Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #86: "The Conduit."

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond

I have several ongoing characters: Sossity Chandler, a popular singing star; Martin Rollins, a guitarist; Jancinda Lamott, a vampire; and Alessia Bernini, who is a streg, a kind of witch or sorceress. Some writers use ongoing characters. Lucy Maud Montgomery gave us Anne Shirley, who continues on from Anne of Green Gables to Anne of Windy Poplars. Ian Fleming wrote fourteen novels about his character, James Bond. And W. Somerset Maugham, wrote a book of stories featuring a character named Ashendon and also made him narrator in the novels Cakes and Ale, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Razor's Edge.  

This is a good thing to do, I think, for a writer. It allows you to develop a character in various ways, through different situations, and through the years. The character I’ve published the most stories about is Sossity Chandler (twenty-eight stories). I’ve had to build a consistent biography for her and have written stories about her at various stages of her life. And it enables you to know a character well. I know Sossity likes whiskey, her favorite oath is “for Christ’s sake,” her favorite musical group The Rolling Stones. I know about her marriage, her divorce, her children, her boyfriends, her very good friends Heather and Lydia, her band, and her early failures and, later, massive success as a singer. It is a good exercise, I think, to develop ongoing characters.

Alessia Bernini

The story I want to talk about here is one about Alessia Bernini. Alessia is a streg, a witch or sorceress from Italian tradition. Strega practice natural magic, not black magic. In other words, they don’t sell their souls to the Devil but rather gain magical skill through study, discipline, and, most importantly, from inclusion in a line of practitioners that goes back, for Alessia’s order, a thousand years. She has inherited, and is guardian of, the accumulated power of the women in the succession before her. She will train a young girl to succeed her when she turns thirty.

Strega are benign. They cast spells only that they think are just and do no harm to the innocent. In the story, “The Conduit,” Alessia must use her power to rescue a local girl who dabbled in the occult and to save a woman who has been enslaved by oculists and used to further their designs—used at a terrible cost to her.

Alessia has known Genesia, daughter of a local mob boss named Corsi, for him Alessia has done spells (though never to further his Mafia interests). Her unstable, mercurial nature has led her to aspire to be, at various times, a Communist, an atheist, and a nun. When she dabbles in Satanism, however, and she and her boyfriend make a pact with the dark powers, she finds it’s not so easy to back out of the associations. They are bedeviled—literally. And feel malevolent power manifesting itself again them. Mr. Corsi has sought Alessia’s help. She is wary. “I’m not afraid of many things, Mr. Corsi. I am afraid of this. When you go up against the powers of darkness, it is no small matter. It’s dangerous—as dangerous as a thing can be.” Still, she agrees to take the job.

When she consults her crystal, she gets confusing images—some that are very dark and troubling but, but some that shine light. After consulting with a mentor, she eventually is transported by magical power to Elizabethan England where she witnesses the hanging of a young woman for witchcraft. But she also notices that the woman does not die. Back in the present, she does research and finds out about a group of people who practiced magical arts in Elizabethan times and were found out and executed. Further research gives her the name of the woman she saw hanged, Moira Whitman. The occultists with whom Genesia deal threaten Alessia, but she is equal to the threat. And the images of dark and light come together in her mind. 

Corsi and his men round up the occultists. Alessia draws a magic circle and reads and incantation they had taken from a captured occultist to summon spirits. They summon Moira Whitman.

Alessia sees the same woman she watched mistreated and scorned in old England. The woman is not defiantly wicked but submissive. Alessia tells her she is safe and they are there to help her. They found out her role was to be a “conduit” for demonic forces to enter the world. Alessia imagines how she was treated—the abuse, perversion, and abjection she must have been put through—to allow demonic powers to come through her. She speaks with Corsi:

“They brought this woman from the past,” he said. “They planned to use her as a conduit—a door through which the dark powers of hell could come to the earth and attack Floriano and Genesia. That would have been a most undesirable situation.”

Corsi looked at the girl, his eyes evaluative.

“She is innocent—a victim of their brutality. No harm is to come to her. We made a covenant and you are required to obey me in this. She can’t hurt anyone herself. The others are the real culprits. You know that a streg cannot take life. But I can say that once those four people you captured are gone, you won’t have any more trouble.”

He nodded.

Corsi and his soldiers dispatch the occultists. Alessia wants to rehabilitate the girl, who has never know good, love, or kindness. She suggests Genesia might profit from caring for her and teaching her to live in the modern world. Her father agrees, saying that is just the sort of thing she needs. Alessia knows Genesia and Floriano will not be bothered by vengeful spirits again. In an epilogue, we learn that Genesia is doing well and Moira is quickly learning the ways of the modern world.

