A Writer’s Journey: Part 9

A WRITER’S JOURNEY: Part 9 – Exorcising Demons

An Interview with Ray Garton

The World Horror Convention presented him with the Grand Master Award in 2006 and he’s written over fifty fiction and non-fiction books between his own name and his two pseudonyms; Joseph Locke and Arthur Darknell. SEDUCTIONS, was his first novel, hitting the shelves at the age of twenty-one and his 1987 novel, LIVE GIRLS, was nominated for a Bram Stoker award. He is Ray Garton, the writer F. Paul Wilson has called, “one of horror fiction’s great innovators.” I’m putting aside my awe for the moment because he has been kind enough to take the time to submit to an interview with me for A Writer’s Journey’s newest installment; Exorcising Demons. I have no doubt that anyone reading this with an itch to write powerful horror fiction will find what this incredibly talented and open writer has to say, both enlightening and a learning experience to be remembered the next time you sit at your keyboards.

BL: Firstly I want to say thank you for sharing your experiences with us in this interview. Some of your books have included novelizations of two of my favourite Nightmare on Elm St. movies (written as Joseph Locke) and a controversial “non-fiction” book co-authored with the infamous Warrens regarding a certain house in Connecticut. Your work has carried with it a certain expectation of shock, sex and violence. How has this viewpoint by the general reading public affected how you write? When you sit at the computer or typewriter do you think, “how can I disturb people this time?” Or are you concerned that some readers miss the dynamics of your character’s relationships, i.e. the Kellar family’s struggles for a new start in THE LOVELIEST DEAD?

RG: I started writing when I was just a little kid. Even back then, when I wrote, what came out was pretty dark. Since I began writing professionally, yes, I’m aware of certain expectations of my work, and I don’t want to disappoint my readers. But at the same time, I’ve never really had to make much of an effort for my stories to take dark turns – that’s just the way they come out of me, and that’s always been the case. I recently wrote a very mainstream non-horror novel under a pseudonym. When I submitted the completed manuscript to my agent, he read it and immediately responded with a note that said, “This book has a classic gruesome Ray Garton ending. It doesn’t fit here. It has to go.” He was right. I had to rewrite the ending. So even when I’m trying to do something different, my work tends to go down dark alleys I’d rather avoid.

I suppose there are readers who may miss my attempts to develop characters and relationships in favor of focusing on the sex and violence. And there may be those who ignore the sex and violence to focus on the characters. All I can do is write what I write. Once I do that, it’s out of my hands. How it’s read, what’s focused on, what’s taken away from it – all that is beyond my control.

Most of the writers I know claim that writing is not something they choose to do, it’s something they have to do. I’m sure not all writers are like that, but I am. Not only is writing something I have to do, I usually don’t have a lot of choice in what comes out once I start to write. I can control it once it’s on the page, but in that first stage in which it actually comes out of me and goes onto the page, it’s kind of out of my hands. It’s a very strange process that’s different for every writer.

　

BL: Many new writers have tried to emulate this shock tactic style of writing much the way that the current horror movie genre has done. Taking old ideas, throwing in excessive blood and guts violence with only the barest thread of a storyline to tie it together. Or they turn horror themes into pretty fantasies full of romance and teenage angst. But when it comes to your own writing you’ve been called an innovator because of your ability to “[take] veteran horror themes and twisting them to evocative or entertaining effect.” (Publishers Weekly). Two of your most popular titles, LIVE GIRLS and RAVENOUS, have taken the vampire and werewolf sub-genres and turned them on their heads by adding a dirty and gritty sexual slant to the mythos. You’ve made these creatures monstrous again by infusing them with the most base human sins but not without fighting to maintain what goodness remains in them. How have you managed to keep that balance while so many others tend to become either too hard or too soft?

RG: I grew up on the traditional icons of horror, particularly those portrayed in the old Universal movies – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man – and the Hammer films that came later. I loved them. Those movies always took place in some distant past, in some foreign land. Long before I started writing professionally, I was very fond of the idea of dropping those monsters in present-day America. Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot was a revelation to me. It made me see that I wasn’t crazy, that I wasn’t just fantasizing, that it could be done and it could work beautifully.

Horror is a genre that sets out to inject the real world we all know with the supernatural, with monsters and psychopaths and strange phenomena. I’ve always thought that the best way to make that genre work is to firmly ground it in that real world, the one we all live in where there are no vampires or werewolves. Populate that world with people we all recognize in some way, people who are like us even if their particular occupations or situations in life are unusual. Once the reader has settled into that real-world situation populated by people they recognize and can, in some way, identify with, then I toss in the weird stuff. For me, a good horror story is grounded in reality first.

In some horror – or in genres that are tenuously related, like urban fantasy – the weird stuff is there from the beginning. The world in which the story is set is not only populated by familiar people, but by vampires or werewolves who are a given from the beginning. The characters are often aware of the existence of these creatures from the very start of the story. These books are extremely popular, so obviously they work for a lot of people, but they aren’t typically what I look for. And they’re not what I’ve been writing over the years.

Having said that, I should point out that that’s starting to change in my writing. Bestial featured two characters from Night Life, the sequel to Live Girls, and linked the two vampire novels and the two werewolf novels into a kind of loosely connected series. In the follow-up to Bestial, I’m going to make that link stronger and this will become a series of books in which the characters and vampires from Live Girls and Night Life interact with the characters and werewolves from Ravenous and Bestial, and new characters will be added. It’s impossible to do this without the supernatural creatures being a constant part of the story. It’s new territory for me and is requiring a slight adjustment, but I’m enjoying the idea of developing stories and characters over multiple books. However, that’s the only difference. The writing and tone will remain the same.

You mentioned sex. There are certain things we all have in common – people we love, dreams and desires we have, personal weaknesses we want to overcome. Those things differ from person to person. But the one thing we all have in common is sex. We all want it, we all need it, we all love it – even those who claim otherwise. Part of the function of horror is to unsettle, disturb and frighten. We are no more vulnerable than in the area of sexuality. It’s always been a sensitive subject. And when are we more vulnerable than when we’re actually engaged in sex? I’ve always thought that sex was a perfect target for the horror genre for that reason. It’s always been a big part of my work. Frankly, I think sex should be a part of any honest fiction. It’s a big part of all of our lives and to present a character whose sexuality and sex life are left out, completely ignored, is to present an incomplete character. I’ve found that sex can be just as revealing of a character – and used just as effectively to develop a character – as background, dialogue, physical description, any of the more common details of a character’s life and personality. And there are two other reasons my books usually have an emphasis on sex: I enjoy writing sex and sex sells because people enjoy reading sex. It would be dishonest to say that I use sex in my writing only for artistic purposes. That’s like saying you read Playboy for the articles.

BL: Religion. You had to know this one was going to come up. It comes up in many interviews you’ve done because it formed a large part of your attraction to horror. You were raised a Seventh-Day Adventist by your parents and your critical views on this religious belief has been applauded and criticized. Both readers and reviewers are split on their opinions of how much emphasis is put on religion in books you’ve written. A recent review of BESTIAL said the only negative aspect of the novel was the dark portrayal of the Seventh-Day Adventist church. I think it would help other writers to know how you decide what parts from your own background to put into the story and if you ever worry that you may have put too much of yourself into your work.

RG: Some people came down hard on Bestial because of the subplot involving Bob Berens and his Seventh-day Adventist family. They accused me of having a vendetta, of being bitter. But the fact is, they know nothing about the Seventh-day Adventist cult and assume that it’s just another Christian denomination. There was a time when I was very bitter, but that’s behind me. Religion is a weird subject in America. We have freedom of religion here, which is one of the things that has always made America so great. This should include freedom from religion if that’s what you want, but that’s not the case so much. If you have a problem with religion, or if you’ve had a bad experience with religion, and you voice any of that, there are a lot of people who bristle and immediately accuse you of being bitter and angry and vindictive. The problem, they say, is with you, not with religion. The religious expect, and even demand, the freedom to criticize and condemn others for all kinds of reasons – their lifestyles, the people they love, their politics, their choices. But if you say anything that suggests criticism of religion, the problem is with you. You’re bitter, you’re angry, you have a vendetta. This comes even from people who claim not to be religious. By the way, isn’t it amazing how many people try to distance themselves from religion – even a lot of the religious. “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious,” they say. “I believe in god, but I’m not religious. I go to church, but I’m not religious.” For something that’s supposed to be so good, so healthy, so positive and loving, there certainly are a lot of people who want to make sure you know they have nothing to do with it – even many of the people who believe in it.

