David Niall Wilson

RETURN TO THE STORYTELLERS HOMEPAGE

I’m a little overwhelmed, as usual, with things clutching and dragging at me, but I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about how schedules and best-laid plans can go to Hell in a handbasket, as my step-dad was fond of saying. I’ve spent a very chaotic few years bouncing form personal disaster to personal disaster, writing in mad sporadic bursts and not writing in molasses-thick periods of lethargy. I have written novels that are better than they should be, and others that are worse. I’ve bounced from project to project like a ping pong ball. It’s no way to make ice cream.

In any case, I find myself in one of those weird transition periods in my career, and standing at a crossroads. It will be November 1st tomorrow, and National Novel Writing month will commence. Normally I’d flip into high gear, drop everything else, and write a new book. I’m not doing that this year. Instead, I’m expanding the new habit of outlining that Nanowrimo has given me into a larger, more over-reaching outline of the next year.

I have a novel, “The Orffyreus Wheel,” that shows great promise. Most of it has been published on Amazon.Com as a series of digital shorts, but I never wrote the final installment. The college blues, the new job, and a host of other things contributed to this glitch in my productivity, but I won’t try to blame those things. I just didn’t “Git ‘er done,” and so the novel remains unfinished.

Last year during Nanowrimo I wrote over 60,000 words of a novel titled “Gideon’s Curse,” but the intended market decided to go a different direction, and as much as I love that book – it fell under the tread of Algebra and Biology along with the other novel, and it — too — remains unfinished.

So, here is my plan. I’m going to carefully revise both novels in November, instead of writing something new, and when I reach the point where I quit writing, I’m going to finish them. I’m going to patch the holes I previously ignored, flesh out the characters, and make sure these two books are worthy of prime-time appearances – then hand them to my agent and regroup. I have the bare beginnings of a new idea that I will work on (slowly) when this is all done – trying to be more complete and careful, at least until my “groove” returns.

I feel like I need to get this old work off my plate before I can really figure out where to head next, and I also feel like I need to come at this strategy with my mind “in the game” and the output clean and as good as I can get it.

The point of all of this is that it is very easy to get caught up in too many things at once and rush int and through them, and that when you do that quality is at least questionable, if not sacrificed on some level. My writing during this past year has slowed to a near halt, and in that period of inactivity I’ve had a good chance to look over the body of words that came before and take stock of the next level of the cliff. I have pitons in hand and my climbing ropes have been checked for fraying and cuts. I’m off to the summit in 2008.

Anyone with the urge to join me can (as every November) sign up to read along with my November work by sending an e-mail to: Orffyreus-subscribe@yahoogroups.com – I’ll be posting the novel as I revise it. Normally you’d have to pay .49 a section for the first book, but this will be the revised version, and If you sign up…you read for free. You’ll get two novels before November is done, or close to it, and I won’t be stopping until both are complete, in any case.

Welcome to November in the Year of Dave – 48.

Onward!

DNW

I have been making the same drive back and forth from Hertford, NC to Chesapeake, VA for over five years now. It’s a long, solitary stretch – and over time, things have added up in my mind until it’s like navigating some other dimension. On the drive home last Sunday, a final pin dropped in the silence, and I heard the echo. I wrote this specially for my extra Halloween Storytellers gift to you all…

Since we have no poster for the 30th, or the 31st this month, I’m sharing today with Sarah and will let this ride through Halloween, when … well … when I’ll be due to post again on the 1st. Hope you don’t get tired of me.

Without further ado…

PHASE

by David Niall Wilson

 

The moon peeked out from behind early evening clouds, a half-crescent of white against shades of violet draining through purple to black. To the right of it, a sequence of clouds resembled a cross, or a man, arms outstretched.

Nickleback rolled from the scratchy speakers in the old Saturn, and Dave sang along.

“This is how you remind me of what I really am…”

A silver Toyota pulled up too close behind. The car hung at his bumper for a few moments, until he averted his eyes and ducked to avoid having to shift the rear-view to night-vision. Then the other driver shifted left to pass. The guy flipped on his brights as he changed lanes, causing a flash of light. Dave cursed, and waited for his vision to clear. He glanced up.

The moon hung a little higher in the sky, almost directly ahead. Half bright, half dark, it gleamed with a back-light glow of luminous promise. Farther to the right, the cloud had shifted to an equal armed cross with a circle at the top and bent at an angle. Beside it, another formation was an elongated, feline eye. The iris and pupil were perfectly formed, and it glared down over the tree line as he took the gentle curve where highway 17 swerved out and around the swamp. Something itched at his mind, but Nickleback had shifted to Uncle Cracker, and he was singing again, the jerk in the Toyota forgotten, and the giant eye in the sky only a minor distraction.

“Give me the beat boys; to free my soul…I want to get lost.”

It felt a little like being lost. The shadows were taller than usual, and storms had painted a different world over the backdrops of sky and road. A sign proclaimed bear crossing, and, as always, he glanced out into the fields and scanned the passing trees, hoping to catch sight of one. One morning, heading the other direction, he’d seen a huge, furred mound lying beside the road that he’d been certain was a bear run afoul of a car, but on the return trip – it was gone. One of many moments where that road had seemed to shift dimensions over a relatively short period of time.

A dead bear would be heavy, and the North Carolina authorities were never quick to remove road kill. It was possible the animal had only been stunned, or that some red neck had stopped with his eight cousins to lift the thing into the bed of a pickup truck and haul it back to the farm, but it didn’t feel that way. The more he thought about it, the less he remembered the exact shape of the lump beside the road. The less certain his memory became, the more possibilities opened up in his imagination – impossibilities, more accurately, but he couldn’t push them aside.

He glanced up. His hand shook on the wheel as he noted the half-moon hanging overhead. Far to his right, the clouds had stretched and elongated and the cross was more a sharp, driving spike hammed into the sky. The eye had disappeared completely but it didn’t ease his mind. It only seemed that whatever had watched the road was now hunkered behind the trees and out of sight. All the colors had shifted again, deep dark greens washing out the purples. He knew the rain would hit once he made it to the bypass. Another forty minutes to home. He gave the tree line a last glance, but saw nothing moving.

