F. Paul Wilson - Aftershock & Others: 19 Oddities

This will be my last short fiction collection. I may put together some sort of omnibus volume in the future, or perhaps a special collection of stories from the Secret History of the World, but all those will be culled from Soft and Others, The Barrens and Others, and this volume. Im pretty much done with short fiction. I cant give you a reason for that. Simply put, the form no longer appeals to me.

Since Ill have no fourth collection, I thought Id catch you up on the threads I left hanging in the biographical sections.

The Long Way Home was the most downloaded story on Amazon Shorts for 2006. That sounds impressive, and conferred some bragging rights, but at twenty cents per download, it did not make me rich.

Dario Argento chose Pelts for his second Masters of Horror feature. I consider it one of the goriest tales Ive ever written, but he upped the gore factor to extreme levels and added a lot of explicit sex. I suppose you could call the result soft-core gorn. But thanks to Matt Vennes script, the film remains true to the heart of the story. If you have a strong stomach, its available for rent, but be prepared for some look-away moments.

The Touch TV series never passed beyond the script stage. No pilot. No future. No taking the script anywhere else without ABCs permission and we werent going to get that. Seems they once passed on a pilot for a show called CSI and let the writers take it to a rival network. Theyre not going to make that mistake again.

As for the Repairman Jack film, the agony continues. The Joel Fields script didnt fly and the too-young star passed on it. (Thank you!) So Beacon turned to Chris Morgan and told him to go back to Craig Spectors original script and juice it up. The result blew me away. As of this writing, Ryan Reynolds has been attached to star as Jack. But Beacon cant seem to nail down a director. The problem is that a number of previous and inferior versions of the script circulated through Hollywood during the films many, many years in development hell. As a result, directors and their agents think theyve already read itand they remember not liking it (with good reason). But they havent read Chriss new and vastly improved version that sticks to the novel. The big challenge is getting people to give it another look.

As far as books go, Ive branched out into young-adult fiction, going back in time to 1983 when Jack was fourteen and just beginning to discover his talents. The first, Jack: Secret Histories, was a lot of fun and I plan to write a few more.

I continue to write the adult Repairman Jack novels as well. Ive decided to end the series with number fifteen. I made a promise early on not to run Jack into the ground, and Im keeping it.

After that Ill try different things. Ive kept other ideas in holding patterns for years. Ill let them land when Ive completed Jacks saga.

The beat goes on.

F. Paul Wilson
the Jersey Shore
July 2008

The nightmare again.

I almost dread falling asleep. Always the same, and yet never quite the same. The events differ dream to dream, yet always I am in a strangers body, a huge, monstrous, patchwork contraption that reels through the darkness in such ungainly fashion. Its always dark in the dream, for I seem to be a creature of the night, forever in hiding.

And I cant remember my name.

The recent dreams are well formed. My head has cleared in them. So unlike the early dreams, which I can barely remember. Those are no more than a montage of blurred images nowa lightning-drenched laboratory, a whip-wielding hunchback, fear, a stone-walled cell, chains, loneliness, a little girl drowning among floating blossoms, a woman in a wedding gown, townsfolk with torches, fire, a burning windmill, pain, rage, PAIN!

But Im all right now. Scarred but healing. And my mind is clear. The pain from the fire burned away the mists. I remember things from dream to dream, and more and more bits and pieces from long ago.

But what is my name?

I know I must stay out of sight. I dont want to be burned again. Thats why I spend the daylight hours hiding here in the loft of this abandoned stable on the outskirts of Goldstadt. I sleep most of the day. But at night I wander. Always into town. Always to the area around the Goldstadt Medical College. I seem to be attracted to the medical college. The reason rests here in my brain, but it scampers beyond my grasp whenever I reach for it. One day Ill catch it and then Ill know.

So many unanswered questions in these dreams. But arent dreams supposed to be that way? Dont they pose more questions than they answer?