Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #19: Horror Through the Ages, Horror.

I've talked about how I'm not a horror writer, but people are not consistent. I went through a phase where I wrote and published horror. I had done this before. One of my first stories, "The Snow Demon," was a horror story, and I had written a few others, but mainly my stories did not go along the lines of horrific supernatural. Then a streak of them came, and most of the tales were more traditional and "dark" horror. As for my aversion to that kind of writing—well, as Walt Whitman once said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." Some of the stories were quite fascinating and interesting to compose.

A series of horror stories came from my pen (I write in longhand). The first one, "Dream Catcher," was about a serial killer with Satanic connections who goes after a young man's girlfriend (he has already killed her sister). His attempts to get at the girl are blocked because the young man possesses a dream catcher from a friend who is Native American and practices their ancient spirituality. Also, his girlfriend is a sculptor, and art communicates.

That's probably the best part of the story. An artist puts 

something of himself or herself into a

work of art. Any writer knows this. Margie, the girlfriend of Daniel, who narrates the story, has done a sculptured bust of Amy, her sister. So much of Margie is in the bust, and so much of Amy in Margie, that Daniel begins to have a recurrent dream. Amy is communicating through the statue, and which has captured so much of her soul—which has, like all good art, immortalized her. The dream catcher Daniel has facilitates this. He begins to see an old train signal tower, an anchor, and something having to do with Alabama.

All of the substance of the dream came from my home town. There is an old, fading, creepy train tower from the days when railroads hung lanterns out for signals so trains would not overlap on the tracks and crash into each other. Near-by is the Anchor Bar. And the street that runs just past this is Alabama Street. Daniel does not comprehend this, but eventually he recognizes the landscape and begins to investigate.

In the tower he finds a photo of Amy. It is surrounded by cryptic writing in  ancient languages. With the evidence he needs, Daniel climbs the narrow steel ladder to the street below.

Rail Tower near Alabama Street, Grand Rapids, MI

He is attacked by shadowy creature but manages but destroys it with the dream catcher. After that, Daniel confronts the killer himself, who has a gun. He hears voices. He has killed Amy as "tuition" (Daniel terms it this) so he can gain occult power from these higher powers he hears. Daniel is not impressed. He has the dream catcher. The killer scoffs at the dream catcher, calling it an "Injun charm." In reply, Daniel says, "This 'Injun charm' draws on power that was recognized and feared thousands of years before your ancestors or mine ever set foot on this land. Whatever two-bit magic you learned will collapse when it comes up against this."

The serial killer's gun won't work. He eventually flees. Daniel calls the police. At first they suspect him, but he tells them they will find the real culprit somewhere on Alabama Street. They find him hiding in a warehouse. Amy's murder is solved, as are the murders of three other women. The dream catcher has proved its potent magic.

But, as I've said before, horror is not my thing—at least not the type of horror I often encounter,where characters face unopposable evil. To me, such writing is simplistic. It strikes me rather like the classic cartoon Bambi vs. Godzilla, which is only about ten seconds long. You see Bambi grazing. He looks up to see Godzilla approaching. A shadow falls and then Godzilla's foot comes down and squishes Bambi. End of movie. This typifies a lot of horror. Where is the conflict, the complication, the plot twists—other than the protagonist fleeing from the monster and ending up in a box alley where he or she can't escape—or the woman in the fifties 

horror movie, Tarantula, who gets her skirt caught in 

the door of a car as the spider closes in on her?

In "Dream Catcher" evil is not ultimate because, unlike good, it is derivative. It has no existence in itself but is only the twisting of something good. It can exist, but when it runs up against its opposite—no, not it's opposite, the genuine thing of which is the perversion—no contest.

But the horror-writing phase went on for a while. More on this to come.

If you want to read "The Dream Catcher," here is a link to it. The Horror Zine, an award-winning online horror publication, is one of the very best and I highly recommend it.