The road curved to the right slightly as it rejoined the old highway. On countless previous trips he’d driven that older road, running parallel to the Inter-Coastal Waterway, which stretched all the way to Florida and had its roots firmly in the nation’s historical registers. George Washington had played a hand in its creation. When the last hurricane had ripped through and smashed trees like weak toothpicks, he’d had to follow that road to work. State workers went through with huge chainsaws on trucks. They couldn’t really clear the trees, but they cut them all off even with the edge of the row. It was like driving through some sort of primordial phalanx, gigantic lances turned toward the road.

One morning, shortly after the storm, he’d found deep ruts dug into the side of the asphalt. They must have been caused by some heavy equipment – that’s what he’d told himself. It didn’t ring true. He’d actually stopped the car and gone back to photograph those ruts. When he followed the direction they seemed to point, he saw a line of trees smashed flat. At first, this seemed natural, with the damage from the storm. Then he looked harder. Looking harder on that road was always a mistake.

The trees he’d noticed were broken off pointing away from the waterway, and away from the swamp beyond. All of the damage from the hurricane leaned the same direction. The opposite direction. His skin had prickled and though he kept himself from breaking into a run as he returned to his car, he averted his eyes from the claw marks on the asphalt until the state repaired them, and he never glanced into the broken trees.

He hit the last of the widely spaced stoplights and halted. There was no other traffic. Only the dim glow of lights from nearby towns broke the misty gloom. Before he could think better of it, Dave turned his gaze up to the three quarter moon. His mouth went dry. The road ahead stretched into shadows. The light shifted to green. He pulled slowly away from the stoplight and rolled at a steady fifty-five miles an hour toward the bypass and home.

He rounded the curve and shot under the overpass that dipped off to Elizabeth City. The speed limit was 65 on the bypass, and he breathed a little easier – until he glanced ahead and saw the wall of shadow he knew was the storm. He sped into its mouth and felt the Saturn shudder. He slowed and the car shimmied. He thought he saw dim glowing eyes ahead, then thought they were taillights, then saw nothing. He slowed further, imagined another vehicle roaring up from behind and clutched the wheel too tightly.

Rain pounded the car, and the overworked wipers could barely give him a foot of visibility. The dashed centerline was the only guide he could find, and it made his eyes water staring at it. Something large loomed, and his heart slammed in his chest until he realized it was the second overpass. He slowed and rolled to the side of the road beneath it, pulling as far to the side as he could. The rain cut off like a switch.

The silence was eerie. Even with the hammering rain echoing all around him, it felt like a hole in the universe. There was a roar of sound, and a flash of light. He closed his eyes as a tractor trailer roared past, barely slowing for the storm. His memory flashed on the ruts in the road near the swamp, and he thought of dragons. He opened his eyes and watched as the rain slowed again to a drizzle. Looking carefully behind, he pulled back onto the road. A mile later he spun onto Highway 17 and headed for home.

He concentrated on the road. It seemed like hours, days, maybe years since he’d climbed into the Saturn. Ahead, at last, the road to home opened up on the right. He slowed, turned, and glanced up again. The full moon winked down at him as he passed beneath a canopy of trees and tried not to watch the shadows. Tried to remember which was real and which the dream. Shifted down through layers to life.

He stepped from his car and mounted the steps to home in shadow, deepened by the moonless sky.

—- David Niall Wilson

The Deep Blue Journal

Here at Storytellers Unplugged we started a semi-traditional practice last year of posting fiction during October to celebrate Halloween. When we started out, there was a predominance of horror writers in the group – we are much more diverse now. Some of us will still be posting fiction this month, and for my own entry I’ve chosen a very old story of mine. It was written for and published in a fanzine titled “Norfolk by Night,” and it’s a vampire story. It’s not extreme horror – it’s almost philosophical in nature. I still smiled when I read it, though I wrote it back in the 1990s. I will probably be reading this for a podcast version in the next day or so…and if so I’ll get the link added to the post…for now…Vintage Dave – vampires – and welcome to October!

By David Niall Wilson

I have traveled roads long and weary, darkness my companion and destiny my guide. I have seen the sun rise and set on the courts of kings, and I have seen those kingdoms crumble back to dust. I have shared wine with women, war with men, and the night with no one. I have no name, and yet I am. Death does not stalk me; not though I dream a thousand nights for his cold embrace. This is my destiny.

Though I was born to poverty and ignorance, I have aspired to eloquence and power. I am a success story on an epic scale, one with a tragic footnote. This story I have put down that those who follow in my footsteps will understand that I was here, that I endure, even now, even in the social wasteland of this place that they now call Norfolk, but that has none of the charm, or the old-world civility, of the original city of that name.

I came here out of boredom, out of an incessant need for travel, a yearning for change. I have spoken with derelicts, madmen so soused on wine and midnight dreams that they could barely remember their given names, but whose words wove the tapestry of society with clarity and vision. I have stalked men, and women as well, from upper to lower class, knowing each, loving few, ending the existences of all but one. That is my story.

I prowled the docks, for they are near the sea, near those whose adventuresome souls and yearning hearts mirror in some small way the eternal quest that drives me onward. The men of these later days do not have the heart, nor the strength, of those whom I knew in earlier times — in greater times — but the spirit is still there, and it was that I sought. Something different, something new. Someone who might relieve the unbearable weight of boredom that bears down on my shoulders every waking moment of the night. I never dreamed of entertainment, I sought only a moments relief.

I thought momentarily of the bars. There is always music. Caustic and violent as the modern groups tended to be, there was still the allure of poetry, still the message of their souls to be picked free. I decided against it. It was a night to wander beneath the stars, to find something unique. Somehow I felt it, and I have learned to trust my instincts.

And so the docks — the waves — the moonlight dancing on choppy, off-shore swells and glistening in the captured pools of salt-spray on the rocks. I moved as silently as the breeze, as effortlessly as the gulls who owned the day-time sky.

I dream, at times, of those moments — the price of immortality — the daylight lives and trivial pursuits of those upon whom I fed. I can remember, even now, the graceful swooping movements of birds, their arrogant cries. Such dreams are an empty pursuit — painful.

I saw him as I crossed from one darkened alley to another, walking along a row of abandoned warehouses without concern, despite the hour and the solitude — despite the danger. We were not in one of the better neighborhoods, those held no interest to me. It was the edge of things, the borders of the “real” world, that caught at my senses and gave me a reason to go on.

