B.E. Scully's Blog

Every town has at least one… the house at the end of the deserted street with the malevolent, off-kilter window eyes; the dark side of the lake where the air feels just a little colder, the wind a little meaner; the lonely lane or gravel path that makes you quicken your step on a moonless night…

In River Town, that place is The Dying House–as dark and deadly as it is necessary, folks come to this ancient plot of land to die… that is, until the continuing begins…

Click the link below to read an excerpt from my short story “The Dying House,” included in ANTHOLOGY Year Two: Inner Demons Out, A Celebration of Speculative Fiction and Art, a collection showcasing the combined talents of the authors, poets and artists of AnthoCon, Northern New England’s only Multi-Genre Literature and Arts Convention.

http://www.bescully.com/2013/12/08/th...

Mummies… ancient messengers bearing witness to the human obsession of self-preservation against the ravaging hands of time. But what if the prize of earthly immortality turns out to be a curse far crueler than death–and far, far more difficult from which to escape…

Inside every mummy is a story waiting to be told… but are you certain it’s a story you’re prepared to hear?

Click http://www.bescully.com/ to read more about mummies, eternal life, and being careful what you wish to preserve.

In the year 1816, severe climate abnormalities caused global temperatures to drop dramatically. In some places, the fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight to such a degree that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Crop failures led to food riots and widespread famine, causing approximately 200,000 deaths in Europe alone. In a villa near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, Lord Byron and his young physician John Polidori were sequestered from the inhospitable weather along with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, the author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Claire Clairmont. Over a three day period in June, the five turned to telling fantastical tales to pass the time, and then to composing their own. Out of that summer without light or warmth, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was born, along with what would become the archetypal creature of the night for generations to come—John Polidori’s Byron-inspired Vampyre.

Read more about Polidori's famous short story re-imagined from an entirely point of view at my blog:
http://www.bescully.com/2013/10/28/in...

“If you start out with, ‘Oh, shit, is this going to be marketable?',
I think you’re in trouble.”

Passion before marketing and more at my new blog post about Portland, Oregon's literary festival WordStock.

http://www.bescully.com/2013/10/top-5...

"As long as there are enough anal rapes and eviscerations and child killings thrown in, stories that suffer the same entirely predictable lack of imagination are given a “dark and edgy” pass out of Clichéville..."
Read my guest blog "Shadows Born of Light: A Call for the Full Color Spectrum in Dark Fiction and Horror" at Matt Molgaard's site Horror Novel Reviews.

http://horrornovelreviews.com/2013/08...

While recently watching the 2012 drama-comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, about the adventures of two strangers who meet as an asteroid is set to destroy Earth, I found myself trying to resist it. The source of this resistance came from those scenes and plot devices that tested my tolerance for sentimentality: who didn’t see it coming that Steve Carell’s character Dodge would reunite with his long absent father? Did anyone think Keira Knightley's character Penny wouldn’t reappear at the last minute having realized true love at last? We even have a little white dog thrown into the mix, abandoned and then saved at the end just like Dodge.

A cuteness asteroid that powerful didn't need any help from outer space. And yet by the end of the movie, when asked whether or not I’d enjoyed it, the last of my resistance had crumbled along with the rest of the planet: I enjoyed Seeking a Friend for the End of the World very much, little white dog and all.

A fair number of potentially enjoyable films these days are marred by turns of plot so predictable you can go out for a pizza and come back thirty minutes later without missing anything but the latest seizure-inducing string of special effects. (Change special effects to action scenes and insert a fair number of potentially enjoyable novels, as well). A lot of this predictability hinges on the tedious gut-spilling, gun-slinging, face-punching that goes along with these special effects. The flip-side knew-it-was-coming moments, however, play upon our need to ultimately restore the balance from all of this destruction with the never-fail feel good of sentiment. The hero (or, just as often these days, the anti-hero or downright scoundrel) always gets the girl; the heartfelt reconciliation or world-changing epiphany or heroic sacrifice always comes in the nick of time; the metaphoric sun always rises, even when the literal one has been destroyed by an asteroid...

Click the link below to read more:
http://www.bescully.com/2013/06/seeki...

