Nine gallon mark in blood donation reached!

I reached the nine-gallon donation mark on Nov. 1, 2024. If you can, please give blood. You could save a life!

 

Halloween and a major book anniversary

 

Thirty-five years ago this autumn, just in time for Halloween, my first book, the horror novel Thunder Rise, was published. I was represented by the late Kay McCauley and her brother, the late Kirby McCauley, who at the time were the agents for Stephen King, whose work has greatly influenced my fiction.

Needless to say,  publication was exciting. Thunder Rise launched my book-writing career – 21 fiction and non-fiction books as of thiswriting. Two are the second and third volumes in the Thunder Rise trilogy: Asylum and Summer Place. Several others are also horror novels.

Following the U.S. hardcover publication of Thunder Rise in 1989, a British edition was published and also a U.S. paperback. Thunder Rise today is available in audio and Kindle from Crossroad Press.

 I met Kay McCauley at the 1986 World Fantasy Convention, held in Providence at the then-Biltmore Hotel. The inaugural World Fantasy Convention, in 1975, was chaired by Kay’s brother and it, too, took place in Providence, where Lovecraft and Poe lived.

When someone pointed out Kay to me, I introduced myself. I wanted to interview King for a story in The Providence Journal, where I was a staff writer, and thinking King would respond favorably to a “kindred spirit,” I told Kay I wrote horror, too (short stories in The Horror Show, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and other magazines). Kay never was able to arrange the interview, but she liked my short stories and asked if I had written any books. I had and she sold Thunder Rise to William Morrow, now a division of HarperCollins.

In the following years, Kay, who lived in New York City, became my dear friend and she represented me for several more books before semi-retiring (her only client in her final days was George R.R. Martin, of Game of Thrones fame). She died in 2020, RIP Kay. Kirby had died in 2014.

This photo of Kay is from Martin's tribute to her.

 So on this Halloween, my thoughts turn to the past, and not just books but also the many years of trick-or-treating with my children and grandchildren.

 

My thoughts turn, too, to the present.

Happy Halloween, all!

 

About Thunder Rise, from the original-edition jacket:

Relentlessly gripping, this debut novel is classically responsive to the adage that fictional horror is far more vivid in daylit, familiar surroundings than in darkly dripping gothic vistas. Morgantown, an old, white clapboard and steepled town in the lovely Berkshires of western Massachusetts: America could have few settings as idyllic and inviting -- or as deadly. Up against the towering mass of Thunder Rise, the mountain behind which the sun sets every evening, Morgantown is cowering -- from a nameless, lethal and seemingly sourceless malady that threatens the populace through its most vulnerable members, the children.

Journalist Brad Gale, who has fled a broken marriage and given up a top New York job, has come to Morgantown seeker a serener life as editor of the local Daily Transcript. With him he brings five-year-old Abbie, "Apple Guy" of his eye. When the mysterious affliction strikes Morgantown's youngest inhabitants, signaled by soul-shattering nightmares of individual creatures of dread -- a bear, a wolf, a prehistoric carnivore -- and followed by an inexplicable wasting away, Brad knows it is a story to be explored in full. Then Abbie is stricken and Brad too must join in deadly battle with a force beyond rational imagining.

As more children sicken and slide toward doom, the struggles of the medical establishment seem increasingly futile. Even a trained and scoffing skeptic like Brad becomes reluctantly and belatedly drawn to listen to the beliefs and theories of Charlie Moonlight, a Quidneck Native American who speaks of the primordial demon lurking in the heart of Thunder Rise now stirring anew. At the end a battle of terror is drawn -- with the reader enlisted in as close and fateful combat as the printed page can ever afford.

“An Unbroken Pact,” one of my earliest horror stories, written for my high school newspaper:

 

 

Wolf Hill

 

Wolf Hill: An essay from long ago.

I periodically repost some of my favorite essays. Here's one, set in autumn, my favorite season. I wrote this in October 1997, on a break from finishing my fourth book, Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie and the Companies That Make Them. Cal is an adult today, living in Rhode Island after five years in Japan. Rachel and Katy have children of their own. Life, like a river, keeps on flowing.