I do not have a vendetta against the Seventh-day Adventist sect, and I have made no attempt to smear it or make it look bad in any way. I have simply depicted life within the world of Seventh-day Adventism the way it is. Most people don’t know that because Adventism does a very good job of presenting itself to the world in a way that looks conventional and mainstream. But life inside the cult is very different. I’ve written nothing about Adventism that is inaccurate – in fact, I rigidly stuck to the facts about the sect in Bestial – and I have made no attempt to slant my depiction in a way that would defame or smear it. Just the facts, ma’am. Bob Berens, a character in Bestial, is a real person. I changed his name and his age, a few other minor details about him, but his situation, his fears, the incredible dysfunction and pain and loneliness that make up his life – all of that was lifted directly and in one whole piece from an old friend of mine, someone I grew up with and have known all my life. His situation is not uncommon in the cult. The Adventist beliefs and teachings I depicted in the book, the facts about its founder and “prophet” Ellen G. White, are all very, very real. I can understand readers being appalled by what they read about Adventism in Bestial, but it’s a mistake to blame me for it. I didn’t make it up, and I didn’t manipulate it with an eye toward making the sect look weird. The sect is weird.

Most Adventists are born and raised in the cult, and their worldview – including their view of themselves, of others, and their relationships with others – is warped from infancy onward. They are raised to fear the Catholic church; to expect that church to take over the country at any moment and try to force everyone to worship on Sunday; to believe that there are active conspiracies going on behind closed doors in Washington, D.C. right now to pass a “national Sunday law” making Sunday worship mandatory; to prepare for the day when they – the Adventists – will be hunted down and tortured and executed for worshipping on Saturday instead of Sunday; to believe that worshipping on Sunday is the mark of the beast (which makes all of mainstream Christianity “the enemy”); that every word written by a paranoid, fanatical, masturbation-obsessed Victorian-era woman (Ellen G. White) came directly from god and that the fact that she plagiarized much of her copious writings is nothing more than a lie planted by Satan, and anyone who claims it’s true is an agent of Satan – I could go on and on. When I point out any part of this, when I discuss these things, there are people who immediately – before I’m even finished – claim that I’m bitter, disgruntled, and that I have a grudge against Seventh-day Adventism, an ax to grind. Over the years, I’ve talked at length about what happened to me when my first novel was published while I was living in an Adventist community in the Napa Valley. I’m not going to rehash it here, but when I tell some people about the threats and the vandalism and the other things that were done to me in reaction to the fact that I’d written a horror novel, they say that I am the one with the problem.

I recently reconnected with a woman from my past. We went to the same Adventist boarding academy and college. I didn’t know her well back then – I was more acquainted with her older sister, who was very religious. Like me (and unlike her older sister), she has managed to break free of the cult – something that is much harder to do than anyone who hasn’t experienced it can possibly know – and has made a great life for herself free of all the fear and paranoia that made up her earlier life (if you’re ever in West Hollywood, you should visit her fantastic shop, The Yogurt Stop!). She and I have been discussing our past and we’ve discovered that the older we get, the more life we live out here in the real world, the more clearly we see how truly bizarre our lives were back then and how much we’ve had to overcome. One of my dearest friends in the world is the novelist Steven Spruill, a great writer, the author of the vampire novels Daughter of Darkness and Rulers of Darkness, as well as a lot of medical thrillers and science fiction novels. He’s 15 years older than I, and he, too, was raised a Seventh-day Adventist. As far as I know, Steve and I are the only two former Adventists on the planet who write horror. Despite our age difference, we feel like brothers because our background – our experiences, terrors and the things we were taught – are identical. Even now – I’m 47, he’s 62 – we are still dealing with problems left over from our upbringing, things indoctrinated in us from the earliest ages that have effected our self-image, the way we deal with other people. What some people see as anger and bitterness and some kind of vendetta is actually very typical of people who, like myself, were raised Adventists. You’d be amazed by how many people there are out there who’ve had nearly identical experiences growing up Adventist and who feel exactly the same as I – I’ve met a lot of them, some have written to me. The difference between us is that sometimes I write about. And I write about it even when I’m not trying to write about it. The only difference in Bestial is that I specifically identified the sect.

I was raised in this cult and for a good-sized chunk of my life, it was my entire world. Like all Adventists, I was taught that my oddness, my inability to fit in with the rest of the world – which is something Adventism fosters – was a sign of righteousness, a positive thing and something to be nurtured. I know this cult inside and out. It helped shape me, to make me who I am today. When people ask why I write horror, I say it’s because I was raised a Seventh-day Adventist. I’m not complaining. That’s my life, that was my situation, it was out of my hands, I dealt with it as best I could, and I’m still dealing with it. Like every writer, when I write, a good deal of myself goes on the page. In fact, a lot more of me goes on the page than I’m aware of, I’ve found. A friend recently pointed out to me just how much autobiographical material is in all of my fiction, and I was so shocked I had to lift my chin off my lap. I knew there were bits and pieces of me and my life in there, but I had no idea how much. I’m sure that’s the case with most writers. To answer your question, even when I thought I was making a conscious decision on how much of myself and my experience to put in my fiction, I’ve always been putting in more than I thought.

As for those who have a problem with the way I write or talk about religion – I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t see religion – and by religion, I’m not referring specifically to Christianity, but to any religion, all religion – as a very positive or productive thing, and there’s a whole lot of history out there that backs me up on that. In the United States, you are free to believe what you want, to worship as you please, and to belong to the religion of your choice. But this country has a real problem dealing with people who choose not to believe, worship, or belong to a religion. The whole world seems to have a problem with that. And if those people express this – if they say out loud they don’t believe in god, or that they don’t think religion is a positive, productive thing – people absolutely come to pieces. I mean, the reaction is astonishing. It really is angry and bitter. All over a difference of opinion. Richard Dawkins has written about his experiences with the religious on his book tours. Before he made one particular appearance in England, a local Vicar went on the radio and called for Dawkins’s execution. His execution! I get chills just thinking about the hate mail and death threats that people like Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins and Sam Harris get – and it comes from people who claim to worship Jesus Christ, the so-called “Prince of Peace.” If all that happens to me is that some people accuse me of being bitter and having a vendetta against the Seventh-day Adventist cult, then I have nothing to complain about and consider myself lucky.

BL: A Haunting in Connecticut was released in theatres a while back and I know you’ve been quite vocal regarding your views of this particular “story” or rather the varying accounts of what happened. There’s no love for Ed and Lorraine Warren when you’re asked about them, and often you’ve stated that when you noticed the accounts of the people involved didn’t mesh you wanted to back out of the book deal. But what were your feelings and first impressions when the offer to co-write a book with the Warrens first appeared across your desk?

RG: My first thought was that it might be fun to work with Ed and Lorraine Warren. I’d read about them in tabloids and had followed their paranormal adventures over the years. I’m not a believer in ghosts and demons, but I assumed the Snedekers would be people who honestly believed that they’d encountered ghosts or demons. I assumed that that was how they had interpreted the events of their life. I thought there might be a good story there. So I signed on. As it turned out, I was wrong on all counts.

BL: Is there a warning to other writers somewhere in your experiences with the Warrens?

RG: Don’t sign a contract to do anything until you’ve had the opportunity to investigate every aspect of that job. Don’t put yourself in a situation in which others can tell you what you must write unless you have the resources to get out of that situation should you find that you’re uncomfortable with what’s being required of you. I was very naive and I backed myself into a corner. I regret it.

BL: You’ve dealt with both mass market publishers and small press publishers in your career. What has been the difference for you as a writer (in terms of both style and content) between works like DARK CHANNEL published by Bantam Falcon and NIGHT LIFE published by Leisure Books? Or in the small press realm, like the Bloodletting Press editions of your books? Has one publisher let you get away with more than another when it came to more extreme scenes?

RG: Honestly, there’s been no difference. I write what I write. Different publishers end up publishing my work at different times and for different reasons. I’m not aware of ever tailoring my writing to a publisher other than, say, writing a short story for an anthology that has a particular theme or writing movie novelizations or TV tie-ins, which are specific assignments.

BL: Some more mainstream readers may find your fiction goes too far. Personally, scenes like the gang-bang porn scene from NIGHT LIFE made me angry, but I have to say that I wasn’t angry with you. I had grown to care for the characters and reading about them suffering that kind of abuse upset me because you had made me care for them. Do you think a lot of people lose sight of the story when that happens and blame the author for letting it happen? That they say, “you didn’t have to write it that way”?

RG: I’m glad that scene made you angry, because it was supposed to. If you had felt nothing, then I would feel I had failed because I wanted you to care about that character.

