When We Were Young and the Shadows Were Deep

For the past few weeks, I've been writing a lot of horror, including two short stories which are now finished, and the beginning of a longer story that will be the first of a series heavily influenced by HP Lovecraft. All this horror had me thinking of certain events in my childhood that I think were somewhat responsible for planting the seeds of my interest in gruesome fiction. As more and more of these memories resurfaced, I decided it would make a good subject for a blog. I then thought it might be fun to present two writers' thoughts on the subject, so I invited my friend Wendy Potocki, author of horror novels including Black Adagio and Trillingham to join me. So here we have two essays about things in our childhoods that we suspect played a part in our growing up to be horror writers.

From the Cradle to Writing About Graves

By Aaron Smith

When it comes to writing, one thing I’m very happy about is the fact that I’m able to write in many different genres. I’ve done mysteries, thrillers, urban fantasy, science fiction, and even a western. But I have to admit that one genre affects me in ways that most others don’t. It feels, when working in this particular genre, like I’m digging deep into my mind and pulling up, sometimes easily and other times forcibly, things that have been buried deeply in there for most of my life. That genre is horror. In some ways, horror is easier to write than other types of stories. At its best, it feels natural. But, at other times, it can be difficult, and I can even, when it’s really working, scare myself. Horror is powerful, personal, and satisfying.  

            But where does it begin? How does one acquire the impulse to explore and write about the bizarre, the grotesque, and the terrible? What makes a person, especially one who is essentially nice, quiet, and mostly gentle crave the act of putting into words ideas designed to make readers cringe, squirm, have nightmares, and maybe even get a bit nauseous?

            As I’ve been writing more horror lately, images and memories have been coming to the surface of my mind. I’m seeing bits and pieces of the events, sights, words that I now believe triggered the feelings of awe, wonder, fear, and dread that eventually led to my interest in horror. What have been resurfacing are moments of my childhood.

            Stop! Don’t make assumptions yet! I’m not about to reveal some deep, dark secrets or tell the world that repressed memories of abuse or violence have jumped up and shown themselves. It’s nothing like that.

            For the most part, I had a very happy childhood. I had good parents and grandparents and some fine teachers. I wasn’t a popular kid and didn’t have many close friends, but that was all right, since I was the solitary kind anyway, an introvert who loved to read (which is another thing that made me a writer).

            So, no, there are no traumatic memories to be spoken of in this essay. What I do want to talk about are the ways in which innocent events of childhood can be filtered through the imagination of a child and made into something deeper and perhaps frightening. Those are the things that I believe contributed to my love of the horror genre. You see, as a kid with a vivid imagination grows up, he or she sees and hears things but can’t quite, due to being young and not having sufficient life experience to form a frame of reference, understand them. So the natural process is for that child to fill in the blanks, either knowingly or unaware of the act, and come up with an explanation. Maybe it’s this instinct to struggle for an explanation of what one doesn’t yet understand that inspires some kids, the naturally curious kind, to grow up to be scientists, and others of the same sort but with different inclinations, to become horror writers (did I just hit upon the reason so many horror writers like HP Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, Richard Matheson, and HG Wells incorporated nightmarish versions of scientific progress into their work?).

            Anyway, I was that sort of child: curious, always wondering, and often easily frightened by what I now realize were my own attempts to fill in the blanks in my understanding of the world, its people, and its situations.

            That’s the reason I think I write horror now. It’s also the reason I felt a certain sense of familiarity, like I was visiting a place I’d been before, when I first read the works of such authors as Bram Stoker, JRR Tolkein (not strictly horror, but there was some scary stuff in Middle Earth), and especially HP Lovecraft, who was a master of writing about the world that sits just beyond the edges of our known “reality,” and so really understood how the fill-in-the-blanks mode of the mind can be a wonderfully terrifying thing.

            Here are some examples of what triggered my mind’s flights during childhood and sent me down the road to embracing horror.

            I can blame my grandmother (or thank her, depending on your point of view) for some of it. I think she was the person who introduced me to vampires, which are a type of monster that really fascinated and scared me when I was young, so much so that it was inevitable that I’d eventually write two (so far) novels about them. But what was my first encounter with the blood-drinking undead? I’m pretty sure it was the stories Grandma used to tell me when it was time for bed (I’m not joking! Dracula was her idea of a good subject for a bedtime story, and she also told me about Jack the Ripper; the murders by knife were included, but she left out the fact that the victims were prostitutes). So, thanks to her, I got an idea very early in life that there just might be creatures out there that wanted to bite me and drink my blood!

