Category Archives: General

Just about everything else of no particular interest

Time is When You Make It

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I’ve been hearing a lot of “I don’t have time” lately. Hell, I’ve been sweating a lot of that lack of time myself.

I thought about going for a run this morning. It’s an unseasonably warm day, and there’s a storm and a cold front bearing down on us that will plunge temps back down into the thirties. I may not have another nice running day this season.

Then I took a look at all of the things I’ve got on my plate for today:

  1. Clean up the dishes
  2. Get lunch started
  3. Lower the storm windows all around the house
  4. Seal up the attic fan
  5. Finish rewriting this graphic novel script
  6. Put together invoices for a publisher
  7. Go through photos from Friday’s karate graduation
  8. Head out to the dojo to work out with my attack team

It would be nice if I had some time to hang out with the Wife and the Rugrats. This list also fails to address bigger projects like the short stories I need to write and tackling the last round of revisions on Lie with the Dead. Nor does it address my desire to revamp my weightlifting workouts because I haven’t been happy with the routine I put together a few weeks ago.

If today were a normal workday at the day gig, I’d be hosed.

I felt bad about not going out of the run, and griped about not having time. But it occurred to me I’m still going to get a good workout at the dojo. I want to get better at running, but what’s the ultimate goal? Getting in shape. Does it matter how I sweat the extra weight off? If I don’t have time to sit down and look at my weightlifting routine today, will it kill me to stick to the current routine this week? Either way it amounts to moving heavy stuff around and working muscles.

We can’t find time because we’re not looking for it. I don’t think it’s because we’re not working hard, though. I think it’s because we’re not working smart. We’re not addressing and attacking our tasks in a diligent manner, and we let our failures to address some items weigh us down far too much.

Our failures should not outweigh our successes. We should concentrate on what we’ve achieved, then address a plan to address the things we had to put aside. Not the things we’ve failed to do, the things we simply need to reprioritize.

It’s 11:30am as I start this, and for the most part I’ve already taken out items 1-3. 7, honestly, can wait. If I don’t do 4 today I’ll get a chewing from the Wife, but I’ve been chewed out before. 5, 6 and 8 are must-do.

Following lunch in a moment, I’ve got another ten hours or so in the day.

Boom, time made.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.

Thicker Than Blood, Stronger Than Time

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It hit the five of us as we drove through the mountain passes between Loveland and Estes Park, Colorado: we’ve known one another fourteen or fifteen years, depending who logged in to the old HorrorNet chat when.

It occurred to me tonight that we’ve known one another over a third of our lives, even for the oldest of us.

KRAP 1

The original “KRAP” photo: John, Geoff, Brian, me, Mikey
World Horror Convention, Seattle, 2001

I’m horrible at keeping in touch with people. My family moved around like gypsies while I grew up, and I haven’t managed to do a whole lot better as an adult. The past seven years are the longest I’ve spent any place, any time. There are friends from farther back whom I’ve known longer, but there are very few who I’ve kept in touch with as consistently as these guys.

Part of the Cabal. The Four/Five Horsemen. The Musketeers. Several monikers (and epithets) have been thrown our way over the years. They all work, and they all tend to stick. I’ve always felt brotherhood was as good a description as any.

It’s been fourteen or fifteen years, but in many ways it feels like longer. That bit in my latest Indie Pulp column about spilling and shedding blood together? That was with these guys. We’ve seen births and deaths in our circle. We’ve been to marriages and through divorces. There have been fights and reconciliations. All through it, we celebrate with or lean on one another as appropriate.

KRAP 2 Color

KRAP Revisited, 11 years later
The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, 2012

We gathered this time to visit our friend and mentor, Tom Piccirilli. All things considered, Tom’s doing well and he and Michelle are staying positive and are determined to fight. It was good to see them and to help out.

I think, too, we got a glimpse of our own mortality.

At least, I did. I may be the youngest of the group, but I can see age sneaking up on us. Various ailments were discussed, as were the health scares some have already faced. What will KRAP Re-Revisited look like in another 11 years? It’s hard to say.

But in the meantime, gentlemen, it’s damn good to know we can count on one another.

Boom de yada.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.

Help Tom Piccirilli Crush Cancer

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Our friend Tom Piccirilli needs help.

Last week, doctors discovered a large tumor on his brain. As I write this, Tom is undergoing surgery to remove the tumor. He will have a long recovery and cancer therapy ahead of him, and there is little doubt the bills will quickly overwhelm whatever insurance he and his wife may have.

Tom and Michelle

Pic and his wife, Michelle Scalise

Tom is a great writer and a hell of a guy. A number of writers—myself included—look to Tom for advice and guidance in our work and our careers, and he is always happy to provide it. We’ve hung out at cons, we hang out online, and he and his wife were gracious enough to take my family on a tour of Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel when we visited Colorado one year.

