Read a Good Book Lately?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how books create atmosphere and unforgettable characters. It's one of the biggest inspirations behind my own project, SAVAGE SMILE, which I originally wrote as a novel before adapting it into a screenplay.

I thought I'd share the first chapter for anyone who's interested in dark mysteries and stories where every choice has consequences.

My coming-of-age memoir was released recently.

Single-sentence description: Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood is a coming-of-age story about identity and self-acceptance, as told through the lens of Francis DiClemente's journey to adulthood after being diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was 15 years old.

https://www.amazon.com/Stunted-Delayed-Manhood-Francis-DiClemente/dp/147...

https://a.co/d/0992M8s7

Hi. I'm getting a late start on this site and want to introduce myself. I'm Dave Gordon, and under the pen name "Gorde" I am the creator/writer/illustrator of a new independent comic book series called "BEING GORDY, A Situation Comedy."

Many years ago, BEING GORDY was created with the goal of daily comic strip newspaper syndication. That didn't work out the way I had hoped, but I believed in this property and these characters I created. My entire life I have loved three things — comic books, comic strips, and TV situation comedy. Once I made the leap and fully embraced all three together, I ended up with the following ... a TV show in comic book form, and with a rightly-sarcastic comic strip sensibility to it (wearing my early roots on my sleeve). Each issue is a self-contained story — beginning, middle, and end ... just like a tv sitcom episode. And each episode of BEING GORDY pays tribute to one of my favorite television shows of the past. Among other things, this comic series is a love letter to classic television I grew up on. My pilot issue pays homage to Garry Marshall's "The Odd Couple." I self-published the first issue back in 2024. It's can be sampled and purchased on my website — beinggordy.com.

I am currently crowdfunding the 2nd issue on Kickstarter (only 6 days left) for an August release. Issue 2 pays tribute the a classic sitcom from the 1960's — "F-Troop." This second tale of BEING GORDY is a simple one that proudly wears its stupidity on its sleeve. Gordy takes a genealogy test and is told he is 98% Native American. He was never the most religious Jew, but Gordy likes the idea of telling his Rabbi to "take a hike" and walk the path of his new identity as one of the indigenous people. And as is with everything else involving Gordy — chaos ensues, and his best friends Paige and Max are along for the ride, whether they want it or not.

If anyone is curious, the KS page offers a 10-page preview of the new issue. The link is: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beinggordy/being-gordy-a-situation-...

Enclosed is my cover for issue #2. Thanks for listening, and "Stay Tuned!"

Over the past few years, and especially since the recent movie, The Backrooms have become the go-to for liminal spaces and liminal horror. However, there is a 1964 story that gets at the same fears, while offering some insight where they come from. The parlance and vocabulary are a relic of their time and feel odd at times, but the story remains readily accessible.

An unnamed protagonist (referred to only as “he”) lives a comfortable life in a nice city, but is spending beyond his means. He pays with “charge” (aka credit card) and feels “giddy with self-indulgence” as he buys “fancy groceries,” several books, and then tosses a coin to decide on his last stop in the shopping a gallery: a tailor for a new suit or the top floor cafe for a treat.

It ends up being the treat, so up he goes, enjoys that dessert (baklava) and then starts the what the title suggest: his descent back down. He is so familiar with escalators in this store, referred to as “Underwoods,” that he reads one of his new books as he goes down. When he makes it to each landing, he walks over to the next section of escalator without looking up from the book he is so enthralled in…

It’s only when he’s on page 55 that something feels odd… he’s on another landing… he feels he reads roughly a page per minute, so has he been on the escalator for nearly an hour? And where is everyone? What floor is he on?

This is only page 4 of the edition I read and the remaining 10 pages are the liminal horror. I found it surprisingly well done for a time when the concept was far from what it is today. I haven’t read into the biography and works of author Thomas M. Disch, but he did have much to draw from in his time. Folk tales of impossible paths in the forest, ancient castles, even Lovecraft who described impossible (albeit alien) places. The interesting thing here is that Disch puts all that into into a modern shopping center. Given the time of writing, 1964, a 15-story shopping gallery with full escalator access was a novelty. So much like the famous “backrooms” image that took empty commercial space and made it into a nightmare with a short paragraph, here we have 14 pages of initially lively commercial space that inexplicably empties.

Why? When exactly? In liminal horror fashion, that’s quite never answered, but certainly open to discussion and I’ll start!

Commercial spaces are huge and impersonal, almost purely transactional, so the man fell behind. He lives alone, so has lack of social connection. On page 1 he has a credit card bill for the very store he’s going to, but ignores it for more shopping, so has racked up debt. His narration barely mentions anyone else at the shopping gallery, aka Underwoods, so he’s totally focuses on material goods.

We’re well into the 2020s and those are still very real problems people face and many are overwhelmed by them as they become too hard to manage and fall out of our control.

Has a very established character that you like ever taken a very unexpected turn? Well...

I recently read the excellent 6-part series Punisher: Soviet. It ran from November 2019 to March 2020, aka right until the time the world seemed to turn upside down. And it seems oddly fitting given what the Punisher does in this series.

A quick spoiler free recap: gangsters are dropping dead in NYC but it's not the Punisher's doing even though organized crime thinks it is. After doing some digging (and going past another pile of bodies he didn't create), the Punisher meets Valery Stepanovich. And this is where the story gets interesting. It's not entirely unpredictable, Valery is even made out to be the "Russian Punisher" on the cover art of the first issue (see pic), but his backstory is very well fleshed out. Thus, the execution and storytelling, I felt, makes him more than just "Punisher Russian = Valery."

Like Frank Castle, the Punisher, Valery is a disgruntled veteran who's life of service in Afghanistan went unrewarded while corrupt high level officers made bank... and led to the death of Valery's paratrooper unit. He uncovered this years later and so started his vigilantism. The story of the Soviet-Afghan War gets the better part of issue #3 as Valery recounts his past and it's a great mix of patriotism, anger, and understanding.

Since this is spoiler-free, I won't spoil the details, but this lengthy recap does factor into the main story and the Punisher's final action in this series --- minor spoiler, but it's THE BIG CHANGE that round of the Punisher's arc here --- and that's NOT killing which goes against his entire ethos, but it's an action influenced by Valery.

I haven't followed The Punisher in a long time, but this was a very welcome read and break from screenplays. The visual aspect of comics makes them cinematic and the pacing is very sharp. Informatibe for screenwriters.

A highly recommended read for gritty action fans.

Now available on Amazon !