Between Darkness and Light

When I set out to write MFoDB I knew immediately that I wanted to approach it in a way that reflected the world that we live in. In a lot of literature there is a lot of conflict between good and evil and, to me, it takes away from the believability of a horror story. Don't get me wrong, I love a good super hero movie and sit in awe of a character who can be fundamentally pure, but in the real world there is rarely a clear line between a good or evil act. It comes down to intent.

In my novel the characters are all deeply flawed, broken individuals who arose from traumatic pasts. How they respond and mature into their present form depends on the influences in their lives, less than on their base character. The characters evolve and may appear to be moving in one direction when they are actually stepping closer to a precipice. One may think that they are acting out of love but may be, essentially, doing all the wrong things for the right reasons.

Writing characters like that is so incredibly dangerous because an author risks alienating the reader. Personally, I have been put off from books or movies over how characters are written like this. There was a movie that came out a few years ago called Splice that immediately comes to mind. There were absolutely no likable characters in the film. There wasn't an anti-hero, just selfish people doing selfish things. There were no acts of good intent, or even malice -- just selfishness for the purpose of self gratification. It made me hate the film. The last thing I want to do is present a cast of characters who act only in their own self interest. The most sympathetic heroes and villains are often those with whom you feel are trying to do the right thing, but completely screwing up in the process.

My characters do exist firmly within the grey area, between darkness and light. I don't think I would want to write a character in any other way. We all have our dark chapters in our psyche, and MFoDB exposes that festering sludge in full display for the reader to experience.

The Origins of David Bennett

In the three years since I first began to flesh out the concept of The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett, the story has gone through quite the evolution. Originally envisioned as a character piece that centered around a man who was so obsessed with death that he became a serial killer just to get a glimpse of what happens to people in their dying moments. This gradually transformed into a less heavy concept. I feel like that story still has a place to be told, perhaps even as part of this character's arc through future novels, but it was pretty heavy subject matter for a debut novel.

I also had this concept rolling around my mind of creating a novel that was a fictionalized account of what a paranormal investigator may experience while working a particularly dark case. Over time I began to realize that I could push both of these concepts together and form a coherent story that would eventually open up an opportunity for incredible world building.

So we have The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett.

The locations are (mostly) real in the novel. Almost the entire story takes place in northern Michigan, a territory where I lived for more than a decade. The street names have been changed to protect the house upon which this story is loosely inspired. I think anyone who is a local to the area really won't have much trouble figuring out exactly what house I am talking about.

The real house that inspired this tale was one that I owned for six years before turning it, briefly, into a rental before eventually letting it go to foreclosure. I couldn't sell it. Anyone who set foot in that house instantly hated it. It was probably what actually attracted me to it in the first place. It was a dark place, full of anger. There was a history of bad people living there who did bad things within the house. As I learned more of the history of the house I became determined to get my family out of there. Some of the paranormal incidents my family experienced there are chronicled and embellished within the novel. In future blog posts I plan to elaborate on some of the real life episodes from the house.

David escaped from the clutches of the house once, but finds himself ensnared by it once more upon a series of freak accidents. He tries to leave repeatedly but something won't let him.

I hope you continue to join me in our explorations of the forthcoming novel, and themes within it.

Enjoy the ride!

The Truth About the Middle Ground

My private social media accounts were a mess. I made a mistake, very early on, when I opened my Facebook account back in 2009. I decided to be one of those folks who loved to foray into political discussions and let myself get worked up over what people say and think online. It was a slippery slope and, boy, did I really slide all the way down. A decade of maturing, evolving, changing my opinion did nothing to help my cause. I was called a hypocrite by members of my former political party, lost customers of my jewelry business, etc. No matter what I said I alienated half my friends/customer base.

When I opened my Twitter account I decided to stay neutral, as much as possible. My philosophy is 'believe what you want but be kind to others.' Sure, I still occasionally get sucked into arguments but I try to keep it away from my author page. Unfortunately, I can't refrain from liking certain posts and even that comes around to bite me in the rear.

It's incredibly hard to find a middle ground. Someone will always read into your posts and find something they think is a clue about how you feel and decide to take you down a peg or two over it. Even IF you somehow find that perfect balance on your account you will then be accused of being apathetic and uncaring about what goes on in the world around you. There is no winning this war.

