Category Archives: The Fictorians

Writing as Immortality

P.S. Demian The Writing Life 1 Comment

InfinityI’ve often thought about what my influences are in writing. Some people watch a movie or read a book and think “Hey, I wish I had written that.” Others think “Gosh, I could have written that!” In fact, some stories are so good, or so impactful and resonate so well with what is churning in your own mind, that you think “Gosh – I need to write MORE of that!”

I can’t tell whether exposure to literature and film created my worldview, or if some primeval dystopian conspiracist reincarnationist ideas were merely activated and given form by the media I was exposed to. In either event, I’d love to detail a few of the influences that inform my writing.

Old School
When I was in 6th grade I think it was, I was too young for my parents to let me watch a violent film like Terminator. And yet my best friend turned me on to it, by sitting in the library with me and explaining the plot, beat for beat, to me. (Am I the only one whose exposure to the Terminator myth began through oral culture?) The story resonated because of the time travel. But if you look at it, time travel is a great plot device to explore consequences of actions over time. And these consequences go down for the ages.

Of course another time travel movie became wildly popular in the 80s, Back to the Future. This movie explored not only time travel but also generations, how families grow over time and pass on their values, beliefs and culture. The juxtaposition of then and now serves not only to advance the story, but as a compressed-time metaphor for exploring how EVERYTHING that happened before now is leading up to THIS INSTANT and our actions within it.

One of my teachers, a Kenneth Haker, AP US History, had us watch a film. It was The Manchurian Candidate. It’s a cold-war film about mind control and sending soldiers back to the US who have been mentally reprogrammed to assasinate. We were told I think that Sinatra (who stars) was against it’s continued release in light of Kennedy’s assassination (there was no snopes.com at the time to disprove this false fact). This experience set me searching for other material about this. Even if you view swinging watches and queen of hearts and post-hypnotic suggestions as a bunch of hooey, the success of the advertising industry should tell you that mind control *can* work…

It Never Works Out
Of course like every high school student in America (I assume), I was exposed to Animal Farm at some point. It’s a great book, and my main take-away was that they change the rules over time. Lord of the Flies taught me that even in democracy, the majority will eventually vote to eliminate human rights. But Brave New World is by far the most impactful and influential of these novels to me. From it I learned that you will be rewarded, in our culture, for giving up your power of choice.

Going Back in Time
Now, when I was in my mid teens, I had an interesting experience. After some soul searching about what I wanted to do with my life, I became fascinated with the possibility of past lives. What if you somewhat unexpectedly and suddenly remembered with clarity and specificity, who you were in a past life? What if you had memories of just the same quality as your normal memories, experiences were just as profane or mundane as now? What if you could see how the incomplete projects you had started in your last life had simply spilled into your current life? This would certainly make you into somewhat of an oddball. You’d probably have some urge to talk to people about it, yet feel like you couldn’t. It’s not like you would believe in past lives – you wouldn’t. You would simply have memories, as vivid and detailed as your current memories, such as driving such-and-such a car, and being friends with so-and-so, and wanting to live in a certain part of town, but living in another part. You might even remembered how you died. Should you believe these memories? Ah, another film, Total Recall and numerous others in the amnesia-through-drugs-or-mind-control explores these tropes and helps us understand the answer to that dilemma. Around this time as well as later, I was also exposed to the Highlander movie and series. This theatrical device – an immortal, who sort of “hides out” and keeps changing identities – is another fantastic metaphor that touches on the problems of reincarnation without getting bogged down in ‘reincarnation’ or Samsara as it is understood in Eastern culture.

But how weird was my interest in past lives? I find some solace in the fact that today, on Earth, at least a billion people, perhaps 1.5 billion believe in past lives. And a few billion more – the vast majority – at least believe in future lives. (Source: CIA World Factbook. No joke, look it up.) Even the much revered and respected Dalai Lama knows that talking about his past lives may be too much for people, and he downplays their significance in interviews.

It’s a Conspiracy
I have read countless ‘rational’ and ‘skeptical’ articles attempting to debunk conspiracy. And yet, for every one of these authors, no matter how many individual fallacies they point out, I still think they are whistling in the dark. I think their approach to explaining the chaos of the world is to say it just isn’t that complicated, resorting to Occam’s razor and all that, glosses over the fact that sometimes the world IS dark and sinister and very, very complicated.

