Just the Good Ol’ Boys

Wow! It has been way too long since our last post! Well, we’re pretty sure that we’re not the only ones affected by the circumstances of the world. Speaking of the circumstances happening within the world … for some reason we thought about a story that we had written many, many years ago which ended up being published in Issue #3 of Encounters Magazine back in 2010. Encounters was a beautiful magazine – perfect bound, 8”x10”, and filled with well over 100 pages of speculative fiction short stories. Alas, Encounters no longer exists, having gone the way of so many print magazines. Since it has been so long since the story in question had seen the light of day and it may or may not look sideways at the apocalypse, we decided to share it with this post. We hope you enjoy!

  

Just the Good Ol’ Boys

Brian Koscienski & Chris Pisano

         

             Michael hated this assignment. He hated the walking, but that limitation was part of the assignment. As well as dressing his best, but that he did not mind. Grousing as he walked, he stepped with precision in an attempt to keep the filth of the dirt road from marring the sheen of his black shoes. Every minute or so he ran his right hand over his suit jacket to shoo away potential wrinkles, his left hand gripping an attaché. Despite his professional attire, he refused to keep his hair short, his flaxen locks glowed from the noon sun while his ponytail reached the middle of his back.

            The road snaked through the forest, wide enough to keep the treetops from forming a canopy, and led to a cabin as dirty as the road. Around the ramshackle structure lay accoutrements once meaningful, but now rusted and useless: a dilapidated push mower sans engine, a refrigerator with no door on the crusty hinges, a couch with springs poking from the seat like the hairs of a dying man’s head. Michael noticed a primer gray car as well, but cared very little if it worked or not. He had no affinity for vehicles either.

            But there was one useful piece of furniture outside the cabin – a picnic table – and seated on its bench was a bald man, neck as thick as a leg, with muscular arms powering out of a sleeveless flannel shirt. Tattoos of religious symbols:  crosses, stars (five-pointed, six-pointed, nine-pointed), an ichthys, a kalmia, an omkar, an ankh, a triskele, a menorah, a khanda, and other symbols of luck and blessing, covered his arms. This monster of a man was one of the individuals Michael needed to see.

            Michael approached the picnic table, trying not to think about how crunching through the leaves and twigs scuffed his shoes. The man at the table stared at a little brown cup next to a large brown jug. The veins in his scalp seemed to push his forehead downward, a scowl that cut ravines into his face, ruddy from ire. Hand quivering, he reached for the cup and lifted it only a few inches. The trembling spread through his entire arm, the shaking forced him to yield and place the cup back on the picnic table. Michael wondered how an arm large enough to throw a person could not lift a tiny cup. Then the scowling hulk looked up. And smiled. “Never thought I’d be happy to see you, Michael. Looks like you can help me out here.”

            “Greetings, Warren. Should we—” Michael cut himself short due to the shotgun pointing at him.

            “Drink what’s in the cup,” Warren said, his voice deep and aggressive, his finger on the trigger.

            Michael sighed and rolled his eyes. “Warren—”

            “Oh, high and mighty Michael, you know I ain’t got no qualms ‘bout pullin’ the trigger. And it ain’t gonna be pleasant. Now drink.”

            Sighing again, Michael placed his attaché on the table then ran both hands over his suit jacket. With great trepidation, he reached for the cup and brought it to his lips. Pausing, he inhaled, trying to determine the concoction. Alcohol wafted through his nostrils and he smiled, remembering the immaturity of the cabin’s inhabitants. Throwing his head back, he swallowed the liquid in one gulp. He wanted to die, even though that was an impossibility.

            A conflagration exploded within him as his ivory wings burst from his back, tearing his suit jacket to shreds. The bind that held his ponytail snapped, his hair frizzing, struck by invisible lightning. Tears mixed with sweat as Michael fought with gravity to remain standing all the while screaming, “OH GOD!”

            Warren howled with laughter. By the time he calmed himself Michael finished gesticulating. Stray feathers floated from his still twitching wings.  His shirt and tie remained on his body, but sweat discolored the whiteness of his shirt. Still trying to catch his breath, he panted, “What … was … that?”

            “Just a batch of moonshine we whipped up. Here, my turn,” Warren said as he handed the shotgun to Michael.

            “What?” Michael asked.

            “I ain’t gonna drink it unless I gotta. And what’s in that gun is special. Can hurt angels like you and creatures like me. Now point it at me!”

            Raising the gun at Warren, Michael contemplated pulling the trigger no matter what happened. But the large man poured a splash of moonshine from the jug into the cup and slugged it back. He clenched his meaty fists and held his breath, his skin reddening past the point of burgundy. Veins rippled their way across his muscles. Even his tattoos looked ready to peel from his skin. With one eruption of fury, Warren let loose a roar that rumbled the ground and shook the forest. Branches and leaves rained about the cabin.

            Panting, Warren wiped away a tear and laughed. “Now, that’s some good stuff! Roscoe sure knows what he’s doin’!”

            As if scripted, the cabin door opened and two scruffy men meandered out, hooting and cheering. One man, sickly and gaunt except for a bulbous bulge from his midsection that looked more like a boil ready for popping than a belly, sidled up to the picnic table and plopped down next to Warren. “Good stuff in there, yeah?”

            “Damn, Roscoe!” Warren yelled, still chuckling. “You sure got a way with the hooch!”

            “Second favorite thing I invented. After these bad boys, of course,” Roscoe cackled, pointing to his trucker cap that displayed a logo of a cigarette company, and tugged at his ratty tee shirt, adorned by an advertisement for another cigarette company. His teeth yellow and brown, his gums blood red with hints of pus.

            Michael grimaced at the man’s visage and sat down on the picnic table’s other bench. Fetching his attaché, he procured a pencil and notepad from it. Old fashioned, but he felt more comfortable with these means than any other technology throughout the years. “Sure are proud of yourself, Roscoe.”

