There Are No Doors in Dark Places

I’m going to talk about my collection of short stories: There Are No Doors in Dark Places.  It’s part of my trilogy of horror along with Giant Monsters Sing Sad Songs, and What Devours Always Hungers.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m doing with this blog. Seriously, angry rants about Covid-19 and black lives matter, or biographical sketches, philosophical questions, thinking out loud as to what I’d do with Doctor Who or Robin, or really obscure reviews, it’s whatever seems to occur to me at the moment.

I’m sure that there are other writers out there with blogs that are just laser focused on the exigencies of writing, or the cutting edges of techno-pop culture, or whatever the hell. There’s blogs full of deep insightful book reviews, sophisticated discussions of the going’s on of the book industry, or a niche about comics.

Me? Who the hell knows?

I just write about… Whatever.

I’m I don’t really have much of anyone reading this stuff. That’s kind of liberating. I write, compulsively. If it was a successful blog, readership and everything, regular followers, I would probably need to be more focused, more narrow.  I’d have to get my shit together. But here, I just write whatever.

Some people talk or think in terms of their writing careers.

For me, writing is not so much a career, but more a personality disorder.

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What would you do?

Here’s a thought experiment.  Try it on.

What if God came to you one day.

And God said,  “I don’t like you.”

God goes on,  “It’s just one of those things.  It’s not personal, it’s not something you did, or didn’t do. There’s no reason for it.  Sometimes these things just happen.  I just don’t like you. I know the books say I’m ‘love’ and I’m supposed to love everyone, and that’s mostly true, maybe for everyone else. But not you. I draw the line. I don’t like you. I’m God, and I can do that. I don’t have to justify or explain. It is what it is.”

“So here’s the deal,” God continues, “your life will be meaningless and worthless. Nothing you ever do will matter.  No one will ever care about you. Your existence will be pointless and meaningless. It will be that way every single day, every single moment.  You can kill yourself tomorrow, or you can live a long time, I don’t care. You can rob liquor stores, or build cathedrals, or go to church every day, it won’t make a difference. You won’t make a difference to anyone or anything, you’ll have no accomplishments, no family, no legacy. Eventually, you’ll die, and I’ll be rid of you. But I really don’t care. That’s the way it is because I don’t like you.”

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Lovecraft’s World

Back when The Mermaid’s Tale came out, I was attending a Sci Fi Convention called CanCon in Ottawa, Ontario.

Interesting story there. One day, I get an email from Lorina, my publisher, asking about the book launch for The Mermaid’s Tale. I replied back, that it sounded like a terrific idea, I was all for it. Then I learned there was actually a book launch scheduled at a convention called When World’s Collide in Alberta. Terrific! But then I found that When World’s Collide was sold out, both the convention and the hotels. I missed my own book launch. Kind of ironic, or something.

So I thought what the hell, and went to CanCon. It was nice. The problem for me is that I don’t attend these things regularly enough to be able to take full advantage of them.

If I have any advice for young writers, it’s this: Go to conventions regularly. You don’t have to go to all of them, but pick a few, and go a few years in succession. The first time at a particular convention you’re just getting the lay of the land. I think it’s the second or third time, maybe even fourth, that you can actually take advantage of the potential opportunities. Hell, if you go there three or four years in a row, then you may just keep on for the hell of it.

The first year, it’s up and down. You go to panels, you sign up for things, you say hello to random strangers. It’s all hit and miss

So anyway, at CanCon, I attended an absolutely terrible panel on Lovecraft and Racism.

How terrible was it?

Let me put it this way: One of the panellists, in the minutes before the panel actually started, had to google Lovecraft on her phone. Well, that’s a good sign. That’s preparation.

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Rethinking It: Robin, Year One

How about something a little different? Robin, Year One. This is another one of my “Hey, if I could get my hands on a Franchise – Doctor Who, Space Force, Stargate, etc., here’s the cool thing I would do!”

Yeah, it’s never going to happen. But they’re fun ideas to play with. The thing with being a writer is everyone asks you ‘where do you get your ideas.’ But the thing is, ideas are only the start. It’s what you do with them, where you take them, how you develop them. Behind any story, any novel, there’s this whole background. The story is like the tip of the iceberg, or the front of the stage. But there’s all this stuff underneath the water, or behind and below the stage, premises and assumptions, choices, arcs directions. There are all these elements which give the story shape, structure, energy. It’s all this backstage stuff that gets worked out, which really makes a story interesting… or uninteresting.

Call it backstage at the writers mind. The thing I like about these sorts of exercises, is that the reader actually knows the end product or at least the shape of it. People know Doctor Who, or Godzilla, or Stargate. People know who Batman is. So I can take that, spin, work it, and say “Here’s an interesting line of ideas, premises, arcs.” And I think that you can relate to it a little better than some random idea, you’re closer to being able to see what the end result would be.

