Publishing, Movies, Books, and Reviews

I think my posts are getting a little too emotional for my own good. But that seems to be the case, these days. Fact is, I spend a lot of time writing in the journal, and sometimes after a heartfelt entry, I always think, "That would make a good blog." So, I retype it, polish it up a bit, and well, as honest as they sometimes are, I really don't mind sharing. A friend of mine said everyone feels that way, I just voice it aloud, so maybe I'm speaking for a lot of us. Who the hell knows? I have nothing to hide and I'm not ashamed, and I've always prided myself on at least being a fearless writer. It goes back to that--being honest with yourself, unafraid, and express from the heart, and chances are--whatever comes out is going to be beautiful.

With all that said, I thought I'd steer from it a little and mention some things I've been up to. Lately I was able to join the Horror Writer's Association, because of Donny's Day, and nominate the little bugger for a Stoker Award. That was pretty exciting, and I'm privileged to add one more thing to the resume. Also, there was this review, which was very nice of Michele, so thank you Michele. Donny's Day Review And yes, I would rather be on the eclectic shelves as opposed to the trendy ones. Fact is, I never think about plot. I think it's a waste of time. And personally, action scenes never do it for me. It's a yawn. I like thickness, depth of emotion, heavy atmosphere and detail. But...that's just me.

Also, I'm always a little late on books and movies because I usually wait til they come out on DVD or until I can get the books from the library, but on the literary front, Just After Sunset (Stephen King), A Dark Matter (Peter Straub) and The Grin of the Dark (Ramsey Campbell) were all a nice getaway. Three of my favorite authors and all with new work I hadn't gotten to yet. Great stuff, and I will gladly single out Peter Straub--only because I'm biased and I love the man's work, and this one was not a disappointment. Not as thick and descriptive as most of Straub's work, but it's nice to see him return to the darker supernatural, which he has done lately. Ramsey Campbell, of course, has got to be one the most incredible horror authors in the business. The man never wavers, never lets down, and always delivers, no matter what. Unsettling, just like all his work. Personally, I don't know how he can keep delivering the way he does after all these years. It's really quite amazing. Also, he just came out with another, Creatures of the Pool, but I haven't read it yet. And only King can create an asshole villain and still make you giggle and laugh about him, while somehow, making you like him at the same time.

House of the Devil was not disappointing, either, for those traditional horror movie fans--a period piece made about the '80's, but done in 2008, which sounds so odd to think of the '80's as a period piece, but the movie is quite good. Some may think it slow and doesn't take off until the last half hour, but I personally liked the buildup and didn't mind it at all. The atmosphere and the sense that something awful was going to happen was worth the wait. Also, rent The Fourth Kind, and Chasing Sleep with Jeff Daniels. This is good, maddening stuff, and if you like dark, the descent into the precarious abyss of lunacy, then you might enjoy yourselves here.

Aside from that, crypt dwellers, it's life as usual. Writing, reading, watching movies, the hockey playoffs around the corner, baseball season begun, and the transition to the warmer climate, announcing spring. Not a bad way to begin the warmer months. Stay scared, friends! Like always, I wish you well, and hope you are embracing your vision, your art, and treating yourselves kindly. We'll see you next time.

Keeping Me Company...

I still miss you and think about you all the time, whoever you are. I am still here alone, and sometimes, every day, I fall in love with someone new. It happens, sometimes several times a day.

I think about the imaginations of all these other people and the worlds they have inside their heads. These days, things just feel bone dry to me. I'm lucky to think of character names. I want to create something beautiful again on a fantastic scale. I don't know what else I can write again, sometimes. I think about the art of Michael Whelan, the prose of Jonathan Carroll, the pure innocent love of Dickens, and I know there are worlds in there.

I wonder what the truths are these days. Maybe I muse too much. My quiet solace, my time here with no one else but me and the words to keep me company. Do I think I will actually experience love at first sight? That she'll have everything I dream, compatibility, something vital in common--another shade--and something will happen and we'll talk and see we were made for each other? How many fantasies, how many worlds of pretend can I live in? Maybe I should do fantasy dreams come true instead of darker tales, but really, they are all kind of the same, aren't they? I like to mix and match. I cannot talk to every girl I fall in love with, and why must you all be so beautiful to me anyway? What a killer beauty can be! You have faults, too. I know that. It's what I want to accept about you, but you aren't listening, or you simply don't care. There's more material out there for you to gain, I know. I guess I was just looking for someone with a little more depth to their personality.

