The rains are back, boo hoo.

It seems that the all too brief Seattle summer of 2011 is officially over. The rain has been pouring down for the last two days and the temperature has taken a dip. The autumn season is underway and the leaves will soon be changing. This weekend brought the Fall Carnival to B-Town and Oktoberfest is right around the corner which includes the B-Town Brat Trot, a charity 5k race benefitting the Highline Schools Foundation for Excellence, Safe Kids King County and Mary Bridge Childrens Hospital.




Our favorite eatery The Tin Room Bar puts this on each year and it's a blast. There will be a German Oompah band, beer and brats. The yodeling dominatrix will be there. Everything a great Oktoberfest needs. So there that to look forward to in the coming days. I will give you a full report.  But in the meantime it's chilly, rainy and windy. So I have made the first fire of the season and curled up with a good book. I am going to use my blog this week to give a shameless plug to my good friend Wayne Wise, the author of my current read, Scratch.

Wayne Wise is a writer, artist, seeker, shaman and magician, or at least claims to be in casual conversation. He has a BA in History and an MA in Clinical Psychology and in his life has worked as a counselor, an administrative assistant for a state legislator, an inter-office mail courier, a freelance comic book inker, and a department store Santa. He wrote music and comics-based articles for several local news mags and a couple of national magazines. In 1993 he and his business partner/collaborator Fred Wheaton self-published the comic book "Grey Legacy". In 2010 he wrote and drew a follow-up called "Grey Legacy Tales". Raised in rural southwestern Pennsylvania he is currently employed by the Eisner Award-nominated comic book store Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh and recently taught a course in Comics and Pop Culture as a guest lecturer at Chatham University. You can read his Blog at www.wayne-wise.com.










I am really enjoying the book and highly recommend it to you. A horror/fantasy  fiction that is entertaining and well written. If you are a Stephen King or Dean Koontz fan you will like Scratch.  Great charactor development that plays on our most primal fears. I also have to disclose that the illustrations are done by my brother, Marcel Lamont Walker. The story is:



Like all small rural towns, Canaan, West Virginia has its secrets: lies, infidelities, and even murder are kept hidden in the minds of the residents there. But there is one secret they will go to any lengths to protect.


A little girl named Gabrielle, believed to be an angel, has been kept chained in the church basement for over a century now, prisoner of an ancient pact. Unaging and unearthly beautiful, Gabrielle has the power to heal.


A madman pursues outsiders Adam and Holly Mansfield to Canaan, intent on kidnapping their daughter. Once there they discover there is one other secret in Canaan.


Chained deep in the heart of the mountain is another being, a demon called Scratch. If Gabrielle is freed, Scratch will be as well, and his vengeance and evil will consume the town.

A great read.