David Niall Wilson

RETURN TO THE STORYTELLERS HOMEPAGE

I started a novel back at the beginning of November.  I wrote well beyond the required fifty thousand words required for Nanowrimo and the annual challenge, and sometime in January, I finished.  The book came in between 80,000 and 90,000 words.  I immediately set it aside.  I don’t know how many know or remember, but things in my personal life took a sock to the teeth at the end of November, and I was in need of time to re-boot my brain and get the creative engines firing on all cylinders again.

Still, I have this novel.  I had a good pack of readers signed in who read it in installments as I wrote it, and I got some amazing feedback.  Overall, the response was very positive.  I also got a suggestion from one of the readers – a guy who took time out of his own busy life to help me put together a “bible” for this series of novels.  He suggested that I should read some of the novels by Jim Butcher about the character Harry Dresden.

I was leery of this advice for the simple reason that I did not want someone’s style (other than my own) to leak into my work.  Still, I wasn’t ready to do the revision yet, and I had / have a lot of nagging doubts and problems with my manuscript as it stands.  I went on over to Audible.com and downloaded the first Harry Dresden novel.  I listened to it on my recent trip to Baltimore, and I have to say – I’m a fan.  It’s quick moving, it immediately provides you with  a nice comfortable stable of regular characters and settings.  I don’t believe the books are remarkable in the way that you’d remember them for years to come – but that they ARE addictive in the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and other shows of that type can be.  I am currently reading the second in the series and will no doubt slog my way through every one of them.

Before I give the impression this is a book review, let me shift gears.  I did learn some things from the Harry Dresden novels that will affect how I revise “Heart of a Dragon,” which is an odd duck.  It’s the second Donovan DeChance novel, but if and when I get a mass market deal on the series, it will probably be the first released.  When I wrote and sold Vintage Soul, I did so in a bit more cavalier a manner than I should have.  I have learned some things, and I intend to make use of the knowledge.

For one thing, revising this novel very carefully and noting characters and settings that will recur.  I’m also trying to provide a bit more explanation of the magic involved to lend some weight and “gravity” to the prose.  Originally I intended to write these as if I were writing one of the World of Darkness novels I penned early in my career, only without the restrictions of writing in someone else’s world.  What I neglected to do was set proper restrictions for my own.

So…this revision is a careful one.  I’ve revised Chapter One three times and have had four passes at the ending of Chapter Two.  The book will be stronger for it…but it’s going to take some time.  I believe the outcome will be worth it.

Meanwhile – any blogs / websites / book reviewers out there willing to interview, review, or take a guest blog spot to promote Vintage Soul…contact me.  I’m ready and willing.  The book has gotten very little press, and it’s been out since December.

Now, back to my revision…

-DNW

Test

I want to start this post off by giving credit where credit is due.  Many years ago, Joe Nassise e-mailed me and invited me to be part of a new “experiment” he wanted to try.  He called it, no surprise, “Storytellers Unplugged.”  Originally, it was to be a group of thirty genre-related authors, mostly horror writers, who would post in a sort of round-robin form on a “blog”.  Keep in mind that – at the time – blog wasn’t a common term in the outside world.  Social Media was only beginning to make it’s mark in advertising and marketing, and HTML tables were still the standard for web page design.  I was less than totally enthusiastic, but I told Joe I’d do it.  I just didn’t “get” it.  Joe did.

In fact, Joe has been at the forefront of a lot of things I’ve seen slowly become standards, and I salute him for his forward thinking.  I believe we are likely to hear about a few of them in future posts. I also thank him for both conceiving Storytellers Unplugged and for allowing me to share admin responsibilities.  As time went along, we both learned a lot about blogging, managing websites, and WordPress – our chosen blogging platform.

Now Storytellers is moving into a new era.  Joe is going to drop back to the ranks of regular posters, so he’s not going anywhere, and I’m going to try my hand at pushing the envelope with a new format.  The new Storytellers Unplugged is built on the WordPress MU platform.  (Multi-User).  What we have here is a miniature community modeled on WordPress.com – a site where you can not only sign up new users, but you can have as many different blogs as you like.

I’ve separated our authors into their own blogs – you’ll find the links to them on the right of the main page.  This allows readers to find more posts by an author they are particularly taken with, and allows us to more easily back up our content and search it when we want to find something.  It also gives the authors more freedom to customize their content, track the stats on their individual posts, and promote their work.  There’s a lot more coming.

