Geek that I am, I've been playing this game called "Vampire Wars" on facebook for the last few weeks. The game itself is not that great, really. I don't know why the hell I keep coming back to it. It's kind of a bare-bones role playing game. All text-based, like old time D&D games. You earn skill points and strength points and all those other things RPG types are familiar with.
The thing appears to be wildly popular. Facebook (which I spend way too much time on, by the way) offers a lot of these type of games, but the Vampire application really seems to have a following.
This got me to thinking. As a writer, I've always resisted entering the vampire genre, but there really does seem to be a built-in audience for anything undead. My feeling was always that the vampire tale had been "done to death" so to speak, and done quite well. From Bram Stoker to Anne Rice, what more could there be to say?
Now I'm beginning to re-think that. Maybe the vampire mythos enjoys such an enduring place in the human imagination for a reason.
On the one hand, they are a romantic monster. Elegant, sophisticated and beautiful -- sexy even, in the hands of many authors. But for all their power and allure, they are the most tragic of all mythical creatures. They have what we all wish we could have, immunity from death and suffering, but it is this very quality that renders them hopeless and alone. They embody the things we wish we could have, and yet suffer from the same fundamental problems that we do.
So if they are "us", then there's always more to be said.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Whatever works, I guess
I'm back. At least my ability to put words together on a page is back, for now.
I have no idea how this works. Last month, I couldn't string a sentence together. I'd just stare at the page, coming up with nothing. Nothing. Now, for no apparent reason, the old gray matter is ready to work again.
In the last month or so I've taken a minor break from writing. It seems to have helped. Part of it was involuntary, of course, I couldn't do it even when I wanted to. The other part was just circumstance. I took a few road trips.
Early in October I drove over to Pittsburgh to meet up with an old buddy from NJ, and to watch the Devils edge out the Penguins -- behind enemy lines. I'd been to Pittsburgh before. It's a lot like my adopted hometown of Cleveland, for as much as residents of both cities like to act as if one or the other is somehow far superior to their rival. I guess that's how people from the rest of the country look at my precious Boston-New York rivalry. Without a dog in the fight, it probably looks like two groups of very similar people, from very similar places who just love to act like they hate each other.
A few weeks later, I ventured further east, to Virginia. With a bunch of fellow attorneys and amateur Civil War buffs, we toured two battlefields, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. I love doing that. some of those places are so pristine, it's like taking a vacation in the 19th century, albeit with a nice hotel suite to go back to at the end of the day.
Funny story, we got lost in the woods, near a thick forest area they called "The Wilderness" during the war. At some point, we did consider resorting to cannibalism if our barely-remembered Cub Scout training proved unable to find us a way out. Luckily we weren't lost for that long, but I'm wondering if I can turn that into some kind of a horror story.
So now, like magic, I come home and find that I'm able to write again. Maybe it was just the R&R that hit the "reset" button on my current manuscript. Then again, there's nothing quite like a real-life discussion of human sacrifice to get the creative juices flowing.
I have no idea how this works. Last month, I couldn't string a sentence together. I'd just stare at the page, coming up with nothing. Nothing. Now, for no apparent reason, the old gray matter is ready to work again.
In the last month or so I've taken a minor break from writing. It seems to have helped. Part of it was involuntary, of course, I couldn't do it even when I wanted to. The other part was just circumstance. I took a few road trips.
Early in October I drove over to Pittsburgh to meet up with an old buddy from NJ, and to watch the Devils edge out the Penguins -- behind enemy lines. I'd been to Pittsburgh before. It's a lot like my adopted hometown of Cleveland, for as much as residents of both cities like to act as if one or the other is somehow far superior to their rival. I guess that's how people from the rest of the country look at my precious Boston-New York rivalry. Without a dog in the fight, it probably looks like two groups of very similar people, from very similar places who just love to act like they hate each other.
A few weeks later, I ventured further east, to Virginia. With a bunch of fellow attorneys and amateur Civil War buffs, we toured two battlefields, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. I love doing that. some of those places are so pristine, it's like taking a vacation in the 19th century, albeit with a nice hotel suite to go back to at the end of the day.
Funny story, we got lost in the woods, near a thick forest area they called "The Wilderness" during the war. At some point, we did consider resorting to cannibalism if our barely-remembered Cub Scout training proved unable to find us a way out. Luckily we weren't lost for that long, but I'm wondering if I can turn that into some kind of a horror story.
So now, like magic, I come home and find that I'm able to write again. Maybe it was just the R&R that hit the "reset" button on my current manuscript. Then again, there's nothing quite like a real-life discussion of human sacrifice to get the creative juices flowing.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Dreaded Block
It's happening again. Writer's block.
It's no myth. No fantasy. It's very real. And it's got me stuck.
I was cruising along, too. I'm approximately halfway through a new manuscript, I had all the major characters established, the plot was moving just as it should and then -- boom. Nothing. Every time I've sat down to write for the last few weeks, I haven't been able to muster a word. Not a thing.
The worst part of it is that it's largely self-inflicted. When I do think about writing at the moment, I'm thinking about sales figures, about distribution, about reviews -- or the lack of them, about getting a deal for my most recent finished manuscript, and even obsessing over the details of my first one -- why it didn't sell as many as I'd hoped, why it didn't get in more stores.
This is supposed to be about the process. The writing itself. Doing it for its own sake. Not for money (God knows I haven't really made any). Not for recognition (no problem there, either). Not for the business.
But for some reason, that's all I can think about right now.
It's no myth. No fantasy. It's very real. And it's got me stuck.
I was cruising along, too. I'm approximately halfway through a new manuscript, I had all the major characters established, the plot was moving just as it should and then -- boom. Nothing. Every time I've sat down to write for the last few weeks, I haven't been able to muster a word. Not a thing.
The worst part of it is that it's largely self-inflicted. When I do think about writing at the moment, I'm thinking about sales figures, about distribution, about reviews -- or the lack of them, about getting a deal for my most recent finished manuscript, and even obsessing over the details of my first one -- why it didn't sell as many as I'd hoped, why it didn't get in more stores.
This is supposed to be about the process. The writing itself. Doing it for its own sake. Not for money (God knows I haven't really made any). Not for recognition (no problem there, either). Not for the business.
But for some reason, that's all I can think about right now.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A New Day
I haven't updated this blog since July. Not that I haven't been working, I just haven't had much to put up here.
The other day my agent asked me to put up a "blurb" on her website (agentR.com) for the manuscript that I've been working on this summer. It's not done. I'm barely halfway through it, in fact. While I usually don't like to do this -- I don't even let anyone read what I'm writing until it's done -- in this case I'll make an exception. This project is all outlined already, which is another thing I don't usually do, but it means that I know pretty much how it's going to look when I finish it.
If you've read this blog at all, then you might recall that about a year ago (after several trips to the desert Southwest) I started musing about the idea of a horror-fantasy set in the Old West. The blurb that follows is the result of those ideas rattling around my head for a while.
The other manuscript I posted about a while back, "The Prometheus Gate" is still out there in the ether, so keep checking back for updates on that one.
Anyway, here's the teaser for the new one, working title "The Hand of Osiris":
The year is 1879. Bounty hunter Jacob Hatcher has pursued the outlaw Jedediah Sykes from the Texas prairie to the deserts of the Arizona Territory. On the verge of capture, Sykes escapes into a valley that Hatcher’s Apache guides refuse to enter, warning that the lands are cursed by an ancient, nameless evil. The trail leads him to a town that appears on no maps, a dark paradise of sin and vice called Gehenna. Though gambling and gunfights rule the day, no one in Gehenna ever dies. Unless everyone in Gehenna is already dead. Hatcher and Sykes soon find themselves entangled in the mysteries of Gehenna’s peculiar denizens – a pale dandy, a fire & brimstone Jesuit preaching to a city of lost souls, and a shadowy figure who rules over the town like a living god. When one of them makes a choice that threatens to damn them all, the rest must work together, confronting not only their own demons, but the hidden horrors of Gehenna itself, to find a stolen key that can unlock the domain of the dead. The Hand of Osiris.
The other day my agent asked me to put up a "blurb" on her website (agentR.com) for the manuscript that I've been working on this summer. It's not done. I'm barely halfway through it, in fact. While I usually don't like to do this -- I don't even let anyone read what I'm writing until it's done -- in this case I'll make an exception. This project is all outlined already, which is another thing I don't usually do, but it means that I know pretty much how it's going to look when I finish it.
If you've read this blog at all, then you might recall that about a year ago (after several trips to the desert Southwest) I started musing about the idea of a horror-fantasy set in the Old West. The blurb that follows is the result of those ideas rattling around my head for a while.
The other manuscript I posted about a while back, "The Prometheus Gate" is still out there in the ether, so keep checking back for updates on that one.
Anyway, here's the teaser for the new one, working title "The Hand of Osiris":
The year is 1879. Bounty hunter Jacob Hatcher has pursued the outlaw Jedediah Sykes from the Texas prairie to the deserts of the Arizona Territory. On the verge of capture, Sykes escapes into a valley that Hatcher’s Apache guides refuse to enter, warning that the lands are cursed by an ancient, nameless evil. The trail leads him to a town that appears on no maps, a dark paradise of sin and vice called Gehenna. Though gambling and gunfights rule the day, no one in Gehenna ever dies. Unless everyone in Gehenna is already dead. Hatcher and Sykes soon find themselves entangled in the mysteries of Gehenna’s peculiar denizens – a pale dandy, a fire & brimstone Jesuit preaching to a city of lost souls, and a shadowy figure who rules over the town like a living god. When one of them makes a choice that threatens to damn them all, the rest must work together, confronting not only their own demons, but the hidden horrors of Gehenna itself, to find a stolen key that can unlock the domain of the dead. The Hand of Osiris.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Opinions May Vary
I got a kick out of this.
Every so often I google "The Lucifer Messiah." I used to do it a lot, during the first six months after it came out. Not nearly as much lately. The great thing about all this "inter-connectivity" these days is that you can find out all kinds of things you never could have known before: who's reading your book, what they think about it, even where they got it.
You can also get a great, and sometimes humorous, sense of how people think your work ranks compared to other authors.
That's what I found today.
I googled the book and a site popped up that I had never visited before. A reader had posted a whole long list of books that he'd read recently. He categorized them into those that he considered "Good" "Okay" and "Awful."
I already knew my book was on the list somewhere, but I didn't know where. So I scrolled through it.
The good news?
My book is in the same category with novels by Kurt Vonnegut, William Peter Blatty of "The Exorcist," Thomas Harris of "Silence of the Lambs," "Red Dragon" and "Hannibal,"C.S. Lewis and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Fine literary company, indeed, wouldn't you say?
Well, here's the rub. According to this particular blogger, all of us wrote books that fell into the "OKAY" category.
Oh well, you can't please everyone, right?
I suppose I 'd rather be considered "Okay" alongside Kurt Vonnegut than be considered "Good" alongside Terry Brooks and that Christopher Paolini kid. Don't even get me started on that.
Every so often I google "The Lucifer Messiah." I used to do it a lot, during the first six months after it came out. Not nearly as much lately. The great thing about all this "inter-connectivity" these days is that you can find out all kinds of things you never could have known before: who's reading your book, what they think about it, even where they got it.
You can also get a great, and sometimes humorous, sense of how people think your work ranks compared to other authors.
That's what I found today.
I googled the book and a site popped up that I had never visited before. A reader had posted a whole long list of books that he'd read recently. He categorized them into those that he considered "Good" "Okay" and "Awful."
I already knew my book was on the list somewhere, but I didn't know where. So I scrolled through it.
The good news?
My book is in the same category with novels by Kurt Vonnegut, William Peter Blatty of "The Exorcist," Thomas Harris of "Silence of the Lambs," "Red Dragon" and "Hannibal,"C.S. Lewis and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Fine literary company, indeed, wouldn't you say?
Well, here's the rub. According to this particular blogger, all of us wrote books that fell into the "OKAY" category.
Oh well, you can't please everyone, right?
I suppose I 'd rather be considered "Okay" alongside Kurt Vonnegut than be considered "Good" alongside Terry Brooks and that Christopher Paolini kid. Don't even get me started on that.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Gettysburg, Shelby Foote and the 4th
I just read Shelby Foote's "Stars in Their Courses." That's not actually a complete book. It's a very small segment of the middle volume of a three volume history of the American Civil War. I hope someday to read the entire thing.
This has become something of a minor obsession for me lately. A few weekends ago I visited Gettysburg for the first time. It's an amazing place. Nowhere that I've been to is quite like it. I could go on for pages and pages about why Gettysburg is so important, why it's so meaningful, why the place is so affecting. But other, better writers have already done that, and if you care at all about the subject, you'd do well to read any of them.
Shelby Foote, would be a good first choice.
He was a gifted writer. His words do what every writer attempts, and what few ever achieve. They do not merely describe, they evoke. Both transcedent beauty and horrific suffering, and every shade in between. He weaves an epic tale, all the more touching because it is no tale, as he reminds the reader every few pages by digressing -- never for long and never without good reason -- with personal stories about the men who fought and died all those years ago.
As the Fourth of July draws to a rainy close here in North Jersey, Shelby Foote has me thinking. That's what we should have been talking about today. That's the point. But all day, while HBO ran a "John Adams" marathon and one of the other cable channels ran all the episodes of "The American Revolution" series back-to-back, I didn't see a single mention of the Civil War, let alone Gettysburg, which was fought on the first 3 days of July.
That's a shame, because an understanding of the Civil War is essential to an understanding of the United States. The freedoms that were won during the Revolution, the freedoms proclaimed by Jefferson and the men in Philadelphia on this date 232 years ago, marked only the beginning of the story. In many important ways, the ultimate success of that revolution wasn't realized until the Civil War, and no one moment better encapsulates the Civil War than the Battle of Gettysburg itself.
