Author: Pierre

Castle of Ages Release!

Available on Kindle and Paperback

Chapter One

I can say without any semblance of ego that I have seen deeper into the shadows than any of my kind born upon this earth. I have pierced through the hearts of men and found the horns hidden underneath the brows of innocents. I have been kissed by demons and cursed by those who claimed to serve the Lord.

Yet, in all that I have witnessed, of all of the multitudinous horrors, including bearing witness to that awful chamber of the Castellan, nothing could have prepared me for the Aionic canal. Time, the Castellan said, was a difficult thing to manage and there are always the elements of physical law to consider. I know now that time itself occurs simultaneously to our dimension, or no, perhaps it is more accurate to say that time does not occur at all; it is immovable and mass and matter merely revolve around it. This, of course, becomes something of an issue when one decides, perhaps foolishly, that he wishes to travel to an earlier era— for matter must be dissolved to its simplest iota to be put to use elsewhere. Great minds in the fields of chemistry and physics have postulated that there is a finite amount of matter. There would be no lesser or greater amount of the stuff in 1503, my destined era, than there was in 1903, the year I departed from. Hence, the Castellan’s Aionic canal must strip me of my physicality in 1903 and find a suitable amount of atomic material in 1503 to re-establish my form. 

This was not a pleasant experience if I might offer a wry understatement. Imagine that you have been pushed through a sieve with an imperceptibly small mesh or otherwise have fallen into a meat-grinder and even the most vivid of imaginations could not possibly anticipate the amount of pain one must endure to travel backward through linear time. The physical pain was one thing and perhaps easier to understand. Now apply the process to your mental state or, if you dare, your spiritual being. Of how many memories creates a person? Of how many thoughts and ideas? These are ethereal concepts, containing no substance, yet these too must become obliviated, parceled into the tiniest parts of their humane sum. One might be able to calculate the weight, volume, and atomic material a single body possesses, but the equation is less precise when it comes to the intangible modules of the human spirit. This is why the Castellan prefers a sacrifice when transmuting a body along the canal— simple maths of debit. 

Perhaps it would be helpful to provide an allegory to better explain myself. In my travels to visit my mother country of Russia, I encountered a former Buddhist monk from Japan who once tried to explain to me, over a shared bowl of saké, where the concept of separate identities comes from. He asked me to consider the table and he asked me to give it a name. 

“It is a table,” I told him. 

He agreed. Then he asked me to consider what I would call it if he took an axe to it. 

“A broken table,” I told him. 

He agreed. Then he asked me to consider what to call it if he shredded the table to absolute bits. 

“Splinters.” 

He asked me to consider what to call it if he then shredded it further. 

“Sawdust.”

 And then what to call it if he burned it?

 “Smoke. Ash.”

 “And once the smoke disperses and the ash is thrown 

into the dirt?” “Air. Soil.” 

“And yet you continue to call this a table,” the monk said, somewhat mockingly. “And can you make a table out of air and soil?” 

“No,” I said.

 “You can,” he said. “You need only to wait.”

 It was not until I had separated into a million particles that I fully understood what the monk had been saying. My identity as the man, Ulysses Malevich, my body, my mind, had joined the cosmic oblivion of energy passing into states of motion and rest. Memories of my mother holding the obsidian knife to my eye, blessing me with the Siren Goddess’s vision of collapsable probability, separated into the concepts of mother, knife, eye, blessing. And then those concepts separated into vaguer ones, woman, child, stone, sight, prayer, blood… and so on. They mingled with the particles that once comprised my face, my eyes, nose, forehead, eyebrows, ears… Atoms that had comprised my circulatory system passed through synaptic charges of energy that held thoughts of duties, compulsions, the drive to eat… and what’s more, after their unbecoming, the differences between them were unrecognizable. 

This, then, is the Castellan’s gift, for it soon dispatched of the particles that comprised my bodily form and absorbed it to put to use in my “modern” era. With it left all feelings of pain and misery. All else was flushed into a great sea of energy, thought, and consciousness. From there, I witnessed every possibility from every outcome. Perhaps, I misspoke. Earth barely registered as a place here. The universe, as I had once considered it, also appeared small and inconsequential to me. I was then a part of some greater formation, some eternal architecture. Flowing through it. I had not the capacity to feel joy or sublimity, nor had I even the faculties to think— again, I floated like a cloud of concepts, partially formed ideas, and then merged with every concept. There was no future, no past, no love, no hate, nothing. I was the table shattered, burned, and returned into this swirling void of the never-was, the cannot-be, the all-encompassing tide of non-reality. 

And then, when I felt as if I had finally found my home, those damnable Newtonian physics once again began to seep into veracity. With it, my amorphous cloud of concept began cleaving back into itself, memories, lusts, and traumas made whole, as physical law crafted planets and stars according to their mass and volume. I became aware of globules of atoms here, snatches of particles there, elements from quasars, salts from unnamable moons, proteins filched from protozoan organisms from cratered pools of ice pocking the surface of meteors, all of it carrying the pain of entropy, establishing in my thinking that to exist within this universe, one must suffer. 

I became the table reborn. 

The Holiday Stone: Chapter One

The Holiday Stone: Chapter One

Below is a sample from my most recent work, The Holiday Stone. It is available on Amazon and elsewhere here.

I was returning from a journey to Barcelona, another exhausting stop on my steadfast quest to find certain apocryphal scrolls pertaining to a lesser known Saint in a pre-Catholic cult of Christ. My search yielded nothing but a sense of disappointment and, I admit, embarrassment. The universities there, while welcoming, eschewed any theories I posited, refusing to even entertain the possibility that this chapter in the non-canonical Bible truly existed. The professors there were too courteous to laugh directly in my face. They had the decency, by God, to wait until I had turned my back. I do not regret the trip, however, as I am used to such suspicion and skepticism. I do, however, regret returning so early, as a few days on the beach would have surely restored my harried and frayed nerves after so much tedious study. If that had been the case, then I would not have come home in time to act on that fateful letter from Doctor Woodstrom. 

I remembered the good Doctor, of course. He had instructed me in the fields of human anatomy and physic when I was just a fledgling medical student, but it wasn’t until I took his elective course in experimental medicines that we actually bonded. We would sit in his office over tea and brandy and discuss his research into ancient methods of healing, which naturally led us to conversations on shamanism and associated atavistic mysteries, until our shared scholarly passion for occultism (heretofore a solitary, clandestine enthusiasm) became our primary obsession. The surprising seriousness with which this esteemed man of science indulged the fantastical imagination and dubious theories of one of his medical students gave me an indispensable confidence in the value of these pursuits, but my studies after receiving my degree led me far afield, and I had quite lost touch with Doctor Woodstrom. 

So it came as some surprise when I received word from him in that unseasonably crisp springtimeof 1904. I assumed, frankly, that he would long since have passed away, for I knew his nature to be that of a physician, through and through. A good doctor’s energy is all too frequently focused on the health of his patients at the expense of his own. I myself was on the verge of becoming an old man, ever so slightly jaded by the vicissitudes, and those university days seemed very far away, but Woodstrom had always been a good-natured and gentle man…a friend to me, in his way, and I must say that I was not unhappy to hear from him. 

I tidied myself up, dishevelled as I was after having spent the day traveling. I took a bath and sent for a simple meal of sausage and sliced bread from the delicatessen below my apartment. I thought to read the letter as I ate, but I instead found myself nodding into a doze over the newspaper. I put myself to bed, saving a focused reading of Woodstrom’s letter for less weary eyes. 

In the morning, I consumed the letter more attentively over coffee and boiled eggs, rereading it several times. It wasn’t an unfriendly or anguished dispatch, but it worried me all the same. It read as follows. Bear in mind whilst reading it that English was not the Doctor’s first or even second language:

My dear Simon Holiday,

I hope this letter finds you well. In my memory you have always been my most promising student as your principal notion was to unearth core truths beyond what has already been discovered. I was saddened to hear that you had abandoned your study of medicine and man’s health, although I have heard rumors that you have been intrepidly following other pursuits. Would these perchance be the same pursuits we had once discussed in my office so long ago? If this be the case then I am in need of your assistance. I am currently in the American state of Louisiana, engaged in various fields of study at Elbridge University. I have secured a position for you here if you would so choose it. If you do, I would ask desperately that you bring that artifact left to your inheritance, as it might hold yet some valuable secret. I guarantee that you will find here what you have been searching for all over Europe. Please respond without delay and I will arrange the necessities of your voyage and your room here in New Orleans. 

