The people you meet....

I know almost nobody in the book/publishing business. Ultimately, this is for the best, because it allows me to talk about books on the blog without having to worry about skewing my reactions one way or another.  I want to be free to praise or destroy whatever books I choose, and not have to think, "geez, is this gonna be okay for whoever?".  Also, there are a couple of authors that, if I knew them and had a way to contact them, well....there would be restraining orders in my name already. (Seriously, Mr Chabon, just put me as a minor character in one book. Just one!..etc, and so on.)


But there is one author I do kinda know, in the most inconsequential way you could know somebody. His name is Tom Piccirilli, and I don't know him well; in fact, I've met him once.  A good friend of his was on our Tues. Night trivia team (5 Guys In A Bar, defending Summer Season champions, thank you very much) and invited Tom to join us, which he did.  Joe, having already read one of Tom's books, was very happy to have him aboard, and after talking with the writer for a bit, I was impressed.  Tom was intelligent with being off-putting, and willing to talk about his books without steering our conversations that way; I think we ended up talking more about movies with him than anything. He never made it back, and his friend shortly had to leave the trivia team, but I  have always had a good feeling about him since, and soon decided that I needed to try to read one of his books.  Unfortunately, things happened, other books got in the way, and I kinda forgot about that.  Until a month ago...

One night, out of the blue, Joe told me that Tom was found to have a brain tumor, and was obviously not doing so well.  And our "sister" book blog, "A Thousand Lives", who are much closer to Tom than Joe and I, have been pimping out a donation site, and also asking people, if they so choose, to buy some of his books, and seeing that I was somebody who wanted to read his novels, I bought two: "Shadow Season", the book Joe read and loved, and "The Night Class".  The reason I bought "The Night Class" was, Tom started out as a horror writer, and even though he now writes a lot of crime fiction (which Shadow Season belongs in), most of his fans are from his horror novels, and "The Night Class", though not his most popular, won The Bram Stoker award, and I am nothing if not an easy mark for award-winners.  After I bought them, I was drawn to "The Night Class". Maybe it was because it's October, and you can't walk into any store without being surrounded by reminders of Halloween.  Maybe I was blinded by the vision of light reflecting of the golden patina of The Stoker award in my head. (Quick confession: I have no earthly clue what the Stoker award looks like.  If it were my choice, it'd be a bloody stake sticking out of rotting wood with a piece of silken black cloth poking slightly out from under it.  But I have a habit of missing the point on these things.) But I started reading...

"Night Class" is about Caleb Prentiss, a senior at a small northeastern University, who as a child, watched his sister commit suicide in front of him, and though he is about to graduate, he still has moments of unwashed visions of his dead sibling and binge drinking, which are only made worse when he returns from Winter break to his room, to find the remnants of a murder committed while he was gone.  Caleb, mystified that almost nobody else realizes what happened in his room, and those who do know are loathe to talk, becomes obsessed with the murder, and tries to find out who the dead girl really was, and why she was killed.  Now, I am not a horror "fan", books or movies, and I think it's a hard genre to get right. And Piccirilli really does get it right in "Night Class", mostly in focusing on Caleb's ever-loosening hold on the truth, and his sanity.  I was never truly sure if what was happening in the book was real, or figments born of Caleb's mind.  You realize that the battle Caleb was waging against unknown forces may or may not have actually been happening, and the line on that was an even bet, a pick 'em. And at the end, when (SPOILERS) Caleb finds the cabal behind the strange workings of the University, and ultimately the death in the dorms, and Cal is facing his own death, nose to nose, I love that the emotion he feels is relief, that he realizes that his ability to travel down the rough road he was going , fighting back the demons at every turn, had a finite limit, and one way or another, that journey has ended. 

Again, I am not a horror fan, and I don't honestly read a lot of those books, but I am a fan of good writing, and Piccirilli really does seem like a good writer, without trying to "write" like a good writer.  He does not effort to write prose, but I love his use of clever wordplay and well-formed dialogue in "Night Class".  And the way Caleb's mind slowly ebbs from reality...it would have been very easy to slide into ridiculousness, but Piccirilli keeps the book on course, and away from becoming a parody. "Night Class" was an enjoyable read all the way for me, and will fight for a spot on my best book list at the end of the year.

 I don't write this as some sort of chest-puffing exercise, a "look at the author I know", because I don't really know Tom Piccirilli. I met him once, and he was a genuinely nice person.  I read one of his books, and it was great. Those are two different things, not to be confused together, and I mention both of them together because...that's what I do on this blog.  I talk about books, and not just what I read, but why I read them, and it's all one big mess, but it's interesting. (To me, anyways.) And I plan on reading more of Tom's books, and maybe, if they are all this good,  who knows, I might get that restraining order against me one day. Cross your fingers

(I also did not write this to shill for donations, but if you are interested, here is a link to the Thousand Lives website, where you can find out how to do so.   Or, if you want, you can do what I did, and buy one or more of Tom's books (available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble) and enjoy his stories while you help.)