            “Ehhhh. Those ain’t the true disease, though.”

            “No?” Michael asked.

            “Neh. The pestilence is from within. In a man’s heart, his soul. Make him do all kiiiiiiiiiiiinds of crazy things.”

            “You had nothing to do with that?”

            “Nope. Most I can do is toss a couple germs about. Science kills half and ‘education’ prevents the spread of the other half.”

            “So, what about the pestilence from within?”

            “That? That’s what man is born with, Michael. Addiction. They all got it. A few can control it. But they allllllllllllllll got it!” Roscoe cackled again. “The best part is if they ain’t addicted to what I got, then they addicted to what Enos got!”

            Michael frowned. He turned to Enos and did a double take. Every one hundred years Michael performed this visit and took notes from these interviews. When the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, Enos was the skinniest of the bunch, but now … “Enos? You’re … you’re … fat?”

            Sitting on the couch, bowing it in center from the prodigious girth, Enos smiled. His thick lips were shimmering from the grease of the fast-food burgers piled on the plate he held. The stained tee shirt, advertising the very burgers he ate, did nothing to stop his imperialistic belly from hiding his lap. Ham hands and sausage fingers picked a burger from the pile and he unwrapped it. His chuckle resembled a gurgle as he said, “Yep.”

            “But … but … you’re … you…”

            “Ain’t like the ol’ days, Michael,” Enos said in between bites of his burger. “New kinda famine.”

            “How? You’re … I’m sorry, Enos, but you’re the opposite of ‘famine’ now.”

            “Just ‘cause I’s fat? You thinkin’ too old, Michael.”

            Michael slapped his pencil down from frustration. He crossed his arms and frowned. Even his wings angled forward. “Oh, this has to be good. Please enlighten me.”

            “Famine don’t mean ‘no food’ no more. It mean ‘no nourishment.’ It mean ‘always hungry,’ Michael.”

            Michael leaned forward a bit, now interested in what the obese man had to say. “Go on.”

            Enos slurped the grease from his fingers and grabbed another burger from the pile. Holding it in his bloated palm, he showed it to Michael. “This ain’t go no nutrition. Got nuthin’ good for the body. No vitamins. Processed wheat, processed meat. Man killed whatever was good in the pieces parts to make these here burgers. You eat these and you belly fill. But you body starvin’!”

            His brows knitting, Michael leaned back. “Now wait a minute, Enos—”

            “And then you belly never full! You eat these, and you never satisfied. You eat more, ‘cause you need more.”

            Roscoe cackled again. “Ain’t that a hoot, Michael? In the old days, man was scared that one of us would come along and then be followed by the other one of us. We thought that too! But man, he’s combined us! He now got an addiction to neeeeeeeever being satisfied.”

            “Man outsmart ol’ Enos. I always thought to take food from man. Ha! To make man hunger, I shoulda give him more food!”

            “Don’t you know it!” Roscoe howled. “Mosta the diseases man gets, he gets from food – ‘cause he wants mooooooooooore food and he tries to grow in places it shouldn’t! Swine Flu! Mad Cow! Great stuff!”

            Michael stared, trying to take in what he just heard. “You two are trying to tell me you had nothing to do with that?”

            “Nope,” Roscoe and Enos said in unison.

            Skeptical, Michael continued with his interview, and asked Warren. “How about you? Those tattoos are new. Religious symbols? Doesn’t seem your style?”

            Warren grinned and leaned back, crossing his arms in front of his chest, flexing to show off the topic of conversation. “Yeah? Why not?”

            Michael snorted and shook his head, amazed at the gall. “Well … how about most of them promote peace?”

            Warren laughed, shaking the whole picnic table. “They can promote all they want, but the only thing they’re good for is what I promote. I’m their biggest fan.”

            “Warren, that’s—”

            “Frighteningly accurate? Think about it. Name one recent war that wasn’t about religion?”

            “That’s ridiculous. Just recently—”

            “It’s not about territory or freedom or resources like the old days. Just recently the good ol’ U. S. of A. went over to the Middle East. And ‘won.’ Did they take territory? No. They didn’t even take the resources that they said they were gonna take.”

            Michael frowned. “Are you saying that you had nothing to do with any of these recent wars?”

            Warren laughed again. “I love startin’ me a good war. I really do, but I never thought to start one by sayin’, ‘My peace lovin’ god is better than your peace lovin’ god.’ That’s just brilliant!”

            “I’m not buying any of this from you three. Where’s Dean?”

            On cue, the cabin door opened again, giving way to a thin, pale figure wearing a faded overalls over a faded tee shirt and a faded trucker cap. “Hey, Michael.”

            “Dean,” Michael moaned his salutation.

            Dean strode from the door, carrying a six-pack of beer. He moved like a ghost through a graveyard on his way to the picnic table and tossed a can to each of his friends. With one final saunter he sat directly across from Michael. “What are you doing here Michael?”

            “The same thing I do every one hundred years. I’m sent to check up on you four. Make sure you’re behaving yourselves until the appropriate time.”

            Dean sipped his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We been. Nuthin’ more wild than making moonshine.”

            “I don’t believe you, Dean. Especially with your likes. Both Heaven and Hell have been getting more souls the past hundred years.”

            A raspy chuckle. A sip of beer. “The average life span of man increased by more than a decade between the turn of last century and the turn of this century. Technologies have been growing by leaps and bounds. Longer lives. Greater prosperity. More and more people on this planet means more and more souls. More lives means more deaths.”

            “How convenient.”

            “Michael, Michael, Michael. Man is very convenient. The four of us were chompin’ at the bit the moment these monkeys became ‘man’ to get a piece of them. To inflict our ways on them. Little did we know all we hadda do was be patient. They say they fear us, but their actions say they love us!”

            “I don’t believe this.”

            Another swig of beer. “Look around, Michael. Do you see the steeds?”