The story appeared in Wake the Witch, an anthology of stories on witches. Get a copy here.

For more stories, check out my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

How to Write a Story: #82. Popular Culture, the Mafia, and the Past: “Tony’s”

In writing, we draw on the past, but we draw on popular culture. When the Twilight series of books about “sparkly” vampires became popular, horror magazines became flooded with vampire story submissions, so much that many of them started stipulating in their guidelines that they would not accept vampire tales. The popularity of those books influenced what manner writers wanted to produce (me too—during this time I submitted and published quite a few vampire stories). Another bit of popular culture was the HBO series The Sopranos, a gangster show, but unlike most of the films or TV programs in that genre. One critic called it a “postmodern gangster story.” Tony Soprano, leader of crime gang in New Jersey, is not your typical mob boss. He goes to a psychiatrist for counseling. He has troubles with his kids. He has to deal not just with rival gangs and the cops, but with many of the issue that affect our society today. It was a fascinating TV drama and ran for six seasons. I had never written a story about organized crime; but I did have memories from my past.

I lived in a small Midwestern city. I don’t know how active organized crime was in the city, but one man we knew because we lived next door to his aged Mother, and because my mother worked with him as an election judge, seemed to at least be a front man for it. The reason I suspected this? He owned a small pool hall about four doors down from my house on a corner near a man street. It had two pool tables inside. That was all. It was called after his first name—to keep on the Soprano theme, let’s call him Tony—and so it was “Tony’s.”

It wasn’t a fancy building:  a concrete block Quonset hut with a small parking lot to one side. The parking lot was what made me begin think something more than games of eight-ball went on there. When me and my friends would walk home from school afternoons, certain days, in the parking lot by the side of Tony’s, sat a row of cars. And not just any cars—not Chevys, Fords, Packards, or (they still made them back then) Studebakers. Parked outside this shabby little buildings were Cadillacs, Mercedes, BMWs, Lincoln Continentals—well, you get the idea. They were not the kind of cars people who went to pool halls to play eight-ball or snooker drove.

When we were young, we didn’t take much notice. But when we got to the sixth and seventh grades, the appearance of these big, fancy cars by a nondescript pool hall a in our working-class neighborhood looked suspicious. We decided it must be a front for illegal gambling. The fancy cars had to be there for a reason. And Tony was Italian. So the evidence seemed overwhelming. Whether we were right or not I don’t know. But combine this incident with the popular of The Sopranos and with all the George Raft and Jimmy Cagney films plus The Godfather—I had the makings for a story.

So in writing stories, we can combine the fictional, the speculative, and life experience. We can draw on cultural tropes like the organized crime and the Mafia. Personal experience can be woven together with fiction, speculation, adolescent fantasy, and facts (there is organized crime; it is not a myth). This gave birth and shape to my story.

I wondered what would have happened if we, as adolescent boys, had seen something that would expose the gambling ring and maybe put some of the Mafia leaders who drove in from who knows where in danger? I had recently seen Road to Perdition, a film with Tom Hanks about a small boy who sees a mob hit and becomes the target of a crime gang. If we, at age twelve and thirteen, became a threat to the Mafia, what would they do to us?

In the story, two boy walk by Tony’s and witness the aftermath of a gunfight. One man is killed, another wounded. As they gaped at the sight, they are suddenly surrounded by mob soldiers and the head of the mob. He comes over to question the boys, asking if they saw what happened. They tell him they heard noises, people shouting, thought there was a fight on, and ran over to see what was going on. Phil, the head man, seems not to believe them and they are perceptive enough to know the danger they in.

Just then, Tony shows up. He says he knows the boys, they are good boys, and they can be depended upon not to tell anyone what they witnesses. Phil seems reluctant, but he respects Tony, they’re friends, and he lets them use his place for—well, whatever it is that goes on inside. Tony says he’ll talk to them. This exchange occurs:
“Do you boys know what happened here?”

We nodded.

“You’re in trouble, but I can get you out of it. You’ll be okay.”

We did not know what to say. I felt like I might cry but didn’t think that would be good. I managed to hold it.

“I know Phil,” he continued. “He and I are friends and he respects me. I’ll get you out of this, but you can’t say anything about what you just saw—not to anyone. I mean anyone. Not to your parents, teachers, friends, brothers, sisters—no one—not a word. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

We did. We could only nod.

“I’ll talk to Phil. He’ll want to talk some more with you. It will be okay. Just be honest and give him honest answers.”

Phil reiterates what Tony told them. They must not tell anyone. They nod. Phil smiled and tells them to go on their way. They walk home. The story ends on a positive note—of sorts. This incident will haunt them for years to come. They will not feel safe. They will never know if the mob will need “protection”—that is, will protect itself by eliminating everyone who might be a witness or reveal the crime. The ending is semi-happy but also dark because it is ambiguous.

