to think he couldn’t have done it.

Motive, means, and opportunity—it’s all there. Then there’s evidence. There’s the cell phone records that seem to put Adnan’s phone in Leakin Park at the time Hae was just happening to be buried there. There’s the 2 minute 30 second call to Nisha, which seems impossible to really explain. And then, there’s Jay.

It’s Jay, more than anything, that I think provides the reasonable doubt for most people. So much of the case hangs on his testimony, and yet, it seems so inconsistent. Jay lies. There is no question about that. And many of those lies are simply inexplicable. And if Jay is lying about one thing, maybe he’s lying about it all. Maybe he’s lying about Adnan. Maybe he killed Hae.

Maybe, but I don’t think so. First of all, if Adnan’s motive is flimsy, Jay’s is almost non-existent. The only suggested motive is that Jay was jealous of Stephanie’s relationship with Adnan. So he killed Hae and then framed Adnan? Seems like a lot of work, right? And framing people isn’t easy. Think about how easily that plan could have fallen apart. If someone just remembered Adnan at track practice, it’s over. Frankly, if I’m just making up motives for Jay, the better one is that Stephanie killed Hae and Jay freaked out and framed Adnan to try and protect her. But come on. That’s the kind of story that might work in a book; not here.

More importantly—and perhaps shockingly to a lay person—it’s not all that surprising that Jay lies. Most criminals are convicted by testimony from terrible people, usually accomplices in exchange for immunity. Those witnesses often lie to minimize their involvement. It’s almost par for the course. The important thing is that Jay is consistent on the important things, and his claims about burying the body fit with the cell phone evidence. In fact, the cell phone evidence really only fits with that part of the timeline. Why is that? I have a theory.

I think Jay was far more involved in the crime than he lets on. I think he might have even been there when Adnan killed Hae. Not sure where it happened. Maybe at the Best Buy. Maybe somewhere else. That would explain why the cell phone evidence doesn’t seem to support the first half of Jay’s story. It would also explain why the timeline doesn’t work after Hae is supposedly killed, and why Jay lies about most of that part of the story. That’s the part he is making up to minimize his own role. Hae was probably killed in the three o’clock hour. Immediately after, Adnan called Nisha. Maybe because he is a sick and twisted individual, maybe because he wanted to establish an alibi. Then Adnan went to track practice, and later on he and Jay reconvened to bury Hae.

See, the fact of the matter is that only Jay and Adnan actually know what happened. If Jay was more involved, Adnan can’t say so without admitting his own crime.

Now you may be saying to yourself, “That would make Adnan a psychopath, and what are the chances that Sarah just happened upon a psychopath?” (Thanks again, Deirdre at IP.) But here’s the thing—Sarah has almost certainly come into contact with a psychopath. Once again, either Adnan killed Hae or Jay did. Everyone pretty much agrees that if Adnan did it, he is a cold-blood monster. But what if Jay did it? What kind of person can kill an innocent girl just to frame a friend?

I could be wrong about all of this. Adnan could be innocent. Maybe that’s what we’ll learn as the story continues. Or maybe we’ll never really know.

To be continued…

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From ghoulies and ghosties. And long-leggedy beasties. And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!

It’s that time of year when ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night are about. What better way to celebrate than with a copy of That Which Should Not Be, available for a short time for only 99 cents! Enjoy.

What can you say about Carrie? It’s brilliant, iconic, influential. It’s also patently ridiculous, in the way so many of Stephen King’s most self-indulgent works are ridiculous. I don’t know his history, and perhaps something happened to him at some point to turn him into such a virulent anti-Christian, but Carrie was only the first of his works to include the crazy Christian zealot motif. And yet, it works in Carrie, without being insulting, unlike some of his later works that certainly straddle the border between legitimate literary criticism and bigotry. Anyway, obviously, the movie is worth watching. Check it out, if you haven’t already.

Bad movies are an amazing thing. Bad books generally end up forgotten, but bad movies can take on a cult-following of shocking size and power. Such is the story of Best Worst Movie, a documentary on the making, failure, and subsequent rebirth of Troll 2, generally regarded as the worst movie ever made.

Now I’ve never seen Troll 2, but I can tell you, I’ll see it now. I’ve watched many documentaries, not a few on horror movies. None are better than this one. The stars of Troll 2 take center stage, some 18 years after the movie wrapped. For the most part, they are ordinary people, engaged in ordinary professions, most of whom believe that Troll 2 was a dismal disaster, an embarrassment to be forgotten. But when they discover that Troll 2 has become a hit, they bask in their well-deserved fifteen minutes of fame.

Heart-warming, uplifting, and sometimes even sad, Best Worst Movie is far better than the film it chronicles.

So I’ve been falling behind in my 31 Days of Halloween project. But I have a good excuse! First, I’ve been working on the final edits to Limbus II. The book is in with the publisher and will be available later this month. Don’t miss it. But more importantly, I spent the last few days in Salem, Massachusetts, America’s Halloween capitol. If you haven’t had a chance to get up there, you should really check it out. Pics below.