Happy New Year

Despite the passing of more good friends, 2014 has been a much better year for me than either 2012 or 2013. I reconnected with my daughter, Tammy, visiting her in Medford, Oregon, in May, then helping her to buy a condo and get everything moved to her new digs by the first of December. I wrote and sold four new novels and two short stories, though they won’t see print until next year. I did autographings or panels or workshops at three major cons, reconnected with dozens of writer friends in person and many more on Facebook, and lectured on writing and hypnosis at Rock Valley College. Macabre Ink and Crossroad Press will soon re-release The Devil Made Me Do It, Claw Hammer, and Daddy’s Home as e-books, and David also agreed to publish a couple of new never-before-published novels I sent him in manuscript.

            2015 looks to be even busier than 2014. Abandoned is scheduled to come out in paperback and hardcover by the end of February or beginning of March. I am so very fond of that novel and its sympathetic characters that I wrote four sequels containing some of the same characters. I’ll be signing copies of Abandoned at Barnes and Noble in late February, the World Horror Convention and Wiscon in May, the World Science Fiction Convention (Sasquan) in August, and the World Fantasy Convention in November.

            Impossible is developing nicely. I’m in the fun process of building the sexual tension between Jack and Sylvia at the same time they’re fleeing for their lives from two teams of super-assassins. Jack doesn’t dare tell Sylvia everything, and Sylvia, of course, doesn’t believe half of what he has told her and certainly doesn’t believe the threat is real. Her naivete keeps putting them both in jeopardy. Let this be a lesson to you, guys. Leaving the woman you love in the dark can be hazardous to your health.

            My writing was often interrupted by the real-life dramas of people close to me. Too many of my friends developed cancer or heart conditions, and several friends died quite unexpectedly. Some of my friends made life-changing decisions or endured life-changing events. On the plus side, Elizabeth has remained clean and sober for more than a year, and Tammy now has a more stable living environment. I had my annual physical and the doctor tells me I can expect to live for another year or more. Maybe I can equal Isaac Asimov’s output before I die. I’ll keep working at it.

            Happy New Year to all my friends, family, and fans. May each year be better than the last.

           

The Devil Made Me Do It

Introduction to The Devil Made Me Do It

As I reread the twenty early tales that comprise The Devil Made Me Do It for the digital edition soon to be republished by Macabre Ink Digital and Crossroad Press, I was amazed how well some the stories still worked while others seemed time-worn and too sloppy to be called stories. Few have real beginnings, middles, and satisfying endings. I was still learning my craft when those tales were written, having recently emerged from a literary tradition heavily influenced by Hemingway, Faulkner, and the beat writers of the 1950s and 1960s. Several of the tales were experiments in subtlety where less was always more. The writer’s job was only to set the stage, establish the mood, so that horrors were implied rather than described. The reader was left to fill in from his or her own imagination what would happen next or what might already have happened.

            Two of my favorite tales are included in this early collection: “Change of Mind” and “The Last Ding Dong of Doom.”

            Some of the tales display my debt to Howard Phillips Lovecraft, especially “The Outsider” and “The Rats in the Walls”. “Soon” and “Till the End of Time” had been previously published in Randy Everts’ The Arkham Sampler, and show my cross-over from science fiction writer to horror writer. When The Devil Made Me Do It first appeared in 1985 under the Miskatonic University imprint of The Strange Company, I was definitely a Lovecraftian imitator. Devil was released in a limited edition at Madcon, a semi-annual Lovecraft convention in Madison, Wisconsin. I was heavily into Lovecraft during the early eighties, and it shows in at least half of the twenty stories contained in The Devil Made Me Do It.

            My previously published novels had ranged from westerns, thrillers, contemporary romances, and erotica written under pseudonyms. The Devil Made Me Do It was the first book with my real name on the cover. I had also written half-a-hundred science fiction stories, most of which never saw print. The few that did were more horror than hard sf, and they didn’t fit into Asimov’s or Analog.

            Even “The Last Ding Dong of Doom” had appeared in The Horror Show under a Dale Anderson byline. It was only after Devil that I decided to submit to horror markets and to use my real name on stories and novels. Claw Hammer came out in 1989 under the Paul Dale Anderson name, followed by Daddy’s Home. I began to use my own name on book reviews, too, although I did use Irwin Chapman on most of the reviews I wrote for 2AM. Paul Dale Anderson fiction appeared in The Horror Show, Arkham Sampler, Deathrealm, New Blood, Dark Regions, SPWAO Showcase, Etchings and Odysseys, and in anthologies like Hotter Blood, Masques III, Seeds of Fear, and Shock Rock.

            Then--when death and life-threatening illnesses claimed so many of my loved ones and associates, including my agent Barbara Puechner--Paul Dale Anderson disappeared as a fiction writer and Paul Dale Anderson, the board-certified hypnotist and scholar, appeared. I earned several masters degrees and worked diligently on a doctorate, completing all but the dissertation. I wrote primarily non-fiction for twenty years. And, for twenty years, I fought a valiant battle against death and disease.

            Like all wars, you win a few battles and you lose a few. Without a doubt, I helped some people live longer and more productive lives.

            That war ended in 2012 when my wife Gretta died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Paul D. Anderson, the hypnotist, died that same day.

            A few months later, Paul Dale Anderson, the horror writer, was literally reincarnated. Like Phoenix rising from the ashes, I was reborn with new tales to tell.

            I’m happy that The Devil Made Me Do It is now reborn as well. Soon Claw Hammer and Daddy’s Home will be, too.

            Yes, Virginia, there is life after death. Abandoned is a completely new novel unlike anything I have done before, and Deviants is mind-bending. Spilled Milk is just plain nasty. I love Pickaxe, Icepick, and Meat Cleaver. There are twenty new Paul Dale Anderson novels completed, and more on the way. I have a new few short stories ready to go, too.

            But The Devil Made Me Do It started it all.

           

Paul Dale Anderson lecture on Writing, Hypnosis, and FLow at Rock Valley College 10-22-14

Free Lecture on Writing

Learn about Self Hypnosis and Writing

 

 

Self-hypnosis is practiced by writers familiar with their craft who use it to separate in their writing the creative process and the editing process. One of the challenges for writers is to take the elements of a story and imaginatively create a finished work for readers. One aspect of Paul Dale Anderson’s talk will be a discussion of “flow” as a state of mind. As explained by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychology professor at University of Chicago, “Flow” is sought out by people in their desire for happiness and challenge related to their skills. To achieve flow humans must have challenges and achieve mastery in the skills necessary to meet those challenges. Skill sets develop when each challenge is only slightly greater than the previous ones. If the challenge is too much greater, or insufficient to be interesting, the person becomes anxious or bored and develops no new skills.

 Anderson has an MS in educational psychology from Northern Illinois University and an MA in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of numerous books and short stories and has taught writing in courses for the Writer's Digest Schools and in workshops at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Learn more at www.pauldaleanderson.com

Date:  Wednesday, October 22

Time: 2:30 – 3:30  pm
Location: Woodward Technology Center Room 141/142

 

The lecture is sponsored by Friends of the Estelle M. Black Library.