John B. Rosenman

“Where do you get your ideas?”  It’s a common question that writers get, especially famous ones.  I’m not famous, but I thought I’d talk a little about the origins of some of my stories and novels, and how they came into being.

One day I was walking through Barnes & Noble, and I saw a book title: The Calm Technique.  Wham-o!  All at once a similar title leapt into my mind with one chilling word change.  The Death Technique.  And I knew at once it would be about a man with a morbid “artistic” gift: the ability to will his body to decay as if he were dead.  Gruesome and sick?  Yes, but it found a home with Dark Arts, a professional hardback horror anthology published by Cemetery Dance Publications. 

And here’s how the story begins:

I discovered the Death Technique the day after my twelfth birthday.  Perhaps it was puberty that made it possible, or the fact that I simply did the right thing at the right time.

It’s more likely, though, that I was genetically predisposed to discover the DT, that it was in my nature to lie down one day and concentrate on a realm somewhere beyond this one and start to dissolve as a result.  Well, “dissolve” isn’t the word.  “Decompose” is more like it, as in ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  “Decompose,” as in there goes my right eyeball, there goes my left.  And darned if I can’t feel my bones emerging from where my flesh used to be.

Charming, huh?  Well, here’s something a little more pleasant, though the origin, as with many of my stories and novels, is extremely slight.  One day I found myself wondering what would happen if a person found that every time he made love or had sex, he changed into the opposite gender, and the only way to change back was to have sex again.  The result was a story called “When I Was Michelle,” and the experience of his first transformation goes like this:

When Michael Truman was seventeen, he made love to his first girl.  It was the most wonderful and exciting experience of his life.

An hour later, his whole world fell apart.

It started with a tingling in his genitals that soon intensified and spread to his entire body.  It felt like a thousand crazed insects were scurrying over his skin and biting deep into his flesh. 

Alarmed, he locked his bedroom door and tore off his clothes.  What he saw made him whimper.

Uh, sorry, folks, I can’t go any further.  This is a PG site, after all.  But I hope you get my basic point, which is that many, not all of my tales originate from the flimsiest of sources.  One story, “High Concept,” sprang full bloom from just glancing at a page when a book fell open.  I didn’t read a single word.  Another, “Ancient Art,” which I just finished, came from watching a documentary on ancient Australian cave art which in ancient days, was accompanied and complemented by musical instruments.  Suddenly the basic plot and theme were just there.  All I had to do was expand them a little.

I even wrote a novel inspired by a single evocative word: Dreamfarer.

Occasionally my stories do have a more substantial foundation and ripen a while in my mind.  That’s the case with my longest and most ambitious novel, A Senseless Act of Beauty, published by Blade Publishing and available at http://www.bladepublishing.org.  Beauty is African SF that takes place on a distant, exotic world in the 24^th century, and its hero, Aaron Okonkwo, is a Nigerian scientist who has to save this “New Africa” from colonial exploitation—just as the original Africa was conquered and colonized.

Where did I get the idea?  For many years I had taught at three historically black universities and was immersed in African-American culture.  Then one day I was sitting near a bookshelf at Norfolk State University and suddenly just knew that if I reached out and picked a book from a shelf, the book would inspire me to write my next novel.  So I reached out and picked a book at random, and when I brought my hand back, I saw that it held Things Fall Apart, a novel by the great Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe.  In it, Nigeria is conquered by colonial exploitation—something that my hero on the planet Viridis tries to prevent against overwhelming odds.

First, though, since all my novels involve romances, Aaron has to resist a more immediate threat by a delectable native girl who will soon prove to be irresistible:

Peering through the shining leaves of a sarberry bush, Aaron Okonkwo watched the naked alien girl dive into the pond. Her green body lithe, and breasts full and firm in the sun. He wet his lips, feeling his blood course as her delicate, sinuous form glided through the water faster than any human could swim. She moved smoothly, with barely a ripple, her webbed hands flowing with graceful precision. Watching the water caress her long, slender limbs, he felt his body respond.

So where do I get my ideas?  Like many writers, I get them from many places, although it seems that often I reap when I have done only the barest of sowing.  Whatever the source of my ideas, I’m grateful for every one and invite you to come explore them with me at http://www.johnrosenman.com.

by John B. Rosenman

No, no, I’m not talking about the sensational movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis in his first Oscar-winning role. I’m talking about my left foot, which until six weeks ago was strictly dependable, except for a weak ankle that necessitated wearing an ankle brace if I engaged in physical exercise. One day I noticed that my left foot hurt. Then it hurt a lot more. Then it got better and lulled me into a false sense of security, because just when it had almost returned to normal, it started to hurt again. The swelling returned, and each day the painful areas shifted. Now it was my toes, now it was the top of my foot, and now the bottom.

Finally, after two weeks of fluctuating discomfort, I went to a clinic. They X-rayed it and the doctor prescribed a pain killer. His best guess: gout, something that had occurred to me. He referred me to a podiatrist, and I went.

About this time, you’re probably wondering if I’m blogging on the wrong site. What does any of this have to do with writing or creativity? To which I say . . . patience.

I hobbled to the podiatrist’s office, had my foot X-rayed, and was led to a room with a padded chair where I waited, my throbbing foot extended like an offering to some sadistic god. After a few minutes, I heard someone in the hall and moments later, footsteps approached. I sighed, expecting a stereotype in a white coat – that is, a middle-aged podiatrist in a rumpled white coat who looked like Edward G. Robinson.

