Category Archives: writing

The Art and The Artist Part One Million

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With the further and now apparently well documented allegations that paint Neil Gaiman as a rather nasty piece of work we are once again thrust into the unresolved and unresolvable debate concerning separating the artists from the art.

First off, it is decision of personal moral standards. I hold no ill will or any negative opinion for anyone that decides to boycott or who continues to support the art an artist. We each make our own choices about how much compromise the broken world demands of us. No one can live in this universe pure and unsullied. Every choice we make has consequences and moral implications.

Personally, I think one defining line is asking how much of the art promotes the objectionable stands, beliefs, or actions of the artist. Roman Polanski should be rotting in a prison cell for forcibly raping a child. yet, his cinematic production of Macbeth or Chinatown do not promote such a world view and while both have a cynical approach to evil in the world, both recognize and clearly delineate that the evil is real and not an arbitrary illusion crafted by mere mortals.

Bryan Singer a talented filmmaker is always accosted with more than a little credibility of also sexually abusing minors. If true he should face legal consequences. But it is also true that his film X-Men is an allegory for the mistreatment of minorities and takes a stand against such bigotry.

Kevin Spacey’s career was derailed by allegations of sexual abuse and he cowardly tried to use he newly disclosed sexuality as a shield. A dodge that did not work and he was ejected from a number of productions. Spacey’s portray of Jack Vincennes as morally corrupt cop who comes to realize the evil he has helped perpetuate and tried to correct it is a deeply moving and touching job that gives hope to the concept of redemption.

In each of these cases and others I would argue that the art is not corrupted by the evils of the artist. These are also all films, and I think the boycotting of film productions if particularly problematic.

Film is a collaborative art and to boycott a film is not just a harm to the objectionable artist but to all the artist that work and profit from that production. Boycott the Harry Potter films due to Rowlings despicable beliefs and you also are striking against Radcliff who gives every appearance of a devoted ally. Boycotting film, for me personally, has too high of a ration of collateral damage to target.

Books are a different matter.

Only three entities profit from the sale of a book, the book seller, the publisher, and the author. Everyone else has already been paid and compensated for their time and labor. If you are one to buy books then your support for the book seller is unlikely to change, leaving just the publisher and the author. Given that I find the boycotting of books from questionable artist much easier to justify.

Luckily for me I was never much of a Gaiman fan with his novels, so not buying them isn’t so much a boycott as life as normal. For you, well that’s your decision.

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Celebrity is a Performance

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The Neil Gaiman story which went much wider this week with a long and disturbing account of his alleged sexual assaults and other nasty work has stirred up some very deep feelings of betrayal among his fans in the fantasy and horror communities.

I don’t blame them for feeling betrayed. Gaiman had constructed a nearly perfect public persona that invited respect and admiration. He doled out advice that encouraged artists of all stripes as they struggled with impostor syndrome, his stories celebrated the outsider, and they presented a level of inclusion that welcome many groups of people form whom society has always felt excluding and threatening.

But it his public persona was all for show, and the most vital lesson we need to take away from all this is that all public personas are for show.

Gaiman, Whedon, Cosby are but a few names of men with public faces that made them admired are people who lifted up others and presented what appeared to be images of our better selves. The truth for each of these turned far darker than most expected.

Everyone who is some form of celebrity presents a public face that is not their true self. Some do it to market themselves and their art. Some do it to cover up an inner insecurity that never leaves them. Some do it because their true selves are not readily accepted in wider society. This is particularly true for those in the closet. But some do it to conceal their monstrous nature.

On the outside looking in we cannot not their true selves, we can only know what they project, the image that they create and distribute for their own purposes, some of which are mercenary, some self-protecting, and some nefarious. This is way it is important to never place anyone on that pedestal of admiration.

Praise the art, praise the skill of the artist, but do not believe that simply because of the art that they are good. They may be, there are noble, good, and great people everywhere, but you cannot know them save by their actions and even then, your data set is limited by what they want you to know.

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My Writing Report Card

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It is a new year and I am not one for resolutions, but it is a time to look back at what I wanted to achieve and what I did achieve.

I set one writing goal for myself in 2024, to write a full folk/cosmic horror novel before the end of the year.

Now, I did not set this goal in January but rather July, the first half of the year was finishing up the previous horror novel, getting it out the door to a publisher I had worked with before and begin the tedious process of searching for representation. All those goals were met by July with the agent hunting a continuing endeavor. That left six months to go from a vague concept to a completed first draft for the new novel.

As my last post indicated I did not quite meet that objective. The first draft landed at 84 thousand words on Jan 3rd, 2025, three days late.

