Dark & Twisty

So this is my 100th Blog Entry, and I decided to make it epic.  I'm doing my year in review.

There are two major events that have marked this year for me. 

The most important thing that has shaped my year is the death of my father, Lacy Vickery.  He passed on April 22.  From the beginning of 2009 until that moment much of day to day activity revolved around helping my mother care for him as he slowly passed.  Then the rest of the year has dealt with the aftermath.  I have spent most of the year in a depressed funk.  I am just recently coming out of this. 

The second thing is I turned 30 this year. This had much less impact than it might otherwise have due to the most important event.  Nevertheless, I am thirty this year.  I made a milestone.

Other things: I still work on a psych unit despite not wanting to.  I'm still in school but now I'm going after an MFA instead of an MA.  I didn't make my goal for publication this year.  I fell one short.  I believe in keeping goals reasonable.  I planned for 4 publications and only made 3, but I was paid the most for a story at that time.

Other good things that happen is that I've made good connections with three editors. 

I finished the first draft of my thesis novel, only to have to completely rewrite it, but it is all good. 

Posted by Jared at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Things you should know about this horror writer.

1. I've never seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre  or any of the Romero Dead movies beyond the original Night of the Living Dead.

1.5 I have a severe phobia of chainsaws and all power saws, which is why I've never seen the TCM.  It is also the reason I won't go to spook houses on Halloween.

2. Beyond, my fear of power saws.  I am afraid of heights, but not really anything else.

3. I don't believe in ghosts, aliens, vampires, werewolves, mummies, monsters, and most zoocrypts.

4. I wrote my first master thesis on perception of humor.  I consider myself an expert on how humor is used as a coping skills.

5. Marionette puppets and vantriliquist dolls bother me (I suppose that is uncanny).

6. I only started seriously reading horror literature about 5 years ago.  Until then, I almost exclusively read classics.

7. My first published story was about a therapist who doesn't believe that his client was bitten by a zombie.

8. I write horror as a cathatric release.  I work on a psych unit.  I can't kill them, but I would sure like to some time.

9. My grandmother is terrified that I'm going to snap one day.

10. My favorite movie is Casablanca, my favorite book is The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Elton John is my favorite musical artist (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is the best album), none of which are horror stories.

The strange thing is that I don't have a lot of association of horror outside the study of it and my personal writing.  No horror novel or movie has become my favorite.  I don't look like I would write horror (scifi but not horror maybe fantasy).  I hate fantasy and most sci fi.

So there we go.

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In an essay by Berkencamp, she discusses how Misery is about a reader writer relationship.  This was a idea I had not thought of it.  Berkencamp discusses that this reader writer relationship goes beyond actual reading of words on paper and the creation of that kind of literature.

The essay discusses how the characters learn to read each other and then how each character writers the plot of their adventure.  This idea is fascinating.  To think that a story about a writer and a reader turns into a story where each writes and reads the other's adventure.  The characters are actual writing the other's horror story.

Annie is writing the best horror book Paul could dream of.  She is tormenting him with his own fears.  She takes away his ability to do for himself.  She keeps him on the edge of pain and addiction so to manipulate him into what she wants.  Why else would a writer burn his prize property if he wasn't made to do so?  Annie wrote it with torture. 

As the book progresses, it is easy to see that Paul is able to read Annie better.  At first, he needed to read and reread her before he learned her language.  He learns that Annie has more twists than any great adventure novel.  The problem is that this page turner will kill him.  Once Paul learns the story, he can work with it, and he does.  Paul starts to manipulate Annie by writing a mystery around himself.  He builds his story to match hers but doesn't give any clues that he is building himself up with the giant typwriter, or that he plans of burning his manuscript. 

In the end, Paul gives Annie her worst horror.  He burns her baby.  She doesn't read the clues that are provided, maybe because she is so into the story or because she is ignoring different things because she doesn't want to see it.

Berkencamp has an interested thesis. A thesis that I can get

Posted by Jared at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Pop culture and pop literature walk hand in hand.  Oftentimes, the culture popular at the time will influence what is written in popular literature.  The opposite is true as well.  When pop literature is examined through time, it is easy to see the popular culture of the time’s influence.  Charles Dickens, now considered to have transcended the status of pop fiction, wrote stories that were influenced by the culture of his day.  Pip worked in a sweatshop, gluing labels onto bottles.  Many children worked in similar sweatshops at that time.  The same can be true of the other poor characters Dickens wrote about.  Even though his stories dealt with social evils, the popular culture of that time was for those impoverished people to be treated such.  “And union workhouses? . . . Are they still in operation?” (Dickens, 1843) Scrooge asks. 