This isn't just limited to politics, either. Social media has devolved to the point where any person will eventually find themselves crucified over any opinion they hold - no matter how trivial. I have seen people dog pile on someone who liked pineapple on their pizza until the poor fruit lover deleted their account. It's maddening, and even more so for any of us that are attempting to hold a public persona. It makes my daily interactions on Twitter feel like tip-toeing through a minefield. I will go online with an intent to be supportive and build someone up and then live in anxiety about an impending take down coming my way.

The last straw for me on Facebook involved a crime that happened in the town that I lived in. A friend tagged me in a news story about it and someone who was involved with the parties involved in a suspicious murder/suicide decided that I must know something and started threatening to kill my family via Facebook Messenger. (Dude isn't very bright, obviously.) I literally did nothing other than have my name tagged in a comment by a friend.

So, fellow social media users, don't feel alone if you find yourself struggling with that unattainable balance for your public persona. There are always going to be people out there who love to take you down. They are miserable human beings (or bots) who just want the rest of the world to feel as hollow and empty as they are. Don't waste your time on it. It's not healthy. My advice, from a decade of personal experience and learning from doing it the wrong way for a long time: Block them the moment they attack. Don't respond, don't feed their troll behavior even one syllable of retort. Just block and move on. Ignoring them will gnaw at you for a while, passing up an opportunity to set them in their place but, to a troll, not being acknowledged is a fate worse than death.

Don't feel like a failure if you slip up and lose your appearance of neutrality online, just pick up and move on. Accept that eventually some sad person is going to target you for harassment. How you respond will make the difference between keeping your page a positive place or not. Good luck.

Just because there's a hole, it doesn't mean you have to fill it

Tonight I spent the better part of an hour on the phone with my father, trying to trouble shoot his technical issues. For a couple of years, now, he has had issues with different Roku streaming boxes. They freeze up, take up to an hour to reboot, crash constantly. I live nearly 200 miles away so this gets more than a bit frustrating. I have spent so much time trying to talk him through the resetting procedures. He has returned devices under warranty. I had him check his electric outlet, test for stray voltage on the phone line used for his DSL connection. It was puzzling, to say the least. Then, tonight, I suddenly said "Wait, do you have an SD card in your Roku?" Yep. It was a cheap PNY card with a slow write speed. Notorious for corrupting when used in demanding electronics. Removed, reset, bingo!

This whole episode became a metaphor for me as I entered into edits on my Work in Progress today. My grammar is fairly acceptable but the one problem I have is being over descriptive and repeating myself every few chapters, as if reminding the audience of what had happened in prior scenes. In short, I treat the reader like they are a moron. Not a great approach to writing. So I have been cleaning that up, cleaning up exposition that tries to tie the loose ends together for the reader.

I ended up telling myself the same thing I told my dad, "Just because there's a space for something doesn't mean that you have to fill it. The Roku operates just fine without an SD card. My story will operate just fine without me going overkill on explaining everything. There has to be something left to the imagination or else the story isn't really worth reading, is it?

I know that I didn't intend to write the story that way, so what happened? I tend to write in chunks, somewhere between 1200 and 2000 words per day. So I think I was rehashing subject matter to refresh my own memory again.

So, lesson of the day: Don't be afraid to leave something to the imagination. I think it was Bob Ross who said that the empty space in a painting is sometimes more important than what is there.*



*Please don't quote me on that. It's late and I have a ginger cat's rear end in my face.

It's All About Control

Today I took a huge step toward finishing the second draft of my work in progress. I finished the main body and began work on the epilogue - with a goal of shortening the word count in it by about half. Reading it back, the epilogue just seemed to drag on for no real reason. I was attempting to convey a sense of the meaninglessness of time in the environment but, instead, it just came across as a boring trudge.

Really, it's about control. Authors want to control everything but always feel somewhat helpless to elements of the tales they tell. Characters love to take on a life of their own and defy our intentions for them. Control is such a fundamental thing that it can be extremely off-putting to feel like we are reduced to mere conduits for a story, instead of the master behind the pen.

Control is also a subject in my personal life these days. After years of being borderline type 2 Diabetes I recently discovered that I am now well past the border. Two weeks ago I thought the biggest issue the doctor would have with me when I went in for my physical would be that I was ten pounds overweight. Suddenly, I felt totally out of control over my body, how others would perceive me, and my future. It's been a frustrating lesson in learning how to turn off that button within my brain that makes me want to dominate everything in my environment and simply take it one day at a time.

Going through this is also tempering my approach as a writer. Maybe the characters do have a story to tell that is equally as important, if not more so, than the one that I intended to write for them. Maybe there is a time to surrender control and just see where the path leads. Perhaps I will surprise myself.