So, Robin,Year One. Or Batman and Robin, Year One.

Here’s something I’ve been kicking around.

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The Agents Merry Go Round – Part Two

So here I am searching for an Agent.

I confess, I feel almost as if I’ve passed through a time warp. The era in which I started trying hard to be a Writer, and the era I find myself in now, seem so different. Yet I don’t feel different. My writing doesn’t feel different. I went on this journey, restarting my life again and again, the time filled up, and yet, returning to this passion of mine, picking up the pen it feels as if no time has passed, but suddenly the world is different.

So what about this new world of smart phones and an amazingly comprehensive internet and online commerce? What does it mean to me as a Writer?

In one sense, it’s been disastrous for Free Lance writers. You hear that a lot from free lancers and former free lancers. The markets have dried up, magazines and newspapers are a dying industry, the world is awash in free content, or low price content. It’s harder than ever for most creatives to make a living at it, or even a successful hobby.

But then again, in the fiction trade, it was hardly ever easy. There were times perhaps when things were more open, where there were paying markets for fiction, where publishers were looking desperately for product to stock the shelves and fill the catalogue. Or where people in just the right places and time could get lucky. Unfortunately, I was never in those times or places.

So be it.

I’ve read that there are more novels around now than ever before, more readers, more books than ever before, the world is awash in print, either manual or electronic. Okay, maybe. Sure. I’m not sure I’m seeing it. I remember when I came to Winnipeg, I counted twenty bookstores, new and used in a half hour walk. Today, I count one new bookstore and maybe a half dozen used. Of course there are the big box book superstores in the suburbs and the ebook market, so apples and oranges.

But if there are more books out than ever, then my god, there are more Writers out there than you’ve ever seen. I’ve read someplace that there are a million scripts floating around Hollywood at any given time. I don’t know whether that’s true. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Every publisher, every editor, every agent has a gigantic slush pile. Looking through some of the literature on Agents, it’s like they get literally hundreds of inquiries a day coming in through mail and email from prospective writers. The numbers out there are insane.

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Reflections on a Pandemic

WARNING:  Strong and Salty language in use.  Unkind things are said in the unkindest possible ways.  Words not used in polite company are employed in appropriate ways.  Do not read if you are easily offended.  If judicious use of vulgar language is not for you, then piss off. I don’t care. Sometimes you have to be blunt.

Hi ho. So here we are, into the seventh month of a pandemic, no end in sight. Most of us are holding our breaths waiting for a second wave.

The United States… Well, let’s put it this way. Their handling of the pandemic has been nightmarishly bad. We can blame the Orange Narcissist, but in fact there’s plenty of blame to go around, ranging from badly mismanaged and ill coordinated pandemic plans at federal, state and local levels, politicization of the virus, and just an appalling amount of selfishness and stupidity among large parts of the population.

You could spend weeks dissecting everything the Americans did wrong. But so what?  America is a distraction.  It’s a distraction from how completely badly so many others dropped the ball.

I’m going to be blunt: There are a lot of dead people in Canada, because the people who should have been paying attention were asleep at the wheel. The same for Italy, for Iran, for France and England, Spain and Germany, Russia, Brazil, India, you name it.

Those people, the ones asleep at the wheel, do not deserve to be let off the hook. They do not get to point to America and say “Yes, we were negligent and sloppy and half assed, we weren’t paying attention, or exercising due diligence, yes the sins of our past caught up with us, and we weren’t prepared, we acted late and badly, and we lied to you some, possibly a lot… but hey, look at Trump!”

No.

Dear Bastards, you do not get to do that.

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Honeymooning!

Elijah McClain was a young black man, kind of skinny, glasses. He lived in the suburb or Aurora, in the city of Denver. He had no criminal record, had never been in trouble, he didn’t do drugs, there were none found in his system. He was a massage therapist, he volunteered at the SPCA, and he played the violin for lonely animals. He was just a sweet kid who never did anything to anyone. On August 24, 2019, he bought Ice tea at the corner store for his brother and began to walk home. Then police killed him.

The story goes was that it was a warm night, and he was wearing a ski mask. He did this because he had anaemia his face was cold, apparently there might be some mild autism, or some issue with thermo-regulation. I know people who are cold in warm weather. It happens.

Someone called 911 on him. The report was that he was acting “sketchy,” according to an audio recording of the 911 call released by the Aurora Police Department. The caller told a 911 that the person “has a mask on” and “he might be a good person or a bad person.” The caller went on to say no weapons were involved and when asked if he or anyone else was in danger, the caller said “No.” We don’t know what ‘sketchy’ means, and neither did the police. But what’s clear from the call is: No danger, no weapon.