 

WOLF HILL

An Essay About a Boy

We avoid the woods in summer. We don't like bugs, the ticks and mosquitoes especially, and anyway, we're drawn to the beach at Wallum Lake, which is just up the road. But early October finds us eager for the first killing frost. It came this year at the customary time, when the sugar maples are at their peak and the oaks are only beginning to turn. The temperature at dawn read 29 or 30 degrees, depending on the angle the thermometer was viewed. I figured if any of my city friends asked, I'd say 29.

By late afternoon, it had warmed to almost 50. The sky was cloudless and the breeze had shifted to the south. I put on my boots and vest and helped Cal, who is almost three, on with his. Our vests have large pockets, very important for walks in the woods. We went through the backyard and onto the cart path that ascends Wolf Hill, a fanciful name in the nineties, even for a rural town like ours. Cal's first priority was equipping himself with a stick. He found one about two feet long, and another slightly larger, which he gave me. ``Little boys need big sticks,'' he observed. I wholeheartedly agreed.

Many years ago, when a farmhouse graced the top of Wolf Hill, the path could accommodate vehicles; one, a bus, ended its last journey up there and its rotting remains continue to be a source of wonderment to all who happen upon it. Every year the mountain laurel and pine claim more of the path, and this year was no exception, but there was still plenty of room -- more than sufficient, I informed Cal, for another good flying- saucer run this winter. Cal insisted on taking the lead and, unlike our last walk, in April, he refused assistance getting past deadfalls. He went under, or around, and then stopped to reveal the appropriate route to me. ``Dad, come on over here,'' he said at one point, ``that's a safe place to get by.''

 

We climbed, past the inevitable stone walls, still remarkably intact, if mostly overgrown. The air seemed fresher as we continued, the light through the foliage stronger, and soon enough we'd reached the peak. Only a cellar hole is left of the farmhouse, destroyed some thirty years ago in a fire of suspicious origin. Rusting machinery, barrels and bedframes are strewn about, and the woods are slowly claiming them, too. We marveled together at a sight as strange as grape vines entwined around a bedframe, and I tried explaining how a house not unlike our own had been reduced to ruin, but I don't believe I succeeded, nor did I really try. I steered Cal's attention to the only grass on Wolf Hill, a small, sunlit remnant of lawn. We picked wildflowers, the last of the season. I did not know the species. They had thirteen petals and came in two shades: lavendar and white. The frost had not touched them. Cal was more interested in mushrooms. He'd been keen on mushrooms since our last swim at Wallum Lake, when he found ones as big as my hand that had materialized overnight beneath a picnic bench. He also gathered acorns, which he proposed to feed to squirrels, a word he still had difficulty pronouncing.

 

From the cellar hole, we descended to the quarry. I cautioned Cal not to run, but he explained that he was not -- this was skipping. I wanted to carry him or at least hold his hand; instead, I took a breath and was silent on the matter. The quarry has not been worked since the 1800s, but if you look around town, you will see many foundations made of its imperfect granite. Our own front steps, I am sure, came from here. Water has long filled where men once labored, of course, and a century's worth of sediment covers the bottom, making it impossible to gauge true depth (although we have tried, with our sticks). When Cal is a little older, I will tell him -- as I did his sisters -- spooky stories of the goings-on here when the moon is full. For now, we concern ourselves with water. It had not rained in over a week, and the stream that empties the quarry was dry. Our April walk was during a nor'easter, and we got soaked playing in the waterfall, but it was gone now, too. Cal was worried it would never return, but I reassured him it would, with the next steady downpour.

 

The shadows were lengthening and the temperature was edging down. An inventory of our pockets disclosed sticks, pebbles, acorns, flowers, mushrooms and a bright yellow leaf, which Cal had selected for his mom. We left the quarry and made our way back to the cart path through a stand of towering Balsam firs, unlike any other on Wolf Hill. When the girls were small, long before Cal was born, we found this place. It resembles a den, and the forest floor is softly carpeted and often dotted with toadstools -- certainly a spot, I allowed, where elves dance under the starry sky. Honest? Rachel and Katy were wide-eyed. There was only one way to know for sure, I said: Some fine summer night, we would have to camp out here, being careful to stay awake until midnight. We never did. Rachel is in high school now, and Katy, four years younger, is sneaking looks at Seventeen. Cal listened with great interest at the prospect of seeing elves. He was tired, and as I carried him home, I promised we'd camp out next summer, bugs and all. I intend to ask Rachel and Katy if they'd care to join us.

