Spark in the Umbra

When I was at high school, my two best subjects were Physics and English. I loved fiction and drama and I was also rather partial to calculus and formulae.

It was a strange tension even then and it has never really left me.

Whilst geeks often have a fairly wide and eclectic palette of interests, most of my friends still had a single centre of geek gravity.

I definitely seemed to have two and they pulled in decidedly different directions, so I was forever caught between the worlds of Intellect and Emotion.

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This post is part of NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week which runs from Sept 14-20, which you can read more about here.

The week is a project of SpecFicNZ, a group of passionate and wildly creative individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside as we build an organisation for the support and promotion of Speculative Fiction writers in our little corner of the world.

Personally, I’ve always loved Speculative Fiction, well before I even knew of the concept. On the surface, Speculative Fiction is an umbrella term which spans across the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror which just happen to be my 3 favourite genres.

To my mind, what the 3 genres have in common and what I love so much is that they are all stories of encounters with The Other, something that transcends the everyday, whether it’s Other worlds, Other species, Other times, or the Other hidden within us.

For me, Speculative Fiction is all about Tales of the Other.

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It’s been far too long since I’ve posted here.

(No shit, Sherlock!)

I could make excuses about ‘life being busy’ and all that, but they would be just that.

Excuses.

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I recently joined the Critters on-line critiquing group.

So far it’s been a great experience. I ended up chatting with one of the other writers whose story I had submitted a critique on.

We got to talking about how we came to love the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

I know where mine comes from and it’s part of what makes me want to be a writer.

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Yeah, I know. Two posts in one night.

This was the post I was keen to write initially, but then I realised a whole lot had happened that I hadn’t written to give it context. So I’m on a roll.

Anyway, I mentioned that I’d decided to try my hand at writing some horror short stories.

A week or so ago, my wife and I were discussing our new vegetable garden and the predations of certain unwanted molluscs.

Which is a fancy way of saying that “slugs ate our radishes”.

Anyway, something happened during this discussion.

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Things have happened.

Good things.

And I figure this makes for a lousy journal if I don’t record them here since this is supposed to be all about my writing journey.

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Hrmm.. it’s been too long since I’ve written here. In the interim, I have been doing quite a bit of reading about writing (a weak excuse, I know).

Dwight Swain’s ‘Techniques of the Selling Writer’ in particular is a classic, amazingly written in 1965 but as fresh and inspiring as ever. I can also recommend James Scott Bell’s ‘Plot and Structure’, a far more recent but just as useful exposition on the nuts and bolts of building stories. Anyway. Enough about that.

You see, in some respects, I’ve gone and made this all rather difficult for myself. Which is rather typical of me, by the way. Most writers sensibly start with aiming at something small, like a short story or even a poem. Me, I had to pick a bloody novel. Which makes that whole virtuous feedback loop that comes from starting and then finishing something all rather distant. Hell, it’s makes it largely non-existent!

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This post has been a while in coming. I’ve been avoiding it. However, due to requests from my adoring (ahem) public I have been moved into action.

(Someone becomes a development manager and look what happens!)

This was a strange kind of writer’s block.

It’s not that I didn’t know what to write, rather that I was vacillating about whether to write it.

Why may soon become obvious. But more likely, it will remain opaque to you, dear reader, and the truth is that I’ve been soul-searching and agonising over reasons why I do or don’t need to write this for no valid external reason at all.

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You know you’ve passed a milestone (or is that millstone, or even worse, gallstone) when your doctor casually includes you in the class of middle-aged men for the first time.

You see, cholesterol is no longer my friend. Now I don’t have any of the true risk factors so whilst there is nothing to really worry about, she thinks it would be better for me to eat a little better and exercise a little more. No need to tempt fate.

Apparently, my situation is “classic for middle-aged men with young families”. Pow!

I suppose it’s fair enough – I have just turned 40 after all. But nevertheless, Ooof!

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It’s been a weird thing, deciding to actually post the initial drafts of the novel. Normally, what you see on the printed page is the result of much revision, editing, and rewriting.

First drafts are generally rough and flawed beasts, written to get the basics down. The author can take solace in the fact that no-one else ever needs to see them, with all their dialogue warts, plot holes, and missteps.

This helps to sustain the illusion that only polished, beguiling prose drips from the authors fingertips, like nectar. (Yeah, right!)

By choosing to post these drafts, I’ve effectively deprived myself of any such cover and that leaves me feeling rather exposed. I’m a bit of a perfectionist you see, and I have a bit too much tied up in maintaining that particular illusion.

So it’s probably healthy for me to push through this barrier, despite the fact that this pithy rationalisation is not doing much to calm my intemperate emotions.

Anyway, here is more of the introductory chapter which continues from where the previous post left off.

Please ignore the man behind the curtain.

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