"Black Cab" appears in my massive story collection UNTIL YOU CAN SCREAM NO MORE! (You'll get more than 50 full-length stories!) or in the audio-exclusive collection URBAN NIGHTMARES! |
HOW I CAME TO WRITE "BLACK CAB"
by
David Bain
My story “Black Cab” stems directly from the lyrics of the song of the same name by the Swedish musician Jens Lekman.
“They might be psycho killers but tonight I really don’t care.”
And:
“Take me home or take me anywhere.”
Boom.
There you are.
I really don’t need to write much else.
I listened to the song on a CD in the car on the way to work one morning, and the idea simply gelled. I had some time before work and I wrote it pretty much in one sitting, in an hour or two.
The only version I can find online anymore isn't my favorite version, but here you go. There doesn’t seem to be an official video, but I’m really amused by Lekman’s deadpan, sword-wielding, hand-clapping, armor-wearing, just-got-busted persona in his video for “You Are the Light.”
I always find it interesting that people who associate me strictly with horror presume I must listen exclusively to industrial/metal/tortureporn/sadomaso-rock.
Truth be told, I listen to some, but not much of that - but I do try to listen to music without prejudice.
Inspiration can come from anywhere.
Want to know one of my biggest failures as a human being? Well, I’ll suck it up and admit it right here: I can’t play or read a single note of music. For now at least. I’m a proud lifelong learner and music is something I’d like to tackle before I kick it - music is the background of almost all my waking life (unless I’m listening to an audiobook).
Basically, when it comes to music, I look for wit and talent. I find some death metal full of wit and talent. I find some (but not much) disco full of wit and talent.
And I certainly find Jens Lekman full of wit and talent.
I tend to use the same credentials for fiction, for art, for movies and TV, etc.
The genre matters not.
***
My egalitarian art lecture aside, “Black Cab” has an interesting publication history. The evening after I wrote it, I sent it off to Mike Kelly, a writer I knew from his excellent stories as well as his presence on various message boards which I was a member of - perhaps this tells you a little about the age of the story, given that message boards were still a thing. Mike had recently acquired the editorship of City Slab Magazine, which had a great, long-standing rep for dark urban fantasy.
Mike accepted the story in short order.
Soon thereafter I saw a copy of City Slab in my local Hallmark store, and was triply excited, as I’d never appeared in any locally-available magazine before.
Then, sometime later, Mike e-mailed me to say the issue had been shipped to the printers.
Hurray!
And then, the very next day, there was an email saying the magazine had folded.
Ah, yes, the mid-to-late '00s. So much quality print died - and so often it was sudden like that, like a hitman had crept in during the middle of the night and slit the faithful ‘zine’s throat in the name of a thousand “submit-for-exposure” copy-and-paste online wannabes.
It was right around this time that I ran into J. A. Konrath’s blog. Konrath was talking about this revolutionary form of self-publishing, claiming the stigma was slipping away from the term, claiming he was making oodles of money.
So I decided to try it. Just happened to have a new story sitting around, after all.
Thus “Black Cab” became my first self-published piece (sometime in early 2011, I believe). I still pursue publishing in many different forms, but self-pub’s been pretty decent to me. I could probably create or buy a better cover for this one, but that’s my original first effort, and I keep it around for nostalgia’s sake.
by
David Bain
My story “Black Cab” stems directly from the lyrics of the song of the same name by the Swedish musician Jens Lekman.
“They might be psycho killers but tonight I really don’t care.”
And:
“Take me home or take me anywhere.”
Boom.
There you are.
I really don’t need to write much else.
I listened to the song on a CD in the car on the way to work one morning, and the idea simply gelled. I had some time before work and I wrote it pretty much in one sitting, in an hour or two.
The only version I can find online anymore isn't my favorite version, but here you go. There doesn’t seem to be an official video, but I’m really amused by Lekman’s deadpan, sword-wielding, hand-clapping, armor-wearing, just-got-busted persona in his video for “You Are the Light.”
I always find it interesting that people who associate me strictly with horror presume I must listen exclusively to industrial/metal/tortureporn/sadomaso-rock.
Truth be told, I listen to some, but not much of that - but I do try to listen to music without prejudice.
Inspiration can come from anywhere.
Want to know one of my biggest failures as a human being? Well, I’ll suck it up and admit it right here: I can’t play or read a single note of music. For now at least. I’m a proud lifelong learner and music is something I’d like to tackle before I kick it - music is the background of almost all my waking life (unless I’m listening to an audiobook).
Basically, when it comes to music, I look for wit and talent. I find some death metal full of wit and talent. I find some (but not much) disco full of wit and talent.
And I certainly find Jens Lekman full of wit and talent.
I tend to use the same credentials for fiction, for art, for movies and TV, etc.
The genre matters not.
***
My egalitarian art lecture aside, “Black Cab” has an interesting publication history. The evening after I wrote it, I sent it off to Mike Kelly, a writer I knew from his excellent stories as well as his presence on various message boards which I was a member of - perhaps this tells you a little about the age of the story, given that message boards were still a thing. Mike had recently acquired the editorship of City Slab Magazine, which had a great, long-standing rep for dark urban fantasy.
Mike accepted the story in short order.
Soon thereafter I saw a copy of City Slab in my local Hallmark store, and was triply excited, as I’d never appeared in any locally-available magazine before.
Then, sometime later, Mike e-mailed me to say the issue had been shipped to the printers.
Hurray!
And then, the very next day, there was an email saying the magazine had folded.
Ah, yes, the mid-to-late '00s. So much quality print died - and so often it was sudden like that, like a hitman had crept in during the middle of the night and slit the faithful ‘zine’s throat in the name of a thousand “submit-for-exposure” copy-and-paste online wannabes.
It was right around this time that I ran into J. A. Konrath’s blog. Konrath was talking about this revolutionary form of self-publishing, claiming the stigma was slipping away from the term, claiming he was making oodles of money.
So I decided to try it. Just happened to have a new story sitting around, after all.
Thus “Black Cab” became my first self-published piece (sometime in early 2011, I believe). I still pursue publishing in many different forms, but self-pub’s been pretty decent to me. I could probably create or buy a better cover for this one, but that’s my original first effort, and I keep it around for nostalgia’s sake.
"Black Cab" appears in my massive story collection UNTIL YOU CAN SCREAM NO MORE! (You'll get more than 50 full-length stories!) or in the audio-exclusive collection URBAN NIGHTMARES! |