Perhaps the best example of how popular culture affects pop fiction can be seen in the Twentieth Century.  Nothing is more evident of how a pop cultural phenomenon affects pop literature than jazz.  When this musical style hit, literature picked up the culture and spread it around.  The works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and others of the “Lost Generation” picked up the banner and ran with it.  The thing is, now these authors are considered to be literary authors and held in esteem.  All they did was write for the popular audience often about pop cultural ideas.

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That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Today, I saw a woman's name.  It was Novella.  She was born before that title existed in literature.  But that got me to thinking.  What if we named people like Native Americans or other cultures did.

What if we wanted our Daughter to be named a short fictional tale longer than a short story.  We'd name her Novella or maybe Novellette.  Novellette sounds more French in origin.

How about Lyric, Stanza, Iambic, Foot, or Ballad?  What would these say about our child or us?

Come here Stanza; I have a job for you to do.

Ballad, you are so long winded and boring.

Would giving our children such names hinder them in life?

Could Lyric be taken seriously as a astrophysicist?

What if we named our children, Go-go, Can-can, Tango, or Burlesque?  What kind of life would that set up for them?

How about characters?  Could a character bearing the name Hiaku exist without reprecussions of believability.

The interesting thing is that yesterday, I was reading up on Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, the last War Chief in the US.  I saw Indian names like Man Afraid of His Horses, and Red Cloud.  What wonderful names, but what do they say about the people or character?

It's kind of like Scrooge.  That name fit so well the character, even Ebenezer, they both sound so miserly that they fit so well.  (Even though Ebenzer means rock of help.)

So, I've rambled.  Now I'm going to stop before my name becomes, Man Whose Wind Blows like a Hurricane.

Posted by Jared at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As I've been reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I started to think about all the characters similar to Hyde in Victorian England.  Of course, the first that comes to mind is Jack the Ripper. He is a very similar figure to Hyde, even though he didn't start killing until a year after this book was published. But I remember several other bloody characters besides Mr. Hyde.

One of the things that suprises me is how much Jekyll and Hyde seem like the Jack the Ripper cases.  I think I've seen too many Hammer Movies or other cinematic takes on the tale.  I looked up some things as well.

About a decade before the publication of the book and the Ripper murders, Victorians were haunted by a springheel Jack.  This was  a character or monster that looked like a human, committed murders and then sprang out of sight like he had, well, spring heels.  This is funny story but it is so much like Hyde and the Ripper that they fit together.  These tales might have even inspired Hyde.

Then there is of course the Demon Barber of Fleet Street Mr. Sweeny Todd.  He was before this time.  HE stalked around in the early 1800's penny dreadfuls, but his story was set earlier in the 1700's.

The thing is that Victorians, to have been so staunch and pragmatic, loved their bloody horror tales.  They seemed to relish in the gore of all these murders and what not.  That came up with wonder tales about the killers.  They saw a lot of death from disease and war, so bloody murders in real life and fiction and the mixtures of the two make sense for these folks.

I enjoy reading about these other bloody Victorians.  Just the other night my wife and I watched From Hell.  It was only the second time I watched it and her first.  I noticed so many similarities to Jekyll and Hyde though.

Posted by Jared at 07:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have some things to discuss today, but they don't really have much in common.  They have little in common with horror, I guess.

First things first, I hate drug addicts.  There I said it and its out in the open.  They ruin my otherwise perfectly planned day with idle psychotics.  They suck and more than valiums or meth. 

Number two, My friend J.B. reads this blog.  I forget this sometimes.  He sent me a text message yesterday that said he was going to the mullet toss.  I know what this is.  You toss fish.  In the gulf, we have fish called mullets.  People decide to throw them.  It's great fun.  The thing is, I like the other idea it conjures up.  Tossing men, women and children with mullets.  What a competition.  It could be an Olympic Sport.  The Americans should triumph.  Anyway, that's another random thing.

Third, Did I mention that I hate drug addicts?