            So now I had some idea about vampires, a frame of reference for when I began to notice them popping up and creeping about in the fiction I was exposed to. And since Grandma’s stories had embedded themselves in my mind and my imagination had gone to work on the concept, any depiction of vampires I came across, no matter how tame it really was, wound up being magnified a thousand times when filtered through my brain. The space vampires episode of the not so great Buck Rodgers TV series starring Gil Gerard scared me silly, as did the mere mention of vampires in an episode of Thundarr the Barbarian, an early 80s animated series. And when I got a tiny glimpse of something vampire-related but didn’t get to see it through to its conclusion, my mind had even more blanks to fill in and really went wild. I recall one afternoon, a calm day when I was home being bored as my mother wandered around the house doing laundry and cleaning. I was sitting in front of the TV while she ironed. She came across Dracula, Prince of Darkness on Channel 5. It’s one of those mid-60s Hammer horror films with Christopher Lee as the count. It sounded interesting. I remember seeing the ivy-covered exterior wall of a castle, a few actors in period costumes, and then nothing. I fell asleep. When I woke up, the TV was off. I asked what had happened to the movie. The only thing my mother, who is a very squeamish person, I later realized, had to say was, “It was horrible!” I never did see the rest of the movie until I was well into adulthood. I love the Hammer movies now, and I see they’re mostly harmless, with very little actual gore compared to what’s come later in horror films, but that one little statement from Mom about how horrible it had been sent my mind racing with images of blood far worse than anything in any movie of the time.

            Perhaps the ultimate vampire-related moment of my childhood was when I convinced myself Dracula was buried only a ten minute drive from my home! In the town of West Paterson, New Jersey (now renamed Woodland Park to avoid association with the neighboring Paterson, which is a city with a bad reputation) is a memorial to residents who served in the first World War (in fact, my great-grandfather’s name is inscribed there). It’s a big stone block with a plaque on the front and a sculpture of an eagle on top. But, driving past it at twilight, I thought it was a grave with a bat perched above it. Therefore, I concluded, it just had to be the burial site of the lord of vampires! Yes, I thought if I had the misfortune to be stranded on that spot around midnight, I’d probably see a pale, long-nailed hand dig its way out of the soil and Dracula would live again and probably prey on the unfortunate kid who happened to be closest.

            That I was scared of vampires at that age makes sense, since they’re such a big part of popular culture that one can’t help hearing about them from time to time. Even had I not been exposed to them so early in life, I’m sure I would have discovered vampires eventually and maybe been just as interested in them. Vampires are designed to frighten people. Why else would so many writers of books, movies, etc. feel compelled to use them as subject matter?

            But I can recall many other things, some of them quite mundane, which put fascinating and frightening ideas in my mind. Those things, probably more than Dracula and his kind did, added up to make me a horror fan and then a horror creator.

            I didn’t read the work of my favorite horror writer, HP Lovecraft, until I was about thirty, but when I finally did, it felt strangely familiar, almost as if my mind worked in the same way as his. If I believed in reincarnation, I might be tempted to come up with some theories about that, but I don’t, so I won’t.

            Lovecraft’s work often had to do with someone traveling into an unfamiliar area, an old town or city with areas, or all of it, in a dilapidated condition, its citizens exhibiting odd or hostile behavior, its streets and houses containing dark secrets. That’s probably why I feel so at home in Lovecraft Country.

            When I was a boy, I loved traveling. I thrived on long rides through unfamiliar regions, staring out the car windows and observing sights I was unused to. My grandparents lived in Paterson, New Jersey, the same city in which I grew up. Paterson is a big city as far as places in New Jersey go. It’s partially urban, with the rest made up of tightly populated suburbs, block after block of homes and businesses. I was used to the city. So, some of my favorite memories are of the times my grandparents would take me up to their little country house on Saturdays. They owned it for years, a small red cabin in the woods of Westbrookville, New York. They visited it maybe two dozen times a year, took the long drive up through the small towns of northern New Jersey, then deep into rural New York State. I went with them a handful of times each year, in all different seasons so that one time it might be the height of summer and another time Grandpa might have to dig out a parking space in the long, unpaved driveway a day or two after a heavy snowfall. I loved that property, with its forest, the brook that babbled its way through, and the feeling of serene separation from the constant background noise of home.

            I felt safe at home. I felt safe “up the country,” as we used to call it. But the stretch of in-between, the journey from Paterson to Westbrookville, was the most interesting part. On those drives, with Grandpa behind the wheel navigating the trip he’d made hundreds of times before, and me in the back of his big Chevy Suburban, trying to see everything there was to see for those two hours on the road, I began to (not quite consciously) ask the question I’ve now come to refer to as, “What Hides Off the Highway?”

            As adults, we get used to the idea that people live differently in different places and that not all towns or cities look the same. We absorb ideas for years by reading, watching, or just living. But kids don’t have the experience to possess such a frame of reference. To them, going to strange new places can be as interesting and feel as alien as it might feel for Captain Kirk and his crew to beam down to planets far, far away from Earth. So, imagine how fascinating it was for me, at a young age, to travel out of the closely populated, tightly built city I was used to and find myself passing through rural roads that wound like snakes through tiny towns where the air smelled like hay and cow manure, where rusty old silos stood guard over pumpkin patches, where one could buy a fishing license at the only local deli, where hints of dilapidation and decrepitude were present everywhere, and where shops, restaurants, and homes often looked like they’d been frozen in time since the 60s or 50s or even since the Depression.