Shelby Foote summed it up so well, with one statement that everyone should know about the U.S.
Before the Civil War people would typically say "The United States are..." After the war however, and ever since, people say "The Unites States is..." And that's what the war meant at it's most basic level. That's what all the blood spilled and the suffering endured at places like Gettysburg achieved. Foote says, as only he could: "the war made us an is."
The Fourth of July marks the date when a group of sovereign states came together to end their collective rule from London. But it was only many years later that those several states truly became what we are now, one single nation.
This has become something of a minor obsession for me lately. A few weekends ago I visited Gettysburg for the first time. It's an amazing place. Nowhere that I've been to is quite like it. I could go on for pages and pages about why Gettysburg is so important, why it's so meaningful, why the place is so affecting. But other, better writers have already done that, and if you care at all about the subject, you'd do well to read any of them.
Shelby Foote, would be a good first choice.
He was a gifted writer. His words do what every writer attempts, and what few ever achieve. They do not merely describe, they evoke. Both transcedent beauty and horrific suffering, and every shade in between. He weaves an epic tale, all the more touching because it is no tale, as he reminds the reader every few pages by digressing -- never for long and never without good reason -- with personal stories about the men who fought and died all those years ago.
As the Fourth of July draws to a rainy close here in North Jersey, Shelby Foote has me thinking. That's what we should have been talking about today. That's the point. But all day, while HBO ran a "John Adams" marathon and one of the other cable channels ran all the episodes of "The American Revolution" series back-to-back, I didn't see a single mention of the Civil War, let alone Gettysburg, which was fought on the first 3 days of July.
That's a shame, because an understanding of the Civil War is essential to an understanding of the United States. The freedoms that were won during the Revolution, the freedoms proclaimed by Jefferson and the men in Philadelphia on this date 232 years ago, marked only the beginning of the story. In many important ways, the ultimate success of that revolution wasn't realized until the Civil War, and no one moment better encapsulates the Civil War than the Battle of Gettysburg itself.
Shelby Foote summed it up so well, with one statement that everyone should know about the U.S.
Before the Civil War people would typically say "The United States are..." After the war however, and ever since, people say "The Unites States is..." And that's what the war meant at it's most basic level. That's what all the blood spilled and the suffering endured at places like Gettysburg achieved. Foote says, as only he could: "the war made us an is."
The Fourth of July marks the date when a group of sovereign states came together to end their collective rule from London. But it was only many years later that those several states truly became what we are now, one single nation.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
My First Ever "Fan" Call
This is a new one.
As a writer, I don't really get fan mail. When The Lucifer Messiah came out in 2006, I got a few emails from people who had read the book. Mostly they were just dropping a line to say a nice thing or two.
That died down quickly. Then I went to Fan Expo Canada last year, where Medallion Press and I gave out a few hundred signed copies. That generated a handful of nice comments from folks who attended and liked the book.
But today I got something new. A fan phone call.
When I got home from work today there was a message on my landline phone (I rely almost exclusively on my cell these days, so my landline is kind of a vestige of the old days.) It was from a woman who very nicely reported that she had just read my book and wanted to let me know that she liked it. She didn't leave a number, and the caller ID on my phone registered "private call" so I don't know who she is or where she called from. But it was nice to hear.
Unusual, but nice.
As a writer, I don't really get fan mail. When The Lucifer Messiah came out in 2006, I got a few emails from people who had read the book. Mostly they were just dropping a line to say a nice thing or two.
That died down quickly. Then I went to Fan Expo Canada last year, where Medallion Press and I gave out a few hundred signed copies. That generated a handful of nice comments from folks who attended and liked the book.
But today I got something new. A fan phone call.
When I got home from work today there was a message on my landline phone (I rely almost exclusively on my cell these days, so my landline is kind of a vestige of the old days.) It was from a woman who very nicely reported that she had just read my book and wanted to let me know that she liked it. She didn't leave a number, and the caller ID on my phone registered "private call" so I don't know who she is or where she called from. But it was nice to hear.
Unusual, but nice.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Steal This Book (not really…)
I just learned something strange. People have stolen The Lucifer Messiah from the Library.
The Cuyahoga County Library system here in Ohio has 10 copies of it listed at their various locations. That’s a high number for a one-book author with no real following. In part this is because folks here generally make an effort to support their own, whether it be in music, art, sports or anything else.
Even though I’m not technically one of their own, since I’m not a native Clevelander (I can’t even bring myself to call soda “pop”) I have lived here since the late 90s – and even transplants get support around these parts.
Apparently, of the 10 copies (five of which are currently checked out – amazingly) two of them have been checked out and never returned. They’re so overdue in fact that they’re now listed as “billed” which I assume means that the library has simply given up on getting them back and charged the customer.
I don’t advocate theft. I can’t, as an officer of the court and simply as a matter of principle. So I’ll say for the record, please don’t steal my book. I know it’s not on the shelf at the local Borders. But it’s available on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, as well as Chapters/Indigo in Canada and about 30 independent booksellers accessible through Google. A few brick and mortar stores still carry it too, mostly used bookstores or non-chain places.
On the other hand, I think it’s kind of a bizarre compliment. Either a number of very lazy people are borrowing my book, or some of the people who are reading it have decided to just keep the damn thing for themselves.
Or maybe it means nothing.
The Cuyahoga County Library system here in Ohio has 10 copies of it listed at their various locations. That’s a high number for a one-book author with no real following. In part this is because folks here generally make an effort to support their own, whether it be in music, art, sports or anything else.
Even though I’m not technically one of their own, since I’m not a native Clevelander (I can’t even bring myself to call soda “pop”) I have lived here since the late 90s – and even transplants get support around these parts.
Apparently, of the 10 copies (five of which are currently checked out – amazingly) two of them have been checked out and never returned. They’re so overdue in fact that they’re now listed as “billed” which I assume means that the library has simply given up on getting them back and charged the customer.
I don’t advocate theft. I can’t, as an officer of the court and simply as a matter of principle. So I’ll say for the record, please don’t steal my book. I know it’s not on the shelf at the local Borders. But it’s available on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, as well as Chapters/Indigo in Canada and about 30 independent booksellers accessible through Google. A few brick and mortar stores still carry it too, mostly used bookstores or non-chain places.
On the other hand, I think it’s kind of a bizarre compliment. Either a number of very lazy people are borrowing my book, or some of the people who are reading it have decided to just keep the damn thing for themselves.
Or maybe it means nothing.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Email Book Club
I'd like to take a moment to thank the folks at the Email Book Club and Dear Reader dot com. The Lucifer Messiah was their featured selection in the Horror category over these past two weeks. Other recent selections include novels by Bentley Little, Scott Nicholson and Tim Lebbon, so I was quite honestly thrilled to have my strange little book included in their company.
It didn't hurt sales either, as I noticed a spike in amazon.com purchases over the last fourteen days for my now-almost-two-year-old novel. Since a book by an otherwise unknown author on the market for that length of time is almost impossible to find on store shelves at this point, I'm assuming almost anyone who wants a copy checks amazon sooner or later.
The idea of the email book club is that they send readers the first few chapters of a novel over the course of a week or two so they can decide if they want to buy it after having read enough to make an informed choice -- and without spending anything on it until they have some idea if they're going to enjoy it.
Happily, it would seem that at least some of the people who read the first few chapters of The Lucifer Messiah thought enough of it to plunk down a few bucks on the thing. If anyone reading this now falls into that category, I'd like to thank you as well. I hope the rest of the book, weird and odd as it is, was to your liking.
And if it was, keep your eyes peeled for my new one, hopefully coming soon.
It didn't hurt sales either, as I noticed a spike in amazon.com purchases over the last fourteen days for my now-almost-two-year-old novel. Since a book by an otherwise unknown author on the market for that length of time is almost impossible to find on store shelves at this point, I'm assuming almost anyone who wants a copy checks amazon sooner or later.
The idea of the email book club is that they send readers the first few chapters of a novel over the course of a week or two so they can decide if they want to buy it after having read enough to make an informed choice -- and without spending anything on it until they have some idea if they're going to enjoy it.
Happily, it would seem that at least some of the people who read the first few chapters of The Lucifer Messiah thought enough of it to plunk down a few bucks on the thing. If anyone reading this now falls into that category, I'd like to thank you as well. I hope the rest of the book, weird and odd as it is, was to your liking.
And if it was, keep your eyes peeled for my new one, hopefully coming soon.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
The (minor) Genius of Tombstone
I love the movie Tombstone. Good thing too, because it seems like it’s on just about every week. Between the Encore Western Channel, the Action Channel, TNT or any of the HBO’s, you sometimes feel like it has its own network.
At this point, I must have seen all or part of this film a few dozen times (including last night) and after many repeated viewings, I have some thoughts about why it’s so good. Why it worked so well originally and why it’s held up so well over the last fifteen years. (plus, I'm house-bound in a blizzard and I'm looking for things to write about)
If you recall, Tombstone is one of two Wyatt Earp bio-pics that were made in the early nineties. The other one you might remember was actually called Wyatt Earp. It was one of a string of Kevin Costner post-Dances with Wolves epics. Today that version of the Wyatt Earp story is almost forgotten, although I have heard that it is used in some hospitals to anesthetize patients who have allergies to traditional sedatives. It’s a sprawling three-plus hours long, and if I remember right, Costner really was striving for, and probably achieved, a high degree of historical authenticity with it. It covered Wyatt Earp's formative years, following him all the way to the famous showdown at the O.K. Corral. It just doesn't work though.
Tombstone, on the other hand, is blatantly and rather unapologetically inaccurate. I say that because it not only plays fast and loose with the facts of Wyatt Earp’s life (and the lives of his friends and family) it even goes so far as to begin the film with faked-up black and white newsreel footage. An accompanying Robert Mitchum voice-over informs us that the movie takes place in 1879. You don’t need a degree in film studies to know that showing newsreels from the 1870s is about as accurate as depicting Teddy Roosevelt debating the use of an atomic bomb.
And that’s just the beginning. The entire movie is a fantasy-version of Wyatt Earp’s life. The film omits members of his family, alters the timelines of significant events and treats actual historical figures as almost fictional characters. Two quick examples: the town Marshall Fred White killed by Curly Bill Brocius is played by an elderly man. The actual Marshall White was in his early thirties. John Ringo is portrayed (brilliantly, by the way) as a well-educated sociopath regarded as the fastest gun since Wild Bill. In truth he was probably something of a coward who was no better educated than anyone else, who might not have killed anyone and who didn’t die in a gun-battle with Doc Holliday, but probably committed suicide.
So why is it so damn good?
For one, because it isn’t tethered to the facts. Where Costner’s version tried to show a complete picture of the man Wyatt Earp, Tombstone may as well be a work of complete fiction. It has little regard for the actual chronology of all but a few iron-clad details. Rather than being a negative though, that's actually one the things that I think elevates it. Life doesn’t really work like the movies. It’s messy and illogical and doesn’t always make sense. By abandoning the real events to some degree then, Tombstone is free to tell an entertaining, if not totally true, story.
If you watch it closely, it actually works kind of like a stage play on film. The Cowboy Gang is introduced in a fast sequence right after the opening that establishes their brutality in about 30 seconds. Then, in short order, we meet Wyatt and his whole family at a train station where Wyatt rebukes a man for whipping a horse, showing his good-nature in even less time. A few minutes later we find ourselves in Tombstone itself, where Wyatt meets up with: Doc Holliday, the Sheriff, the Marshall, two of the men who will eventually join Wyatt’s “gang” and the entire acting troupe from which Wyatt’s love interest is drawn – all in one street scene.
Now, there’s no way all of those people would have met like that in “real life.” And we know enough about the real people that we can say for sure that it didn’t happen that way at all. But it doesn’t matter, because it works. We meet every major character and learn one or two key things about them in the time it takes to get the cellophane wrapper off of your box of Snow Caps.
A scene a few minutes later puts Curly Bill and Ringo face-to-face with Wyatt and Doc in the Earps’ casino, where Bill and Wyatt size each other up across the Faro table, as Doc and Ringo do the same in a clever display of Latin proverbs and hand-eye-coordination. Another great scene that is at once completely unrealistic and yet totally effective. From there, only a half hour into the film, every major conflict is not only well established, but is already well underway.
I could go on.
Most of the rest of the film plays out just like that. Every scene has a purpose and every scene moves the story along. Not like real life at all, and almost certainly not the way the real lives of the real Earps happened. But that’s fine. It's better that way.
The performances are excellent too. Tombstone is one of those movies where every actor is on his or her game, no matter how relatively minor their role might be.
Michael Biehn as the previously mentioned Johnny Ringo is my personal favorite. He plays the steely-eyed villain as an almost tragic figure, a lost soul whose background suggests wealth and refinement, but who somehow lost his humanity en route to becoming a feared gunfighter. So what if it isn’t true? The acting is brilliant and the character feels authentic.
Val Kilmer puts on a show of his own as Doc Holliday, in some ways the inverse of Ringo -- a refined gentleman who is also a ruthless killer, but who, is somehow a more benevolent scoundrel, and while suffering from tuberculosis, is somewhat tragic himself.
Kurt Russell in the Wyatt Earp role plays him as the reluctant lawman, drawn into a conflict despite doing everything to remain neutral. He’s the classic hero, slow to anger, but fearsome and bold when called upon. A less demanding role than some others, but Russell holds his own with just the right mix of intensity and warmth.
Again, whether Wyatt Earp was actually like that hardly seems to matter, because this isn’t a movie about the real Wyatt Earp. It’s a story about gunfighters and cowboys in a fictionalized Old West. It’s about a group of fully-realized characters who have the same names as people who were once real. It isn’t an attempt to re-create real people that results in a bunch of poorly realized characters.