All the best,

Professor Woodstrom

I turned his words over and over in my mind. He was speaking with discretion about my interest in the occult and yet very openly about where I could find the answers that I have been looking for. The apparent fact that Woodstrom had some intimate knowledge of my movements around the continent was exceedingly curious. That realization did little to settle the growing unease within my stomach. And yet the suggestion that Elbridge University might hold within its library the apocryphal scroll that I had so fervently been searching for these last few years was too great a temptation to ignore. 

But what of the favor he asked of me? I knew at once the artifact he was referring to, yet I could barely recall how he came to know of it. Eventually, I remembered that I did bring the object to his office for his expert inspection. We dipped deeply into the brandy that night and conversed into the small hours until his room was so thick with cigar smoke that I could hardly see. I forget now, of course, the details of our conversation, but the subject throughout was the nature and provenance of the Stone.

The Stone had always been to me a wretched memento that haunted my belongings. I expect that it had haunted my father’s house as well, before and after his passing. I had long since sealed it in a velvet pouch and locked it in the bottom of a chest of winter clothes so that I might only chance to remember its existence once or twice a year, upon wardrobe rotation. It was to this chest that I returned from a wasted day of research at the library. 

The texts that I had borrowed, I knew, would offer little to no information that I had not previously gleaned, and my eyes wandered from the script, thinking back to my cursed heirloom. After fortifying myself with a double brandy, I unlatched the chest and rooted underneath coats and scarves until my hands felt velvet. I took the pouch to my study and set it down on my desk. I refilled my brandy and, thinking on old times once more, lit a cigar. I unsheathed the object and weighed it in my hands, inspecting it closely. 

It was heavier than one might expect, a burden in both practicality and metaphor. Having the thing too near my eye, however, sent a shiver down my spine and I quickly set it upon my desk. I filled my pipe with tobacco and lit it, feigning insouciance for the benefit of no one but my own unsettled self, blowing smoke rings at the artifact as the flickering lamp-flame imbued it with an eerie semblance of animation. 

It was a large stone of crystalline green amber, cut to resemble a tetragonal prism, though flat along the bottom so that it could freely stand. Suspended within the crystal was a necrotic human hand, half skeletal and minus its ring finger entirely. The flame of my lamp danced within the green gem, casting a rainbow of prismatic colors upon my face and the walls around me. I could not help but think that the stone itself was beautiful, ethereally hypnotic in its array of glittering imperfections. The dessicated palm ensconced within the stone cast the mineral beauty into higher relief, creating an effect so mesmerizing and disquieting that the beholder might quite evade the relic’s gruesome implications. 

So I stared at the Stone, pondering the Doctor’s proposition. I was loath to admit it, but my research had reached an impasse in Wales. Perhaps some time in America would not only benefit my studies, but also restore the vigor and joi de vivre that had been so lacking in me as of late. A trip would do me good, on professional, personal, and constitutional terms. I had made up my mind. I pushed the garish object out of view as I drew up a letter of acceptance. 

As I wrote, the shadows on the periphery of my vision made a flickering mockery of my rational faculties, somehow indicating to my atavistic unconscious the trepidations of a spectral presence. Perhaps it was merely a trick of the lamp’s inconstant flame, its dancing refracted within the crystalline amber— but I could have sworn I saw those wretched fingers ever so slightly twitch.

***

Hope you enjoyed this free chapter. If you would like to purchase this fun little horror novelette, please follow this link.

6 Reasons The Lighthouse is the Perfect Allegory for our Quarantined Lives

6 Reasons The Lighthouse is the Perfect Allegory for our Quarantined Lives

2019’s late cinematic delicatessen offered a unique spread of savory delights from the lauded offering of class struggle Parasite to the more palatable generational whodunit comedy Knives Out. But amongst that table of winter entertainment, there was one film that stood out amongst the rest in both tone and style. That film, of course, is The Lighthouse, a black and white film shot stubbornly in an 1.19:1 aspect ratio with orthochromatic film. This movie contains multitudes, spinning more of a myth than a true narrative that breaks down into a Promethean mindtrap of cosmic insanity, homoeroticism, abusive parental relationships, abusive gaslighting employer relationships, the spatiality of one’s conscience, cabin-fever, and a mythos of Greek, Pagan, and Christian pastiche mixed with American superstition that swells into a chorus sung of some forgotten yet familiar drunken sea shanty.

But the film now serves as a living piece of empathetic art, as it contains nearly every aspect of quarantined life within its runtime. Take for example…  

Time No Longer Makes Sense

Time

In the same way that three months have just passed in the blink of an eye, the grueling nature of experiencing those minutes tick by seems to drag along and occasionally appearing to stop altogether. Microwaving a burrito seems to take an hour and yet binge-watching the entire season of FX’s What We Do In The Shadows feels like it takes five minutes. The only certainty is that it’s later than it was before.

Think now of a particular scene when Old Tom complains of the dwindling rations and how Young Tom’s drunkenness led to the rations rotting. He passes into a doorway and returns, now desperately confused, saying, “How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Five days? Help me to recollect.” 

This strikes a chord with those of us who are struggling to keep time without any given schedule. Without, say, my smartphone making note of when I drunkenly text my friends that I miss them, there would be no anchor, even though I could have sworn that yesterday was years ago. 

The Drinking

Drinking

First, props to all out there in recovery who are fighting the urge to relapse into addiction. You’re doing great and I’m in your corner. 

For those of us who still indulge a tipple, however, the montage of Old and Young Tom power-housing bottles of whiskey after their rations went to rot became all too familiar during week two when the modest 48 cans of beer had been consumed and all that was left was a handle of Tequila that had an umlaut in the brand name. Suddenly, your aunt is posting #quarantini pics at ten in the morning and your ex is sending “new compositions” of his song for you at five in the morning. A blender full of margarita interrupts your ZOOM meeting. 

We don’t judge here, because The Lighthouse has informed us that this is pretty par for the course.

But speaking of booze…

Your New Alchemical Talents

Alchemy

Right before the movie blows out into a full wiggety-whack (that is the scholar’s term for it) freakshow, Robert Pattinson’s Young Tom is seen dipping a pestle of what I assume is honey into a container of kerosene to replace their diminished alcohol. I would remind everyone that as far as I know, liquor stores are still very much open. 

However.

Once the hand sanitizer ran out and I, and perhaps yourself, began mixing a pitch of aloe vera into a pot of rubbing alcohol to synthesize a working substitute, I too felt as if I was on the verge of either madness or delirious genius. An old man and I (both masked and standing twelve feet apart) swapped home sanitization tips. He preferred a mixture of iodine and ethanol in use with absorbent gloves. 

Anyway. 

The Farts

farts

Whether you are confined in small quarters with your significant other, your roommate, or yourself, I’m sure we can all just take a moment to appreciate Robert Pattinson’s archaic Massachusetts accented delivery of his displeasure towards Old Tom’s gastro-intestinal butt-punches. As much as this movie is dark and weird and scary, it’s also funny as hell. Say it with me: “Your… FAHHHTS!”

The Frustrated Masturbation

Masturbation

Of course this is on the list. It’s like the free BINGO space of quarantine life. Feel no shame. 

The first action Young Tom takes after moving into the quarters is to covet and hide a mermaid statuette as a dark pall crosses over his face. He repeatedly imagines making love to it–or depending on your read of the film, finally summons a mermaid to bump uglies with–but ultimately becomes frustrated with the attempt and destroys it with a broken knife. 

I’ve witnessed some strange responses to the lack of sexual contact within my own community. Largely, it is a dire desperation for human touch and affection, which is both natural and understandable. Sexuality has been a thing that we’ve been individually hiding from each other, and often from ourselves, that we don’t understand how necessary it is to society until any recourse to intercourse has been removed. 

In this way, we are like Young Tom, striking the hammer to the statue. Or like Old Tom, making love to the light itself. 

There’s a lot of cum in this movie.

Perhaps it is with some optimism that I think that we have been faring better than Young Tom, as the thirst-trap economy is booming, PornHUB has been offering free premium services, and strippers and sexworkers are taking to paid-cam sites. So while you’re scrambling to “make-ends-meet” while the missus is taking a trip to the supermarket, just remember that you have more than an obtuse carving of a mermaid to get you along.   