            It was a land of lifestyles I wasn’t used to seeing (farm life is much different than city existence; just ask Oliver and Lisa Douglas. How many people reading this know what I’m referencing?), a vast stretch of fields, cows, rust, and woods that seemed to stretch on forever. How, I wondered, could such an alien landscape not hold dark secrets? And so I was glad when we passed each turn off the main highway (which itself was much narrower than the highways closer to home) so we wouldn’t encounter any of the beasts or eccentrics that lurked along the side routes. Yes, I loved and feared that feeling, enjoyed those journeys tremendously. So much so that when, years later, I read the work of Lovecraft, I knew exactly where he was coming from. It was the same effect that made movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seem so dreadfully real, because I’d been down those lonely, foreboding roads myself at an age when the mind is most impressionable. Luckily, the grandparents and I never ran into Leatherface or the cultists of Innsmouth or anything worthy of Mulder and Scully’s attention, but I sure thought it was possible that we might! Now, so many years later, I love to ponder dark, strange places, towns where strangers are unwelcome and in danger, and even how some areas really do seem frozen in a time long since passed in most of the world (there’s a whole section about such a town in my first vampire novel, 100,000 Midnights).

            Those trips into New York State had a serious impact on me. Great memories combined with frightening possibilities spring to mind whenever I think back to those long drives.  

            As I sit here typing, even more memories come to the surface. I think of the mall close to where I lived. That place had its share of sights that made me wonder, made me guess at the nature of things I didn’t yet understand, and even scared me. I remember being there with my parents or grandparents, walking around with them as they shopped, and seeing so many different kinds of people. It was the early 80s and there were punks with their strange hair and makeup, looking like creatures from space to me. There were the heavy metal fans too, and you know what really scared me about them? Iron Maiden T-shirts! As a kid of five or six years old, I had no idea Iron Maiden was a band, and they always had gruesome (maybe not so scary to an adult, but to a child …) images on their shirts and posters. Why, I wondered with my young mind, were these people walking around with such horrific pictures decorating their clothes? I shuddered to think what they did when they were away from the public, when those police who patrolled the mall (security guards, not actual cops, I realized later) weren’t there to keep an eye on them? They were just T-shirts, but they made a big impression on me. I suspect, thinking about it now, that the art on those shirts may have inspired my later interest in the gruesome illustrations in horror comics or the fact that I always noticed horror movie posters and wanted to see the films they represented, though I was, in many cases, too young to see them at the times of their release.  

            Although I saw those T-shirts, it wasn’t until years later that I actually heard the music of Iron Maiden. But music did have an ability to make me ponder some rather dark ideas when I was a child. And it wasn’t intentionally scary music like heavy metal that did it (although I did find Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” a bit frightening, especially the part spoken by Vincent Price. Years later, I wouldn’t consider myself a Jackson fan, but I sure as hell love many of Vincent Price’s films). Rather, it was the 60s and 70s soft rock my parents listened to. That was, after all, the majority of the music I was exposed to then. Whatever they had playing on the car radio was what I had no choice but to hear. When I hear those songs now, I understand more of the lyrical content. I get it now, but back then a stray scrap of words could send my mind running down some morbid paths. One example that springs to mind is Don McLean’s masterpiece, “American Pie,” which I now know is a complicated, wonderful poem on the history of rock during its first two decades or so. Back then, though, that tangled mass of lyrics was mostly indecipherable to me, but what jumped out was the chorus’s repeated, “This will be the day that I die.” How scary would that sound to a little kid? Somebody stating out loud the certain knowledge that the end of their life is about to occur!

            And, since we’re on the subject of death (a topic which is, undoubtedly, at the very core of most horror fiction) I’m now thinking about the first few times my life was touched by the grim reaper.

            I was lucky. Nobody I was close to ever died abruptly during my childhood, so I never really felt the shock of death. Two of my grandparents and the only great-grandmother I knew are now gone, but those losses were not especially painful ones. My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother both lived very long, full, mostly healthy lives (87 and 97, respectively), so there was no sorrow at their passing. My grandfather died after a long illness during which that once strong, confident man was reduced to a pain-ridden, fragile shell of what he’d been, so his leaving this life was, in many ways, a relief to me. By the time anyone I knew well died in any way that might be perceived as tragic (at least when I was aware of the cause of death), I was an adult and far better equipped to handle it. However, I do have one strong memory of death from when I was about six or seven. I think what scared me at that point in my life wasn’t so much the idea that someone had died, but the fact that I was given too little information about how it had happened. That being said, I can’t blame my parents in this case, for what they told me was too little, but the whole truth would have been far too much for me to take at that age. 

