This is the first in a multi-part series detailing my happenstance introduction to a community of artists, writers, and creatives who collectively make Metro-Detroit an interesting place to live.
Chapter 1: All Wounds Bleed Ink
Stating the obvious here, but I’m a big fan of horror. A good horror movie is a catharsis for the soul — a timely comeuppance, a jaw-dropping twist, the mindless slaughter of scantily-clad, nubile woman — yes, horror has the dexterity to pluck all the best strings. Horror, however, isn’t limited to the silver screen, the genre has transcended every entertainment medium known to Western Civilization, and that does bode well for those of us with an unquenchable thirst for the spookies.
My love of horror is substantial, but it is not without rival. Yes, you read that correctly, there is another. By what name is this harlot known, you ponder? Well I call her the written word. I cherish the ability to read because it has granted me the pleasure of pulling the curtain on the external world and has offered a reprieve from an otherwise racing mind. Similar to the way those flickering images flutter across the screen to form a narrative, ink patters over the page to reveal a plot. This act of absorbing and encoding these stories is singular and intimate.
So then, how to blend these two white-hot passions? Horror poured onto the page, of course, but in particular, written in short form. Yes, the joy of cracking open a book filled with an array of the eerie, macabre, and perplexing is as addicting a drug as man or nature can conceive. With that said, one can imagine what someone such as myself might do when suddenly unencumbered by the trappings of pesky employment in a world now consumed by pandemic.
Needle meet vein.
This ironic, harmonic convergence would, last month, bring me to the Balloon Factory in Ferndale where an outdoor, art pop up called Black Cat was held, the latest such event presented by Pinzu. Pinzu? Yes, Pinzu. What the hell’s a Pinzu, you say? Fair question, and one I had asked myself just two years prior. Simply put, Pinzu is a convention of sorts and having attended it twice before I found that it possessed both a certain whimsy and an allure for those who embrace all things that go bump in the night.
It was there that I had a conversation with Michael Cieslak, a Michigan-based author of horror and publisher of Dragon’s Roost Press. Michael had a small tent erected at one corner of the parking lot where he had displayed a collection of books. We chatted casually about our specific tastes in the genre and I ultimately settled on a pair of titles that jumped out at me. The first, titled The Midnight Creature Feature Picture Show, was a collection of short stories hatched from the fertile mind of David C. Hayes and published by Cieslak’s aforementioned Dragon’s Roost Press. The second selection cut from a similar narrative fabric and titled Urbane Decay, was penned by Cieslak himself and published by Source Point Press.
I found myself back in my vehicle, lost in reverie and very much filled with pleasure over the fact that my greedy fingers would soon swim across a sea of words in search of suspense, gore, and the skillful execution of gallows humor. My mind swam back to the publisher of Mr. Cieslak’s book, Source Point Press. It was a name I knew and it had caused me to reflect on the curious path that had first led me to Pinzu, a path I can plausibly claim was blazed by a foul-mouthed sock puppet some seven years prior.
