National Author’s Day. This is cool. Let me tell you a little story involving a couple of authors. I first met TJ in 1999 working together. We had instant chemistry even then. Instant friends. A pair of close goofballs who we could also vent to about our personal lives. We were both struggling writers. I coached her, she beta read me. We pushed one another, we cheered each other on. Eventually we landed Darth Maul stories together at a Star Wars fan fiction site. We kept talking then about one day getting published in something bigger together.

Flash forward many years and other jobs we had together that wasn’t the same mojo we’d enjoyed as our personal lives tailspun. Eventually, we just lost contact with one another. Four and a half years ago, only a few months after separation from my first wife, TJ spots me and my kid in a Panera. She asks me out on the spot. Of course I said yes. You all know what happened afterwards.

For all the success I enjoyed 16 years as a music and film journalist, I was still subversively miserable despite a fruitful three year stint dogging open mikes in Maryland and building a family within who eased some of my angst. My fiction writing was ghastly and it reflected who I was then. It was getting together with TJ when my fiction began to build. I grew stronger. I grew more motivated. I wanted to reclaim what had died inside of me. I wanted to write and I wanted to matter again.

She restored my wherewithal and the happy smiles you see on my face in photos or at a book signing or on the open mike these days is because I have a spitfire author for a wife who isn’t afraid to call me out if I lambaste and lament, chastising myself as a pretender. I know many of you feel me.

We are there to back one another at many of our individual book signings, but the true bliss for me is when we have joint signings. Fulfilling something we only gave voice to and dreamed about in ’99. There is no competition between us. No ego. Only love.

I have begun a gradual acceleration these past few months similar to how I rose covering metal, punk and horror. Those were glorious times which I feel beginning to restack with my new endeavors.

I fearlessly reach out and network to established pros and celebrities in the writing world, because it worked for me in my old life. I know it can happen again. It’s extra special this time, because I have an exceptional woman at my side, another author who deserves to bask in today’s laudatory theme.

To all of my brothers and sisters of the word, no matter your level of success, bask and be awesome, today and evermore. You are awesome for even trying.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Awesome time last night at Scary Tales to Tell at Cult Classic at the Fifties’ Atomic Age lovin’ Cult Classic Brewery in Stevensville, Maryland!

Amazing venue with a big, enthusiastic crowd and a terrific band of authors. Cool stuff getting introduced by Samantha Curtin, who was my rad table neighbor at Frightreads and is becoming another of my sisters the trenches. Thank you to Sandee Webster for inviting me down and to all the fun writers I got to know backstage. Great chatting with Brent Lewis about comic books.

Just say no to Godzilla ’97!

Godzilla vs. Ebirah is more like it!

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

As a tribute, The Metal Hall of Fame has reprinted my 2009 interview with the late, great Ace Frehley I did for Dee Snider’s House of Hair Online. We talked about Ace’s current album at the time, Anomaly, and he shared some of his pre-Kiss memories with me. Growing up as a huge Kiss fan in the Seventies, this remains one of the sweetest moments of my writing career.

I’ve shared my thoughts about Ace in past newsletters, my notes and in online discussions with other Substackers and on social media, but the man was one of a kind. A scorcher of a guitar player who carried more demons than his bandmate, Gene Simmons, you never truly appreciate the gift from someone of Frehley’s caliber as a player until it’s no longer there. So true, the sage advice dropped by hair metal savants Cinderella with their waxing ballad, “Don’t Know What You Got (Till it’s Gone).” Whether it’s the blistering guitar outro on Kiss’ “Deuce” or his daydreamy, multilayered series of “Fractured” instrumentals Frehley wove across many of his solo albums including Frehley’s Comet, the Spaceman was a true original. We are a shade lesser as a music-loving culture without Ace Frehley’s ricocheting tonality.

Here’s a link to my 2009 interview with Ace:

Ace Frehley Forever: Remembering the Spaceman

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Dread Mondays from Whisper House Press drops today and I am proud to have my story, “Bentalou Crush” in it. An anthology of workplace horrors, shake some American Psycho and a shivery whiff of Hostel into the tension, and you have “Bentalou Crush.” I drop perhaps one of my favorite endings to one of my own works into this nasty tale. I am enjoying working with editor Steve Capone and we may be cooking up something else together in the immediate future. Come and get it, boils and ghouls!

