Who is anyone these days? If people are shocked that the iconic cartoon character Betty Boop was originally named Nan McGrew or Nancy Lee, then how will they feel when we reveal the truth behind weird fiction author Betty Rocksteady? Do they realise that Rocksteady is in fact a sheet-welder from Wisconsin, known in the local bars as Acetylene Lil? Or that her love of cats is due to a chance encounter with a handsome but troubled anaesthetist on the set of ‘General Hospital’ in the September of 1998? We think not, but read the interview further down and judge for yourself…

Slightly unlike Betty Rocksteady, Betty Boop (created by animator Max Fleischer) began her career in 1930, and her ‘real’ identity was once another conundrum. In 1932, singer Helen Kane filed a lawsuit, claiming that the cartoon Betty was based on Kane’s style and signature vocals.

It was, however, decided that Kane had drawn her own act from that of Esther Jones (‘Baby Esther’), a black singer and entertainer of the late 1920s, known for her “baby” singing style, who performed regularly at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Kane appeared to start booping only after seeing Esther perform in 1928. As the defence could also add in the Betty Boop look of actress Clara Bow to confuse matters, Kane lost her case.

So Betty and her “boop boop a doop” originated with the African American Baby Esther. Which is neat. And bearing self-interest in mind, we can add that the disreputable John Linwood Grant writes about one of the Cotton Club’s smaller rivals, a black and tan on the edge of Harlem in the late 1920s. The joint was known to Mamma Lucy, the conjure-woman, and Baby Esther would have sung there:

The smooth tones of the saxophone; the taste of cigarette smoke under her tongue. Late Monday night at the Ivory Club, and she was almost ready to fall towards her bed. A last dancer sat on the edge of the stage, listening to the sax and trying to pick gum off the sole of one of her shoes. There were only ten or eleven patrons left.
“Anything here you can’t handle, Marcel? she asked the thin man at her side.
He shook his head. “Lieutenant Chase is crying into his martini again, that’s about the worst of it.”
“Have one of the girl find him a cab.”
“Sure, Miss Garvey.”
She glanced around, checking those shadowy corners of the club where deals were made and hearts broken. Under the peeling stucco of a fake arch, a large man sat protectively over a brandy bottle and a half-empty glass. She peered through the lingering smoke.
“Who’s that guy?”
Her manager hesitated. “Some limey. Been here a few nights, on and off.”
“Trouble?”
“Maybe if someone pokes him. Hettie tried it on with him, says he growled and gave her the hard eye.”
“Hmm.”
Hettie was a pure-gold package, a dancer with the face, body and voice for Broadway. No-one turned her away. Intrigued, she wandered over to the arch and perched on a chair at the man’s table.
“Florence Garvey,” she said softly. “The owner of the Ivory Club.”

‘Hoodoo Man’, Speakeasies & Spiritualists (18thWall Productions)

All this gives us an excuse to quickly insert one of our favourite Betty Boop clips, because the voice of Koko the clown is none other than Cab Calloway, another more famous African American performer closely associated with the Cotton Club:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDATXtewPrg

Incidentally, Helen Kane was also an actress – she starred in the comedy film Dangerous Nan McGrew, from which Boop’s earlier name was borrowed.

The film title was, of course, borrowed in turn from Robert Service’s poem, almost as iconic as Betty Boop, ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ (Songs of a Sourdough, 1907).

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

Some rather interesting stuff on Dangerous Dan McGrew can be found here – well worth a look:

http://hougengroup.com/yukon-history/yukon-nuggets/who-was-dan-mcgrew/

Right, then. We’d better get back to the plot. Lacking our own Dan McGrew, today we have Duane Pesice with us, as he interviews Betty Rocksteady…

BETTY ROCKSTEADY BOOPS

by Duane Pesice

 

Duane: Where should a reader that is new to your work start?

Betty: My collection In Dreams We Rot coming in October 2019 is gonna be a great Rocksteady starting place, featuring a mishmash of my brand of surreal and sometimes extreme nightmarish horror. Until then, I would point you towards The Writhing Skies, my cosmic sex horror novella that won This Is Horror’s Novella of the Year and has been nominated for the Splatterpunk Awards.

Duane: Is there a piece that you are particularly proud of?

Betty: One of the first things I wrote that I was really proud of was Dusk Urchin, originally published in Looming Low. It hits on the black-eyed children trope but with my unique flavor. I really started thinking about how backstory can be hinted at, giving you a full impression of a character’s history without actually stating a lot outright. I also worked on tightening dread even before the supernatural elements come into play, with the goal of making the reader tense as hell without even knowing why.

