May | 2020 | Eric Lahti

The country is slowly reopening. It’s like coming out of a short-term, fucked-up relationship followed by a nasty breakup. Walking around in one of Albuquerque’s many indoor flea markets – albeit with masks and social distancing – felt almost like being alive again. Sights! Sounds! Things that weren’t my house or the odd trip to my abandoned cubicle at work. Stuff other than food. I found an original copy of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasuredome on vinyl and it brought back all those wondrous moments of misbegotten youth when I didn’t have to worry about pandemics or riots or a renegade president threatening to change the rules because Twitter applied the rules to him.

Normally, these posts are supposed to be about a recent news article that was uplifting. Dog finds its way home. A tiny bit of justice happens somewhere. Stuff like that. It’s kinda hard right now to find positive news articles that don’t include cops getting arrested for murder or Twitter slapping warning labels on tweets. Those are good things, don’t get me wrong, but they’re band-aids over wounds that have been hemorrhaging and festering for years. A step in the right direction, but nothing more. So, I’m not going to link to any positive news articles. Let the WATWB police come after me.

So, to quote Moshav, the whole world’s on fire.

It’s times like these that you have to look for the small things. The last broken Oreo in the package, that single shot of bourbon you forgot you had, the half-smoked cigarette when you wake up in the middle of night and can’t get the dream out of your head. Follow the smoke up into the æther and find some peace.

Or it could just be that old record (in mint condition! Frankie says Relax!) or the free concert from Le Chat Lunatique that those amazing Albuquerque mainstays put on tonight over the web or even just eating frozen custard at a roadside shop and enjoying the weather.

There have been more people eating in parks than I’ve ever seen. People in my neighborhood have little get-togethers on their front lawns. The little roadside trail I ride is filled with people. It’s like America suddenly discovered there’s more than just reality TV and trying to get laid in bars. That there’s a life outside of the life we thought we had.

To quote Colonel Kilgore, “Someday this war’s gonna end.” So, here’s your uplifting bit of news. Yes, the Cronizzle is still out there. No, it probably won’t go away any time soon. But everything comes to an end. And what’ll be important isn’t what happened. It’s what you carry with you out the other side. The riots will end, the incompetent oaf running the country into the ground will end. Or, as Charlie Chaplin said in The Great Dictator:

“To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …..”

Lines like that keep me warm at night.

Keep what you’ve learned. Hold it tight. Never let it go.

If you’d like to connect your blog and help spread a little joy (or snark, like I do), it’s easy to sign up. Just ask and ye shall receive. Or go check it out here: here.

Our lovely and talented hosts this month are: Susan Scott, Lizbeth Hertz, Shilpa Garg, Mary Giese, and Damyanti Biswas

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1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible. (Wow, I totally missed that mark this time around).

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And now your moment of Zen.

Alaska is the land the U.S. seems to have forgotten. Other than a brief flirtation with the state back when Sarah Palin claimed to be able to see the back of Vladimir Putin’s head from her porch, it seems like Alaska doesn’t really exist in popular culture. There’s plenty going on about the rest of the country from sweet tale of overcoming cancer in New Mexico that was “Breaking Bad” to the lovely travel documentary of Georgia in “Deliverance”. But aside from that terrible Steven Segal movie back in the day, Alaska seems to have fallen off the face of the planet. Which is a pity because there’s a lot of cool stuff in Alaska beyond the annual winter-time vampire feeding fest and HAARP.

So that’s why DM Shepard’s The Dark Land makes for such a great story. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more than just Alaska, the story is good and well-written, too. But setting something in Alaska and having it written by someone who actually lives in the state brings a great deal of detail to the story. In fact, if you’re so inclined, go read Shepard’s guest-post about the myths and legends she tapped to spin her yarn of terror, adventure, and romance.

Details are all fine and good in a story, but it is possible to get bogged down in them. They’re like tequila – fine in small doses but too much can leave on the floor questioning your sanity. Fortunately, Shepard understands that and uses the real-world details to add spice and depth to the story without overpowering it. In other words, she makes the frozen hell-hole that is Alaska live and breathe. She populates the world with characters you feel like you can almost touch and monsters that are just as alien as anything you can imagine. And throughout the whole thing makes a Southwestern guy like me wonder what the hell people are doing trudging through the snow when its, like, four degrees below absolute zero out there.

As I said earlier, this is blend of action, horror, and romance. Which would seem to make for strange bedfellows, but Shepard pulls it off brilliantly and lets each style emerge on its own terms. It would be easy to have a romantic interlude in the woods that leads to getting eaten by monsters. It’s far harder to put two characters together and not have them go steamrollering straight to the sack. She lets the story develop in its own time. So, you can go from some pretty intense action to a calming sequence to some pretty intense action of another type, if you get my drift. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a good story, well-told, with enough mystery and detail added to make it feel real, even when the tale points the car toward mythology town and steps on the gas. Truly a treasure. This is the kind of story they make movies out of.

A dark tale of legendary creatures stalking the isolated trails of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in the deep cold of winter.

Lured by her high peaks and vast forests, adventurers swarm to the siren call of Alaska’s backcountry. Her harsh bite scars many. Some never return.

Please find my son’s remains…

Haunted by the last request of her foster mother, experienced outdoorswoman, Rose Long, skis into the Wrangell-St. Elias wilderness to search for clues surrounding the missing man. Concerned about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the older woman’s death, her childhood friend, Ulrik, joins the quest to protect the woman he secretly loves.
Ancient evil seethes in the ice-locked boreal forest, watching their every move during the long northern nights. The legend of the Headless Ravine is steeped in blood. The Dark Land’s hunger for flesh never sleeps, even in the deepest cold of winter—and it has marked Rose as its next victim.