I appreciate the well-wishes and support after last week’s email. Please keep my father in your prayers. He’s getting a lot of support from family and caregivers, and he needs it.

We’ve since learned more about his diagnosis, and it is grim: Stage IV cancer of the esophagus, with metastases to his lungs and adrenal gland.

But we’re fighting.

His oncologist is recommending chemotherapy. Last Friday I took him to the hospital for a port-a-cath implantation, the principal chemo delivery site. Next up is a PET scan, then chemotherapy education, and then the treatment itself should begin early next week. IV infusions twice weekly, followed by a week off. Repeat 4x and re-evaluate the progress, if any.

I have been told that this treatment is age appropriate and well-tolerated by most. His biggest problem right now is painful swallowing; solid foods must be mashed up and most of his calories are liquid. I hold no false hopes for a cure but we’re hoping the chemo could shrink the tumor in his esophagus and improve the quality of his remaining days.

If Dad can’t tolerate the side effects of the chemo we will discontinue.

I think you’d all like my Dad BTW. He once read me Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, and helped me build a kick-ass castle with cardboard tube towers, cutting out the crenellations with a jig saw and adding a working drawbridge. He never really got my weird fascinations with D&D and heavy metal … but he let me pursue them, with a smile. He helped shape who I am today.

A low-key Halloween

It was a low-key Halloween at home. A total of six trick-or-treaters. I sat on the porch looking at an empty street. But it was a mild night and the fall foliage this year has been stunning. Paired with a cold beer and a bowl of candy it was lovely.

I had to drive to Dad’s at the height of trick-or-treating to check in on him and saw some fabulous sights that put me in the Halloween spirit. Big groups of kids walking around from house to house in costume. Parents sitting around low fires with Yeti mugs, sipping booze. A circle of brightly light jack o’ lanterns placed around our downtown rotary. A house that went all in with eerie music and light show, watched by dozens.

Ray Bradbury would have enjoyed this quiet evening, a night when "Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades." (The Halloween Tree)

Later I put on an old favorite, An American Werewolf in London. My wife isn’t a horror fan but she relented on this night, and I think she enjoyed it.

Not bad.

Growing Up Metal strikes a power chord

By now it is apparent Growing Up Metal is two things:

1. Not as commercially popular as Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery. Less sales, less hype, less chatter.

2. More personally impactful than my prior book. The reviews are better, the individual messages and long phone calls I’ve received, rewarding in a deeper, more personal way. In short, its reception is every bit as strong as Flame and Crimson—for a smaller crowd (or in the spirit of the book, a Spinal Tap “more selective” audience).

Between Goodreads and Amazon I’m up to 20 total reviews, all five star. The comments speak for themselves. Here's a bit of a recent one:

If you enjoyed the book and haven’t left a comment or review, please do, it helps. If you like what I write here, if you enjoyed Flame and Crimson, or followed my blog these many long years, consider picking up a copy.

Regarding marketing, there is a power to video I haven’t fully appreciated. My conversation on the Rogues in the House podcast led to sales. It is a personal book, so seeing and hearing me talk about metal created a connection mere text cannot, I suppose.

I wish I had more time and enthusiasm for a podcast or YouTube channel of my own but I’m too much of a keyboard warrior and have a face for radio.

Odds and ends

• Current reading: The Once and Future King, T.H. White. I believe this is my third reading of White’s classic, a book which falls comfortably into my top 10 novels of all time. I was inspired to begin again by the enthusiasm of the dudes on The Cromcast, who are working through a reading of Book One, The Sword in the Stone. This book is magic in every sense, easily one of the finest works of fantasy you will ever read. The Lord of the Rings gets the edge for its sheer act of creation, but The Once and Future King is every bit its peer for beauty of writing and depth of meaning.
• Current listening: The Exorcist on Weird Studies. This particular combination of words typed in that order should prompt you to stop whatever you’re doing and go listen. Halloween may be over but this is a must-listen episode of a highly recommended podcast and will probably prompt you to revisit director William Friedkin’s 1973 classic. As always, brilliant and insightful conversation between the two co-hosts.
• Rest in Peace, Leodegrance aka., Patrick Stewart. I join the list of mourners for the great British actor of stage and screen. But while most (understandably) revere Stewart for his work in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or his turn as Magneto in the X-Men, how about his memorable appearance in Excalibur? Leodegrance may have failed to draw the sword from the stone, but he was the first noble to follow his heart and rally to the boy king: "I saw what I saw! The boy drew the sword. If a boy has been chosen, a boy shall be King!"
• A Rainbow over Metal Friday. This past week on the blog I featured “Run With the Wolf” off Rainbow Rising (1976). I’ve been digging a bit deeper into Rainbow’s early catalog, inspired by finishing the Ronnie James Dio autobiography Rainbow in the Dark. News flash: Rainbow is good.

How did your candy supply hold out this Halloween? Send Brian your spare Snickers.