            Not noticing until now, Michael took a moment to peek around. No steeds. Setting his jaw firm, he looked back to Dean. “No.”

            “Don’t you find it odd that the Four Horseman don’t have horses?”

            Wings twitching, Michael steeled his gaze at Dean.

            Dean continued, “We let them go. We hadn’t needed them for ‘bout fifty years now. We fire up that car now and again to go to town for supplies. That’s it. We’re just good ol’ boys now. You can protect man from us, Michael, but you can’t protect man from man.”

            Frustrated, Michael slouched and ran his hands through his hair, searching for answers. Realizing one thing, he sat back up and sighed. “Well, there’s still one saving grace.”

            Dean smirked, taking a slow drag from his beer while glancing at his comrades. Turning back to Michael, he asked, “What’s that?”

            “The mark of the Beast.”

            Chuckling, Dean replied, “Come again?”

            “The End of Days. There will be no End of Days until the Mark of the Beast is on everything.”

            Laughing, Dean turned his beer can to show Michael the bar code. Warren, Roscoe and Enos followed suit, displaying the bar codes.

            Jaw dropped, Michael could only whisper, “The Mark of the Beast?”

            Dean answered, “Ain’t many products left without it. How long before man puts it on himself?”

            “No,” Michael mumbled, dejected. Even his wings sagged. “It’s not time for the Apocalypse to come.”

            “The Apocalypse ain’t comin’, Michael.” Dean’s voice hollowed, an icy breeze across a tombstone. “It’s already here.”

            Michael sat for minutes, unable to move, processing all he had heard. Finally he sat straight, fluttered his wings, and ran his hands over his shirt in an attempt to smooth the wrinkles. Once satisfied, he reached for the jug, filled the cup and threw back a swig….

 

Deconstructing the Stories, Part 6

BRIAN SAYS:

People often ask us if there is anything autobiographical in the Drunk Comic Book Monkey series. The answer is absolutely yes. After all, the series is a collection of short stories where Chris and I are the main characters, so it stands to reason that there would be plenty of experiences to draw from. Now, some of what we’ve experienced in the books, aside from going toe-to-toe with monsters and aliens, happened to us only in the fictional world, such as waking up in a Tijuana jail cell, waking up in a Canadian jail cell, waking up on a deserted beach, but we’ve sprinkled some bits of real life throughout. One story that comes to mind is “The Day the Drunken Comic Book Monkeys Stood Still” in The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction. 

In this story, Chris and I are the ambassadors for Earth. Yep. You read correctly. He and I represent Earth and all the people on it to a techno logically advanced alien race. As with most situations in our lives (both real and fictional) we just happen to stumble upon the roles the way most individuals step on sidewalk gum during a hundred degree day. The results are about the same, too, being sticky and unwelcomed. As the title implies, the story is a spoof of The Day the Earth Stood Still, including large, unstoppable alien robot. The aforementioned large, unstoppable alien robot is called down from the celestial heavens because Chris and I accidentally sidestepped yet another of Jeff’s attempts to kill us. The alien being wonders if he should annihilate Earth, and thusly uses Chris and me and measuring sticks for all of humanity. Obviously, Chris and I decide to show the alien the best humanity has to offer, so we take him to Las Vegas.

This story contains the most autobiographical material. The first, and most obvious, is that Jeff is way cooler than we are. We have a great deal of respect for him and a super great deal of fear of him, as mentioned repeatedly throughout the story. The next snippet that we’ve included from real life is Chris’s inability to consume an Irish Car Bomb (the adult beverage) without creating a sloppy disaster. Yes, I have literally seen remnants drip from his forehead after placing the empty glass on the bar top. More than once. Finally, this one should surprise no one, we have offended strippers. Again, by pure accident. Much like the story, we went to a club and we knew very well that we simply should not interact with the outside world or any of its denizens, but we just couldn’t help ourselves. Conversations were started and then somewhere along the way, we spoke and soured the mood. That’s our mutant super power – souring the mood through discourse. Now, we have yet to place the entire planet in peril by interacting with any lifeforms from outer space. That is pure fiction. Should there ever … oh, hey! Look at those blinking lights in the sky…

… Sorry. Just a firefly. Where was I? Oh, yes, I remember now. Another story that has quite a bit of autobiographical influence is “Jeff vs. The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys and Their Clones and the Alternate Universe Drunken Comic Book Monkeys with Little to No Help from Drunkenstein.” Just from seeing how needlessly long the title is, one could assume some real life spilled into this fiction. Throughout the book other versions of us pop up. We are cloned. Alternate dimension versions of us find their way into this world. And Jeff is stuck taking all six Drunken Comic Book Monkeys through a fast food drive thru. Hijinks ensue. Although there isn’t one specific thing that happened in the story that came from the real world, some of the arguments between the multiple Brians and the many Chrises are pretty spot on to actual discussions we’ve had. And, on more than one occasion, Jeff has taken toys from us because we were annoying him.

CHRIS SAYS:

            Drunken Comic Book Monkeys? Never heard of them. And I never drank anything alcoholic during the making of any stories. And I’m not drinking anything alcoholic right now. But if I had an alter ego, he might be writing me into a story at this very moment and that could lead to some pretty heavy alcoholic consumption, so here we are.

            In terms of The Drunken Comic Book Monkey stories, one of the things that Brian and I tried to do, in very different fashions, is maintain some sort of link to the original, beautiful stories that we went on to ruin. Oh, you certainly have some stories that are simply trope concerned, such as Vampires and Drunkenstein where we used some very familiar aspects of wonderful novels, because, well, short stories are, in fact, short. One doesn’t have a great deal of space to flesh out a detailed background, so we chose stories that mean a great deal to us, personally, but are also literary classics so that readers would already have a good sense of the background details. It’s for certain that we sullied both Dracula and Frankenstein with our efforts, but both are examples of us having fun touching something that clearly should have been off limits to us. Fortunately, we recognize no such barriers as “good taste.”

