Something Wicked is a great mag, one of my favorites (if not the favorite). They have a knack for filtering out the more contrived stories (writing to market, etc), which some mags have trouble with.

I’m happy to note that I’ve also been interviewed for the magazine, and I go into a bit of detail concerning how the piece was developed.  The interview will appear on their website on October 18th, and is already included in the Kindle edition on Amazon, which you can get for a great price here:

Something Wicked October 2011

“The Watcher in the Corner” is probably one of my more unusual stories. It’s also crafted in first person, which is rare for me.

All revisions to my novel INVASIVE are complete and the manuscript is in my agent’s hands.  I’m not one to sit back and chill though (at least when it comes to writing).  I’ve just finished a 6,000 word thriller titled, “Lost Planes, Lost River”.  It feels good to write a first draft again.  I’ve got a couple other short stories out there in the final rounds of consideration, so we’ll see how that goes in the next few weeks.

I’m expecting a busy fall. A bunch of my work is set for publication, and I’ll be doing at least two interviews. And of course there’s the matter of my other novel (AKA “my baby”), which is in its fifth draft. It should be polished within two months. The beta responses have been excellent, and that’s always a good feeling.  I’m lucky to have a doctor in the mix as well in order to verify medical jargon/situations.

Stay tuned for updates, including news on a killer hardcover version of an anthology due in October.

Wait…did someone say “bears”? Why yes, they did:

This healthy Glacier National Park black bear popped up on the trail next to me at about twenty feet. Click the image for a huge version.

It seems like something out of a science fiction novel, doesn’t it? For the month of August I camped in several national forests and Glacier National Park. On my first night in the mountains, I was treated to a spectacular sunset. Many of the clouds took on vivid colors, and even the rain came down pink. I’d never seen this phenomenon before and was mesmerized by the beauty.

OK, so maybe there’s a touch of orange and red in there too. But pink is close.

So why spend all that time in the wilderness, tossing and turning in a tent as all kinds of critters patter by in the night? For scenes like this, of course. This is an area I visit every year. I’ve been tempted to reveal the location, but there are people I know who would kill me (and people I don’t know) if I gave it away. I can say the area is in Montana, and it’s where the first group of mountains rise above the prairie coming from the east. There are several ranges here, one of them a distinct “island range”. We’re looking south in the image towards Yellowstone, as this is part of the eighteen million acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

As spectacular as the view was, the aural experience was just as good…the rustling cottonwoods, the faint chewing and hoofing of horses in a nearby pasture, the whisper of a fast-moving river in the distance. But sometimes what is left out is most important of all. And in this case it was the absence of motors. Airplanes, cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers, weedwackers, gone. You don’t notice how dominating those noises are until they’re removed.

Eventually the storm drifted east over the prairie, losing its colors. There’s something about light in the mountains. It’s cleaner, more vibrant, even restless. I wasn’t surprised as it faded above the flatlands. There’s magic in the wilderness and those peaks, enough for clouds to absorb when they pass over.

The fall issue of Ghostlight Magazine is out, and with it my story “The Red Aspen”. It’s a tale of dark suspense featuring Forest Service Ranger Matt Jenson as he searches for his missing ex-girlfriend in the wilds of Northern Minnesota.

You can pick up a digital or hard copy here.

Ghostlight Magazine does great work. You can’t go wrong checking out an issue. The cover reminds me of fall, too (my favorite season in Chicagoland).

I’ve always been fascinated by bears, and this has led me to some of the best bear habitat in the country. This image was taken a couple weeks ago in Glacier National Park, Montana. It’s a healthy male black bear returning from a drink at the lake. This shot took me about six hours to get after first spotting the bear on the slopes at sunrise. I waited him out and sure enough he came down to the lake for a drink at noon. I used a long lens (420mm on a 1.6x crop sensor).
Glacier National Park is stacked with healthy berry patches which these bears love. Sometimes you can see up to a dozen bears on the high slopes making their way slowly through the berries. After this guy got his drink, he went right back to the huckleberries.

Upon seeing this photo, a friend of mine asked me if I feared bears, and why I don’t carry a firearm. There are a couple reasons. First, I carry bear spray, which has been proven more effective than guns as a bear deterrent. Secondly, while bears are indeed wild animals, I find that a little common sense pays off. These are not blood thirsty maniacs thundering through the forests. They are intelligent and well-behaved for the most part. I do not approach them or act in any way which alters their behavior. It’s also important to follow food storage precautions in places like Glacier. A bear’s sense of smell is unmatched by any land animal, and seven times stronger than a bloodhound. The part of a bear’s brain devoted to smell is five times the size the human portion devoted to smell.

For a little reality, see this fascinating “odds of dying” chart:

Odds of Biting It

A few more odds:

Odds of dying by a grizzly in Yellowstone: 1 in 3 million
Odds of dying by a cougar attack in California: 1 in 32 million
Odds of dying via attack by any animal not a dog or pet: 1 in 4,200,000
Odds of dying by accidental firearm discharge: 1 in 5134
Odds of dying by firearm assault: 1 in 324
Odds of dying from heart disease: 1 in 5

As you can see, there are many worse things to worry about. As for our bear friend, eventually he sauntered off into the woods, no doubt stuffed with berries. My fascination with bears (and the wild in general) has led to these topics frequenting my fiction. My short story “Revenge on Apex Mountain” features a grizzly (due for release any day now in Fearology 2). My novel INVASIVE also has bears, as does the novel that takes place in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which has no grizzly bears, but is thick with black bears.

Sometimes I see the bears I’ve photographed as I drift off to sleep. But it’s not the perfect shot, or the best image of the day, only the last glimpse before they disappear into the shadows at tree line. Strange, but I think that’s how they want to be seen, and in the end, no matter the photo, that’s how I remember them.