Fourth, someone gave me a free copy of Tuesdays with Morrie.  I'm wondering what I did wrong.  Have I committed some henous crime that I'm being punished for?  Does this qualify as cruel and unusual punishment? 

Fifth, I hat drug addicts.  Have you got that yet?

Sixth, I set a goal for myself this year in writing.  I wanted to publish at least 4 short stories in 2009.  I'm one away from this goal having sold a story last night.  I'm excited but my short story stockpile is dwindling down.  I've got to get to writing some more.

My seventh rambling, I may have been sellling stories this year, but I've still fallen short of the goal of  being able to join HWA.  This I might have to put as a goal for 2010.  I don't like pushing goals back but after the rough year I've had, I think that would be fine.

Number 8, Did I mention my hate for drug addicts?

Nine Ladies dancing.

Ten is that I got paid today.  I'm paying off a small loan made for tution at SHU.  I'm excited about that.

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Today is Father's day, and for the first time in 30 years I am fatherless.  This is a very sad day for me.  Making it worse, is that it falls one day before the 2-month anniversary of my father's passing. 

I tried to avoid the holiday all toghter and I've done a pretty good job. I didn't buy a gift and attempted to keep from seeing comercials and other adverts.  Things seemed to have worked pretty well.  I aniticpated being very depressed today and that just doesn't seem to be the way things turned out.  It's a good thing because I can't handle spending weeks of dysphoria having to struggle to get out of bed in the morning. (more so than usual.)

Looking today at father's and son's, I had to do something strange to be with my dad.  I wore one of his shirts.  I can't be with him, but I was close to him. 

For those lucky enough to still have a father, good for you.  For those fathers have a happy day.

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So, today is my first day back from vacation in Pensacola Beach, Florida.  First thing first, I hate the beach, but this is a very pretty beach all the same.  I was able to find some really good shells that I was happy with.  I also got to eat at a lot of good places, but I must comment that I had too much seafood. 

While I was there, I figured out that writing scenes of dark horror are difficult to do while sitting on a brightly lit beach.  I was shocked.  I also discovered that stingrays jump out of the water. 

 Well, that's that.  I'm done with Florida.

Posted by Jared at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a very personal entry.  It's the obituary for my father who died at 2:30 am on April 22, 2009.

Lacy Vickery was my father.  He was born on October 1, 1951 in Alabama.  He lived the majority of his life there.  He was raised in rural Marion County which is near the Mississippi border.  He went to elementary school in a small town called Brillant before he moved to Parrish, where he lived the remainder of his life.

My father worked most of his life in the coal mines.  Most of that time was spent underground.  He helped build airshafts early on before actually mining the coal.  He finished out his career as a variety of former first a section forman then as an assistant mine former.  This was a good job for people around this area.  They made lots of money but the work was hard, and as most of the miners I know that worked with my father would tell you, no one worked harder than him.  My father only went through high school, but was well read.  He knew a little bit about everything.  He knew a lot about history, especially American.  He knew about electricity, and had fun with it when he could.  He was a fisherman who spent many days on the river catching bass and got really good at it.  He loved his family and did everything he could for them. 

All sons write things like this about their fathers, but this is true.  This is as true as what every son writes about his father after he is gone.  We do this because we cannot in life tell them how special they have been and what kind of heroes they were while living.  It makes us wusses.

My father battled colon cancer for 7 long years.  At times he seemed like he would beat it down and be as good as new, but at other times, he seemed on deaths door. This waffled back and forth many times until earlier this year.  At the beginning of 2009, it became evident that my father would not make it out of this year.  As the months rolled passed faster than I would like, he got worse and worse faster than any of us liked.  Finally he spent his last few weeks coming in and out of delirium, thinner than he had been since high school and unable to walk without assitance.  When I helped my father changed shirts, his chest sunk in and his muscle drooped.  My father never had drooping arm muscles.  He had hard biceps, viened and scarred from years of hard labor.  Cancer, the most evil of all villians, stripped him of everything.  Everything but his love for his family and his stubborn will to live as long as he could.  Even the villanous cancer took away that will at last.  My father struggled through his last day, laboring to breath and doped on morphine.  He final ceased his breathing at 2:30 am.  I had dozed and awoke to my mothers pitiful and agnozied sobs. 

