The Halloween Post

'Tis the end of October and the spooks are about, so it seems the thing to do is wax poetic on Halloween and Samhain themes.

For the quick studies among us, I offer these "cheat sheets": Some Halloween history  and Some Samhain history.

In my life I haven't cared much for the day. Love the season, but not the rituals. I've never been a ritual kind of guy. But I have history on my side.

The first Halloween I remember was in a distant realm where costumes were crafted by hand. 

I perfected the "robot" by combining several cardboard boxes, a larger one for the body, a smaller one for the head, still others for feet. Arms and legs remained sheathed in clothes. That was while I was in the second grade; I won a prize for having the best costume. What was special about the robot costume was that the non-steam-powered device was also an early form of the personal computer. If someone were to write out a question and introduce the slip of paper through the designated slot in the body of the robot, the robot would [eventually] produce a verbal answer to the question. The robot proved to be 90% accurate which was, pre-MSWindows 1.0, quite a remarkable feat.

Then came other costumes full of commercial interests: characters from TV shows, classical monsters, space aliens (the fierce and loathsome kind, not ET), and finally the minimalist kind of costume. Minimalist? You know the type: you put on a clean shirt and glasses and say you are dressed as a "nerd". Later, as an adult, I graced one maybe two adult Halloween parties where others went full out as sexy witches and vampire studs. I was still dressed as a nerd - long before nerds were cool.

I often went trick or treating with my cousin, but our chief goal was less about collecting candy than harassing his sisters. Gradually, we forgot the costumes and simply ran wild through the night, sending rolls of toilet paper up into the trees of houses where girls lived who had rejected him. By then we could buy our own candy. 

Then the reverse happened. We became candy givers! Definitely less fun. However, I have not given out candy for many years now. You see, congruent with my emerging adulthood came the cultural shift away from children ringing doorbells and begging for treats. It started with scares over pins and razor blades in candy. Parents took their children to the mall for trick or treating, or only within a trusted neighborhood. It continues today. What a shame!

Well, it was never really about the candy or the costumes, anyway, I soon learned while hanging out with people who actually called themselves witches.  

Real witches. They had many of the same beliefs I held at that time. None of us threatened people nor begged for snacks. A few preferred to dress in black year-round, and all of them seemed to wear a pentacle around their necks or emblazoned on their black t-shirts. All in all a friendly, charming bunch of social rebels whose chief activity was "raising awareness" of their existence - then complaining that everyone disrespected them.

Other cultures celebrate death and welcome back the dead at this time of the year. That's fine with me. I've had it both ways - err, well, perhaps not both ways in the way you might be thinking. Someday I will, of course. 

What I meant was the fun side and the serious side of the holiday. Now, however, it seems like just one more excuse for shopping. Halloween "memorabilia" is present in stores hours after Labor Day sales have ended. I can deal with fake cobwebs and spiders and bats, even a few talking skulls or laughing zombie heads, but let's be real. 

Death ain't so great. That's what I was told by a rather decayed ancestor of mine who happened to pop up in the middle of the night beside my bed - a day early, no less - just to warn me that on one of these Halloween nights I might not be around to celebrate much of anything. I said, in my sleepy voice, "Fair enough."

The laughter that followed my ancestor out through the cracks in the walls was unnerving enough to get me up from bed. I had to splash cold water on my face and awaken fully, just to be sure I was still alive. Shaking my head in front of the mirror with all the lights on, I knew it had not been a dream.

So I made my way back to bed yet lay awake for hours, unable to close my eyes, afraid of the next snap, squeak, creak, breath, sigh, or moan - most of them, thankfully, coming from my neighbors arriving home late after the bars closed.

I've never been interested in horror, scary stories, or gore. But when the Twilight series of books and movies captured the imagination of my daughter, I had to set her straight. The truth about vampires! I had some knowledge previously about the medical issues which produce symptoms which simulate the traits of vampirism.

So I sought to research and write a medically accurate vampire tale. It coincided with events in my real life, so I set it in Oklahoma City where I was living then and in 2013, the year I was writing it. The result is my 2014 novel A DRY PATCH of SKIN, what some readers have called "literary horror". Now I've been compelled to write a sequel - to be titled SUNRISE - about what happened to our hero after he transformed into a vampire. Look for it in Spring 2018.