 

Copyright © 1997 G. Wayne Miller

Looking back: Vox interview about Car Crazy by senior producer Phil Edwards

 

 

WATCH THE VIDEO!

 

We all know the horseless carriage beat out the horse — but the early battles were surprisingly fierce and involved some nasty PR tactics. And as the above video shows, this marketing conflict from the early 1900s may show how a battle between self-driving cars and traditional cars could play out.

That story is one of the highlights in G. Wayne Miller’s Car Crazy: The Battle for Supremacy Between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age. Miller told me that early carmakers adopted a variety of marketing techniques to sell cars that weren’t particularly cheap or reliable. That arsenal often fired shots against the horse.

And despite the car’s shortcomings, the horse really did create a lot of problems that automobiles could fix. Horse manure was a serious public health hazard; thousands of horses were maltreated (and as many died); and, of course, horses had less acceleration and braking power than the car, resulting in slowdowns and accidents.

As we look ahead to a public conversation about the merits of self-driving cars over traditionally driven ones, the horse and car battle may prove to be prescient. New technologies aren’t easily accepted — and sometimes even a superior product has to adopt fierce tactics to win.

New five-star review for "Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire"

Five-star review for Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire

Reviewed by Christian Sia for Readers’ Favorite

 

 Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire by G. Wayne Miller delivers a visceral critique of modern journalism. Nick Nolan, a former Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, fights to redeem his career when SuperGoodMedia buys the venerable Boston Daily Tribune. He has a few months left on the paper. But everything changes when he writes a column about an 8-year-old called Amber Abbott. Her mother and Nolan’s former lover claim the Virgin Mother speaks to her. His column becomes a viral sensation, and he's thrust into the spotlight. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with the clicks and attention his story generates, he's aided by an unexpected guest — none other than Benjamin Franklin — who offers his guidance and wisdom. However, as Nick's fortunes rise, so do the stakes, and he must confront the darker side of journalism and the corporate interests that are destroying the industry.

With its sharp critique, this novel is a timely and urgent warning about the future of truth-telling in the media. G. Wayne Miller's Unfit to Print is a powerful commentary on the decline of local journalism and its impact on democracy. There is a struggle to maintain the integrity and quality of local journalism in the face of declining readership and increasing competition from online media sources. There is a conflict between the old guard of journalism, represented by Nick and his colleagues, and the latest wave of online media entrepreneurs who are more interested in clicks and profits than serious reporting. Characterization is impeccable, and Nolan is a nuanced, genuinely flawed protagonist who catches readers' attention the moment they encounter him in the story. Destiny Carter, the African American business reporter at the Tribune, is another sophisticated character whose sharp wit and insight provide a much-needed perspective on the industry's challenges. The author explores themes such as the importance of local journalism, the impact of social media on democracy, and the need for quality reporting in a world where "fake news" and "alternative facts" are increasingly prevalent. This is an ingeniously plotted and cleverly written novel.

 

 

 

Listen to Joe Biden in 2009, after he became vice president.

I interviewed Joe Biden by telephone in 2009 for An Uncommon Man: The Life and Times of Senator Claiborne Pell, the biography I was writing that was published in 2011.

Biden was 66 years old.

How much has changed since then.

 
Listen to the interview (takes a moment to load):

 

 

COVID theme songs? My pick: Duran Duran's Ordinary World.

 Originally published in The Providence Journal on July 12, 2021.

COVID-19 theme songs? Many fit as the pandemic changed since earliest days.

G. Wayne Miller

The Providence Journal

 

 

As The Journal’s health-care reporter, I have been covering COVID-19 since January 2020. Early on, I began to wonder:

If the coronavirus pandemic had a theme song, what would it be?