If you’ve ever considered picking up Tom’s work, or if you’re looking for something in the horror or crime/noir genres, now’s a great time to make a purchase. His electronic publisher, Crossroads Press, is currently giving all proceeds from the sale of Tom’s books directly to Tom. If you shoot over to their website, you’ll find links to Tom’s entire Crossroads catalog in various formats. You may also want to drop by his Amazon Author Page, where his current books are available in both electronic and print editions. His most recent novel, The Last Kind Words, is a good place to start with Pic’s work.

If you would like to donate directly, Tom’s niece has set up an IndieGoGo page. With IndieGoGo, all donations will go to Tom to help defray the costs of medical bills. The campaign has already raised $10,000 in 24 hours, which is amazing. Every donation counts and would be greatly appreciated.

Our thoughts our with you, Pic. Get well soon, brother.

Update: Great news out of Colorado! Michelle has posted to Pic’s FB page that he’s awake and recovering in the ICU and already cracking jokes with the nurses. So glad to hear this. Keep it up, Tom!

Update 2: Michelle reprots things may be tougher than expected for Pic’s recovery. However, there are now two more ways you can help them with medical bills so they can concentrate on the physical and emotional recovery:

Publisher Warren Lapine is donating 200% of the October proceeds from the anthology Fantastic Stories of the Imagination to Pic.

ChiZine Publications is donating 100% of the proceeds of Pic’s Every Shallow Cut eBook.

Support a great guy and get yourself a good read. It doesn’t get much better than that. I love seeing the lit community pull together for one of their own like this. Very cool.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.

The Nature Lesson

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My children received a first-hand view of nature in action today.

I was in the middle of my lifting when my son ran into my office, excited because the cat had caught a bird. I told him to take the body out into the corn field, like we have with the other birds we’ve found on the porch.

“No, he just caught the bird now, and it’s still alive!”

I grabbed the camera and we ran outside. I thought the bird might chase him off and I’d get a few pictures. The cat’s not quite a year old, and he barely touched a mouse we caught in a trap once. I half wondered if the birds we’d been finding actually belonged to some of the other cats who prowl near the house, cats we hear Ghost fighting with from time to time.

Instead, I discovered Ghost had broken the bird’s wing and bit a hole in its back. I moved in to put the bird out of its misery, but it still had some fight left in it and it hopped away. That’s when Ghost pounced one more time and finished it off.

The kids watched as the cat settled in for supper.

Ghost's Kill

The kids' lesson in natural selection.

I thought the kids might be upset, but they handled it well. They asked a few questions, and they kept their distance until the cat wandered off. Then the two boys took the bird’s body out to the field. They didn’t play with it, or kick it around, or chase their sister with it, they just scooped it up with the shovel and disposed of it.

I think I felt bad for the bird more than they did. Nature is rarely gentle, though, and cats get hungry. Cats know their place in the food chain, and so do we. It was a safe way for the kids to observe in person the kinds of things they’ve been watching on nature shows on Netflix. It wasn’t bloodsport, it was just… nature.

Ghost

Less than a year ago, he looked like this

It amazes me how instinct takes over. Ghost was only five or six weeks old when we adopted him, and he didn’t spend a lot of time outdoors until this Spring. He had no mother cat around to raise him, so I don’t think he was ever taught to hunt. He just does it, and now we know those other birds belonged to him after all. We adopted him with the hope he’d become a mouser, and I guess birds come with the package.

Yet he’s gentle as can be with the kids, and he is very patient with other, smaller children who have visited and put their hands all over him. A friendly family pet one moment, a vicious predator the next. Maybe he just got tired of dry cat food.

Of course, he didn’t eat much of the bird. He ate some of the meat off its back and gave up.

I said “Hey Ghost, you didn’t even finish that bird. Why’d you kill it?”

He looked up at me with a lazy blink as if to say “Because fuck that bird, that’s why.” Then he curled up on the couch for a nap.

Damn. I hope I don’t forget to change his litter.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.

Memorial Day

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Deepest respect to those who gave their all to defend the freedoms we hold so dear.

USMC Memorial

Semper Fi, gentlemen. Thank you.

This US Marine Corps memorial stone is located in Tower Park in Peoria Heights, IL, at the intersection of Prospect and Glen.

If you have the day off today, please take a moment to reflect on why.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.

Smoking Under the Supermoon

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It’s quiet in my neighborhood.

Almost too quiet.

The wind is steady and strong, blowing through the trees and drowning out even the toads and cicadas in the fields. An American flag flies over my neighbor’s driveway, and it snaps and pops in the breeze while the orange streetlamp shines through its stars and bars. After that it’s just the sound of the living room stereo streaming tunes through the window behind me.

“Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me…”

I’m sitting under this year’s Supermoon with a Davidoff cigar. It’s a half hour before the first car comes down the street, a dark blue, late model Mustang with a throaty growl from under the hood. It pulls over three doors down and seconds later a pickup backs out of the drive. They roll off up the street together.