I know there are plenty of people who don’t like the directions my novels go in and once they’ve discovered that, it’s perfectly understandable if they don’t pick up any more of my books. I’m not sure I understand those who get angry at me for what I write. Some do, though. I guess I should be gratified that they are responding to my work, even though it’s in a way I didn’t intend.

BL: Has writing about your personal demons been cathartic? Are there anymore left that we can count on seeing showing up in future novels?

RG: I often joke that, given the bizarre nature of my upbringing, I’ll never be able to afford the amount of therapy I need. But the truth is, writing has been my therapy. I shudder to think of the shape I’d be in if I didn’t have that outlet. Now, I’m sure there are some who will look at that last sentence and assume that, without writing, I’d be some slobbering, greasy-haired psycho with one hand in my pants and the other clutching a blood-dripping knife. But that’s not what I mean. I wouldn’t be dangerous without writing – not to anyone but myself. Growing up, I was told by everyone around me – my parents, my pastors, my teachers, my “friends” – that there was something wrong with me because I enjoyed movies and novels and comic books and TV shows (especially in the horror genre), that Satan was working in me, that I was bad. When you’re a child, and you’re told these things all the time by everyone in your life, you believe them. And I grew up thinking I was a pretty horrible person, unworthy of love, deserving of punishment. It’s that self-hatred, more than anything else, that writing has allowed me to release, and the ability to do that has probably saved me from turning it on myself. If my writing has changed at all in recent years – I’m too close to it to know if it has or not – it’s because that attitude in me has finally begun to change in a real way.

BL: I noticed that in some of your acknowledgements at the beginning of a few of your books you’ve thanked your parents. Have you reconciled your past with them and the part they played in making you the writer you are? How big was their part, in your opinion?

RG: First of all, I don’t want to give the impression that my parents were absolute monsters and my childhood was one long agonizing nightmare. That’s not the case. In fact, I was a lot better off than many of the other Adventist kids I knew. If my parents were just horrible people with no redeeming qualities, things would be much easier – I could simply hate them. But I don’t, not at all. My parents provided for me, took good care of me (if you don’t count my dad’s habit of kicking me as he dragged me through the house by my hair or flogging me with his belt), and they gave me a lot of happiness. Mom and Dad hated the fact that I liked horror movies and TV shows like Night Gallery and Dark Shadows and Twilight Zone. (I wasn’t allowed to go to movies because “movie houses” were off limits to Adventists back then, but I understand there’s been some loosening in this area in the intervening years.) But they were open-minded in some very odd ways – especially for Adventists. They saw how happy those movies and TV shows made me, so they let me watch them. But they never missed an opportunity to express their intense disapproval. They were constantly telling me how much I was hurting Jesus, how I was letting Satan enter me and work through me, and that if Jesus came in the clouds with trumpeting angels while I was planted in front of the TV watching Creatures Features, I would be lost. (Personally, I always kind of figured that any guy who would keep a wedding party rocking by turning water into wine would probably get a kick out of Attack of the Mushroom People or Invasion of the Saucer Men.) Sometimes I got the feeling they let me watch that stuff specifically for the opportunity to tell me, over and over, how bad it was, how bad I was for watching it, and how it was going to ruin my chances for salvation. But at least I was able　to watch it, even though I was always being condemned for it. I think if it hadn’t been for horror on TV, I would have gone insane. It was an outlet. Horror was a relief to me, a fun little vacation from the terrors of my life. And just as much as my parents and their religion, those wonderful old movies and TV shows contributed to the person I became – and to the writer I became.

We had a friend who visited occasionally, a guy who was probably in his late twenties when I was just boy. His name was Phil and I always enjoyed his visits because he was hilarious and made me laugh until I had tears running down my cheeks. But Phil was different. He was very effeminate – although at that age, I was unable to describe it that way because I had so little frame of reference. I once asked my dad why Phil was the way he was. Dad explained that Phil was gay – I don’t remember if he actually used the word “gay,” but whatever word he used, I don’t think it was in any way derogatory. He explained that most guys liked girls, and most girls liked guys, but there were some guys who liked other guys and some girls who liked other girls. His theory was simply that they were born that way. “Some people don’t like them and think they’re sinning,” he said. “But it’s not our place to judge.” This was at the end of the 1960s, maybe 1970. Looking back on it now, I think what Dad said was astonishingly progressive. Even loving. In fact, that is the kind of love I’ve always seen in the words of Jesus Christ from the bible, and it’s the kind of love you almost never　see in the people who claim to worship him! My parents also had friends of all colors from our church – black, Filipino, hispanic – who frequently spent time at our house. I grew up around these people and honestly paid no attention to the color difference. I remember how baffled I was when I encountered the concept of racism – it made no sense to me. I’ve always been grateful for those healthy attitudes they passed on to me.

But I picked up some things that weren’t so good. The primary emotions in my family were always anger, fear, and guilt. As I got older and occasionally began to mix with people outside our Seventh-day Adventist community – which is a very tightly closed circle, by the way – I started to see that things were extremely different on the outside. Once I had something to compare my life to, I began to think that maybe I wasn’t crazy for being so miserable. Maybe – just maybe – the problem, contrary to everything I was told by everyone in my life, wasn’t me.

I’ve tried so hard in my adult life to make my relationship with my parents work. I acknowledged them in my books, I gave them a copy of each book. I knew they wouldn’t read them, but I inscribed each one with a note thanking them for everything they’d done for me and telling them I loved them. I’ve tried to excuse the constant disapproval and judgment I’ve always received from them. I’ve tried to ignore their endless talk about the “signs of the end” and how close the “time of trouble” is, when the Sunday law will pass and we’ll have to flee to the mountains and live in caves to stay alive. I’ve tried to remind myself that my dad – who scared me even more than the “time of trouble” when I was growing up – physically abused me and treated me cruelly because he had been so horribly abused and cruelly treated by his parents. I’ve tried to remind myself that, no matter how weird their religion was or how much damage was done by the things they taught me, they always honestly believed they were doing the right thing. Then two things happened within weeks of each other.

A few years ago, my mother boxed up my books, said they no longer had room for them, and thought I’d want them back. I knew immediately that they simply didn’t want them in the house anymore. I don’t know for a fact but strongly suspect that they’d seen something on the Seventh-day Adventist TV channel, 3ABN, that had brought them to their decision – some sermon, or a series of programs that included the evils of fiction or discussed the nearness of The End. I pointed out to Mom that all the books were inscribed to them. She said, “Oh … they are?” She didn’t know. They hadn’t looked.

Shortly after that, I was sitting in our kitchen with my wife Dawn. We were at the table reading and the radio was on. An old song Dawn liked began to play. She got up, grabbed my hand and said, “Dance with me!” I’d never danced. There’s no dancing among Adventists. In the Adventist schools I’d attended, they held banquets instead of dances. I’d never learned to dance. Didn’t know how. But I gave it a try with Dawn that day. It was very brief, quickly aborted. My attempt to dance resulted in a rush of unpleasant feelings in me. I was embarassed because I was no good, I didn’t know what I was doing. But far worse were the feelings of shame and guilt. I was dancing – I wasn’t supposed to dance! Dancing was a bad thing! This reaction was instantaneous and involuntary. Then I was hit hard with the daunting realization that I was a man in my mid-forties, and I was unable to dance with my wife in my own kitchen without feeling bad about it. I realized I had to do something, make some changes in my life.

That month, I wrote a letter to my parents (who live only a few miles from me) and spilled my guts. I tried to explain to them the damage they and their religion had done to me, how it had made me feel about myself and my life, and how difficult it had been to recover from it. I wrote it down because I knew if I tried to tell them in person, I would never be allowed to finish. And even as I wrote the letter, I knew they would read it and see none of the words as I had written them. They would see only what they were conditioned to see, what they were indoctrinated to see. But I didn’t care. I was writing the letter more for my own sake than theirs. I sent it to them the next day. It put some much-needed distance between myself and my parents – if not geographical then certainly emotional. It was sad and it wasn’t something I enjoyed doing, but it was necessary for the sake of my own peace of mind. And it has brought a lot of peace to my life.

BL: I’m a dog person, but I have to know; do the cats ever whisper ideas to you while you’re writing? I’ve seen many a writer’s bio with the mention of owning cats. Is that the secret?

RG: They’ve never whispered to me, but they often paw me for attention and meow at length while I’m writing. And occasionally they fart in my office and throw up on my shoes.

BL: Okay, I think I harassed you enough as it is. Now is the part of the interview where you toot your own horn and we all get to salivate in anticipation for the next craziness brought to us by the delightfully disturbed imagination of Ray Garton. I know you have a few books optioned for film, any word on their state of production? What new works are set to come out?

