Gerald C. Matics -- Author

Maybe it's morbid, but I have been listening to parts of the KYW-1060 NewsRadio coverage from September 11, 2001.  Every year they stream their archived coverage, unedited and uninterrupted, in real time throughout the day, and every year I can't help tuning in.  I have a dreadful fascination with the events of that day, and the broadcast always takes me back.

With my son Jack just starting first grade this week, I know he's going to start hearing about September 11, and he's going to have questions about it as he grows older.  It was, after all, a defining moment in our history -- like Pearl Harbor or the JFK assassination, the kind that causes people to remember where they were and what they were doing when it happened. There will be no shortage of reminiscences and recognitions of that day in the media, but I feel compelled to set down some of my own stronger impressions, if only as a way to preserve them for him.

I was working as a proofreader in the labeling department of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals at its King of Prussia location (no longer there), and I got to work around 9:00 that morning.  It was a gorgeous post-summer Tuesday, sunny and warm, and I was dragging my feet about going into the building.  I hadn't listened to any news that morning, so the first I knew about anything happening was when I walked into the proofreaders' room on the third floor.  Most of the other proofreaders were there, as I recall -- including Mustafa Khalil, a Palestinian, and Adel Bakr, an Egyptian.  Both Muslims, both good guys.

The first thing I remember was Mustafa talking about a news report of a small plane crashing into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Early reports were that it was a twin-prop commuter plane, and it sounded like no more than a horrible accident: something to feel bad about for those involved, but not much more than a blip on my personal radar.

That attitude changed.  I don't remember actually hearing about the second plane hitting the south tower, but we were getting updates from Lou DeBernardino, a proofreader who often walked around with a radio in his pocket and buds in his ears; usually he listened to music, but as the day wore on there were fewer and fewer music options on the radio anyway as broadcasters switched over coverage to their news-formatted sister stations.  As Lou moved about the room, picking up jobs from the rack and walking them back to his desk and then returning them to the rack when he finished, he gave increasingly more sobering updates.

I remember with some clarity many of the day's events, but there are three moments that remain, for me, digitally sharp.  The first of these indelible impressions came from one of Lou's updates.  Around 9:45, about an hour after the first impact and forty or so minutes after the second, he was giving a running commentary of events as he walked a job back to the rack.  In the middle of it he literally stopped in his tracks and said, "Holy shit, they crashed into the Pentagon!"

Whatever shred of hope anyone had clung to that it was somehow a bizarre pair of accidents -- or if an intentional set of events, at least something confined to New York -- died at that moment.  There was no longer even a dim possibility that the entire nation was not under attack.  Personally, although I don't remember having thought the crashes were accidental before then, Lou's announcement of the Pentagon hit somehow crystallized it for me, bringing it home with force.

The rest of the morning I'm not too clear on as far as the what-happened-whens -- I know that I heard about Flight 93 diving into a field in western Pennsylvania, but I don't remember any details about it -- but I can tell you for sure that I didn't get a great deal of work done.  At some point I wandered downstairs to the cafeteria, where someone had set up a pair of televisions tuned to the virtually omnipresent coverage.  (As I recall, almost every television and cable station in America was covering the event, the only exceptions being those with children's programming, such as the Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel, and a handful of PBS stations that were also providing a safe haven for young viewers.) They were replaying certain events like the tower collapses in a window in the corner of the screen, but I'm pretty sure I saw one of the towers collapse live; I say this because there was audio, and the reactions of the camera crew were as profane as could be; the camera was, I think, on the Jersey side.

As I said, my memories of the rest of the morning are a little hazy, but at some point shortly before noon I decided to go out to my car, thinking that I needed to be alone and retreat from the news coverage for a time -- and this began the second hard-as-diamond recollection I have of that day.  I walked outside and was struck by the surreality of such things happening on such a beautiful, tranquil day; looking back, I think that tranquility, that quietness, actually struck me on a subconscious level.  I got in my car and sat there with the windows rolled up, closed my eyes and leaned my head back on the headrest for a few minutes before the curiosity about what was going on got to me. So I turned on the radio for the first time that day, and the first thing I heard was the anchor saying, "There are no commercial planes flying anywhere in the United States right now; the only planes in the air are military."

At that moment it hit me: that tranquility I'd noticed was partly due to the fact that there were no jet noises to be heard whatsoever.  I got out of the car and looked all over the sky but saw nothing, as of course I wouldn't, and the quiet was almost eerie.  For the first time in history, all non-military flights were grounded while officials sorted out what, exactly, was going on.

Eventually I walked back inside, and right into my third sharp memory.  It was lunch time, and although I didn't have much of an appetite, I headed back to the cafeteria.  By this time both the news anchors and some regular folks had started to say that the world had just changed, and I think I craved some small measure of normality, even though there was little chance of finding any.

I got a tray of food and found a seat at a table; it happened to be next to Mustafa and Adel, my Muslim co-workers and friends.  Of all the people I'd seen that morning, no one was more distraught over the sensless violence than those two -- and they had more reason than many.  Already Osama bin Laden had been mentioned as the prime mover behind the attacks, and of course people's early suspicions that fanatical Muslim extremists were involved proved to be correct.  But both Mustafa (who married an American woman) and Adel were somewhat Westernized men who had adopted the United States as their home and appreciated the freedom they found here; I remember once having a conversation with Mustafa about Israel and Palestine, and he told me that Yassir Arafat didn't speak for him or a lot of other Palestinians who simply wanted to live in peace with their neighbors.

