–Photo by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

This beautiful girl and I made quite the connection at the DC zoo. Everywhere I went around the pen, she followed me with her stare. I left and came back after 20 minutes, just to test a theory. There she was, in the same spot, sensing my approach and turning her head specifically to me, again smiling so wondrously. The other lionesses kept to themselves. Not this one. I didn’t feel like her next potential dinner. I felt the divine glowing all around her and channeling to me. Happiness is.

–Photo by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Yesterday I wrote one of the most satisfying pieces I have in a long while. A 40-year retrospective piece that put me back into an old school happy zone and back where I was 20 years ago starting a journalism journey that defined me for life. Announcement whenever it’s live.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I was mighty sick for much of the week, Friday into Saturday being absolutely brutal. My wife pushed her remedy of dandelion tea with apple cider vinegar at me like it was my favorite vitamin water to clean out all the toxins that were chewing my guts out. Yesterday, I felt like a million bucks and spent hours grinding out promotional and requests like a madman for Bringing in the Creeps. Boom!

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

This is 55, almost. Older, grayer, but still with all original parts, so far, lol. Happy to be doing what my body gives me, though we have had to come to an understanding this past year. I am strong, reasonably cut, though sore and more tired than I want to be. My heart soars for being able to pursue my ongoing fitness campaign best of all.

I am deeply in love with my wife, proud of my family and friends, especially our hard working kids and my son who finally, “gets it” about life as he prepares for his life in the army. All that we’ve been through, I am so very proud to see where he is heading.

This time next year, TJ’s and my life will change dramatically as we open a new chapter of our own where we aim to cultivate who we are supposed to be in a new home and location. We have everything to look forward to.

I have tremendous joy, but like anyone else, I have my moments of lingering in the doldrums. Right now, as a matter of fact. I love the metal band Deftones so much, because that bombast and Chino Moreno’s incomparable screeching says how I feel at my most confident, but also at my most sullen. When I am deathly quiet, you can most assuredly bet the sound in my head is the Deftones.

I am valued in my position as a real estate title examiner. I have done it for almost 30 years and my brothers and sisters who have slugged in these trenches will attest it takes its toll. It’s given me a way to survive, and for that, I have zero regrets.

The biggest struggle I face other than the minutiae of the cost of living and jockeying amidst the good people and the bad of the world, is feeling voiceless on the quest to be heard with my writing. Funny how that base teen emotion never really goes away. You still want to be heard, you still want to belong, if even to a selected demographic that makes you feel most like you. It’s not just a hustle, this writing business. It’s life. It’s life defining. The California no’s to reach outs and networking stings. The outright no’s sear the soul, no matter how you steel yourself for it. It’s part of the game, period. Thus, the yeses become ferocious wins. I write about this very thing to tragic results in my story, “Lucky Burns” from my new horror collection, Bringing in the Creeps.

I still find myself lamenting my unexpected exit from music and film journalism, but I am so grateful for those 16 years where I slept 3 to 4 hours a night working a day job and covering concerts, doing interviews and media reviews in the evenings and weekends. I had status. I had cred. It was intoxicating being with Blabbermouth and going to pick up my credentials at shows and hearing people say, “Blabbermouth’s in the house!” then watching the bands knock themselves out onstage to make an impression.

I never take that feeling for granted. I know it so deeply, trying to make an impression in everything I do. It means everything to me to translate that success to my horror fiction. After receiving the manuscript for my next novel back from my editor, I have learned new things and hope that evolves me even further. I look forward to growing in year 55, as much as I flog myself and scream Deftones munitions inside my head.

I am grateful, more than anything, to my wife, family, friends, the divine, employers, editors, publishers, readers and fans. I have made many choices in my 55 years I am proud of, a few not so much. The rest have been pragmatic learning experiences and testing of the waters to see what I am capable of and who wants to be a part of my mission. There is where I am infinitely blessed.

–Photos by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Now we can debate the argument of sanctity versus commercialized manufacturing when it comes to gift giving holidays like Christmas and Easter. We can even take the neutral ground and call it bird-in-hand, unlike Valentine’s Day, which is pure fabrication and perhaps and the most shameless money grab of any holiday. In terms of the Christian faith, we can liken the gesture of gift giving as a symbolic remembrance in ongoing adoration of the messiah. Even if there’s nothing devout about giving your kid a $600.00 PS5 or your significant other a $42,000.00 vehicle on Christmas Day.