From the instant he caught my eye, I knew I’d found what I was looking for. He wore what appeared to be a robe, sweeping to the ground at his feet. It was sewn and patched together of a hundred colored rags, of old shirts and pants, even socks, wash-cloths, towels and sheets. It was multicolored and ragged, and in the moonlight, with his long gray hair and unruly beard, with the staff he held in his right hand as he moved, he might have been an ancient prophet, Moses with his robe of many colors moving through the night.

I swept past him far to one side, coming at him from the front, where he could see me clearly, moving slowly and watching him with wondering eyes.

He never flinched. His eyes were filled with light and energy, the one thing about him that bore witness to an intelligence buried beneath the veneer of madness, of secrets he knew and none would guess. I smiled, and as I drew near, I held out my hand.

He stared at me, not offering his own hand in return, but he stopped as well, as though he’d spotted, or guessed at, my own nature. He did not turn to run, nor did he cower, but he stood there as an equal, calm and self-assured.

“You are Death?” he asked calmly?

I shook my head. “I am not, nor are you Moses, but there is a strange light about you.”

“I am a prophet,” he said matter-of-factly. “I have seen things — many things. They will not listen.” He waved his arm in a gesture that encompassed the world.
“They never have,” I told him. “From one who knows only too well, they never have. Walk with me?” I asked him, but there was not really a question involved. He moved at my side easily, comfortably.

“I did not think you were Death,” he told me, “because I have not yet foreseen my own.”

“You see everything?” I prompted.

“No, only that which matters. To me, life matters very much, so I believe I will see Death, and I will know him.”

“You are not so far from the mark,” I admitted slowly. “I have been as the angel of death to many — too many to count. Does that frighten you?”

“No,” he answered immediately. “Death is for all — I have always known that. If you were Death, I would walk with you anyway — what would be the point in resistance?”

“You are a religious man?” I asked, thoroughly intrigued. We were moving back toward the beach, along the water now. There were the flashing lights of boats — naval vessels — and the occasional backfire of a car’s engine as backdrop to our conversation — nothing more.

“I am a religious man,” he replied, his eyes growing far away, “In a sacrilegious land. I am a prophet in a world of non-believers. I am the answer to questions better left unanswered, and so, am unwanted as well. There is no soul in mankind any longer.”

“And yet you believe in your own?”

“I live within my soul. It is my soul that draws me onward, that shows me ways when others see walls, that opens windows where others see only air. There are veils, shuttered portals all around us, but we have trained ourselves to ignore them. There are windows to the soul, but man has bricked them over.

“There is poetry, still, but it is empty. It is re-played pain and endless unfulfilled dreams. They do not know what will fulfill them, so they build towers to reach a God they do not believe in, hoping that when they arrive they can take over and all will be well.

“There is religion in the world, but there is no passion. The passion is for things of the Earth, things of the flesh. There is no passion for spirit, or for beauty. There is more passion for death — it must be pleasant for you?”

He turned to me then, and I was fascinated. “There is no passion in death, so it is not such a pleasant thing. I take no pleasure in death, my own or those of others. Death is a necessity, to me, the universe — even to you.

“I serve no Gods but the night, the stars, and hunger — only one demands anything of me and the effort necessary to please him is slight. Your Gods, it would seem, deny you nothing except life.”

“I have more life here,” he gestured to his breast, his eyes softening for a moment, almost twinkling, “than you will find in the rest of this city. I learn, I watch, I survive. These are my life. To know is enough.”

“But it would be better if they knew, as well,” I countered. “That is why you try to make them see.”

“I tell them because they ask. Then they laugh, point their fingers, and wander back into darkness. It is not for me to judge, or to desire, but for them.”

The hunger was calling to me, and I knew that if I stayed longer, much as I was enjoying this exchange, that I would feed. Something within me would not allow it. There was something in his eyes, something that reminded even me, after centuries of cynicism and loneliness, of faith. There was a promise in those eyes, and I would not snatch it from the Earth.

“I must leave you now,” I told him. “To you I am not Death this night, but there are others. Walk your paths, prophesy and speak when they will listen.

“Our roads are not so different. We are solitary, we are visionary, and we are free. They are lonely roads, but they are true — keep that nearest to your heart.”

With those words, and looking back only once into the flashing depths of his eyes, I was gone. I moved as swiftly as my heightened strength and agility would allow, beyond the limits of his sight — or perhaps not. He raised his staff, and he waved in the direction in which I’d moved. I did not return that wave, but turned to embrace the darkness with new vigor.

Somewhere behind me, a beacon, a latter-day Moses, walked the streets of his own land, showing miracles to the blind and preaching to the deaf. I moved as he named me, the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper with fangs as my scythe and hunger as my guide. We both blended with the darkness.

All around me the blood called to me. Somewhere in the shadows of the city the renewal of my own form of life pulsed through another’s veins. For once, I would dine with a clear conscience — I had spared a life that mattered, and he had shared that life with me of his own free will. Such are the miracles of the night.

—– DNW

by David Niall Wilson

When I was younger, I had a plan that involved growing up to be a minister. In a way, that plan never left me, since I did become ordained through the Universal Life Church, an ordainment every bit as legal as any other, but probably not taken too seriously in most circles. I also had a plan that involved growing up to be a great writer. That plan is also still kicking and breathing, and the question that keeps cropping up – one I’d like to address in this installment of Storytellers Unplugged, is simple. How is the status of “great writer” achieved? Whose judgment is required to make it so? Similar questions could be aimed at the churches who would not consider me an ordained minister, and I think my feelings on that score reflect a greater reality I can apply to writing, and to other aspects of my life.

Let’s put it into perspective. Good, great, lousy, and functional are all words that can be used to modify other words. If you apply them to writing, you require more input to make their meaning clear. The merit of a thing requires a judgment. So, to really assess what’s what, you have to know up front exactly whose word you’re going to accept as the authority.

In the case of my ordainment, it’s a simple question. The only person it matters to is me. I can make what I want of it, but I’m not likely to have folks debating over whether or not I’m a good minister. When you start looking at other roads to the ministry though – different faiths, organized religions and parochial education, you add layers of judgment, and every time you add such a layer, you add the possibility of layers of failure. You can have a rogue priest or a minister who breaks off from the religious canon he’s trained in, but you will never erase the stigma caused by their decisions, made after the fact, to deviate from set beliefs.