Considering the unique process this book followed to its initial draft I’m quite pleased. Normally, I am an outliner, produced pages and pages of notes, characters backgrounds and a detailed map of the plot and the story as it unfolds. Not this time. With only a vague notion of what I was going to do with the story, and shockingly for me, no clearly defined ending, I just began writing.

I expected that if I made it past 10,000 words then the project had a better than fifty/fifty chance of reaching completion. I found a few sticky spots where I stopped my weekday writing to let ideas cook and figure out the next few events but generally, I maintained a steady pace of 800 to 1000 words each weekday.

In fact, had I not on the final week of the year taken two days off to detail notes for the table Top RPG I run I would have met that December 31st self-imposed deadline.

Now I need to do serious revision work. I had to create new backstory elements for the protagonist halfway through the draft and that means the first half doesn’t line up with the second half. There are characters that appeared in the second half that need to be established and such, but overall, I am happy with the draft and the project.

I give myself a solid B as a grade and look forward to the next three months as I mold this thing into its final form.

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Goal Not Met

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So, in late June early July I began writing my American Folk/Cosmic horror novel. An experiment for not only was it a genre I had never attempted in long form before but I began the manuscript without an outline.

My goal was to have a completed first draft, but not an edited one, by the end of the year on December 31st, 2024. Today is that date and the manuscript is not finished.

It is close, it is amazingly close, but with mere hours until the close of the year and a full day at the day-job still to complete I have to face the fact that I missed the goal.

There were writing days between July and today when I did not write. This new process of flying without a map produced a few times when in the middle of the story I became more lost and disoriented that usual. The end of the year is also a time when the day job become quite busy and pushing myself into serious amounts of overtime, while profitable, instigated migraines and cost me writing time as well.

Still, I did quite well. When I say it is close to being completed, I am talking less than a few thousand words. A day or two of writing and it will have been landed. Granted because of the no outline process the edit and revision process will be far more extensive than for other manuscripts. Halfway through the story I realized I had a motivation issue with the protagonist. What I had given her was not enough to propel her through the entire story. A change to her profession fixed that trouble, adding additional reasons for her to continue in a dangerous environment but that means new scenes and more rewrite for what had already been crafted.

Still, I like what I have written. I like the concept, and I look forward to completing the manuscript.

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The End of Spooky Season and Final Stretch for 2024

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October has left us and there were some very nice horror films that I visited for this time of the year when summer dies away and darkness creeps in. Though my favorite horror films that were new to me this year I watched outside of spooky season, Longlegs That Satanic serial killer film from Oz Perkins and Immaculate the feminist/religious/body-horror starring Sydney Sweeney. (Reviews for both are on this blog.) Though there is time for Heretic with what looks like a deliciously evil Hugh Grant to win a spot at the top.

My own foray in horror proceeds but a bit slower than I had wanted. My folk/Cosmic horror novel should have been at 60,000 words by the end of October but landed at 55,000. 5K short is not terrible and it remains very likely that the first draft will be completed before year’s end.

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I am Falling Behind

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The writing of my folk/cosmic horror has fallen a little behind the schedule. Just 3 or 4 thousand words shy of where I want to be by the end of October. Still, the novel might be completed by the end of the calendar year, particularly if it ends up between 80k and 90k words.

Right now, I am at the most challenging part of my novel writing process. I am more than halfway through the first draft and the sensation that I haven’t a clue how to make the whole piece work is quite strong. This mid-plot doldrum and uncertainty occurs even with a carefully outlined book and seems more intense with this work which I am writing without the safety net of a prepared outline.

Still, there are aspect of this manuscript that have me very happy. My three point of view characters have strong distinct voices, and I have confidence in the material even if I don’t have that for myself.

This weekend is likely to be rejuvenating for me. We have a small local convention to lift my spirits and on Monday I am driving to Hollywood to see Quatermass and the Pit one of my favorite films projected from a technicolor print.

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Well, This Took an Interesting Turn

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I will return to Spooky Season posting soon, thought this is at least related.

My currently novel in progress, an attempt at an American folk horror with elements of cosmic horror has been quite a journey so far.

First, it’s being written sans outline. My original plan had been to outline each act, out of five acts, just before I started writing those parts. And I did sort of draft one for the first act, but when I reached act 2 rather than lose momentum I barreled on. Now, I am reaching the end of the 3rd act and have abandoned the pretense of outlining.

I do believe that years and years of outlining has sort of drilled into me an intuitive sense of plotting and structure that allows me to flow freely and yet maintain the form I am most comfortable with.

Second, this is the only novel sized project I have started where I did not have a clear ending in mind.

I am one of those who believe that endings are vitally important. So many great stories and films have been lost to a crappy or poorly executed ending. It is the place where theme, character, and plot all come together.