RG: I am unable to toot my own horn, but I understand kundalini yoga makes that possible so I’m thinking of taking it up, and if what I’ve heard is true, I’ll probably never leave the house again.

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten any updates on the movie projects. I’m not involved in any of them and I’m kind of out of the loop. Last I heard, Live Girls will star Ray Winstone and is supposed to shoot in Detroit. I’m not sure what’s happening with Graven Image or Lot Lizards. Sex and Violence in Hollywood has hit a wall, which I’ve found is a pretty standard state of affairs in the process of getting a movie off the ground.

My novel Scissors has just been released in paperback. At the moment, I’m working on a few things. I’m writing a novella that has no title yet but will be published by Sideshow Press. I’m working on the follow-up to Bestial. And I’m trying to put the finishing touches on Dismissed From the Front and Center, my humorous novel about my two years at a Seventh-day Adventist boarding academy so my agent can sell it.

BL: I’d like thank you once again for joining me on the journey, Mr. Garton. Readers can find out more about his vast body of work at the links below. Amazing writing and long hours of some of the best entertainment you’ll find between the pages are a guarantee with this man. In addition, he’s also one of the funniest people in horror, make sure to follow him on Twitter.

RG: Thanks for thinking of me, Brandon.

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/RayGarton

Website:  http://preposteroustwaddlecock.blogspot.com/

Wiki Page:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Garton

MySpace: www.myspace.com/raygarton

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/people/Ray-Garton/1134782857

FINDING OPHELIA

FINDING OPHELIA

By

Brandon Layng

Her eyes looked a glassy black and I thought they seemed full of death. She stared up at me and laid half on the rocks with her feet in the water. A circle of light, the full moon above us, reflected in each pupil and they were like willow-the-wisps floating over the dark waters of her soul, cheeks coursed with black mascara tears and gaunt with smudges of gray. Her eyebrows were only lines of captured droplets.

Waves lapped at the rocks, hungry for her flesh.

I kicked, slow and deliberate, feeling the water’s liquid resistance to the solidity of my actions. It stayed my place in the deep waters close to the shoreline beneath the bluffs and kept her body close. The water was a cool solution to the touch, raising goosebumps on my arms and sliding her against my naked torso. Her light pink nipples were flush to her areola, her breasts laid flat and sloughed off to the sides of her chest. I take one in my hand, feeling its firm lividity in beneath the palm. I’m tempted to place the other between my lips, the lumps of flesh quivered and when I took the plump teat between my teeth the blood was a metallic tang against my tongue. Her red hair, with highlights of blonde like embroidered trimmings of gold in a crimson tapestry was spread out in cascade over the rocks.

Skin soft and pliant to the touch. It moved over the muscle and sinew beneath like a loose fitting silk sheet over a firm mattress, sliding and wrinkling, yet so erotic to feel against you. Her crushed white rose petal skin, splashed with red where the cuts exposed the red carnations beneath. I smelled the garden of her flesh and her flowers were pitcher plants, the smell made my nipples harden and my body crawl with the heat of arousal. I added my own moisture to the lake at the sight of her blue-tinted lips, a pair of spooning lovers above and pointed chin and beneath a petite nose of commercial beauty.

She stared at the stars as the water pushed against her wet body, her celestial lover thrusting into her.

With reluctance I removed my hand from her chest and waded out until I felt her toes touched me and then back between her slender legs, their length straddling my scaled hips. Her nest of hair pressed to my stomach and I pull her closer. My hands clasped on the sides of her waist beneath the picket fences of her ribs and above the sharp ridges of her hipbones. Fingers clenched tight on the waspish waist and her fur lined lips kissed my flesh as I released her from the rocky sanctuary. The redness of her hair left a splattered stain on the granite pillow. I pulled her out with me, a scarf trailed behind her, black in the water beneath the lunar spotlight.

Oh, how the moon shone in sensual glory as he struggled for conquest with his lover. Always incessant with his need and imposing himself on the lake’s skin.

“Don’t worry poor lost Ophelia.” I said. “Your Hamlet has abandoned you, but I would keep you safe and show you love.”

A bat flitted from a cave in the face of the cliff, his brown body cut the air in zigzagged incisions, his chirps pitched through the night. A pale moth fluttered overhead, a transient lunatic in the light of the sinking satellite whose life is a pale reflection of the sun. I turned my head to watch it course a yard and then another and another over the rippled water. The bat called to it, only to have its beckoning returned unanswered. It dove toward the moth who searched in vain for the false comfort of the moon savior in the sweeping black glitter spackled shroud. The bat lunged within a few wing beats of the moth when a wide-mouthed fish leapt and captured the moth in its maw before splashing back to the water’s safety and cold welcome. A wingtip of the bat touched the splash and shied away like a finger passing too close to the flame of a candle and it coursed away into the night in search of another prospective meal.

A cool smile touched my lips at the irony and I pushed away out into the lake’s vast womb, with the pale-skinned woman pressed upon my body, her breasts firm against my own. My progress, slow and the feel of her so close, relished. I ached for her lips and tender nipple to suckle and to taste the junction of her tight curls.

The moon seemed mere inches from the lake’s edge when I reached my place at the center of the water and the sky to the east had lightened to a purple. I assured the stiffened Ophelia in my arms that no longer will she be a lover cast aside and abandoned but one cherished and patiently appreciated for all she had to offer. I felt the thick strands of fluid seep out from between her cleft and the milky semen was slick and sexy as it rubbed onto my skin. There was a nudging and a squirming, before the minnow, that for a while called her crevice home, wriggled out from between us. I took her down into the darkness with me and saw it circled us before it disappeared as curiosity dissipated.

Black strands of blood threaded out from her hair as I pulled her down and clutched her luminescent body close to mine. My one arm arced around her back, clutching a rounded cheek in my hand and my other curled behind her shoulder blade to tangle my finger in her hair which slowly turned more golden with each ebb and flow of the current. A scattering of bubbles floated up from her mouth and raise like helium balloons to pop at the surface. I searched her eyes and saw the wisp’s lights were gone. Inside her was darkness but not emptiness. I pressed her open mouth against mine and snaked my tongue into the bitter taste of the exposed cavity. Her hipbones dug into my pelvis, I gripped her harder to me. My nipples were pebbles sitting on my breasts. The gills at the side of my neck fluttered in hurried breaths as I licked the soul from her mouth. Her tongue was stiff and sensual like a lollipop, her soul the chewy center. Her lips – once spooning lovers – are like candy as I bit them off of her face and swallowed them.

I fed for a while before dragging her deep into the bottom of the lake and wedging her between two rocks to let her soften more for me to savor later. With a strong kick of my tail I rose to the surface. The water glided over and beneath my scales.

The moon had lain down in submission to the coming day and the sun strode red into the morning sky. It smelled like a storm coming and if the fishermen had not taken heed of the red sky’s warning, another meal waited in this mermaid’s not too distant future.

A WRITER’S JOURNEY: Part 8 — History Class

Have you ever been out walking in the woods and come across the rusted out hulk of a car from a bygone era?

The trees surround you, a vast army division frozen at parade attention, with branches at arms ready to poke you in the eye if you should turn too fast to investigate the snapping sound that came from… the left, maybe. Decaying blanket of needles and leaves cushioning your steps. The smell of moss in the air dampening each breath with nature’s potpourri and the sunrays playing a light orchestra at the conduction of the breeze that plays in your sweat wet hair.

And there it is; the red raw leftovers of history.

If the tires have rotted away you can’t see them. Mud has swallowed everything below the wheel-wells and grass has grown high enough to poke through holes in the hood. Like shards stuck in the frames of eyeglasses, the dirty lenses of windshield and other windows stare blindly as you approach. The side-view mirror is dog-eared. Springs have torn free of their seats and the faded paint has lost all of its personality to rust and rain. Some other venturer has taken the hood ornament and steering wheel for souveniers. Souveniers of what, no one could know. If you peer through where time has perforated the car to reveal its inner workings you’ll see its guts are missing.

Look around and you’ll see a spot in the trees where a road might have been. The tracks have filled in and the ruts hold thin streams of run-off between the blades of grass. But who goes to all the work of pushing a junk car out into the woods? Or did they drive it out there, get stuck and then came back for the engine later? Did they stop using this old roadway after too many cars were lost or did the woods just take it back one day? What make is the car? You can’t even figure it out because time has stepped in, stolen the history of the men and women who manufactured it, owned it and drove it, made love in it, laughed and cried in it, hell, maybe died in it for all you know standing and wondering about it.

The car in the woods forgotten for you to discover it has a history but it doesn’t matter to your story. What matters is what happens when you find it.