I face no such constraints. I represent a ministry that caters to Druids, Wiccans, Shamans, Christians, and any other faith you happen to believe in. In fact, if you really wanted to start your own religion, the best way to do so would be to get ordainment in that faith through the Universal Life Ministry, write a course on your faith, and submit it to their system to be broadcast to Reverends far and wide (among whose number you’ll find at least one cat that I know of). There are no regulations in my faith against which I should be judged, so I’m left with one criterion. In my mind, how do I feel about it? Do I feel like I’m a good proponent of my faith? Do I feel like a good minister? A great minister? I’ll leave that answer for a different time, but as an example it helps me with what’s coming next.

Writing. I recently participated (and am participating, though I’m uncertain why) in a debate that started with the flawed question “Is a great writer one who writes for a lesser, or greater audience?” That might be slightly paraphrased, but the illogic of it is intact. We now go to the criteria. Who or what group will be the judge of good, great, lousy and / or adequate? Isn’t it likely that a great writer is a great writer, and that the audience, the size of the audience, etc. is totally dislocated from the judgment? I think the answer to that is obvious, and my intention isn’t to bring that odd debate here. The question that I’d like to pose instead is, do we put layers of judgment on our shoulders and allow the possible layers of failure to cause us unnecessary stress?

For example. Say I just sat down to write a story – first time out of the gates, no expectations, just had an idea and thought, hey, I should write this down. If there is no outside expectation at this point, no reader in mind, no audience in mind, no market in mind, and so forth, I think I will write with a freedom that can’t ever be regained once one heads into any other type or level of writing. The more people who look at the work, the more angles it is attacked from and the more levels of possible failure are packed in on top, the deeper, thicker, and more complex the pressures acting on the writer, and the writing, become. Say I show that story to one person, and they love it. I’m likely to be pretty pleased, but the next thing I’ll probably want is to have more people like it. Eventually I’ll show it to someone with a critical eye, a bad attitude, or more experience, and they will tell me – honestly – what they think.

From that point on, everything changes. All bets are off. I will wonder what that person will think next time. I will wonder if the people who liked it really liked it, or just said so to make me happy. I’ll wonder if I did it right. I’ll wonder how to make it better, how to please more people, and I’ll worry over other critics who might weigh in that I’ve never interacted with in the past. In short, it’s a coming of age moment that taints every word I will write from then on, to whatever level that I allow. That, then, is the key.

It’s a matter of perspective, and if you want to write professionally and be happy doing it, you need to grasp it tightly and take it to heart. What you write has got to make you happy. Creating stories and novels has to be something you enjoy doing – that you are either driven to do, or at the very least not driven away from doing. You have to keep yourself in the equation, your sense of worth foremost, and apply this to everything you do. It doesn’t matter if you are writing for a media tie-in, a themed anthology, a stand-alone novel, ghost-writing, or doing articles for the local newspaper. They all need an investment from you, and they all need your personal backing to make the grade. Anything less than this will itch at you. It will chew at the back of your mind and irritate you, and when people bring it up you’ll be instantly defensive – not because they attack, but because you already feel as if the work NEEDS defending.

And in the end you won’t have a choice anyway. If writing is in your blood, then even if you write things that don’t make you happy and don’t make your personal grade, your mind will seek a balance. You will eventually not be able to do it any longer, and you’ll move on to something that matters. I have experienced this. Sometimes it’s like the shedding of an old skin. Sometimes it’s a natural transformation. Other times you have to drag yourself from the muck, dust off as best you can, and find a new “groove.”

And if any of you have a crisis of faith, or feel like it no longer has a point, remember that I’m here for you. The not-quite-right Reverend Dave has a very small congregation, but serves a greater world…you are all welcome in my house. And in my house, all the words are sacred…the quest is to find the proper order, the perfect pattern that will make them sing and prophesy and change the world. It’s likely a futile quest, but any quest that has an ending is not worthy of full attention. It will let you down and leave you without purpose.

I’ll pass the donation plate at my next signing…can I get an Amen?
Onward!

DNW
The Deep Blue Journal
Macabre Ink

By David Niall Wilson

I’m currently reading one of the most recent novels by Stephen King, Lisey’s Story, which is a twist on the old writer writing a story about a writer plot. The story is about the widow of a writer, and is full of insights from an odd perspective. The perspective, in this case, is that of an author, Stephen King, writing through the mind and eyes of a woman who was married to a horror writer. In other words, it’s a way of writing about the writer without doing it in first person, and with the more objective mindset of someone on the outside looking in. I don’t know, of course, if this is an autobiographical piece, but I have to believe it’s likely. How does one resist an opportunity like that? I mean, we all know deep inside what our failings, shortcomings, bad habits and foibles are, and we believe we know our strengths. Given a chance to present our case before the jury, why not take a stab at it?

Simple answer, of course. It’s terrifying. If you could just write such a thing and walk away from it, that might be therapeutic, but not if the world is going to read it, dissect it, and half of them are going to believe it’s all about you — maybe including the woman you’ve been married to for decades. I mean, the characters and situations might be wholly removed from your own world reality, but that doesn’t mean an insightful reader – one close to your heart – wouldn’t see through the smoke screens and know when it was real.

Anyway, none of this is the point of what I sat down to write. What caught my eye (the first of many things) in this novel was a passing mention that the protagonist, Lisey, makes to “the myth pool.” In the opinion of her late husband, novelist Scott Landon, all readers and writers go to the same place to “drink”. Writers bring a buckets full of themselves, I believe, and readers bring dippers, mugs, jugs and barrels to cart the stuff away in, but that central connection is the same on either side of the fence. Sometimes I feel like I’ve set up a lemonade stand by the pool and everyone has come looking for beer, but that’s beside the point — I think King nailed the experience with his metaphoric pool. Maybe he created it by writing about it. Maybe it called out to him for some cheap advertising – and then to me to get a banner up on the web.

When I’m writing well, and the world slips away, the sensation is one of slippage. The things in the story take on substance and importance that made-up things don’t possess in regular day-to-day life. It’s the same when I’m reading. If the words I’m reading catch my attention, the world shuts down while I’m visiting whatever place, time or dimension the author has presented to me. When I have reached the end of a long writing binge, it sometimes takes days for my brain to really disengage from the story. I worry over details and replay scenes in my mind. When I finish reading an amazing book, it’s the same. I don’t want to come back. I want more information. I want to wake up with the characters one last time. It’s a very strange, very pleasant sensation. It isn’t called escapism for nothing…there is a place you actually go. Since Steve named it first, and I think it’s a fine name that will stick, I’m tacking a sign on the tree next to the stream were I serve my words to the world that reads MYTH POOL in big bold letters so people will see it and stop by more often.