            Another good example of the trope methodically destroyed was “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. Werewolves.” It’s a much less well known example of literary goodness, not to mention, a much less wordy example than Dracula or Frankenstein, but I have always found it to be constructed with equal care. Brian and I attempting to become werewolves ourselves goes against the very principle of every other take on the subject with which I am familiar, so, of course, that’s exactly what we had to do. And that led to some very interesting characterization (or is it technically half characterization and half personification?) of the main baddies. I still chuckle a little bit (when no one is listening, of course) when I read the story.

            On the other end of the spectrum, though, are the stories where we tried to contain our mayhem within the confines of the original masterpiece. For example, the original Wendigo story in Scary Tales of Scariness was an attempt to pay homage to the story by Algernon Blackwood, containing several of the same themes and elements found therein. “The Island of Dr. Merlot” from Sciency Tales of Science Fiction also uses this same idea to some extent, except that the good doctor has no interest in vivisection, but instead focuses on viticulture. And in the story of “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs the Moon” one may find some similarity of theme and setting to Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Brian and I found it to be a great organizational tool, as well as providing us with the opportunity to write in a slightly different voice by using the classics in this fashion versus just playing with the tropes a little bit.

            Oh, wait … a knock on the door … hello? No! I said “playing with the tropes!” Yes, we put them back when we were done! Excuse me … this could get messy …

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Deconstructing the Anthology, Part 1 – TV Gods

BRIAN SAYS:

“Are we sure we want to do this?” I asked.

Chris exhaled, slowly trying to blow doubt and insecurity out of his body. His eyes shimmered with the start of tears. “I think so?”

“Oh… oh, God… no…,” Christine muttered, realization crawling up her spine like ants.

“What are we talking about?” Jeff asked.

“Jeff, run. Run, run now, run fast, Jeff, just run,” Christine whispered.

Knowing Christine well enough, Jeff heeded her warning without question. He jumped from the couch, knocking the tray table over, and stepped on the cat’s tail as he sprinted for the door. Fingertips fractions of an inch from the doorknob, Chris and I thwarted his escape by yelling in unison, “We’re going to publish an anthology and you’re going to be the editor!!”

Jeff fell to the floor and writhed, screaming, “It burns! IT BURNS!”

“Are we sure we’re ready for this next step?” I asked.

“Well, we’ve published one anthology already, as well as three story collections, and dozens of magazines,” Chris answered. “It’s the next logical step.”

“IT BURNS!! BURNING BURNS!”

“So, what’s the anthology going to be?” Christine asked.

“IT STILL BURNS! IT BURRRRRRRNS!”

I shrugged my shoulders. “How about we call it ‘TV Gods’? We’ll ask the writers to take their favorite TV shows and their favorite mythologies and mash them together.”

“BURNING ME! IT BURRRRRR… wait… that’s not a bad idea,” Jeff replied as he sat up and grabbed his mead, the aloe rub for his soul. “I think I even have a story idea already.”

Thus, TV Gods was born. The reality of how it came to be was not all that far off from the above anecdote. As we had mentioned in previous blogs, the “Drunken Comic Book Monkeys” series was an experiment. We wanted to see what it took to publish a book; a full, perfect bound, trade paperback sized book with stories and illustrations. And we did it. It was not without its pains, but we did it and it was fairly successful. People we didn’t know purchased it and liked it. It ended up on the shelves of a few book stores. Everyone involved was very proud of the finished product. So, after about ten years of being a publishing company, we decided to take a more hands-on approach to publishing an anthology where there would be more writers involved than just Chris and me. And through divine intervention, we procured a wonderful editor almost immediately. We were all but finished! Okay, maybe it wasn’t that easy….

CHRIS SAYS:

Fortress Publishing Inc. events are pretty simple, by and large. For instance, one of us states that a day off work is approaching and asks if there is interest in going to the lunch buffet until we are asked to leave. All hands raise in lieu of a more formal RSVP and we’re done. That’s how stories get done. But an anthology? Well suddenly it goes from “Dude, are you free on Friday?” to “Contact fifteen to twenty of your closest work associates.” Now it’s more like a daunting task. Where to begin?

Fortunately, Brian and I are quasi-likeable guys. More fortunately, we’ve been invited to participate in anthologies as contributors. First step: pull out copies of those anthologies. We learned a great deal by looking through those books, from formatting to layout to estimated page counts.

We had so much fun working with Danielle McPhail and her editorial team on the “Bad Ass Faeries” anthologies. Flipping through the pages of the actual book was a bit of a trip down memory lane for us. Brian and I have our own series of editorial steps that we use when we are working on a story, but we were able to add our experience of having gone through the editorial process that they used for “Bad Ass Faeries.” Big bonus.

More recently, Brian and I had also been in the anthology, Coven, edited by Andi O’Connor. Again, it was a completely different process, including a virtual chat room that was set up for the day of the book release. Contributors could check into the “room” and answer questions posed by potential readers. We had a great deal of fun with that as well.

Now where to find contributors. Well, we had a good beginning spot by looking through the table of contents for “Bad Ass Faeries” and Coven as well as other anthologies that we’ve been in. But, over the years, Brian and I have done a fair number of public appearances and conventions. If we could bide our time, we reasoned, we’d be seeing some likely candidates and decided that we could corner a few of the less intimidating ones in the hallways or at a convention table. There was also our most valuable resource: the bar! Brian and I have been known to hang out there for extended periods of time in order to change a non-committal answer into “Yes, if it will make you leave!”

But what to do with the more intimidating folks? Hmmmm. We went to our usual thinking place. We did our usual thinking tasks. We ate pizza rolls by the box. We drank beer by the pitcher. And then it came to us like a power surge on an otherwise dreary day: Jeff! We’d get Jeff to do it!!