Read a review in The Oklahoman newspaper here! 

(The only vampire romance story to be set in Oklahoma City... among other places.)

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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Coming to terms: Blog-reality vs Life-reality

Yes, I know it's been a while. Don't worry; I have excuses. Mostly the timing of events in the month of April left me off-balance as far as putting up blog posts. Then things happened: bad things, awful things, and I was numb and unable to find the words to express anything, either about the horrors happening or even about ordinary mundane episodes of amusement which are my usual stock in trade.

I was forced to think in a deeply profound manner. What is the point of a blog? Many of my colleagues have answered that question already. But aside from a little personal pleasure ("thoughts on waking up too late"), self-promotion ("check out my latest book"), sharing writing tips ("I really have nothing new to offer"), or celebrating holidays ("here's my annual Thanksgiving post"), why take the time to dabble when there is so much going on that is decidedly undabble-worthy?

Let's face it: There are a lot more important things happening in the world today, the past week, this entire month - but if you're a writer, all that matters is the story in front of you. (The story in front of me often serves as an escape from the reality of the world I hear about on social media and television.) All this is meant to say is that not even writers can solve all the problems in the world. Long gone are the days when we could right wrongs with a well-turned phrase. Where are those word warriors who fight with sonnets instead of swords?

I'm working on an epic fantasy, as everyone and their grandparents know, yet I fell into a funk - writer's block, if you will - because of everything going on in the world: death and destruction, terrorism and earthquakes, storms and murders, crashes and floods, lots and lots of inane arguing, lying, shouting, cursing, and more or less deception by just about anyone who makes it onto the national or world stage. Plus deaths of people who were minding their own business in the music business.

It's always sad when a celebrity dies, regardless of the reason. As a public figure, we all tend to feel we know that person. We have close loved ones who die, of course, but we share that person with fewer mourners. Every day it seems another actor or musician passes on, and we are surprised because we've grown accustomed to their immortality. Theirs seems to be real while our own we understand is finite. So we pay tributes, listen to their songs, watch their movies, remember the good times we were having while they somehow were invited into those moments with us through the music or the shows. This week I've heard several people say this or that musician provided the soundtrack to his or her life. 

The phenomena remains. Time stops, the past flashing through us, like memories we wonder if we really ever had or if we are creating anew just for this moment, just so we can join in with others in mourning, in remembering, in sharing a feeling of joy at having known that person. And a feeling of sorrow at that person's passing. What once was an endless stadium of space suddenly collapses into a closet-sized reality: if this person, so celebrated, who had everything, can pass so easily, so suddenly, who am I in the greater scheme of the universe? And in that flicker of recognition, we are born again. And we go on.

An anecdote: I had been in the National Guard for about a year when a new guy arrived. On one weekend drill, I happened to see a small flyer advertising a concert which he had sitting at his station. I picked up the flyer to look at it closer. On the flyer was a striking face of the musician performing at the concert, smug expression under a wild mop of hair. The name on the flyer said Prince. I said to my colleague, both of us in our fatigue uniforms, waiting for the final formation late on a Saturday afternoon, "Who would name their kid 'Prince'?" He shrugged and said he was going to the concert that night. This must have been in Fall 1980. Kansas City. A few years later I went on a first-date which began with the movie Purple Rain. I finally put two and two together. 



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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How and Why to Unmurder Someone

As many of my 35,000 followers, likers, G+ers, tumblrites, fellow writers, beloved readers, and their assorted dogs and cats, and children of all ages know, I have been writing a new novel which I have decided to title A DRY PATCH OF SKIN.

I've written (i.e., blogged) previously about the origin of this story and its name.

About a month ago I finished the first first draft, which is always a writer's first truly significant milestone--or word count stone? page number stone? Well, woo hoo and hurrah! Right? Nope.

Now I can begin the real work. I like to imagine a potter getting all his wet clay together and finally tossing it all on the spinning wheel. Yes, it's all there but it's hardly finished, and it hardly looks like something anyone would want. But you have all the clay there. Good for you! Now you work with it, shaping it, fashioning it into something beautiful, something which has value, something people would want.