Now Mustafa turned to me and said, "This is the worst thing that could have happened for Muslims.  People won't look at us the same anymore.  Everyone will look at us and think that we think like them." I didn't have to ask who them was.  And of course, for a long time, he was right -- and for many people, he still is.

That was it for memories for me on that day, although there are a lot of things from the aftermath that I think about from time to time.  I watched a somber telethon a day or two later that raised money for the survivors and the families of the fallen, and I remember Clint Eastwood in an ill-fitting suit saying into the camera, "They [the terrorists] wanted 300 million victims; they got 300 million heroes," and Dave Matthews singing a solo version of "Everyday."  (I later saw the video for the song and couldn't help noting the stark contrast between the images in the video, in which a man spends his entire day offering hugs to strangers, and the hatred behind the attacks on so many people the hijackers had never met.)

But the thing that really stuck with me was seeing the film shot by a pair of French brothers who happened to be filming a documentary about a company of New York firefighters that day and wound up with a unique record of their rescue efforts.  Unfortunately, the most powerful images were the helpless faces of the firefighters in the lobby of one of the twin towers before they collapsed.  Their captain was dictating instructions into a walkie-talkie but would stop every few moments whenever a loud thud sounded on the roof, and all the firefighters would lookup at the ceiling and cringe in horror; they knew the thudding objects were people leaping from the burning building above, some hand-in-hand with others, preferring a death by impact to one of incineration.

Those are my reflections on this eighth anniversary of that horrific day.  We've hoed a long row since September 11, 2001, and a lot has happened, both good and bad.  As individuals, the survivors and the families of the victims have done their best to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives and move on -- some successfully, some not.  As a nation, we're embroiled in two wars, and whatever you think of the rightness of the missions and the motives of those who declared them, the men and women of the military who continue to fight on our behalf are true heroes who deserve our support and our thanks.

So as you go through your day, take a moment to consider your own reflections.  Where were you?  What were you doing?  And how do you see it all today?

When I first started writing seriously, I asked myself a pie-in-the-sky question:  Should fame and fortune ever come looking for me, what name do I want it to find me under?  This might be an easy question for most people, but I struggled with it a little bit.

The reason?  For most of my life I hated the sound of my own name.

I can't explain why that is, really.  Oh, I'm sure I could go all Freudian (or maybe it's Jungian, I don't really know) and blame childhood trauma.  I could go on about how one of my sisters -- I'll never reveal which one it was, so don't ask me which one did it, because I'll never say which one was responsible -- used to butcher my name on purpose because she knew it bugged me.  I could blame it on the fact that at about the time I started school Gerald Ford was president so I was called Gerald Ford a lot.  But in the end, it doesn't really matter.  The point is, it took me most of my life to embrace the name my parents gave me.

Once I finally did,  though, I began using it exclusively in in my day job as an editor with a legal publisher, so in a sense I'm stuck with it in that respect.  In my fiction writing, meanwhile, I shopped around stories in several genres under "Gerald C. Matics," but it turned out that the first one to catch on, "Enthralled," was a horror story.  Recently that was followed by "The Sisters," another horror piece.  Again, it's just the way that it worked out.  Now, if I were to hit it big as a horror writer, I would not complain even once; horror is obviously something I enjoy, and there are at least a few people out there who think I'm not completely wasting my time writing it.

But a great many authors have had the experience of having their name so thoroughly associated with one genre that it's nearly impossible for them to attract readers when they break out of their genre and try something new; I'm too lazy to look up specifics right now, but Stephen King wrote something years ago -- well before Lisey's Story won him critical praise as a serious literary novelist -- about the "horror ghetto" and how difficult it is for a writer to lift himself out of it.  His own agent warned him that he was "gonna get typed" as a horror writer and would never be able to publish anything else.  (As I remember, though, a few best-sellers down the road when King mentioned he wanted to write something a little different for his next book, the same agent argued against it, asking him to please at least write something haunted into the story.)

For many of these authors whose body of work spans genres, the solution is to use a pseudonym for different kinds of stories.  King himself did it with Richard Bachman.  Nora Roberts, one of the most successful romance writers ever, also pens stories as J.D. Robb.  Ann Rice has written under at least three different names.

In any event, I have a hard drive full of other stories in different genres for which I hope to find homes someday, and I'm wondering whether it's worth the trouble to assume another name under which to publish them.

I'd like your input on this. Take a second, go back to The Home Page, and scroll down to the poll on this question, then vote your conscience.

My Yahoo! account for some reason throws a lot of random stuff into the Spam folder. When it comes to Viagra ads, notices of fictitious lottery winnings, or come-ons from Russian women dying for a husband, I say Spam folder, do your thing.

But often things I have more than a passing interest in land in there, and I have to rescue them before they pass into oblivion forever more.  Case in point: an e-mail from the editor of Dappled Things telling me she was happy to let me know they want to publish "Dirty Little Coward."

Take a minute and click on the link to check out Dappled Things' website.  I'll wait.

(Sigh)

Back? Okay, tell me if you noticed anything unusual about it, at least in terms of the two stories I've already had published. If you noticed it's not a horror magazine, you're right! Did you notice it's maybe the farthest thing on the planet from a horror magazine?

Bingo, it's a Catholic magazine! (Hey, does that count as a pun?)