I’m also super proud of The Writhing Skies and the illustrations I did for it. It deals with some traumatic topics blended with surrealism.

Duane: Whose work do you read, yourself?

Betty: I just finished rereading V C Andrews Flowers In The Attic, which is one of my all time favorites. I love the gothic melodrama and insane twists and turns. Next up is The Trap by Tabitha King, another limited-setting book that I first read in high school.

Paul Tremblay and John Langan are favorites. I also dig Mo Hayder and Gemma Files.

Danger Slater just released Impossible James and I’m stoked to read it. I’m super into Dark Moon Digest and read every issue cover to cover.

Duane: What kind of beer goes with your pizza? And what’s on the pizza?

Betty: Not a huge drinker, just drink the ol’ soda pop with my pizza. Fave pizza has mushrooms and honestly whatever else on it. I’m not too picky.

Duane: Do you consider your work weird, or horror? Or do you leave that to the marketing department?

Betty: Weird and horror are pretty close sisters, and I think my work hovers around the borders of each. The speculative element is important to my writing, and something horrific usually happens but stylistically I bounce around between literary, extreme/splatterpunk, bizarro. Sometimes I’ll have a style in mind when I start writing (especially if it’s for a call or particular market) and sometimes I just write and whatever happens, happens.

Duane: You’ve been convicted of crimes against the empire. What would be your last meal? Include something big to hide the explosives in.

Betty: This is such a weird question! I feel like I should have some funny cool answer but uh, I dunno. I can eat a lot! Some sort of giant all you can eat buffet and I’ll just stuff myself stupid. Pasta, sushi, sweets, everybody.

Duane: Are you involved in any arts besides writing? Any odd hobbies we should know about?

Betty: Yep, I draw too. Used to do a lot of pen and ink stuff, meticulous little crosshatching occult sort of designs, lately more into a 1920s cartoon style on my iPad. I illustrated The Writhing Skies with 20 black and white illustrations, done in a mix of Edward Gorey/20s cartoon style and I think it added a really interesting contrast to the disgusting things going on in the book.

As far as odd hobbies, nothing too crazy. I spend my free time looking for cool dumb junk at thrift stores, playing Just Dance and laying around watching old cartoons on VHS.

Duane: Cats or dogs?

Betty: Anyone who follows me on social media can probably guess that I’m a total cat lady. I have three (Ripley, Ozma and Henrietta) and oh, just remembered another odd hobby – I love to go for walks or hang out in my neighborhood and take pictures of any cats I see.

Duane: Tell us about a work-in-progress.

Betty: So right now I’m working on a novel that’s a modern take on The Collector by John Fowles, where Plain Jane is sick of her social medial persona and is totally thrilled to be kidnapped and set up in a cool room where she can do whatever she wants and not have to worry about bills and rent and work and people-pleasing. But then she realizes she may have underestimated her kidnapper, and faceless queens haunt her dreams, and the walls start closing in.

Duane: Thanks for joinng us. Is there anything else you would like readers to know?

Betty: Yeah, I’ve just started a new podcast with my buddy Popeye Otaku called Popcast, so keep an eye out for that! We’re reading the original Popeye comic strips and they’re really weird and fun, and Troy has some great Popeye impressions.

Otherwise, follow me on twitter @bettyrocksteady or look me up on facebook or check out www.bettyrocksteady.com to find out more.

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We reviewed Betty Rocksteady’s The Writhing Skies on here last month:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/quiet-and-writhing-horrors-for-all-tastes/

 

 

There are many excellent writers of weird fiction who will not be remembered. I expect to be one of them (well, the ‘not remembered’ rather than the ‘excellent’ bit). But let’s not indulge in the cheerful supportive stuff for a moment, and let’s be real.

I (and perhaps you) have an inventiveness, a voice, and possibly a degree of craft, which exceed those of many authors who sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their books. I will never achieve those levels of sales. And you’re not supposed to say it, but I’m fairly sure I’m a more accomplished writer than a number of people who have contracts with the Big Five publishers. Yet I am largely unknown, whereas people who mass-produce often tedious, by-the-numbers novels have delightful fan clubs and an enthusiastic reception for every new work.

This is what is. It could be that you make choices. You might choose intense, solitary production of work which matters to you, and which has the slim chance of being noticed by serious literary critics, or which may only suit enthusiasts of a specific sub-genre. You might employ moderate use of social media, and hope that your presence and your work gradually seep into the public consciousness. Or you might spend many hours informing yourself about the creation of an audience – marketing, promotion, writer and reviewer networks; newsletters, constant timely book deals and utilisation of every trick in the book. Freebies, swag, book tours, mutual promotion schemes and all that jazz.