I regret nothing.  I had a wonderful father who spent the last 7 years in and out of pain.  I spent as much quality time with him as I could and absorbed all I could from him.  The last good memory I have is sitting while he needed help up and down but was too himself and watching old Clint Eastwood westerns.  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  We couldn't decide why Clint, Lee Van Cleeve and Eli Wallach weren't all the ugly.

But now, he's gone and at 29, I'm fatherless and feeling a little bit like an orphan.  But I had a daddy once and he was a good one.  I thanked him in his last hours, and when the time came I gave him his dignity by dressing him in clothes like a man wears not the PJ's of man stripped of his manhood by horrible disease.

Posted by Jared at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, I've achieved alot in my 30 years.  My wife likes to say that my resume includes such highlights as climbing Mount Everest in high school, and winning the noble prize.  (I've done neither of these, however).  I have done alot.  This leads to being able to brag about a lot of accomplishments.  I'm going to brag for just a moment.

I graduated from grad school at 23 and started my career for which I've been at for nearly 6 years now.

I'm a published story writer (not a novelist yet, but working on it.)

I've travelled.

I teach adjunct at a junior college.

I own my own home and car.

But I still get the biggest boost of accomplishment when I finish reading a book.  This is the strangest feeling to me, but when I read the last word on the last page of a book (novel or whatnot) I feel like a million dollars.  Why?  What is it about finishing a book that is so fulfilling.  I get this feeling even with small novels like Dawn by Elie Weisel.  I don't get the same feeling when I finish writing a story.  I think it comes from my nonreading culture.  I'm not talk about my Southern heritage; I'm talking about my family culture.  We've always been more TV folks than readers.  I finished a book yesterday.  This was just a week after finishing another book.  I've read like eight just for class, not to mention the random other ones I read. 

I wish I could add that to my resume.  IT would make up for the lack climbing Everest or winning the nobel.

Posted by Jared at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I was totally blown away.  I was sitting today with my father, a biweekly activity.  I finished reading Jack Ketchem's Offspring.  It wasn't on my school approved reading list but it had similar themes to my thesis.  Anyway I'm doing a review later.  That's not what blew me away.

My mother arrived home and as we sat down to eat she asked me where the book was I left lying on the end table.  I told her I had just finished reading it.  She stated that my father's friend who has been sitting with him half days to help out had nearly finished it on Wednesday and wanted to take it home with him to finish.  This blew me away.  Firstly, I didn't know that this guy read.  Secondly, I had no idea he enjoyed such gory stories.  HE even admitted he liked it because of its intensity. 

This is a coal miner, who has never heard of Jack Ketchum nor of most of the  author's I've read but still enjoyed the story.  I'm blown away because, we (horror writers with really nasty ideas) have audiences.

I am shocked and amazed and happy.

Posted by Jared at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What makes a classic? That question gets asked everytime AMC or TCM gets turned on.  But what does make a classic?  Is it that people always think about that certain thing as the epitome or prototype of the institution that is supposed to be classic?

When talk about old cars, the machine must be 25 years old to get classic status.  That's great, that means that a 1984 Buick Skylark is a classic automobile, but you don't see many of those sitting around at carshows.  Everyday I drive to and from work I get to see another great "classic" car, a lime green AMC pacer.  Now that's classic.

With the 25 year earmark, New Coke would be a classic, but what would that make Coca-Cola Classic?   What about classic albums that came out on vinyl?  Do we have to enjoy them on that antiquated mode of communication?

Does quality have anything to do with the making of a classic?  Obiviously with Coca-Cola it does.  New Coke (now old coke or if you will classic new coke) didn't have the same Coke quality.  It was fine for Pepsi quality.  Does the vinyl make an album classic?  Of course not, think of all the crap on vinyl.  What about television?  Why is it that something like Family Matters is classic but Small Wonder is forgotten by all but a few.

Classics.  I want to be forgotten.  I don't want to be the instant classic.  If you are, you have nothing else to shoot for.  When you hit hte top, the only place to go is down.  Think about Coke and of course classic New Coke, the chose of a forgotten generation of classic stuff that ain't so classic.

Posted by Jared at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, so I lost my old blog.  I lost my wife's interview about monsters.  Here is a new interview with her about things scary.  Please note that she is not a fan of horror or reading horror novels. (But we're working on that.)