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I’m unapologetically a passionate being. Not that I plan on going anywhere for a long time, if there’s one thing I hope to be remembered for, it’s showing my friends, family, my lover, my work, my craft, my fatherhood, my spirituality, my interests, my health and fitness and my ambitions the deepest commitment to passion. To whatever extent of success I may achieve, those few of you who have gotten to my core know and earn the fervor inside.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Hidee hey, dear friends and readers!

I’ve been more inactive here at Roads Lesser Traveled, mostly due to the fact outside of the normal daily-do, I’m writing my fool head off, as you can infer from prior posts. My productivity has spiked and while I’m taking a few days to cool my jets while continuing on the next project I started, I’m pushing my work out there relentlessly. I have a couple of appearances upcoming and lots of good things cooking.

Here in this picture, I’m online with Jack Mangan and my fellow panelists, Mark Pruett, Bert Edens and RD Rivers for an amazing SLAM summit podcast done this past Monday, where we hit on the music industry, horror, writing, changes in media technology and even whiskey, lol. Jack has a righteous thing going on here with SLAM, a non-profit organization tackling mental health and survival issues inside the music industry such as suicide, substance abuse, band infighting and self-destruction. Past guests of SLAM have included former Megadeth, F5, The Lucid and Deith bassist David Ellefson and ex-Fear Factory vocalist Burton C. Bell. It’s my absolute honor to to participate in SLAM.

Stay tuned for more goodness and frivolity to come here at Roads Lesser Traveled. If you want more details about what I’ve got going, head over to my Substack and hit the subscribe button to latch onto “Lucky Burns with Ray Van Horn, Jr.” I’ve been averaging a newsletter per week titled “Great Fraggin’ Life” and dropping other stuff here and there. Drop in here:

https://substack.com/@rayvanhornjr

Much love to you, friends!

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

What the flying eff? Monroeville Mall, Pittsburgh, iconic landmark for horror history as the setting for the original Dawn of the Dead from 1978 is being bought and demoed by Walmart.

Glad I made my pilgrimage in ’97. Of course, the people working in Suncoast video when we went to Monroeville Mall had the furthest clue they were working on hallowed grounds. Pitiful, all-around. I was vastly disappointed in my visit which, even back then, the famous tower clock in the mall had been removed and the ice rink in the film had been stripped and repurposed into a half-assed food court. I remember eating and sitting a table that was position over one of the rink’s barrier lines.

However, it was worth it back then getting to take a slide down the escalator rails (from the halfway mark, anyway) at JC Penneys like Scott Reiniger does in the film, plus an up-and-down ride in the famous elevator before store security gave us a half-disgusted, half-amused polite escort out of the store.

I’m told by many the Monroeville Mall has fallen into neglect over the years, and sadly, it’s the state of union when it comes to shopping malls, period. The retail dawn of the dead already upon us in that respect. Glad Romero didn’t live to see this, a new road lesser traveled.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I went and saw The Long Walk a second time yesterday because it’s just that damn good. I took my son with me the first round a few weeks ago, and the movie adaption of Stephen King’s (under his famous alternate nom de plume, Richard Bachman) cautionary dystopian tale just incredible.

I can see my mom and I saying way back in the Eighties what it would mean if they ever made this King-Bachman story into a film. Damn if this wasn’t the masterpiece we expected back then. I remember being numbed and chilled when I first read the novella back in the day. Nowadays, I have to face-palm myself at those calling this a rip-off of The Hunger Games. History lesson, King first wrote this in 1982 and his moves were borrowed, reimagined and made into a pop culture phenom. Suzanne Collins did a phenomenal job in her own right, sure. The concept starts here, however. Intense and soul-shattering, Long Walk the movie is an all-time best King adaptation.

My second trip yesterday got me thinking when I was gifted The Bachman Books and all the deep discussions in the late 80s with my mom and Paulette over King’s early visions and what has transpired since. I call him the inadvertent godfather of reality t.v. by writing The Running Man and The Long Walk all those decades ago. As it was, he was a frigging soothsayer with The Dead Zone. We spoke back then hoping such nihilism and dystopia would never come to pass. Wondering over the years when someone would have the stones to bring The Long Walk to life.

I think this film is going somewhat underappreciated, though we had a fair size audience a month after it came out. I’m still feeling affected by this story and its ramifications after two viewings. Sidebar, Hamill, you glorious bastard!

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

All September through yesterday, I breathed new life into three shelved stories and wrote four fresh tales of terror, submitting them all. And I came to the finish line on the next one last night. I can honestly say reading the King tribute The End of the World as We Know it and starting The Rack Volume 1 took me back to school and my writing has changed dramatically and more efficiently studying these masters.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.