Or maybe, sometimes, you don’t feel you have a choice. You are not the sort of person who can do those latter things. You abhor them for the commercialised nonsense which is attached to the game, or you cannot, temperamentally, engage with it. You are a writer, not a witty, social engine. You deliver carefully, even painstakingly, constructed fictions which spring from deep experiences and emotions. You have doubts about the quality of your work, and fear that others will see flaws which are not even in there.

Or – let’s dig relentlessly – you feel that you yourself and/or your approach to writing are marginalised. You feel you are a Voice that They don’t want to hear. There are cliques and cadres of other writers, and it may not be true that you aren’t welcome, but you feel that way. It may be true, but not as often as you think it is. Many are a different gender, colour or sexual orientation to you. They seem to have the control and confidence which you have never raised, or which has been ground out of you.

These are the things we face; the days we inhabit. I’m a positive soul, but I don’t believe in pretending that the issues I mention above don’t exist. Nor do I ignore the fact that some people are not inherently very good writers, and that they should steer themselves more to the pleasure of having created, and have family and friends who thought it neat, and leave it there. Is the grind of years of craft development and thankless, badly-paid work worth taking it any further?

For those of us who must, for those who persevere and those who appear to have a natural literary grace, it is not necessarily any better than it is for those who write a few pieces for their friends, sit back and feel pleased. Maybe seventy three people will get it. Or forty three. It is said that many, many books sell less than one hundred copies. Others might have considered a purchase, but they have never heard of you or your book. They never will.

Large numbers of writers, a century and more ago, wrote ten, fifty, a hundred novels – huge novels – and hundreds of magazine stories. They are remembered for three or four anthologised supernatural tales, and most of their work is gone. Some of it was written from the heart, and had important social and literary relevance; some of it – the bulk – was mediocre and written to pay the bills.

I chose to write short stories at the age of fifty seven. And I could, if I wanted, cripple myself by dwelling on what has been lost, what would have happened if I’d done this ten, twenty, thirty years earlier. I wrote drafts of grimdark novels when the term didn’t exist; I have seen inventive twists I came up with thirty years ago employed and then over-employed in genre fiction. I drafted Imperial Gothic and ‘Penny Dreadful’ storylines before they were popular. So what? I wasn’t there at the right time, and it’s just tough luck.

I do not inhabit, fully, the zeitgeist of weird fiction, and will not achieve that status of being revered or mentioned frequently by the serious afficionados. I could complain about the lack of attention to certain of my dark and serious pieces, and the delightful though bizarre interest in others of less obvious worth. I could wonder if I made poor choices about genre and tone. But it’s just tough luck.

There are no cheering words, not in the sense that you might hope. A rising tide does not float all boats, however much we hope it does. It lifts some of them, but maybe not your boat or mine. There is only one reconciliation, one charitable act for your own good, and that is to acknowledge every fault, flaw and limitation of yourself and the entire writing and publishing world. And then get on with it.

To say yes, it is like this. And some of it is awful, unfair and even vicious in its impact. But you and I write. It matters to us, and it is what is.

I am a writer, and really, I’m quite glad I am. One voice which say “I liked that”, or “That affected me” is more than no voices. Infinitely more…

Today’s terrific Ten Questions interview, courtesy of our colonial correspondent Duane Pesice, considers a talented and much admired author of the modern weird, one S P Miskowski. Or for those who insist, S. P. Miskowski. We prefer to save up all those little dots for ellipses… We also add some of our usual useless historical trivia notes, because we clearly have a problem.

Continue reading S P Miskowski: Her Skillute is Mightier Than Her Sword →

We don’t really do ‘Best Of’ lists, because most of them are silly and far too idiosyncratic to whoever picks them. But we like to pick out works which embed themselves at the back of your mind. So we’re back again, this time with ten supernatural stories, some of which you’ll know, some of which you might not.

We have no reason to believe these will resonate with you as they do with us. But we did sort of have rules. As before, the stories picked had to be:

• properly supernatural or unnatural (no pretend hauntings, let-downs or mundane explanations that the cat did it)
• memorable for their themes, key elements or imagery
• different from the usual fare in some way, either in style, approach or resolution
• free of the standard vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies and cthulhoids

And each had to be a tale which remained in memory after the book was closed. Remember, these are not the ‘Goodness Me Bestest Stories Ever’, they’re simply ones we can’t forget. Continue reading Ten Supernatural Stories Which Stay With You →