And that’s why it works so well. Real events don’t tell stories. They just happen. We sometimes tell stories about real events, but those stories are easier to follow and more entertaining to watch if they follow a few basic rules of drama, of fiction in other words – set up the characters, lay out a conflict for them, let them try to figure their way out and see what resolution they arrive at.
That’s what Tombstone does, and what Wyatt Earp the film didn’t really do. That’s why it works, and why it’ll probably be on again soon.
At this point, I must have seen all or part of this film a few dozen times (including last night) and after many repeated viewings, I have some thoughts about why it’s so good. Why it worked so well originally and why it’s held up so well over the last fifteen years. (plus, I'm house-bound in a blizzard and I'm looking for things to write about)
If you recall, Tombstone is one of two Wyatt Earp bio-pics that were made in the early nineties. The other one you might remember was actually called Wyatt Earp. It was one of a string of Kevin Costner post-Dances with Wolves epics. Today that version of the Wyatt Earp story is almost forgotten, although I have heard that it is used in some hospitals to anesthetize patients who have allergies to traditional sedatives. It’s a sprawling three-plus hours long, and if I remember right, Costner really was striving for, and probably achieved, a high degree of historical authenticity with it. It covered Wyatt Earp's formative years, following him all the way to the famous showdown at the O.K. Corral. It just doesn't work though.
Tombstone, on the other hand, is blatantly and rather unapologetically inaccurate. I say that because it not only plays fast and loose with the facts of Wyatt Earp’s life (and the lives of his friends and family) it even goes so far as to begin the film with faked-up black and white newsreel footage. An accompanying Robert Mitchum voice-over informs us that the movie takes place in 1879. You don’t need a degree in film studies to know that showing newsreels from the 1870s is about as accurate as depicting Teddy Roosevelt debating the use of an atomic bomb.
And that’s just the beginning. The entire movie is a fantasy-version of Wyatt Earp’s life. The film omits members of his family, alters the timelines of significant events and treats actual historical figures as almost fictional characters. Two quick examples: the town Marshall Fred White killed by Curly Bill Brocius is played by an elderly man. The actual Marshall White was in his early thirties. John Ringo is portrayed (brilliantly, by the way) as a well-educated sociopath regarded as the fastest gun since Wild Bill. In truth he was probably something of a coward who was no better educated than anyone else, who might not have killed anyone and who didn’t die in a gun-battle with Doc Holliday, but probably committed suicide.
So why is it so damn good?
For one, because it isn’t tethered to the facts. Where Costner’s version tried to show a complete picture of the man Wyatt Earp, Tombstone may as well be a work of complete fiction. It has little regard for the actual chronology of all but a few iron-clad details. Rather than being a negative though, that's actually one the things that I think elevates it. Life doesn’t really work like the movies. It’s messy and illogical and doesn’t always make sense. By abandoning the real events to some degree then, Tombstone is free to tell an entertaining, if not totally true, story.
If you watch it closely, it actually works kind of like a stage play on film. The Cowboy Gang is introduced in a fast sequence right after the opening that establishes their brutality in about 30 seconds. Then, in short order, we meet Wyatt and his whole family at a train station where Wyatt rebukes a man for whipping a horse, showing his good-nature in even less time. A few minutes later we find ourselves in Tombstone itself, where Wyatt meets up with: Doc Holliday, the Sheriff, the Marshall, two of the men who will eventually join Wyatt’s “gang” and the entire acting troupe from which Wyatt’s love interest is drawn – all in one street scene.
Now, there’s no way all of those people would have met like that in “real life.” And we know enough about the real people that we can say for sure that it didn’t happen that way at all. But it doesn’t matter, because it works. We meet every major character and learn one or two key things about them in the time it takes to get the cellophane wrapper off of your box of Snow Caps.
A scene a few minutes later puts Curly Bill and Ringo face-to-face with Wyatt and Doc in the Earps’ casino, where Bill and Wyatt size each other up across the Faro table, as Doc and Ringo do the same in a clever display of Latin proverbs and hand-eye-coordination. Another great scene that is at once completely unrealistic and yet totally effective. From there, only a half hour into the film, every major conflict is not only well established, but is already well underway.
I could go on.
Most of the rest of the film plays out just like that. Every scene has a purpose and every scene moves the story along. Not like real life at all, and almost certainly not the way the real lives of the real Earps happened. But that’s fine. It's better that way.
The performances are excellent too. Tombstone is one of those movies where every actor is on his or her game, no matter how relatively minor their role might be.
Michael Biehn as the previously mentioned Johnny Ringo is my personal favorite. He plays the steely-eyed villain as an almost tragic figure, a lost soul whose background suggests wealth and refinement, but who somehow lost his humanity en route to becoming a feared gunfighter. So what if it isn’t true? The acting is brilliant and the character feels authentic.
Val Kilmer puts on a show of his own as Doc Holliday, in some ways the inverse of Ringo -- a refined gentleman who is also a ruthless killer, but who, is somehow a more benevolent scoundrel, and while suffering from tuberculosis, is somewhat tragic himself.
Kurt Russell in the Wyatt Earp role plays him as the reluctant lawman, drawn into a conflict despite doing everything to remain neutral. He’s the classic hero, slow to anger, but fearsome and bold when called upon. A less demanding role than some others, but Russell holds his own with just the right mix of intensity and warmth.
Again, whether Wyatt Earp was actually like that hardly seems to matter, because this isn’t a movie about the real Wyatt Earp. It’s a story about gunfighters and cowboys in a fictionalized Old West. It’s about a group of fully-realized characters who have the same names as people who were once real. It isn’t an attempt to re-create real people that results in a bunch of poorly realized characters.
And that’s why it works so well. Real events don’t tell stories. They just happen. We sometimes tell stories about real events, but those stories are easier to follow and more entertaining to watch if they follow a few basic rules of drama, of fiction in other words – set up the characters, lay out a conflict for them, let them try to figure their way out and see what resolution they arrive at.
That’s what Tombstone does, and what Wyatt Earp the film didn’t really do. That’s why it works, and why it’ll probably be on again soon.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Defending The Godfather
This might be unnecessary. The Godfather is widely recognized as one of the greatest American films. Perhaps even one the greatest films -- period. It certainly doesn't need me, a little-known fantasy author with a limited blog readership, to rise to its defense. But I'm going to anyway.
I was reading the newspaper the other day and I came across one of those human interest stories that runs from time to time. You know the kind I mean, it isn't really news, and much of the time it isn't all that interesting, either. It always goes something like this : "local boy/girl rises above adversity to accomplish something you don't actually care about but we need to fill space in the Arts and Life section."
That's written, by the way, as someone who was once the subject of just such an article when my first novel was published. Not sure too many folks in Cleveland really cared about it, but it was nice that the Plain Dealer ran a story.
Anyway, the one I read this week involved an NBA ref from New Jersey (which is probably why I read it in the first place) who at one time worked as an undercover agent infiltrating the mob in my home state. His undercover name was actually something like John Covert. Seems like an absurd name, I know, but he claims in the story that the word "covert" wasn't widely known in the 1970s. I'll take that on faith. Other than perhaps Meyer Lansky, mobsters aren't generally known for their intelligence.
At some point in the interview, the guy was asked how realistic mob portrayals are in the movies, based on his first-hand experience. This is a question that gets asked of everyone who's been on the inside, like Joe Pistone and Henry Hill. And they all say the same thing. Goodfellas is pretty much right on, and this NBA/Covert guy said The Departed was pretty close too. Then they always go on to say that The Godfather was total Hollywood nonsense. Every time. Everyone wants to take a shot at Vito and the Corleones.
By all accounts, there's no argument to be had on that point, of course. I grew up in New Jersey, and I heard the stories here and there. So and so owed the wrong people money and ended up taking a vacation -- permanently. Or someone else's Dad is "connected." Or we can't eat at that restaurant because it's "mobbed up." There's even a family story about my great-grandfather's bar in New York that was supposedly a hang-out for the local goombahs in the late teens and early twenties. Apparently they felt so comfortable there they used it to do some business (which ended up with some poor soul getting killed) and my great-grandfather sold the place the next day.
Nothing about noble sacrifices and honorable deaths, or even dramatic betrayals and family squabbles. Nothing like what you see in The Godfather.
And my point is this: So what?
The Godfather is not highly regarded because of its purported accuracy. It isn't renowed as a faithful depiction of the mafia, a word that famously isn't even used in the movie itself. The reason The Godfather is so respected has nothing to do with its authenticity -- or lack thereof. The Godfather is epic tragedy. It is to America what King Lear is to England. Or what Oedipus Rex was to Athens.
It's American Shakespeare, American Sophocles. It's the tragedy of power destroying those who wield it, even those who do so with the best of intentions. And just like the Elizabethans or the Greeks, it's about the way power is held and lost at the highest levels -- among kings and princes.
Does it matter that real mobsters didn't behave like Vito Corleone or Michael Corleone?
About as much as it matters whether or not a Greek king ever actually married his mother and killed his father.
Were any Greek kings driven to ruin by their pride and arrogance? Probably, but that isn't the point. Oedipus Rex isn't an attempt to chronicle the way actual Greek kings ruled their city-states. It's a morality tale about the dangers of those behaviors; and what bigger canvas could that lesson be painted on than the world of kings?
That's why I think that criticism of the Godfather for being unrealistic is almost superfluous. Sure, Goodfellas and The Departed more accurately represent how actual mobsters lived, but in a very real way, The Godfather isn't about the mob, at least not any more than Oedipus Rex is about Greek aristocracy. They're both about people, about us.
The Godfather is about the way a good but flawed man goes wrong by trying to do right. The way a man loses his soul by attempting to protect the things he cares about and the ideas he believes in, the way a good man becomes a bad man without realizing it. It's human tragedy of the oldest kind. It happens to be set among the mob because that world is possibly the nearest thing that 20th century America could have offered to compare with the bygone days of hereditary kings, loyal knights and court intrigue -- most of which was probably not as honorable or noble as the stories depict it anyway.
So The Godfather isn't realistic. Big deal. I suspect Hamlet isn't a particularly accurate depiction of ancient Danish princes either.
And it doesn't matter in the least.
I was reading the newspaper the other day and I came across one of those human interest stories that runs from time to time. You know the kind I mean, it isn't really news, and much of the time it isn't all that interesting, either. It always goes something like this : "local boy/girl rises above adversity to accomplish something you don't actually care about but we need to fill space in the Arts and Life section."
That's written, by the way, as someone who was once the subject of just such an article when my first novel was published. Not sure too many folks in Cleveland really cared about it, but it was nice that the Plain Dealer ran a story.
Anyway, the one I read this week involved an NBA ref from New Jersey (which is probably why I read it in the first place) who at one time worked as an undercover agent infiltrating the mob in my home state. His undercover name was actually something like John Covert. Seems like an absurd name, I know, but he claims in the story that the word "covert" wasn't widely known in the 1970s. I'll take that on faith. Other than perhaps Meyer Lansky, mobsters aren't generally known for their intelligence.
At some point in the interview, the guy was asked how realistic mob portrayals are in the movies, based on his first-hand experience. This is a question that gets asked of everyone who's been on the inside, like Joe Pistone and Henry Hill. And they all say the same thing. Goodfellas is pretty much right on, and this NBA/Covert guy said The Departed was pretty close too. Then they always go on to say that The Godfather was total Hollywood nonsense. Every time. Everyone wants to take a shot at Vito and the Corleones.
By all accounts, there's no argument to be had on that point, of course. I grew up in New Jersey, and I heard the stories here and there. So and so owed the wrong people money and ended up taking a vacation -- permanently. Or someone else's Dad is "connected." Or we can't eat at that restaurant because it's "mobbed up." There's even a family story about my great-grandfather's bar in New York that was supposedly a hang-out for the local goombahs in the late teens and early twenties. Apparently they felt so comfortable there they used it to do some business (which ended up with some poor soul getting killed) and my great-grandfather sold the place the next day.
Nothing about noble sacrifices and honorable deaths, or even dramatic betrayals and family squabbles. Nothing like what you see in The Godfather.
And my point is this: So what?
The Godfather is not highly regarded because of its purported accuracy. It isn't renowed as a faithful depiction of the mafia, a word that famously isn't even used in the movie itself. The reason The Godfather is so respected has nothing to do with its authenticity -- or lack thereof. The Godfather is epic tragedy. It is to America what King Lear is to England. Or what Oedipus Rex was to Athens.
It's American Shakespeare, American Sophocles. It's the tragedy of power destroying those who wield it, even those who do so with the best of intentions. And just like the Elizabethans or the Greeks, it's about the way power is held and lost at the highest levels -- among kings and princes.
Does it matter that real mobsters didn't behave like Vito Corleone or Michael Corleone?
About as much as it matters whether or not a Greek king ever actually married his mother and killed his father.
Were any Greek kings driven to ruin by their pride and arrogance? Probably, but that isn't the point. Oedipus Rex isn't an attempt to chronicle the way actual Greek kings ruled their city-states. It's a morality tale about the dangers of those behaviors; and what bigger canvas could that lesson be painted on than the world of kings?
That's why I think that criticism of the Godfather for being unrealistic is almost superfluous. Sure, Goodfellas and The Departed more accurately represent how actual mobsters lived, but in a very real way, The Godfather isn't about the mob, at least not any more than Oedipus Rex is about Greek aristocracy. They're both about people, about us.