I was wrong.

Beautifully wrong.

Into the room walked a Vision of Loveliness, a Goddess Who Must Be Obeyed. Let me be plain here: to say that MY podiatrist was attractive is like saying Venus is photogenic. Folks, we’re talking Drop-Dead Gorgeous. I swear that within the first few seconds, I actually started to salivate, like Pavlov’s dog.

Then my writer’s brain kicked in. Mixed with my heterosexual proclivities, the result was bizarre or unusual, as it often is with writers, who have a tendency sometimes to see trivial experiences as dramatic or fictional events in which they are the main character or leading actor. Examining my X-rays, my doctor informed me I had Hammer-toe, not gout, and that a dislocated joint explained why one toe was partly looped over the other. She also said that she had received an operation just five days before for that same condition. Here she showed me a delectable bandaged LEFT foot as proof.

Gazing at her exquisite instep, I realized that I’d had a foot fetish all my life and had never known it. What’s more, the fact that she and I shared the same affliction on the same foot, created an instant we-are-made-for-each-other soulmates aura I could not ignore. Never mind that it was completely one-sided and unreciprocated. When, after all, has any writer worth his or her salt let reality derail a satisfying romantic fantasy? When she advised me that my condition would only become worse with time and that I needed to have it fixed, I promptly said, without thinking, “Well, why don’t we do it right now?”

Turns out, a patient had cancelled his procedure and she could work me right in. I lurched up, limped to a phone at the front desk and called my wife, telling her to bring lunch (it was two o’clock and I hadn’t eaten), and to give me a ride home.

I then limped to a back room and climbed onto a padded couch. A nurse told me the only “real” pain I’d feel would be when she numbed my foot. She asked me if I was ready.

I gave her a John Wayne grin and said you betcha.

She sprayed some icy solution on my left foot and then gave it four needles. And let me tell you, those needles came from all directions and went in deep. Then my goddess materialized with an angelic smile. She suggested I might want to avert my eyes and perhaps contemplate the ceiling, but there was no way I was going to remove my gaze from her. Besides, I felt that a potentially heroic, semi-preposterous scene was imminent, and part of me wanted to play my creative part so I could dramatize it to others later.

SHE asked me if I was ready.

Repressing the urge to ask for a shot of bourbon and a hunk of rawhide to clench between my teeth, I gave her a fearless look and nodded.

She smiled and then broke the second largest toe on my left foot. I watched her proceed to the smaller toe adjacent to it and crack the knuckle out of that one. She then sliced my toes open, gutting and filleting them like little fish. I gazed down at the bloody ruins of my toes and thought, “Wait’ll I tell folks about this.” Next came the black stitches and a two-inch long pin, which she inserted horizontally to the hilt in the broken toe. In the month since this operation, I’ve had some pain and a little pleasure from this wicked pin, making up all kinds of inane jokes which probably amuse me only. You know, how the pin has improved my TV reception remarkably, and its only drawbacks are that I sometimes get stopped at the airport or pick up a cheap porn station from Seattle.

Well, I won’t belabor this chapter in my life any more, except to say that just after the slice and dice was completed, Jane arrived with a cup of chili (with cheese) from Wendy’s. In tales I tell of this saga, I usually mention the chili as a humorous example of my courage while they bandaged me up and gave me a prescription for enough Oxycodone to stop a charging rhino in his tracks.

Since the operation, I’ve gone back once more to have the stitches out, and I’m frankly ambivalent about my next and possibly last visit, when the divine doctor pulls the pin on our relationship and I can wear a regulation shoe on my left foot. But part of me foresees a continuation of this cosmic drama, with the toesies on my right foot misbehaving. Again and again I go back to her, but after she has cracked and repaired all my toes, what possible excuse will I have left to see her? Hmm, damned if I can’t think of some truly sick and morbid possibilities.

At any rate, like the ham I am, I continue to narrate and dramatize this experience. Sometimes I tell colleagues I was so enraptured by this celestial creature that if she had said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we have no other choice but to amputate your left leg,” that I would have given her a he-man shrug and said, “Well, Doc, if you really think it’s necessary . . .”

Okay, here’s the point of the whole thing, and the question(s) I want to ask those reading this blog. Are we creative types more likely to see even trivial experiences in our lives as momentous events in which we play a vital role – sometimes as an action hero, other times, as a watered down protagonist or Everyman? Is there a detached writer or editor sitting on our shoulders, weighing the possibilities? Do we dramatize our lives and ourselves more than others? I really want to know. Seems to me I’ve heard this discussed before and the general consensus is yes. But surely ordinary people do it too. There’s Thurber’s Walter Mitty, for example, who spiced up his humdrum life with heroic fantasies. But then, what was Mitty but a writer who hadn’t found himself? I’m also reminded of The Truman Show. Are we more likely to imagine we’re the star of a lifelong sitcom or dramatic series with smash ratings? Are we so narcissistic and vain, so enraptured by the image in our psychic mirrors, that we suspect that everyone we pass is an adoring fan?

Please tell me what you think. Am I nuts, or perversely normal? Really, I can take it.

In the meantime, I’m getting ready for a trip to the Dentist next week. Though he’s in his fifties and does look like Edward G. Robinson, I feel my muse stirring. After all, his assistant’s from Sweden and she’s one hell of a looker. . . .