            I walked into the kitchen one day to find my mother crying. I asked what was wrong. She told me my great-aunt had died (I didn’t know her very well, so I didn’t get upset. I also suspect that I didn’t yet understand the true meaning of death: its permanence, the way it changes the lives of everyone who knew the deceased). Of course, I asked what had happened. My mother told me, simply, that Aunt ___ had been sick for a long time. I let it go at that. Of course, my imagination took over. What was “a long time?” To a kid, that might mean an hour! What was “sick?” To a kid, that might mean a stomach ache or a cold. That was all the explanation I got, so the next time I got “sick” I was terrified, and the longer the illness went on (which was probably a day or two, but that can seem like forever to a child) the more convinced I was that I’d end up dead too!

            As for the true details, the poor woman had long suffered from depression and had committed suicide, which is something I didn’t learn until I was grown up, so now I can understand why my mother’s explanation was so vague.

            With time, of course, I understood the difference between a “long time” and a truly long time. I also understood the difference between serious illness of the potentially fatal kind and minor illnesses that seem like horrible ordeals for the brief span they last. Time teaches lessons and time heals wounds, and time is also responsible for giving us history, which is a subject that’s always fascinated me. I enjoy reading about what life was like in the past, whether mere decades ago or centuries or even longer. And it’s not just words on the pages of history books that interest me. It’s also images or objects of the past, or, to take it a step further and combine the two, objects that bear images of the past. In other words, the art of days long ago is always interesting to see, for there we find ideas and thoughts as the people of those times actually considered them. One particular example of old art comes to mind as I explore the memories of my childhood.  

            I’ll never forget the evening I first saw one. On the second floor of the mall (the same mall where I’d first seen those Iron Maiden T-shirts) was a little shop that sold the sort of junk my mother liked to decorate the house with, craft-type stuff and wreaths and baskets and cast iron napkin holders and plaques bearing silly sayings that are supposed to be clever or inspiring.  I was bored out of my mind during one visit to the place when a set of placemats, of all things, caught my attention and wouldn’t let go. Printed on those mats was one of those old-fashioned maps of the world. Continents were represented with some degree of accuracy, though not entirely accurate. But it was the spaces between land masses that captivated me. These were not empty blue oceans, but vast stretches of sea populated in certain spots by sea monsters! I’m sure you’ve seen these maps. The watery sections are punctuated by a giant serpent here, a tentacle monstrosity there, a scattered assortment of things you wouldn’t want suddenly rising up out of churning waves to dwarf your ship (like in the wonderful two-page spread drawn by Michael Zulli in one of the later issues of Neil Gaiman’s brilliant comic book series Sandman). I was fascinated by the idea that massive creatures of the deep, much more menacing than whales, might have once lived. I was too young to see Jaws and probably would have freaked out if I had, even if the great white shark was tame in comparison to the species on the map.

            This interest in sea monsters went even deeper when I first visited one of my favorite places in the world, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Most kids, I suspect, are most impressed by the bones of the tyrannosaurus or the triceratops, but I was entranced by the ocean-dwelling beasts of the prehistoric age, like the menacing Mosasaur with its enormous size, fast swimming speed, and rows of razor-sharp fangs.

            Oh, and I absolutely refused, refused, refused to stand under the huge replica blue whale that hangs from the ceiling of the Hall of Ocean Life. I didn’t care if it had been successfully and safely secured up there for years and years. I was sure it would choose the precise moment of my arrival in its awesome shadow to come down and crush the life out of me!              

            My interest in the things that once stalked, or, I hoped, still stalk the deep wet places of the world increased exponentially after that visit to the museum, but that wasn’t all I got from my trip to that wonderful building.

            The American Museum of Natural History literally and permanently changed my life in ways that are most certainly reflected in my writing now, over thirty years later. Suddenly seeing, in one busy day, hundreds of animal species and dozens of artifacts from long-ago historical periods, learning about how people lived ages before the present, and gaining for the first time a fraction of an understanding of some of the strange ancient superstitions and religious beliefs once held by members of the human race had an enormous impact on my mind. I truly believe that day may have been the instigator of my interests in history, mythology, science, and other subjects, all of which have encouraged me to gather knowledge and conceive ideas that have shown up in my writing, including my fantasy and horror stories. While it’s impossible now to trace all the paths of thought that led me to where I am today, I’d bet a good portion of those roads were first stepped onto on that wonderful day.

            Incidentally, my favorite room in the museum has become, over the course of many visits over the years, the Hall of Northwest Indians. That room probably triggered, more than any other place I’ve been, my fascination with religion, superstition, and the supernatural (not that I believe in any of that, but it’s amazing, inspiring, and not just a little frightening that so many people have in the past and still do today). I was absolutely delighted when I learned years later that one of my favorite authors, world famous expert on mythology, Joseph Campbell, credited that very same room with jumpstarting his interest in the subject.

            That room, with its high ceiling, wooden floors that make footsteps echo, huge totem poles, and grotesque ceremonial masks, has been left mostly as it’s been since Campbell saw it as a child decades before I did. I suspect that if that room is ever remodeled, a segment of my soul will shrivel and die.