The Godfather is about the way a good but flawed man goes wrong by trying to do right. The way a man loses his soul by attempting to protect the things he cares about and the ideas he believes in, the way a good man becomes a bad man without realizing it. It's human tragedy of the oldest kind. It happens to be set among the mob because that world is possibly the nearest thing that 20th century America could have offered to compare with the bygone days of hereditary kings, loyal knights and court intrigue -- most of which was probably not as honorable or noble as the stories depict it anyway.
So The Godfather isn't realistic. Big deal. I suspect Hamlet isn't a particularly accurate depiction of ancient Danish princes either.
And it doesn't matter in the least.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Tolkien Lite
When I was a junior in high school I was very much into traditional fantasy fiction. I was in the middle of working my way through Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and in between reading the actual tales I lived on steady diet of Conan and Kull comic books. I was only vaguely aware of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft at that point, but I was already quite familiar with the Lord of Rings, first from the Ralph Bakshi animated film and then through the books themselves. Also around this time, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons PC-based games like Pool of Radiance.
One of my best friends at the time, a fellow geek and fantasy fan, was VERY much into the Dragonlance book series, and he repeatedly tried to sell me on it. He not only read the books, he bought up every ancillary publication that TSR sold, The Art of Dragonlance, The Atlas of Krynn, etc. We used to pour over these things studying the character designs, marvelling at the artwork and using it to build our own fantasy stories and art, as both of us considered ourselves budding artists/writers.
I was kind of a snob about it though, and we would often clash over whose fantasy was the "real thing" or whose was the best. I argued over and over for Robert E. Howard & Tolkien as the true fantasy, denigrating Dragonlance as a pale imitation. He argued that what I was reading was old and tired and that Dragonlance was new and fresh. I don't think I ever convinced him to read Conan or Kull (although I remember he gave more respect to Tolkien) but I did eventually attempt to read the first Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
I hated it. I couldn't finish it and the experience only hardened my resolve that what Weiss and Hickman had done was to raid Tolkien's work, coming away with a bunch of transparent, poorly imagined copies masquerading as characters. Eventually my friend and I agreed to disagree and put the subject to rest. I put the book aside and never touched it again.
As I continued reading other fantasy over the years, Dragonlance never left my mind though. I always held that up as the standard bearer for everything that was wrong with the genre. In my opinion, fantasy fiction by the 1990s was a dying art. All sense of innovation and creativity had been beaten out of it by a legion of writers hacking away about enchanted swords, dragons, rangers, knights and mages; plumbing the depths of imaginary inter-racial politics between arrogant elves, hot-tempered dwarves, impossibly noble/impossibly evil humans and code-word-disguised versions of hobbits.
These books are still being written (and still being purchased in large numbers, for some reason) but since then a new breed of genre-bending, genre-blending authors have started to do things with fantasy that are finally making it exciting again. I've already mentioned on this blog my admiration for the UK's China Mieville, but there are also people like K.J. Bishop, Jeff Vandermeer and even R. Scott Bakker, among others, who are pushing the envelope of fantasy fiction into new and interesting areas.
There is new life in the varied realms of fantasy. But old habits die hard, I suppose. This week I was browsing my local Hollywood Video and I discovered that my old friend Dragonlance did not go away gently into that good night, after all. Apparently someone made an animated version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, with no less a voice than Kiefer Sutherland lending his talents to the role of Raistlin Majere.
I had no choice. I had to rent it, just to see it. To see if it was as derivative and weak as I remembered.
I wasn't disappointed. Perhaps because I could only stomach part of the novel the first time around (in 1988 or so) the story was almost completely new to me this time. I remembered only a few details. And yet the details were somehow VERY familiar to me.
One of my best friends at the time, a fellow geek and fantasy fan, was VERY much into the Dragonlance book series, and he repeatedly tried to sell me on it. He not only read the books, he bought up every ancillary publication that TSR sold, The Art of Dragonlance, The Atlas of Krynn, etc. We used to pour over these things studying the character designs, marvelling at the artwork and using it to build our own fantasy stories and art, as both of us considered ourselves budding artists/writers.
I was kind of a snob about it though, and we would often clash over whose fantasy was the "real thing" or whose was the best. I argued over and over for Robert E. Howard & Tolkien as the true fantasy, denigrating Dragonlance as a pale imitation. He argued that what I was reading was old and tired and that Dragonlance was new and fresh. I don't think I ever convinced him to read Conan or Kull (although I remember he gave more respect to Tolkien) but I did eventually attempt to read the first Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
I hated it. I couldn't finish it and the experience only hardened my resolve that what Weiss and Hickman had done was to raid Tolkien's work, coming away with a bunch of transparent, poorly imagined copies masquerading as characters. Eventually my friend and I agreed to disagree and put the subject to rest. I put the book aside and never touched it again.
As I continued reading other fantasy over the years, Dragonlance never left my mind though. I always held that up as the standard bearer for everything that was wrong with the genre. In my opinion, fantasy fiction by the 1990s was a dying art. All sense of innovation and creativity had been beaten out of it by a legion of writers hacking away about enchanted swords, dragons, rangers, knights and mages; plumbing the depths of imaginary inter-racial politics between arrogant elves, hot-tempered dwarves, impossibly noble/impossibly evil humans and code-word-disguised versions of hobbits.
These books are still being written (and still being purchased in large numbers, for some reason) but since then a new breed of genre-bending, genre-blending authors have started to do things with fantasy that are finally making it exciting again. I've already mentioned on this blog my admiration for the UK's China Mieville, but there are also people like K.J. Bishop, Jeff Vandermeer and even R. Scott Bakker, among others, who are pushing the envelope of fantasy fiction into new and interesting areas.
There is new life in the varied realms of fantasy. But old habits die hard, I suppose. This week I was browsing my local Hollywood Video and I discovered that my old friend Dragonlance did not go away gently into that good night, after all. Apparently someone made an animated version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, with no less a voice than Kiefer Sutherland lending his talents to the role of Raistlin Majere.
I had no choice. I had to rent it, just to see it. To see if it was as derivative and weak as I remembered.
I wasn't disappointed. Perhaps because I could only stomach part of the novel the first time around (in 1988 or so) the story was almost completely new to me this time. I remembered only a few details. And yet the details were somehow VERY familiar to me.
See if this sounds familiar: A conflicted ranger with ties to both the human and elf world leads a group of companions on a quest, included in his party are a good-natured old wizard, a dwarf, a half-sized creature and a human knight. In their travels, always on guard against the growing evil of a deity who has returned from a long-ago defeat, the good-companions pass through a haunted forest, a ruined city and enter a beautiful Elvish city where the residents are in the process of leaving, possibly forever. That's Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
Or how about this? Aragorn leading Gandalf, Gimli, Frodo and Boromir, among others, traveling through the ruined Mines of Moria on their way to see Galadriel, after passing through the realm of Elrond, which will soon be evacuated as the Elves journey across the sea. Always on guard against the likes of a re-energized Sauron and his minions, back from ages of slumber.
I think a guy named Peter Jackson did something with that storyline a few years ago, didn't he?
So please accept my apology John, if by some chance you're reading this. I know we put aside our little argument about Dragonlance almost 20 years ago. But after watching this pale imitation, Jack Bauer's efforts notwithstanding, I had to take one last shot.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
And We're Back...
I took a little break from this blog last month. No particular reason. There just wasn't anything going on. At least not in the writing department.
Which is not to say that I haven't been occupied -- busy even.
Writing isn't really my job, it's more like a hobby that I occasionally get paid a little to do (very occasionally and very little.) Most days I wake up earlier than I'd like, after sleeping less than I'd like. I put on clothes that I'd rather not wear (after swearing when I was in high school that I would never wear a suit and tie everyday) and I drive to a place where most of the people I deal with are unhappy and/or insane.
Which is not to say that I haven't been occupied -- busy even.
Writing isn't really my job, it's more like a hobby that I occasionally get paid a little to do (very occasionally and very little.) Most days I wake up earlier than I'd like, after sleeping less than I'd like. I put on clothes that I'd rather not wear (after swearing when I was in high school that I would never wear a suit and tie everyday) and I drive to a place where most of the people I deal with are unhappy and/or insane.
That's not a slight against my office, although I suspect that most of the people I actually work with would probably agree that we all fit that description to varying degrees.
I'm a public defender. That means that I spend most of the day dealing with alleged criminals, bailiffs, prosecutors and judges. Last week I worked on a trial with another attorney defending a man who introduced himself to the jury as "The Prophet..." and who was so disruptive that the judge had him removed from the courtroom during part of the trial.
That was fun.
I also had the opportunity, since I live in the Tim Russert-dubbed "battleground" state of Ohio, to see Barack Obama speak at a rally here in Cleveland a week ago. Very interesting. Even if you disagree with him, you have to give the guy credit for bringing some new life to the national political stage. I've never seen people so genuinely enthusiastic about a candidate for any office, much less President. It was worth it to see him in person just to have the chance to experience that energy first hand. Plus anyone who knows me knows that I never really liked Hillary all that much anyway.
This blog is not for political posturing. It only exists because I write horror/fantasy novels, and I don't expect anyone to care one iota for my opinions on anything else (at least not on this forum.) But I will say this: love him or hate him (and I have friends on both sides of that divide) Barack Obama is a cultural phenomenon.
Moving right along, since the last post The Prometheus Gate has been reviewed by Kerry Estevez, the Acquistions Editor at Medallion Press and is working its way through the review process. I'm sure that will take a while. It's a 500-something page monster, and although I submitted a 5 page synopsis with it, the thing will take some time to digest.
Now I find myself a little bit lost. I have three things I've been working on sort of piecemeal while Prometheus was in progress. I can put that aside for a while, but I have to decide what else to concentrate on. At the moment I don't really know.
I was just in Arizona last month, so I'm leaning towards the idea I floated here a few months back about a western-horror, but that's the least developed of my current projects. The other two are a short vampire piece that I have to get out of my system and a steampunk-type novel about an alternate history version of New York City. I've been chipping away at the last one for several years here and there, and although I have about 30,000 words written, I'm stalled on it.
Sooner or later, I'll make a decision. Until then I'll just keep going into work, chatting with crack dealers, crack addicts, thieves, burglars and the occasional sex offender. Eventually I'll come up with something.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Frustrations and surprises
I'm feeling a little frustrated lately. If you follow this blog at all, even occasionally, you'll know that I finished working on a manuscript near the end of last year. That's a great feeling, a sense of accomplishment. And then comes the waiting.
The publishing industry is glacially slow. Right now my manuscript is being reviewed, and that takes time. We're only at stage 1. After this initial review, many more people will read it, changes will no doubt be requested, submitted and re-reviewed -- and if all of that goes well, the art department, the copy editor, the typesetter and several other people have to do their thing.
The thought that this process could, and probably will, last for the next year or so is a hard pill to swallow. In the meantime I'm working on a new idea, but the serious delay between finishing the manuscript and actually seeing it become a book can get you down.
On the upside, people appear to still be buying Lucifer, which is nice. I've been told repeatedly that the amazon rankings are not supposed to be used as a gauge for your overall sales, but it's all I've got. Today it "shot up" into the 65,000 range, which it hasn't seen in about a year. Not quite a best seller, I know, but any sales are good, especially for a no-name author with a year and a half old book.
The publishing industry is glacially slow. Right now my manuscript is being reviewed, and that takes time. We're only at stage 1. After this initial review, many more people will read it, changes will no doubt be requested, submitted and re-reviewed -- and if all of that goes well, the art department, the copy editor, the typesetter and several other people have to do their thing.
The thought that this process could, and probably will, last for the next year or so is a hard pill to swallow. In the meantime I'm working on a new idea, but the serious delay between finishing the manuscript and actually seeing it become a book can get you down.
On the upside, people appear to still be buying Lucifer, which is nice. I've been told repeatedly that the amazon rankings are not supposed to be used as a gauge for your overall sales, but it's all I've got. Today it "shot up" into the 65,000 range, which it hasn't seen in about a year. Not quite a best seller, I know, but any sales are good, especially for a no-name author with a year and a half old book.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The Ban Sidhe Part III
The conclusion of Ciarin and the Death Maiden:
All the magical creatures of the realm, filled with grief for the sufferings of the world, came across the northern seas to the cloud tops where the Ban Sidhe reposed.
Great-armed Goibniu, master smith of Faerie implored her to loose her ghastly shriek. Ogma the sun-faced pleaded the same. In Dagda, the wise and ancient All Father, flew with urgency to the refuge of the rebel spirit. The deceit of the Fear Dearg himself lapsed, and the red trickster joined in the beseeching.
The calls went unheeded.
In time even the Morrigan made her way to the frigid abode. Feared and hated no less than the Ban Sidhe herself, it was to her, finally that the others turned for a final plea.
She came upon her dark chariot, drawn by twin ravens with breath of fire, and though a horrific sight, the Morrigan was surprised to find the Ban Sidhe pleased at her arrival.
"Long has it been," the Morrigan began.
"Yes, not since the glorious slaughter at Aran. Many brave men followed my call to the darkness that day," the Ban Sidhe answered.
The ghost of Ciarin sat beside her upon the cloud, a phantom consort to a spectral queen.
"Even greater agony now menaces,” the Morrigan said. “Lugh's anger ravages the isles, and legions of the dead walk among the living. Druids invoke our aid, but we are left helpless. Even I am rendered useless, forced to ignore the prayers of those men upon the fields who battle without end.
"I implore you, as all our kind have done before me, surrender the soul of this man. Quiet the fury of maddened Lugh!"
The Ban Sidhe remained unmoved. She clung ever harder to the wraith that had been Ciarin mac Ruaidhri.
"Lugh has heard me. I hold sway over the gates of the dead. He may rage for all time, but only I can open them.
"Long have I served him with never a waver in my devotion. Yet now, that I wish one soul spared, he curses the world? No, Queen of War, I shall not lead a single soul to the abyss."
