Blog Therapy: Clown Statues

Urban folklore, the campfire yarn, creepypasta – this evening I was looking up some of my favorite tales and thinking about what devices they share. Like the infamous story of the couple at Lovers’ Lane and the hook-handed maniac, all of my favorite stories have that end reveal which shows you (and the protagonist, if they’re still alive) that you were all in the company of stark horror without realizing it.

Clown Statue

White and Red

The Reflection

The caller’s inside the house! The killer was in the backseat the whole time! Stories in the vein of “The Hook” or “The Roommate’s Death” generally target young adults, either as cautionary tales or as expressions of a soon-to-be grownup’s fear of the “real world.” No doubt Jan Brunvand’s The Vanishing Hitchhiker breaks down the emergence of these tales, as well as those of preceding generations. Being me, I’m more preoccupied with why these particular stories still get under my skin so much – so much so that, if I’m honest, sometimes after reading one I’m reluctant to navigate the darkness from my office to my bedroom. My flesh crawls at the thought of some wraith or madman seizing me from out of nowhere and yet I still read the damn things – and I have a goddamn three-foot undead clown in my bedroom. No shit. Just occurred to me as I’m writing this. What in God’s name did I ever do to me to deserve this treatment?

So I love the stories because some part of me loves being scared. That’s clear. They serve as my amusement park rides because I’ll be fucked in a diamond dress if you ever catch me on a Tilt-a-Whirl or Magic Carpet again. But I’m almost thirty-two and these are still the ones that get me. What gives? No children over whose naiveté I need to fret. And I’m a night owl, and a lone wolf, among other animals, so why dread the same two-A.M. silence I so enjoy when writing my own tales?

Maybe that’s why I write at night, and horror at that. To master these terrible little zingers, to beat them with some of my own. My Harvest Cycle flash in Slices of Flesh is a good example of the devices the aforementioned tales employ.  Still doesn’t explain why they bother me so. I think I’m writing this post backwards.

Oh. Oh, wait.

It’s because I still haven’t grown up. Because I refuse to (see three-foot clown). Because I’m still not entirely comfortable in my own skin or the world surrounding it.

Well, good. If I can’t remind myself now and again what it feels like to be terrified of the dark, I ought not be writing about what lives there.

SLICES OF FLESH

Stoker nominee SLICES OF FLESH includes the Harvest Cycle story "Cutter." Congratulations to Stan Swanson and Dark Moon Books!

The Mayans were wrong

The Mayans were wrong! Permuted lost its bet with the cosmos and now over a dozen ebooks – including THE HARVEST CYCLE – are on sale for $2.99 through January 2nd!

Don’t waste a second – the world may end tomorrow.

The Next Big Thing (That Already Happened)

This is a meme of sorts going around among writers. David Bernstein (Machines of the Dead) tagged me to take part and answer the below questions. Since my next novel is still in the early outlining stages, I’ve opted to yak about this fall’s The Harvest Cycle (which, while it exists, isn’t quite a Big Thing yet). At the end of this post you’ll find links to the authors I tagged – their posts will go up next week.

What’s the working title of your book?
The Harvest Cycle. Though meant as a nod to Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, I know the title sounds like a gardening guide, but I never did think of an alternative and became comfortable with it.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

A good ol’-fashioned nightmare, about five or six years ago. I was sequestered with strangers in a hotel lounge and watching raw-skinned humanoids race through the streets, tearing people apart. I knew it was the end of the world and that taking refuge only delayed the inevitable. As that thought settled in, I looked out the window at a neighboring building and saw one of the things perched on the roof like a gargoyle, claws clicking together. The images from that dream have never left me, and it unfolds in its entirety in Chapter Seven.

While expanding this nightmare into a novel outline in 2007-08, I was also writing a submission for the Permuted Press antho Robots Beyond. That inspired me to add robots to Harvest and both stories took off from there, pulling in Lovecraft’s mythos and becoming part of the same world.

What genre does your book fall under?

I guess it’s first and foremost horror – weird horror – but with a side of sci-fi. It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - a strange journey peppered with absurd, mad characters - and there are several references to that work. It’s also an unmistakable Cthulhu Mythos tale. What was I saying? Right, horror.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

The one I have always known is Nicholas Campbell as deranged Inspector DaVinci (pictured in the above image). Campbell was the star of the wonderful Canadian coroner/cop drama Da Vinci’s Inquest, and though the two characters are nothing alike, I always saw Campbell as Harvest’s maniac cop. So much so, obviously, that the character was tagged with that name!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Everything, killing everything else.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It was published this past August by Permuted Press. No agent.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I started it in March 2008 and finished in the fall - about six months, give or take. I lost most of my eyesight halfway through it, so that was a bit of a rain delay.

To what other books within your genre would you compare this story?

The Bible

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

After my percolating subconscious, Lovecraft’s cosmicism became a big part of  the novel, as has been the case for so many authors enamored with his mythos. As the basic story – a fifty-year siege by mindless alien beasts, with renegade robots compounding the chaos – materialized, plugging in the existential scope of Lovecraftian horror seemed a natural next step. After all, it’s the apocalypse. When the “gods” reveal themselves and Man learns there are no answers to the questions that define his life, what does life become? Does the unyielding logic of a robot or the unshakable faith of a human have any real meaning if the cosmos is a mere insane asylum?

Would watching your world fragment make you feel bigger or smaller?

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

In the style of Joe Bob Briggs’ drive-in totals: we’ve got parkour, electric sex, cannibals on Mount Rushmore, homicidal cosplay, the choke pear, hatchet-fu, god dreams, an adorable puppy, too many exposed human brains to count and a whole mess of folks being ripped apart in every way imaginable. See? The Bible.

My Tags – watch this space!

Jacqueline Druga - LIVE

Robert R. Best - LIVE

C Dulaney - LIVE
Sue Edge