Why don't you like horror? Lauren: Well, I guess I don't like it at the time.  I don't like it when things jump out.  I don't like to be startled.  The more psychological things, like Halloween, bother me later because they are too real.  They are like things that could actually happen to you.  I think on it too hard.

So we've discussed a variety of monsters, what is the scariest monster for you? Lauren: Like an actual monster? [yes].  I don't know.  A lot of monsters don't actually scare me that bad.  As a kid, I was terribly frightened by the Gremlins.  I guess I'm more scared of people than monsters.  I can think of one thing that always freaked me out.  That truck from the movie Duel.  I didn't like that it really bothered me.

Did you know that Duel was a book first? Lauren: Yeah. Wasn't it a Stephen King book?

So what about the Exorcist? Lauren: It sucked. If you're asking me if it was scary, ah . . . no.  You hear all these things about the exorcist, you would think that me a scaredy cat would be frightened.  The creepiest thing was the girl's makeup.  There was too much of the movie that was unnecessary.  After studying demon possession, there wasn't much to it.

Talking about devil children, how about Rosemary's Baby? Lauren: The movie, I haven't read the book, wasn't really all that scary.  It was curious because you don't really understand what's going on.  Until you think you haven't at the end, unless she's just crazy.  Even so, nothing bad happens in the movie.  it's not all that frightening.

 So how about Jaws? Lauren: Didn't you ask me about Jaws the last time.  It's scarier than somethings because they really are sharks and you hear of people seriously or mortally injured by sharks.  Because it is based on a true story, it's too much food for thought.  It lingers.

What about Hammer Horror movies? Lauren: I thik to most modern people, even anti-horror people like me.  Hammer horror seems, quant.  It's supposed to be scary and was intended so in the time it was made, but it's kind of like reading Dracula, it's just old fashion enough to not be scary.

So you're a history teacher, whose scarier Abraham Lincoln or Harry S. Truman? Lauren: Why those two?  In the looks department, Lincoln.  In terms of capabilities, probably Truman.

Again as a history teacher, who would you least like to meet in a dark alley U.S. Grant or Walt Whitman? Laren: I don't know enough about Walt Whitman to make that decision, and how drunk is Grant?

Okay, John Q. Adams or Mike Arnzen? Lauren: Ooh, definitely Mike Arnzen.

One last question, what is the creepiest song you know? Lauren: Can it be a like just movie music or a song? [Doesn't matter].  Probably the music from the shower scene from Psycho.

Posted by Jared at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bram Stoker left a legacy, Dracula.  His vampire character through cinema and constant publication has become the king of the vampires.  Every vampyric  creature since his novel owes a debt to the count. 

The image of vampire and the word Dracula walk hand in hand.  If you show a picture of any vampire, be it Count Yorga, Count Chocula, the Count from Sesame Street, Lestat, and people will say “Dracula”.  The dark brooding image of Bela Legosi’s character has permanently made Dracula an archetype. 

From a writer’s perspective this can be a good thing.  It is a ready made character just add blood. (For the love of everything don’t add water.)  The problem comes from it’s too easy.  There are vampires everywhere.  They brood and look sexy and of course drinks blood.  They have become so common writing a traditional vampire story is like driving a stake into your own productivity.

In an introduction to Salem’s Lot, Stephen King wrote that he enjoyed both the Dracula-like vampires, but also the Count Orlock-type he saw in comic books.  He stated the his mother felt they were both junk.  The strange thing is that Count Orlock was a copy of Dracula. 

Now, we look at romanticized vampires that sparkle or have other extraordinary issues that are lovely.  Dracula was none of that.  He was evil and ugly. 

He is the king of the vampires, but he is not what people think he is.  They see the Bela Legosi version and think that is Dracula.  What a problem.  It is the curse of Dracula’s legacy, that and the need for more “nontraditional” vampire stories. 

Posted by Jared at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have decided that writing is hard.  It is time consuming and ego affecting.  Lately, even with all the other stressors in my life, it has become the second worst one I face.  That's scary.  It's passed my psychiatric unit job, smart allecky students, and poverty.  That's saying alot. 

I feel more insecure now than I have in al ong time.  It's not about the massive weight gain I've had (25 + lbs since the summer) it's about writing.  Wow, I'm actually more concerned about writing than weight.  My body dysmorphic disorder is not very happy right now. 

Posted by Jared at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)