It's simply another example of how surreal my life is at times that I went from a pair of horror magazines to a Catholic literary journal. I don't think I would even have written that twist, but as the saying goes, truth often really is stranger than fiction.

Anyway, I've had some back-and-forth with the editor, who has some very insightful feedback on how to make the story even better.  This woman is wicked smart, and in fact, based on our e-mail exchanges, I'm not sure I'm smart enuff to be in her magazine.  But I'll not bemoan my good fortune; I'm thrilled about the whole thing.

Incidentally, Dappled Things is both a print and an online magazine, so there's a medium for every taste. No word yet on a publication date, but it should be sometime around Easter. I'll pass it along a firm date when I get notification of it.

That is, if it doesn't land in my Spam folder.

As mentioned last time, "The Sisters" is officially my second published piece of fiction.  It being Friday the 13th, today's the perfect day to check it out.  Go to Fantastic Horror and have a look at it and some of the other fine pieces the site has to offer.

And when you're finished, please come back and let me know what you think -- good or bad, I can take it (as long as it's good; if not, I don't want to hear it).

It's taken awhile -- longer than I expected -- but "The Sisters" has found a home.

I found out on Sunday that this story, my second-oldest piece of horror fiction (not counting a piece I wrote in grade school called "Dr. Heidigger's Experiment," which was a horror in a whole 'nother sense), was accepted for publication by Fantastic Horror, an online magazine or "webzine."

Fantastic Horror is a little different from the standard webzine in a couple of ways. First, it is beautifully done. The editor/publisher, J.J. Burke, seems to have a real gift for web design, and it's immediately apparent when you click on the site. The artwork is top-notch as well.

Second, there's a whole little community of authors on there -- in their words, "a free and independent enclave of creative fellows working to build something of uncommon value" -- who "workshop" each other's stories. While not always a positive thing, most of the time this kind of review is a valuable experience. It's like having a writing group and publisher wrapped up in one. In my case, I got saved from an unintentional guffaw when someone noticed I'd written "dessert" when I meant "desert." And, by the way, they're open to writers of every skill and experience level.

Anyway, needless to say I'm excited about the upcoming publication. Don't know exactly when it will be because it hasn't been scheduled yet -- I think they try to stick to certain themes for each issue -- but it will definitely be in February, April, or June (it's a bi-monthly). Whatever issue it turns out to be, I will link to it as soon as it is released.

A funny note about "The Sisters" itself. Before I was able to update this site, I updated the status on my Facebook page to read: "Gerald just found out his short story "The Sisters" was accepted by the online magazine FantasticHorror.com (pub date TBA)."  I immediately started receiving comments from several friends and family members.  Almost all of them congratulated me on the impending publication. The exception? One of my own sisters, Emily Anthony, who just wanted to know if the story was based on them.

(If you want to know the inside story on the creation of "The Sisters," I have a new page on this site called "Behind The Stories" that will tell you about it.  Eventually I'll have something to say on there about each story I've written.)

I know where you live.

I know a surprising amount about you, in fact, all you "anonymous" visitors.  Most people don't realize that people who run Web sites have access to a startling amount of information.  Your personal information.

I know you live in cities throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware -- no surprise there -- but also in Cambridge, MA...Dublin, OH...Jacksonville, FL...Chicago...San Diego...and even one young man in Thailand.

I know some of you searched me out specifically, and others found me by accident.  A few of you landed on my Facebook page and clicked through.  My Dublin, OH visitor found me by searching the epigram at the top of the page ("It is the tale, not he who tells it").  Two of you work for hospitals; a couple more work for PNC Bank.

Most of you prefer Internet Explorer and Microsoft PCs -- very few Vista converts; Bill Gates would not be pleased -- but there are a few Firefox users and Mac afficionados among you.

I even know, down to the last digits, your IP addresses.

From my hiding hole, I spy on you.  I am a spider on your wall.  I am the Eye in the Sky.  I'm the voyeur guy from Sliver.  Yes, I know quite a bit about you.

I just don't know who you are.

Come on, there are limits here.  The hosting service I use provides access to certain demographic information, as do other services, but none of them that I know of disclose much more than the very basic stuff.  I'm not even sure they could track you down very easily, and it would probably take a court order to do it, so the odds are -- with Mr. Bush on his way out of office -- no shady government agent will knock on your door one morning with a search warrant, ask to see your computer, and demand to know why you've been frequenting my site while obstinately refusing to leave your name.

Nevertheless, it would be nice if I knew who you are.

So I'm asking you, in the spirit of making New Year's resolutions, to drop me a line via The Contact Information page and let me know when you visit.  Or just add a comment below this or another blog post. Tell me if you like what you're reading.  Tell me if you don't.  Either way, leave a sign you were here.  Please?  Because it's driving me crazy not knowing who you are.

(Oh, yeah, except for that guy in Thailand -- that's my nephew, George Anthony.)

A brief post to wish you all the happiest of holidays.  If you care to learn what's been happening with my family over the past year, check out The Maticses' Christmas Message for 2008; it's become quite the tradition over the last several years.

A couple of weeks ago Timothy Egan wrote an article in the New York Times after learning that "Joe the Plumber," who became a symbol during the election run-up for the common man, had a book come out this month. Egan is incensed by the fact that a publisher would pay JTP a no-doubt handsome advance while so many more deserving "real" writers can't get their manuscripts read by publisher, let alone published.  He's also upset over Sarah Palin reportedly mulling offers in the millions to put her thoughts onto paper.