Some things I’m hoping to add include a separate blog with information on different publishers, a podcast channel, a video channel where we can show book trailers and other short video content, a bookstore where our author’s work will be available – hopefully signed – and a section for interviews.  I’ve interviewed many of the folks here on my main website, Glimpses Into an Overactive Mind, and I hope to update those and move them here.  We might also have a blog for excerpts to upcoming work – and could even hold some contests and promotions.  The Net’s the limit, and it’s still fairly boundless – just stick with me.  I want to get all the wheels spinning smoothly and on the right tracks before I start building on the framework.

Comments can be left on the main site now, or on the original post at the particular author’s site.  If you have questions, suggestions for content of for topics you’d like to see covered, please, feel free to include these in your comments.  All of our authors are very interested in your feedback – the comments are what make the “connection” – and the connection between authors, readers, and other creative minds is the entire point of our site.

We’d like to welcome back to the fold author Elizabeth Bear, who was on a Storytellers hiatus for a while, and in a month or so, author Brian Hodge, both of whom have agreed to sign on and re-enter the madness.  This month we will bid fond farewell to Steve and Melanie Tem, though I’m sure we’ll see them around these parts now and again – they have contributed some of the most thoughtful and memorable posts in recent months, and they will be missed.

Welcome new Storyteller Mur Lafferty – who is a master of geek-fu, queen of the Murverse, and whose novels Heaven and Hell were the first two “podioooks” I’ve ever read.  Very lucky and happy to have her on board – she adds another clear helpful voice, a lot of energy and talent, and words.  It’s all about the words.

Anyway, I’ve droned on long enough.  My next post will be on the 31st – I’ve traditionally taken that date as an extra, and my fellow Storytellers always allow it.  I’ll be posting a short story…and then the next day diving into the world of Nanowrimo and National Novel Writing Month.  I’d like to thank the love of my life, and my collaborator in creativity, Patricia Lee Macomber for the cool flying books banner on the main site.  She’s available for graphics work, if you need it, and reasonable (both in price and demeanor … ) She and I have collaborated on stories and a Stargate Atlantis novel due out in February – and on our masterwork, a little girl named Katie who started kindergarten this year.

It’s an interesting time to be a writer, and I’m hoping that Storytellers Unplugged will become an important part of the written world as we move into a new generation of publishing, technology, and stories.

You can follow us on Twitter as well.  We’re cool like that. We don’t post to the account, but it updates whenever there is a new post on the site – sort of like a reminder.  Also another archive, if you’re the archiving sort…

Welcome to our home.  Enter…of your own free will.

Listen to them…the storytellers of the night…what music they make.

(Okay…I’ll stop)

—DNW

Welcome to Storytellers Unplugged. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

When it rains, it pours. We’ve all heard that a million times, and though it’s a generalization with no real basis in fact – it’s also true that when things get overwhelming, they only seem to get crazier. This year has been that way for me, so I figured I’d take a day here, write a post and see if I could put it in perspective.

For several years I had very little published…those were recent years. It happened because, as most things do, publishing seems to come in cycles. You don’t necessarily see things that you have sold come out near the time they are sold. During the years in question I had some short stories published, and my last White Wolf novel was published – a High Fantasy book titled “Relic of the Dawn”. I was writing, and even selling, but things just weren’t appearing on shelves, and sales without books did little to help with the fact that the readers I’d worked years to cultivate were forgetting I existed.

So enter 2007. Things picked up a little. I had a collection come out from a small press publisher in the UK – it got some notice – a nomination for the Bram Stoker Award, and it sold out pretty quickly. That was followed by my novel “Ancient Eyes,” also quickly sold out. I spent the summer writing a long novella and I had another short period of nothing…a dry spell, I guess…and then it hit.

I sold another collection. This one will actually have an affordable trade paperback edition which should help my readership and circulation. Then I sold another novel – this one sold not only to a trade hardcover publisher, but to a signed limited publisher as well –simultaneous release planned. Then I sold a novella – the one I’d been working on all summer. It went on sale and sold out in two weeks. It’s a limited edition, yes, but with a trade paperback in the future with decent distribution. Then I sold another novel. Then I sold ANOTHER NOVEL. Well, to be honest, a novel that I’d sold was pulled from one publisher with no ill-will and transferred to one that will actually publish it reasonably soon. Both of these two novels are older books, but both will get decent circulation and very nice treatment from the publisher.

Then I won the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction. Years like this just don’t happen. Not to me, anyway. What I’m doing now is writing desperately to keep the wagon rolling forward. If ever a year was designed to assist an author in leap-frogging out of the small puddle to at least the next loop in the river, this is the one.

It feels very self-indulgent to be writing this post, but on the other hand, this is what we do here. We write about the world of the author. We write about what it’s like to struggle. We write about what thrills us, what depresses us, what angers us. We write about what motivates us to go on, and where the stories are born. This time I’m writing to say that I seem to have done something right. The stars have momentarily aligned in my favor…and it’s difficult to process it.