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Deconstructing the Stories, Part 5

BRIAN SAYS:

A sequel. That’s what we needed, a sequel. Okay, I’m using the term “need” very liberally, but after we successfully put together The DrunkenComic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness and The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in:Scary Tales of Scariness: Reflux Edition we decided to do a sequel. So, now what? Science fiction, of course! Thus, The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: ScienceyTales of Science Fiction was born. Obviously, we wanted to evolve, to do more with this book than just rehash the same jokes over and over again. One of the ways to do that was Jeff.

Even though each story in The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness had an antagonist – more times than not, Chris and I acted as our own antagonists – we felt that there was something missing by not having a more specific, overarching bad guy. Jeff fit into that role perfectly! As editor, Jeff has to wear many hats, especially when dealing with Chris and me. Sometimes he needs to wear many hats as disguises to hide from Chris and me. After reviewing our antics from the first book and the extended edition, we realized that Jeff has PLENTY of motivation to want to kill us.

Having Jeff as a villain (at least to our characters), it created a sense of continuity with the stories, and it retroactively fit with The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness. Even the stories without Jeff now had the feel that he could have been behind the scenes influencing the events. Ultimately, this idea led to one of my favorite stories in The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction — “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. Mad Scientists.”

Throughout both books, and the extended edition, Chris and I crossed paths with more than a few mad scientists and (usually by no fault of our own) thwart their plans. In “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. Mad Scientists” Jeff decides to act as the unifying factor, gathering the many disgruntled scientists to join forces for the singular purpose of destroying Chris and me. What makes this one of my favorite stories? Chris and I aren’t even in it. Yep, the influence of The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys is so great that we don’t even need to be in the story to affect its outcome. What about the goat, you may ask? Yep, he’s there, too!

CHRIS SAYS:

A sequel? Why in the name of anything that’s good, worthy, or even slightly wanted by anyone, would we do a sequel? I’m glad you asked! The most obvious answer is that we had so much fun with the first book. Throughout the writing process of the first book, our snickering and giggling about what we were doing was a contributing factor in waitresses asking us to leave more than one location of a well-known restaurant chain (but I digress…). More importantly, though, there were still things that we hadn’t tried and we were in agreement that we needed to try them.

In The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness we mostly stuck to tropes for a variety of reasons. Using a “type” of monster not only increased the chances of greater reader familiarity, but it allowed us to jump right into the story without needing much background for setup. Not to be vain, but we really did think these stories were about “us.” Since short fiction was one of the goals of the project, we saved word space through the trope technique.

In The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Sciencey Tales of Science Fiction, we wanted to break out of that mold a little bit. We considered for the first time some character re-occurrence, so it made sense to give them a slightly more specific background. As such, we created each story with the backdrop of a much more famous story in mind. This helped us with the organizational details of the stories and kept us directionally pointed towards a proper story “ending.”

It’s always difficult for me to pick a favorite from any of our collections. “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs The Center of the Earth” appeals to me because of the attempt to show the camaraderie that Brian and I share. Plus I just find the concept of fighting the center of the earth one that allows for a great deal of interpretation. “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs The Moon” is another story that really allows for a great range of writing freedom, conceptually, and it is based on one of my very favorite books of all time. Every story in this collection is a doppleganger of a much more famous piece of fiction. Take the challenge and see if you can guess them all!

Deconstructing the Stories, Part 4

BRIAN SAYS:

For this installment, the stories that we’re going to deconstruct are four that can only be found in The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness: Reflux Edition. From here on out, we’ll just refer to it as Reflux. What is Reflux? Other than that burny feeling your insides get when thinking about either Chris or me? It’s the special edition of The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness. This limited print run can only be purchased directly from us at any of our various appearances (check here for where we might be next), or from our website, here. What makes Reflux different from the original edition? Well, we added three stories, rewrote four stories, and after EACH story is a behind the scenes look of what we did or drank to come up with the story. It’s like the special director’s commentary DVD of your favorite movie. Why did we rewrite four of the stories? Well, we’re glad you asked.

One of the stories I decided to rewrite was “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. The Wendigo.” Chris wrote that story in the original version. He did a fantastic job with it, continuing our adventure from our time in Tijuana chronicled in “Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. La Chupacabra.” However, when we first brought up the idea of our characters facing the wendigo spirit, we each had vastly different takes on the subject. Chris portrayed the spirit much like Algernon Blackwood did in his tale many years ago. It lent itself well for what Chris did with the story, but my favorite versions of the wendigo were always the more Hollywood style – the ravenous creature possessing a person, turning them into an insatiable cannibal. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Algernon Blackwood version of the wendigo. But after we released the original version of Scary Tales, we learned that many people don’t know what a wendigo is, and even fewer have heard of Algernon Blackwood. When we decided to do Reflux, I jumped at the chance to tell a story using one of my favorite spirits not sold in a liquor store. I also took the opportunity to make a few jokes about Canada. Because, you know, Canada.

The other story I rewrote was “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. Zombies.” This concept was actually what started the whole nonsense of us writing ourselves as characters in horror stories. At the time, I was not a fan of zombies. Over the decades, the typical zombie story evolved from inept young people struggling to flee from shambling corpses that can somehow utter the word, “Braaaaaaaaains,” to a more sophisticated study of human nature where survivors could be more dangerous than the zombies themselves. When Chris wrote the original, he did a fantastic job of taking the zombie story to a unique place (the zombies in question were not actually undead, instead they were under the mind control of the nefarious Potato People) as well as tell a compelling story using dialog only, with zero narrative. Even though I enjoyed his vision, I still wanted to see a traditional zombie story filled with traditionally stupid characters. Namely, Chris and me.