Diatribe over. For those celebrating Easter with reverence and rejoicing, peace be with you and may you take solace in the gaiety of Spring colors and warm moments spent amongst family. For those of you beating feet this weekend to procure flowers, egg dye and sugary wonder affixed to names you hear more in this season than the rest of the year (i.e. Cadbury, Mary Sue, Bracht’s, Palmer, Peeps and Lindt), may you do so with a spring in your step as personified Easter bunnies and may you find smiles over artificial grass sprouting inside your kids’ Easter baskets.

In 1978, you never saw a more thunderstruck child on Easter Sunday than me to find a basket from my folks, loaded with chocolate eggs, jellybeans, a tall Palmer chocolate bunny and…a Kenner toy Star Wars X-Wing Fighter plane.

It remains an unprecedented Easter gift I’ll always cherish, even if I no longer have the toy. Any child who was there when the original Star Wars played in 1977, then brought back to theaters a year later can get the significance of this most righteous gift. The greatest moment of my childhood was age seven, seeing Star Wars: A New Hope upon release, and again for the return engagement. I was submerged into Star Wars. I had all the original run of action figures and the original figure storage case. I had Luke Skywalker’s land speeder. I had a TIE fighter. I had Star Wars comic books, magazines, trading cards, Burger King glasses and the two LP score from John Williams, which I played nearly every day for months. I had Star Wars bed linen and curtains, which I’ve since passed down to my son. Later in 1978, I’d have the holy grail of Star Wars toys: the Death Star playset (which I did recover a couple years ago, huzzah).

But the X-Wing? You never saw such gratitude, not just my repetitive thank yous, but from taking that toy with me on Easter morning to show off. Inserting Luke in his orange Rebel Alliance pilot uniform into my new treasure (action figures sold separately, of course), I ran around the house swooping it. I did the same at my grandparents’ place, whooshing it from one end of their old Cape Cod to the other with the family chattering away and snickering at my emphatic playtime. I can still smell the ham, corn and lima beans from their stifling kitchen. You pushed down on R2D2’s blue and silver dome behind the cockpit to snap open the closed wings to form the “X,” as it did to much slower effect in the movie. You pushed a button in the back of the X-Wing to trigger a buzzer and a lighting of a tiny red light at the fore of the spaceship, denoting a laser fire.

Only the spectacular rumbling chariot race scene in Ben-Hur, a family Easter viewing tradition for most of my life, could ground me from my doings in a pretend galaxy far, far away. Even when we’d gone home after family dinner and settled in for the commercial interrupted marathon of The Ten Commandments on ABC (another annual family custom at Easter), I kept the X-Wing landed inside my lap. It was a day which belonged to Mark Hammill as much as Charlton Heston.

Only the time I got nothing but comic books inside an Easter basket later in life could compare.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I have had the pleasure of reconnecting with many people in the past couple weeks and there are others I owe follow-ups to. It has me thinking of my time writing in the music industry as I fight to build this new identity as a horror author. Which was always my goal since my late teens, taking numerous wonderful detours in other avenues to build my rep.

I’ve preached it before and I’ll do so again. Your network is everything and always do someone a solid as often as you can, never with the intention of getting one back. When you are honest with yourself and with others and you give where you can, it’s astonishing how the universe drops goodwill back into your lap.

Right now, I was given some tremendous advice from a colleague as I beat my brains out trying to market my books. I turn, I was solicited by a friend looking for advice on how to navigate the music industry as a newbie. I was glad to give, in my limited capacity. It was how I rose to the level of success I enjoyed covering music and film. You do the solid, build the network, be genuine. Be cool.

What I have to tell myself, and yesterday was a big reminder day filled with doubt and self-chastising, is I need solids as much as anyone trying to do something artistic. Yet the opportunity to give solids never dwindles and i am happy to do so when i have the capacity. Or if I have a better connection to direct someone to.

It’s the same as any business model. Network, do a solid, be the best you can, show integrity and keep the self-chastising in check. I am incredibly blessed, no matter the slow rebuild, because of my network and those who do me a solid. I promise I recognize and treasure each solid I’m given, because we’re all on the same journey, when you break it down properly. 

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.