“Tony” appeared in Sparkbright, another magazine that has bit the dust and is no longer in publication.

 For further titles, see my Writer's Page.

My vampire novel, Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute, will soon have sequence. Get a copy of Sinfonia and be prepared to read the sequel.

I would love to hear your comments.

Happy reading.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #51: Ethical Sorcery: "Avenging Earth"

The question of ethics is one that often takes odd directions. In C. S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength, he has a character he calls an "honest thief." This is a man who steals, knows stealing is wrong, does it, gets caught, and is ready to take the punishment for what he did; unfortunately, he is taken from jail to an organization that does not value human life, has no ethical base, and is willing to exploit and brutalize human beings (he is going to be used for medical experiments). Lewis is making the point that a thief who does something he senses is wrong but does it anyway to serve necessity or just because he decides to disregard the law, is better than an organization that has no sense of what is moral or ethical—that operates devoid of human decency and traditional ideas of right and wrong.

My story, "Avenging Earth" explores this same sort of question. It centers on two of my ongoing characters, Kathy Farisi and Alessia Bernini. The latter is a streg, a witch who practices "natural magic," magic that does not derive its power from evil but from nature and from traditions passed on from practitioner to practitioner from the Middle Ages on. Alessia and Kathy have become friends, though Kathy, recovering from an adulterous affair that broke up her best friend's marriage and damaged her life as well, is often censorious of Alessia and critical of her use of magic. At one point in this particular story, she castigates Alessia for using magic that caused a woman to suffer. Still, they maintain their sometimes shaky friendship.

Alessia Bernini, streg

Alessia finds Kathy at church. She has come to pray for a fifteen year-old girl named Alana, who has been blinded and has lost both her parents in a terrorist bombing. The terrorist is not a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS but is an eco-terrorist named Corey Allen. Allen bombed the home office of Paul Fusco's construction company because they were beginning to develop an area of land that Allen did not want to see developed. His wife and daughter happened to be visiting when the blast went off. Only the daughter survived but with the loss of her eyesight. While Kathy is praying, Alessia slides in beside her. They pray together and then Alessia says she needs Kathy's
help and wants to meet with her later in the day.

She finds out what her streg friend wants. Mr. Corsi, the head of the local Mafia, has paid Alessia a large sum of money to find Allen and to punish him for what he has done. (Fusco and Corsi were related, though Fusco was not involved in organized crime). Kathy has called together some of her friends to assist her in the ceremony she must go through to locate Allen, who knows no magic but who has power from his association with the earth and his innate grasp of its natural force. Kathy agrees. The ceremony frightens her and the other three friends. Alessia is battered by what she encounters but survives the ordeal, is able to locate Allen and give his location to the Mafia. Kathy asks if they will kill him. Alessia says he doesn't get off that easy.

Later, Alessia asks if Kathy will come with her as she does the spell that will be Allen's punishment. She agrees and watches with horror as Alessia casts her spell on him:

A transformation started at Allen's face and spread over his whole body, as if he had turned to dirt. For a second he looked ashy, like a mummy. Then his body broke apart and fell in a heap to the ground. Kathy gasped. Her heart felt as if it had stopped.

She heard a man’s scream.

The heap of dust into which Allen had collapsed resembled a human form. Suddenly the wind struck it, blow it into the air. Another scream rent the silence. She saw Corey Allen’s form, his face distinct in the swirling cloud of dust the wind blew violently into the water of the brook. After another pause, she saw a wave rise—a wave that bore Allen’s horrified, astonished likeness a second or two. She heard more screaming as the wave dissolved into the streambed.

Corsi says he is satisfied and asks if Allen will stay in this state of disembodiment and pain. Alessia tells him he will "as long as earth endures." Corsi is satisfied and goes his way. Alessia begins to sob. She has done justice. But to condemn a man to an earthly hell, where he will be transformed to elements and incessantly torn apart and assembled in other forms to be torn apart again, is something from Dante's Inferno. She asks Kathy to carry the suitcase full of money she has been paid for the job, and Kathy agrees. As they walk off to Alessia's car, they hear screaming from the wood. Alessia is crying. Kathy understands why her friend needs her, why she wanted her to come along. Doing what is right is sometimes wrong—or painful—or both at the same time.

The story appeared in a magazine called The Edge of Propinquity. It has an archive but says my story is missing, unfortunately.

A great story that is not missing is my novella Le Cafe de la Mort. You were astonished to find out your lover is the Angel of Death; more so when you find out she has been sent to Gehenna for violating angelic law; but even more when you are told you are the only one who can free her. 

 

For more titles, visit my Writer's Page.

 

I would love to hear your comments.