I’m very grateful for the things that have happened over the past few months. The award is the sort of validation that only those who understand what I do – and why I do it – can understand. My fellow writers found a grouping of my words worthy of note. Publishers found my stories fascinating. Readers are getting excited that new work is forthcoming. It’s hard not to grin, to be honest, and I’m not really the grinning type.

So – for the support of this group, the inspiration of the Gonquin table, the passion of Richard Steinberg, the magic woven words of Thomas “Sully” Sullivan, the worlds and words of Janet Berliner, the long, strong friendship and camaraderie I feel for the group within the group, Mark, Beth, Brian, Wayne – the Pseudocon crowd who have been with me almost every step of my literary career – to Bill Lindblad for reading, selling our work, and caring about our work, to Bear and Sarah, Cody and Alexandra, who I’m still getting to know – to Justine for her deep inspiration … to Rich Dansky, my fellow warrior in the White Wolf wars…to Skipp who makes me smile, and to my old, old friend John Rosenman, who can still beat me at tennis, and who was there when I made my first sales…for all of this, I’m thankful. This is what you all get this month from me. I’m overwhelmed, and I probably have a lot to share, but I needed to get this out. And to all of our readers here at Storytellers Unplugged who validate us every day by reading along and commenting and giving us a sense of purpose and value…we couldn’t do it without all of you.

As I’ve said a thousand times…

Onward!

I’m working on a piece for a publisher who has a particular liking for something I wrote in the past.  He asked me specifically to try and recapture what I did in that first piece…not the story itself, or the characters, but the style – and it set me on a short quest.

The older piece was my novella, written for Cemetery Dance years ago, titled “Roll Them Bones.”  In that work I was asked to emulate the styles of several authors popular at the time, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Ray Bradbury.  One problem with this is that none of the three of them has a similar style to the other two.  What I gathered from this fact was that I needed to find a point of similarity – something glaring that I was missing in focusing too tightly on the authors.  I think I found it.

What I determined that the publisher was after was more of a “formula”.  He wanted a group of friends coming back together after long absence to some place from their past to fight or finish some evil they’d faced before.  In essence, that was what I did in “Roll Them Bones.”  As it turns out, that was only one thing I did.

My new quest is different. This time it’s myself I’m seeking – something I did in my writing that worked very well for someone.  I read the story again.  Then I made a short list of other stories similar in style, and found a shocking truth (to me).  Those are my most critically acclaimed stories.  Those are the ones the largest number and diversity of readers found memorable.  One was “The Call of Farther Shores,” which was picked up for 2005: Year’s Best Horror.

The quality that I found in the stories in question is the topic of today’s essay.  The topic?  My past.  All of these stories have at least one setting, or one incident, that is drawn directly from the important memories of my past.  The Call of Farther Shores takes place in a barber shop created from that of my step father and the one my grandfather took me to as a child.  In that same story, the description of the parent’s bedroom is a description of my own parents bedroom.  In Roll Them Bones I brought to life a combination of my childhood home at Charleston Lake, in Illinois and my grandfather’s home town of Flora, Illinois.

The thing is, there are serious depths to the memories, details, and impressions I have saved over the years and when I took off the dusty sheets and dug in deeper, I was able to transfer some of that to the words.  In other words I wrote in a place I’d been before, albeit modified, and it lent the prose a strength and conviction it might not have had otherwise.

So now I’m writing “Hickory Nuts and Bones.”  I remember very clearly walking down the railroad tracks with my grandfather when I was a child.  It was hard to walk – you either walked on the railroad ties, spaced just far enough apart to risk a sprained ankle at ever step, or you worked your ass off trying to slog through gravel made of giant broken bits of cinder.  There were the skeletal remnants of creatures the train had struck over the years. There were odd, sometimes very old bits of debris.

We used to go down the tracks to the persimmon trees – it was the one time anywhere in my life I got persimmons, warm and pulpy – sometimes bitter.  We also went back to groves of hickory nut and walnut trees my grandfather knew.  They were magical times, usually followed by a stop at the East End Cafe, where they had an old Minah bird that talked, ice cream sundaes, and cream in those little glass creamers – I used to drink it straight.

Those are the times I’m after in this story, and there’s a very different feel to such writing…a sense of dropping back into another world.  I hope I find it again…it feels like I’m close.  I think it’s important, and I suggest it to anyone as a starting place.  Find a memory  a place, or a time, that you remember, but when you think about it it feels surreal – as if the memory detaches you from the world.  Build around it and see what comes to you…if it works, let me know.