And speaking of words, that brings me back to the other half of my entry. Perspective. A long time ago I wrote the first chapter of what I thought would become a novel. The title is “The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J (Jehosephat) Diggs and the Currently Accepted Habits of Nature.” That isn’t important. What is important is that I wrote the first chapter of this, and I loved it. I then got derailed, distracted, etc. – life took me down another road. Now I’m working on that project again. I wrote a short outline. I started to write chapter two. I hated it. It was like pulling teeth. I ground through it, and finished it, and was absolutely dissatisfied with the outcome. The worst of it was I was absolutely unable to figure out why.

Then I let it go for a day. Yesterday I was driving home, and I started to run through the plot in my head again to figure out what was wrong. I didn’t get any further than the title in my mind before it hit me so hard I nearly pulled off the road. I had started chapter two as if it were a completely new book. The POV shifted, and since this is — at its heart – a mystery, I was giving away things that I should have been keeping in my notes…things I know, but that neither the reader (Nor Cletus) should know in the second chapter. I cheerfully saved it as a spare chapter and started over last night, writing back in the POV of my protagonist, and all is right with the novella. The title was the key. It’s Cletus’ story I’m telling, and it has to be in his own time, and his own way.

The lesson in this case is that no matter how many times I tell people something about their writing, or writing in general, I still have to remind myself. I have to watch tense and POV and keep the timeline straight for all groups of characters involved and make sure that I don’t write about a character’s reactions to things they couldn’t possibly know…

I was told once a long time ago that you can’t write a story in multiple POV. That was, of course, silly. What IS true is that you can’t do it without extreme care, and if you can avoid shifting POV, you almost always should. The characters Cletus will encounter are a hell of a lot creepier revealed in tiny bits and pieces than they ever could have been if I told their story in the beginning. I may make it to chapter three yet. All I have to do is drag them out of that pool, pour them into pewter mugs, bowls, and goblets, and wait for someone to drink…

I wonder if the pool is filled with ink?

Onward!

DNW

By David Niall Wilson

There is a venerable ritual in the halls of wordsmiths everywhere that I thought, considering my current odd and pretty pleasant situation, would be worthy of a bit of thought. What better place to record those thoughts, and who better to share them with?

One of the images we all have of successful authors is the tabletop full of books piled up next to a drink glass sporting an umbrella or a well shaken (never stirred) martini, and a long line of smiling, eager faces stretched off into the distance. The author is chatting up the crowd, smiling a lot, and signing his John Hancock across the pristine pages of his current bestseller. In the line, the ranks of the faithful hold white-knuckle gripped books with a variety of covers – the writer’s past – brought to him for an ink anointment and the chance of a few words about a favorite story. Somewhere in the lot is a young guy with bad hair who stares at the ground a lot. He’s hoping to find the courage to ask if his idol will read something he’s written. Another arrogant prick somewhere near the middle intends to try and bully the author into showing something to the agent that made him famous.

That’s the image I had, anyway. I used to see it in movies, even in cartoons, and during the early years of my life there was nothing to dissuade me of the truth of it. I saw one or two famous people sign books. They had the lines, and in those days none of them was important to me, so I never got into the line, and was left with my misconceptions. Now, of course, all of that has changed.

Signings are a nightmare for me, most of the time. I always get enthusiastic up-front support, followed by mediocre advertisement of the event and a small to middling to non-extant crowd on game day. The last signing I attended, a local bookstore owner asked me to come because the other guy was nervous. It was his first book, his first signing. I agreed.

I arrived to find that “other guy” and his wife had brought boxes of wine and squares of cheese. OG was a college professor. He was expecting his colleagues to show up, and was nervous beyond belief. He started on the boxed wine early. Every ten minutes or so, his wife, who was obviously already spending the huge money her author husband was about to start raking in, kept urging him to read from his work, though there were only three or four people there, all of whom came with the OG family. Another professor did show up, from a different school. He came to talk about his own crazed book involving time travel and future Baptists. OG – by the way – published his book with a very plain, very forgettable cover through Publish America. He actually asked me if I’d been paid for my books by my publishers, and seemed uncertain that this ever really happened. I didn’t stay long. I signed and sold one book. As far as I know OG sold one book as well, to the same guy – the other professor.

None of this is really what I’m here to write about, though. I want to talk about signing books. I want to talk about how cool it is to personalize the final product, the thing you slaved over, marketed, edited, revised – and waited far too long to see. It’s a very interesting sensation, and not everyone handles it the same way. Some people quickly scribble something vaguely resembling the first letter of their name and some ripples onto the page. Some people write personal messages to each and every person they sign for. Some have cute little “remarques” they add – spiders dangling, or skulls surrounding their names, and others always use a particular color of ink. I like that sort of thought in something signed to me. I like that they care about the few extra words they are adding to their book enough to take time over them and make them as memorable as possible.

I don’t always do that, of course. When I get a sheet of names for an anthology I sign fast and hard. My name will get lost in the Stephen Kings and Peter Straubs anyway, and no one is standing by, eager to get my name scribbled in their book. They don’t mind, but it’s less important (usually) than the rest. Now I face something different, and I have to tell you…it actually made me smile.

The other day I got a box in the mail from a publisher. I have a signed limited novel coming out later this year. The book has gorgeous cover art done by a close friend, will be beautifully bound and well handled, and people are shelling out a good bit of cash to own a copy, not because Stephen King is in it, but because they want something I wrote. The box contains 500 signature sheets. These aren’t just plain paper, or a page with border and a number line at the bottom – the publisher commissioned my friend the artist to create a unique signature page for me. They are gorgeous, and I intend to spend some time on them, using a calligraphy pen, and to do my best to add to something already impressive, knowing each signature will eventually be shelved next to similar books signed by others equally proud of their work and their words. These aren’t the sort of books people buy to read on the subway, but books people buy because they love the feel of leather covers and the scent of acid-free paper. And, for whatever reason, they have deemed me worthy.