Since the characters of Chris and Brian spent so much time in a restaurant thinly veiled in fiction called Melons, I thought it would be funny if Chris and I won a “golden ticket” to visit the headquarters. Little did we know it would be much like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory! Not only did I want to up the fun factor, but I also wanted to add to the body count. Scary Tales is a book about horror stories, and zombies are always eating people, so the zombies in this version of the story eat people. Of course, they deserve to be eaten since they do what the characters do in the zombie stories of yesteryear that I detested – drop weapons right after successfully using them, or sacrificing themselves for the rest of the group when there’s another option that would allow everyone to escape unscathed. Of course, I also decided to have fun with the source of zombie-making contagion. Yes, you guessed it – the goat.

CHRIS SAYS:

  

…And cut. Ok, that’s a wrap, guys. Good job and we can continue filming tomorrow… Oh, hi! I didn’t hear you back there, you sneaky creepers! Thanks for visiting us on the top secret Fortress lair… oh, wait… it’s top secret… so, what was Brian going on about? Reflux? Yeah, I know a thing or two about that. Come on over here where we can talk.

Four stories from the original collection got a complete makeover in Reflux. Brian wanted to tackle Zombies and The Wendigo because he simply envisioned them as something other than what they were in the original edition of the book. And I’m glad that he did. He took both stories back to their more Hollywood roots and it brought out more of that delightful lunacy that you all know as The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys.

For my part, I wanted to try to work a slightly different angle with “Spider.” The original is classical zaniness and a favorite of ours to do at readings. I’m always a sucker to twist up a good classic into knots, so I wondered what would happen if I made “Spider” follow a traditional European fairy tale format, complete with a stranger and gifts and all of that. As we had begun to work in Jeff Young more as an antagonist, I thought it would be great fun to continue this theme (it wasn’t until Brian and I met after the first round of story re-writing that we found out that we had both taken this tactic). The framework of the story is largely autobiographical as Brian had told me just weeks earlier how he had blown up two mowers in a span of a few days. For someone who only mows twice a year, this is no small task! Brian’s accountant, financial justification for the events of the story… well, that just makes me laugh a little bit on the inside. He’s read it. He still hasn’t denied that he would rationalize it similarly….  

“The Blob” was a story for which I had no reference. There is no literary equivalent that I’m aware of and I have never seen the movies pertaining to it. I enjoyed Brian’s take on things (who doesn’t love a good mad scientist?) and I stopped to wonder what semi-autobiographical reference I could use in which we were mad scientists… hmmm… oh, yeah… at one of our Fortress excursions we may have relived the good old college days and some of our less than wise mixologies. At the forefront was some good, old-fashioned, gummy candy. Couldn’t possibly cause any harm, right? So I threw in a little Ghostbuster humor and mixed it with a few fifty piece wing platters and voila! Speaking of gummy candy, I think it’s… ummmm… clean out the pantry day! National holiday, you know. Gotta go! Bye!

Deconstructing the Stories, Part 3

BRIAN SAYS:

Holy wow! It’s been less than a year between postings! Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors! Tell your Priest! We’re heading to Crazytown and I think I’m the Mayor! Okay, I might have oversold it a bit. Sorry. It’s just another post pulling back the curtain that separates Chris and me from the rest of the world.

So, the last time we deconstructed some stories from our short story collection, The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness (available here and here), Chris and I looked at a couple of our favorites. This time, we’ll take a look at a couple that really stood out for us. Or me, I’d have to say it’s the last story in the book, “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. The Devil,” for many reasons.

As we were writing the book, we went along our merry way doing some goofy things that led to unanswered questions. Beer Pants. Talking to animals. Dying more than the average human being. Why there’s a goat in a few of the stories. As we were finishing up the rest of the stories, we were running out of opportunities to explain ourselves. It finally dawned us to do one final story where we match wits with the devil. Better yet, we force Jeff to match his wits with the devil. And it worked.

Within the stories, we go up against scary creatures and other dastardly villains. The creatures were all fun, but the villains of the human variety lacked a certain level of relatability. After we finished about half of the stories and started talking about sequels to the book itself, we realized that it would be super fun to have Jeff as the antagonist, trying to kill us. “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. The Devil” sets that up very nicely, as if the motivation to kill us isn’t obvious enough.

One interesting piece of trivia is this story parallels the first story I ever had printed in a magazine titled, “Why I am no longer a lawyer.” In that story, a young man makes a deal with the devil. Regretting what he did, he went to consult a lawyer. The parallel between that story and “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. The Devil” is part of the reason why the characters of Brian and Chris get what they want and still escape with their souls is because of paperwork. The idea stemmed from soooooooo many “make a wish” stories where the wish maker gets screwed over by the wish giver because of poorly worded wishes. If I ever have a chance at receiving a wish or two from a near-omnipotent being, you better believe that I’m going to dot my “t”s and cross my “i”s before I utter any part of that wish, and all kinds of eyes will be crossed by the time I’m done!

Even though this story is the last one in the book, it’s the one that ties most of the other stories together. With a dash of meta-humor, the reader now gets a better understanding of the universe were working in and the characters running around in it. The goat? What about the goat? Well, you’ll just have to read the story to find out….

CHRIS SAYS:

  

Howdy, fellow reader! I see Brian is trying to set up here. Like anyone could choose one favorite from amongst their thousands of stories (or, in this case, half a dozen)! It’s a daunting task, I say! But I can do this….

When we had gotten to the point of falling off the barstools while discussing The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys project two things were evident: I had to do a zombie story (because Brian hates them!) and it had to be ridiculous. So when next we met, I was about 1000 words into the story and I told Brian that Drunken Comic Book Monkey Brian was turning out to be a legendary cusser. He thought for a second and said “Dude, it has to be PG13.” Well, dang. So I went home and pulled up the story. I laid on the delete key like a Rhode Island driver punishing the car horn in light-to-moderate traffic. I now had a story that was 273 words long and I was less than pleased about it. So I wondered, “What would Brian do?” Well, that’s easy! He’d do something that I hate. Hmmmmm….