As many of you who craft these novel things know, sometimes things just don't fit together neatly. Yes, I got my hero to the intended destination but not in the smoothest or most convincing way. Plot holes haunted me. Now, I'm not admitting there are any; I admit only that I knew there were spots I would return to and fix once I reached the end. So I did. Fixed. But it took a whole rewrite of a chapter, and in that process, a nameless young man got to live rather than die.

Yes, I unmurdered someone. It felt good, too. It's not as though he was essentially a good and decent person anyway. That was not the reason for his unmurder. I revisited the scene and looked at it from a couple different angles--much as a film director might go stand over there or there to see how the stage looks. For me, it was a matter of practicality.

You see, murder is a big deal, whether in real life or fiction, and it has consequences. My hero would be pursued, arrested, questioned, perhaps go to trial, lose and be locked up. And is that any way for a novel to end? Sure, I suppose there's some irony in that scenario, where the hero does not get to fulfill his journey's goal. But that is not what I can allow to happen. So, rather than a fight than ends with a young man dying, it may be enough that the young man suffers a serious ass-whooping and runs off.

Then our fine hero can mope about how he almost killed someone but did not. It's enough that there is blood sprayed. Besides, he knows God would approve of him showing mercy upon the young man. That's a fresh angle to the story: the tests that God may or may not be setting in the way of our hero's desperate journey to save himself from the steadily encroaching disfigurement of his disease. No, ladies and gentlemen, he does not want to transform into a vampire. He would prefer to find a cure for his medical condition and be able to return to his Beloved for a long, happy life with her.

Any more would likely take us into Spoiler territory.

However, I can offer the first page of this forthcoming medical thriller / vampire tale.

A DRY PATCH OF SKIN

1

The priest stood before me in his black suit and white collar. His eyes studied me as I approached, strolling quietly up the aisle of this small chapel set high on the hills above the resort town of Makarska, on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. Far below the open doors of the chapel stretched the picturesque town of red tiled roofs and gray plaster buildings, its sandy white beach bookended by massive granite cliffs where dozens of vacationers took in the sun and swam in the turquoise sea.

With a curt nod to acknowledge our meeting, he started to speak, could not find the words, then recovered.

“Mister Székely,” he spoke, “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.” Then, as if only at that moment remembering, he handed me a beige envelope with elegant black writing on its face. The logo of a Hungarian law firm was printed in the corner. “This is from your parents. I am to give it to you as soon as you arrive. Before the funeral service. I hope it is not rude of me.”

“No, not at all, Father.”

“Thank you.” He gave another curt nod.

“I’m sure glad you speak English,” I said sheepishly, “because I don’t know any Croatian.”

I took the envelope, glanced at it, and wondered what value it might have. Mother was always fond of writing letters, sending cards, but during the past dozen years she had dwindled down to only birthday and Christmas.

I turned the envelope over in my hands, felt how thick it was, which could only mean it was longer than most of her letters.

“Does this letter explain what happened? I mean, why they committed suicide?”

“I do not know the content of that letter,” said the priest. “They only wished me to give it to you. Also, they wished for you to take a week, or more, if you can, and enjoy a richly deserved vacation. Your room has been reserved and everything is paid for the week.”

“How kind of them. They must’ve believed I would travel all the way here to see them off.”

“You work so hard, they always told me, thus you need a good break.”

“But there’s no need to kill themselves just to get me to fly over to Croatia.”

I tore open the end of the envelope and pulled out a trifolded letter of three pages wrapped around a generous gift of cash. The letter, written in my mother’s hand, stated almost word for word what the priest had just told me.

“Yes, I supposed it’s my duty,” I said, looking up from the letter and casually folding the cash into my front trouser pocket. “Me being their only child…. It’s an obligation. So….”

I took a few deep breaths.

“You’re a good son,” said the priest.

“At least they were old—old enough, sure, but not too old to be able to make a rational decision. Probably they were simply tired of all they had endured.”

“Indeed, Mister Székely. I’m sure it was for the best.”

“Please, Father...call me Stefan.”

We shook hands and he assured me that everything would be ready for the service the next day.

So it was without much amusement that I came to accept the truth of my parents’ situation. I did, however, fully appreciate the irony involved. Reclining on the bed in the hotel room they had arranged for me, I reread the last letter.