At the very least, we now have the phrase “Abusing himself in the workshed” to say through the door of your knocking, inquiring roommate. 

We’re All Spilling Our Beans

Beans

The turning point of the film comes with the ominous phrasing of perhaps the silliest sentence. Yet, it works and it works hilariously. It is at once funny and sinister and it works so good, the phrase is repeated and it’s somehow scarier the second time as if the viewer had forgotten a nightmare only to be reminded of it innocuously during their daily toil: 

“Why’d you spill your beans, Tommy? Why’d you spill your beans?” 

It’s a reference to Young Tom confessing his sins to Old Tom, the maybe-murder of Ephraim Winslow. When he finally spills those beans, the film takes a Lynchian turn. 

But upon our quarantined rock of solitude, the language of honesty is our biggest strength! Like the example above, I don’t see this as necessarily a bad thing. People are complex and they need to out their complexities. Largely, you see it in outbursts of social media posts, folks you know showing a different side to them, whether it be arrogant, over-informative, shitty or flirtatious. 

But people are sharing more, spilling more beans. 

Perhaps it’s a Catholic thing for some people, but I have had a few folk call in to confess the thoughts they had that day. People live and people want to talk about their life. Even in quarantine, when lives are boring, I find that beautiful.

And while The Lighthouse posits many things, philosophically, filmicly, mythically, existentially, and even hyper-realistically, the film also endears us to the eccentric Willem Dafoe and the reserved and rightfully frustrated Robert Pattinson through their mealtime banter. 

If nothing else, let’s keep this tradition of honesty and human connection going after this thing blows over. 

Pierre Manchot currently writing a gothic horror series, The Dark Castellan, which you can begin reading here.  

CoS_cover_small

Castle of Blood [Sample]

Castle of Blood [Sample]

The Dark Castellan series is in full swing. Here are some sample passages from Castle of Blood. If you would like to pre-order the book, please do so here. Enjoy.

 

i

Diary of Henri Le Brun

Paris, France

Entry, March 23rd, 1903

I had been making my usual nightly routine of a brisk promenade through the Parisian streets as usual when I came home to a disquieting dispatch from a former colleague from the Sûreté Nationale. I admit that I was not keen on immediately opening the letter as I had largely left policing matters behind me after I had suffered a series of palpitations that had left me unconscious for several days and required bedrest for many weeks afterwards. The physician that now attends me is adamant that I take course to invite morning and evening air into my lungs and to avoid any strenuous activity as well as any business that might cause my heart undue rigor. The contemptible doctor also tells me to avoid red meats and keep to a diet of fish and dark vegetables and red wine. The man has robbed me of the pleasures of cigars and brandy and has recommended that I switch to cigarettes and should I have want for spirits, to embellish the pour with mineral water.

The letter remained on the chair where I had dropped it until late evening, after I had supped on an unsatisfying meal and after delaying the task for as long as I could, I opened it and read the contents, wishing afterwards that I had left it sealed. The letter was addressed from a magistrate from the Ministry of the Interior and one that I knew quite well and one of the few that I still held any fondness for. That would one François Soulages and if the note had not been written and stamped with official letterhead and seal, I would have been happy to hear from him. I will transcribe the letter here for future referencing.

Monsieur Le Brun,

Hello my friend, it has been too long since we have last spoken. I pray that you have been recovering well although I was saddened to hear that you would not be returning to your duties any time soon. The ministry suffers a lack of personality with you gone and your absence is deeply felt by all who worked with you. I wish that I was writing you to describe personal matters as much has happened in my life and I would be eager to hear the events of yours, however, there is some business I must attend to and it would seem that you might be uniquely capable of solving a particular problem that has been plaguing the ministry. There appears to be a dispute in a rural municipality concerning the slaying of bovine farmstock. Generally, as you know, these matters are resolved to be the mere whims of nature, the culprit revealed to be a hungry wolf or daring badger, but the frequency of requests to send a magistrate to the village is staggering. I’ve wired the nearest municipal director of police but it would appear that lines of jurisdiction would be violated if they were to intercede, making this one of those petty national matters. My offices are currently lacking in manpower, much less an officer that would be able to make a trip so far into the country. I am disinclined to ask anything of you, as your service to this country has long been demonstrated and I know you have suffered for it. But I do not know Henri Le Brun to be a sickly man, but a robust investigator keen for the next challenge. Perhaps the countryside would also do you well. I will not force the issue should you refuse it, but it would mean a great deal to an old friend if you were to travel to Lons-le-Saunier prefecture and meet with the local brigadier of the constabulary to help aid any investigation into the wrongful harming of livestock in the surrounding area. I hope that you will take the opportunity and await your response.    

Mag. Francois Soulages

The insult of the letter was nothing less than an open palmed strike to my face. I dispensed the original copy to shreds and deposited it in the fireplace, alighting it with a match that I then took to a petite cigar. The flame took the page suddenly and after a flash, it cindered in black webs before dying into white ash. I felt as impotent as the fire and having lost my taste for the cigar, snubbed it out. I will read now to take my mind off things, as I feel my heart is agitated.

Later: Novels do me no good, nor does the evening dispatch. I am ruminating ever on the act of pitying kindness from my former friend Soulages. That I have fallen so far as to become a wretched errand boy—no, a judge presiding over barnyard livestock—burns me to little end. I put these words down in the hopes that I might void the matter from my mind. I am ready for sleep and I do not want to dream fitfully, or cling to this resentment.

ii

Entry, March 24th

In the morning I felt very much the fool for having borne any hatred towards Francois. My morning promenade took me through the foggy channels of Paris—I’m afraid our spring has yet to catch up to the calendar— and I returned to my apartment to break fast with a few slices of toasted bread and a smear of camembert with a dollop of currant. I returned to this diary to reread the words and my feelings of disgust were reignited. I nearly thought to tear the pages from the journal and cast them into the fire but that ritual had done so little to quell my fury the night previous that I applied no effort to indulge the impulse. I am due for an appointment with my physician. He will want to know why I am so agitated. I think I will tell him of the troubling letter and leave out the details of the cigar. He will give authority over my refusal to accept the task and vindicate any guilt I might experience for such a blunt response. 

The damn physician is a quack! I’ll write it here the exchange so it will not trouble me later. I came to his offices so that he might examine my physic and when I made mention of the letter that Francois Soulages had sent me, the imposter agreed with the bloody magistrate! He said that in his studies of the mental physic, engaging in tasks with a defined goal would benefit the body as well as the mind. I argued with the man, saying that he had told me to refrain from any strenuous activity. His response, “Getting on a train and examining the remains of a few bovine carcasses does not sound like too much of a strain.” I had hoped that I had an ally within the doctor, but it would seem that I am as lonesome as I ever was in any of my efforts. I must sit down to luncheon and hope that the matter leaves my mind some quiet. 

I cannot focus on my book and I fear that this anxiety has not let the ham sandwich sit well in my stomach. I will take an early stride through town until my nerves and belly cooperate. 

Upon returning from my walk, I found another letter courier-expedited in my mail slot. It was another from François and this time, I ripped it open with haste so that I could sooner hate his pitying words. I read it once and then again more carefully. I set it down on the table and made myself a coffee and returned to it to read a third time. I shall clip the margins of the letterhead and paste it inside this diary. Transcription is too much of an effort for me as of now. 

Letter Insert

In the hand of François Soulages

Sealed with the stamp of the Ministry of the Interior, Paris

Monsieur Le Brun,

 I fear that my last letter may have been too hastily written and I may have incurred some insult upon you. It was not my design to wound the pride of such an esteemed officer of French security such as yourself as I well know the efforts you have plied to ensure the surety of our people. It is regretful that a mind such yours should be put to waste as your cunning has demonstrated time and again to ably penetrate the obfuscation of truth. Mark that it is for no little matter that I wish to employ you. Since I have last written, I have received no less than three more messages of livestock mutilation. As the first were bovine, these new complaints concerned swine. The nature of their mutilation might interest you in that their carcasses were displayed in such a fashion that no animal could have designed. Police in Lons-le-Saunier are still unsure of their legal recourse to intervene and it requires a third party to investigate. They have told me that they would assist you with what they can. I know that you are a man of little spoken affect, and none at all if the thought of response displeases you, but I ask that you reconsider your silence and position of acceptance. I have little agency to dispense any officers into a region so far as there are pressing matters in the north that have unfortunately usurped our resources. It would be no small favor if you inclined to accept. I await your reply eagerly. 

