Escape Hatch 056: Fifty-Two Pickup

Summer reading, summer plans, introducing the checklist

Checking In, Checking Out

If I’m not careful, I can overthink anything, even a newsletter.

But it’s the wrong sort of weather for overthinking—the wrong sort of day. The thermometer is just kissing seventy and the trees are tossing their young green leaves in a light breeze. It’s the sort of afternoon where you’re inclined to bail on work early, kick off your shoes, and sit outside with an old paperback and a cold bottle of something. Turn a few pages while the toddlers shout and charge across the grass on one of their feverish, inexplicable, little kid missions.

I turned in the third draft of King Sorrow at the beginning of the month and then placed two short stories with publishers, bang-bang. I’m not allowed to say where those shorts wound up just yet and I couldn’t tell you when my big flying dragon of a book will be in your local bookstore. I’ve heard summer 2025 tossed around. That would suit me. I was aiming to write a fat summer read, something to get lost in for a few weeks.

Then I laid off work for a time. Some real life stuff happened, had been happening for a while, the kind of real life stuff that puts the nonsense most of us worry about most of the time into perspective. My wife was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and they brought her in for surgery a couple weeks ago. She’s recovering well and is in good spirits. Her team was and is amazing; her medical outlook is good. We’ve been very lucky and have a lot of reasons to be grateful. Our warmest and best wishes go out to anyone whose life is, or has been, touched by cancer. It’s about as scary as things get.

I’m just now getting back to arranging words into neat lines and this newsletter is the proof. I’ve gone back to writing the first drafts of most everything longhand—even stuff as trivial as Escape Hatch. I feel more grounded and less distracted when I’m not looking at a screen. I stay offline most of the day. It’s easy. I don’t seem to want it. Someone else will have to sweat AI. I’m happy back here with my vinyl records and my collection of battered Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks.

Oh and speaking of those—

Spin, Spin

Locke & Key editor Chris Ryall has a drugstore spinner rack for his comics, and in his own Substack routinely showcases a batch of comic books all on a theme. I always look forward to seeing his latest curated collection.

I love Chris’s spinner rack feature so much I thought I’d borrow it this time out. Just to the right of my desk I’ve got a drugstore rack of my own, not for comics, but for Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks—the kind of books that had girls falling out of bikinis on the covers, while a chisel-faced thug with a gun in one fist sneers at the world.

Here’s the side of the rack dedicated to the sort of crime novels I always find myself drawn to right around this time of the year.

And, yes, if you look close, you can see the next side of the spinner rack has been colonized by Paperbacks from Hell.

Not pictured: the side of the spinner rack reserved for 60s era paperback sleaze. But just because I’m not showing off those winners today doesn’t mean you can’t hope for them in the future.

Crime novels and horror movies—that’s how I prefer to whittle away my summer. Oh, you too? You don’t say! Well then:

My friend Paul Tremblay has a new one out on the 11th and it looks essential for us fright fiends. Go get a faceful.

On The Market

Theoretically, I started this newsletter to sell stuff. But here I am writing you anyway, even though I have surprisingly little to peddle right now.

If you got $175 burning a hole in your pocket, Subterranean Press’s limited edition of “Late Returns” is illustrated to the hilt by Francois Vallaincourt and looks sensational.

Lividian Press might have a few copies of Horns available for sale when their own really glorious limited edition is ready to ship. If you want one, it can’t hurt to try the waiting list and see. They also price out at $175.

In the market for something a little more economical? You can always order a signed book from Water Street Books in Exeter, NH and that’s for cover price. Just be patient with me, I only get in to sign the stack about once a month. (Water Street has also started carrying Skelton Crew’s Keys to the Classics—the Crew’s most beautiful and inspired work ever.)

The Checklist

Possibly a new regular feature of the newsletter, here’s what I’ve been digging in the last few months:

[√] Fever House by Keith Rosson. Bonkers gut-spilling horror. I had an advance peek at the sequel, The Devil by Name, due later this year, and it’s a blast.

[√] The Dark and the Wicked. Shudder. I’m not sure I ever understood the why of this particular demonic haunting. But the first 90 minutes were so ferociously terrifying, I hardly cared. Repeat: Ferociously terrifying.

[√] Bodies. Netflix. Gripping time travel story, in which all the threads entwine together into a baffling work of beauty, something like a monkey’s fist knot.

[√] Somna by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay. Blood-drenched and monstrous erotica with plenty of folk horror witchy-ness.

Bonus:

[√] Renegade Nell, Disney+. Zippy Spielbergurian fun. It brings to mind what was best in those first couple Pirates of the Caribbean movies, minus all the bloat. I’m not surprised it grabbed me: the scriptwriter behind Nell is Sally Wainwright, who, alongside Craig Mazin, is the best in the field as far as I’m concerned.

Now you can’t say you have nothing to entertain you.

52 Pick-Up

I turn 52 in a few days, the full deck of cards at last. I admit I’m not a big cake guy—I don’t like anything too sweet. But you probably knew I don’t want it sweet just from looking at the stuff I like to read.

My people are healthy and well, so I’ve already got everything I need; as for everything I want, I picked up the new Black Crowes album for myself, what else is there? Probably should’ve put Happiness Bastards on the checklist too.

I hope you’ve got your summer reading lined up and that it’s all good stuff. Don’t forget your suntan lotion. I’ll catch you around.