From the Desk of William Pauley III
Man, I’ve had a busy week. Busy doesn’t necessarily mean bad, cause it’s actually been quite good, but still… stresssssssssss.
It started out with a nice visit with family—mostly sitting around a campfire in the backyard, talking, listening to music, while the kiddos snuggled up in their sleeping bags and watched Halloween movies on the projector. Fun times!
Then on Monday, Heather and I went on a little road trip to Nashville, TN. We found a place to ditch the car, then stalked the streets, looking for trouble.
One of our favorite places to visit every time we find ourselves in Nashville is Third Man Records. If you’ve never been, it’s incredible. Jack White (of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather) owns the place, so you know it has to be cool as hell.
It’s a recording/photo/film studio all in one, as well as a bar that hosts live events, a museum, record store, bookstore, and a storage facility for all his musical equipment. There’s a recording booth there where you can record anything you want directly to vinyl, a plastic molding press that allows you to make your own replica of one of Jack White’s signature guitars, and a listening booth where you can chill and listen to 45s all day long. Oh, and there’s even an entire room designed for jamming—strap on a guitar, play around with effects pedals (built in-house!), and even play a few unique instruments (so unique I’m not even sure what they’re called). The place is different every time we go, and we go fairly often. Always a great time!
We stopped and ate at a place called Jonathan’s. It was our first time there. Great service, great food, great beer (they brew their own) and we got to chill on the rooftop for an hour or so on one of the most beautiful days of the year.
After that, we walked a couple blocks down to Brooklyn Bowl, perhaps the biggest bowling alley I’ve ever been inside, and caught a Death Grips show (my second of the year—love Death Grips).
I’d seen a show in the basement of a bowling alley once before (Chelsea Wolfe) and it was annoying because every now and then the music was interrupted by someone hurling a bowling ball so hard the pins exploded.
That wasn’t the case in Nashville though.
Death Grips is by far the loudest band I’ve ever seen live. We couldn’t hear anything but the music. I wouldn’t be surprised if the vibrations were so intense that not a single pin in the alley (or hell, in all of Nashville) would even stand up for the entirety of the show.
Heather captured part of the concert on video:
Great time!
Anyway, all this traveling has hindered my writing progress a bit, and we still have a big event tomorrow that we have to pack for tonight… so I guess I won’t be getting much writing done until maybe Sunday. We’ll see how it goes.
We’ll talk next week. Until then, enjoy this week’s newsletter!
Possibly in Michigan (1983)
dir. Cecelia Condit
Last Week / This Week
GAME OVER! You all kicked the bucket on yesterday’s “Choose-Your-Own-Mindfuck: A Night in the Eighth Block Tower” post! No worries though, you now have three places to choose from where you can start your adventure over again! Don’t forget to vote! Thanks to everyone who’s been playing along! It’s never too late to join in on the fun, click here to get started.
What is this madness?? This interactive adventure allows the unique opportunity to explore one of the weirdest, most disturbing (sentient?) buildings in all of fiction, but be careful not to become a permanent resident in the process! See how it all works here, then start reading!
BOOK EVENT: We’ll be at the Witches Day Out Festival in Cynthiana, KY (birthplace of The Walking Dead) today! Come out and say hi! Oh, and I’ve added a handful of new events where we’ll be slingin’ DOOM. For more information, click here.
ALL SUBSCRIBERS: On this week’s episode of Storytime!, Connor Brannigan will be reading a story from my brand spankin’ new short story collection, Twelve Residents Dreaming. This collection contains some of my greatest work to date. I’m so excited to share these stories with you! Be sure to check out “Heirs of the Abyss” when it drops on Monday!
PAID SUBSCRIBERS: Not only will you getting all the bonus material in today’s newsletter, but on October 1st (tomorrow) you’ll be sent the entire Twelve Residents Dreaming audiobook! You’ll then have access to every audiobook in The Bedlam Bible series! Access paid subscriber content here, and thank you so much for supporting DOOM FICTION!
Also, in case you missed the announcement last week: The first issue of MELT Magazine is here! This project is a collaboration between myself and Tom Stripper and will be published quarterly (an issue for every season of the year). There will be two different versions of this zine available to download: a PDF that can be read on just about any electronic device you have & a print-at-home version that will only require a single piece of paper to print. By following the folding instructions, that one sheet of paper will turn into a fully-illustrated magazine, complete with pages you can flip through. Mind-blown!
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VIP SUBSCRIBERS: You’ve been reading early drafts of “Choose Your Own Mindfuck: An Night in Eighth Block Tower” chapters, including several that belong in alternate storylines (not the storyline subscribers have chosen to follow)! I’ve been enjoying the nice Fall weather (my favorite time of year), so I’ve been handwriting this one. Hopefully you all can read that chicken scratch! Haha…Want to see a behind-the-scenes look at how stories are written—warts and all? Become a VIP subscriber today!
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Oddities Theater
The Phantom Tollbooth (also known as The Adventures of Milo in the Phantom Tollbooth) is a 1970 American live-action/animated fantasy film based on Norton Juster's 1961 children's book of the same name. Produced by Chuck Jones at MGM Animation/Visual Arts, the film stars Butch Patrick as Milo, alongside the voice talents of Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Candy Candido, Hans Conried, June Foray, Patti Gilbert, Shepard Menken, Cliff Norton, Larry Thor, and Les Tremayne. (Wikipedia)
Synopsis: Milo is a boy who is bored with life. One day he comes home to find a tollbooth in his room. Having nothing better to do, he gets in his toy car and drives through - only to emerge in a world full of adventure.
The October Country, Pt. 3
“It was September, and the last days when things are getting sad for no reason. The beach was so long and lonely, with only about six people on it. The kids quit bouncing the ball because somehow the wind made them sad too, whistling the way it did. And the kids sat down and felt autumn come along the endless shore. All of the hot dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins.”
And so, Bradbury sets the opening scene of his brilliant short story, “The Lake,” the third in his The October Country collection that I wanted to break apart and dissect.
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