Month: January 2016

Taking a Constitutional

The new Current Story is called A Stroll in Breda, and I have a lot of trouble deciding what genre it lies in.  It is a very gentle excursion into weird fiction, lacking the brutality of finish that marks horror, and without the overt unreality of fantasy.  As you’ll see in the tags, this had led me to stuff its octagonal peg in both a square and a round hole at the same time.

There is an something of authorial personal experience to this piece, but only trace elements.  My father does indeed come from Breda (or an immediately adjacent village which has since been absorbed), and I have stood in several of the places mentioned.  The Mastbos, for all its trim plantation nature, has the power to be a very eerie place in the right light.  The beer is unreasonably good, and not just in the little bar across the street from the old tank.

Edging Out Onto Thin Ice

The new Current Story, The Golden Oracle, is the sort of thing that a writing chap could get in a variety of troubles over.  At the back of it are a couple of authors whose works I quite enjoy.

The first burden I’m giving myself, and the one I’m content to shoulder, is one of vocabulary.  When I decided to pursue this story in the general way I did, I seemed to me that the style should match the setting, as far as I was able to make it.  Since I don’t have a publisher to please, I didn’t need to suppress that urge.  I don’t think “blatant attempt to pretend to 19th century writing style” is a trigger warning yet, but I suppose there are some who will appreciate a warning all the same.

There is another burden I look with distaste at and will attempt to leave where it lies.  I am known by some to be a fan of the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, and if that’s news to you, I don’t deny it.  The problem with this admission is that it brings with it a question of whether I also admire some of his less amiable qualities.  The way I phrase that should give a clue, but let me be clear; Lovecraft’s racism saddens me deeply, and I do not share it.  I bring this up because I’m setting a story in early 19th century England, and trying to write in the style of that time, and I’m presenting the reactions of people of that time and place to foreigners.  I try to go no farther than I absolutely have to, but people do like to impute a writer’s attitudes by holding up characters as an example.

On a final note, I’ll admit to there being an element of hubris at work here as well.  The initial inspiration for this story was a bit in the middle of Sheridan le Fanu’s The Room at the Dragon Volant which is marvelously weird on its face… but for one who spent a childhood in the 1970s getting very angry with Scooby Doo’s approach to the supernatural, it felt like a big fat cheat when the truth of it was unveiled.  I wrote this story in part to get the taste of that out of my mouth.

I will still bow to le Fanu, generally.  I know my place.

Hey! Look Over There!

I don’t want to get too much in the habit of cross-posting, especially since there’s cross-links in the left-hand bar of this screen, but I thought those who are following this enterprise of mine but not my non-fiction blog might enjoy a chance to point at and giggle quietly over an entry about my reading habits.

As a bonus, it reveals less than one might expect because it’s based (partly) on an artificial exercise.  But there’s a list of books, most of which I enjoyed.

It Lacks, Alas, 76 Trombones

The new Current Story, which like the one it replaces is a flash, is offset in season.  I had expected, when getting my batting order sorted out, that the December/January transition would find much of North America wriggling in the grip of tyrant Winter and we’d all like a vicarious excursion into summer.

Mild temperatures, however, seem to be the norm this year, although there have been some odd extremities of wind and snow in some locations.  The Mermaid Parade remains the new story, though, because however wanting in chill it is, there’s still a bleakness to winter that I don’t mind being distracted from for a moment.

I’ll also mention that the genesis of the story was from merely reading the phrase “Mermaid Parade” in a state of profound ignorance as to how the actual item (which there is one of; if this is news to you as it was to me, here’s the straight goods on it) was conducted.  After some giggling at the more whimsical mental images, this story is what fell out of my head.  As with most stuff that drops from that chamber, it has little to do with the real world, and I hope anyone who has a deep and abiding fondness for the actual parade will forgive the excursion I took.