With this book I had a sense of the tone I wanted to end on but not the mechanics or the specifics that would build my ending.

Until last night.

As I lay in bed, groggy and about to slip off into sleep the ending came to me. Particulars with the characters and a visual of what the final scene would look like. It resonated perfectly with what I had wanted and what has been so far and what was yet to come.

Best of all — I remember it this morning.

I still have high hopes of a first draft finished before Dec 31st but unlike most of my other works there will be serious retooling in at least one follow-up draft.

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Spooky Season Starts

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For as long as I can remember horror movies have played a part in my life. Growing up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, (the devastation visited there by hurricane Helene is heartbreaking) as a child the drive-in was my first exposure to movies. My older brothers would promise my parents that they would be seeing something appropriate for their little brother and invariably break that oath and select a horror film. I have fragmentary memories of Hammer Horror and region drive-in movies that in all likelihood are far less well executed than I remember them.

I also clearly remember during the summers that bats lived nearby and often fluttered just beyond my window, casting shadows into my second story bedroom. A macabre scene that is impressed on my memory.

It is no surprise that horror cinema has always been fascinating and inviting to me. Ghost stories are by far my favorite sub-genre of horror with the slashers born in the wake of 1978’s Halloween my least loved.

I have written and published a few short stories in the genre and currently await the decision from a publisher on my first horror novel. It is no surprise that the ‘spooky season’ is something I enjoy.

This October, in addition to getting more work done on my folk-horror novel, I plan to watch more horror than usual, revisiting some I enjoy and exploring a few new ones.

It should be fun.

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A Writing Blindspot

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As a writer one of the things I strive to do is get emotionally in the head and heart space of the characters in my stories. Of course I am far from perfect in this. I maintain one of the hardest things for any human to do is truly see something from another point of view. It is difficult to ignore the years of joy and pain and experiences that formed your nature and try to imagine even a sliver of that which was felt by another, but I try.

That said one aspect of people I can never seem to connect with emotionally is antisemitism.

Intellectually I can construct the flawed and hatefully reason why someone might believe such idiotic things, but it is a mindset and a prejudice that is always alien to me.

Perhaps my distance from it stems from my own non-religious nature. While as a child I was exposed to Southern Baptist teachings in Sunday school they never took root in my mental garden. Even if they had I suspect my ever-questioning nature wouldn’t have place me in a position to hate Jews because they had ‘killed Jesus.’ Wasn’t that his purpose anyway? To die, albeit get better after that that, for our sins? That would just mean the people who killed him were all part of God’s plot and plan. It makes no sense.

Of course, there are the conspiracy theories that Jews run the world. Conspiracy theories are sanctuaries for those that need an explanation for the chaotic world we live in. They are poison to a healthy mind, and none stand up to the most casual scrutiny. I cannot emotionally connect with any conspiracy theory; they are more ludicrous than any religion.

Sadly, antisemitism is very real and my lack of ability to even fake feeling it has no bearing on the world, only a weakness in my fiction. Out there in the wider world it is alive and well and sadly thriving.

It may be strange, alien, and incomprehensible to me but that doesn’t mean I will not denounce it or that I will not fight it.

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Not Dead, Dying, or Seriously Ill

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This blog has been fallow since Sep 11 because my mind has been a wandering and not very blog productive. I am half-way through my folk/cosmic horror novel, but production of that project has now stalled.

I started this manuscript with just a bare idea of who the characters were and crude arc for their passage. This is the most I have ever ‘pantsed’ a book and overall the results so far have been surprisingly good. The voices of the point of view characters, three in all, came easily and strike me as distinct. (Whenever I turn to Sabrina the langue gets very salty. She’s got a moth on her.)

However, the motivation I gave the protagonist for traveling to the island commune feels too weak, too little to sustain her momentum until the hard plot kicks in. I need to find more personal motivations with more to lose that will drive her actions rather than having events influence them.

I have come ideas, and it feels like they are about to fall together into something I can use but there is an element or two missing still.

For the blog I could have been writing about the current and terrible political landscape but at this point it feels terribly repetitive. I did not watch the presidential candidate debate because it is almost inconceivable that Harris could have made a gaff that would have cost her my support and vote, and it is utterly inconceivable that Trump could do anything at all that would win any support from me at all.

I have been thoroughly enjoying on YouTube watching a pair of Canadian Gen Z’ers working through way through Star Trek the original series. Being an old fart who has seen these episodes countless time it’s quite a thrill watching someone get surprised that Korby is a freaking robot, that it was Kodos’ daughter that was murdering all those pesky witnesses, and that Finney wasn’t actually dead.

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