We’ve already established that Brian isn’t overly fond of zombie stuff, so I needed to dig a little but deeper. Speech tags! Brian hates it when there are no speech tags! Brilliant! I’ll write a story without any speech tags. After a few hundred more words, I remembered an old college writing challenge where we were forbidden to use narrative exposition….All dialogue sans speech tags! That’s it! I’ll write the whole dang thing in dialogue! Words flew on to paper and I was loving how quickly I could type if I didn’t have to consider verbiage on the speech tags.

Suddenly I’m a few thousand words into the story and I can’t shake the nagging feeling that I don’t know how to end this thing, so I get the idea “what if I don’t?” If I blame the whole thing on the dastardly Potato People, then I can keep the pure dialogue gag going for another whole story and I have a reason for the zombie appearances. So I rolled with it. When I was about halfway through the Potato People story I realized that I didn’t know how to end that one either, so I figured “if it works once, then why not try it again?” Of course, as soon as Brian found out my little scheme, he forbid me from using dialogue in the Cthulhu story, which was fine by me and I like to think that it rankled him that the story got finished….Well, Brian is due back any minute now and I just swiped his last beer, so I’ll be seeing you!

Deconstructing the Stories, Part 2

BRIAN SAYS:

Look at us posting another entry within a year from our last one! It’s like we’re trying to keep some form of schedule.  Crazy! Anyway….

If you recall from a loooooong time ago (last year), we started  a blog  segment called “Deconstructing the Stories” wherein we wanted to take you behind the scenes for our short story collection, The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this work – it’s a collection of short stories by Chris and me featuring ourselves as characters of horror stories. If you’d like to familiarize yourselves with this book before we continue, you can order a hardcopy here or here (Amazon) and you can order an eVersion here. Okay, so now that you’ve read the book from cover to cover, the first question you might have is how we came up with the idea in the first place. Well, we went over that in “Deconstructing the Stories, Part 1.” The second question you might ask is how we’re allowed to mingle with regular society. We don’t know either. The third question might be which stories in the book are our favorites. Okay, we know the answer to that question!

For me, I would have to say it’s “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. La Chupacabra.” First, it was the first story first written, firstly, and you always remember your firsts first. First is a funny word if you say it too many times. Anyway, it became the first story we wrote because when we made the list of creatures we wanted to tussle with, the top three monsters were obvious (vampires, zombies, werewolves), and even some other monsters made the list with very little thought (blob, ghosts, the devil, a slasher), but the ones that quickly intrigued us were the little known ones, such as the chupacabra. How were we going to write a story about a topic with only a handful of resource materials and even fewer recognizable tropes? For this whole book to be successful, this was one of the first questions we needed to answer.

Chris and I started off waking up in a Tijuana jail cell. One of the potential pitfalls of writing a piece where you’re the main character is that there is a chance that you’ll include an inside joke or a reference that only you know. Chris and I constantly joked about waking up in a Tijuana jail cell. So, we had to gut-check most of our jokes – are they too much of an inside joke for the readers? With that question in mind, we moved forward with the story and jokes, trying our hand at different types of comedy ranging from the subtle (arguing with a goat) to the absurd (a French speaking Mexican character).

With this story, we also inadvertently came up with two important items in the “Drunken Comic Book Monkey” lore – the beer pants and the goat. The beer pants are pretty self-explanatory. Whenever we (the characters) needed a cold beer, we’d procure one by reaching into our pants’ pocket. At the time, we (the writers) didn’t know how the beer pants worked. For those of you who haven’t made it to the end of the book yet – yes, we do explain how the beer pants work. Then, there’s the goat. The goat who can outdrink us. Throughout the Drunken Comic Book Monkey series, we pride ourselves in our drinking abilities. Sadly, that pride resonates in both of us as characters and writers. We added the goat with supernatural alcohol stamina as a joke. It’s a goat! Who can outdrink us! That’s funny! At the time, we didn’t realize that the goat was going to be a fan-favorite character. I mean, we should have guessed that was going to happen since the goat is a recurring character not named Brian or Chris.

After finishing “DCM vs La Chupacabra”, we set the tone and answered a few questions we had about the project. We also realized that we could dip back into the pool of characters that we create along the way, such as the goat and El Tigre Grande. Plus, it’s just a fun story! So, that is why this is my favorite story of the book.

CHRIS SAYS:

It’s completely cliché to say that choosing your favorite story is akin to picking your favorite child. So I’ll forgo that approach and say, instead, that the line is thoroughly untrue. It’s nothing like trying to pick your favorite child. The difficulty is that it’s easy to like stories for such vastly different reasons that it’s often difficult to choose – unless you have a sound process to determine what matters most to you. It just so happens that I do….

Oh those many years ago, Brian and I found ourselves perched atop barstools (where else would you find the two of us?), laughing like asylum escapees over this whole Scary Tales of Scariness idea. We were taking turns playing “Oh, yeah? Well, then I’m gonna…,” concocting a potential story idea giving the other person more agita than the previous story idea that caused eczema for the soul. It was hysterical! Well, it was hysterical for the two of us. Looking back I realize that no one else in the Hooter’s restaurant shared in our enthusiasm. In fact, I remember thinking at the time that our neighbor consumed his wings at an impossible pace. I may have thought then that he was practicing for a wing eating contest, but, alas….

When I first blurted out that I wanted to do a story where we face zombies, because Brian hates zombies, I quickly coupled it with the idea that there would be no speech tags. Sure, they can be used to convey a character’s frame of mind, but I often view them as the speed bumps of the written word, merely serving to slow down both the reader and the writer. Robert Heinlein often had two characters engage in pages of back-and-forth dialogue that was thoroughly successful without speech tags, so why the heck not give it a shot? In fact, I even went so far as to challenge myself to do the entire story as dialogue, not a single word of narrative to grace the pages! I appreciate effort and authenticity as a reader, which I knew going into things would be a fair challenge with the recent popularity of zombie stories.