That was the start of my week. Today, I got two more boxes in the mail. These came all the way from Cardiff in Wales. They are copies of my short story collection, “Defining Moments,” and about half of them are going on from me to a bookseller and then on to collectors. These stories comprise decades of my life, and the process of choosing them from the hundred and fifty or so possibilities was both unique, and rewarding. This book means a great deal to me, and, of course, I’ll be signing all those that aren’t already signed. Then they go on to the artist (the same as on the other book, my pal Don Paresi) and they will get small “remarque” sketches on their title page, making them even a bit more special and collectible than they were before, and on to collectors and readers literally worldwide. People who want to read my words…and keep them. People who want me to scribble in their new book.

Then, to top it off, I got an e-mail from fellow author Matt Cardin today. He was cheerfully informing me that the signature sheets for an anthology he and I are both in were winging their way to me as he typed. I sat, and I laughed, and today I bought another pen.

Someday, I suppose, I’ll lose the edge off the sense of wonder this process still brings me, but not this week. Not today, or tomorrow. I can imagine John Hancock signing important documents, and I can imagine the things I sign are important in their own right. I try to picture that flowing script and the bold lines of his name, and to be worthy of the moment.

I may never get my tabletop full of bestsellers, or a line headed out the door filled with people dying to talk to me, but I know that there are books on shelves with my name scribbled in them. There are others with short notes, greetings, haiku and lines of poetry. There are a couple with odd little pictures that came to me on the spur of the moment. Some of them are cherished. Some of them are forgotten. Every one of them was a moment I spent at an odd, writer’s altar, sacrificing ink to the memory of my own words. It’s a connection between myself, and the book, and when it’s a personal inscription, it’s a connection through the book to the reader. It changes the way they hold the book, how they view it, for better or worse. Some will, of course, rush off to see if it’s worth a buck on eBay, but others will want to read it more than they did, and they’ll enjoy the experience in a slightly different way. When they open the book, they’ll see the name and maybe they’ll remember how it got there. I can always dream.

After all, we remember how John Hancock’s signature got to be the icon for this phenomenon in our country, and not a one of us stood there and watched him do it. For a couple of days I’m going to be channeling John Hancock…and smiling.

Until next time,

Onward,

DNW

By David Niall Wilson

Deadlines. Did you ever wonder why they call them that? Dictionary.com tells me it’s the boundary beyond which a prisoner should not pass unless he wants to risk being shot. That would be an example of old-school deadlines. These days I live a life full of self-imposed, work-imposed and by various means implied deadlines that would probably drive your average prisoner to step across the boundary and take his chances with the afterlife. That is normal, and I’ve accepted it. What I’ve discovered (much to my chagrin) is that I am NOT a miracle worker, and, in point of fact, cannot fly or jump buildings very effectively.

As a writer, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with deadlines for many years. Usually, they are my friends. I don’t really require close supervision to get a project completed, but if I don’t impose goals and deadlines on the work myself, I may allow things to build up until I have to rush through in a manic, caffeine-fueled haze, and this is not conducive to achieving excellence. I try to keep a close eye on days remaining, and words remaining, applying those well-honed college algebra skills I spent the winter acquiring, so that I know about how far I should be into a project by a certain point. This allows me to guess with at least a modicum of accuracy how many new projects (and of what length) I can take on in a given period and still sleep, eat, and interact with humanity.

The point of this essay, of course, is that it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes deadlines are set for you and you have the choice to either cowboy-the-heck-up or fail. Sometimes, despite the best intentions, you take on too much work and implode as you keep promising to do it all and flailing madly at the keys in the hope that some miracle will turn your words into small rabbits that multiply faster than you can think. It’s not going to happen, of course, but if you are failing anyway, you might as well dream about fluffy bunnies.

There is a proverbial barrier called “the wall” that people talk about occasionally. Sometimes they are talking about physical endurance, sometimes it’s depression, other times it’s just there and you can’t really define it. I want you all to know that, whether you’ve hit it or not, that freaking wall is there. I know because I’ve brushed it a few times in the past, and this winter I hit it head on. It’s clear, you see? – or don’t, actually — it’s transparent. You know there’s the possibility it’s out there, but like smoking under a lung cancer sign, or driving with your eyes closed, you can ignore it right up to the point of impact – even to the point of not believing in its existence.

For the record, writing, full-time work, college, and a family are too many things to juggle at high speed for very long. I tried, and the writing (eventually) dribbled off to nothing. I kept myself sane with this journal – and my own Deep Blue Journal – but my creative wells were closed for repairs. Deadlines meant nothing to me because what difference does it make what or when the deadline is if you know up front you can’t possibly meet it? If you are on thin ice, you might as well dance…if you are failing; you might as well day-dream about fluffy bunnies typing. Eternal laws of the universe.

I bring this up now because I’m just reinventing my schedule. Deadlines are taking on actual meaning again, and every hare and hair is receding, which is how it should be (or at least how it has been for many years now). To get myself back in shape (and to scrape an unnamed buddy off the wall) I’ve recently tackled a nearly insane deadline. I haven’t met it yet, but it’s looking good (of course, Trish is helping). Another project (a screenplay) that has been due for two months has progressed swiftly and will be in rough draft form by this weekend. Projects are lining up and I’m knocking them down. I realized this morning that I have committed myself blithely to a novella, a novelette, and at least two short stories by the end of the summer, not to mention a non-fiction book I’ve been working on…and other projects. It feels good, but now I watch the woods with a wary eye, because I know it’s out there – lurking – the bane of deadlines…

The wall.

I’ve gained a new respect for its existence, and I’ve added it to the algorithm of my life. Others can tell you that in the past I would have tackled a year-long schedule of a novel a month if I had a reasonable idea I’d sell them all…and to a point, I’m still that way, but quality over quantity has always been important, and sometimes you just have to put on the brakes – line it all up and give it a once over before you say “sure, I can do that” to the next big project.

Believe me – as pleasant as fluffy bunnies are, you don’t want to be contemplating them for any length of time. Set deadlines that make sense, commit to nothing you can’t reasonably expect to complete – and avoid the wall at all costs.

This has been a public service message from a recently glass-scraped writer who still has bunny fuzz clogging his ears.

Onward!

DNW

(This is a post from our past, a golden oldie to fill a gap. Starting next month we have three new Storyteller Members to introduce, and we’re excited about it. I hope you enjoy this, and accept our apology for the weekend…Wayne and I had some technical back-and-forth glitches and the holiday ate his post. Tomorrow you’ll get the marvelous Dick Hill…today you have to settle for me…)

David Niall Wilson

My current project, which started out as a biography, has gotten me thinking about history again. The recent hoopla over a million little half-truths and made up facts pushed me deeper into the same thoughts. Any of you who have known me for a long time will remember my going off on this subject a time or two. I won’t call it a pet peeve, because that phrase is a pet peeve of mine…but what is history, really?