Fire-eyed Morrigan could find no words to reply. A deep voice spoke instead. It was Ciarin himself.
"Queen of Battle, many times I invoked your aid," the ghost said. He raised his phantom hand as the Morrigan turned to hear him. "Now my beloved Ban Sidhe gives me refuge from death itself. Yet the world suffers for my stay, as all the gods of Faerie have here attested.
"Perhaps I should go. Perhaps I should fade into the dim, else there be no world for us to remain in."
For a moment, silence reigned. The wicked War-Goddess and the Herald of Death reflected upon his words. Finally, the Ban Sidhe answered.
"Perhaps you are correct Ciarin. Lugh will only be satisfied when I open the way to the darkness. So I will do so."
The dawn of the day following was nothing so much as a herald of horror.
Fractured sunbeams fell across a tormented Erin. The stench of rotting flesh pervaded the wind, even spreading through the mist of Faerie, though Lugh Samildanach remained unmoved.
The Morrigan returned from the north seas with only the cryptic word of the death maiden. She called upon the lords of the mist to gather, the Morrigan told them, upon the Ulster field where Ciarin had fallen many months before. There, the Ban Sidhe would appear.
The rising of the sun soon came and passed, and the gods began to grow restless.
Then, a shriek split the morning like thunder. It quaked the hills with frightful echoes. Beneath them, the gods watched a black chasm tear open the field. Above them, the screeching form of the Ban Sidhe hurled out of the clouds.
"Lugh Samildanach, Lord of Faerie! By my scream the gates to the abyss have opened, and here Ciarin, son of the Red King stands ready to enter," the Ban Sidhe proclaimed.
Her voice grated upon even Lugh's own ears. He was a moment before answering.
"Well and good that you have come to realize my authority," the red-bearded god said.
Ciarin did stand ready at the dark gates, jaws of sundered stone and mud gaping before him. But as he began to step toward the chasm, the Ban Sidhe remained beside him. Arm-in-arm.
Brigit gasped. The Morrigan cried out.
"She means to enter with him!" the Leanan exclaimed.
Lugh sneered.
“Cease this folly! None may ever return from the land of the dead, mortal or otherwise!" he roared.
The Ban Sidhe and her companion wraith ignored him. They continued to edge closer to the caverns of Hell.
"If you call it folly then my efforts have indeed been in vain, for you still fail to understand what I asked of you," the Ban Sidhe said.
She spoke amid a swirl of wind, the screams of the dead churning all around her as she moved closer to the darkness. The summoned immortals watched one of their own reach out for the place of all gloom.
Finally, Lugh sighed, and the red beard’s breath brought pause to all things.
"You would do this just to be with Ciarin, son of the Red King?" he asked.
The Ban Sidhe stared him down.
"I will enter and close the gates behind me. I will have Ciarin mac Ruaidhri in the land of the dead if not in the land of the living," she replied.
Ciarin's own spear rested in her hands.
Again, Lugh frowned and did not speak. His all-seeing eyes turned to the face of ageless Brigit, whose counsel now echoed in his heart.
"Perhaps I have been wrong," he said. "Perhaps you are so perfect in the love of death that you would bring the world to its knees by your devotion. Perhaps I have been blind."
The Ban Sidhe and Ciarin halted, poised at the precipice of the smoldering maw.
"Noble sentiment Lugh, but words do me little good. Ciarin remains a ghost."
Again, Lugh met the gaze of Queen Brigit, and the eyes of heaven now looked upon him.
"Very well. Ciarin, son of the Red King is dead, and I did slay him. For that I do regret, though after such time has passed I cannot restore him. Yet your struggle has been brave, and for that I offer a concession."
As the host of Faerie watched, Lugh Samildanach came down to the world. He laid his hands upon Ciarin.
"Ciarin mac Ruaidhri, so loved by the spirit of death, I raise you up to the skies, and free you from mortal bonds. Join with your Ban Sidhe, not as a ghost, but as a true immortal. May you both herald the dead."
The Ban Sidhe smiled her ghastly grin, and Ciarin joined her in eerie mirth. Away they took then from the other gods and spirits, to ply their lethal trade for ever after.
So it was from that day onward, that the people of old Ireland came to know a second voice from the darkness, the twin callings of death from the Ban Sidhe and her eternal love.
All the magical creatures of the realm, filled with grief for the sufferings of the world, came across the northern seas to the cloud tops where the Ban Sidhe reposed.
Great-armed Goibniu, master smith of Faerie implored her to loose her ghastly shriek. Ogma the sun-faced pleaded the same. In Dagda, the wise and ancient All Father, flew with urgency to the refuge of the rebel spirit. The deceit of the Fear Dearg himself lapsed, and the red trickster joined in the beseeching.
The calls went unheeded.
In time even the Morrigan made her way to the frigid abode. Feared and hated no less than the Ban Sidhe herself, it was to her, finally that the others turned for a final plea.
She came upon her dark chariot, drawn by twin ravens with breath of fire, and though a horrific sight, the Morrigan was surprised to find the Ban Sidhe pleased at her arrival.
"Long has it been," the Morrigan began.
"Yes, not since the glorious slaughter at Aran. Many brave men followed my call to the darkness that day," the Ban Sidhe answered.
The ghost of Ciarin sat beside her upon the cloud, a phantom consort to a spectral queen.
"Even greater agony now menaces,” the Morrigan said. “Lugh's anger ravages the isles, and legions of the dead walk among the living. Druids invoke our aid, but we are left helpless. Even I am rendered useless, forced to ignore the prayers of those men upon the fields who battle without end.
"I implore you, as all our kind have done before me, surrender the soul of this man. Quiet the fury of maddened Lugh!"
The Ban Sidhe remained unmoved. She clung ever harder to the wraith that had been Ciarin mac Ruaidhri.
"Lugh has heard me. I hold sway over the gates of the dead. He may rage for all time, but only I can open them.
"Long have I served him with never a waver in my devotion. Yet now, that I wish one soul spared, he curses the world? No, Queen of War, I shall not lead a single soul to the abyss."
Fire-eyed Morrigan could find no words to reply. A deep voice spoke instead. It was Ciarin himself.
"Queen of Battle, many times I invoked your aid," the ghost said. He raised his phantom hand as the Morrigan turned to hear him. "Now my beloved Ban Sidhe gives me refuge from death itself. Yet the world suffers for my stay, as all the gods of Faerie have here attested.
"Perhaps I should go. Perhaps I should fade into the dim, else there be no world for us to remain in."
For a moment, silence reigned. The wicked War-Goddess and the Herald of Death reflected upon his words. Finally, the Ban Sidhe answered.
"Perhaps you are correct Ciarin. Lugh will only be satisfied when I open the way to the darkness. So I will do so."
The dawn of the day following was nothing so much as a herald of horror.
Fractured sunbeams fell across a tormented Erin. The stench of rotting flesh pervaded the wind, even spreading through the mist of Faerie, though Lugh Samildanach remained unmoved.
The Morrigan returned from the north seas with only the cryptic word of the death maiden. She called upon the lords of the mist to gather, the Morrigan told them, upon the Ulster field where Ciarin had fallen many months before. There, the Ban Sidhe would appear.
The rising of the sun soon came and passed, and the gods began to grow restless.
Then, a shriek split the morning like thunder. It quaked the hills with frightful echoes. Beneath them, the gods watched a black chasm tear open the field. Above them, the screeching form of the Ban Sidhe hurled out of the clouds.
"Lugh Samildanach, Lord of Faerie! By my scream the gates to the abyss have opened, and here Ciarin, son of the Red King stands ready to enter," the Ban Sidhe proclaimed.
Her voice grated upon even Lugh's own ears. He was a moment before answering.
"Well and good that you have come to realize my authority," the red-bearded god said.
Ciarin did stand ready at the dark gates, jaws of sundered stone and mud gaping before him. But as he began to step toward the chasm, the Ban Sidhe remained beside him. Arm-in-arm.
Brigit gasped. The Morrigan cried out.
"She means to enter with him!" the Leanan exclaimed.
Lugh sneered.
“Cease this folly! None may ever return from the land of the dead, mortal or otherwise!" he roared.
The Ban Sidhe and her companion wraith ignored him. They continued to edge closer to the caverns of Hell.
"If you call it folly then my efforts have indeed been in vain, for you still fail to understand what I asked of you," the Ban Sidhe said.
She spoke amid a swirl of wind, the screams of the dead churning all around her as she moved closer to the darkness. The summoned immortals watched one of their own reach out for the place of all gloom.
Finally, Lugh sighed, and the red beard’s breath brought pause to all things.
"You would do this just to be with Ciarin, son of the Red King?" he asked.
The Ban Sidhe stared him down.
"I will enter and close the gates behind me. I will have Ciarin mac Ruaidhri in the land of the dead if not in the land of the living," she replied.
Ciarin's own spear rested in her hands.
Again, Lugh frowned and did not speak. His all-seeing eyes turned to the face of ageless Brigit, whose counsel now echoed in his heart.
"Perhaps I have been wrong," he said. "Perhaps you are so perfect in the love of death that you would bring the world to its knees by your devotion. Perhaps I have been blind."
The Ban Sidhe and Ciarin halted, poised at the precipice of the smoldering maw.
"Noble sentiment Lugh, but words do me little good. Ciarin remains a ghost."
Again, Lugh met the gaze of Queen Brigit, and the eyes of heaven now looked upon him.
"Very well. Ciarin, son of the Red King is dead, and I did slay him. For that I do regret, though after such time has passed I cannot restore him. Yet your struggle has been brave, and for that I offer a concession."
As the host of Faerie watched, Lugh Samildanach came down to the world. He laid his hands upon Ciarin.
"Ciarin mac Ruaidhri, so loved by the spirit of death, I raise you up to the skies, and free you from mortal bonds. Join with your Ban Sidhe, not as a ghost, but as a true immortal. May you both herald the dead."
The Ban Sidhe smiled her ghastly grin, and Ciarin joined her in eerie mirth. Away they took then from the other gods and spirits, to ply their lethal trade for ever after.
So it was from that day onward, that the people of old Ireland came to know a second voice from the darkness, the twin callings of death from the Ban Sidhe and her eternal love.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Ban Sidhe Part II
Chapter II of the tale of Ciarin the Son of the Red King and the Death Faerie:
The thanes of Dun Daigh split the enemy host. Amid the routed Bruatta horde, fair-haired Ciarin, the son of the Red King, cut his path. Hacking and chopping, he carved a swath through the wall of iron and muscle and blood, warrior after warrior brought down by the stroke of his spear.
A feast of carnage spread out in such savage glory that the Ban Sidhe fell still at first sight. Perched among the sharp cliffs, girded with dawn-fog, the death Faerie held her voice at bay. She watched the killing field. She felt the stench thicken, rising about her in a shroud of screams.
It softened her stare.
Deep amidst the swirl of iron and entrails, Ciarin drew her gaze. She knew him. He had seized the chieftain’s mantle while still a teen, and in the twenty years since he had written his reputation in blood across the fields of Ireland.
It was a body of work the death maiden admired.
Brutality. Cruelty. The relish he took from ending life etched a mark of respect through the faerie’s empty soul. This was not the first time she had paused to marvel at his butchery.
The habit had not gone unnoticed.
Beyond the veil of mist, behind the reflections of the world of men, Lugh Samildanach saw her pause. The silence echoed in the great god’s ears. There was no scream. No killer howl. The lord of Tuatha De Dannan was not pleased by the interest his ghost-lady had taken in the affairs of men.
On that morning, as the strife stained black the green of spring, Lugh brought his interminable gaze from the realms of faerie. Across the valley Othma he looked long and hard, seeing through the smoke of crumpled chariots and the eddies of dying groans. He drank in the clamor of Ciarin’s rage and the stirring scent of dead men rotting in the mud.
A frown twisted his red beard.
"There sits my Ban Sidhe. She wilts after the doings of Ciarin while the Gates of Death stand closed. A dove upon the clouds."
Brigit, most ancient of the faerie listened to him ponder. She was not as dismayed. She drifted toward him through the magical shadows, sparkling with phantom shards of light.
"What trouble is that?" she asked. "Why shouldn’t the spirit of death be moved by such ferocity?"
"She has no heart," Lugh answered. “No feelings.”
Brigit sighed. A sea of clouds danced around her like fair maidens. She did not reply.
Another voice sounded through the dolmens. It was the Leanan Sidhe, soul of muses.
"Mortals love those who speak to their desires and their minds, as do we. Cannot a Faerie then, even one so baneful as the Ban Sidhe, come to such affection?"
Lugh did not consider the Leanan's words.
"The Ban Sidhe has but one purpose. That is all she has ever done, and all that I intend for her," he said.
Leanan was bade travel to the fields of Ulster, as messenger of the Gods of Faerie. She came upon the death maiden at the approach of noon, seated still where Lugh had seen her, enthroned among the low clouds.
So smitten was she that the Ban Sidhe failed to note the Leanan’s approach, though she came carried upon a torrent of leaves and straw grass. Before the spirit spoke, she gazed for a space upon the ghost-queen, her name a bane to both Faerie and Gael. The glare of her red eyes seemed to follow the blood-trailing figure of Ciarin.
Lugh had not been mistaken.
The Ban Sidhe was taken with him.
"Ban Sidhe! I come at the behest Lugh Samildanach. He demands that you issue your call. Many men have fallen this day, yet your scream has sounded but once."
The Ban Sidhe did not turn. She shifted her gaze from the struggle. The Leanan shuddered. Her stare was ghastly. Echoes of horror danced in her eyes.
"I serve Lugh. Never have I failed him," the killer-faerie said.