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

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy #9: My History as a Writer: Writing stories based on songs: "Purple Haze"

As a musician, I know a lot of songs. As a writer, I use them to create stories. Looking back, the creative evolution of these stories intrigues me. Writing a story based on a song, on the concept of song, entails more than simply taking  what is described in a song's lyrics and turning it into a narrative tale. Songs are poems of a sort and they create not merely narratives with the lyrics but also a group of creative associations that become springboards into unique plot sequences.

Looking at lyrics, I marvel at how they are so often creatively associative. An old Led Zeppelin song, "Rock and Roll," has the line, Been a long time since the book of love. I've pondered the exact meaning of that line a lot. Does it mean:  Been a long time since the book of love was written? Been a long time since I read the book of love? Been a long time since the Monotones released "Who Wrote the Book of Love" in 1957? What is the book of love? This is the richness of song lyrics. Or the line by Cat Stevens, in "Peace Train":  Peace train holy roller. Again, what does this mean? A holy roller is a derogatory name for a charismatic or Pentecostal Christian who might shout or, in some cases, roll on the floor in religious ecstasy. But what does that have to do with the Peace Train? And what is the Peace Train anyway?

Song lyrics are not as cut and dried as we think. Ideally, they get the human mind working in creative directions. They create associations. I followed the lead of some of the associations of song lyrics in my story "Purple Haze." I had used song titles for titles of stories before:  "Son of a Preacher Man," "Norwegian Wood," "Into White," and "Revolution." Most of these stories, however, took the song titles because my character, Sossity Chandler, sang the song at one point in the story. This one was different. It relied more on creative association.

Most people interpreted "Purple Haze," as a song is about an LSD trip (though this is disputable). It emerged as a hit in 1967 and remains an iconic song in rock and roll. Whether about drugs or not, it is about someone out of control and not able to function properly. This, I think, was the thing I took to make the basic plot of the story. Sossity falls in with people who turn out to be a gang that steals musical instruments. They want her guitar. They drug her and take her to an abandoned warehouse, steal her purse, and try to get her guitar (she has left it with a friend). She also finds a stolen guitar that belonged Jimi Hendrix

But Sossity is at least able to function and reason, despite being disoriented by the drugs they gave her. She finds a headset and puts in on, thinking it may provide focus to her mind. It is a track of Jimi Hendrix's first album. By letting the familiar songs focus her mind, Sossity is able to get out and get home. The police contact her, return her stolen purse, and tell her the gang has been caught.

Years, later, her nun friend Heather arranges a meeting with a

female member of the gang, who has been religiously converted and released from prison. She asks Sossity's pardon for what she did. When Sossity asks her who helped the police find them, she answers, "It was him." Sossity asks who. The woman says, "I think you know." Though she doesn't believe in ghosts, Sossity at least considers the possibility what she has been told is true.

Being confused (possibly by drugs), helpless, and fighting for control of one's senses are big parts of the song "Purple Haze." These elements suggested Sossity's drug-induced torpor. The iconic songs on the album Are You Experienced give her a focus and help her snap out of her own "purple haze." Stories of Hendrix supply additional content. Songs lead us down creative pathways. Any pathway has lots of possibilities. Songs are good for story ideas. More on this topic later.

My new book, Mother Hulda, a short, fast-moving sci-fi tale based on a story by the Brothers Grimm, is available. Pick up a Kindle copy. 

For more titles, checks out my Writer's Page.

And--amazement!--I found an archive copy of the story, even though the journal that printed it is no longer in operation.  Here it is, for your reading pleasure:  Purple Haze. 

More to come on using songs and music in stories.

Dave's Anatomy #7: My History as a Writer: Seeing My Character from Another Character's Point of View

Sossity

As my writing developed, I set down several more stories about my ongoing character, singer Sossity Chandler. She seemed a good bet. Several stories about her went to press, and I had begun to get a sense of her as a character.  But a good idea is to get as many perspectives as possible to know the character better. I wondered how she would look through the eyes of another figure in a story.