One of the earliest introductions to this fact was actually not fiction, but the true stories of American double agents in WWII Germany. I read about double agents; in this case, working for the British but trusted by the Germans, they had to let real Allied troops die, and had to give good, actionable intelligence to the Germans to build that trust. This fact made me realize that the game of war and of life really, can get so very existential and complex, that the loyalties can get so perverted and converted that you don’t know what to do any more. And it taught me that the real truth can, after a “reveal”, be startlingly different than what you thought it was.

The stark verisimilitude of LeCarré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the best spy novel of all time, only confirmed my sense of how the world runs.

My history studies of the 60’s contributed to this view. We know the Warren commission said it wasn’t. And we know that Bobby Kennedy’s death was yet another lone agent. And so were all the others. And after a while, after so many events, the rationalist will try to talk you down from trying to draw conspiratorial conclusions. “It’s a human need to explain things”, they will explain. “Your mind wants to make sense of all this, fit it into a pattern”. To hell with this rationalist. There is an order to this chaos. We know now about the FBI hounding MLK, John Lennon, anyone they don’t like. We know about Nixon’s lies.

Perhaps it’s not the lizard people, perhaps it’s not the UFOs, and perhaps it’s not the dirty dozen, but to deny the fact that evil men conspire to create evil effects in our world is to be in denial.

Why I write
The novels I am writing are reincarnationist, because I simply find it fascinating and under-explored in the fiction of Western civilization, and of course I’m weird. The novels I am writing are conspiratorial, because in trying to make sense of the chaos of the world and all the broken plans of man, my mind feels compelled to weave it into a logically consistent and explanatory conspiracy.

My exposure to Huxley’s Brave New World (and the irony of his dropping acid on his deathbed and trying to achieve some sort of agnostic spiritual ascent) informs my complex anti-drug spirituality.

Possibly the real reason I am writing about it because, like Woody Allen, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.”

But think about your writing in this light. Immortality is a tricky thing to understand. Yet there are writers from thousands of years ago, whose ideas we still discuss every day. Greek philosophic ideas, various sacred testaments, and the Veda permeate and shape our culture, often more powerfully than the artists of today.

Who knows – perhaps that poem in school you hated having to study was something you wrote long ago!

But whatever you write, know that it can echo down the ages, affecting people, changing their minds, and imbuing them with the energy that was your life.

Daydream Addiction

Leigh Galbreath The Writing Life No Comments

When asked to write a post on what inspired me to be a writer I went blank. Couldn’t think of a thing. Most everyone else was talking about things they’d seen, books they read, that sort of thing, but when really thinking about it, my inspiration didn’t come from any external source. In the immortal words of Neil Gaiman, “It came from my head.”

I’m an addict, and my drug of choice is daydreaming. Has been from a very early age. If I’m not actively involved in a conversation with another person, or engrossed in a work of fiction, I’m locked in my head beating up bad guys or taking over the world–or both. I spend most of my day thinking about being someone else someplace else. So, naturally, when I started writing, all I was doing was writing what I had experienced in my head.

To tell the truth, I’ve been writing far longer than I wanted to be a writer. I think I started writing when I was in junior high school (I particularly remember a story about a group of kids my age who were trapped in their school, which had been sucked into a kind of limbo universe where nothing existed but the school-yeah, I was a weird kid). I never took it seriously at all. Making up stories was just something I did, like other kids doodled cartoons on their notebooks.

At some point in my teenage years (probably around eighteen or nineteen) I wondered what it would be like to get sucked into an alternate world with magic. Not original, I know, but bear with me. I started going through scenarios in my head as to how I would react in that situation. In true Walter Mitty fashion, I wasn’t really myself, but a better, braver, prettier, cleverer version of myself. At some point in the daydream, I got the weird notion that I would get imprisoned in a mountain. This brought up a question.

What would a magically inclined person be like if they were locked in a dark, underground prison, alone, for hundreds of years? How would they cope? What would they do to get out, and what would they be like when they did?

From that kernel was born my first trunk novel.