The story came out so quickly that I actually found it difficult to be an amanuensis for my muse. But she, my shrill harpy of a muse, continued to harangue me, reminding me that deadlines were created specifically with procrastinators like me in mind, so I did my best to avoid in the moment editing on the first draft. As I typed I was fully aware that I’d never thought up the ending to the story. At this point, it was the first story I’d written for Scary Tales of Scariness, so there was no other material available for me, no previous story to use as a tie-in… and then it hit me that I could make this piece the tie-in story. Brian hates open-ended stories and if I went to him with my very first piece and told him there’s no real ending, he’d blow a head gasket. How perfect was that? I could do what I do best: be a further annoyance! And as I worked towards the pseudo-ending I matched up the ridiculous notion of “The Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. The Potato People” as the successor story and how that could ultimately lead into the “Drunken Comic Book Monkeys vs. Cthulhu” story, which Brian had already challenged me to write sans any dialogue. Thus a trifecta of stories was planned out amidst the clacking of the keyboard keys.  

It’s been mentioned to me in the past that I’m a pretty simple guy (usually as a somewhat less than obscure comment on my mental faculties, much like an amoeba being a simple organism). If my ultimate criterion for determining my favorite anything is the annoyance of my Fortress Publishing, Inc co-owner, then I guess I’d have a difficult time trying to argue to the contrary any point concerning my simplicity as a human being. Or an amoeba. But I think I’m perfectly okay with that….

Deconstructing the Story: Part 1

BRIAN SAYS:

Welcome back! Chris and I hope you’re enjoying our blog so far. As we mentioned in our very first post, we wanted to do a segment called “Deconstructing the Stories” where we’ll be going behind the scenes of some of our short-stories that we’ve had published. Well, here we go!

For “Deconstructing the Stories” Part 1, let’s take a look at “Drunken Comic Book Monkeys in: Scary Tales of Scariness”. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this work – it’s a collection of short stories where Chris and I wrote ourselves in as characters of horror stories. If you’d like to familiarize yourselves with this book before we continue, you can order a hardcopy here at the Fortress Site and you can order an eVersion here (Smashwords) or here (Amazon) or here (B&N). Okay, so now that you’ve familiarized yourselves with the book, the first question you might have is how we came up with the idea in the first place.

As with most ideas that Chris and I have, we ultimately found inspiration at the bottom of a beer pitcher. But there were a couple things that happened before that.

As Chris and I were creating Fortress Publishing, Inc., we attended a few conventions to gather intel and generate some ideas. One convention in particular was the Pittsburgh Comicon and one particular comic book that we picked up was “Living With Zombies” where, as you may have guessed, the creators wrote and drew themselves as characters surviving the zombie apocalypse.

A few months later, Chris and I were at our monthly shareholders meeting (yes, Fortress Publishing, Inc. is REALLY a corporation) at Hooters. Much to the chagrin of the waitresses, our meetings would last 6+ hours and would deteriorate into silly debates, often loud and slurred. This one happened to be: Zombies, Pro or Con.

I find zombies little more than moving scenery while Chris believes that they represent man’s inherent fear of blah blah blah blah blah. During a particularly heated part of the debate (and for those of you who don’t know us, “heated” really means we entered the “giggle like a couple of preteen girls” stage of our drunkenness), Chris blurted, “I’m gonna write a zombie story with us as characters!” I replied, all too loudly as well, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m gonna write a vampire story with us as characters! And they’re gonna be the new, hip, sexy kind who wear black leather and listen to techno music!” We then paused in our bickering, ignoring the looks of indignation being cast at us by the waitresses and other patrons, and let the concept of writing ourselves as characters into stories percolate in our alcohol addled minds. We then looked at each other and asked, “Do we really want to do this?”

CHRIS SAYS:

Do we really want to order more beer? Duh! Oh, wait…Do we really want to work on this project that, in a more sober frame of mind, would likely be less appealing than shouting “all in” while holding a deuce and a seven, unsuited? We assessed our current situation as publishers. At that point, to date, we were the proud publishers of a few slick looking magazines and a graphic novel. A few nice beginner projects, but hardly the stuff of publishing legend. Brian and I both love short story anthologies and hoped that eventually the magazine arm of Fortress Publishing, Inc., would lead us down the path to publishing a few of them. From that aspect we were pretty darn amped about giving this project a shot.

As writers, we had a few short stories and some poems published, but we clearly wanted to get some more writing experience. We had no large writing projects looming so as we began to flesh out this project, we decided that this was a great opportunity to attempt to write in a few different styles, work with an outside editor (potentially), work with deadlines (shudder), find an illustrator, practice re-writes, find a printer we liked, and assemble a novel-length piece into a computer file that the printer would accept. All in all, this was a more daunting task than merely writing a few stories, and a few more pitchers later we found that we were pretty excited about the whole project and the experience we would get out of it.

While the creative coals were still hot, Brian and I started throwing out story names and suggestions at each other. Some of them made us cringe. Others made us cackle in a manner worthy of the forcing the employees to ask us to leave. But that didn’t happen. Instead, one of us got the bright idea that we should be capturing these ideas for future reference (the other argued…because, hey, it’s what we do). Fortunately, we not only write down our ideas, but somehow managed to stow the notes in a place where we actually came across them the next day. 

Now, in all truth, Brian and I took far different approaches to the potential selection process. We both loved the ideas that made us titter uncontrollably, but Brian really focused on his past movie experiences, while I delved into the literary vault of my mind and dug out some of my favorite Gothic reads. Brian was noting themes and tropes, while I was methodically examining very specific works that focused on a specific atmosphere or style. In the end we wound up with a nice blend of horror that we thought we could poke fun at through unique twists, while maintaining a sense of respect for the original ideas.

Tune in next time when we deconstruct our novel “The Shattered Visage Lies”…