Guest Post: Avalanche by Tom Piccirilli

As many of you know, I’m a HUGE fan of Tom Piccirilli. Over the last twenty years,  Piccirilli’s tried his hand at virtually every genre. But in my opinion, his stellar crime novels (particularly his “noirellas” such as The Short Ride To No Where, The Last Deep Breath, and the brilliant Every Shallow Cut.) have been must reads for me.

Piccirilli’s latest, The Last Kind Words, may very well be his strongest novel to date, and currently ranks as one of my top reads of 2012. And I’m very excited to host Piccirilli as he gears up for the release of The Last Kind Words on June 12th.

Avalanche by Tom Piccirilli

As anyone who’s ever read my blog knows, I talk a lot about my growing sentimentality, or better put, the burdensome weight of the past.  Those feelings were especially true last night at the drive-in. 

I clearly remember my first drive-in experience. I couldn’t have been more than three.  My parents took me to see Planet of the Apes during its initial run back in ‘68, a film which utterly terrified me.  The human hunt early on in the picture freaked my little ass out.  I was so scared I was speechless, which is a good thing because my father hated my whining. (I was a big whiner. I still am.)

Nowadays the drive-in experience is a little different.  My wife and I pack our three dogs into the car, we stop and grab dinner (last night it was a couple of calzones from Chicago’s), we eat, walk the dogs around the lot, and then settle in.  Nowadays you listen to the movie over your radio, not over those big speaker boxes you hang on your window (I kind of miss them). 

More gravity from the past: the two movies playing were The Avengers and Dark Shadows.  The Avengers was one of the first comic books I ever pored over.  It was an early issue, #5, which came out in ‘63, two years before I was born.  My brother, Bill, who’s eleven years older, must’ve had it lying around in a drawer for a while.  I clearly recall him telling me Thor was his favorite character because he had long hair (Bill was a hippie with big porkchop sideburns at the time). 

When I finally picked up another copy of the issue a few years ago off eBay, I was surprised at how much I remembered: the storyline, bits of dialogue, and even what certain panels of art looked like.  People can slam comic books all day long as being silly or cheesy, but as a child I found them mind-expanding.  They fired my imagination.  They started the tickle that led to the itch that became my passion and need to write.

But we’re not through with our nostalgic trip yet.  Because the second feature last night was Dark Shadows.  While the film is utterly awful in my opinion, it also brought me back to the late 60s when I’d plant myself in front of the TV and watch Barnabas and the whole cursed Collins family try to untangle themselves from the trials of enduring vampirism, witchcraft, spectres, lycanthropy, and other supernatural and non-supernatural ills. That show had impact on a kid, let me tell you.

So the past was heavy last night. My parents were on my mind.  My brother, the house I grew up in, the stirrings of early imagination.  I remembered sitting outside a stationary store with a long-dead friend of mine reading comics in the early 70s.  I remembered that the kid had long blonde hair like Thor.  I remembered when he got run over on his bike while delivering newspapers on his route. 

But, really, the past is always opening wide beneath my feet.  It’s the well from which I draw my water.  All of it.  My next story, like the current one, like the last one, will be built on the foundation of comics, movies, old TV shows, the actions of my mother and father, some offhand remark made by my brother almost fifty years ago, the great human hunt by talking apes on horseback.   I never know when some pebble will fall from the cliffs of my subconscious to start an avalanche of memory, motif, and compulsion. 

What’s in the water of your well?

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty novels, including THE LAST KIND WORDS, which bestselling author Lee Child called “Perfect crime fiction.” (Click HERE to order) He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Learn more about Tom at: www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com