[cover artwork coming soon]

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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Got Fortunate Serendipity?

I had seriously expected to begin my blogcation by now, but thought to give it one more post before I do.

This is all because of a fortunate turn of events, what I like to call a fortunate serendipity. 

It is fortunate in that I, being a fictioneer of boundless imagination, occasionally run dry. Not to worry! I was minding my own business recently at my local B&N bookstore when I was forced into an altercation. Yes, that's correct: me, a fight, a coming to blows, in a public arena of all places! Rather than tell you what happened in police procedural style, I was able to turn that true event into a moment the protagonist in my current work-in-progress gets to experience.

Art imitating Life, as it were.

The irony of the episode was that I was in that bookstore doing research, as I often do, and so the items in question were related to the very book I am working on. Thus we have a real experience of researching in a book store for a new novel being written whereby the real author has a run-in with a real villain (curse you, strange man!) which becomes a scene (rather, a dream) the protagonist has in the book for which the author went to the book store to conduct research and thus happened into the episode where.... Yes, it's an endless circle of serendipity.

Here is what happened:

(Well, here is the scene that came about because of what happened.)

(To recap: In this novel, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, our hero is transforming against his will into a disfigured monster, appearing rather like a hideous [i.e., non-sparkly] vampire, and thus he is desperate to reach a special spa in Hungary for treatment, hoping he can cure his awful affliction and return to his former beautiful self as well as be with fiancée Penny once more.)

The nightmare shook me and I fell from the seat [of the train], rolled on the floor and got quickly up again.

I was relaxing in the café section of our usual Barnes & Noble bookstore, my home away from home—and the world. It was more than half-filled with young people studying for exams, old people chatting, assorted others browsing magazines or books they had brought to their tables. I had a short stack of items on my table, as well. I shook my head, as though I had been napping on that table. I stood and stretched. At that moment, a man was getting up from his table. He stepped past my table and the top item on my stack of materials caught his eye. A map of Hungary. Without saying a word, without scarcely a blink of his eye, he picked up the map and took it with him. Just took it right off my stack of items!

“Excuse me!” I cried out after him. Everyone looked at me, the crazy person. “I was going to buy that.”

The man slowed, turned and, seeing me standing with an angry look, stopped and said, “But you haven’t bought it yet, so it’s available to anyone, like me.”

“What? Are you mad? Possession is nine-tenths of the law!”

But the man grinned as though he knew the law backward and forward, and stalked off to the cashier with my map.

So right then I gathered up my remaining items: travel books on Hungary and Croatia, a Croatian phrasebook, and a couple of magazines, presumably to read on the way, and took them to the cashier, too. I wanted to purchase them before anyone else could steal them. When I arrived, the man with my map had gone, but I continued with my purchase.

Then, as I took my bag of books and magazines across the store, returning to the café to get a latté for the road, there was Penny Park, ace reporter, in her news station logo jacket, sitting at the same table I had sat at, her own latté in hand. Across from her sat the indefatigable Tommy, ball cap reversed on his head, a stupid grin on his face, his gnarly hand laid casually over the hand of my Beloved. I stood like a statue, frozen at the sight of them. As I watched, I saw her lift her hand and admire the ring on her finger. Tommy stretched across the table and she rose to meet his kiss—

The train was slowing, rattling, hissing, as it rolled into a station. I scooted up on the seat, and parted the curtains to see where we were. We rolled and rolled through the station. Finally I saw a sign. We were only in Düsseldorf.

It's all true--except, for me, it was in a real bookstore and there were no book cops to come to my aid. That final bit about him seeing Penny and Tommy, I should note, was added for plot purposes; I did not actually see them there in the store that day. I did, however, return to the map rack and was fortunate (there's that word, again!) to find a second map--but as I opened it at home later, I discovered the map I was lucky to get had several tears in it, requiring me to apply tape so as not to make the situation worse.

The lesson for us all is to mind your unpurchased intended-purchases with tooth and nail, for there are scum out there (scum, I tell you!) who would steal the things you have not yet purchased! There oughta be a law! So be careful what you do; you might actually dream of it someday, or cause someone else to dream it.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.