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Jeff Baker

Boogieman In Lavender: On Beyond Cisgender: Books for High School

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Jeff Baker

On Beyond Cisgender: Books For High School                                                By Jeff Baker    A. M.  (Amy) Leibowitz has grumbled on Facebook about the “Old Dead White (mostly/presumed) Cis Hetero Male Literature Canon,” and how high-schoolers mainly read books from the aforementioned canon. No authors of color. Rarely any women. “Only literary fiction and other genres are typically not only disallowed but actively sneered at.” A. M. goes on to ask that if you could add any 4 books to a high school literature curriculum (one for each year of US High School) which would you add and why? Among the Facebook users … Read more

A Post From The Stone Age – Boogieman In Lavender

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Stone Knives and Bearskins By Jeff Baker                                                 Our computers are down as I write this. At least, the modem and Internet are out. (Word processor still works.) Should have it back up sometime tomorrow. For the weekend we’ve been basically living in the 1970s, except with cable. It says a lot that I capitalized “Internet” above. We’ve come to depend on this thing. A lot. It has helped me get some of my writing published professionally and a lot of it posted. (It also brought my husband and I together but that’s another story.) We’ve had the T.V. on … Read more

Jeff Baker, Boogieman In lavender: Halloween Reading; Clive Barker

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        By Jeff Baker    The year was 1993 (or pretty close.) I was running a delivery route in-town and on my lunch hour I ran into a used bookstore and grabbed a horror anthology I hadn’t heard of. “Masters of Darkness,” edited by Dennis Etchison. In three volumes, the books feature horror stories selected and introduced by their authors, stories they think may not have gotten the exposure they deserved on first publication. Robert Bloch, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell. And Clive Barker.             I’d heard the name, but this was where I first encountered Barker. His selection was “In the Hills, … Read more

Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender: Of Dracula and Dragons

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                                                            By Jeff Baker             He is one of the most famous characters in fiction, certainly the most famous vampire. He is Dracula, also known as Count Dracula. Not popular fiction’s first vampire, or even the second, but the template from which the others either followed or diverged.             And any writer, reader or fan of vampire-themed fiction should read “Dracula,” the novel from which all the movies sprang. Published in 1897 it is an epistolary novel; that is, one told through letters and journals and diary entries of the characters. Dracula himself does not appear in much of … Read more

When Carmilla Ruled the Night – Boogieman in Lavender

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Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender             But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.                                                   ———from Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu She prowls the night, looking for blood—and women. She sleeps in late, usually rising at one in the afternoon, but it is at night that she seeks what she truly desires. She is Carmilla, seemingly a victim of a carriage accident recovering in a neighboring castle. The residents of the castle see nothing too unusual, even as … Read more

A Loaf of Bread, A Jug of Urine and Thou – Jeff Baker

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Writers have day jobs. It’s a plain fact of economics, writing doesn’t pay that much unless the writer is very lucky. We supplant our creative careers with a nine-to-five (or six to three, or some such.) A lot of writers have been teachers. Stephen King taught high school English. Jeffrey Marks juggles teaching and editing, the British ghost story writer M. R. James was a Provost of King’s College, Cambridge and Eaton. Some writers, like Steve Berman, have worked in publishing. And others, like me, have jobs that have nothing to do with writing at all. For the last 25 … Read more

Jeff Baker—Boogieman In Lavender: “Remembering Dennis Etchison.”

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                       Remembering Dennis Etchison                                                  By Jeff Baker             A fine writer I know, well-versed in the field of horror, had never heard of Dennis Etchison. This seems to have been a problem for Etchison who was continually being referred to as a “new discovery,” even though he began publishing fiction when he was in school in the early 60s. Etchison published horror stories in the girlie magazines (then a thriving market) about the same time Stephen King was breaking in to print. Etchison passed away at the end of May. I never met him or even spoke … Read more

“How I Do It” – Boogieman In Lavender

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                          By Jeff Baker                                                Not every writer writes short-stories. The form has been described as “difficult” and “challenging.” Some fiction writers don’t write short-stories. I write almost nothing but short-stories. I haven’t discussed the process very often, and I don’t always do it the same way, but this is more or less how I do it. (Sometimes.) First, there’s the idea. Ideas are easy. Everybody gets them. It’s what we do with them that counts. About four years ago we had a storm here and the power went out. It was Friday evening, we had no place to be the next … Read more

When Dark Shadows Got Graphic – Boogieman In Lavender

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“The fools! Of course there is no book! It is but a shabby lie to hide the truth; that I sleep with the dead during the day and spend my nights prowling for blood!”—-Barnabas Collins, Dark Shadows, issue # 35. I’ve written here before about “Dark Shadows,” the Gothic T.V. soap opera with supernatural themes and a large following in the LGBT community. Those who were around in the early 1970s may remember that there was a comic book version as well. Produced by Gold Key Comics the comic book (we’d call them “Graphic Novels” now) lasted an amazing 35 … Read more

Following Oscar Wilde – Boogieman In Lavender

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Oscar Wilde

       Following Oscar                                                 By Jeff Baker “In the old days, men had the rack. Now they have the Press.” —Oscar Wilde. It is possible, in the United States, to have crossed paths with the legendary Oscar Wilde without knowing it. Wilde did a lecture tour of the U.S. in 1882 that was supposed to last a few months. He wound up staying about a year, and crossed the States, touring the East and West coasts, traveling through the South and even visiting Canada. For years, however, the specifics of Wilde’s itinerary were a matter of debate, but now a … Read more