Mag. François Soulages

I have finished my coffee and my third reading of the letter. It strikes me that flattery must be the principal tool of the ministry these days which is a sad state of affairs. Flattery rankles less than passive insult, however, and I was not displeased to read the heaping praise Soulages poured over my abilities as an investigator. My coffee is finished. I shall do some tidying up and return to this journal when I have taken my evening promenade. 

My evening jaunt consisted of passing over a bridge, stopping at a butcher’s and peering through the window, and strolling through a park moistened by the evening fog. I was struck with a fit of rheumatism on my journey home, for it would seem that this air is yet too wet for my lungs. My heart had a flutter and I was made to stop and relax myself. Perhaps the city is not the right place for my recuperation. I admit, before scrawling in these pages, I skimmed the passages previous since my embolism. It would appear that I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the only sights I’m willing to see are limited to the butcher’s shop and a petit and often foggy park. I dared not look at the passages previous Celine’s passing. I cannot bear to. I poured myself a brandy and mineral water and stressed François’s issue into my temples. I could not deny that the new information held some new intrigue over me. I must think on this. 

Perhaps it was the brandy but I removed a leaf of paper from a folder and wrote a reply to François. There is no need for transcription but I kept my language cordial and made no indication of my previous mood. I accepted the offer and inquired about particulars concerning travel and dates and persons of whom I would have need of introduction. I sealed the letter in an envelope and brought it to a peddling courier. Walking back upstairs, I regretted it. I prepared a meal of fish and potato and relished no flavor. It is time for bed. God help me, I hope I have not done anything foolish.

If you would like to read more, please pre-order the book for Kindle or buy it in paperback in late February. If you still haven’t read the precursor, Castle of Shadow, please do that now or suffer the ghosts of mirrors for all times. CoB_cover_small

The Mess of Skywalker: Too Many Sith on the Dance Floor

The Mess of Skywalker: Too Many Sith on the Dance Floor

I don’t give a man’s ass if you care about the spoilers I’m about to unload on you for Star Wars EP IX: The Rise of Skywalker because that movie is some hot dogshit.

First, let me make something clear. There are a lot of reasons why this movie doesn’t work but the performances were not one of them. Everyone did a pretty stellar job turning in performances for a bat-shit crazy script. Also, I’m not trying to attack the film the same way a rabid Star Wars fan would because the movie “messed up the lore.” Naw, I want to take a look at the script and talk about the problems of its narrative– and since this will be the last post of the decade, and since the problems I noticed are indicative of some troubling cinematic trends of the 2010s, this’ll also serve as a quaint little retrospective. SO. What went wrong with the Rise of Skywalker? 

Let’s start with the fact that it has four credited screenwriters, including the director JJ Abrams. I’ve talked before of how a showrunner requires a writer’s room in order to produce a quality show, else be cast the fate of True Detective: Season 2. But cinematic screenplays seem to suffer under the weight of too much influence. We saw this in 2015’s Jurassic World (totaling 5 credits for the screenplay). That final product we saw nearly five years ago was a patchwork of unrelated threads and tangents presented as if it should make any linear sense but was simply a sequence of vignettes loosely tied to the franchise’s conceit.

The Rise of Skywalker might be worse in this regard, the first two acts seemingly jumping around from five-second scene to the next five-second scene at such a dizzying rate that it felt as if I watch watching a music video than the world’s most successful movie this year. One suspects that one of the culprits was having spread the writing duties too thin across four people and then having to fold everything into something resembling a story. Writing is generally a solitary craft for this reason–or an extremely intimate one between a trusted collaborator– as it is hard to telegraph a singular vision of a story to even one other person before it’s finished. Imagine that problem multiplied three more times and the screenplay’s lack of communication within itself makes sense– even if the script doesn’t.

Some of these issues, however, could have been fixed with heavy revisions that would have required condensing smaller portions of the film into one. The afore-mentioned five-second scenes are largely in place to exposit where the team was heading in the next scene. There are just too many goddamn locations in this film. They go to Pasaana, they go to Kim Chi (I know that’s not the name, I’m not looking it up!), they go to Kef Bir, the rebel base is in a forest somewhere, Rey goes back to  Ahch-To and Tatooine at certain points, but the final act all happens around Exegol. That’s not even including the set pieces of the Star Destroyer(s). There’s no space to breathe when the story is always pushed to the next set. Abrams, perhaps, wanted to send off the trilogy with a tour of yet unexplored planets– or more likely, the four screenwriters fucked up and wrote in too many locations separately and merged all of these together. The obvious fix is to nix a planet, but the way the scenes seem to be arranged, and it barely made sense then, taking out any more of the story would fell this tensile house of cards.

Too many locations were behind another colossal disappointment of the decade, the should-have-been-great 007 feature Spectre which boasts a whopping 158 filming locations. Compared to the also-bloated-but-more-reasonable 51 of Skyfall and you can perhaps see where I’m going with this. When every scene is just a setup to get the next setup, there’s no basis to ground the audience. I can’t tell you what the hell happened in that movie because, as it was also a final installment of sorts, most of it was a marathon run of Bond doing “cool things” in “cool locations” and the value of any of those actions was entirely lost on me. Likewise, Rise falls into the same trap (although the filming was done almost entirely on green screens) taking place in too many locations to the point where it felt as if it didn’t take place anywhere. We got shown a weird alien version of Burning Man, only to get whisked away by Lando to get fed some exposition, leading to the next truncated action scene to find one of…

Too many MacGuffins. In other words, there are too many objectives. The dagger makes no logical fucking sense. The victory of finding the second wayfinder (for all of the dumb Star Wars bullshit names for stuff, an old nautical term for this magic GPS was a kick in the dick) was immediately nullified. Finn and whatshername crossing the waves to reach Rey, also rendered meaningless. Finn heading towards the control tower, also pointless. In this fuckin’ Star Wars movie, in addition to finding a 20-year old blade that belongs in the Goonies and enchanted map prisms, the gang has to hack into C3P0’s mainframe (the tears spent on his lost memory lasts about fifteen minutes before it’s restored), save Chewbacca from the bad guys (the pangs from his percieved death lasts 13 seconds), repair the Falcon, save Ben’s soul from the Dark Side and ON and ON and FUCK. It is the cinematic equivalent to watching a child play with action figures, endlessly explaining “and then…” but with million-dollar sets. How can you convincingly express a character’s motivation if they are narratively motivated to find 13 different things? Speaking of which.

The erratic character motivations are a symptom of too many fuckin’ characters. The character of Finn has to respond to Rey, New Han Solo, Rose, New Girl-Who-Used-to-be-a-Stormtrooper. A lot’s been made of the fact that Rose’s character has essentially been benched, and the explanation was one of cutting scenes to make the movie fit into two hours and 35 minutes (UGH), but really, when you decide to make a trilogy centering around four principal characters (Rey, Kylo, Finn, New-Han-Solo) and you give each of them five other characters to interact with, it’s going to be messy. What the hell does Finn want? We don’t know, other than he has something really important to tell Rey, which was apparently not “let’s bang” but instead “I”m force-sensitive” which is just… you fuckers… it’s just unnecessary (especially since it was only explained via a panel interview with Abrams).

