Blood on the Page and Blood in Your Dreams

You’ve heard the term “blood on the page,” right? Means the author tapped a vein for inspiration, utilizing life experiences, emotions, events for fictional fodder, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Makes for gripping storytelling, for crucial reality, for living, breathing characterization, though you wouldn’t know how much blood was on the page unless you  knew the author personally or said author pulled back the curtain, as Brian Keene has done many times on his podcast. At this point, I think it’s pretty safe to say that most coming of age stories are fueled by the author's blood, veins tapped like kegs for ripe inspiration, sometimes maybe too much so, particularly for those who lived it, but it's not the only way.

Sure, I’ve bled on the page here and there, but let’s face it, ideas are all around us, buried in experience, hiding behind unusual facades, ready to slip into our minds and take root. I ask you to take this little ride in exploring the roots of my novella Brothers in Blood, because there is virtually none of my own blood on this one. It’s pure fantasy (set in the real world without supernatural elements, not sword and sorcery fantasy!), completely drawn from my imagination . . . and a number of outside influences. So come with me, let’s take a ride.

In a nutshell, Brothers in Blood is the story of Kyle and Lyle Morris, twin brothers who murder people for two very different reasons. One brother is mentally disabled and the other is mentally deranged. Lyle has a caregiver, Desiree, who finally feels content in life when her ex returns out of nowhere to torment her. Things happen, bad, bad things, and soon enough everyone is tangled in quite a messed up web of madness and perversion.

The first element of the story I came up with was the twin brothers, but originally they were characters in two separate stories, and they were inspired by an episode of Taboo or My Strange Addiction, I can’t remember which one. The episode dealt with a man who liked pretending that he was a baby. He wore diapers and bibs and even had an adult sized crib made for him. I started thinking about the awful extremes of someone with that kind of mental state and wrote two separate short stories, one dealing with a serial killer who dressed as a baby while murdering hookers with a giant bulb syringe, and another about a mentally deformed man with the mind of a toddler who kept the faces of those he murdered and stitched them together into a comfort blanket. The stories weren’t all that good. There was just something off about them, so I didn’t do much to look for a magazine or anthology to send them to. But the characters stayed in my mind.

One day it occurred to me that they were two very different people, yet so similar . . . like sicko twins. That’s when the seeds that had germinated in the writing of those stories sprouted into the beginnings of a novella. I developed a pretty good idea of how the twin brothers coexist and feed off of one another to achieve their unusual goals, sadistic and absurd as they may be. I thought about how these men got to this point in life and what kind of tragedy could have spurred them down such a damaged path. This was all good and well, however it occurred to me that I needed a protagonist, I needed a story. I won’t go into detail, because I don’t want to ruin the story for those of you who have not read it yet, but I decided that Lyle, being a grown man with the mind of a toddler, would very likely have a caregiver, particularly since he and his brother live off of many facets of the system from Medicaid to Welfare to cash aid. One of the requirements for some of the aid Lyle is receiving is having a caregiver visit on a weekly basis. Enter Desiree, a woman whose life is finally going in the right direction. She loves helping people, has a steady boyfriend, and has finally gotten over her psycho, stalker ex . . . and then she comes home to find a rose and a note on her doorstep, and her world begins to crumble.

I’ve always admired the way Richard Laymon laid down his stories, often with twists and turns that keep the pace ratcheted up and the reader turning the pages. With Brothers in Blood I intended on doing the same thing by introducing another antagonist, one with a fetish of his own. He’s a sick man with nothing to lose, which are perhaps the scariest of deviants. I won’t say much about him, because I’d rather he was revealed to the reader organically than here in an essay. I again went to shows like My Strange Addiction for inspiration. I’ll leave it at that.

Now, I have a story, I’ve written the first draft, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a title. I don’t remember what the working title was. I have about six unfinished stories with variations on “Untitled,” so I try to give each new story a fill-in title to avoid confusion. Titles are important, and I’ve not been very happy with my other book titles. Through the In Between, Hell Awaits? Michael Arnzen asked, at a convention, “So what’s with the long title?” Yeah, should have called that one Hell Awaits. People of the Ethereal Realm? Not bad, but… In Black? I kinda like that title. It was originally called Paint it Black, but I figured people would think the Rolling Stones were somehow weaved into the plot or something like in a Greg Kihn book. So one day I’m at work listening to Anthrax on my ipod. I was plotting the ending of the story in my head (I tend to plot while driving or at work, that way I’m ready to write when I sit my ass in front of the computer). I was listening to the album Persistence of Time. Anthrax fans might know where I’m going with this. The song “Blood” was on. So close to finishing the first draft, I was actually running possible titles through my head, and then the chorus hit: “Brother on, brother on, brothers in blood!”