            So there you have it. I’ve just talked about a handful of experiences from my childhood that I think had a lot to do with me growing up to be a horror writer. There are other memories too, little moments, sights, and thoughts that made their own contributions to the morbid neighborhoods of my mind. Things like my grandfather’s stories of Europe during World War II. I still have a few of the souvenirs he brought home from the war: the Nazi armband with the bloodstains and bullet hole, and the binoculars he claimed to have taken from a headless German corpse. I also remember that he never ate chicken after the war; a meal they fed the troops made him so sick he couldn’t bear the thought of ever eating that particular kind of bird ever again.

            There were dreams too, certain nighttime movies that played in my head repeatedly during the years I was growing up, like the one about the girl on the beach running from something, begging me to help her hide. I never did find out what had frightened her so, but I’ll never forget the vivid streaks of blood on her white shirt. There were also dreams of the underground tunnels one could crawl into if one dared go through the hole under the lowest shelf of the storage closet in the back of the basement (this idea has a prominent place in the horror story I’m working on right now). If one ventured far enough into those passages, he’d hear chanting and maybe even catch a glimpse of the robed subterranean monks that apparently lived under Paterson. Come to think of it, maybe that’s where a few of my grammar school teachers lived when they weren’t at school. That would explain a lot! 

            Wow! After having written these nearly 5,000 words about possible influences on my desire to write the scary stuff, I feel like I’ve just been catapulted back to my childhood, spun around in the cement mixer of my mind a few thousand times, and spit back to the present! I’ve had enough for now, although I’m sure I’ll remember a few dozen things I’ll wish I’d included. As an adult and a writer, it’s sometimes easy and sometimes difficult to pinpoint the various themes that seem to occur frequently in my stories. Trying to trace those concepts back to their deeply buried roots has been a lot of fun, and a little disturbing at times. I hope you found it interesting. That’s enough about me for now. My characters need my attention.   

If anyone reading this hasn't sampled any of my horror writing, I'm happy to report that my zombie novel, Chicago Fell First, is on sale for Kindle this week, at only 99 cents, so now's your chance!

And now, on to Wendy's part of the blog!

The World Where Children Live 

By Wendy Potocki

When the idea of writing on this subject was first presented to me, I was intrigued. Not so much by what happened to me as to me as a child, but more by what I’d forgotten. Tender perspectives, attitudes, fears and uncertainty had been erased from my thinking patterns and put in some back drawer where dust collected on youthful promise. I’m not sure why that happened since there is something so decidedly charming about the time spent as a youth Put succinctly, it’s magical.

     I suppose the main reason for childhood being a perpetual anything-can-happen high is because children are not miniature adults. Repeat NOT. Never were and never will be—at least not until we hit puberty. Then all that enchantment goes away and we never think we see dragons in the closet again. But until that happens, wee ones live in a universe adults could never comprehend. But like Neverland, we outgrow this domain—and the memories, too. At least I did, and it’s a real shame. So here’s a refresher course in what I went through and chose to forget until that talemeister Aaron Smith rattled my chains.

     The realm I inhabited as a child was a highly-charged affair. In this domain, the ability to imagine was encouraged and flourished to the point of overflowing like an unattended tub. While this dreamlike state was the norm, the use of mental weaponry in conjuring up dangerous ideas caused a few consequences. Just as dreams sometimes morph into nightmares, my undeveloped frontal cortex allowed some pretty strange thoughts to intrude and take over the mundane affair of growing up in a household that was about as exciting as a tennis racket with no strings. But my neurons firing on the toddler setting turned all that around. Hence the food that was served by my loving mom became a source of contention. Instead of ingesting the nutritious offering, I probed one of numerous charred cubes with suspicion while forking it to death in order to learn what it really was. After all, I couldn’t really trust my mother, could I? And whose word did I have that she was even who she claimed to be? For all I knew, she could be an imposter, as phony as the piece of unrecognizable protein that was set before me. And so I speared at it with sharp prongs, watching a slightly pinkish-brown liquid spill out a new set of holes. It was clearly not pork … or chicken. But how about an alien form of life? Could be … could very well be. It’s how the family dog became the official taste tester. I figured if he didn’t sprout another leg or tail by the end of next week, that piece of meat might just be chewed and swallowed by the intended recipient the next time. I’m sure it’s how Gordon Ramsay got his start.

     As spelled out above, my youth was damned by odd stirrings of dramatic non sequiturs. They’d pull me out of reality, putting me on the Road of Tangents faster than my father could yell, “Finish your homework or it’s no TV!” It’s not that I wasn’t trying to learn what the heck prime numbers were, but these bouts with delirium would send me pinging off imaginary walls for hours, days and weeks at a time. The mental obsessions I created would sometimes disappear along with the trolls that once inhabited the backyard, but sometimes they’d morph into my own personal urban legends. Like that house I used to pass on my walk to school every day … the stone one … covered in English ivy.