I’m off down the tracks in search of Hickory Nuts and Bones…I’ll let you know what I find.

–DNW

When Inspiration Strikes It’s Best to be Prepared by David Niall Wilson Sometimes you get images that stick. It’s a good idea to write them down, even if you can’t currently pry yourself from life or leisure long enough to put them to proper use, or to complete them. I’ve been toying with the sadness of Greyhound stations, the way they seem to suck in people with no real place to go, the poor, those whose loves or lives are in tatters — people giving up and going back, and people hoping that something at the other end of a bouncing, lonely ride might be better. Anyway, this train of thought started me thinking about inspiration, how it comes at the oddest moments, and what you can do to preserver those moments so that when you desperately need the shot in the arm they provide, they are ready to hand.There are a lot of ways you can accomplish this. I know people who still carry the old spiral notebooks, or small pads of paper with them at all times, and keep them by the bedside. I have one friend who has a digital audio recorder attached to his belt. I have one of those, Trish bought it for me because I thought it would be a good way to capture things as I drove. I used it for a while, but it turned out to be a detriment to my driving, and so I let it go. I’m not a proponent of talking on the phone, doing makeup, or otherwise engaging in extra-curricular activities while behind the wheel, so I opted not to become part of that particular problem.My own solution is to worry over the idea in my head until I get to a keyboard, or a notebook, and then to write something down. It’s usually not good enough for me to just write a single-sentence idea, or words to remind me of what I was thinking. I’ve done that and come back later to stare fruitlessly at what I wrote, absolutely unable to make sense of it. Instead, what I do is that I put the image to use. I write small snippets of things that may, or may not ever see the light of day, but that capture the thing that is bothering me, eating at me, or otherwise making a mental nuisance of itself.

As an example, I present an excerpt from nothing in particular involving my current obsession with the Greyhound station – a disembodied paragraph or two that might have been scribbled in a bus station, or on the napkin at a Denny’s in Hoboken, left behind to be swept up when the bus-boys come through…

“James slouched down the sidewalk with one shoulder to the grimy wall and the other tucked in close. His tattered sea bag curled across his back like a hump, and his long hair clung to the top of it, spreading out like crusty seaweed. Ahead, the glow of the Greyhound terminal leaked into the night, dragging him onward.

James hated bus stations. They were too bright. The lights illuminated the grime and stains of the ages. Emotions, trapped for eternity, oozed from the walls. The grey dog was the chosen transport of the damned, and their legacy etched itself into each terminal and was ground into the asphalt outside the gray, filthy glass doors. Winos gathered at shrines like these, toasting the lost and the lonely, those looking for things they’d never find and leaving things they’d never forget.

The wind pressed into his back, spitting him from the city and into the maw of the future without regret. ”

I have that now. I don’t know if I’ll ever use it, but I know that it captures (somewhat) the thoughts I’ve been chewing and trying to digest, and it allows me to save it to the “idea file” and move on to the next mental obsession. I have a folder on my computer filled with things like this. Back in the day, I had a file folder with clippings, hand-written notes, and print-outs of just this sort of thing. I also had / have a list of titles that have occurred to me that started as just that – words with no story behind them, like “A Plethora of Penguins,” and “The Fall of the House of Escher.” Some of these (the latter is one such) became stories along the way. Perusing that list while seeking inspiration for a themed anthology has saved me more than once, and at least once I took one of the snippets like the Greyhound “clip” above and it became a novel – that was my most recent book, “Ancient Eyes.” The snippet I began with was something I wrote down after watching the movie “Next of Kin,” with Patrick Swayze and Liam Nisson. I never know when, or if I’ll make use of them, but I save them slavishly.

One day on the way to work I saw a truck loaded up with cars that had been compressed into cubes. I started wondering just what might have been crushed along with the upholstery, electronics, and engine.

One day a man passed me in a car with eighteen colors of primer – two windows covered with plastic and duct-tape, one big black boot propped up and out the window, slouched down and driving crazily. I recorded it as I remembered it the moment I reached my office.

There is a house along my drive to work where, in the summer, vines grow up a power pole and stretch out along the metal cord that braces the wood and holds it upright, as well as along the line leading to the house. It’s a solitary home, standing beside a cotton field in the middle of nowhere. When the vines grow in full, it looks exactly as if there is a large woman pointing an accusing finger straight at that place, and it stays that way all summer.

Another pole, further down, grows broad shoulders and, at dusk, looks like Bigfoot.

What if a Mastodon was discovered frozen in the ice – and when they managed to chip it out and study it, they found a bullet in its heart?

What if a hurricane disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle? What then, word man? What then?