I have my title. Yes, there are other books with that title (kinda popular with books on war and soldier camaraderie), but it fit the novella so well that I had to use it, and I have no regrets. It’s catchy, looks good on the cover, and fits the story very well. So, though I didn’t bleed on the pages of this particular novella, it certainly is covered in blood. In the first weeks sales have been good. Better than any of my prior releases. This pleases me greatly. If you have read it, consider reviewing it on Amazon whether you loved it, liked it, or hated it. The reviews help the book get traction, and, of course, I appreciate the effort. Thanks!

Brothers in Blood is available on Amazon for $1.99, or FREE with your Amazon Unlimited subscription. Purchase the book in the US, UK, or from Amazon wherever you happen to reside across the globe.

Hell Awaits is Back!!!

That's right, my novel Through the In Between, Hell Awaits is once again available in both print and ebook at affordable prices.

If you like horror, demons, monstrosities, urban fantasy, winged monster maggots, and a bit of ultra violence, then you're in for a treat. This is a twisted journey from this world to the In Between, a place where nightmares are blissful, torture is cherished, and those evicted from Hell can roam free. Just think, what would happen if a couple of humans ended up there? All I know is that one way or the other, Hell awaits!

Available at Amazon and Shashwords.

Rediscovering Music in the 21st Century

I've always been a fan of the sonic pleasure of music. I was turned onto music by the sounds of the rock 'n' roll and oldies I heard growing up. As a youngster following the cues of my misguided peers I was swept up in time-lost fads like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. I find it hard to believe that I liked that tripe, but kids will be kids. Put a shiny enough wrapper on the so-called rapper and you got kids dancing like little fools to the beat of something that wouldn't, couldn't last. That's okay. In the long run, that awful music planted the seed that would begin to sprout at the moment I heard bands like Metallica and Guns 'N' Roses, and eventually the seedling would thrive.

I was a music fiend in the 90s with a penchant toward heavy metal, but I didn't shy away from twangy country, blues, bubblegum 60s pop, industrial, classical and whatever else I could get my hands on. Music was fun and being a guitar player caused me to open my mind and travel down avenues I would have scoffed at otherwise.

In time, though, my tastes for modern music dwindled. The bands I'd grown to love began putting out terrible records and the fresh crop of rock and metal bands sounded like they were playing guitars with broken strings and crooning to the contents of an outhouse. I guess that's a nice way of saying it sounded like shit.

I dropped out of the rat race for decent new music. In the early 2000s I regressed, searching for the roots of the music I so loved, and I found it squarely in the 50s and 60s. It's all there. In many ways you could call those two eras the very blueprints for all good music that has come since. All you have to do is listen close enough. Consider "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. If you close your eyes and listen to the guitar riffs, you can hear some of the very seeds of what would eventually, through harder rockin' bands in the 60s and 70s, become metal. It's all there. I listened for several years wondering how the hell people found the tolerance for the crap that was being foisted upon us at the time.

Now I'm completely removed from modern music. I can hardly listen to the radio without a gag reflex. I found something in artists like Amy Winehouse and Muse, Mastodon and The Black Keys, but there is a realization culminating in my mind that perhaps I'm just getting old enough to bitch about how awful modern music is. Maybe. I mean, there have always been fads that were less than appealing (I figure every generation has its "disco" that, for the most part, is better left in the dustbin of history).

After I burned out on the oldies I went back to my own roots (no, not Vanilla Ice, those were seeds). I delved into metal music and I haven't looked back. I decided to try out some newer bands and newer albums from bands I used to love. Two albums I have been enamored with are SUPER COLLIDER by Megadeth and INFLIKTED  by Cavalera Conspiracy.

The Megadeth album is infectious. It harkens back to CRYPTIC WRITINGS and COUNTDOWN TO EXTINCTION. I stopped listening to new Megadeth music after the steaming pile that was RISK. After all these years I am excited to hear good music from a band that I had admired so much in my teenage years.

As for Cavalera Conspiracy's INFLIKTED, this is the album Sepultura should have produced in the wake of CHAOS AD, which so happens to be one of my favorite heavy metal albums ever. It's good to hear the result of Max and Igor Cavalera burying the hatchet. I've been listening to this one at least once every day for almost two weeks now. They have a second album that has been calling to me and they are in production of a third. I hope they're as good as INFLIKTED.

There are always good tunes to be found, even if I have to tap old resources. I have a lot to choose from.

Cheers!