The same goes for characters you’re writing about. The people, places and things central to your scenes. For the purpose of this entry to A Writer’s Journey this relic of a different time brought into the future in an unfortunate state is the character that sets the scene. You’re only a witness to the car’s story. Your will continue on after you’ve left the car behind but don’t be mistaken, it will affect you whether you forget about it or try to discover its mysteries.

Many times while writing I’ve been tempted to go deeply into the history of my characters only to realize in proof-reading that the story lags at these points. History is interesting. It is an entirely different creature than backstory though. And backstory works best when it is spread out in brief swallows over the course of the real story.

He scratched at the pale circlet of skin around a finger on his left hand as the woman with the cat fur covered blouse talked. The itch was a reminder of loving things unsaid, brought on by this stranger, who had bribed him with a drink in the hope he would listen to her and finish the conversation with a note on her pillow in the morning instead of his head.

Obviously this guy is a bitter divorcee and the woman has been single for a while. How can you tell? The mark on his ring finger from an absent wedding band that was there long enough to leave a tan-line. The things unsaid that he probably regrets and the tone he uses when assuming his companions motive for buying him a drink. What about the woman? Is she a long-time single woman? We can’t know for sure because our impression of her is actually filtered through our main character’s observations and tone which is tainted by his own history. He assumes she is lonely because she has cat hair all over her shirt and she bought a stranger a drink in a bar. She could be married for all he is really noticing about her. Plenty of couples have cats you know. The fact of the matter is, you’re a writer and your job is telling readers what to see and how to see it. If I had bogged my example down with the details of the guy’s marriage or what things were unsaid and how they lead to a divorce then I would probably bore you. I would also get side tracked from the real story. If the divorce is the real story then why is this character even in the bar? He should be at home in a marital spat or something.

I directed you in what to see with the car and I did the same thing with the guy from the example by filtering the information and giving you what would be necessary to the story. One over several paragraphs and the other during two sentences.

If you have a story that lags in a few places, the chances are that you’ve given your characters (people, places and things) too much history. Find a way to turn that info into backstory. These kind of changes don’t always mean cutting word count either. If a war happened to battle its way through the town square, instead of saying the Nazi army invading Nonametown in 1943 with tanks and blah, blah, too many facts, you could write about the walls of the shops with their patchwork of motley brick hastily laid after the onslaught of German munitions, crooked crosses and French bones buried in the mortar cementing them together. Or some such thing. You get the idea.

But I ramble. The point is you may wonder about that car, where it came from and who it belonged to but it only matters if it concerns the now. The same goes for your characters. Give them a backstory because people fall asleep in history class.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2009

It’s been a rough year for me personally, and for a few others I know as well but I know for myself if it wasn’t for the support I received from so many of my online friends in addition to my family, I would have had a much harder time this year during the holidays. Thank you all and a Merry Christmas to you and yours. May the season bring you joy and remind you of the best qualities of friends and family. Appreciate them. Time is a precious thing.

And a Happy New Years too!

Brandon

A WRITER’S JOURNEY: Part 7

DEALING WITH FRUSTRATIONS — An Interview with Nate Kenyon

BL: Bram Stoker Award finalist and P&E Horror Novel of the Year winner, Nate Kenyon, has been kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about some of the frustrations writers encounter during the process from first draft to publication. Thank you for joining me on the journey, Mr. Kenyon.

Since 2006 when your debut novel, Bloodstone, came out to rave reviews and became a bestseller for the original publisher (Five Star Publishing), you have had a meteoric rise with two newer books from Leisure Books who also reprinted Bloodstone. Has the response to your work been overwhelming for you? Or do you take it in stride and try not to concentrate on it when you work on your next project?

NK: I don’t see it quite the same way, I guess. I mean, I’m very happy with the success I’ve had so far. It’s one step at a time…I’m thrilled to have people reading my work, but I have a long way yet to go to get to where I want to be. The fact is, when you sit down in that chair to write another novel, you’re always starting from scratch again, and readers are going to judge you on that book. Whatever you did before doesn’t matter one bit. I’m nowhere near well known enough to have people pick up my work just from my name alone.

BL: Editing can be a bitch. It is the process of cutting out beloved parts of a novel that can be daunting or in some cases debilitating to new writers as well as the old hats. What techniques do you use to coach yourself through “killing your darlings”? Or are you the writer who cuts them and keeps them in a separate file in case you change your mind later?

NK: That’s a great question, and it’s one reason it took me nearly ten years from first draft to publication for my first novel, BLOODSTONE. I had a lot of great feedback, but the novel was 145,000 words, way too long for a first novel, and nobody wanted to take a chance on it. I had to cut a tremendous amount out of it, and a lot of those scenes were favourites of mine. It was very difficult. But eventually I got there! And as soon as I got it down to around 100,000 words, I had an offer.

The best advice I can give on that is to just approach the editing process as if it’s not even your book. Pretend a friend has hired you to make these cuts, and then go about it as ruthlessly as possible. Anything that doesn’t directly advance the plot or illuminate something important about character needs to go, no matter how well written it is.

BL: There are scores of articles in books and on the Web that detail advice on how to write a Query Letter, so I won’t go into that but rather I want to ask you how you’ve learned to cope with the frustration of waiting to hear back from a publisher you’ve submitted to? Has it become easier after the publication of your first novel?

NK: Yes, it’s easier now, particularly since I have an agent. But the early times were tough. I got good advice from another writer on that–he told me to make sure I always had something else in the mail, so that when the inevitable rejection came, I would have something else to look forward to the next day. He was right–and when that rejection comes in, get it back out to someplace else asap, unless of course you’re lucky enough to get feedback that can help you revise first.

BL: Finding the right publisher for a horror novel can be a trial in itself, especially with a lot of the big boys shying away from using the word “Horror” in their list of needs. Some writers of horror believe that if you want to sell your book you have to call it by; thriller, suspense and add on descriptions like paranormal, supernatural or psychological. Did you feel pressured by this kind of common viewpoint when you shopped around your first novel or did you feel disheartened by the lack of major publishers willing to buy straight horror? Has Leisure Books blatant pride in the Horror genre changed this trend of viewing darker fiction with a wary eye?

NK: I did feel some of that prejudice, yes, but I don’t really consider myself a “horror” writer, or any particular kind of writer, for that matter. I just write the stories that I want to write, and although most of them end up dark and creepy, not all of them do. I leave the labelling to the publishers.

I think Leisure has brought some legitimacy to the mass market paperback horror novel, and they are one of the few publishers that has no problem declaring that they’re interested in that kind of work. But you can find horror everywhere–I find it amusing that there’s this huge fanbase for the Twilight series, and movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy are all time record breakers, and yet the mass media doesn’t want to label any part of them as horror. Did anyone really see the Scarecrow in Batman Begins? If that’s not horror, I don’t know what is.

BL: Writing can be a pleasure and a pain but it’s also a privilege and to be able to make it a career that you can put food on the table with is a rarity without any other income. New writers will look at the advances of writers like Stephen King and swoon with envy. What obstacles have you had to overcome to get to where you are, how did you manage them and what are your goals for the future of your writing?

NK: I’m lucky in many respects that I have a very good day job in marketing and communications, which allows me the flexibility to write what I want, when I want. So I’ve never really had to make that “choice” between writing books and putting food on the table. But there’s stress there, sure. Eventually I’d like to write full time, hit the bestseller lists consistently and become a “name” writer, but I’ll certainly take what I’ve received so far and be happy with it. I know how hard it is to get where I am now, and I won’t take it for granted.

BL: What is the hardest part of the writing process for you? For some it is developing the seed of an idea into a full-grown novel complete with likeable characters, arcing storylines and sub-plots that don’t take over a story, while for others it’s working around the rest of their life to get in the hours it takes to write a book. Do you find your homelife can distract from your writing or add to it?

NK: I think juggling my homelife is probably one of the tougher parts of writing, yes, particularly since (as I mentioned) I have a day job. With three kids, that makes it difficult to find the hours. In order to write a compelling story, I really have to immerse myself in it, keep my mind focused.

BL: Horror magazines tend to include more author interviews than others. I sometimes wonder if others genres care as much about where the stories come from the way horror readers do. Do you think horror writers have to work harder to sell their work than the person writing the next literary/romance/mystery sensation? Are interviews a pleasure or stress for you at this point in your career and do you see yourself getting frustrated with the clichéd questions like; “Where do you get your ideas” and “Why horror”?

NK: I don’t think we have to work any harder, really–these days, all writers have to get out there and promote themselves or they’ll sink without a trace. There’s so little marketing money from publishers, and where there is usually goes to the name writers. So us mid-listers need to do more of it on our own.