I interpret my real world here in this chaos, my over-thinking, over-dreaming. Demon shadows. Haunting every hand I long to hold. Usually it's just something in your eyes, I see, a familiarity, like you're speaking to me through telepathy, telling me it's okay to talk to you. A smile here and there. I wonder what would happen if I acted on them. But I need your help. I can't go into it alone. I need you to encourage me, give me something to live by. Hope for. Get excited about. Jesus, I'm just another lonely man in here! Can't you see that? I know this softness inside me, this sensitivity, this lonely pain I feel is very real with you near. You think I like it that way? Why do you think I medicated my dreams for so long, a haze I'm still trying to pull myself out of? A person can only handle so much, and I feel what you do, too, is the funny thing. It's twice the pain. My scars make all my dreams a reality, but that's not poetry either. It's just another unlucky line, another way to express my sadness--more acute. I keep telling myself that something good will come of all this--experience makes the artist, makes the writer, makes the man, and without pain, what would I write about? You're making progress, I tell myself, and it's sometimes scary to me, that I'm so open, so willing to lay my guts out here for all to see--to do with as they please, judge and criticize harshly. I could care less about you, is the thing. How's that for apathy? Only that you see in this, a reflection, and maybe then we'll have something to fucking talk about.

There are ladies of traumatizing memory--how horrible a person I see you now, the worst I could see, worse than my worst memory. Any demon I've created pales by comparison by the light of you--or should I say the 'lack thereof.' How do you justify such vile, empty, selfish behavior--evil--other than evil? Your needs at the expense of everyone else? Has the world taught you nothing? Are you still blaming your actions on the past, because of what mommy and daddy did to you? Disillusioned. Mad. I thought I knew. But evil is nothing compared to you. You take the cake, baby. You proved me wrong.

Luckily, I know there's something beautiful in all this--and it has nothing to do with you. I have the power here to immortalize you in the wasted, dying light of hatred and pain. You are known for hurt alone and nothing else. I guess if that's good enough for you, what you aspire to be, then your work here is done. There's no need for you anymore. How sad, really. To aspire to nothing more than what everyone longs to forget? I thought we had transcended to so much more, advancement, evolution. May you be happy in the soulless, loveless life you have chosen, Ebenezer Scrooge. My, what a ponderous chain!

I guess the sadness comes with expectation and disappointment, because you try to be honest and sincere--for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do. There's nothing wrong with focusing on the right thing to do. It has a role, too. Can you hear me?

I've been embracing vision, art, prose, stylists, beauty, and expression, which is why we're here now. Sometimes, it gets harder to reach deep down. All the time, I try to go a little further. No remorse. I do not repent. I've paid my dues. It's time for something more.

The energy spent on love is, ironically, filled with nothing but heartache. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I keep thinking this is a crucial element. My dreams, however, are still. And sometimes, I still like to take the time to write to you (the one I dream about) in passing. In thoughts. Whenever I see a couple strolling hand in hand, and I wonder sometimes if I've ever really loved anyone at all. After all, the older you get, the more the definition changes.

I've been writing stories about you again, who I think you are, letters penned...because you are the opposite of everything I've ever been with, the most supportive and unconditional girl, and I try to reach out to you with ink, thinking there's magic in those words that will one day make you real, another refection--if you will. But I know there is no such thing as the perfect girl. I'm not that naive. Perfect for me? And me for you? That's a different possibility, maybe.

We don't care that we're poor. We are richer than we ever dreamed because we are who we are. After all, who else can make us laugh and smile like you and me? Every eye I see, every smile turned to me, brings you a little more to life, if only for a day. Do you accept my proposal? Or maybe it's a challenge? Just another fantasy, too, writers, poets, painters, musicians. We all have our ideas and thoughts on what it could be. Worlds in here. If only for pretend, something to write about, to keep me company before I fall in love again tomorrow or tonight--before I go to bed. I'll go turn on the t.v now. Maybe I'll catch a glimpse of you then.

Words, Unspoken (For A Very Special Girl)

Sometimes, these days just hold everyday sounds. It is always just an ordinary day until you come around. Miles mean nothing for all the things in between that separate us. We seem to bridge it easily where distance becomes meaningless. Funny, don't you think? We penetrate the indestructible, all the trivial things that bar our way.

But it's funny to me how these words we exchange back and forth have so much power in them, at least they do over me. I feel my fabric shifting, changing, because they have more substance and weight in them than a wrecking ball. They are like daggers and swords, sharpened to perfection, making the smoothest cuts, going deep in ways I never dreamed. The funny thing is, I would have it no other way. Bleeding for you? Willingly, my love. How else can my love be proved?