We don’t really know what Rey wants, either. She just bounces from A to B. We know that she’s afraid of succumbing to the Dark Side, but there’s been nothing in the previous two films to indicate that she ever would. So. Who gives a shit? But probably the most egregious case of this is when homeboy Abrams introduces MORE GODDAMN characters and they behave like fuckin’ nonsense puppets. The bounty hunter chick that New Han So-Poe used to shuffle uglies with goes from “I can turn you in for a bounty” to “Just between you and me, I think you’re pretty OK,” in SECONDS. Then, she asks Poe to run away with her, lascivious eyes and all, and when he declines the offer, she gives him the thing that she was going to use to escape. Regardless of HOW she escaped without that medal (another macguffin? kinda? one that we didn’t know they needed?) homegirl shows back up with the weird monkey Gremlin to help save the day and in a closing scene (that I actually liked) rebuffs the suggested make-out session implied by Poe’s expression. That scene worked in that moment but not the larger context of any sense of consistency. It was funny, unexpected, and a light little bow to put on that charact– WASN’T SHE GOING TO RUN AWAY WITH THE DUDE EARLIER THAT SAME DAY?! What the fuck does Kylo want? To turn Rey into his goth girlfriend? Is that it? Fuckin’ APPARENTLY. Who the fuck is that weird yellow alien with dicks hanging from his face? Why is he there? What’s his fuckin’ deal? (After a google search of “yellow dick alien slug” I found that he is A MECHANIC WITH NO DISCERNABLE ARMS FUCK YOU) Aren’t the Knights of Ren trained Jedi under Luke Skywalker who followed Ren to the dark side? Wouldn’t that have been an interesting moment if they allowed a moment’s breath to reflect on the fact that RenBen had to kill his old friends to save his new one? No? The only motivation that was clear was General Hux’s double-cross, because it was set up previously that he despised the direction that Kylo-Ren was taking his Order but that subplot was treated so flippantly that I barely remembered it before looking at a plot summary. Yes, the side-lining of Rose is indicative of shitty Hollywood trend to appease the toxic opinions of redpill redditors, but the tragedy of narrative here is that every character was sidelined and their stories were diminished into oblivion.

That’s not to say the movie didn’t do some things right. The final third of the movie, at least the bits of RenBen and Rey-Bae, was genuinely interesting as the movie slowed down around them to face each other on the fallen death star. One setting, two characters, strong emotions. That was good. It was also almost good when they combined forces to face Palpatine. Almost. It didn’t bother me all that much that Darth Sidious had been resurrected by old sith magic (blah blah the force and forbidden sciences, cool). But that fucker is a font of unnecessary explication to justify the existence of this trilogy without ever actually explaining anything. He created Snoke? The fuck for? You want to kill Rey? Or Kylo? Why? Oh, ReyBae and RenBen are a diad in the force? Is that just a cool word you learned? Why? And more importantly… who gives a shit? Is it so Palpatine can restore his powers? He didn’t know about their diad. But then he does restore himself using their force power. Couldn’t he have done that… with… anybody? What the fuck is going on? Half that diad is thrown out of the battle immediately so… goddammit, why are you telling me all of this, you shitty fucking movie?!

The gripe here isn’t necessarily about the lore here, but just that the lore doesn’t matter. It isn’t relevant beyond a single scene and the scenes themselves, even the kinda-good ones, we’ve seen before. Essentially, there are too many new ideas to explain too many rehashed plotlines. Force healing is now a thing. So is cloning, and necromancy. There are so many new concepts introduced in this final chapter that the characters themselves, in an eye-rolling fourth-wall-breaking piece of dialogue call it out (“They FLY now?!”) It might have been different if any of the new concepts were introduced in EP VII or VIII, but we’re being told everything in the same movie in which Lando Calrissian shoots a stormtrooper with a bow and arrow. It’s not that great art can’t be told with the seat-of-your-pants, let’s-make-shit-up-as-we-go-along approach (Star Wars Episodes 4-6 is guilty of the same bullshit), it’s that as the final episode of this trilogy, it culminates to nothing. If Episode VII was guilty of rehashing the plot of A New Hope, then Rise is a pale imitation of Return of the Jedi shrouded in a bunch of gimmicky space religion gibberish to make it feel different enough. Where this should have resonated with the previous final chapters (III: Anakin succumbs to the Dark Side; VI: Luke stays to the light, Anakin redeems himself) the closing chapter to the third trilogy gives us a dual-win for the light side– ReyBae stays to the light, BenBen sacrifices himself to renounce the dark. That’s nothing new, but sure, it might’ve been a fitting end. It just seems so unearned, despite RenBen’s death, as so much of this movie is up its own ass in telling us why the nonsensical rules of this movie are more important than the two before it to justify taking the big bad from the first six movies and posturing him as the ultimate retcon villain. (See Star Wars and the Art of Derivation for more on how deriving art from previous installments leads to an ouroboros of self-fellating bullshit)

He would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for you lousy Skywalkers*.

Much like the disappointing truncated 8th season of Game of Thrones, this movie would have benefitted from either a split release or another year in pre-production script development with writers who understood that less is more and that 2.5 hours is more than enough to evince a complete story. My guess with Game of Thrones, was that the writers and producers wanted to move on to newer projects and the care that they had treated the series up until the final (two) seasons must have felt like a yoke around their necks and wished to tidy things up as quickly as possible. The story arcs that had been cultivated for years were suddenly dashed and resolved in perpendicular character turns, mystifying audiences for the sake of cheap double ironies. With Rise, my guess is that there was too much pressure to release it this decade. It is, after all, a story of resisting fascism and the last in the franchise to be released before the 2020 election at the end of a decade that has fallen from hope to dystopia in ten quick years.

With the Orig Trig (as all of the guys who get hella laid refer to it as), there was an emphasis in George Lucas’s interviews about the importance of adhering to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. A lot of this is horseshit coming from Lucas’s mouth, as we owe his wife of the time a great debt in editing what was otherwise an unmanagable movie, and his mentor who infused Empire with genius storytelling techniques. Yet, the focus on making mythic storytelling accessible to wide audiences was part of what made those movies endure the tests of time. Rise of Skywalker is also a space-opera about Good v Evil and the battle within the soul between those two extremes, yet it isn’t accessible to anyone. To (again) use Dan Harmon’s simplification of the Hero’s Journey: A character wants something, they get it but at a cost, they return to the status quo, having now changed. Because so much of the screentime is dedicated to fan-service, disjointed scenes between a bloated cast of characters, and a directorial pissing contest, the journey the audience goes on is incomprehensible. Yes, the heroes go on a journey and achieve the ultimate goal of peace in the galaxy but the costs of that achievement were cheap. (Also who galvanized a fleet of your average pilot? They Field-of-Dreamsed that whole subplot, fuck’s sake). Yes, Leia sacrifices herself for the narrative convenience of writing herself out of the rest of the script and yes, RenBen sacrifices himself to bring Rey back to life (which was a pretty good moment, to be H) but when Rey rejoins Han So-Po and Finn, they share an awkward three-way hug and Chewie gets a medal. It seems more like a perfunctory obligation to see them all together again, instead of catharsis, or showing any changed chemistry of their relationships. The film doesn’t linger, almost thankfully, as it transitions to the imitation of a final ending as Rey buries the Skywalker sabers outside the Tatooine moisture farm. As an orphan who once collected rare items from sandy wastelands, I can see how this would have been a fitting seal to Rey’s character arc, as she is symbolically placing the past away and embracing her future. Then she tells a stranger that she’s a Skywalker. I get that it’s adopting an identity that’s not tied to blood, but even still this statement tells me that this movie just can’t let go and I walked away wondering exactly what this whole trilogy was trying to convey, to a startling internal question:.

If films have not learned that HOPE without a definite message collapses under its own weight in the last decade, what have we learned?

 

If you would like to read some horror fiction that is not garbage but is probably somewhat guilty of the above-mentioned sins of storytelling, please check out Castle of Shadow available here in paperback and KindleCoS_cover_small

Castle of Shadow [Chapter Two]

Castle of Shadow [Chapter Two]

Castle of Shadow launches today and can be purchased here

Chapter One is available for free here.

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The morning began, however, with an element of confusion, as we were not accustomed to the east country’s atmosphere and it appeared, upon first glance that the hours still belonged to the night. Robert made mention of the sky’s refusal of the sun’s rays and had to check his watch against that of an attendant to ensure himself that morning had indeed come. A cart came bearing coffee and buttered scones and that did much to improve our temperament, although Robert remarked that perhaps his mother was right and expected Zenborough to be a likewise gloomy place. I soon came to enjoy the dramatic romance of the scenery as it looked remarkably like the paintings I had come to adore within the church where my flower bed once resided.