I’ll leave you with another possible method of storing these ideas, a thing I’ve been trying for a few weeks now. I’ve been writing tiny flash-fiction stories that capture inspirations and actually give them (for what it’s worth) a modicum of closure. These short shorts I’m writing are born of single words …the title of this was

“Indifference.”

She was sure that he’d follow her. When she told him that it was up to him, that if she walked out that door, she wouldn’t come back, she thought it would be just like every other time. They would argue. They would fight. They would tangle themselves in the sheets and stick together for hours and wake up wrapped around one another at the beginning of a new day.The door closed behind her with a snap, and he didn’t follow.She made it to the elevator and hesitated, watching the door, sure he’d open it and follow.Nothing. The elevator doors slid shut slowly and, numb, she pressed the button for the lobby.

* * *

He hit the stairs running. He’d waited until she was out of site, indifference painted on his face like a mask. He’d barely held it in; the hurt in her had eyes floored him. Still, he wanted this time to be something more – a turning point after which they saw how bad things could become, and the fights ceased. He ran, but halfway down, he tripped. It was a stupid misstep. He hit the wall hard on his shoulder, screamed, and staggered to his feet. He turned and stumbled down, but too slowly now. He’d have to catch her on the street…he thought his arm might be broken. His heart felt the same.

* * *

She stepped out into the lobby. It was empty. She pushed her way through the door without looking back, blind with tears and unable to think. She stepped into the street and stopped.

The bus did not stop.

* * *

As he hit the lobby, he heard the sirens.

—DNW
—Macabre Ink

This is an exta post-between-posts to honor a courageous lady and her book. A lot of folks are involved in this effort…all on this particular day…and we at Storytellers Unplugged would be remiss if we didn’t do what we could to join in… so, below is a short snippet and a link. I urge you to follow it, and to show your support in whatever way you can. If you feel the urge to read a book…maybe this is the one — today, anyway. The rest of her supporters celebrated on Monday, but better late than never, huh?

— David Niall Wilson for The Authors of Storytellers Unplugged

 

“Today, over 300 bloggers, including bestsellers, Emmy winners, movie makers, and publishing houses have come together to talk about THE LIAR’S DIARY by Patry Francis. Why? To give the book the attention it deserves on its release day while Patry takes the time she needs to heal from cancer.”

I had a lot of ideas this month that I thought would make fabulous essays, but in the end, I settled on one that came to me while reading someone else’s writing. It’s important to be able to shift through the many hats of our craft, I think, author, editor and reader, and to grasp what is important to each. As a reader, I’ve come to classify genre fiction most judgmentally on one particular criterion. How real is it?

I’ve mentioned this in passing on other occasions, and it is in no way limited to genre fiction. I have found that different authors tend to dive into, or run away from, layers of reality. For instance, legal thrillers. I don’t know how many times I’ve read a perfectly plausible story – up to a point – only to have the characters start bemoaning circumstances they claim as blockages to the progress of the plot that – in real life – are neither plausible, nor correct. I can continue to read a book like that, but every time the issue comes up, it stops me in my tracks and irritates me.

Stories don’t happen in a vacuum. The world around the characters and the events of your fiction must react to it – and the more fully you allow this to happen – the more believably the interactions and reactions are presented – the deeper readers are likely to be drawn into the story. You can enjoy a story from the surface, but it’s not the same.

A true artist at this is Stephen King. He seems to know intuitively what details will matter. When I am done reading one of his books, I feel an actual disconnect, like I’m unplugging from a familiar world and plugging back into another one. His reality is full, robust, and has the ability to surround me and “take me away”. Most fiction never reaches or even aspires to this level. We work at the depths we are comfortable with, I think, but I have challenged myself lately to try to dive deeper.

When truly remarkable events take place in a city, the police, the citizens, and the press are going to take notice. There’s no way around it in the real world. In fiction, you can just tunnel-vision your way through. If you don’t mention it, it doesn’t happen. If your characters seem to be the only living things in an entire cityscape it’s going to be a problem for some readers, but others will read blissfully on, then forget the book the moment the covers snap shut. The nagging, itching doubt created by things that you know should be there and just aren’t can drive you to distraction, and distracted is no way to enjoy reading.

I don’t think that detailed information is the answer, in most cases. What I see as the magic power of authors whose worlds sweep you up and take you away is their ability to pull back and see the bigger picture. I can follow my plots from beginning to end, and create them as I go. When I’m done, I can usually sit back and grasp the entire project as a whole and see where it went well, where it digressed, and where it really needs help. What I think I need to work on is the ability to draw further back and see larger chunks of the plot at once. I may not immediately, even with conscious effort, be able to pull far enough back to see the novel as a whole … but the wider I can make my lens, the more likely I am to see the interactions, the missing elements, and the errors.