It was while writing that book, that I realized how much I really love writing. I’d been doing it forever, already. And I decided that, since it didn’t look like I was going to be rockstar, I’d be a writer.

Just about all my stories have started out just like that first trunk novel. What would it be like to experience this thing that I’ve never experienced, to be this person I’ve never been? Using myself as a starting point makes it easier to get into the idea. A dozen or so scenario’s later, and the idea has a life of its own. Those are the stories I end up writing down.

To be honest, what was in my head was influenced by real events in my life, books I read, music I listened to, and movies and television I had seen, all mashed up in my subconscious and bubbling out in my own unique way. Now that I think about it, the things in my head always had a tendency to work as stories because, after growing up sequestered in my room, reading fiction, I have a very twisted view of the world. I get frustrated when life doesn’t function like a piece of fiction (I’ve come to realize that I walk around listening to music constantly because I feel the need for my life to have a soundtrack-yeah, I’m still a weird kid).

This odd way of looking at the world sort of perpetuates my need to daydream. Life isn’t structured in three acts. We don’t get to skip the boring parts to keep the momentum going. People aren’t characters with understandable motivations.

Real life is complicated.

But dang it, it shouldn’t be! And so, I escape this nonsensical reality to my crazy made up worlds.

I am the first to admit that this is not a healthy way of looking at the world. But I ask you: How else am I going to experience life as a ridiculously rich and famous, deliriously beautiful, impossibly crafty, immortal vampire mage who travels through time to other planets in parallel universes?

Finding Courage in a Harsh World

Ace Jordyn Living Deliberately Motivation Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life Work-Life Balance No Comments

Many stories, from mystery to science fiction and fantasy have inspired and awed me. But my road to writing has been a tough and painful one. It wasn’t so much inspiration I needed as the courage to overcome an environment that discouraged reading, let alone writing for a living. One author gave me that courage.

Imagine growing up in a family where reading was never encouraged and was viewed as being lazy. Where farm chores and homework were the priorities. My father occasionally read westerns and Archie comics and then only after we were in bed. My mother just read recipes. Now, imagine the frustrations of a child whose imagination is so taken by the Dick_and_Janerich worlds in books that she wants to write but must suppress that desire and limit it only to school assignments.

What did I love to read? I still remember Dick and Jane’s antics in the grade one picture books –  “See Dick run. Run Dick run!’ – those first words excited my tiny heart and showed me the power of words on paper. Then came rhyming and Dr. Seuss filled my world – “One fish two fish, red fish blue fish’. nancy drewBy grades five and six, I was sneak reading the mysteries of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys on the bus ride home – a book a day. Somewhere in junior high school, I discovered science fiction, fell in love with it and then got into trouble with teachers because my imagination and verbosity were greater than assignments demanded. When I took a degree in English and drama, I had relatives who shunned me for years.

Perhaps I should have quit then and for a few years life took over and I almost did. But I always dabbled and always loved reading. So, what changed? What gave me the courage to write and to overcome all the discouraging influences? Where did I find the confidence to achieve my goal of mastering and communicating in my second language? Oh yes, English isn’t my first language and throughout my life, I’ve had a desire to master it and rarely feel I have. Yet, one book, one writer gave me the courage to pursue my dream wholly – to throw myself into it with a modicum of hope to succeed. I owe my courage to J.K. Rowling.

Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_StoneWhen I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I thought that if she could do it, so could I!”. Her life story, her courage to write and  her perseverance to find a publisher were the inspiration I needed. Since then, I’ve written many wild tales. I can write! My childhood desire to engage in worlds so far removed from reality, to master their voices and breathe life into them in words not my own has blossomed!

Which authors inspire me today? They all do as do the readers who buy their books. Everyone who has the courage to pen their imaginations, to give life to new worlds and voices, and to all our readers who encourage us, I give you my heartfelt thanks.

Cheers and happy writing (and reading too)!

Seeking Wisdom and Import from Bastions of the Banal

Guest Posts The Writing Life 1 Comment

A guest post by Quincy Allen.