Here's my favorite quote from Egan's piece:

The idea that someone who stumbled into a sound bite can be published, and charge $24.95 for said words, makes so many real writers think the world is unfair.

He has a point, Egan does.  As does a woman named Lorraine Cregar, who commented on the article in a LinkedIn forum I belong to; Lorraine wants to know whether anyone is really interested in reading JTP's story.

I share Lorraine's question. It's the same thing that keeps me away from "reality" TV: having a real life myself, I feel no urge to peek in on someone else's, famous or obscure.

On the other hand, even as (to use Lorraine's phrase) a struggling novelist at night myself -- I'm less successful than Mr. Egan, so presumably I have more cause to complain -- I still can't get behind him on the bashing, which I think comes across as snobbery and, yes, even sour grapes.

Consider that JTP, having been offered a nice chunk of change he couldn't turn down (would you?), was almost certainly "offered" a lot of help in telling his story, by which I mean of course that the publisher will have made a rather, ah, compelling case for collaboration with a ghostwriter.  Now, given his public speaking so far, I can't say that JTP wouldn't sorely need a ghostwriter to assemble a coherent sentence -- but in fairness I can't say for sure that he would, either, because speaking and writing are cousins, not twins. Maybe it's the romantic in me grasping at straws...but maybe with JTP failing at his chosen profession and similarly lacking success as McCain's political pawn, the stars have aligned to reveal his true talent. (Don't laugh; remember Joseph Conrad, considered by many one of the greatest novelists in the English language, didn't start writing seriously until he was nearly forty; before that, he was a Polish sailor for whom English was his fourth language -- and he only started speaking it fluently in his twenties.)

As for Ms. Palin, I have no love at all for her, but for the sake of fairness, let's put some context around this. She and her boss just got slapped silly at the polls by Barrack Obama and a few hundred million of his friends, it was a hard-fought campaign into which she invested (literally) her soul that nevertheless flopped abysmally, and now in the depths of humiliation she has to face Matt Lauer and put on a brave face for America? Under those circumstances, I think I would sound much like she did -- about as lucid as Jim from "Taxi" -- but it has nothing to do with how she writes, yes?

Having said all that, as far as JTP's book and Palin's (hypothetical but virtually certain) book, I plan to vote the same way I did in November: I'm going to pull someone else's lever.

While drinking my own homemade sour grape wine.

Hello.  My name is Gerry, and I'm addicted to Facebook.  And it's all my sister's fault.

That's right, me.  Rarely drink, don't smoke, never did drugs in my life, avoid video games like they're telemarketers.  I'm addicted to Facebook.  My sister Emily -- a fantastic artist, by the way -- invited me to join in November.  I haven't had any spare time since.

Facebook is a shining example of what's being called Web 2.0, where everyone can play and no one has to ride the bench.  There are probably hundreds of these so-called social networking sites popping up all the time, some of which are geared toward teens, some toward professionals, some toward people with the attention span of fruit flies (yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Twitter).  Facebook has something for all these audiences and more.

Bearing in mind that I've only been on Facebook for a number of weeks and there's a lot of unexplored territory out there, here's a thumbnail version of the basics.  You surf to www.facebook.com and create a profile.  The site asks you for some vitals: name, hometown, birthday, marital status, contact info, what you want to get out of Facebook (e.g., friendship, dating, professional networking) and so forth.  It also asks more personal stuff like your political and religious views, activities, favorite books/movies/TV shows, school and professional history and more.  Answer what you like, don't answer what you're not comfortable with, stretch the truth like Silly Putty -- it's entirely up to you how much or little you want to share.  You can then go on to post pictures or videos, among other things.

The fun starts when you search for people you know on Facebook and invite them to connect with you as friends.  Once your friend confirms you, you'll be able to see his or her other friends as well, and vice versa.  No matter who you are, I promise you will be surprised at least once to find out who you know is also on Facebook, and you'll find yourself going through other people's friends lists to see who else you know and want to connect with.  And of course, once your profile is up, people from your past will be crawling out of the woodwork like the bugs in The Lost Weekend coming for Ray Milland.  (If you're worried about privacy, rest assured that you can restrict access to any or all of your personal information, photos, etc. about seven different ways.)

Be warned, though:  this site hooks you like a mackeral (hence "Facehook") and won't let go.  I'm still a newbie and have only about 30 friends, but I've seen others who are only a few degrees of separation from me with literally more than a thousand.  It can take awhile to check out all of those people individually, I'll admit, but Facebook gives you tools like the Wall -- basically an electronic bulletin board -- to help you do it more efficiently.

(Brief pause to look at my Wall.  Distraught expression caused by no one writing on it yet today.)

Entertainment Weekly ran an article a week or two ago naming its 25 Entertainers of the Year, and Facebook ranked a solid number 20 on the list -- ahead of Katy Perry, who kissed a girl; ahead of Neil Patrick Harris, who (presumably) kissed a boy; ahead of Michael Phelps, who only won more gold medals in Beijing than 196 out of 205 countries.

(Phelps, by the way, has 1.63 million Facebook "fans" -- not the same as friends, but you'll have to log on to find out how).

I realize this reads like a commercial for Facebook, but really it's a commercial for me since I'm inviting you to join me there -- here's a link to my Facebook page  -- and after that, we can all meet in Facebook Anonymous.