I have lifted my tear-stained eyes to Heaven, and I think about how this intimate relationship has blossomed through the simplicity of gentle words, poetry. How can the sincerity, the honesty of words shift all these jagged mountains inside me, hold more power in compassion than any touch I've ever known? How can the words I've heard audibly--just next to my ear--be so weightless next to the worlds that appear, here, before my very eyes? The ones you write me. The ones I respond to. The ones that are more eternal, because they have no end. Yours soften me, take all the rugged scars away, smooth out every coarse edge and trauma. They make me smile and cry again. And I'm not sure--if your words are so powerful--what your touch would actually do to me. Is my fabric, my make-up strong enough to withstand it? There, my own strength would be put to the test. For this chance, and the intensity of what could be a perfect romance, I am willing to take. It is not a sacrifice, love. It is the reason I am here. It is the pinnacle of experience. It is the only thing that has ever meant anything to me. Not everyone gets to feel this. Not everyone knows what it means. I wonder if some even know it exist, that it's real? But I would tell you over and over, through every word, through every gesture, that it means everything in the world to me. That nothing has ever meant anything until you wrote me. The bleeding is what I live for. The cutting deep and every scar. The words you write that smooth them over. Your words, unspoken--still louder than sounds.

Unworthy Substitute

I think sadness has no end, unless it's just my inclination for tragedies, prone to sadness like Hemingway, or a Shakespeare play. Maybe it's just a sad tale that compels me because of my fascination with sadness as emotion. But yes, I think sadness has no end.

They are just the same old daydreams anymore, wild little fancies that only confuse my brain. They think they're real is the funny thing, trying to convince me they have a home in there because they always paint these romantic, elaborate pictures. I never know what to make of them except, There they are again. They are pictures of perfection. They always are. They have no flaws, like a girl in tight jeans, or a cover-girl smile, one that impales, like a pillar of light. It can change the way you see and think and feel. I see these things next to what is only now my aging face and mind. I never realized how vain I was until recently. There's a touch in here, I guess, a thing that just keeps coming and going, and all the real things that happen, the seeds that get planted turning all those real things into pretend. There really is such a thing as time travel. It happens to me all the time. Wait. Listen. See? I imagine perfections, maybe that's the trouble, the things I care most about, dream about, long to be outside all the ghosts who live in here, making things more complicated, more confusing than they need to be. See, here, they have no end. It will go on and on until the end of me.

Sometimes, she'll pay me a visit at work, and maybe I'll just be on my way out the door to lunch, and the timing will be perfect. Or I'll come home and she'll be there, waiting for me, just to surprise me, say hello. She never gets mad or frustrated with me. She's always glad to see me. It's just that romantic black magic that has swallowed my life lately, but sometimes I keep thinking I'm just getting old, poor little mouse boy, and I have had a hard time making beautiful memories these days. I don't want a new one to replace an old one. I just want the walks, the talks, and the sharing, the sharing, mainly. It's all meaningless otherwise, a whole bunch of containing nothing. Not me, not the way I am. I don't have time for that. No more invisible memories, barren lifeless memories. Who has time for that?

I'm not as sad and lonely as I used to be, despite my fetish for tragedies. There's still stuff to do in here, better alone, sometimes, but still alone, with no one to talk to but you. I touch you, see, and you are not flesh and warm. You do not make my heart skip a beat. You just lie there flat, with the ink on your back, waiting for me to fill you.

Lost

It is sometimes better here, alone, in this quiet peace without my heart belonging to anyone but me. It's like that now, so maybe that's something. Aren't you supposed to be okay alone first, comfortable with yourself, complete, before moving on to the next phase? These are just images anyway, shades that mean nothing at all through the tears I cry. There seems to be a lot these days. I think I've mentioned that before. I can't always handle this going away--but I like the distance from all my harsh judgments. It get so tiring, trying to make sense of it all. Here. Here, but trying not to be scared anymore. So, I walk along the day, all these faces coming and going. Some pleasant enough to smile at. Tears of tomorrow and of today. It is not the laughter anymore that mocks me, all these dying religions I could give or take. The mantras I constantly speak to myself that everything is okay, that I'm okay in here. That everything is going to be okay in and outside of here. I promise.