Her voice slithered in vile fragments of sound. It echoed within itself a thousand dreadful times, as though spoken in a cavern.
"After age upon age, ere these times since the days of the lost Fomori, what complaint could he have?"
The Leanan looked away. She faded in and out of sight with each gust of the sea-wind. "I speak only the words I have been given. Lugh commands you to carry out your calling."
She now wished nothing more than to flee the hideous gaze.
"I shall do my work," the Ban Sidhe said, shifting her translucent form. "In my own time. Tell Lugh Samildanach. And be gone from here.”
The Leanan Sidhe grimaced. The ghost-faerie pointed her away.
“Now leave me," she hissed.
Upon the wind the Leanan returned to the misty mounds of wandering spirits. She feared the words she carried, knowing the anger they would rouse in the Lord of Faerie.
"In her own time!" he thundered. "She dictates her duty to me?"
Brigit slipped through the shadows, summoned by the rage of the Ever-Seeing.
"Take some pause, Lugh. Never before has the Ban Sidhe refused you. Perhaps she deserves deference. Would you not allow any of us as much? For the sake of love?" she said.
"Love?” he replied. “We speak of the Ban Sidhe. She exists only to herald the descent of the dead. That is her only use, and she is perfect in that creation!"
Brigit passed through the mist trails in Lugh’s wake. Her aspect splintered into a dozen reflections. She came together as she answered.
"Perfect yes, perhaps too perfect. So enamored of death that she has come to love the man who so often brings it to his foes," she said.
"Fine,” Lugh replied. “If the Ban Sidhe so loves death, then let her herald his own."
Lugh’s decree sounded up from the darkness. It made the megaliths tremble. The Burren wept. As the Ban Sidhe watched Ciarin, raising his blade upon a foe, he was struck down. A bronze club smashed his skull.
He collapsed, his crown shattered. Gray matter mixed with mud and pointed flecks of bone.
Finally, the scream came.
The phantasm streaked down from the clouds. While her voice commanded death upon mortals, she held no power to restore life. Now her calling was stronger, for her next announcement would mark the death of the man she most admired.
She did not have tears. The death faerie nurtured no such human traits. Yet as she raised up the ruined corpse of Ciarin, shepherding his spirit out of the broken flesh, a fire seethed inside her. The eyes of the warlord stared even in death. He met the Ban Sidhe’s vacant gaze as few men ever had.
"Ciarin the slayer, long have I admired your spear. Your blood lust has brought me pleasure. No one has caused so much death as you. I will not be rid of you.
"Lugh! I refuse your task. I shall not herald the march of the fallen, lest you restore Ciarin to his beautiful form!"
Her cry shrieked across the green isles. It chilled the blood of thanes and sliced a path to the gods. But it shepherded no spirit up from the plain.
The clouds shivered, shrinking from the death scream. The seas raged. Waves battered the cliffs. Lugh heard the tortured lament of his domain, squeals of deer and shrieks of birds.
Eire trembled.
"Let her scream!” he said. “She serves my wishes. She will suffer my wrath.”
The words of Faerie were not spoken lightly. The tone of Lugh’s angry boast rolled down from the mist and the hidden reaches. It brought his spite to the fields of men in hammer-strokes.
Misery descended. Crops failed overnight, fields withered to dust in the hours of darkness. Grain stores rotted in their sheds just as quickly. The double shadow spread across the land, plague and famine invaded every village and hut.
They ignited a flame of anguish, fanned by the wails of the starving and the cries of suffering children. The thanes of Daigh Tuatha, men of the clans of Ciarin, already saddened by the falling of their leader succumbed with ease.
In the shrouded mounds of the hidden hills, Lugh Samildanach watched the grieving, the wilting of the fields and the dying of the forests. The isles faltered under his wrath, days long and dark as none could recall. Yet among all the long times of grief, as spring wore to summer and then summer into fall, there grew up a sign more ominous than all the gloomy tidings.
The Druid priests were at first loathe to dwell upon it, though as the affliction grew worse it soon demanded redress. For all the despair, and in all the cold months of dread, there had not been a single death across the lands of Eire.
Not in Ulster, or in Munster or Connacht.
Not on Innish More, or at Dun Guarie or Tara.
Where sickness once felled men, they breathed still. Riddled with pain that would have no respite, they watched their bodies rot and putrefy.
But they did not die.
Hobbled husks of men, little more than walking skeletons wandered the countryside. Warriors hacked their blades into the flesh of their enemies from light of dawn until deep into the moonless night.
But they did not die.
Druids assembled. They argued under sacred dolmens. They drank blood and divined the innards of birds and beasts. They sought answers in the black shadows of their Clochans.
They could find no other answer.
Eire had been forsaken.
The thanes of Dun Daigh split the enemy host. Amid the routed Bruatta horde, fair-haired Ciarin, the son of the Red King, cut his path. Hacking and chopping, he carved a swath through the wall of iron and muscle and blood, warrior after warrior brought down by the stroke of his spear.
A feast of carnage spread out in such savage glory that the Ban Sidhe fell still at first sight. Perched among the sharp cliffs, girded with dawn-fog, the death Faerie held her voice at bay. She watched the killing field. She felt the stench thicken, rising about her in a shroud of screams.
It softened her stare.
Deep amidst the swirl of iron and entrails, Ciarin drew her gaze. She knew him. He had seized the chieftain’s mantle while still a teen, and in the twenty years since he had written his reputation in blood across the fields of Ireland.
It was a body of work the death maiden admired.
Brutality. Cruelty. The relish he took from ending life etched a mark of respect through the faerie’s empty soul. This was not the first time she had paused to marvel at his butchery.
The habit had not gone unnoticed.
Beyond the veil of mist, behind the reflections of the world of men, Lugh Samildanach saw her pause. The silence echoed in the great god’s ears. There was no scream. No killer howl. The lord of Tuatha De Dannan was not pleased by the interest his ghost-lady had taken in the affairs of men.
On that morning, as the strife stained black the green of spring, Lugh brought his interminable gaze from the realms of faerie. Across the valley Othma he looked long and hard, seeing through the smoke of crumpled chariots and the eddies of dying groans. He drank in the clamor of Ciarin’s rage and the stirring scent of dead men rotting in the mud.
A frown twisted his red beard.
"There sits my Ban Sidhe. She wilts after the doings of Ciarin while the Gates of Death stand closed. A dove upon the clouds."
Brigit, most ancient of the faerie listened to him ponder. She was not as dismayed. She drifted toward him through the magical shadows, sparkling with phantom shards of light.
"What trouble is that?" she asked. "Why shouldn’t the spirit of death be moved by such ferocity?"
"She has no heart," Lugh answered. “No feelings.”
Brigit sighed. A sea of clouds danced around her like fair maidens. She did not reply.
Another voice sounded through the dolmens. It was the Leanan Sidhe, soul of muses.
"Mortals love those who speak to their desires and their minds, as do we. Cannot a Faerie then, even one so baneful as the Ban Sidhe, come to such affection?"
Lugh did not consider the Leanan's words.
"The Ban Sidhe has but one purpose. That is all she has ever done, and all that I intend for her," he said.
Leanan was bade travel to the fields of Ulster, as messenger of the Gods of Faerie. She came upon the death maiden at the approach of noon, seated still where Lugh had seen her, enthroned among the low clouds.
So smitten was she that the Ban Sidhe failed to note the Leanan’s approach, though she came carried upon a torrent of leaves and straw grass. Before the spirit spoke, she gazed for a space upon the ghost-queen, her name a bane to both Faerie and Gael. The glare of her red eyes seemed to follow the blood-trailing figure of Ciarin.
Lugh had not been mistaken.
The Ban Sidhe was taken with him.
"Ban Sidhe! I come at the behest Lugh Samildanach. He demands that you issue your call. Many men have fallen this day, yet your scream has sounded but once."
The Ban Sidhe did not turn. She shifted her gaze from the struggle. The Leanan shuddered. Her stare was ghastly. Echoes of horror danced in her eyes.
"I serve Lugh. Never have I failed him," the killer-faerie said.
Her voice slithered in vile fragments of sound. It echoed within itself a thousand dreadful times, as though spoken in a cavern.
"After age upon age, ere these times since the days of the lost Fomori, what complaint could he have?"
The Leanan looked away. She faded in and out of sight with each gust of the sea-wind. "I speak only the words I have been given. Lugh commands you to carry out your calling."
She now wished nothing more than to flee the hideous gaze.
"I shall do my work," the Ban Sidhe said, shifting her translucent form. "In my own time. Tell Lugh Samildanach. And be gone from here.”
The Leanan Sidhe grimaced. The ghost-faerie pointed her away.
“Now leave me," she hissed.
Upon the wind the Leanan returned to the misty mounds of wandering spirits. She feared the words she carried, knowing the anger they would rouse in the Lord of Faerie.
"In her own time!" he thundered. "She dictates her duty to me?"
Brigit slipped through the shadows, summoned by the rage of the Ever-Seeing.
"Take some pause, Lugh. Never before has the Ban Sidhe refused you. Perhaps she deserves deference. Would you not allow any of us as much? For the sake of love?" she said.
"Love?” he replied. “We speak of the Ban Sidhe. She exists only to herald the descent of the dead. That is her only use, and she is perfect in that creation!"
Brigit passed through the mist trails in Lugh’s wake. Her aspect splintered into a dozen reflections. She came together as she answered.
"Perfect yes, perhaps too perfect. So enamored of death that she has come to love the man who so often brings it to his foes," she said.
"Fine,” Lugh replied. “If the Ban Sidhe so loves death, then let her herald his own."
Lugh’s decree sounded up from the darkness. It made the megaliths tremble. The Burren wept. As the Ban Sidhe watched Ciarin, raising his blade upon a foe, he was struck down. A bronze club smashed his skull.
He collapsed, his crown shattered. Gray matter mixed with mud and pointed flecks of bone.
Finally, the scream came.
The phantasm streaked down from the clouds. While her voice commanded death upon mortals, she held no power to restore life. Now her calling was stronger, for her next announcement would mark the death of the man she most admired.
She did not have tears. The death faerie nurtured no such human traits. Yet as she raised up the ruined corpse of Ciarin, shepherding his spirit out of the broken flesh, a fire seethed inside her. The eyes of the warlord stared even in death. He met the Ban Sidhe’s vacant gaze as few men ever had.
"Ciarin the slayer, long have I admired your spear. Your blood lust has brought me pleasure. No one has caused so much death as you. I will not be rid of you.
"Lugh! I refuse your task. I shall not herald the march of the fallen, lest you restore Ciarin to his beautiful form!"
Her cry shrieked across the green isles. It chilled the blood of thanes and sliced a path to the gods. But it shepherded no spirit up from the plain.
The clouds shivered, shrinking from the death scream. The seas raged. Waves battered the cliffs. Lugh heard the tortured lament of his domain, squeals of deer and shrieks of birds.
Eire trembled.
"Let her scream!” he said. “She serves my wishes. She will suffer my wrath.”
The words of Faerie were not spoken lightly. The tone of Lugh’s angry boast rolled down from the mist and the hidden reaches. It brought his spite to the fields of men in hammer-strokes.
Misery descended. Crops failed overnight, fields withered to dust in the hours of darkness. Grain stores rotted in their sheds just as quickly. The double shadow spread across the land, plague and famine invaded every village and hut.
They ignited a flame of anguish, fanned by the wails of the starving and the cries of suffering children. The thanes of Daigh Tuatha, men of the clans of Ciarin, already saddened by the falling of their leader succumbed with ease.
In the shrouded mounds of the hidden hills, Lugh Samildanach watched the grieving, the wilting of the fields and the dying of the forests. The isles faltered under his wrath, days long and dark as none could recall. Yet among all the long times of grief, as spring wore to summer and then summer into fall, there grew up a sign more ominous than all the gloomy tidings.
The Druid priests were at first loathe to dwell upon it, though as the affliction grew worse it soon demanded redress. For all the despair, and in all the cold months of dread, there had not been a single death across the lands of Eire.
Not in Ulster, or in Munster or Connacht.
Not on Innish More, or at Dun Guarie or Tara.
Where sickness once felled men, they breathed still. Riddled with pain that would have no respite, they watched their bodies rot and putrefy.
But they did not die.
Hobbled husks of men, little more than walking skeletons wandered the countryside. Warriors hacked their blades into the flesh of their enemies from light of dawn until deep into the moonless night.
But they did not die.
Druids assembled. They argued under sacred dolmens. They drank blood and divined the innards of birds and beasts. They sought answers in the black shadows of their Clochans.
They could find no other answer.
Eire had been forsaken.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Ban Sidhe
I'm going to try something different for the next few posts. I've been going through my old files over the last couple of days, pulling out things I wrote years ago and hadn't looked at in a long time. I posted a few things from the bad old days, and now I'd like to post something else I've been sitting on for years. A story.
About ten years ago, forlorn about my lack of success getting any of my early work published, I got the idea in my head that one of the ways to make my manuscripts more attractive to publishers was by racking up "credits." I thought that if I was published elsewhere, in magazines or some other small publications, it would look better when I sent a novel-length manuscript out. Many of my idols, Lovecraft, Smith and Howard to name a few, all wrote short stories. In fact most of them wrote stories as their main outlet, not novels.
My luck wasn't so good. I wrote a number of stories, sent them off and earned myself a stack of rejection letters. The stack wasn't too big, but only because people don't really read short fiction the way they used to. There are magazines, but these days the short story is kind of a dying art form. Novels are where the money's at for fiction (or so I'm told.)
In any case, other than an entry in an online story contest (that I lost) I haven't done much with any of my short fiction. Now that I have this little forum though, why not use it for that? Air out some of the old material. If you hate it, just skip over it and come back later. If you like it, let me know and I'll post a few more.