I warn you now, this will be a long one. Yesterday was a tough day for me, and I have to share the reason: my best friend from childhood -- and who, although we have seldom spoken in our adult lives, I still consider the best friend I ever had -- was laid to rest after taking his own life. This is my eulogy for him.

Dave Gardner and I met in kindergarten at Coeburn Elementary School in Brookhaven, and in the way of all newly met children, we got along well. My memories of that time are fuzzy after (Jesus God, can it be?) 34 years, but I seem to recall us playing with each other more than with other kids; I do have a clear memory of being upset at my birthday party either that year or the following year -- I would have been turning six or seven -- because Dave came down with a cold that day and couldn't come, even though there were plenty of other kids and presents there.

We weren't each other's only friends, of course, but we kept gravitating toward each other over the years. By the time we were in about sixth grade, we were pretty much inseparable. We often hung out with Ed Paffett and Craig Oberg, and I considered them good friends as well, but Dave and I had a different bond. I think one reason might have been that Dave was for a long time the only other kid I knew besides me and my siblings who was adopted. Fortunately both of us lucked out in the adoptive parent lottery since we each got a wonderful set, but back then I didn't tell many people I was adopted out of self-consciousness because the ones I did tell invariably were for some reason taken aback, and it made me feel like I'd just confessed to being a cross-dresser. (And yes, I know that sounds silly, but I also know with absolute certainty that I would never have had to explain that feeling to Dave.)

I can't begin to tell you all of the things we did, experiences we shared, things that brought us close during those wonder years of preadolescence, but let us simply say that many of them involved being in places we should not have been. We weren't bad kids by any means (although there are a couple of incidents I'm not at liberty to discuss since I'm not totally sure the, ah, parental statute of limitations has expired), but we did tend to trespass a lot. A favorite place was the cliffs behind Brookhaven Swim Club, which we reached through a hole in the fence, and we'd spend hours crisscrossing the cliff face (yes, shockingly, I wasn't acrophobic back then) and talking about all manner of inconsequential yet profoundly weighty matters, like who were the hottest girls in our class, in our school, on TV, and so forth.

Puberty, it need not be pointed out, was bearing down on us like a runaway train.

Speaking of trains, another thing we did a lot was walk the abandoned tracks that ran from Aston to Lenni and points beyond. We sometimes did that with Ed and Craig as well, and friends, let me tell you, when I later saw the movie Stand By Me and read the Stephen King novella it was based on, it was as if King had been riding shotgun with us during those times because so much of his story and our experiences synced, right down to the way you had to almost crawl across the trestle bridges because the apparent motion of the ties going one way and the water beneath going the other made you dizzy. (By the way, I trace my intense fear of heights to an incident in which the four of us crossed Chester Creek by shimmying along the I-beams underneath the bridge, 50 feet or so over the water, and when I was halfway Dave clapped his hands and startled about a hundred pigeons who were roosting under there so the whole freakin' lot of them flew past my face, and don't think he didn't know that was going to happen, either -- but perhaps I've said too much.) All of us, characters and real kids alike, were in search of an adventure, not realizing we were finding it along the way, that the most formative -- and in a sense some of the most important -- segments of our lives were being lived right there, right then. The opening and closing lines of the novella were, going from memory, virtually identical, and for my money they fit us -- particularly Dave and me -- perfectly: "I never had any friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was twelve.  Jesus, does anyone?"

Dave -- and, indirectly, Ed and Craig -- actually was the catalyst for my writing career, such as it is. The first writing I ever attempted was a screenplay Dave and I collaborated on called Adventure In Rutter''s Run, and it featured, in a surprising twist, four pre-teen boys who had a penchant for trespassing. The basic plot had something to do with us exploring land that belonged to Old Man Rutter, stumbling on his son in the midst of assaulting a girl our age, and coming to her rescue. We wrote it all out in a few weeks in one of those black-and-white-marbled copybooks that were omnipresent in our lives back then, and I kept it for the longest time.

I realize it's no Academy Award winner, but I'd give anything to know where that copybook is now.

Anyway, we continued more or less as best friends until high school, when perhaps inevitably we started to drift apart. Our world had suddenly become much larger, and we each saw different corners of it that we wanted to explore. We still did some things together after we started at St. James -- met up for lunch, went to the library, joined cross-country and track, talked about who were the hottest girls at our sister school, O'Hara, and points beyond -- but we also started hanging out with different crowds, and our time outside of school was spent differently.

Four years, it turns out, can vanish in an eyeblink, and we were graduating before we knew it. I remember Dave being floored at how long we'd been friends -- at that age, it seemed like a lot longer time -- and in my yearbook he simply wrote, "Good luck after 13 years together." Then he went into the Army, something we'd both talked about doing for years -- we were going to join the Special Forces together --  but I chickened out and went to college. (I did feel a bit justified, however, when Dave later told me it only took him one jump out of a perfectly good airplane to realize Special Forces wasn't his thing.) And except for seeing him once or twice after he got out, and later talking with him on the phone sometime after my son Jack was born (Rachel, his daughter, would have been about three), we lost touch completely for a long time. We started exchanging phone calls and e-mails earlier this year, but we could never get together. The last I talked with him was in early summer; every time since then when I thought about getting in touch, something would come up, and I'd excuse myself by thinking: I can call him later, he's not going anywhere. 

In the end, I guess we ran out of later.