My choices changed as the months passed and Rhode Island and the world experienced surges, emergency orders, and a devastating toll in lives and jobs lost.

More recently, of course, Rhode Island’s high vaccination rate has helped us to a summer much better than last year's. There are reasons to believe again in ordinariness, and with that in mind, let me share my evolving nominations for theme songs, starting in March 2020, when I wrote my first #coronavirus Reporter’s Notebook, “Thoughts on living in a state of dystopia.”

In it, I referenced Stephen King, my favorite fiction author, and his 1978 post-apocalyptic novel “The Stand,” about a global pandemic. It became a popular TV mini-series in 1994, with songs including Barry McGuire’s cover of “Eve of Destruction.” King himself played guitar for the mini-series rendition of the song.

“Eve of Destruction” is my pick for the early-pandemic theme song. The Barry McGuire cover was released in 1965, during the Cold War and the debacle of Vietnam, but its sentiment captured the mood of late winter 2020.

Can't you feel the fear that I'm feeling today?

If the button is pushed, there's no running away

There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave

Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you, boy

By the end of spring 2020, more than 16,000 positive cases of coronavirus disease had been reported in Rhode Island (more than 2 million in the U.S.). The death toll in Rhode Island surpassed 850. Restrictions prevented relatives and friends from visiting loved ones who were dying in hospitals, and wakes and funerals were severely curtailed.

James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” fits for a theme song then, with its haunting melody and lyrics, including these:

I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again

The gloom deepened when, in late July 2020, deaths surpassed 1,000.

Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” was on my mind then — and during August and September. The song is the story of two deaths by suicide, but the lyrics speak more broadly to loss in general. They also, to me at least, capture the mental-health crises that so many have experienced, a topic I have frequently explored in my reporting.

Think I'll miss you forever

Like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky

Early autumn 2020 brought hopeful developments, including the reopening of some schools, but public-health experts were warning of a possible new surge ahead (they were right). COVID continued to cause unprecedented economic suffering for many. Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” gets my nod for this period of the pandemic.

Here comes the rain again

Falling from the stars

Drenched in my pain again

As the last month of 2020 began, vaccines were not yet available. Another terrible holiday season seemed on the horizon (it was). What better song for December 2020 than B.B. King’s “Everyday I Have the Blues”?

Everyday,

I have the blues

Ooh everyday,

Everyday,

I have the blues

The first shots of the Pfizer vaccine were administered in Rhode Island on Dec. 14, to Lifespan front-line workers. The next day, Care New England employees rolled up their sleeves. Can’t find a better song for expectations than Carrie Underwood’s “Hallelujah,” as she performed it with Legend.

Let the lonely join together, let them know their worth

Ooh, let the children know

There's a brighter day ahead (let's hold on to hope)

As last winter ended and spring 2021 arrived, the data trends in Rhode Island turned positive. Could there be a better song for the second quarter of this year than Jimmy Cliff’s “I Can See Clearly Now?”

 I can see clearly now the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Here is that rainbow I've been praying for

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) sunshiny day

Which brings me to my pick for overall theme song.

First, a disclaimer: popular though they were, the band that wrote and recorded this song was not one of my favorites when they broke onto the music scene. But when Duran Duran released “Ordinary World” a few years later in 1993, I was enthralled. During the pandemic, I have listened to it again (and again) and the lyrics (and incomparable melody) have become an earworm.

No room to include them all, but consider these in judging whether “Ordinary World” best captures the sadness and hopes of the last year and a half:

Where is the life that I recognize?

Gone away

But I won't cry for yesterday

There's an ordinary world

Somehow I have to find

And as I try to make my way

To the ordinary world

I will learn to survive

Perhaps coincidentally (or not), Duran Duran was featured last week on Today. The Brits performed a new song and announced their intention to tour again next year.

In the music world, at least, that indeed would be an ordinary world.

I invite you to send your nominations for pandemic theme songs, along with a brief explanation of why. I may use them in a future #coronavirus Reporter's Notebook. Send to gwmiller@providencejournal.com, writing “COVID song” in the subject field.