“Where do your ideas come from?” I am sometimes asked. “Other worlds,” I say, and smile. I have found, as I write, as I sink into “the zone” of my work and lose myself to all else that may be happening around me, the things I produce are strange. I sit back and read over what I have written and wonder how I could have come up with such things. They seem unusual, surreal, fantastic. They seem sometimes as if they’ve come from someone else, or somewhere else. I’m a normal guy, nothing special, not that interesting to talk to. So how can a guy like me come up with such things? Where do they come from? I don’t have a definitive answer. But I can speculate. There is a concept, revolving around David Lewis’s ideas of Modal Realism, called Fictional Realism, which theorizes that when creative people in our world create things, they aren’t really creating them so much as discovering them, that all things we consider fictitious exist in some world, on some plane of existence, somewhere in the multiverse. This would mean that creative people are those with the ability to see into other universes. Perhaps this is what I’m doing as I write. A little over a year ago, I became acquainted with someone who reminded me, in a lot of ways, of my younger self. His name is Colin Thorne. He shared with me the details of the summer he spent with a wealthy man in a dilapidated yet historical house. He was commissioned to paint an unusual mural in the man’s basement. In the basement, when he wasn’t painting, he found many old and fascinating things scattered about in boxes piled high that had clearly been undisturbed for some time, bits of history, letters and journals, clues left behind by people who had lived but are now forgotten. After some persuading on my part, he agreed to share with me a few of the things he’d found, and gave me a tattered suitcase filled with notes he’d collected. Inside the suitcase, one of the things I found was a notebook filled with accounts of fantastic other realms, strange beasts, peoples, and cultures. It contains many stories written by a man who signs his name only as ‘Marrow.’ Many of the things he discusses are clearly within the realm of the fantastique, yet Marrow’s writings are filled with such detail, it is difficult to imagine them to be entirely fabricated. Shadow Animals, in its original translation, was found this way. Arranging the moldering papers until I could find some semblance of order, wiping the dust away, I discovered a story, and was immediately enthralled. It was written in an entirely different style from what I have written above, of course, in a language that does not yet belong to any cultural group in existence in this world, but I hope I have done it justice. I can only urge readers to be understanding and cognizant of the translation and interpretation I have provided. And this is only the beginning. Much of Marrow’s accounts take place in a world he calls Meridian. It is a world vastly different from our own in many ways, yet similar in others, and they are inexplicably linked. It is Meridian, I believe, where Saul and Ezzy find themselves in Shadow Animals. My plan is to produce more stories set in this world—in translation, of course. Collected, these stories—linked by a common mythology, if not by narrative—will comprise the Meridian Codex. Shadow Animals is a Meridian Codex story, as is Marrow’s Pit. Expect others to follow, including a larger novel, as I am hard at work. Keith Deininger June 20th, 2014
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“Later that night, they go to his dorm room and she shows him what to do. He watches her take one of the containers and go around the room collecting the smudgemutters. He watches her fill the bathtub with water. He watches her drown them, one by one, until they fade into nothing, returning, as she says, home, to the Umbra Ina. He watches her face, calm, eyes stony, lips grimacing slightly. He watches her belly, which does not yet show signs of the life within it, that somehow, he has had a part in creating.”
I must apologize for my absence. I’ve been slacking in my blogging and social media duties. I’ve been busy. I’ve been writing. And my writing has taken some strange turns. It’s exciting, but also very intimidating, as I swim further and further out into the sea of the fantastic, attempting to navigate the stormy waters of world building. I am writing a fantasy novel, without restraint, surreal and dark. I think—some of you may find this strange; others, perhaps not so much—I have found comfort in the horror genre. In many ways, for the beginning writer, it is a safe place to start. While one discovers one’s place in the writing universe—one’s “voice” it is sometimes called—and what one wishes to write, it is a genre that allows a lot of freedom with character and a means to explore internal emotional turmoil and themes that are universal, within us all, and understandably poignant at even a young age. As my writing develops, I’ve found myself drawn inexorably toward the fantastic. I’ve always been drawn to works that explore the imagination, from my early days with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, to later with China Mieville and Clive Barker, amongst others (I read George R.R. Martin before it was cool ;)), and I knew my own attempt at a novel set in a world completely of my fabrication was inevitable. But, I have to be careful. Writing horror is very different from writing fantasy. It is true, they often overlap (as my own work has done), but horror—good horror, I think—is about restraint and subtlety. Fantastic elements in horror are often called “supernatural”, and for good reason. They are unexplainable and contrary to the natural workings of reality as it is usually perceived, thus the uncanny is achieved, thus horror. Fantasy, in contrast, “goes off the deep end.” It no longer has use for the natural laws, other than as loose guidelines to be manipulated. It involves the writing of one’s own rules. It begs the imagination for possibilities, to reinvent not what is, but what could be. It’s a lot of work, and, as I’m finding, perhaps more difficult to write well than is horror. I’m still in the early stages of the novel, so we’ll see how it goes, but I’d like to share a excerpt with you all soon, so be sure to check this space. Oh, and don’t for a moment think of such things as swords and dungeons and wizards. And do NOT think I’d let myself become another Tolkien ripoff, or George R.R. Martin, or Robert Jordan, or anything like that. What I have so far, what I’ve been writing, looks to be a very different beast, a different experience, than anything else out there. And for my fans: don’t worry; my writing will always remain dark, violent, and disturbing. In fact, despite my claim to fantasy, my work may remain classified as horror, just like many of the works of such writers as Barker and King. ;) Intrigued? Sign up for my New Release Mailing List: The reason many people will never find success in writing, or any other artistic pursuit, is very simple: rejection. It’s going to happen. You’re going to fail. You’re going to spend innumerable hours writing steaming piles of mastodon shit. And then, if you’re strong enough to keep going, you’re going to write something that to your mind is pure genius, that you know is at least better than some of the dreck you’ve seen while perusing the popular shelves at Barnes and Noble…and it’s going to be rejected. If you’re strong enough, you’ll pick up your work, dust it off, and try again. And it will be rejected. I’m a failure, you’ll wail. And you’ll be right. And then, after that, if you’re strong enough, you’ll write something else, you’ll write even more, you’ll just keep shitting and shitting. Eventually, if you’re strong enough, if you have a true fiery passion for what you do, you’ll see some success, maybe publish some things. And then the next thing you do will be rejected. Successful people are always failures first. And they continued to fail. It’s how he or she reacts to failure that makes him or her a success. And so I’m officially declaring it now: I’m a failure!And I will continue to swim in my own shit, playing, discovering new shapes, sniffing a little, tasting, forming new shapes, uncovering secrets I never would have, had I given up the search and been afraid. Intrigued? Sign up for my New Release Mailing List: |
"Unrelenting Horror"- FREE!An award-winning author known for blending elements of fantasy with horror in his surreal, literary style. Author of WITHIN, A GAME FOR GODS and VIOLENT HEARTS.
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