So here we go, a totally free short story for your reading pleasure, in three parts:
THE BAN SIDHE
Dawn bled through the storm clouds. The Ulster fields bathed in crimson.
Morning scents lingered. Rain was in the air. Winds tumbled up from the sea-cliffs, swaying the saplings and the green highland grass. Cold streams whistled through broken crags.
Other noises intruded.
There was a clank. Then a howl. The deep cries of men were not long behind.
They marched out from the shadows of the high rocks, a riot of shouts and prayers. A yawning, wet plain opened to their approach.
It was a brutal throng, a rabble spawned from sunless reaches. Bloodstained saffron cloaks rustled about them, affixed by silver brooches over scaled bronze plate. Spears and swords struck wide shields in deliberate hammering, fueled by invocations to the spirits of war and chaos.
Woad stained their faces nightmare shades of purple and blue. The slather stank.
They loved the odor. It swelled about them as they cheered, mixing with the heat of their breath and their trickling sweat.
Wild hair like the full manes of horses danced across their shoulders, screaming shades of orange and blonde in a rage of Celtic hues.
Two men led the horde. One was silent. The other was singing.
Feargus’ tune was ancient, a sacred song as old as the hills. The assembled knew every verse. They chanted with the Druid. Their voices rose and fell by the motions of his crooked staff.
His pale skin was bare, and though untouched by the etchings of war paint, it was not unspoiled. Human blood streaked down his face and across his chest.
A severed head, the slashed throat still wet and festering, dangled at his side. It was tied to his waist by its own knotted hair. He swung the totem to the lyrics of his battle-dirge, splattering those beside him with drops of congealed blood.
Beside the mystic in his coarse black robes, Ciarin Mac Ruaidhri walked in stark silence. The warrior-king made no calls. He sang no songs.
His eyes focused across the plain, where sparkles of silver-white burned like cold fire in the distance. The matted hair that swept across his face did not faze him, nor did the savage cries around him.
His beard was like the fur of a hound. Across his breast, held fast like a talisman, he clutched a wooden shaft. It was hewn by hand, polished to a sheen, and crowned with a wide blade.
He stopped at the edge of a brook. His men did the same. He turned to face them. He roared.
“Men of Daigh Tuatha! Today we spill blood! Today we take many heads!”
A rally cry echoed through his horde. Arrayed across the far edge of the field, born out of the silver-sparkles in the red-gray light, their enemies gathered on the muddy banks of the River Lhiannan.
There was no pause. No attempt at entreaty.
Ciarin charged. And his men charged behind him. They screamed that the gods of Faerie would smile on his blade.
Against their rush, their foes did the same. In moments, the Ri Tuath and his men swept down against a sea of spears.
Ciarin's sword cut first. It heaved in an arc, splitting the shield of a Bruatta thane, cleaving his chest and his throat. Flesh and bone splinters spat into his face. Steam surged from the wound.
The reek enlivened his arms for a second slash.
Death-stink spilled out beneath the hills of Erin.
The odor crawled over green dales, and through old forests. Every blow, every rotten scream of misery spawned an ill wind. It fouled the air with a cruel stench. Birds choked, chased from the sky. Woodland creatures fled.
But there was one for whom the odor was not vile, and it was she who arose from the mist, called by the gale she was ever-seeking.
It roused her from slumber, filled her with delicious wailing. Every whimper gave her strength. Every lovely hint of anguish. She savored the carnage.
The Ban Sidhe screamed.
About ten years ago, forlorn about my lack of success getting any of my early work published, I got the idea in my head that one of the ways to make my manuscripts more attractive to publishers was by racking up "credits." I thought that if I was published elsewhere, in magazines or some other small publications, it would look better when I sent a novel-length manuscript out. Many of my idols, Lovecraft, Smith and Howard to name a few, all wrote short stories. In fact most of them wrote stories as their main outlet, not novels.
My luck wasn't so good. I wrote a number of stories, sent them off and earned myself a stack of rejection letters. The stack wasn't too big, but only because people don't really read short fiction the way they used to. There are magazines, but these days the short story is kind of a dying art form. Novels are where the money's at for fiction (or so I'm told.)
In any case, other than an entry in an online story contest (that I lost) I haven't done much with any of my short fiction. Now that I have this little forum though, why not use it for that? Air out some of the old material. If you hate it, just skip over it and come back later. If you like it, let me know and I'll post a few more.
So here we go, a totally free short story for your reading pleasure, in three parts:
THE BAN SIDHE
Dawn bled through the storm clouds. The Ulster fields bathed in crimson.
Morning scents lingered. Rain was in the air. Winds tumbled up from the sea-cliffs, swaying the saplings and the green highland grass. Cold streams whistled through broken crags.
Other noises intruded.
There was a clank. Then a howl. The deep cries of men were not long behind.
They marched out from the shadows of the high rocks, a riot of shouts and prayers. A yawning, wet plain opened to their approach.
It was a brutal throng, a rabble spawned from sunless reaches. Bloodstained saffron cloaks rustled about them, affixed by silver brooches over scaled bronze plate. Spears and swords struck wide shields in deliberate hammering, fueled by invocations to the spirits of war and chaos.
Woad stained their faces nightmare shades of purple and blue. The slather stank.
They loved the odor. It swelled about them as they cheered, mixing with the heat of their breath and their trickling sweat.
Wild hair like the full manes of horses danced across their shoulders, screaming shades of orange and blonde in a rage of Celtic hues.
Two men led the horde. One was silent. The other was singing.
Feargus’ tune was ancient, a sacred song as old as the hills. The assembled knew every verse. They chanted with the Druid. Their voices rose and fell by the motions of his crooked staff.
His pale skin was bare, and though untouched by the etchings of war paint, it was not unspoiled. Human blood streaked down his face and across his chest.
A severed head, the slashed throat still wet and festering, dangled at his side. It was tied to his waist by its own knotted hair. He swung the totem to the lyrics of his battle-dirge, splattering those beside him with drops of congealed blood.
Beside the mystic in his coarse black robes, Ciarin Mac Ruaidhri walked in stark silence. The warrior-king made no calls. He sang no songs.
His eyes focused across the plain, where sparkles of silver-white burned like cold fire in the distance. The matted hair that swept across his face did not faze him, nor did the savage cries around him.
His beard was like the fur of a hound. Across his breast, held fast like a talisman, he clutched a wooden shaft. It was hewn by hand, polished to a sheen, and crowned with a wide blade.
He stopped at the edge of a brook. His men did the same. He turned to face them. He roared.
“Men of Daigh Tuatha! Today we spill blood! Today we take many heads!”
A rally cry echoed through his horde. Arrayed across the far edge of the field, born out of the silver-sparkles in the red-gray light, their enemies gathered on the muddy banks of the River Lhiannan.
There was no pause. No attempt at entreaty.
Ciarin charged. And his men charged behind him. They screamed that the gods of Faerie would smile on his blade.
Against their rush, their foes did the same. In moments, the Ri Tuath and his men swept down against a sea of spears.
Ciarin's sword cut first. It heaved in an arc, splitting the shield of a Bruatta thane, cleaving his chest and his throat. Flesh and bone splinters spat into his face. Steam surged from the wound.
The reek enlivened his arms for a second slash.
Death-stink spilled out beneath the hills of Erin.
The odor crawled over green dales, and through old forests. Every blow, every rotten scream of misery spawned an ill wind. It fouled the air with a cruel stench. Birds choked, chased from the sky. Woodland creatures fled.
But there was one for whom the odor was not vile, and it was she who arose from the mist, called by the gale she was ever-seeking.
It roused her from slumber, filled her with delicious wailing. Every whimper gave her strength. Every lovely hint of anguish. She savored the carnage.
The Ban Sidhe screamed.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
You Have to Start Somewhere Part IV
The last post was supposed to be the end of this thread, but after I read the first draft of the first chapter of "The Lucifer Messiah" -- and remembered how less-than-good it was, I thought maybe I should come up with a concluding post.
So what follows are the actual first few lines of my first published novel, as they appear in the book itself. Combined with the last three posts, this forms a rough chart of my progression as a writer, from what I was scribbling up in 1987, to what I was doing in 1995 or so, to what I was writing by 2000 and finally, what got published in 2006.
Honestly, reading that over now, for the first time in more than a year, I feel like I want to get back to editing it again. I want to make some changes and "fix" a few things. But that never changes. and I've got new things to work on anyway.
So what follows are the actual first few lines of my first published novel, as they appear in the book itself. Combined with the last three posts, this forms a rough chart of my progression as a writer, from what I was scribbling up in 1987, to what I was doing in 1995 or so, to what I was writing by 2000 and finally, what got published in 2006.
********************
Sean staggered.
A stench crawled into his nostrils. Garbage. Rotten food. Shit. Even the shadows stank.
They were still out there. Somewhere. Stalking him.
He forced himself to move, creeping through the filth and the darkness. His gut ached. He felt the blood drooling out of him. It trickled into his pants, ran down his leg. It was sticky, and wet.
He had to keep going.
He recognized the street ahead. 9th Avenue and the corner of West 36th Street. The edge of Hell’s Kitchen.
Street lamps buzzed overhead; an electric swarm of pale, flickering light. Across the way, the minute hand of an old gothic clock moved one click. That made it 1:13 a.m.
Sean didn’t care.
Steam exhaled from a sewer vent. Sulfurous ghosts washed over him. For a moment he welcomed the warmth. But he couldn’t linger. He only bathed in the hot odor for a moment.
He fell, toppling a half-filled trashcan. Noise was the last thing he needed. He didn’t get up, not right away. First he grabbed his dented felt hat from a puddle. His overcoat was already ruined, but that hat meant a lot to him—sweat stains and mildew notwithstanding.
A sedan turned from around the far corner. Headlights skimmed the street. Tires squeaked on blacktop.
Sean scrambled to his feet. He stumbled backward, hoping to reach the safety of the reeking dark.
********************
Honestly, reading that over now, for the first time in more than a year, I feel like I want to get back to editing it again. I want to make some changes and "fix" a few things. But that never changes. and I've got new things to work on anyway.
Friday, January 18, 2008
You Have to Start Somewhere Part III
In keeping with the theme of the last few posts, I scoured the hard drive of my old computer for one more example of my earlier writing. Unlike the last two snippets from my failed high school and college novels, which were selected more or less at random from the old files, I went looking for today's clip. It took a while, but eventually I found it.
What follows here are the first few lines of the very first draft of what became "The Lucifer Messiah" -- in other words, the first draft of the first book I was able to get someone to pay me for. It was written while I was in law school, maybe 1999 or 2000.
In my humble opinion, it was better than the stuff I put up here in the previous two posts (you can judge that for yourself.) But it still wasn't good. The following clip went through literally dozens of revisions before I settled on the opening lines of the book, sometime in 2005.
**************************
Flickering pools of light washed across the alley; rude, but momentary intrusions upon the shadows that were strewn like rubbish across the urban filth. For an instant, the hairless tail of a rodent slithered into view, and then just as quickly it slipped back into the rotting debris, and the gloom. A dented tin can similarly rattled along the slime, its path briefly revealed before it too clattered back into the stinking dim.
Just above the gutter level, though not more than a few feet higher than the rats and the rubbish, the milky, shifting lights crossed over a cloud of steam. The warm vapor glistened in the cold light, but only for a silent, aborted second. A rustle followed, rough cloth against concrete, the muted sound of a movement that was meant to have been concealed.
The shuffle of worn-out soles came next, and then the heavy noise of a man's breathing mixed with the crashing sound of a toppled trashcan.
The street-lamps cast their aura more evenly at the mouth of the alleyway, and it was there, for a moment, that a man fell quite accidentally into their harsh gleam. His face was hidden by a felt hat, sodden with sweat or perhaps something more foul, and his body was likewise obscured by the tattered folds of what could once have been an expensive overcoat.
Hardly a moment passed before he scrambled to his feet, and leaped back into the darkness.
*****************************
I hope that these three posts show that writing takes time, and that it takes time to become a writer (a published writer, at least.) It doesn't happen overnight, and Christopher Paolini notwithstanding, it usually doesn't happen when you're in your teens, or (China Mieville notwithstanding) even your twenties. Becoming good at it is a process that takes years. It's frustrating. It's slow and it can seem like a futile effort. Very few people can pick it up right off the bat. The rest of us have to work at it.
So why do it? Not for the money, because I haven't made much of that, and my prospects for future earnings aren't much brighter. You do it because you have to, because you can't quite imagine what life would be like, how your day would be structured, if you didn't do it. Because you really don't understand how the rest of the world goes through their day without doing it, and you probably never will. That's what kept me going from that first, atrocious book when I was 15 to the first book deal when I was 33. Just keep at it.
What follows here are the first few lines of the very first draft of what became "The Lucifer Messiah" -- in other words, the first draft of the first book I was able to get someone to pay me for. It was written while I was in law school, maybe 1999 or 2000.
In my humble opinion, it was better than the stuff I put up here in the previous two posts (you can judge that for yourself.) But it still wasn't good. The following clip went through literally dozens of revisions before I settled on the opening lines of the book, sometime in 2005.
**************************
Flickering pools of light washed across the alley; rude, but momentary intrusions upon the shadows that were strewn like rubbish across the urban filth. For an instant, the hairless tail of a rodent slithered into view, and then just as quickly it slipped back into the rotting debris, and the gloom. A dented tin can similarly rattled along the slime, its path briefly revealed before it too clattered back into the stinking dim.
Just above the gutter level, though not more than a few feet higher than the rats and the rubbish, the milky, shifting lights crossed over a cloud of steam. The warm vapor glistened in the cold light, but only for a silent, aborted second. A rustle followed, rough cloth against concrete, the muted sound of a movement that was meant to have been concealed.