I don’t remember how old I was when it first occurred to me that a thing being written in a history book did not make it so; that the news didn’t necessarily happen just as it was reported, and that baseball radio announcers might not even be calling games the way they actually saw them. That’s an eye-opening factoid for a young man, let me tell you, and formative in ways that other life-lessons can never be.

Maybe it was the year in high school I accidentally signed up for both Ancient History and Western Civilization. Ancient History was the college preparatory class, and Western Civilization, as it turned out, was for those with less aptitude and concentration to spare. They covered the same period in history, as it turns out, and they covered them differently. One class taught that Babylon was the first great civilization, while the other talked about ancient Sumer, the Zoroastrians, and drilled down into the deeper facts. Fool that I was, I pointed this out to the Western Civilization teacher, thinking that maybe he was just ill-educated, and didn’t know about ancient Sumer. Maybe he really thought the Babylonians were first, and it was my duty to set him straight.

I was removed from the class and enrolled in “Individual Research in Social Studies,” where I had to write a fifty page research paper, and history continued down its two separate roads without a hitch in its giddy-up over my concerns. In any case, that was the start of it. I don’t think I gave it much more thought back then because I had a week to catch up on researching my paper “The Opium Trade Between China and Great Britain in the 1840s,” and I didn’t have much time on my hands.

It hit me again standing in a news stand one day and reading headlines about what appeared to be the same events, but with entirely skewed “facts”. I started wondering which attitude was written into the history books, and where one could find a true accounting of anything if everything ever recorded was subject to bias. The annals of history crumbled in my mind, and I began to think more for myself. It was a good thing, I’m convinced, but one that had to be kept in check and watched constantly. If you worry over it too much you start to think that if enough people say it long enough the textbooks will report the second gunman on the grassy knoll as fact, and that H. G. Wells was the first reporter with a bird’s eye view of the Martian invasion. It’s funny, and it’s not, because repeated over and over enough times, words become history.

Words that are not repeated enough times slip through the cracks, as well, leaving people with the impression that some things never happened, when they did. It’s an impossible conundrum. You don’t know who or what to trust, so you become a historian, of sorts, in your own right, hoping to patch together a sequence of historical events that is comfortable to you, and that you can live with. It’s best if you can find a good, solid support group of like-minded pseudo-historians to back up your theories.

How does this apply to writing? In the case of the biography I’m writing, which is the story of a psychedelic band from the 1960s, it’s crucial. Running through the stories and memories of the band members, I find threads of things they all remember, and believe. I find stories only one of them remembers, or that some fan told them about, but that none of them remember. Dates are jumbled, names and places run together, then apart, and my determination, after long thought, is that it doesn’t matter. If I capture the spirit of the days when the band was working its way to fame, then I’ve done my job. If the events, dates, relationships, and hair-colors don’t match up to exact history, what difference does it make? If the four guys involved don’t’ remember the details, who does? Do they even exist, at this point in time? I’m not sure. I am sure that there is an amazing story waiting to be told, and that if I get mired in the detailed history of it, it will bog down and never get written, but if I go with the flow and apply myself to getting “in character,” I can produce something that will give the reader the “feel” of that time, and that band. The experience is what is important, and what remains of those now are the strongest parts – the parts that time couldn’t kill. Those are what matter most. What happened in the 60s – for all intents and purposes – appears to have stayed there in large degree, but we can visit it, recreate it, and find the magic that gave four college boys with dreams, an RCA recording contract and a chance to stand on stage with Iron Butterfly and Dick Clark. And we can experience what it was like to have that, and just walk away.

Years from now readers may study this book, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To Woodstock,” and spread it as gospel. It may become a definitive history of the band, or it may sink into oblivion as so many other books have done, unnoticed. If any of you run across such a reader, and they start babbling to you about the exact events of a night in 1967, or a concert in 1969, just smile and nod, and say, “Yeah, that Dave Wilson sure knew his stuff.” History is full of little secrets like that.

DNW

By David Niall Wilson

I wanted to take some time, now that the long cold winter of my disconnection has passed, to revisit one of our favorite topics. Regardless of how many times it is asked and answered, the question of where stories are found, bought, traded or raised through arcane ritual is most prevalent (even beating out ‘Do you know Stephen King,” and “Have you written anything I’ve read?”). I’ve been in a unique (and very frustrating) position over the past few months, and it has allowed me to take some notes.

Most of you know I’ve been completing my 30 year quest for an AA degree. I finished that up last week, and the sensation of freedom is overwhelming. While the college work put a strangle hold on my creative output, it did nothing to slow or stop the processes running in the background, so I thought I’d use this essay to get some of that into perspective and examine it from different angles.

I’m always a bit bemused when confronted by people who can’t figure out what to write, or by those who believe I should be dying to write what they have come up with, as though my own imagination wouldn’t have anything in the back of the bus trying to shove its way forward. If I could just write down all of the ideas and inspirations that hit me in a single year, allotting them a single sentence apiece, I’d have a novel. It would be a mess, composed of disparate thoughts and plots and elephants, no doubt, but a very large data dump indeed.

I tried to go back through my battered brain in search of things that caught my eye just over the past few months – things that immediately tripped my “writing gene” into overdrive, though I was unable to act on the instinct at the time they first confronted me. For writer’s, it’s been a banner year, particularly writer with a macabre leaning.

They have genetically combined goats and spiders to create very strong silk through the goat’s milk. This silk is hundreds of times stronger than any known material. In fact, it is being produced for use by the military.

In Surabaya, a city in Indonesia, they are repairing a wall they built to stop a mud volcano named Lusi from burying them alive. This disaster was caused by a greedy company who drilled in an unsafe manner – the company, ironically owned by the Minister in charge of Public Welfare – has fought tooth and nail against accepting blame. Meanwhile, scientists are dropping giant concrete balls into the crater (I would assume while covering their ears and running very fast) hoping to plug ol’ Lusi up. As those of us who are old know, even Ricky Ricardo couldn’t do that, no matter how much ‘splainin’ she had to do.

