Back before I got bored to the point of standing in the cold doing nothing but feeding a bad habit, I would stroll down to the middle of the creek where a concrete drive crosses and provides a place to pace back and forth well away from anything combustible or to the annoyance of others. I find I still spend a considerable amount of time well into the depths of the night down there pacing back and forth but now it is without that bad decision wreathing me in stench and such time is never spent just feeding a boring habit. In 2018, I was still smoking and I remember one night that July which stands out. I had driven up from Phoenix and being summer, that meant my daughter was down there visiting her mom. I had work to return to and thus as I drove up the I-17 toward Sunset Point, a very active part of that journey for me apparently insofar as the genesis point for Tales to spring forth, one did just that.
I paced that night back and forth in a light rain, the flow of the creek not yet risen to tempest but still getting used to the notion of water again. I was down in the concrete drive, my steps away from the running flow that cascaded down over the edge to flow further down the creek. My thoughts were on what I already knew to be "The Portraitist", a Tale that would not arrive for two more years. I was at the point of concern as it was well into the month and I hadn't a Tale yet to tell. This new thought, that of a photographer documenting the depredations of the Depression, was the first clear spark I had had yet as none of those in my notebook were speaking to me. I was chasing hints of what could be in contemplative pacing when the water over that short fall and the rain sprinkling down began to soak its way into my thoughts. With my back to the runoff behind and my face turned to the drizzle to see the moon dancing behind racing clouds, something new crawled up from the mud in the creek behind me and whispered itself into my ear.
"Puddle of Mud" fairly flew from my fingers over the next few days. It was a very pulpy thought that I had had, one which I could see in the pages of a comic book controversial before self-censorship stifled the creativity of the macabre. That is what this Tale is meant to be. I do apologize for... nah, I don't. It was fun all the way around to write and still if it is raining and I'm poking around in the creek at night, a smile comes now to my face.
Oddly this I realize is, roughly 84 years or so after the town of Baird's Holler met its end, the final chapter of the "Outside the / Circle of Midnight Black" saga begun with "Child of the Earth", published by Nightmare Press. Why this connection matters is that "Puddle of Mud", coming in at 4,356 pulp soaked words, will be appearing very shortly in a new anthology by Nightmare Press. Trust me, they had no idea... and neither did I at the time even though I do have a bit of an inside here. The fun part for ya'll will be figuring out just how one fits to the other.
Do forgive me for not providing any practical advice for getting unstuck when things get muddy. I was relying on my characters here to help me out on that, but...
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