I follow strict rules with Sossity. The stories that feature her are always third person, never first. They are from her point of view, but you never get inside her head. She is a mysterious figure. In my favorite novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman, the omniscient narrator gets inside the head of every character except Sarah, the French Lieutenant's Woman. She remains a mystery and, to an extent, so does Sossity Chandler.

In her character biography, she marries a guy named David Urbanic. But before David there a couple of long-term relationships. She dates Diggory Marks, who will return to her later life as a love interest; and she dates Jerry Watanabe for eighteen months. Their love affair and their split-up is part—though not the entirety—of my story, "Being Caught up with My Ego, I Leave Behind a Beautiful Girl Who Eventually Becomes Rich and Famous."

Quite a title! I did this because Jerry is Japanese-American. There is a

Jerry

tradition in Japanese haiku poetry of long titles. They are sometimes longer than the poet itself. Hence, the title, which nods at Jerry's ethnic heritage but also suggests his lack of connection with it in the slightly parodic use of such a title to tell the story of his lost love.

Jerry dates Sossity Chandler when they are students at Purdue. When she drops out, they start to lose contact, though they do see each other from time to time. Jerry is with her when she get her "big break." They are in his plane (he has a pilot's license) flying above Beaver Island, Michigan, when Sossity gets the call that one of her recording is getting lots of airplay, is selling well, and has the makings of a hit. The two of them spend a weekend together and go their way, Sossity to fame and fortune, Jerry to a job in a computer company in Chicago.

While there, Jerry gets caught up in the pursuit of success. He also begins to have an affair with Anna, the woman who runs his company. He and Sossity drift further away from each other.

Anna

The affair with Anna, though, has a dark side. She is into S&M and slowly drags Jerry into the practice. Like a frog in a kettle, her preferences take him over. She uses her position as CEO of the company to coerce Jerry into servicing her. He has started to like Cynthia Ku, a Chinese-American girl who works in the firm. Anna threatens to fire her if Jerry does not cooperate.

Cynthia

Jerry and Sossity finally break it off. The trauma of this makes him see things clearly. He realizes what he has got himself into and refuses to come to Anna's house. She sends a local thug to beat him up. 

Mistake. Jerry is a martial arts expert. He knocks the thug out and calls Anna, telling her he has recorded incriminating pictures of her from her cell phone and will make them public if she doesn't desist. Knowing she is beaten, she give him a severance package. Jerry eventually marries Cynthia and starts his own software company, which is successful.

He never forgets Sossity, though he knows it is over for them. He sees her at a concert later. She sings a cover song, Neil Young's "Birds," dedicating it to him by name, and gets tears in her eyes when she sings the refrain, "When you see me fly away without you. / Shadows on the things you know. / Feathers fall around you and show you the way to go. / It's over. It's over." The last lines of the story are poignant. They show something of Jerry's personality (and I find them poignant because he is a lot like me).

She cried too. I could not see it when she sang the song, but the next day I came across an item on the internet news:   a close-up shot of her with big, glistening tears on her cheeks. When I read the caption, Sossity Chandler sheds tears during Neil Young song, I wanted to put my fist through the computer screen and wanted to find the correspondent who had written that banal tag-line and pull his arm out of joint like I had for Anna’s hired thug. Of course I did neither. I had a family now and responsibilities. Sossity had gone her way, I mine. But she had given voice to what would have otherwise been inexpressible. That is her talent. That is the direction her life should take. The realization of this enabled me to let go of her.

Like me, Jerry is talented, formidable, and tough. But he is also indecisive and allows himself to be bullied by other peoples' expectations. He is too restrained. Worst of all, he allows his ego to get him into trouble. But he is also able to accept loss and to see the good even in a loss, though this is a sad consolation.

Through this story, readers and an author get a viewpoint on Sossity Chandler through the eyes of someone else. In a later story, "Jergen Kohaut's Blues," and in the two stories "Qualities of Light" and "Mood Indigo," Sossity is seen from the POV of other characters. If you are writing an ongoing character, it's a good thing to do.

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