Sometimes, I tell myself I'm okay, and I believe it, that there's nothing wrong with me, even though I do all this to myself. It doesn't always feel okay. This crazy day is here inside my chest, dreaming about you all the time. Anymore, I try living against the grain. Everyone else is doing the same thing. I want to believe in something else, so I believe in something else, better for me, here. There's a deeper calm, a sense of peace now, even though a tear drops to blot the page. Where does all that come from? Long ago? Far away?

It's always moving, speaking differently. Every day, it says something new. So, forever, I guess, it will always change. Passion turns into this. A heart that's full for reasons unknown. Even now, here, it's strange to see this world outside and how it moves so quickly. It's a wonder anyone can keep up at all. No thought too disturbing to enter. Nothing perverse today, just these mantras over and over. They haven't done me any harm. Just the opposite, I think. And you are always in them, because I try to bring you closer. They are like magic words I try to turn into love again, hoping you'll see them someday, know who they're coming from, written in secret messages across the sky, or carved in stone, maybe sand. Even here in side me where all the wreckage is, etched into the muscle of my heart, where I know they'll always be.

Hello, here, another pretty face I see, always, or usually accompanied by some other gentleman I never notice until later. It's ridiculous to think pretty girls are alone. But still, I think sometimes--or maybe always--Is that you? I try to speak to you through telepathy, the look in my eye, a smile if I'm brave enough. It hasn't worked so far. You obviously can't hear me.

It's a matter of balance, how you can be brave enough to open your heart so freely, incapable of judgment--it hardly seems you at all with the way this world is made. Another wall, a fortress towers high. It blocks out the sun. I think, "So that's what it's like to feel no pain. No wonder no one can get through." So much for you. So much for me. I know there's more to it than just this surface area, which is why I came calling in the first place. Someday I will ask you what all this means to you, and you will answer, "It means everything to me."

It is not so lonely here when I try to make it otherwise. There is power in the thought that propels beautiful creation. It wipes away everything dirty, better than the best of pills. It's just a matter of seeing things differently, smiling more. Gravitation. So, I make my own pull, going where I want, when I choose, more versatile than a pendulum swing. Do you see what I mean?

Nothing ever really has to end if you don't want it to. You can raise, resurrect the dead. Find more interesting things to say.

This other voice is trying to break through. It drowns out the sounds, the pestering of all the others. I'm teaching it how to ride a bike now, how to swim, play kickball. Practice makes perfect. Every hurt is some kind of lesson. What if it's always about hurt? Shouldn't you learn enough not to hurt anymore? Isn't there another teacher? Some deeper understanding. I should have learned all this at sixteen. Not here, not now. Better late than never, I guess. To not want. To always have what I have here inside me, in this heart of mine, I'm determined to turn to gold. Maybe it's gold already. It's my mind that needs adjusting, better clarity, renovation. We'll work on that a little more, piece by piece. I'm saving all that anyway, all that good stuff, reserving it, you could say, especially now, only here, only for you. Whoever you are. A dream come true, a song I hear on the radio late at night, driving over the broken bridge of time, a word my pen makes, a sound I utter, a picture I imagine coming to life in my head only you could have put there, like children playing on a swing. Enough is enough already. We can go back to the way things used to be.

I turn sweetly into this hour long embrace of all the many sides of me I used to be ashamed of. I'm tired of fighting. I think it's braver to let go. I can catch myself if it gets too dangerous anyway. I have to to get myself out of every mood, every jam. Resilience and reliance. Then, I can finally devote myself to every part of you--because I can selflessly, finally, give all of me. That's my goal.

It's telepathy I sing. Silver in here, like bright lights on a stage. Have you received my message yet? These words are finally here for you to read. I finally had the chance to carve them into a place they will never wash away. I'll leave a few others just in case. I might need them later to go back to. I don't remember things so well. I have been devoted to you long before I knew your name. I just can't live any other way. There is no other way to be. It's a good place to get lost in, though, don't you think? Just ask anyone.

Donny's Day Print Version

The print version is available now at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Thanks, friends and family, for all your support!

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/donnys-day/brandon-berntson/e/9781615720583/?itm=6>

Donny's Day Ebook

This is the ebook for Donny's Day. The print version will be available in a week or so, so if you're anxious and want to get your feet wet, this is a good way to get a sneak peak, and it's fairly cheap this way. Otherwise, don't hesitate til you can hold the little bugger in your hands. I'll send the link to the print version when it's available. Thanks for all your support.

http://www.damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615720590

And don't be afraid to write a review, if you so desire. And yes, it makes a great gift for you or your loved ones for Christmas!