I enjoy doing interviews because it gives me a chance to talk about writing, and that’s something I’m passionate about. Sure, there are clichéd questions, but I have stock answers for those I can use, and I always find at least a few unique and interesting questions in every interview that make me think.

BL: There is a lot of pressure to get an agent. What’s your take on this? Is it worth the frustration or do writers get scared of contracts filled with legal mumbo-jumbo that amount to selling their souls for a pittance advance and sliver of the royalty pie and frighten themselves into thinking they can’t sell their work for what it’s worth without them? Or is it a matter of finding an agent who wants to build a career instead of building a stable of one-offs?

NK: I think there should be a lot of pressure to find a GOOD agent. A bad one can be more damaging than not having one at all. A good agent should support you, be passionate about your work, responsive and happy to talk with you. They should know how to sell books. This is a brutal business, and you need a powerful advocate in your corner. The good news is that they are out there; the bad news is, you’ll have to compete with everyone else who wants to land them. But if you get one, they are absolutely worth it.

BL: The Reach has been optioned for film, congratulations by the way, but could you tell us a bit about what that experience has been like for you? Several writers like Ray Garton and Robert J. Sawyer have had options purchased for their books without the films going into production, do you worry that the same might happen or do movie releases like Twilight, The Box and Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door add to the excitement? How are your fingernails doing? I’d be gnawing mine off.

NK: Good question. It’s been a fun experience. I just try to sit back and let my agent do most of the work, and if something happens, great. If not, I haven’t really lost anything. I really like this company that optioned THE REACH, and I hope we can make a movie. But if not, we’ll move on to the next one.

BL: Do you find that writing novels has decreased your short story output?

NK: Yeah, I think so. Writing good short fiction is HARD. Maybe harder than writing a novel. I was never a huge short story writer anyway, and now it’s tough to justify the time put into it for a relatively small return, when books need to be written. Still, I get a real thrill out of finishing a good short story and seeing it in print, so I don’t think I’ll ever give them up completely.

BL: I want to thank you again, Mr. Kenyon for taking the time to answer what became more than a “few” questions and finish off by asking what future publications we can keep our eyes out for? Maybe you could give us a brief description of your next novel from Leisure Books, Sparrow Rock, coming out in Spring 2010?

NK: Thank you! SPARROW ROCK is my favorite novel I’ve written so far. I LOVE this book. Here’s the jacket copy:

They were just a group of high school kids looking for a place to party. They didn’t know the end of the world was coming. Now, alone and trapped belowground in a state-of-the-art bomb shelter, they are being stalked—and the creatures that come for them through the dirt and ash are like nothing anyone has ever seen before.

There is a new ruling life-form on earth, and these six humans are the only remaining prey.

Welcome to your worst nightmare. Welcome to…Sparrow Rock.

It’s a wild, dark, thrill ride of a book, the first I’ve done in the first person, and there are some huge twists that I don’t think anyone will see coming. I can’t wait to see the reaction readers have to this book. My editor called it a “modern classic of horror,” and I hope many others will agree. We’ll see! There’s major movie studio interest too. SPARROW ROCK is due out in May 2010.

Other than that, I have a limited edition of SPARROW coming from Bad Moon Books in the spring, and there will be a couple of neat surprises with that. I’m writing several short stories for a secret anthology that’s going to be amazing, and I am signing on to write a novel based on a major gaming franchise–details on that should be released soon. A lot of readers have been asking for a sequel to THE REACH, and I’m considering writing that as well. Lots of things happening, which is the way I like it.

Find more about Nate Kenyon on the Web.

http://www.natekenyon.com

Or follow him on Twitter! http://twitter.com/natekenyon

 

 

A Messy Affair

A MESSY AFFAIR
By
Brandon Layng

“Don’t worry sweetheart I’ll clean up this mess.” The counter was cluttered with dishes covered in chicken and pasta; a wooden bowl contained sour smelling remnants of a Caesar Salad. Sauce and seasoning was sprinkled over the Formica like the sand by the back door. The sand from the turtle-shaped box in the back, the one with the shovel and pail which sat half buried beneath the grains they had had delivered from the place down off of the highway. They had given it Danny his birthday that last summer.

He started to run the water in the sink and squirted a short stream of apricot scented dish soap into the rapidly filling basin. Rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt to keep the water from splashing onto the white cotton, he took off his Bulova watch, the one Rachel had given to him for the Christmas that had just passed. She had been tired of constantly yelling at him for being late and never failed to remind him that it was the cause of their misfortune.

“Did you enjoy your dinner Rachel?” He didn’t really need an answer, he could see that she hadn’t touched her food, it sat on the plate the pasta getting hard and the chicken stiff and cold. The barbeque sauce on the chicken reminded him of a head wound leaking congealing post-mortem blood.

He had booked the day off for the anniversary. It was a special day for them but a somber one. Scraping off the dishes into the garbage bag he thought about the appointment filled day he would have when he got back to the hospital. He felt guilty for taking time off; his patients needed him and yet so did his family, more than ever they needed him.

Rachel’s dinner slid as one chunk into the grocery bag and the foul smelling salad followed. He used a fork to scrape the fat and grease from the frying pan before he put it into the sink. Not one to do the dishes often, he had half expected to hear Rachel snap at him for putting the pan in at the same time as the plates. She was always told him to wash the pans last otherwise the plates and glasses would come out with a film on them.

The only sound in the kitchen was the pop of bubbles in the water and the pan settling onto the pile. Next he put in the pot he had used to cook the pasta in. The white Alfredo sauce mixing and clouding the water like a cataract.

“I hung up that picture Danny drew for me. The one with the sailboat on it. I put it over my desk in a frame I picked up down in the hospital gift shop. My receptionist Betty, you remember her from the service last year, she didn’t look like she approved. I don’t know maybe she thought it was unprofessional or something.” He put his hands into the hot water and saw Danny’s Spider-man cup sitting on the window sill behind the sink. It was covered in a fine layer of dust and he couldn’t remember when he had put it up there. Maybe Rachel had put it up there. He would have asked her if she was not being so quiet. Sometimes you don’t want to ruin a good thing. Instead he put the pot back in the water and washed the cup.

After the cup came the pot, both placed in the drying rack and started to find the silence in the kitchen oppressive. It was like a boulder on his shoulders that weighed him down and troubled his thoughts.

“I thought maybe this summer I’d go out and buy one of those small sailboats, one of the little three person kinds, and take it out to Crescent Lake,” he said and when there was still no reply from Rachel he decided he’d had enough; it was time for someone to talk about what happened while he was making dinner.

“Listen Rachel I’m sorry I rose my voice to you earlier, but it just pissed me off when you said you hated celebrating the anniversary.” With trembling fingers he picked up a plate to wash it, stared out the window to the backyard where the sandbox sat by the pool, the turtle shaped lid pushed to the side from the last time Danny was in a rush to make a sand castle. The cover was pulled over the pool and a layer of snow that would soon melt sat on top like a bundled up blanket. “I get so upset when you start talking to me about Danny that way. Our poor sweet little Danny.”

He wouldn’t give her time to interject with her own two cents that she seemed to need to spend on an argument. He hadn’t wanted her to hit him with one of her patented cheap shot remarks that always cut into his heart like a knife or beat him over the head with yell after yell like she was slamming him with a frying pan.

“I hate how you always have to tell me that what happened was my fault, shoving it into my face, like I don’t already know.” His voice cracked with emotion like an egg hitting the floor and splattering bloody yolk. He washed the cutlery as he talked; swiping the knives, spoons and forks with the dishcloth while staring out at the piece of plastic with the snow covered sand in it. The shovel stuck out like a hand raised in triumph. Or one grasping for help.

“I mean where do you get off Rachel? Saying it was my fault because I got home too late. I was in the middle of performing heart surgery on a man for Christ sakes!” He fought for control of the angry quiver in his voice and lost the battle. “You called the office and told them Danny was missing while I was cracking the man’s ribcage, I couldn’t very well leave. And where were you?” He remembered the two wine glasses he had seen in the sink that day, one with the red lipstick she wore on the rim, the other with only a trace of the wine that sat in the bottom like the last dredges of water in a drained pool. He knew what that water looked like because he had seen it later that day when they closed down the pool for good.

He wasn’t surprised to hear silence from his wife at his question. She never answered that one because a guilty conscience would not permit her to lie.