Quincy 2Like so many born in the sixties, I was raised on television. In my case it was mostly cartoons, and I reveled in them because they took me “someplace else.” Even as a preschooler I found the real world to be banal. Something was always missing from the universe around me, a sense of purpose in crisis. To put it bluntly, suburbia was-and still is-a hive, one with few predators beyond shady car salesmen and cut-throat roofing companies.

By design, the culture of suburbia suppresses any sense of crisis, attempting to bubble-wrap existence at every turn. It strives to create cogs born and bred for the great machine that is our society. That’s not a condemnation, merely an observation. Such were my early stomping grounds, and many of us-particularly devotees of geekdom-have our roots in just such culture.

Interestingly, there is a misapprehension among many Americans raised in suburbia that the Chinese character for “crisis” is the same as the one for “opportunity.” While this is inaccurate, I believe many of us cling to the notion because it speaks to an inner-self that few ever explore in their daily lives. It is this same inner-self that appreciates the film Fight Club and why most of us remember the phrase, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger,” probably learned from the 1982 film Conan rather than from having read Nietzche.

These things speak to us because we’re all seeking something, and in suburban society we can only find it in fiction and films depicting the fantastic. What we seek is import and wisdom-a sense of participating meaningfully in great events that shape the fabric of existence-whilst going mindlessly along in whatever daily grind holds sway over our mortgages and rent payments. Yet we desperately hunger for the wisdom of the ages, learned through epic events that threaten our sense of existence, whatever that may be.

During my formative years-and thanks to my brother-I discovered a handful of authors who stole me away from the banal. Within their tales I was carried to the stars and bore witness to great events, learning from them as if I had been an active participant. I discovered places like Heinlein’s Mars and Zelazny’s Amber. I cut my imaginative teeth on stories spun by Asimov and Clarke, delving deeply into tomes like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume I (printed in 1971 and sitting on a shelf next to me as you read this). They were my first real exposure to import and wisdom, and done in a way that was both intriguing and meaningful to a tenant of the banal.

Philosophers-and they were philosophers-like Campbell, Sturgeon, Bradbury, and Leiber shaped what was a very young, hungry, and naive mind. I was the chalice to their wine, and what I learned between those pages read so long ago still shapes who and what I am today. Zelazny taught me what a shadow walk is and how to appreciate the significance of journey, even when I’m just hiking the Rockies. Heinlein gave me a comprehension of what it means to “grok” and helped me understand why a human should know how to “change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.” Thanks to Laumer I understand the difference between men of action and men of sophistry; I comprehend what loyalty is and have a sincere sense of duty in the face of personal sacrifice.

I am a son of many such fathers… and mothers like Le Guin and Sheldon who helped me understand the differences between the sexes and, more importantly, how shameful inequality in any society really is. I have many more such parents, but you get the point. These thinkers, these visionaries, shared with us their distinct notions of humanity, speculating upon “what if” we were to take current societal constructs and follow them to their inevitable conclusions. Either that or they took societal norms, turned them upside down, and held them up to the light for all to see.

And thus, having set out upon this journey of becoming an author in my own right, I find myself editing my second manuscript. In it I alter American history and explore bigotry, zealotry and sexism. I hold them up to the light and expose hypocrisy. I cast in harsh light those who would discriminate and subjugate, dealing with them via the heavy hand of a six-gun-packing privateer. It’s pure fantasy, to be sure, and pulpy, but under the surface there’s a theme of equality, of treating with other sentient beings in precisely the same manner we wish to be treated.

I can’t imagine that my work will be as highly regarded as those great visionaries who influenced me, but I can aspire to walk in their footsteps and-perhaps-make my own small contribution to what Arthur in Excalibur referred to as “future memory.”

It is a dream I have.

*            *            *

Quincy Allen has been published in multiple anthologies, online and print magazines, as well as in one omnibus. His steampunk version of Rumpelstiltskin is under contract with Fairy Punk Studios, and he’s written for the Internet radio show RadioSteam. His novel Chemical Burn-a finalist in the Rocky Mountain Writers Association Colorado Gold Writing Contest-was first published in June 2012, and has been picked up by Fantastic Journeys Publishing. His new novel, Jake Lasater and the Blood Curse of Atheon, will be on sale this summer, and he’s writing an off-world steampunk-esque series. You can follow his ongoing exploits on Facebook and at his website.