The kid in me says there are no drivers; they’re two Transformers heading out to kick some ass. Are they Autobots? Decepticons? Either way, it’s gonna be epic.

The crime/horror writer in me says they’ve got devious work planned. Someone, somewhere, is about to have a very bad night.

The displaced, suburb-raised dad that I am? He knows better. Local teens off to waste gas because there ain’t shit else to do around here.

Five minutes later the county deputy drives by. Someone wearing red riding shotgun. A ride-along, maybe. Neither of them so much as glances in my direction. Hope the ride-along is prepared for all the quiet and nothing.

That’s not to say this place doesn’t have its share of secrets. The paper may be full of small-town politics and fluff pieces about what’s happening at the school or the nursing home, but there’s still a crime blotter. Most of it is elsewhere in the county, but there’s the occasional local possession charge. Or warrant served. Or domestic battery arrest. The divorce listings tend to be longer than the marriage listings.

All signs of secrets bubbling and festering beneath the veneer. They’re not the dark secrets Writer Mike may conjure, but there are secrets nonetheless. From time to time one will break out into the open and make the shift from secret to scandal, something to be whispered about in watering holes and at water coolers. Then it will fade away, and things will be quiet again.

Almost too quiet.

Not that it stops me from writing about places like this. What am I writing, you ask? Well. That would be telling.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.

Back Away from the Chorizo

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I like chorizo. I’ve had it in fajitas, burritos, chili, appetizers, and omelettes. Spicy pork? Yes, please.

The local grocery stores sometimes stock fresh-ground chorizo, but more often than they just have your standard country pork sausage or Italian sausage. As a result, I finally decided to pick up a tube of this stuff:

Pork Chorizo

Pork? Not so much.

That soylent orange color? Yeah, pretty accurate, unlike the lies the fast food giants like to tell us.

I got the package out to make an omelette this morning. The instructions say to “remove from casing” before cooking. Apparently they meant the packaging, because there was no casing around this pasty muck, near as I could tell. I squeezed it out into the pan and tried to ignore the funky lumps as I attempted to crumble it for cooking.

After a few minutes over heat, I noticed no change in color or consistency. Meats are supposed to brown, right?

Time to look at the packaging again. “Cook to an internal temperature of 160°.” They don’t seem to care how. Okay, the stuff is sizzling and parts are starting to look a little crispy. Gotta be done.

Still bright, nuclear orange. Hmm. Are we sure this is pork? To the ingredients!

Yes, first ingredient is pork. But then came the dreaded parentheses. What, pray tell, pork products are included?

“Salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat (cheeks).”

Back up, Mr Butcher Man! I don’t even know what salivary glands and lymph nodes look like! A series of tubes you just chop up and spice to hide all hint of flavor? I understand you want to use as much of the animal as possible, but is this really necessary anymore? We’re not all Andrew Zimmern or Bear Grylls. You know why? Because we’re not paid to be!

But hey, I can be adventurous. Is this how it was done back in the day? Maybe it’s like pig’s feet or haggis, a remnant from a time people really did have to find a way to eat every bit of an animal to get a meal. Maybe this is what I’ve been eating all along at Mexican restaurants and just didn’t know it. Ignorance is bliss, right?

So I poured in my beaten eggs, cooked it up, flipped, added cheese, and slid it onto the plate.

Understand, chorizo is greasy. Just like any other sausage or fatty meat, you’re going to get some runoff. This stuff took it to a whole new level by leaving a liquid even brighter and more orange than the original product.

Okay, okay, thought I. Let’s not panic. It’s wrapped in egg and cheese. Man the hell up and take a bite.

I tried. I really did. I even had myself psyched up enough I expected a pleasant surprise. Sadly, this tasted nothing like the stuff I got in the local Mexican joints, nor was it anywhere near as tasty as the ground chorizo I bought from the grocery stores. Maybe it was just the thought of the ingredients getting to me, right? Took another bite. Now that it didn’t catch me by surprise, is it really all that bad?

Yes.

Okay, one more bite.

No. No, no, and hell no. Just plain wrong. Into the garbage can.

Just to be sure, I consulted Wikipedia for a second opinion. The chorizo article has a history of the meat from several countries, but nowhere does it mention goddamn salivary glands. From the “Mexican chorizo” portion:

Based on the uncooked Spanish chorizo fresco, the Mexican versions of chorizo are made from fatty pork (however, beef, venison, kosher, and even vegan versions are known). The meat is usually ground (minced) rather than chopped, and different seasonings are used.

Fatty pork. Like where the bacon comes from, perhaps? Or at least somewhere where there is actual meat, not just leftovers. It’s no wonder the taste and texture of the stuff I’ve been eating is completely different from this spicy sludge.

Learn from my pain, my friends.

Next to the pork chorizo I bought is a tube of beef chorizo. I haven’t gone back to see what it’s made of, yet, but I can’t imagine it’s any better.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. His Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Deadliest of the Species, was just reprinted by Evileye Books.