This blog is turning out to be as long as one of my stories, but I have a few more things to say. First and most obviously, Dave could not have been in his right mind to leave behind his wife and children, who by all accounts he loved very much.  Depression, though, is a slippery, insidious, secretive thing, and no one should ever blame themselves for not having foreseen what would happen. He is unfortunately not the only friend I have known who took his own life, and in no case did those closest to the person have any clue what was to come.

Second, the funeral service was a poignant farewell, especially near the end when one of Dave's close friends, Russ, gave the most moving eulogy I have ever heard. At Dave's mom's request, Russ also read a few lines from a poem called "The Golden Heart," author unknown, that were more than fitting.

Although we loved you dearly,

We could not make you stay. 

A golden heart stopped beating, 

A special one was put to rest. 

God broke our hearts to prove to us

He only takes the best.

And finally, while that is a beautiful poem, a different one came to my mind there in the church. Anyone who saw the movie Four Weddings And A Funeral might recognize it as the poem one of the characters recites when his partner is laid to rest, and it affects me every time I read it.

So, Dave, if you will kindly ignore the blatant romantic overtones, I would like to offer this as my final expression of sadness, and my last goodbye to you.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

Funeral Blues

W.H. Auden

 

So I was all set to rant about directionless, pointless stories, but then something cool happened that I just had to write about first.

In my last post, I gushed a little about a new review of Dark Distortions I that mentions "Enthralled" favorably, but I said I wouldn't be going out to buy a Porshe to celebrate.  That made me think of an old (circa 1985) interview in a magazine tribute to Eric Clapton, and I remembered (and wrote about) a quote from J.J. Cale about how he went out and bought a Cadillac when he heard Clapton singing his song "After Midnight" on the radio.  The quote was so memorable it just kind of stuck with me all these years.

As it turns out, though, I misremembered the quote.  I discovered this when I received this comment on the post from a gentleman named Rocky Frisco:

I was playing with Cale at the time and I'm pretty sure that was a Lincoln.

Well, knock me out!  I discovered that Rocky actually went to high school with Cale, and not only has he played with Cale for years -- including at last year's Crossroads Guitar Festival, which was hosted by none other than E.C. -- but he's a writer as well.  He's a really interesting, multifaceted guy, from what I've learned about him.

But it still left the question about what car J.J. actually bought.  I was still sure it was a Cadillac, so I hunted down the magazine article before e-mailing Rocky back to gently confirm it.  Here's the actual quote:

Eric Clapton actually helped me break into some real bread. I was just playing guitar in bars, and all of a sudden I heard "After Midnight" on the radio. I said, "That's my tune. Watch out!" Went out and bought a Chevrolet.

-- from Guitar Player, Special Issue: The Eric Clapton Story, July 1985

I think he was being modest.  I remember clearly that it was a Lincoln.  He got his teeth fixed, too.

Okay, it's been ridiculously long since I've updated.  Ironically, writing for a living has left me with precious little time -- or energy -- to write.

Anyway, like most healthy Americans who aren't my mother, from time to time I Google myself to see whether anything's been posted about me, kind or otherwise.  In the "kind" category, yesterday I discovered a new review of Dark Distortions I that mentions "Enthralled."  All right, it mentions every one of the 33 stories and poems in turn, but it singles mine out for a line of special praise.

The site is The Fix: Short Fiction Review and the reviewer is Michelle Lee.  Here's the paragraph about "Enthralled":

In "Enthralled" by Gerald C. Matics, two college students find more than they bargained for when they venture to a fortuneteller to divine their futures. Suddenly, a momentary bit of entertainment turns into a long, fear-filled trial, as Marie tries to fight a future that seems to be more than a self-fulfilling prophecy; Madam Wanda appears to be acting to guarantee that her predictions come true. "Enthralled" came together nicely at the end, making it one of the more satisfying reads here.

Cool, huh?  I'm not saying I'm going to go out and buy a Porshe or anything (J.J. Cale once said the first time he heard Eric Clapton's version of his song "After Midnight," the first thing he did was go out and buy a Cadillac), but it's nice to get the credit.  I especially appreciate what she credited me on, that the story "came together nicely."  (My next post will be a rant about stories that don't come together at all -- on purpose.)

By the way, in the "otherwise" category on Google, I found the following post on a message board:

One can always tell a skunk by it's stripes and if it looks like a skunk and smells like a skunk you can bet it is a skunk. I would therefore have no problem identifying Gerry Matics as a skunk of the schismatic kind.

Let me just state unequivocally that THIS IS NOT ME!  Apparently there's some controversial character, a borderline heretic by some accounts, in the Catholic church named Gerry Matatics whose name the poster misspelled.  I'm thinking about contacting the message board moderator and asking him to correct it; I love a good skunk analogy as much as the next guy, provided I'm not the skunk.

I don't know about you, but whenever I visit a Web site, even one I've been on before, I scroll down to the bottom of the home page and check the number of visitors the site has had.  I've always wondered why this is so.  I think maybe, in some deep-seated, Freudian manner, I'm looking for validation for having chosen that particular site in the first place.  After all, there are buckets of truth behind the saying about there being safety in numbers; in this case I'm not talking about physical safety but, if you will, social safety.  I guess I just want to know that I'm cool for having chosen a site that 237,704 others have already visited and have presumably gotten something out of while they were there.