Once we had performed our morning toilet and dressed for the day, Robert mused over the figures of his business while I stared out of the window, entranced with the somber landscape outside. Just as it had happened the night previous, I lost track of time and before I knew it nearly an hour and a quarter had passed and had been non-risible to Robert’s touch. A morbid curiosity weighed on my mind then: had I been watching the land outside or had I been once again bewitched by my faint reflection on the windowpane? I shook it off and made the excuse to Robert that I was simply not feeling well. Robert apologized profusely and said that he had been a fool for not expecting that I might endure some travel sickness, never having ventured so far before. He left and returned a few minutes later with a glass of brandy and a quinine tablet. I accepted the medicine gratefully and returned my attention to my novel, fearing any prolonged stare through the glass would lapse my attention back into my trance.

I still allowed myself brief glances to note the progress of our journey. It struck me as strange as to how many owls flew in the sky— generally solitary and nocturnal hunters, the creatures seemed to congregate en masse like a flock of sparrows. When I last glanced at the countryside, I took notice of how densely forested the area had become and how thick the trees themselves were. Black coniferous giants walled off any other features of the countryside and this frustrated any attempt to gauge our distance. I was again flummoxed when an attendant notified us that we were to arrive in Zenborough in a quarter-hour. I remarked to my Robert that there was surely no way any town or village could exist in such dense arboreal vegetation and that seemed to amuse him although I suspect he had the very same inkling.

On the train platform, Robert took care of the particulars to have our luggage delivered to our hotel and asked the bag man for a recommendation for a place that would serve some coffee or tea. The man, whose face was flushed red and carried an odor of bitter alcohol and petulant pipe tobacco, directed us to a cafe near the town square. Robert thanked the man and pressed a silver coin into his palm and we made haste at once, eager to get out of the misting rain and muddy streets.

Robert enjoyed a coffee and a small cigar while I chose chamomile and nibbled on a petite cake. Robert warned me not to eat too much as a Duke’s feast was sure to warrant a healthy appetite. After our luncheon, we settled into the hotel, bathed and took care of our toilet duties before donning our nicest garments— Robert looked absolutely handsome in his dark suit and I slipped into a green dress, an engagement present from my beloved after he had noticed me coveting it through a window. The principle adornment was the silver crucifix necklace and I was moved nearly to tears when Robert said that he had been stricken breathless by my stunning beauty.

Our carriage arrived to take us out to the manor driven by none other than the drunkard who had taken our bags just a few hours earlier. I’m afraid my feelings were not friendly towards the man as intoxication does not usually make for a charming disposition. Robert, however, smiling and eager as ever gave the man two pieces of silver and even asked to know the drunkard’s name which he gave as Klaus. The moment humbled me as I am occasionally too quick to judgment about the lower classes, now that I have been elevated. A true lady remembers her beginnings or she hazards losing her gratitude.

The misting rain turned to downpour on our way to the Duke’s manor and the noise of raindrops against our carriage roof was to be accompanied by the owls’ fevered screeching overhead. This did not seem to affect Robert and thusly I vowed that it would have no effect on me. As the windows of the carriage had no glass, I felt I was again free to gaze outside and take in the sights, what little I could see through the rain and the trees in the night’s gloom. An interesting notion caught me when I regarded the moon— which bore larger here than back home and with a muddled orangish tint— and then some minutes later, after a few miles had been crossed, the queer notion caught me again. It could be the coincidence of our location, but it appeared to me that the moon had not shifted in its location in the sky. Robert squeezed my hand and remarked on how excited he was to meet this Duke and I soon put any thought about the moon and the peculiar absence of stars out of my mind.

 

If you are interested in reading further, please purchase a digital copy of the story here. CoS_cover_small

Creative Identity with JoJo Rabbit

Creative Identity with JoJo Rabbit

Spoilers.

I recently watched Taika Waititi’s latest film compelled by its audacious premise. A Hitler Youth with an imaginary friend who happens to be Hitler? The conceit smacks of a demented Calvin and Hobbes but I left the theater with the movie reels spinning in my mind and spent much of the next day pondering over it and the more I thought about it, the more depth I found in the film’s message.

I think many people could not look past the Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic and the happy face placed over history’s most notorious monster. I had my own reservations that this would simply be a lazy return to late 90’s irony, subversive crudity without any substantial value, after all, does the world really need another Hitler comedy? See, a thousand years ago in the aftermath of the 2016 US elections, there seemed to be an endless conversation concerning how to represent fascists in entertainment. The argument’s two camps were split into those who believed in Mel Brook’s approach (a la The Producers’ “Springtime for Hitler” finale) of removing power from oppressive people by making them appear silly and those who believed that making something as insidious as white supremacy appear comedic rendered it harmless in the eyes of the audience thus making it easier to dismiss real-life iterations of toxic ideology (or worse, accidentally creating a friendly access point for the history-ignorant to latch onto). Jojo Rabbit somehow walks the line and does so all the way to a satisfying conclusion.

It happens about halfway through when the tone of the film takes a sudden turn from happy-go-lucky romp to a grey and anxious thriller. Waititi wants to remind you that yes, this is still a film about Nazi Germany and you will be upset several times over. There are still well-timed moments of levity, but they aren’t used as mere throwaway laughs to ease the tension so much as they are buttresses in the grand design of the film’s message.

The conflict that threads every character in this film together is one of personal identity struggling to survive a regime of oppression. The most obvious examples of this belong to Elsa, the Jewish girl living in the walls of JoJo’s house and JoJo himself, a ten-year-old fanatic of the Reich who, due to a pretty funny grenade accident, cannot become a soldier. It’s important to remember that the mechanisms of genocide work to erase not only a person, but a people and, further, a people’s culture and history. Wishing to aid the war effort, JoJo begins writing a book on how to identify a Jewish person by interviewing Elsa who gives fanciful answers to feed his imagination. They bond over this activity as well as the activity of letters JoJo writes in the voice of Elsa’s late boyfriend. It’s not unlike the plot of The Book Thief in a lot of ways but because of the lighter tone, the heaviness hits subtly here.

That’s the main story, a young girl who doesn’t fit in society because of a government-mandated Holocaust and a young boy who doesn’t fit in a murderous society because he has a gentle heart. But the more I thought about, the more I realized that the entire film is full of misfits, which scratches the core of its sentiment: that fascism dehumanizes everyone— both the perpetrators and the victims.

Rosie is not allowed to exist because she wants a legitimately free Germany– that it is not enough to be German, one must conform to the party’s ideals or perish. The disgraced (but ultimately benevolent) Captain K is not allowed to exist as an openly homosexual man, or even a proper soldier. JoJo’s friend Yoki is not allowed to exist as a young boy, displayed in a hilarious subplot of him ever getting promoted through the Wehrmacht despite his incompetence and age (Rosie tells JoJo directly that he shouldn’t be thinking about war at his age, but should be climbing trees and falling in love). Even Rebel Wilson’s Fraulein Rahm seems to quietly resent that she is not allowed a more valuable role in the war because of her sex, saying through perhaps a smile too tight, “It is a good year to be a girl.”

The method in which these characters are able to endure are through acts of creativity. As stated, Elsa and JoJo write and draw together. Rosie dances and jokes (and drinks). She also does some character acting as JoJo’s absent father with a beard made of soot to soothe the boy’s anger. Captain K is more preoccupied with designing his costume (the reveal of which is probably the most epically FABULOUS scene of drag since Hedwig) than he is planning for the American and Russian invasion. He also drinks heavily and becomes increasingly disheveled throughout the film (until he walks the catwalk battlefield with Alfie Allen’s Finkel in enthusiastic tow) and it doesn’t escape my notice that the only moral adult characters find the current climate unbearable sober.

But it’s Captain K’s final scene that puts the whole film into perspective. He gives JoJo three gifts. He reminds him that his mother was a legitimately good person. He encourages JoJo’s creativity with the book he, along with a terrifying gang of Gestapo, laughed at previously. He sacrifices himself in an act of feigned belligerence so that JoJo can go be with Elsa.

There are many themes tied up before David Bowie cinches up the credits, but Captain K’s performance probably nails most of them. Respectively: you mustn’t forget the value of a person’s individuality; art is what sustains us and brings us together, and the pursuit of art is a noble one; heroism isn’t defined by the battlefield; family is what is important, biological or not.

And it’s the final scene when Elsa finally opens the front door and experiences freedom for the first time in a long while. JoJo does too, although he is slower to realize it, as he had only just come to terms with the fact that he too was a prisoner of the Nazis. The two primary characters, who found and kept each other after the regime had taken everyone else away from them, begin to dance to Bowie’s Heroes sung in German, we end on an optimistic note.