     Why didn’t anyone else notice how weird it was? How it gave off strange vibes and seemed to watch when someone passed by? How the front lawn was always manicured to perfection, but by who? No one ever came or went. Nor did a child living in it attend our school. That had to tell you something right there because everyone had kids. And I mean, everyone. Then there were the windows. Why were they always dark? It could be explained in the daytime, but how about when my father drove past it at night? See what I mean? Crazy Town, right? I’d press my nose against the backseat window and wait to see if something had changed, but it was always the same. No lights were ever on. It signified to me that no human occupied that territory. A giant red X was mentally spray painted over the entirety of the structure. Satan surely had to be in there somewhere … just waiting to suck out my soul.

The whole affair was enough to start me probing my friends for answers. What was their opinion of the House with Nobody Home? At first, I received blank stares when the topic was raised, but I smart-assedly crossed my arms and dug in. If they thought they could prove me wrong, let ‘em try. “Offer me solid evidence,” I insisted in language probably dumbed down by the lack of a few decades and the ingestion of Twinkies. And Twinkies is its own food group you know. I should since I scarfed down enough to be intimately acquainted. But their dismissive smirks were soon history. I knew they couldn’t prove jack shit so I piled on the evidence.

     “Why are there no holiday decorations? Ever? Like at Christmas?” I continued. I knew I was onto something. Every other father in the neighborhood was up there teetering on ladders and swearing at holiday time. It was where most of us learned our best four-letter words. And just happenstancily, it was right around Octoberfest. In a couple of weeks it would be the big “H”, “A” double “L,” “O” time. Add in weenie, and you had yourself a holiday that would make your teeth ache for it to occur more often. A quick glance around the neighborhood confirmed every other house was already outfitted in tacky orange and black decorations. Witches, black cats and Jack O’ Lanterns abounded, but not on the Nobody Home property. Even the steps were bare. In my mind, it read “Guilty,” and I was ready to throw the switch.

When an annoying friend tried to explain away the discrepancy by saying the occupants might not know of the holiday, I fired back the definitive defense. “Who doesn’t know about Halloween?” Ha! The argument was as conclusive as a .24 caliber bullet entering her brain. That would teach her. My summation stopped all those that would have latched onto the pathetic excuse and I ended up winning the day. It’s how I initiated all my friends into the charmed circle of those that knew the Nobody Home home was to be avoided at all costs. It meant running by it when walking alone and never, ever ringing the doorbell on October 31^st. No telling what might answer. But that wasn’t the end of my terror-filled, halcyon days. There was that clock.

It was merely a present. A trinket given to cheer me up. I’d taken ill and had been moping in bed with nothing to do other than drink orange juice. My mother insisted it cured everything, and I guess she was right because I am still here. Anyway, I was taking the high temperatures and sweats in stride like the good little trooper I was, and so my dad brought home this gift as some sort of reward. It was a clock—one suiting a five-year-old child. It was shaped like a dog, a yellow one. I supposed it was intended to be a stylized cocker spaniel, but it was really hard to tell. All I can say is that it had long black ears, black eyes and a little red tongue that lolled out of its mouth. I was delighted when I first opened the package, but I hadn’t yet discovered that it was cursed.

     It took a few hours for me to realize the full dimensions of the act of kindness. Until then, the dog clock was a Good Housekeeping approved, blue-medal-winning child’s toy. I held it in my hands, laughing at the silly expression and stroking the plastic that was painted to resemble soft fur. Placing it on my pillow, I confided in the perennially happy puppy how sick I was of being sick, and how I couldn’t wait to get outside and play. All the while, the toy remained the safe, inanimate item it purported to be. But around five o’clock, that all changed for the worse when the unimaginable happened. My father came into the room and … PLUGGED IT IN!

     Oh, my God! A nightmare was launched—birthed right in my very own bedroom! With the horrible sound of w-www-ww-u-uu-u-r-rrr-rrrrr, those pit-of-hell eyes began to move. Back and forth they shifted as the tongue swung from side-to-side like a machete in the hand of a psychopath. I was dumbfounded! I listened to that fearsome grinding wishing that a bomb would drop from the sky and blast it out of existence, but did I tell my parents of my fears? Of course not! I took it upon my tiny shoulders to fight this demon anyway I could.  

     Shortly after all the happiness officially ended for me—and we’re talking forever—I was served my supper on a little pink tray, but the irritating noise and fitful jerking motions continued. A diabolical staredown began in earnest. I’d determined that I could not look away, because if I did, that mechanical monster would surely attack. The not looking away made eating difficult, but I could forego one supper. Groping for the juice glass, I tried to figure out what my father had been thinking in purchasing the travesty. Didn’t he know that automatons were programmed to kill children in their sleep? But maybe that was the point. Maybe he wanted me dead.