I think that this layering process is a learned skill, at least for most of us. In every artform there are naturals, and I guess they have keys to doors and windows I can only make out through the dust. I know that as I have progressed, certain things that were once difficult for me (or seemed impossible) are things I now take for granted, while new problems I never even dreamed might bother me have surfaced. I can, for instance, apply the pulling back and analyzing process to books I’ve already had published, but was unable to view them in the same way when I was writing, or revising them. I am finding that the realization of this, mostly gleaned by a subconscious evaluation of books I’ve read over the last couple of years, has caused a shift in my mental approach to new work. I find myself stopping and thinking about things in new ways. My characters are getting “smarter,” as I sit back and talk to them, explaining that only an IDIOT would do what I’d just posited that they do, and it didn’t matter how easily it progressed the plot – no character of mine was growing up to be an idiot unless they were INTENDED to be one.

A good example of tunnel vision writing is the TV series CSI. They regularly gloss over things I know can’t be true, and I allow it, but if it was a book I might feel differently. I know you can’t get DNA results as fast as they claim to. I know that you aren’t getting a whole CSI team for one case a week at a time. I know you can’t enhance the quality of an image reflected off of someone’s pocket watch into a rear-view mirror so that you can read license plates in it. I like the show, but I never feel like it’s about the real world. Every member of their team has had a turn being investigated, having an addiction, or being associated with some crime somewhere. Every one of them seems to know more science than your average college professor – snapping off chemicals and ingredients and somehow knowing without thought that it’s a particular cleaning product, or plastic, or paint. Their reality layer, then, is very thin. If I was reading the same stories in book form, and they handled these things the same way that the hour-long time-frame of a TV drama demands, I’d either read it very quickly and forget it immediately, or I’d put it aside and pick up something that could draw me in.

Everything doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s just like hindsight. Readers see what your characters are doing, and what they’ve done, and they evaluate it against what THEY might do, or have done. If they can’t find a match in their imagination for a type of person who’d react as your character does, it’s going to itch at them, or outright irritate them. In your mind, your characters must be alive. Their world must function as a real world with all the associated problems, pitfalls, emotions and drama that real life presents, honed and crafted into something more intriguing than the real life it represents. Most real stories could benefit from some creative editing, but you can’t hack and slash them into nonsense, and you can’t ignore something important just because it would derail your plot to do otherwise, if you want to be remembered.

It’s perfectly possible (and apparently acceptable) to write very lightly layered fiction that moves very quickly and only holds the attention long enough to drag a reader from page one to the end. It’s an entirely different thing to draw them in and make them sorry they have to go when it’s over. I want people to have that slightly dazed sensation at the end of my books – the one I get when I finish something I have absolutely loved, where I’m simultaneously satisfied with the resolution and wistful – because it’s over and I wanted more. I want people to believe in the worlds I create and to miss them when they’re gone.

My New Year’s Resolution is to try and draw back another few feet from my fiction and to test its depth. This is a business, a craft and an art form that is never fully mastered; I hope I never lose sight of that, and that I continue forward; no retreat, no stagnancy. I am a writer. Welcome to my world.

DNW

— A memory – first published in a very limited circulation book titled “Personal Demons” I found this doing some file cleanup, read it, and got lost in the memory all over again. Hope my buddy Randy forgives me…hope you find it of interest.

—David Niall Wilson

Some memories never leave you. Some things you can shrug off, walk away from, squash into the back recesses of your mind, and some others have a will of their own. In other places, on other pages, I have put a name to the moments that lend themselves to such memories. I call them defining moments. Some of them haunt me still.

The hill I lived on as a child overlooked Charleston Lake in Illinois. We lived at the very top of the hill, where a single road wound around and up and one end and down the other. In the winter, this road was a menace because you had to ride the Illinois snow and ice down from the top and make a very sharp turn at the bottom to avoid going over the edge of the road and into a large field. In the summer, that same hill was a place for the release of insanity – two hands gripping the handlebars of a green “Hiawatha” stingray bicycle from Western Auto, no way to hit brakes on a hill that steep, not on the old bikes. There were no hand-grip brakes on those machines. You reared up, kicked back, and sent the rear tire into a skid. On that hill, you didn’t use the brakes at all.

I lived on that hill for over a decade. I survived that stingray bicycle and two others, graduating through five and ten speeds. I survived my mother’s driving, despite the ice and snow. I survived things, in short, that should have scared me, creating those memories you can’t ignore.

What I remember most, though, is the lake – and the river below.