The reason why JoJo Rabbit works now is that it shows you the daily life of Nazi Germany which ranges from boring to beautiful to horrifying and all over again. We rarely see the less dramatic depictions of wartime Germany and might find it shocking to find that it might not be all that different from life in America currently. Perhaps then, to survive with any real dignity, we must embrace each other, value art, dance when we can and take life as it comes.

I’ve got a horror novella coming out shortly and it is available to pre-order here

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Castle of Shadow [Sample Chapter]

Castle of Shadow [Sample Chapter]

Below is the first chapter of Castle of Shadow, released November 26th. The eBook is available for pre-order here.

I

It all began innocuously enough when my fiancé received an invitation to attend dinner from the esteemed Duke of Zenborough in the late of September. My fiancé and benevolent darling, Robert Littelfield, to whom I adore more than anything in this world, is a remarkable craftsman of fine jewelry and purveyor of magnificent gems. He positively delighted in the news that we were welcome at the gracious Duke’s dining table. I’m afraid that I did not catch the significance. Truth be told, Robert curried my favor well out of his class. I was lowly born and orphaned young and had been paying for my room and board by merchandising the flowers I kept in a small bed in the shadow of a church on the east side of town and I was therefore ignorant of the value in twining social connections amongst the world of fine jewelry. My fiancé patiently assured me that this was indeed great news— the Duke, who is a renowned collector of arcane curios, would surely wish to hire my sweet Robert for his skill in his trade.

“We must make arrangements,” declared Robert. Oh, it was the happiest I have ever seen him and his enthusiasm soon spread to my heart as well.

His mother was not as warm on the idea, claiming that Zenborough was a grisly place and crossed herself doubly over her chest. She is not a cold woman, Mrs. Littelfield, but I have never won her affection. She has inspected me as if I am some horrid insect that has crawled into her supper. When Robert was first courting me the woman would not even utter a word towards me. She regarded some perceived slight in my mere existence and there was nothing to be done to win her forgiveness. She nearly fell from a faint when Robert told her that we were betrothed and intended to marry in the spring. On this matter, Robert heartily reminded her that the invitation to the manor was not hers to decide and he happily went to town to send back a reply and to arrange the train tickets due to depart in a mere nine days.

The days passed easily and I would contend that it was the happiest I have ever been. Robert reminded me daily that he loved me more than he did yesterday and did not think that was possible. Robert was able to expedite a few sales that freed up a sizable allowance for us to live as we wished in the days leading up to our journey and so we delighted in the city’s finer offerings, taking in amusements at the theater and dining on fresh fish and sweet wines by the bay. During a promenade around the park with my head firmly nestled into the cradle of his neck, I was reminded about how Robert first came to court me, having stopped by my flower cart to make a purchase and then handed me the flower. It was such a romantic gesture, I was nearly horrified for I had forgotten how to behave! My word, he was so cordial and allowed me to hide my fluster with a whole bouquet next. I do not understand how a woman of my low bearing could have been so lucky as to have found a man as gentle and generous as the one at my side.

When finally the day arrived for us to depart my excitement gave me a barely containable and buoyant energy and Robert was of easy and gregarious cheer. We kissed Mrs. Littelfield goodbye although her mood was dark and ominous. She told us to go with God and draped a silver crucifix necklace over her son’s neck. Robert laughed and accepted the gift but when we were seated he claimed that it was too girlish a feature for himself to wear, and quickly removed it and draped it over my breast. When the train lurched and took off I admit I was glad to be free from the overbearing presence of Mrs. Littelfield and looked forward to a few days without her admonishments. Robert busied himself with the gazette and I a small novel. A cart brought us a tray of cured meats and exquisite cheeses although the bread was rather stale. At nightfall, I made use of the water closet for my evening toilet when a strange thing occurred. I examined my face in the looking glass, although that of itself is not unusual but rather the nightly routine of a young woman who wishes to remain the precious object of her fiancé’s affection, but the peculiarity arose when a knock fell on the door and the concerned tone of my dear Robert came muffled through the wood.

“Are you all right, my love? You’ve been in there for nearly half the hour.”

I snapped alert and it dawned on me that I had been staring into my smiling reflection and fondling the silver cross between my thumb and forefinger. I was dreadfully embarrassed as it is not a woman’s place to reveal her toilet activities to the man she intends to marry and I called back that I was indeed fine and made an excuse about worrying over combing my hair. My beloved Robert mentioned something about never understanding the minds of women and I heard his footfalls retreat to our cabin where I soon joined him. We toasted a small glass of brandy and were both quickly asleep in our beds amidst the rocking cradle of the moving train. Silly dreams filled my head that night and awful ones at that. When I woke and foolishly concerned Robert with the matter he gently reminded me that foul dreams are merely the apparitions of the body’s strained nerves. I was simply anxious about my first big social gathering and nothing more. Robert is so clever and wise and I felt small and childish for even bringing it up. I resumed my slumber and slept easily enough until morning.

I hoped you enjoyed this sample. This book will be released on November 26th. If you would like to pre-order this book, simply click here.

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The Orphan Principle

The Orphan Principle

My mom is pretty candid with her opinions about my books. After she read The Fish Fox Boys she was really supportive. And then in that special way that mothers do, she hemmed a little bit and hawed the following: “… NOT A WHOLE LOT OF MOTHERS IN THE BOOK.”

And I shrugged and said, “Well, obviously.”

But it’s partially untrue as there are matronly characters present in my quaint little novelette– Franny, who takes her name from my IRL Grandmother to whom the piece is dedicated (OH STOP IT, ME! TOO CUTE! SHUCKS!) and of course the Mother Bearoon (the nuclear mutated conglomeration of a bear and a raccoon and aptly named to boot).

But there’s a trope in fiction, primarily in YA oriented genres, that the primary children in most stories are orphans. Harry Potter is the first example that leaps to mind. In thrillers, you have Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. Because this isn’t relegated to literature alone, Zelda: Ocarina of Time follows suit. Batman AND Superman. And Spiderman, now that I think about it. Fuck me, most super heroes, actually. Each character from the addictive goddamn shonen anime series One Piece? Orphans. Little orphan Annie, the Chronicles of Narnia, hell, even Game of Thrones by the end of the Red Wedding (too soon?). Oh yeah, and Luke fuckin’ Skywalker.

It’s an ongoing trope that seemingly verges on self-parody and there’s been discussion as to why the hell this storytelling format exists and why it’s so pervasive in children’s entertainment. There’s a Lithub article by Liz Moore called “Why Do We Write About Orphans So Much” that I found poking around this concept. Moore’s got some pretty good insight on why it matters in a character-driven sense:

…the pain of the orphan occupies a place of precedence among all other types of pain, feels instinctively true, and makes writing about orphans tempting for a novelist.

It’s hard to argue with that logic. After all, Harry “Big Slytherin” Potter (and you thought there wouldn’t be any dick jokes in a post that started with a charming story about my mother, shame on you) has to confront his parent’s death various times through his journey and his acceptance into a famial structure at Hogwarts and at the Weasleys completes his character’s needs. Skywalker’s shit gets all fucked up when he finds out that his dad’s the biggest bastard of all time, Batman flashes back to a fuckin’ rose or some pearls or whatever every time he pours a bowl of cereal in the morning and… you get it.

But I think there’s a more practical explanation (and I might even go as far as to say that all of that Freudian family psychology might have been found in writing exploration after the fact). In the recent episode of The Self Publishing Show, James Blatch offers that it might be a children’s power fantasy of being able to handle adult responsibilities, which is probably true, but Hutchinson lays down the neccessary pragmatism of the trope:

Get rid of the parents in chapter one. Find a way to get the parents out of it so the children can’t just get mum and dad to sort everything out. And then put them in a difficult situation. It’s the same thing writing any genre or any age group, you put your character in a difficult situation and you remove any kind of support for them. It’s exactly the same for children’s books, your characters just happen to be children, so you need to get the parents out of the way so they don’t fix everything.