The shuffle of worn-out soles came next, and then the heavy noise of a man's breathing mixed with the crashing sound of a toppled trashcan.
The street-lamps cast their aura more evenly at the mouth of the alleyway, and it was there, for a moment, that a man fell quite accidentally into their harsh gleam. His face was hidden by a felt hat, sodden with sweat or perhaps something more foul, and his body was likewise obscured by the tattered folds of what could once have been an expensive overcoat.
Hardly a moment passed before he scrambled to his feet, and leaped back into the darkness.
*****************************
I hope that these three posts show that writing takes time, and that it takes time to become a writer (a published writer, at least.) It doesn't happen overnight, and Christopher Paolini notwithstanding, it usually doesn't happen when you're in your teens, or (China Mieville notwithstanding) even your twenties. Becoming good at it is a process that takes years. It's frustrating. It's slow and it can seem like a futile effort. Very few people can pick it up right off the bat. The rest of us have to work at it.
So why do it? Not for the money, because I haven't made much of that, and my prospects for future earnings aren't much brighter. You do it because you have to, because you can't quite imagine what life would be like, how your day would be structured, if you didn't do it. Because you really don't understand how the rest of the world goes through their day without doing it, and you probably never will. That's what kept me going from that first, atrocious book when I was 15 to the first book deal when I was 33. Just keep at it.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
You Have to Start Somewhere Part II
The last post contained a snippet from the first novel I ever tried to write. It's probably one of the best passages in that atrocious mess, but it's still pretty bad. I wrote it when I was about 15 years old. In those days I was working on pure exuberance. Some grammar school English composition classes and a year or so of high school represented the sum total of my formal study in the art of writing. Needless to say, I was unpolished. I was wordy, undisciplined and convinced that the best writing was overflowing with adjectives and adverbs. I was also reading a fair amount of pulp fiction and comic books, which only reinforced all of those wrong ideas and bad habits.
Once I got to college, as a journalism major at first, my wrong-headed ideas suffered a serious smack-down at that hands of one professor after another. My ego took a beating, but my writing got better. After a while, I realized that my first attempt at a novel was so bad that it simply couldn't be saved. It had to be abandoned.
It wasn't long though, before I dusted myself off and tried again. The result was something I called "The Curse of the Warlock." It was still an attempt at a Lord of the Rings-style epic, and was still heavily influenced by Kull of Atlantis and Conan the Barbarian, only now blended with H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker.
And it was still pretty bad. Better than what I wrote when I was in high school, but still not publishable -- although I tried, over and over again until I eventually came to the realization that my second novel was also destined for the scrap heap.
So here is my second "clip" -- a fragment of a chapter that I wrote sometime around the mid-90s, just after I graduated from college.
*******************************************************
Slick condensation slowly dripped from the top of the cold granite window frame, carried away in the cool breeze. Gray-white haze hovered like a lingering spectre over the royal port city of Thudaal as the faint lapping of waves on the nearby shoreline soothed the city to sleep.
The icy glow of the double crescent moons cast little light upon the slumbering metropolis as the faint sound of beating wings became barely audible. Through the thick haze, roaming atop the marble towers, a dark, solitary figure floated menacingly. A silent predator hunted for his kill....
...Then, swooping again like a bat from the shadow, Kha'Ralost plunged his sharp nails into two of the guards, heaving them across the room. Their larynxes dropped to the sticky wet floor as the Warlock turned his hell-red eyes to another. The blade landed hard on Kha's iron gauntlet and a spear deflected harmlessly away from his chest. The wielders of the weapons were quickly dispatched by the ferocious Wraith, his fangs tearing mercilessly into a crushed skull.
******************************************************
As I pointed out the other day, even Ed Wood recognized that the trick with writing is to just keep plugging away. You might not be good at it when you start (and it's probably better for you if you don't realize just how bad you really are at that point, but that's another story) but if you keep it up, you will get better.
The snippet above is better than what I wrote when I was 15, but even then, at about 22 or 23, it was still far from good. But I wasn't about to quit.
Once I got to college, as a journalism major at first, my wrong-headed ideas suffered a serious smack-down at that hands of one professor after another. My ego took a beating, but my writing got better. After a while, I realized that my first attempt at a novel was so bad that it simply couldn't be saved. It had to be abandoned.
It wasn't long though, before I dusted myself off and tried again. The result was something I called "The Curse of the Warlock." It was still an attempt at a Lord of the Rings-style epic, and was still heavily influenced by Kull of Atlantis and Conan the Barbarian, only now blended with H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker.
And it was still pretty bad. Better than what I wrote when I was in high school, but still not publishable -- although I tried, over and over again until I eventually came to the realization that my second novel was also destined for the scrap heap.
So here is my second "clip" -- a fragment of a chapter that I wrote sometime around the mid-90s, just after I graduated from college.
*******************************************************
Slick condensation slowly dripped from the top of the cold granite window frame, carried away in the cool breeze. Gray-white haze hovered like a lingering spectre over the royal port city of Thudaal as the faint lapping of waves on the nearby shoreline soothed the city to sleep.
The icy glow of the double crescent moons cast little light upon the slumbering metropolis as the faint sound of beating wings became barely audible. Through the thick haze, roaming atop the marble towers, a dark, solitary figure floated menacingly. A silent predator hunted for his kill....
...Then, swooping again like a bat from the shadow, Kha'Ralost plunged his sharp nails into two of the guards, heaving them across the room. Their larynxes dropped to the sticky wet floor as the Warlock turned his hell-red eyes to another. The blade landed hard on Kha's iron gauntlet and a spear deflected harmlessly away from his chest. The wielders of the weapons were quickly dispatched by the ferocious Wraith, his fangs tearing mercilessly into a crushed skull.
******************************************************
As I pointed out the other day, even Ed Wood recognized that the trick with writing is to just keep plugging away. You might not be good at it when you start (and it's probably better for you if you don't realize just how bad you really are at that point, but that's another story) but if you keep it up, you will get better.
The snippet above is better than what I wrote when I was 15, but even then, at about 22 or 23, it was still far from good. But I wasn't about to quit.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
You Have to Start Somewhere
I was organizing some files today and I found a bunch of old floppy disks that I hadn't touched in years. After I hooked up a portable floppy drive to my laptop I popped a few of them in. Oh, the memories. These things are upwards of seventeen years old, and contain things I wrote when I was in college.
Most of them are school-related, term papers and scripts for short films and things like that. They're all awful. Reading them now I wonder how I ever passed anything in college. But those aren't even the worst things I discovered. There are other, older files on some of the disks. Files I remember writing, but I didn't actually remember. These are the chapters of the first book I ever tried to write. It was an attempt at a fantasy novel in the Lord of the Rings style, heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The documents were last saved on the disks I found in mid 1990, probably around the time I moved to Boston, but they were written years before that, beginning around 1987.
So what was my writing like 21 years ago?
Pretty freaking terrible.
What follows here is a pretty random selection. None of it is any better, and some of what I read was -- to my horror -- much, much worse. So why post it? To prove a point. It doesn't really matter if you're any good at it. If you want to write, just write. And keep writing. Even if you're awful, don't quit. Keep it up. Eventually you will get better. I promise.
So here it is, a never-before seen (and never to be seen again) excerpt from my truly awful first novel, The War of the Empires (a title I stole, by the way, from an episode of the British Sci-fi series The Tomorrow People):
The inside of the throne room was a beautiful polished ivory-white walled chamber similar to the stairs outside, it was decorated with sparkling jewels of immense size from all over Arulai many of them dating back to the time of Polarian. At the huge wall directly opposite from the huge double wooden doors that led into the room there sat an old wrinkled man with long snow white hair that glistened in the golden sunlight and a beard that stretched all the way down to his lap. He was clothed in elaborate jewelry and expensive white robes with a ruby studded golden crown that bore the emblem of a golden Phytor, a majestic bird twenty times the size of a man which lived in flocks in the forest lands of the far off Penninsula of Sithrica. The phytor had it's wings spread as if it was in flight while its scarlet ruby eyes gleamed like twin crimson stars amid a sky of gold.
Ed Wood, one of the worst and one of the most memorable writer/directors of all time once wrote "...just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better."
Poor old Ed didn't get much right, but he nailed that one.
Most of them are school-related, term papers and scripts for short films and things like that. They're all awful. Reading them now I wonder how I ever passed anything in college. But those aren't even the worst things I discovered. There are other, older files on some of the disks. Files I remember writing, but I didn't actually remember. These are the chapters of the first book I ever tried to write. It was an attempt at a fantasy novel in the Lord of the Rings style, heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The documents were last saved on the disks I found in mid 1990, probably around the time I moved to Boston, but they were written years before that, beginning around 1987.
So what was my writing like 21 years ago?
Pretty freaking terrible.
What follows here is a pretty random selection. None of it is any better, and some of what I read was -- to my horror -- much, much worse. So why post it? To prove a point. It doesn't really matter if you're any good at it. If you want to write, just write. And keep writing. Even if you're awful, don't quit. Keep it up. Eventually you will get better. I promise.
So here it is, a never-before seen (and never to be seen again) excerpt from my truly awful first novel, The War of the Empires (a title I stole, by the way, from an episode of the British Sci-fi series The Tomorrow People):
The inside of the throne room was a beautiful polished ivory-white walled chamber similar to the stairs outside, it was decorated with sparkling jewels of immense size from all over Arulai many of them dating back to the time of Polarian. At the huge wall directly opposite from the huge double wooden doors that led into the room there sat an old wrinkled man with long snow white hair that glistened in the golden sunlight and a beard that stretched all the way down to his lap. He was clothed in elaborate jewelry and expensive white robes with a ruby studded golden crown that bore the emblem of a golden Phytor, a majestic bird twenty times the size of a man which lived in flocks in the forest lands of the far off Penninsula of Sithrica. The phytor had it's wings spread as if it was in flight while its scarlet ruby eyes gleamed like twin crimson stars amid a sky of gold.
Ed Wood, one of the worst and one of the most memorable writer/directors of all time once wrote "...just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better."
Poor old Ed didn't get much right, but he nailed that one.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Dear Reader
I just found out yesterday that "The Lucifer Messiah" has been selected for the Dear Reader Online Book Club. If you're unfamiliar with it (as I was) Dearreader.com is a new idea in book clubs (at least to me.)
It's actually a number of clubs, Romance, Science Fiction, Horror, etc. One book is selected every two weeks, and during that time the club emails members with short snippets of the book, maybe a few pages at a time. Over the course of a week or so, the daily emails usually add up to the first few chapters. At that point, if the reader decides that he or she is enjoying what they've read, they can go out and buy the book or click on a link to amazon to have it delivered to them. If they don't like it, they can just quit there.
It sounds like a good idea to me, and I'm thrilled that after a year and a half people are still reading the thing. Hopefully at least some of the folks who get these emails will run out and pick up the book, and maybe pop in here for a visit.
It's actually a number of clubs, Romance, Science Fiction, Horror, etc. One book is selected every two weeks, and during that time the club emails members with short snippets of the book, maybe a few pages at a time. Over the course of a week or so, the daily emails usually add up to the first few chapters. At that point, if the reader decides that he or she is enjoying what they've read, they can go out and buy the book or click on a link to amazon to have it delivered to them. If they don't like it, they can just quit there.
It sounds like a good idea to me, and I'm thrilled that after a year and a half people are still reading the thing. Hopefully at least some of the folks who get these emails will run out and pick up the book, and maybe pop in here for a visit.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Serpico
The Sidney Lumet film "Serpico" has been making the cable rounds lately. Until this week I hadn't seen it for several years. Over the last few days or so, I kept picking it up on HBO somewhere in the middle, before I finally happened to catch it at the beginning.
If you're like me, and you saw it years ago, or maybe read the Peter Maas book, it's worth watching again.
Frank Serpico would be one of my favorite film characters of all time -- a hippie, non-conformist cop, a civil libertarian law enforcement officer, a man of refined tastes in art and music who made his living for years working in the gutters of NYC -- the sort of man who seems to embody contradiction and yet seems so perfectly adjusted. He would be one of my favorite characters except for the fact that he's very real.
Every time I watch this movie, I feel a little ashamed. How he managed to stand on principle, for as long as he did, taking the kinds of risks that he did, is just amazing to me. Especially because I'm pretty sure that if I were put in his shoes, I wouldn't be able to do it myself.
Apparently Al Pacino asked him once, when he was preparing to play him, just exactly why Serpico did what he did. Why did he risk everything, literally risk his life, to preserve his integrity?
His answer?
"Well, Al, I don't know. I guess I would have to say it would be because ... if I didn't, who would I be when I listened to a piece of music?"
If you're like me, and you saw it years ago, or maybe read the Peter Maas book, it's worth watching again.
Frank Serpico would be one of my favorite film characters of all time -- a hippie, non-conformist cop, a civil libertarian law enforcement officer, a man of refined tastes in art and music who made his living for years working in the gutters of NYC -- the sort of man who seems to embody contradiction and yet seems so perfectly adjusted. He would be one of my favorite characters except for the fact that he's very real.
Every time I watch this movie, I feel a little ashamed. How he managed to stand on principle, for as long as he did, taking the kinds of risks that he did, is just amazing to me. Especially because I'm pretty sure that if I were put in his shoes, I wouldn't be able to do it myself.
Apparently Al Pacino asked him once, when he was preparing to play him, just exactly why Serpico did what he did. Why did he risk everything, literally risk his life, to preserve his integrity?
His answer?
"Well, Al, I don't know. I guess I would have to say it would be because ... if I didn't, who would I be when I listened to a piece of music?"
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