     That solution to the puzzle hit home as tears filled my unwavering eyes. Could my very own father hate me that much? Sure I squeezed the toothpaste in the middle and left the cap off, but was that enough? The proof was before me, but wait! I was leaving out the fact that my dad was not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Sure, he earned a good living and allegedly graduated from an Ivy League institution, but as concerns life? Clueless. I mean, my mom would never have bought something lethal and planted it in my room. The unwholesome character analysis pacified my anxiety. Giving my father a pass for being a doofus, the crime he committed was reduced from first-degree, premeditated murder to manslaughter.  Whew!

While the lessening of the charge gladdened the heart beating wildly in my chest, the glaring standoff continued. For three more hours, I warded off the beast set to strike with laser beams that I shot out my eyes, but it couldn’t last forever. The inevitability of bedtime rolled around and, I mean, I couldn’t not sleep, could I? I decided to try. Long after the lights were turned off and I was tucked in, I bravely struggled to keep my eyelids from closing, but even I realized it was a losing battle. Keeping a vigilant watch by means of the light shining beneath the door, I drifted off for a second. The lapse in consciousness made the alarm bells sound. The exigency of the situation demanded action. Throwing the covers back, I crept towards the maniacal, rabid dog, reciting the Lord’s prayer as I went. I oh so carefully lifted the thing from the wall and saw that the tongue was hooked on. It was something I could disable. With a quick tug, the blood-red tongue came off in my hand.

     I rested the clock back down satisfied that it could no longer taste or lick me. Tossing the metal piece into the trash, I’d teach this cur not to mess with me. When I jumped back into bed, I figured out a new strategy for staying alive. Burying myself under the sheets, I figured what the creature couldn’t see, it couldn’t find and destroy. And that’s how I slept … for weeks. When I woke in the morning that horrible whirring noise would be there to greet me along with that malevolent grin sans the tongue. It was within that span of time that I learned the truism that evil never rests.

     In the ensuing days, I spent as little time as I could in that room, never turning my back on that skinky little devil. Eyeing it as I reached for my socks, I’d throw it a superior look, trying to show who was boss, but it wasn’t fooled. It knew it was. And so after a month and a half of torment, I took drastic action. Upon arriving home from school, I strode into my room and did what I should have done a long time ago—I pulled the plug.

     While disconnecting it returned to its former state, the damage had been done. I could never really trust it, and so after a couple more days, it got dumped in the back of my closet. Things never returned from being put into that black hole.  I was proven right a short time later by my mother asking whatever happened to that clock my dad had bought me. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, giving her that dumb look that mouth-breathing, carbon-based units are famous for. It sufficed to convey that I had no freakin’ idea, but, of course, I did. It was then I learned a second truism which is that not everyone needs to know everything. It’s a paradigm that has come in very handy over the years and one that I still use almost every day. And to think I owe learning that lesson to a clock.

     Now whether these experiences fed into me becoming a writer of horror, I don’t know. It certainly proves that I had  a tankful of  overactive imagination and no brakes. That I will give you. But since I often use stream of consciousness to pen tales, it could be that these experiences are regifted and used to spawn wild tales. Then there’s the aspect of feeling vulnerable. I was excruciatingly aware of this emotion all through those formative years. It’s possible that my feeling weak and at the mercy of circumstances also played a part, but conjecture doesn’t make it true. Of course, I harbor my own personal theory and it comes down to this: It was the ingesting of those Twinkies that did it. I just know it’s because of Twinkies that I’m a writer. 

 Wendy Potocki lives and writes in NYC. If that isn't scary enough, she writes in the genre of horror. She feels creating good horror is an art form. She religiously devotes herself to pursuing it over hill and dale -- and in the crevices of her keyboard.
Named one of the Top Ten "New" Horror Authors by Horror Novel Reviews, she has eight self-published novels. Book trailers for many of her works may be found on her official website listed below. Her latest frightmare is TRILLINGHAM, a book that'll give you chills faster than you can yell, "Help!" She's currently working on THE RECKONING, the third and last installment in her very popular Addune Vampire Trilogy.
In her spare time, she loves to go for long walks, drink Starbucks Apple Chai Lattes, make devotional offerings to her cat named Persephone and be stilled by the grace, beauty and magic of ballet. Her novel BLACK ADAGIO was written in tribute to the passion of dance.

 Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Potocki/e/B002BRGIP6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 

Mailing list: http://bit.ly/1lGwkDm
FB: http://on.fb.me/1oOawJO
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WPotocki
Website: http://www.wendypotocki.com/
Trillingham Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKYY9xYnewY

                                                        

Once I Get Started...