Motives, Ulterior and Otherwise

It's a word that is tossed about constantly in the realms of writers: Motivation.

In social media writing groups there is nearly a constant stream of posts asking for tips on motivation or offering advice about staying If motivated to stay with your WIP. People become frustrated when they compare their progress to others or just generally lack confidence for a multitude of reasons. The truth is that we are all drastically different creatures and, thus, we all have very individualized triggers that can put us on pace or bump us off the right track. Heck, what may work for one writer may absolutely de-motivate another. This makes advice incredibly problematic.

One thing that every writer or potential writer needs to consider, though, is: What do you want to get out of the experience of writing? Are you looking to simply be published? Do you want to make money? Do you want to accomplish something to throw in your childhood bully's face? No judgments, but finding what motivates you is rooted here. You need to reach deep down and find that reason and remind yourself of it in a way that connects with you. From there you can build out goal posts that should be reasonably attainable. Rome wasn't built in a day and, with very few exceptions, no book has been written in one. You aren't a failure if you don't bang out two thousand words per day -- you're human. If you write five hundred words four times a week you will still write a draft in under a year.

Let a goal post be flexible, and learn to be forgiving of yourself. If you fall off a schedule (if you even have one) don't beat yourself up. Just pick up and start again. Take a breath and find your rhythm. Forcing it when the motivation isn't there is only going to burn you out and, possibly, lead you to be unhappy with your writing when you feel flat.

Again, it comes down to what motivated you to even pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard in the first place. For me it was wanting to prove to myself that I could do it, and also prove to my family that they were wrong when they told me that I couldn't.

Some people succeed because of the people in their lives, while others succeed in spite of the people who surround them.

What's important is to know that you aren't alone. In those moments that you feel like you can't do it and you're a failure and should give up just remember that thousands of other writers have felt the exact same way -- often more than once. You've already made it this far, you WILL make it the rest of the way. You have stories inside you and they deserve to be told.

Introducing 'The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett'

Every story has a beginning. Mine started when I was twelve years old when I submit a sci-fi piece to a writing contest. I received a personalized rejection that was encouraging and eagerly began plotting new stories to try again. As time went by I moved on to other interests but never lost the passion for writing, often dabbling into poetry. I compiled journals filled with short stories. I would let friends and mentors read them but never sought publishing. You see, despite praise from strangers, I had been convinced at home that I would only be in for more disappointment if I ever sent my work off to an agent or publisher again.

So I went about life, for years, never feeling like anything I did ever mattered or fit with what I truly wanted to do for a living. About ten years ago I dug out that old outline and sample chapters that I had submit to the writing contest and began to flesh out that story in greater detail. I made it roughly 42,000 words into it over the course of two years before a computer crash and a divorce from my then editor derailed me again. I had a hard copy of my manuscript but it came to represent a huge failure in my life - personally and professionally. It is still sitting in a three ring binder in the top of the closet in my old office. I haven't touched it since I sat it there when I moved into this house nearly seven years ago. It disgusts me. I keep telling myself that I will come back to it and finish it someday. 

I may have grown to hate that story but my heart and head were still weaving tales that longed to be put down onto paper. In the fall of 2016, one late night while dozing to sleep, I had this idea pop into my head of a paranormal investigator who becomes a part of the case that he is investigating - learning that he is somehow linked to the apparitions within the walls of an all too familiar house. He would become obsessed, eventually unable to extract himself from the very story that was driving him mad. I leaned over, grabbed my phone, and whispered the words "morbid fascinations David Bennett" into my voice recorder. 

In the following months I found myself developing the idea further and adding layers to the characters and environment, all in my head. I was now a father for a second time, remarried, and learning to slow down life around me. As my son began to become marginally self sufficient I found the courage to eventually attempt to write this story down that had been whirling around in my head for a few years. I kept telling myself "one day you'll find time to write it." 

That day came on March 3, 2019 when I deleted my personal social media accounts, sick of the problems of the outside world and the pit of hopelessness I experienced in my stomach every time I logged onto Facebook. That very night I wrote the first fifteen hundred words of the first draft. By June I had completed the first draft. It is now mid-September and I have roughly ten thousand words of the second draft to complete. 

In this blog I will explore the characters and themes of my debut novel and what we can learn from it. What is the purpose of horror literature? Why are we drawn to stories that frighten us?

Stay tuned...