A man in Germany, upon beginning divorce proceedings, drove to the country house he and his wife shared, cut it in half with a chain saw, and carted his half back to his brother’s yard on a forklift.

Iran has gone into mass nuclear production – but it’s just for the generation of power. I mean, they have so little fuel to heat their desert homes…and really, Charlie Brown, I won’t pull the football out. I’ll hold it, and you can kick it.

A company bought bits of junk from the wreck of the Titanic and turned them into incredibly expensive designer watches.

A woman lost a court battle to have her father’s ashes compressed into a synthetic diamond. Upon researching this, I found that this is a big industry, and you can even have the ashes of your pet compressed for a price.

Scotty beamed up.

This doesn’t even approach the tip of the iceberg of ideas, impressions, ironies and impossibilities that has frozen around me in the time since I was last writing regularly. Just from this small assortment, I can pluck a dozen stories I’d love to tell.

Let’s give it a try. We’ll take a glimpse into the chaos I call a mind and see what I can fish out of the soup.

When I first saw that they were going to make watches out of Titanic debris, I thought it was a stupid idea. What difference does it make, after all, where the metal came from? Why would that give such a timepiece more value than a good stainless steel Timex?

Of course, I know the answer. That watch ticked the seconds away within earshot of a band that played through one of the most incredible disasters of modern history. That watch might be part of the ship’s compass – the captain’s chair – the bar. It might be something carried by a passenger, or cherished by a crew member. I never walked the deck of the Titanic, but I could wear a piece of that moment – that history – on my arm and dream about its origin. I sometimes think that Alanis Morisette should study the Titanic. A ship is built to be the safest, most unsinkable vessel in history, and it sinks on its maiden voyage. THAT is ironic.

Where’s the story? How about this? A man loves a woman who is fascinated with history. One of her ancestors died on the Titanic, and she feels a strong connection – so strong she’s become obsessed. She dresses only in period clothing. Her family grows slowly alienated as she loses track of what is real, and what is fantasy, what is present, and what is past. Now she is old. She has forgotten her husband, the man she loved. His love doesn’t falter, but he can’t get her to notice him. He can’t get her to love him, or to remember their life together. He becomes little more than a caretaker in a museum where she is the center display. The one thing in his life that matters – being part of her life – has faded.

He is dying, and though she is aware, it is dim for her. Those that she believes she belongs with died so long ago, he is like a voice in her dreams, or a memory she can’t quite place.

Before things got so bad – she gave him a gift. A watch, formed from the wreckage of the Titanic – a chance to draw him in and make him part of what she feels. It didn’t work, of course, but he wears it to his deathbed, where a woman in a business suit visits him. He manages a few croaked words. A question – a test to see if she has memorized his instructions perfectly. She shows him a photo of a gemstone set in a brooch – a brooch last seen in photos of a woman who died at sea. His eyes fill with tears…and he dies.

A delivery reaches his widow, wrapped in vintage paper, and seated in soft tissue. It is a brooch – an exact duplicate of the brooch in the photo, centered by a large, blood red ruby in the shape of a heart. Her eyes fill with tears as she holds it, though she doesn’t know why. A card falls to the floor…”Ashes are Forever” – this stone is a genuine ruby created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to his life. The setting – as requested – was created from his watch….

In the background, an antique Victrola plays “Nearer My God to Thee.”

She clutches him to her heart.

There are stories all around us…welcome to my world.

Onward,

DNW
Deep Blue Journal

Dragon Claws?

I have a lot of vivid memories of Hurricane Isabel. Isabel was a Category 2 hurricane when it hit my home town of Hertford, NC in September of 2003. There were trees uprooted, roofs sheared off, and roads cut off completely to traffic. I was caught in the middle of it with my family. The widow’s walk tore off the roof of my house and fell in the pool while I stood on the porch and watched. Trees older than my great grandparents would be, if any of them were alive, ripped up and fell. My street was without power for a week; living through that storm, and the power-outage that followed was an eye-opening experience.

Many of you already know that I wrote my memories of that storm, and a lot of other things, into my novel “The Mote in Andrea’s eye.” There are other stories, though. Things like hurricanes leave big marks and the memories they carve are deep and lasting. I was reminded of one just the other day when I saw an odd mark in the asphalt in a parking lot. It looked (and looks still) exactly like a giant footprint made by a rubber wading boot, complete with the distinctive tread and the shape of the foot. It is such a startling likeness that my imagination kicked immediately into overdrive. It also made me remember something else about Hurricane Isabel that I thought I’d share. File this on the shelf with all the other places we get our ideas.

When they finally cleared route 17 back through the Great Dismal Swamp, which runs for about 12 miles directly along the long coastal waterway that stretches all the way to Florida, I returned to work, and life. I had an hour commute one way, and every day I drove through that swamp. All long that road crews had come through with chainsaws and just sawed the fallen trees off even with the road – there were too many for them to carry away, and the best they could manage was to cut a swatch through where the road ran to get traffic moving.

I took it all in, driving a little more slowly than usual. It’s a dangerous, narrow road in the best of times – has a sign at either end proclaiming the number of those who have died on the road to be 26 since some year in the 1980s – hasn’t been updated in a long time, but the message is clear enough. Since then they’ve installed a bypass with four fast lanes and fewer dangling trees, but that’s not important to this little tale.

So – there I was, driving along, when suddenly, I saw something, did a double-take, and I had to stop. I pulled to the side of the road, crossed over and stared at the pavement. The edge of the asphalt was scored. Deeply. It wasn’t like something crushed it, but more like huge claws had dug into it – about six of them, a huge saurian back foot ripping the pavement in passing. I’m not particularly superstitious, but that sight chilled me. I was the only car on the road, most businesses were still without power, and people were home.

I looked into that swamp, and I wondered. I knew the marks were probably the mark of the roots of some old tree that was picked up and bodily dragged across the road by the storm, except that I couldn’t see it that way. I couldn’t see how a tree could make the marks, and I couldn’t think of anything else that could make those marks — so my mind built a dragon. It even put the smashed trees into a different perspective, because on one side of the road, the trees had fallen one direction, but on the side with scored ruts, they were smashed in the opposite direction. That means they fell against the wind of the storm.

I never pass that spot without looking at the gouges in the asphalt, and wondering. I see the giant rubber boot print every day on my way to work. One day the words will come…

This has been David Niall Wilson, standing in for the lovely and talented Justine Musk…

Onward!

DNW