I lived by the water. Not in the sense that our home was near it, but in the sense that I fished nearly 365 days a year, threw stones to skip across the surface, swam in the small ring of cable-tied barrels each summer where the city posted a lifeguard, flew down the river with my step-dad in his air-boat, and generally made the water a part of me. I took it for granted, ignoring most dangers – poisonous snakes, steep cliffs, deep pools – combinations of the above.

Then there were other times.

On the day in question, I had a friend visiting, and we started out as days on Charleston lake usually started out. We went fishing. The fishing hole of choice was the pool that gathered at the bottom of a concrete spillway. Giant carp would leap at the base of that slanted surface, vainly attempting to move from the bottom, which flowed off into the Embarrass River to the more placid lake waters above. Catfish gathered at the base, as well, and even a few Crappie and Largemouth bass sweetened the pot.

Old and middle-aged men would drive down to that small stretch, following a gravel road that brought them to the shoreline. Each had huge coolers, tackle-boxes that opened to three-tiers, and station-wagons with wood paneling, or large trucks filled with minnow buckets, fancy spin-casting gear, fly-rods – the works. Each of them tried to outsmart my lake, and, for the most part, they failed. They didn’t know the secrets.

I would slip up with my Zebco 202 rod and reel combination, crab-walk across the slanted concrete slab angling away from the very base of the spillway, toss a line in with a single weight and a hook, baited with whatever form of insect or worm was handy at the time – or even a bit of kernel corn bread dough, and drop it in the corner nearest the spillway. I knew the secrets, you see. I’d watched, and I’d learned. I didn’t have much money for fishing equipment, or fancy bait, but it never mattered. I always caught fish – mostly given away after the thrill of the hunt to the men and women in the big trucks. For me it wasn’t the fish themselves, but the secrets.

That was how the day started. If it had ended as most other days at Charleston Lake ended, all might have been different, and my dreams might be troubled by hair-rasing rides down the side of that hill beside my house. That isn’t the story.

There were others who came to that spillway besides the fishermen. Eastern Illinois University wasn’t far away, nestled in the center of Charleston itself, and the students would come to the lake in droves, mostly drunk on beer, or whiskey, or life and the reckless, never-going-to-die attitude that permeates the world of those who have yet to suffer enough defining moments.

A favorite pass-time at the lake, despite the threat of arrest, or fines, was to swim across the top of the spillway, then slip over the top and slide down. It was like a big, concrete water-slide, coated in green, smooth algea, and water flowing over concrete about a half a foot deep. The current, on most days, wasn’t so strong you couldn’t hit the bottom and pop free, swimming past the angry middle-aged fishermen and the two kids squatting at the bottom, actually catching fish. You could come over that top, bounce free, and swim to the side before the water poured over the next small, man-made structure – a wall of concrete – and two feet down to the river itself. Then you climbed back up the slanted concrete side to the top, hopped into the water, swam out to the middle and did it again.

I was only about ten at the time, and though I could see the merits of such insanity from the side of fun, I was also afraid enough to remain where I was, watching, fishing, and dreaming about the day I’d be in college and brave enough for such foolishness. That was most days. This day, Randy Overton was visiting – my best friend – and there is something about the proximity of friends that lessens the intellect and raises the courage.

So there we were. The sky was relatively clear, the sun was shining, it was warm out, and there were idiots galore slipping over and down the spillway, ruining the fishing for those below and screaming at the top of their lungs. Somehow, with so many bodies lined up along the top of the spillway, it didn’t seem big. The other side seemed very close – you could see the people clearly on both sides of the concrete, and you could even make out the winding road that led from the main highway into the park on the far side of the river. It was the kind of day that made everything seem safe and possible all at once.

I’m not sure where my younger brother Bill was, but if he’d been there, he might have prevented the whole thing by his presence. No way would I have risked his safety. For some reason, though, he was absent. Randy and I slipped into cut-off blue-jean shorts and t-shirts and waded into the lake at the top of the spillway.

I had feared it would be deep, that we would be fighting current with only our ability to swim protecting us from slipping over the top, but this turned out not to be the case. There was a concrete ledge, just along-side the curved top of the spillway, where you could get your footing and brace against the side just enough to keep your balance. Laughing at how easy it was, we set off across the lake. Somehow, as we progressed, we failed to note how the others were disappearing. The fishermen were packing up their things and driving off up the road. The college students were growing fewer, quieter. The sky – in fact – was darkening, and it was far too early in the day for sunset.