This is, I believe, the same thing that leads people to be fashionably late to parties: they don't want to look like geeks for being the first, and possibly only, ones to arrive.  They can wait out the ice-breaking period and let the party seek its own level like water in a roiled-up pond.  If the parking lot outside is half-full or worse, they can make a judgment call about whether the party has reached a critical mass of fun, and if they judge that it hasn't, they can make a quick and unobtrusive getaway before anyone notices how uncool they are for having shown up at such a lame gathering.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a two- or three-sentence post to say that the counter on The Home Page, for some unknown reason, keeps starting over at 00001.  I've seen some of the behind-the-scenes statistics and I can categorically state without fear of contradiction that there have been more than 00001 visitors to the site.  (Of course I can say it without fear of contradiction -- you don't have access to the behind-the-scene statistics, so how could you contradict me?)  (By the way, I imagine I'll have something to say in a future post about the value of statistics.)  I personally have visited the site from at least two computers, so the number can't be lower than 00002.  As of today it reads 00006, but as I've just conclusively demonstrated, that number is unadulterated bird poop.

I'm working on fixing it, after which I fully expect a quantum leap in the number of people who have visited, but until I do, I suggest viewing whatever number is in the counter as the square root of the actual number of people who landed here.  Bottom line, don't feel like a social misfit just because you've joined the other 00006 who have visited my site.  You're not uncool.  I swear.

At least, not because of that....

Yesterday I ran the Collegeville 5K Run/Walk for Arthritis, which is sponsored in large part by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, where Lisa works.  It's not a bad little race, and it was actually the first race I ran last year at the beginning of my latest comeback.  (I think I'm on number 197, but who's counting?)  Then, I'd been running for only about two weeks after a solid nine or ten months without running a step, and on a morning so muggy you almost needed an Xacto knife to slice through the humidity, I wheezed my way to a 19:43.  Surprisingly, this got me sixth place and, if I remember right, a win in my age group.  Naturally I put it on my calendar for this year.

It went even better: I won the race.  The time was slow -- 18:07 -- but "slow" is of course relative.  After the first tenth of a mile, I led every step of the race and didn't even hear footsteps past the first mile and a quarter or so.  So, really, it was like a tempo run for me, which I was fine with since I haven't been working out much lately; a late-winter cold laid me up for a few days, and it was all but impossible to get back into the groove.  At 38 years old, this should not be a surprise, although I do have high hopes for the spring-summer season.

What made it even better was watching Jack run the kids' race and come in second -- "First boy in," he says proudly, "just like Daddy!"  That'll melt the old heart, believe me.  Only problem was, they hemmed and hawed about when they were going to give out the 5K awards, so I floated back and forth between the finish area and the track, where they were holding the kids' run.  I ended up running around the track with Jack, holding his hand about half the way around, and when he finished and we had about ten seconds to celebrate, Lisa told me they just started giving out the awards.  Arrgh!  So I trucked back up the hill to the finish area.  As I was still a couple of hundred yards away, I heard my name announced and a smattering of applause.  The announcer said they might have to come back to me since she knew my son was doing the kids' race, but then she spotted me and said, "Here he is, still running!"

Big yucks all around.

I had the last laugh, though, when I opened up the envelope they handed me along with my medal and discovered a $100 bill.  I had no idea there was money at this race!  Lisa and I talked about dining out on the race, but then she remembered I need new running shoes desperately.  Fortuitously, we had to pass Runaway Success, a local running shoe specialty store, on the way home, so I popped in just as they were closing and treated myself.

Not a bad beginning to the weekend.

Here's a picture of me winning the race and another of Jack and me, the first boys in, with our medals.

Yesterday I took my mother to see a doctor in West Chester.  Mom lives way the hell out in Chester County, nestled close to the Lancaster County border, so it's a bit of a drive.  On the way back I knew she was hungry, so I took her to a little market called Triple-Fresh a couple miles from her house (she doesn't drive and can't walk far, so to her it might as well be on the dark side of the moon).

Standing in line at the deli counter, I met the eye of a gentleman in his late-50s (I thought), casually dressed in jeans and a light jacket, his short gray hair tucked under a Kansas City Chiefs cap -- and the sunniest smile on his face.  Something about him looked incredibly familiar -- not in the "don't I know you" way, more in the manner of someone you see on TV often enough to think you know.

A few more stolen glances, and suddenly it clicked.  I leaned over to him and asked, "Anyone ever tell you that you look a lot like Dick Vermeil?"

"All the time," he answered, sticking out his hand.  "I am Dick Vermeil."

Pretty cool, huh?  For you young-uns, Dick coached the Philadelphia Eagles from the mid-70s to the early 80s, which includes their first-ever Super Bowl appearance in 1981 (they lost to the Raiders, I'm sorry to say).  He retired, suffering from burnout, and did some commentary for the major networks for a few years before taking over the St. Louis Rams and actually winning a Super Bowl with them.  Another retirement, and then he came back again (the guy's Rocky Balboa) to coach -- you guessed it -- the Chiefs.  Had some success there before retiring again, and still does network commentary plus the occassional Blue Cross/Blue Shield ad on TV.  (More about Dick from Wikipedia.)  And by the way, Dick's a bit older than he looks; he's 71.

Turns out Dick and his wife have a spacious ranch a couple of miles down the road and he's in Triple-Fresh a lot.  "They make great sandwiches here," he told me.  I introduced him to Mom, although I'm not quite sure she got who he was until after we left and she started asking questions about him.  Maybe it would have helped if he were wearing his Super Bowl ring; maybe not.

I guess the moral of the story is: you're not famous until my mother knows who you are.