“A tell-tale wind was already rattling the discreetly blackened windows in announcement of winter’s approach. It sounded to Morgan like the spirits of long-vanished dancers click-clacking their heels in some undead cabaret. Sometimes the very walls seemed alive with a thousand hungry eyes still watching from the shadows of time…”

While waiting for that magically transformative age of eighteen, you walk past the mysteriously blackened windows and darkened doorways in equal parts fascination and fear about what’s inside. The ceaselessly flashing signs tell you “Girls, Girls, Girls!” and “Nude Live Women,” so you know that much. But what exactly are those live nude women doing behind those secret windows and forbidden doors?

To read more about the legendary San Francisco strip club The Lusty Lady and how it inspired my ghost story "Time for One Last Dance," click the link below to visit my blog:

http://www.bescully.com/2013/02/time-...

I adore the increasingly popular local news sources that provide such a vital addition to the big corporate news machines. I adore them even more when they include such elegantly written reviews as Matthew Heuett's recent one for Verland: The Transformation. "A welcome return to a time when vampire stories were actually about vampires..."

http://eugenedailynews.com/2013/03/02...

“There’s no such thing as curses.”
“But let’s say there is—then it’s bad luck as long as there’s thirteen of us. Which means we won’t get rescued…”
“Until—”
“Unless—”

Ah, the innocence of children. Just look at them play! A perfect picture of innocence still unspoiled by the world, pure hearts as yet uncorrupted by adult vice… but did I just detect a gleam of malicious glee in Julian’s eyes when Bennie tumbled off the slide and cried over his skinned knee? Are Judith and Mattie pushing little Bonnie just a little too high on the swings, despite (because of?) her shrieks of terror? As William Golding knew, and showed us in full, raw color in The Lord of the Flies, the unspoiled innocence of children is grafted upon the equally untamed savage within; their hearts as driven by innate, uncorrupted purity as by equally innate, uncorrupted wickedness. Ah, yes, the innocence of children… but should you find yourself on a deserted island or a battered lifeboat fighting for survival, be sure to keep watch for that malicious gleam in the eyes…

"As the sea water crept through the hole in the boat and pooled around their feet like a salty promise of things to come, the idea that they’d been cursed began to sprout like a desperate seed poking its way out of otherwise barren soil. Even Judith was starting to think that maybe Justin was on to something with his unlucky thirteen idea. How else to explain why they hadn’t been rescued already? Or why the boat was leaking and they couldn’t catch anything to eat…
and now it wasn’t even raining any more."

To find out what happens to the unlucky children stranded at sea in my short story "Lucky 13," as well as read twelve other tales of Gothic chills, strange happenings, and creepy suspense, click the link below to purchase my collection of short stories The Knife and the Wound It Deals in paperback or ebook format.

http://www.amazon.com/Knife-Wound-Dea...

“As for my part in the whole thing, I always figured that if the only evidence the police had was a witness whose memory could be upended by some clown jiggling his foot in a line-up, then the case must not have been too strong in the first place.”

The legal system makes imperfect gods of all of us. From juries to eye witnesses to pointing an accusing finger of guilt, we get to decide fates and determine lives in ways guaranteed to tear and tangle the fragile threads of the complex human webs we weave. "The Mirror Tells a Different Tale," from my short story collection The Knife and the Wound It Deals, concerns itself with one of the more peculiar practices of the legal system--the strangely intimate yet ultimately almighty procedural of the police line-up. When I submitted this story to the always excellent Tales to Terrify, a weekly horror-themed podcast of thriller and chiller stories hosted by award-winning horror writer Lawrence Santoro, it was accepted. Yet eventually it was deemed a better fit for their sister-show, Crime City Central, an also weekly podcast of noir-drenched detective and mystery stories.

I couldn't agree more with their choice. Cagney, this one's for you.

“I forced myself to think of my body like a piece of stone, incapable of even the slightest movement. I imagined being somewhere really nice, maybe lying on a tropical beach or sitting beside a cool mountain stream—anything to keep from thinking about the witness moving up and down on the other side of that glass. I wasn’t there to be the judge and jury. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time, though I sure know better now...”

To read "The Mirror Tells a Different Tale" and twelve other chilling tales of Gothic intrigue and mystery, click the link below to purchase The Knife and the Wound It Deals in paperback or e-book format.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Knife-Wound...