To make these kind of stories work structurally, they need to start out from a place where traditional family consequences and safety nets are absent. I call it the Orphan Principle. Ron Weasely has a family and you know what? His magic power is that he’s NICE. Without the cursed orphan Godhead as his best friend and main character, the books would be called Ron Weasley: A Bumbling Academic of Little Consequence Who’s Good at Wizard’s Chess Which is Actually Just Kind of Chess, Fuck’s Sake. Batman would be called A Rich and Entitled Twerp Who Should Stop Doing Ninja Shit Outside and Do His Homework, Fuck’s Sake. If Superman came down with his whole family intact, his dad would be Superman who would take care of all the bullshit and he would be like that egg-sucking Superboy who wore a leather jacket despite obviously not being punk (Obviously the Invincibles is great and works in the subversion of the trope). 

Does this mean in order to write a story that you need to kill off the parents every time? Of course not. You just need to get them out of the way. Steven Spielberg accomplishes this in his latchkey kids classic, The Goonies, by having working-class parents simply go to work. Or they’re moving or something. It doesn’t matter, the movie’s not about them, it’s about the kids and they are fo-sho out of the way the entire film.

A better example might be how Stranger Things handles things. The writers cleverly split the Adults and Children protagonists into two parties (three, including the teens) with their own interesting plotlines. The adults are alive and kicking and holding down the B Plot, while the dork children helm the A Plot. The teenagers carry the C Plot, which is mostly about kissing or something gross like that (I wanna say that girl, uh, B…Bart… Banana went missing?). All plotlines intertwine by the season’s end and it never feels forced or hokey. The children characters get all of the adventurous independence that comes from their absent parents and the adults characters carry the emotional weight to a satisfying conclusion. And I guess the teenagers, also with absent parents who are involved with the scary shit, are like, “Hey, you ever hear about this sex thing? Ha! Wouldn’t it be crazy if sex was like, I don’t know, like just a funny thing we– huh? Barbara who?”

Point being it’s not always necessary to orphan your kids to establish a starting point of conflict– but it is damned convenient. What is necessary, parents or no, is that those characters are free from support so that they may overcome the conflicts they encounter.

 

If you’d like to read a YA book featuring orphans that ISN’T a bummer, The Fish Boys: Part One is a great place to start. It’s a post-nuclear fairytale following the adventures ore_cover_smallf three idiot-savant inventors as they traverse the wasteland and it is available to purchase in paperback and Kindle here.

 

The Absurdist Detective: Philosophy of Literary Noir

The Absurdist Detective: Philosophy of Literary Noir

A common question I’ve been asking throughout the course of this blog-essay project is “what defines the literary genre of noir?” After all, the term was coined to describe a brief but potent era of American cinema twenty years later by French auteurs to describe the dark contrast and emphasis on black. There are no established rules, per se, but rather a tone and look. A vibe. And yet, the term was retroactively applied to the hard-boiled detective novels that inspired the films of the cinematic period, despite the confusion as to what the term actually means. It is a genre category on Amazon. And since mankind has now morphed into one 7-billion-person human centipede with Bezos taking the shit, that makes the genre official official.

Also, probably Powell’s has a noir section.

Regardless, in the effort to help define what the genre means, I’d like to examine the suggested philosophy of the literary genre. Sure, this will vary from author to author, book to book, but we can probably find a gestalt that binds the genre together in a nice, inky ribbon.

LET’S BEGIN WITH WORLDVIEW.

The world according to noir heroes is gritty, decadent, sleazy and corrupt. One almost wishes to project an almost eastern philosophical bent to their prose, echoing the Buddhist maxim “life is suffering.” But whereas Buddhism and Hinduism seek holistic release from cyclical torture, the noir protagonist (or pro-no, which I hope isn’t an offensive way to describe the noir heroes in shorthand) always dives back in, seemingly to almost relish the experience. And you could make the argument that Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha numero uno) refused Nirvana so that he could cycle back into life to help bring every other living thing to enlightenment… but pro-nos usually aren’t in the business of actually saving anybody. They’re either in it for the truth or the gelt. Or the revenge.

Phillip Marlowe doesn’t give a shit about money or rekindling the one genuine friendship he made in The Long Goodbye– he throws all of it away after the truth of his friend’s betrayal becomes apparent. On the grim ending, Chandler said, “any man who tries to be honest looks in the end either sentimental or plain foolish,” despite always portraying Marlowe as an honest man. Likewise, the Continental Op chose to burn every bad motherfucker to the ground in a swelling chorus of murder and double-crosses in Red Harvest, after being struck, in his words, “blood simple.” The common consensus seems to be that the world is not only corrupt, but it is also corrupting.

These are not necessarily worlds without moral values. Our No-Pros live and die by a code. Phillip Marlowe is the shining white knight walking down crooked alleyways, even though he’ll withhold evidence from the police, work his own agenda, and succumbs to bouts of violence. The Continental-Op is the “good guy” because he’s tasked with bringing down the “bad guys”– it just so happens that his license to kill gives him carte blanche to decide who the bad guys are. There is a sense of good and evil in noir, and our heroes slum through the grayscale reality of crime to establish their own sense of justice.

James Ellroy’s latest, This Storm, sets a perfect model of this confused dialectic. On one hand, you have the alcoholic chief “Whiskey Bill” Parker (THE GOOD GUY) organizing a group of drunk, drug-addled, racist, murderous, corrupt cops attempting to bring down a drunk, violent, murderous, drug-addled, racist, corrupt and fascist cop Dudley Smith (THE BAD GUY). The amount of characters is numerous enough to require a personae dramatis in the book’s index but those two totem characters serve as GOD and DEVIL attempting to win the souls of those in their orbit and execute their different agendas. OH BUT IF IT WERE SO SIMPLE. See, the Good Guy’s shenanigans gets a primary character, a clockwork orange being wound by both sides, killed out of well-meaning obfuscation of her prior misdeeds, while the Bad Guy’s gift to her satisfies her life-long yen for revenge. Meanwhile, murders and terrorist bombings occur at the negligence of Team God and street-level, murderous and racially-charged violence happens at the behest of Team Devil. As fucked up as Dudley Smith is with his ideas of pugilism and eugenics (and the first LA Quartet demonstrates this at a majestic and delibrate pace), we see a complicated and even vulnerable face of evil. Even though the reader (I hope) agrees with the (erm, comlicated) Good Guys that this motherfucker needs to go down, you find a politically-fried fascist-patriot, a closeted bisexual libertine guilty of an unforgivable hate crime, a racist and eugenecist who falls in love with Mexican men and women, and adores a homosexual Japanese man more than anything and saved him from the nationalistic wave of Japanese-Internment during WWII America. The exegesis I squeeze from this is that even in this corrupt world, in the most corrupted men, there are undeniable shades of humanity, just as within our exonnerated “heroes,” there are equally as many villanious shades. I’m not talking moralistic relativism here, because that’s a cop-out and there is a clear distinction between Good and Evil, but that in the world presented here, both sides zig-zag across the line to meet their ends.

Like Kandera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being,  noir heroes (por-nos, as we call ’em) are stuck within that quandary of their actions both holding little to no value in a world that doesn’t accept them and the weight of responsibility put on their shoulders as they are the only ones likely to carry out any kind of virtuous action, no matter how futile.

Which brings me to Albert Camus, AKA “Sadder Joe Strummer.”

Albert Camus fielded the existentialist brand of Absurdism. Absurdism, for a quick refresher, “refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe.”

The Absurdist Hero, in my mind, is a character that strives to find meaning in the world and tangos with the psychological dissonance when they find none– and yet they carry on with integrity. Phillip Marlowe discovers that the real killer is the loony younger sister in Big Sleep. Once he confirms it with the older sister, he does nothing with the information and goes back to work. The Continental Op washes the blood off his hands in Red Harvest and goes back to work. After the dust settles in LA Confidential, and it becomes apparent that they cannot release the truth behind the LAPD’s most corrupt cop or the revelation of a pedophilic necrophiliac, the surviving heroes are promoted and left to face future uncertainties and bureaucratic injustices.

Just as Sisyphus is doomed to keep rolling his rock up the hill, our No-Pros are doomed to repeatedly affirm what they already knew– that the world is chaotic and cruel– and the knowledge of that Truth is inevitably in vain.

Noir Protagonists are the quintessential Absurdist heroes of fiction. And we must imagine Phillip Marlowe content, if not particularly happy.

 

MS_cover_small   If you are interested in reading some of my own noir fiction,  please check out Muddy Sunset, available here. The book follows PI Roy Delon as he untangles a web of corporate deceit in St. Louis, 1955.