She had smelled of another man’s musk. Smeared lipstick making her face into a bad clown mask. Panties hanging like a noose from her jeans pocket. The front door had been ajar when he’d come home, panicking to the point of almost running the car through the garage door, his hand was on the knob and swinging the door open before he registered that someone had recently left by that way and when he saw the long stemmed glasses, he knew that while his son’s lungs filled with chlorinated water and suffocated the life from his body, depraving his brain of oxygen, a man who took pleasure in his wife’s body ran from the house when he could have pulled Danny from the pool. His wife taking the precious minutes of their son’s life to get dressed, so her infidelities would not be as obvious. Rachel had his limp form pulled onto the concrete where his water soaked clothes puddle around him, her fists pounding his chest while she screamed.
He washed the pan bottom with the steel wool pad he had exchanged the dishcloth for and tried to scrub off the meat burned to it. Getting frustrated with it, he never thought it would be so difficult to get something like that off of a pan. If he had maybe he would have used the pot.

He had pushed her away, fearing that she had already cracked one of his boy’s ribs and paid no attention to the splashing as she fell backwards into the pool. He started CPR and when the wrenching sobs that had wracked his body subsided and the cooing of a dove in the trees hovered over their huddled bodies like a lament.

“You know what? Screw it! I’m just going to let this thing soak in the other side of the sink and I’ll come back to it later after I’m done cleaning the floor.” He ran the water as hot as it would go in the other side of the sink and watched as the steam began to fog the window making the images of the backyard grow vague and indistinct like memories of objects instead of the objects themselves. He shut off the water and picked up the pan to toss it in the clean hot water. Something stuck to the pan came loose and plopped into the dirty water before he could put it in the other side to soak. His emotions were too unwieldy for him to notice the tiny splash.

There was a thump that caused him a moment of fear.

“I can’t believe you said what you said Rachel. How could you say Danny’s dead?” He slammed his fist on the counter and an angry tear dropped into the dishwater. He reached his hand in, it was the temperature of blood like the way it felt when he put his hands into the opened chest cavity of a patient on the operating table. He curled his index and middle finger around the drain stopper and pulled it out. The water quietly drained and the only sound his ears could hear was his own sniffles as he fought back the tears that threatened to follow the first like lemmings off of a cliff. He closed his eyes and could not open them until the drain gurgled with the last of the water. Looking down into the drain he saw the seared orb of an eyeball staring accusingly back at him. His wife’s blue iris runny like pool water and death.

There was another thump that made his heart jump followed by a mewling sound. He dropped the drain stopper into the sink, the metal clip poking through the pupil, rushed out of the kitchen so fast he was nearly running past the slumped form of his wife, ignoring her moans of pain. The empty eye socket seeped out onto the floor and he skidded across the puddle before making it to the carpeted living room, where he took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. The door at the end of the hallway was partially open the light from inside the room glaring off of the glossy plastic stick-on Optimus Prime. He slowed as he came to it and nudged it open with a shaking hand.

Danny was on the floor. Limbs sprawled out and stiff.

He moved silently across the carpet to where his son lay beside the race car bed. Danny often fell off the lumpy mattress, so often he’d been forced to put down padding to prevent bruising on the boy’s body. Gingerly he picked him up, feeling the rigidity of the limbs, looking down as he placed him on the bed and seeing the glassy sheen of the eyes; lifeless eyes.

He chided himself for thinking that way and held his poor sweet Danny in his arms while he wept silent tears.

“Your mother has gone to a better place son.,” he said and choked on the thickness of the words. “Y-y-your mother lives with grandma now. You remember her, don’t you? She passed last year.”

There was a twitch at the corners of Danny’s mouth and a dribble of drool went streaming down his son’s chin. He wiped it away with a corner of the blanket and smiled to see his son shining through the veil of his damaged brain.

He would clean up the mess later.
***

News and I need readers for AWAtD

In an upcoming installment of “A Writer’s Journey”, my blog series about the struggles and joys of breaking into a career in writing, I’ll have a guest. For the first in a series of future interviews, Nate Kenyon, Bram Stoker finalist and author of the books Bloodstone, The Reach, The Bone Factory, Prime (novella) and Sparrow Rock due out in 2010 from Leisure Books has been kind enough to answer some questions on some of the things that you, fellow writers, might find frustrating. I would like to host other interviews dealing with subjects the new and experienced writer might find of interest and I hope that readers will be able to take away useful information from them that will make breaking into the business a little easier and less stressful for them. I’ll keep you guys and gals updated when new interviews will be appearing and I’d like you to pass on the info to friends. Along with the interviews I’ll be posting bio info and links to where you can purchase copies of their books.

Now, I have a request of a more personal nature.

In January, I will be needing four readers to read my book A Walk Amongst the Dead and give feedback. Out of the several books I’ve written this is the one I’ve chosen to use as my first foray into finding representation and a publisher. This is an important one to me; the last book I wrote before my mom passed on and the one I never had the chance to read to her before her tumors made concentration difficult for long periods of time. I also had reservations about sharing it with her as it has a rather dark view of what happens to our bodies after we’re gone. Read the synopsis below and if you’re interested in being a reader send me an e-mail at foxtat2@hotmail.com with the subject line: “I want to Walk with the Dead”. Warning: this book is dark fantasy with a gore and horror bent, contains mature content and if you would like to be a reader I ask that you be at least 18 years of age and I would prefer if you have a background in writing, if possible.

“Mickey O’Flannagan is a husband, father and unlicensed physician for the mob. When mob boss Kiefer O’Bannion calls Mickey to a funeral home and asks him to perform a miracle to save the life of his right-hand man, Mickey realizes his own life is on the line this time. O’Bannion is a man with a ruthless reputation who doesn’t like it when things don’t work out the way he wants. All Hell breaks loose in the funeral home and Mickey gets burned, finding himself being buried in a box six feet down before the night is through.

“Body half-burned, Mickey wakes up in a pine box to the sound of scraping when he falls into The Otherside, a world where men carry their bowels in their arms like babies and only the newcomers breath, (some through holes in the necks). Mickey tries to make an afterlife for himself. He’s working as a physician again alongside a sadistic surgeon with a penchant for amputating and he starts to feel good about himself for the first time in years. All the while his daughter is struggling with the world he left behind, including her mother’s new love interest who she begins to suspect might be a part of her father’s disappearance and even worse are the dreams she is having where she is helpless and must watch her father survive against a biker gang called The Reapers, who are hellbent on killing her father for good.

“Mickey isn’t alone on the Otherside though. He finds help in the form of a young woman named Eve who has a deadly touch to the denizens of the Otherside. Through Eve, Mickey finds a way to get back to the world of the living but regaining his life and getting revenge on the man who took it won’t be easy with The Reapers hot on his tail and strange powers of his own growing stronger every step of the way. He must survive the Otherside if he wants to keep his daughter from joining him.”

Bragging/New Fiction

I realized I have a couple of new works out in publications recently and I haven’t bragged about them. So now I am, lol.

“Die Untoten”, Sonar 4 Magazine Fall Double Edition — Unfortunately this is the last time Sonar 4 is doing a print edition of their popular publication (they still do the online e-zine though) but fortunately they finish off with a big double edition that includes my short tale that is a cross between “Return of the Living Dead” and “Saving Private Ryan”. I use the comparisons loosely. It’s one of my undead type tales set during WWI and gives new meaning to the term “No Man’s Land”. Pick up a copy I’m sure you’ll find plenty of fiction inside you’ll enjoy and hopefully one of those tales that keeps you up at night is mine. http://www.sonar4publications.com/nbstore2.html

“Poppa M’s Bedlam Tales: Bedlam’s Souls”, The New Bedlam Project — I always forget to pump my own work appearing in this quarterly e-zine as I am usually doing my part as a contributing editor to promote people to read the rest of the great fiction that shows up on the site. Be sure to stop by and read the latest installment in my flash series. The series centers around a personable old man named, Poppa M, local druggist, pusher of fountain pops and embellisher of New Bedlam’s history. As this is the third issue of TNBP, there are three stories so far. The first was “In the Beginning There Was Bedlam” introducing Poppa’s version of a town founder, a man who can cure all ills with his tonics and elixirs, Doc Bedlam. Trust me when I say Doc Bedlam is not a man you want to meet on a dirt street late at night as this story’s vict- er… protagonist finds out. The second installment is titled, “Cough Medicine”, in which Poppa cautions a customer taking the day off work for a cough. Poppa relates to the customer a story about one of Doc Bedlam’s unfortunate employees who finds himself waking up to a little girl who has the cure for his cough hidden in a strange green jar. In “Bedlam’s Souls” Poppa explains to an elderly woman admiring his green candy jar how he came by it. This tale blends atmosphere with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor along with revealing a little more about the man known to the town as Poppa M.. Don’t miss these tales, they’re a quick and fun read that will entertain and fill time during the lonely hours of the night. Plus, they’re free to read. You’ll be able to read the third in the series by clicking on the “Zine” link to the left of the opening page but for the first two you will have to click the links for past issues after going to the “Zine” link. If you enjoy what I’ve written or what anyone else has written, then be kind and help this excellent publication with a small donation of a dollar or two.  www.newbedlam.com

Those are the recent two but you can also go to the link in my legend at this side of the main page of my site and follow the “Free Fiction” link to more of my fiction — free of charge — that can be found on the Net. 