I mentioned the river earlier. I see that river in my dreams, some times, dreams where I wake up every bit as wet as I was that day, crossing that lake – coated in sweat with the whirling, out-of control waters of the Embarrass river swirling through my mind. When the rains came, and the lake rose, the river was not my friend. Most times I could camp along those banks, swim and fish, toss stones at the snakes and turtles, and go home with a smile. When the water was up – and the Earth had shed her veneer of calm for a more honest glimpse at the raw power beneath, the Embarrass was a huge, roiling monster.

I remember clearly watching that river slash trees from the banks, rolling the logs up and under and crashing them through rapids. I remember watching boats overturn, slide beneath the water, and not come up again until they were nearly out of site.

I looking back and seeing that the water was pouring over the spillway, twice as deep and twice as fast as it had been when we started across.. There was a large branch that had not been there when we first crossed, caught halfway with branches reaching down the spillway, trailing tendrils of moss and algae.

In Illinois, when it storms, the sky goes greenish yellow – hints of brown around the edges – and you can feel the crackle of the lightning in the air. Things break, in those storms. From wind, lightning, the force of the water. Colors change and you can almost believe you have shifted partially through some sort of veil into another existence to a darker place. Things that were safe are not, and that veil is never quite the same once you’ve seen past it.

All blustering and courage were gone. We were cold, stranded on the wrong side of the lake / river – the park we stood in was within site of home, but the only way to reach home by foot was to trek a mile or so up the dirt / gravel road, find the main road, and another two miles down that to turn back into the drive leading up and around my hill. Too far in bare feet, thunderstorm, alone and hungry. Too far, too dark.

The next few minutes, which seemed to drag into hours, are not completely straight in my head. I believe I’ve relived those minutes in dreams, but they are no more clear when I wake than they are now as I try to sort them out. I know that we went down to the river, tried to find a narrow / shallow place to cross. The storm had raised the level everywhere, and the water was whipping along with unbelievable force. I remember stepping out into it – the sensation of my feet being snatched away, the force as I gripped the roots of a tree on the bank and pulled and prayed and pulled some more until my body dragged free, back to the muddy bank. Colder still than I’d been, and shivering with fear.

And that is when the real nightmare began.

There are times when you come up against a test you could never have expected – times when your heart hammers so hard against the inside of your chest you feel like it might explode, and you shiver until your bones rattle. Those sound like cliches until you live them.

Randy and I stood at the top of that embankment overlooking the spillway. It was nearly dark, though it couldn’t have been more than four in the afternoon. No one was in sight. No one. Our parents didn’t know where we were, though by then I know they were starting to worry that we were out in the storm. We were alone, and we had one choice – a bad choice. We took it.

At first I thought the battle would end before it had begun. The water pressed me against the wall of concrete so hard it nearly took the breath from my lungs and dragged me over and down. Somehow, I hung on. I clung to the top of that spillway, that tiny ledge, only my head above the water, and I started across. It wasn’t as cold in the water as it was out, with the wind, and by some miracle, the rain hadn’t hit yet. There was lightning. You could catch the scent of ozone, and I was never more acutely aware of being immersed in water around electricity. I knew if the lightning hit nearby, it was over.

Randy was very close. I know he wanted to cling to me as we went, I felt the same, but we had to hold on to things that were solid. Things that were not likely to go plunging over the spillway and down, churning off along the length of the Embarrass. I would love to describe what he said, what I said – how we shared the moment. We didn’t. My memories are a very selfish, self-preserving wash of fear.

Not long after we left the far side of the lake, that log-sized branch in the center of the spillway gave way and slipped over the side. I remember stopping. I vaguely remember Randy pressing up behind and slapping at my back, desperate for me to move on. I watched that log slide to the bottom, twisting as it went in a sort of slow-motion dive. It hit the churning, white-crested waves at the bottom, and it dove. One moment it was there, the next, it was gone, and then it burst from the surface of the lake, nearly clearing the water, and shot toward the river, rolling to one side and smashing into the rocks that lined the shore, only to whirl off and away.

I think it was about that time I heard thunder, and I started to move again. It took forever. Mechanical motion, one hand in front of the other. No swimming involved, the current a lot stronger near the center. We dragged ourselves across that lake, and onto the bank on the other side – at last, and part of me never left the lake.

I know it is there, still. I know it slipped over that edge, and down, because when I dream of that river, I can feel the churning, the vertigo brought on by being held, helpless, in the grasp of something that is part of nature – -uncaring, powerful, and deadly.

Some memories never leave you, nor do you really leave them.

I still fear rivers when the water runs high, but I love thunderstorms, and maybe . . . just maybe . . . that river saved me from endless nights gripping my sheets like handlebars as I plummeted down the hill from my house. One day, I’ll have a beer with Randy, and I’ll ask.

Do you remember?

— DNW