Nevertheless, three police officer converged on Elijah McClain as he was walking home with his iced tea. He was indeed wearing a ski mask. There were no weapons or burglary tools visible. There was, apart from the ski mask, nothing unusual about his behaviour. He wasn’t furtive, looking into windows, checking car doors. He wasn’t running. He wasn’t acting bizarrely.

So basically, the police should have noted ‘unarmed man wearing ski mask, carrying iced tea, walking at a normal pace.’ No sign of weapons, no sign of danger, no sign of a crime. No unusual behaviour. And that was it, they should have pissed off somewhere else.

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The Agent’s Merry Go Round – Part One

So….  here I am looking for an Agent again. I’ve got Princess of Asylum.  Bloodsucker has been submitted to a Tor Imprint. The Mermaid’s Tale’s rights have reverted back to me, and The Luck was contracted but never published. That’s four novels in play.

Might as well bite the bullet. What am I going to do? Write another novel? I’m actually working on two right now. Release another ebook? Four or five are done and in the pipeline. Seriously, time to suck it up, and go for it.

So…. Agents?

It was, and still is, a catch 22. To get an Agent you needed a book deal with a publisher. To get a book deal you needed an Agent. Round and round we go on the merry go round, no way on.

How do you find one? Well, back in the day, when I was first trying to break through, there were publications. SF Chronicle and Locus for the speculative fiction genre, there was Writers Digest Magazine, there was an Annual Directory of Publishers and Agents. I had subscriptions, I bought the Directories. It was all like reading tea leaves, it was all inscrutable and frustrating. Names of Agents who had sold novels to publishers, but they were names in a vacuum, phrases connecting here to there in emptiness.  Even the Directories were frustrating, the Agents write ups, or interviews in magazines being maddeningly frustrating.

Back then, when research involved buying directories, combing through trade publications, searching for interviews and references, it was maddeningly vague.

You know what some writers did?  They’d go through books checking the dedications and the acknowledgements, hoping to find the name of the writer’s agent.

“Special thanks to my Agent, Anonymous Blandy, without whose help this novel would never have seen publication.”

The theory being that if these were books that you really liked, which were written similarly to yours, then you could guess this agent might like your stuff.  But what were you going to do, irritate the staff at Bookstores as you worked your way with pen and notepad through the Sci Fi section. Grab your own table at the library and stack em up? Or just go through your personal library? How many books did you read in a year? Twenty? Fifty?  Or search through review for books you thought might be enough like your style and subject matter, then search out the books themselves, check if they’re complementary, then search out the author, and hopefully, get a lead on the author’s agent.  Sometimes, the search for an Agent was this Rube Goldberg Odyssey.

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The Politics of Rage

I want to talk about the politics of rage.

Let me start with an Interesting factoid – they’ve done catscans of the brain in various states. To see what happens when people think, what parts of the brain light up. And what the sequence of the brains activities are in things like happiness, arousal, anger, sadness, etc.

Want to know something they found? The parts of the brain that light up for anger, are exactly the same ones as for happiness.

Anger is basically happiness-lite. It’s substitute happiness.

Anger is Faux-Happiness.

It’s the same kind of neurological high, except that it’s much easier to trigger, and less lasting.

It’s what they call a response rather than a state.

That explains why some people are so angry all the time, so easily angered. Because neurologically, their anger is fake happiness. They’re addicted.

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Bloodsucker – A Sneak Peek

“Melissa is a street kid who believes she’s a vampire.  As she cruises and feeds among the low lifes of a decaying city, she encounters hookers, drug dealers, homeless people, perverts, predators, musicians, artists and social workers, all of them just trying to get by.  Meanwhile, trio of young serial killers are cruising for fun. And elsewhere, a black lab has been exposed and secret investigators are on the trail.  Melissa tries to cope with her new nature by setting limits and moral standards, but as she progresses, she crosses line after line.  Eventually, her journey leads her back to the secret laboratory, and the revelation that she’s not a vampire, but something worse….”

BACKGROUND

Bloodsucker is my first novel, way way back.  Not much to say… I’d been writing short stories for years.  I had dozens of stories. The market for short stories was  crap, and I figured that I’d developed enough as a writer to try something more ambitious.  Simple as that.

Actually, there is more.  When I moved out to Winnipeg to go to law school, it was my first time in an even semi-large city. I was far from home, and on a very limited income, I didn’t know anyone out here. Eventually, I ended up living downtown in the Exchange district in the middle of what turned out to be the red light district, in an old low end building, owned by a divorced entrepreneur and his sons.

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