Happy reading friends and if you are or become a fan, be sure to add my page to your favorites or send me an e-mail foxtat2@hotmail.com telling me what you liked. I’d love to hear from you and us writers are the vain types; we love encouragement.

Brandon Layng

The LPIF Fight Continues

Here is an e-mail I submitted to the misinformation site, www.stopthetvtax.ca regarding the LPIF Fee which their commercial states is a tax foisted on the cable and satellite customers by the CRTC. They have several facts up on their site but fail to mention that this tax was actually placed on the cable and satellite companies by the CRTC and it was these companies who decided they would refuse to take a hit to their profit margins by adding the LPIF fee to the bills of their customers. THE CABLE AND SATELLITE COMPANIES ARE REQUIRED TO PAY THIS FEE, NOT YOU THE CUSTOMER! DON’T BUY THE LIES.

In a letter I received from Rogers it was stated that this tax was being levied on the cable and satellites companies and that they were required to pay it but were going to pass it onto their customers. When I pay for basic cable I believe I also pay for these “Free-to-Air” channels and by passing on this tax to customers isn’t the cable and satellite companies simply double-billing for these channels? Wasn’t the purpose of this tax to make cable and satellite companies pay for channels they had been making a profit off of for decades? Cable and satellite companies pay for other networks and specialty channels, why shouldn’t they pay for local channels as well? Might this tax on cable and satellite companies (because the CRTC isn’t taxing the customers, the companies are, the CRTC just isn’t doing anything to keep you from passing it onto your customers)have been avoided by treating local networks the same way as other networks that these companies already pay for? Perhaps the CRTC made a mistake by not abolishing “Free-to-Air” networks, getting rid of their government subsidies and making the big companies pay for them. The problem would be that there would be little to no Canadian programming guarantee because they have to buy all US and Foreign shows to compete with the ratings to stay in business since Canadian centered shows garner ratings primarily in a Canadian demographic. I think it is immoral that the cable and satellite companies would twist the facts in their commercials to make it appear as if customers have to pay up to $10 because of the CRTC making them pay a tax when it is really a case of the big companies not wanting to take a hit to their profit margins and instead putting their responsibilities on their over-charged customers.

I’d like to see these answers posted to the site along with all the facts. I’m not alone and most people I’ve talked to are not stupid enough to believe that this is a CRTC tax on the public. People who received that letter and actually read it understand that the cable and satellite companies were “required” to pay this tax and it was the companies who decided to pass on the LPIF fee.

Try an honest approach and you might garner respect.

Brandon Layng

A WRITER’S JOURNEY: Part 6

LOSS BUT NOT LOST

If a loved one dies and you’re around to see it, do your fingers stop typing?

This isn’t a normal challenge for a beginning writer. Some fortunate people can go through a majority of their lifespans before losing someone close enough to them that could create an emotional writer’s block. These kind of blocks seem like massive walls in your mind built with bricks of anger, love, sadness, helplessness and depression among a variety of other feelings but the foundation is grief poured into the weak spots in your psyche. Losing a parent, spouse, sibling or child can be devastating to the creative process. The ideas may not come or they may and in such a deluge it becomes hard to find any of use. There may be a stable full of thoroughbred stories locked away in your head with no words to free them onto the field of the page. I’m hoping I am able to help a few of you find solutions to work through your grief. You’ll have to be patient with me reader, because as I write this I am trying to put into use my own method of coping.

On August 28th, 2009 shortly after twelve noon I lost my mother to cancer. She battled for close to two years with it after she was given a prognosis of six months. It was her second bout with it, in honesty I should say that the first one was never really won. When I was in my early teens she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, after a lumpectomy, radiation and chemo therapy that left her feeling half-alive she came out of the fight to be pronounced the victor; she was cancer-free. What the doctors didn’t know (and frankly couldn’t have known) was that like a group of war criminals several cells had survived to find sanctuary in her lungs and there they rebuilt their forces sending battalions of malignant little stormtroopers up into her brain. By the time she realized something was not right with her body and she went to the urgent care to have it checked out the army of cancer had set up three camps in her brain and was based in the area between her lungs. With tears in their eyes the doctors told her she could fight but there was no hope of winning this war. Fight she did, as bravely as any soldier faced with an impossible ridge to conquer, racing across No Man’s Land with determination set into her face and a twinkle in her eye. My wife and I were there beside her, bringing words of encouragement, helping her when she was weakened by disease to do the daily requirements of life, talking to her when she needed a friendly ear to confess her fears to. And she was there for us. God, was she there for us. So selfless and loving a person that she was the embodiment of the saying, “The brightest flame burns fastest.” She was amazing to watch and share a life with. She was everything people should pray to be and should didn’t want to let go until we told her we would be okay when she was gone, that it was all right to have peace from the pain at last.

She encouraged me and my wife in our writing. My wife just received her first acceptances for writing a couple of poems that will appear in the Terror of Miskatonic Falls anthology from Shroud Publishing. I’m proud of her and I know my mother would have been too. It upsets me that she never had the chance to tell her before my mother passed. I told her in my speach at her memorial. I’d like to think she was there listening.

The loss of a loved one or the imminence of such an event can be the push some writers need to finally take a leap and put the words on the paper. It’s a positive way to channel those feelings and discover a renewed purpose in life. If you’re reading this and haven’t started on the path of the writer yet but you’ve lost a loved one, try picking up the pieces by building new worlds. At a time when you feel helpless it helps to take control of something. Fiction is an excellent outlet for that, just ask a psychiatrist. Even inmates in prison are doing it. If you let yourself be open to where the story will take you it will help you to understand why people die whether we want them to or not. I’ve had many characters live that I wanted to die and cried when others died or will killed. You could ask why I didn’t just write it so they would survive? Good question. I would like to be able to do that. Except, the story would suffer for it. Readers as well as the characters themselves need to feel the full spectrum of emotions for it to be real. Imagine a life with only happiness and ask yourself how you would know how special that state of being was without ever experiencing the other side of the spectrum? Would you read a romance where the married man our protagonist is in love with leaves his wife, the wife is happy for him because she has met the new love of her life and the protagonist gets to live happily ever after with the man of her dreams? You would think it sucked. You would because there was no struggle, no obstacles to overcome — lots of feel good happy happy joy joy. A horror story with a monster who doesn’t kill anyone and when he is discovered in a mansion, he is instantly loved by the most beautiful girl in the town, her family approve of their marriage, the neighbours come over to the mansion for veggie burgers and a plastic surgeon offers to fix his deformities pro bono. Sounds like something Jack Ketchum might write, right? I don’t think so. he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole and neither should you. In real life, people hate the monster, ex-wives attack their ex-husband’s mistress and people die.

Fiction is a training ground for life. And when life gets hard it shouldn’t get in the way of writing your own fiction… it should go into it.

“It hurts too much and I’m worried I’ll write a lot of crap,” you say.

I say, “Then write a lot of crap.”

After a while the dirt and grime of grieving will be polished off of your brain and heart. You’ll realize that inside those stories are gems you can sift out and take a closer look at. You will notice upon closer examination that there are parts of the person you lost hidden in them. The walls blocking out the ideas and words will crumble a grain at a time.

Some exercises:

1) Write a letter to your loved one — talk about good ideas you’ve had, how much you miss them, what was great about them, what hurt you the most in their lives and about their deaths.

2) Write a poem or short story — make the main character someone based on the one you lost, explore who they were through the character.

3) Write a memory — look at a photo of the person and write down the memory that goes with it.

4) Write an article and submit it — it can be based on something wonderful your loved one did in their life or even the cause of their death. If they were taken by cancer, do a cancer charity walk and write about the experience. Share it with others.

5) Write a letter to yourself — let you know how you feel.

6) Live life and love the ones left behind even more.

I won’t tell you how these exercises will help you because each person will take something differently from them. I’ve done a few so far and intend to do more. It isn’t easy, it hurts a lot to be reminded of the loss. It is better to hurt and grow than forget and repeat. I won’t show you the results of my exercises and that is because they read like crap. Hopefully this particular one won’t but I’ll risk that it might, even if it only helps one writer.

I’ll finish by saying, that while you’re getting past grief, I give you permission to write crap. Just don’t strive for only that, otherwise there might be a lot of editors with my name on their hit lists.

Take care,

Brandon Layng