You may have noticed that the countdown clock on the front page has expired.  That's because Dark Distortions I is now officially available and shipments are being made.  Yesterday my wife received two copies she ordered (thank God for Lisa!).  That means if you preordered a copy, you should be receiving it any day now, if you haven't already.

It also means ordering is live, so if you haven't picked up a copy yet, now's a good time to do it since you'll get near-instant gratification. 

I'm bracing myself for the inevitable storm of criticism, because that's just who I am.

There's a favorable review of Dark Distortions I by a site called "Bookgasm: Reading Material to Get Excited About."  The review is quite positive, beginning with: "Should you choose to read DARK DISTORTIONS -- the inaugural release of indie publisher Scotopia Press ? it?s a near-guarantee that the book will undergo a transformation in the process, from a mint-condition paperback of considerable heft to a dog-eared stack of no-longer-solid-white pages, stuck between peeling covers."

It mentions "Enthralled" briefly but in a favorable context; I'm apparently one of the several new authors the reviewer, Rod Lott, would like to follow.  Pretty cool.

It's also very timely, since I'm told the pre-ordered copies of the book will be shipping today.  If you haven't ordered yet, you can do so on the publisher's website: www.scotopiapress.com/bookstore.htm -- although I must give my standard disclaimer that this is not by any stretch of the imagination a book for children or the otherwise easily offended.  Purchase at your own risk.

Happy reading!

Last night I attended a reunion of my eighth-grade class.  My 25th year reunion, to be exact.  The night belonged to the Our Lady of Charity Class of 1983.

I have to say I never really expected to see many of these people again, but I'm so glad I went because it was a really good time.  Out of 70-odd people in the class, we managed to contact all but about a dozen.  That's not bad when you figure about half of the class is women who got married and took new last names.  Most everyone was easy to recognize; it wasn't that they hadn't changed so much as that they had changed in predictable ways.  It was easy to look at the adult and see the fresh-minted teen inside.  (Of course, a few really haven't changed, or at least not all that much, and that was a little freaky.)

What interested me most was whether we would all adopt the same patterns of behavior towards each other that we had back then.  What I mean is this:  You grow up in any group, be it family or friends, and you act in certain ways, and you respond to the way others act and they respond to the way you act.  Some kids are cool and some aren't; some are outcasts and some aren't; some are the class brain, the class clown, the pretty girl, the stud football player, the troublemaker.  I always had a sense of the hierarchy of the class, and where I fit into the pecking order was, to be brutally honest about it, quite low down.  When we all got back together, would I remain there?  Would the cool kids have grown into cool adults who wouldn't give me a second glance?  It's like a sociology experiment, in a way -- how does the group behave?

I'm happy to say everyone behaved well from that standpoint.  Twenty-five years later, we'd all become cool.  Maybe it's because we have more in common now than the sports teams or cheerleading squads or the accidents of neighborhood.  Most of us are married.  Many of us have kids of our own.  We all have jobs and lives and histories.  I think that made us all, without exception, interesting.  And that's why it was such a good time.

I wrote an e-mail to the Class of '83 to thank the event organizers and express my thoughts. Hey, I'm a writer, it's what I do. Here's a short excerpt:

What do you think, too mushy?  Not mushy enough?  Too late now to take it back, and anyway I got some positive responses, so there.

So now I'm wondering if somewhere in all of this there's a story lurking....

First off, I can't believe it's going on three months since I updated this page.  That will change, I promise.  Web 2.0, social networking, whatever the hell you want to call it -- it's here to stay, and I'm getting on board.

Second, I finally received my author copy of Dark Distortions I in the mail yesterday.  What a sweet feeling, to actually hold it in my hands!  I'm not narcissistic by nature -- but my God, my name's right there on the cover!  (Hey Ma, look at me, I'm published!)  OK, sure, it's about halfway down the list of authors' names, a reminder that I wrote only one-thirtieth of this huge volume.  Still, it raises my hopes that there will come a day when my name is alone on the marquee in great big Steven King-esque letters.  Damn the reality, full steam ahead!

Naturally I read my contribution first.  There are, regretably, a handful of typos that probably crept in when the book was being typeset, but I'm not quibbling about it because I don't think they distract one from the story.  And, after all, isn't that why we came?

The rest of the book I'm reading in order; I'm on the second story now.  My review?  I'm withholding judgment on the book as a whole until I finish, and I don't think you'll hear me criticize any individual's story (except maybe my own, since I've always been a self-critical bastard) no matter how bad it might be, since I don't feel I've earned the right to do that at this early point in my career.  But I have no doubt I'll be reading some that make me cringe because I think I could do so much better -- and some that make me cringe because they're so good I despair that I ever thought I could write half as well.  Stories in that second category, by the way, I will have no trouble giving their due; I've never been one to put others down in order to raise myself up.  But that won't stop me from raising my own game, will it?  In short, check back with me later.  I'll let you know.

By the way, the book is available for preordering at www.scotopiapress.com.  The cover price is $21.95, but the unfortunate catch is that at this point you have to purchase through PayPal (it's easy to do; these days you don't even need to set up a PayPal account), which adds a small transaction fee.  Still, for a 587-page book, that ain't half-bad.  All preorders will ship March 20, so make sure you order soon.

Any day now, Dark Distortions I, an anthology of horror fiction and poetry from Scotopia Press, will be released and available for preorders.  The book happens to contain my first published piece of horror fiction, "Enthralled," so how about giving it a look?  Trot on over to www.scotopiapress.com for more information....