I recently started a new day job. While there, I’ve met a coworker who’s expressed a lot of curiosity about my writing career and shown some interest in doing some writing of her own. I’ve never before been in a situation where I’ve been asked for help or advice by anyone trying to get started writing. At first, I wasn’t sure how to react. For one thing, writing is an intensely personal and individual thing. Good writing comes from the writer’s unique personality and set of experiences, and I felt that maybe I didn’t have the right to advise anyone else on such matters, even if asked. Another thing is that I don’t often think of myself as a successful writer. This is simply because I want more: more money coming in from the work, higher profile writing jobs, more reviews, and higher sales. Of course I want those things. It’s not greed, but ambition. No matter what I do, I can always do better. I suppose I feel that the moment I get comfortable with what I’ve done so far, I’ll risk losing some of my drive to do more and more. It’s good to be motivated. In some ways, I felt that if I’m not more successful than I am, why should anyone else want help or advice from me?

            But then I started thinking about it a little more and came to realize that in many ways, I am successful with this writing thing! No, I can’t support myself solely on my royalty checks, but I get royalties, which is more than many writers can say. I’ve had 32 stories published, with a few more to come out this year. I have four publishers who are always willing to read something new from me. I’ve been given opportunities to write some of my favorite fictional characters, including Sherlock Holmes! I get to create my own characters too. The vast majority of reviews of my work have been good (and only one story was ever called “a real stinker!”), and there are several readers who seem eager to know when my next vampire or spy novel is coming out. And, just as important as the money and reviews, I’ve made more friends than I can count over the past 5 years, all because of writing. Readers, editors, publishers, artists, and others: all of whom I met through my literary endeavors and the networking that goes with it. Taking all that into consideration, I suppose I am a successful writer in many respects. There’s always room to move up, but I’ve come a long way. Perhaps, then, I am in a position to offer advice to someone who wants to take some steps down the road of words and stories. If I can help at all, I’m glad to do so. Anyway, we writers love to talk about what we do, even if we won’t usually admit it! 

So this blog entry is an open letter to a friend, in which I’m about to speak very honestly about some of my thoughts on the subject of writing. Most of what I say isn’t going to be right or wrong, but will consist of my opinions. When my fellow writers read this, they may nod in agreement with some of what I say and shake their heads (or fists!) in vehement opposition to other statements. That’s what makes writing so great. Every writer is different, and so we end up with a beautiful variety of stories in the world.

Anyway, to the person who started me down this road of thought (and anyone else who wants to listen to my rant), I’ll tell you this:

            Today at work, I overheard your little explosion over certain comments people had been making to you or about you. It’s not my business, but the back room is tight and it’s hard to not hear everything that gets said (and just for the record, don’t let their bullshit get to you), and I liked what I was hearing. Do you remember how it felt when you let out that long string of words, shoved all that frustration into the air and let everything that was on your mind flow out with no hesitation? There was good stuff in there, clever stuff. You were in a state of mind where you just had to get those thoughts out and give them life by turning them into words. You probably felt like you’d explode if you didn’t say those things. You had no choice. If you can find that feeling, that zone, again when you try to write, you’ll be just fine! And that doesn’t mean the writing has to be guided by anger or any other negative emotion, but it has to feel like it needs to come out. You’ll know when it happens, and you’ll love it.

            And once you find that feeling, you’ll want to make it continue, maybe even need to make it continue. That’s where what we talked about in person today comes into the equation. You asked me about discipline, about how I manage to get the work done. I’ll repeat here what I said to you this morning: set a goal and stick with it. Personally, I write a minimum of 1,000 words a day, unless I’m editing a major project, in which case I put the story I’m currently writing on hold just for a little while. Other than those editing pauses, my thousand words are non-negotiable. It’s not what I do when I feel like writing. It’s what I must do to keep the guilt from hitting me too hard. I don’t feel like a real writer if I don’t produce material. If I feel great, I write a thousand (and more sometimes). If I feel like crap, I write a thousand. If I have a headache, I write a thousand. If I’m joyful or depressed or confused or exhausted or sentimental or angry or horny or hungry or not even sure how I feel at the time, I write a thousand. That doesn’t mean you have to write 1,000 words a day. It might be 500 or 1,500 or even just a few paragraphs, but what you have to do is set a goal and stick to it no matter what.

            And it’s not easy. It only looks easy in the movies. Writing, if you really take it seriously, is not a leisure activity. Sure, you’re sitting in a chair at a desk and maybe the only thing anybody else sees moving are your fingers, but don’t make the mistake of thinking writing isn’t work. It is work, and it will have its effects on both your mind and your body. It will give you a glorious mental workout, it will make you tired at times, might cause you to literally break a sweat (remember Sean Connery in Finding Forrester telling his young student to “Punch the keys!” I wish I could type in his accent), will cause an occasional headache, cost you some sleep, and maybe even give you nightmares from time to time. Yes, writing is work, and it’s worth it if that’s what you really want to do. If that’s what you really need to do!

            But what if you can’t make it happen? What if you get Writer’s Block?

            I’ll tell you a secret. There’s no such thing as Writer’s Block. It’s an excuse. Either a person can write or they can’t. If your thoughts turn into stories and you feel the urge to express them in words, that’s a trait that doesn’t just stop. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy. There will be times when you get stuck. My solution to that has always been to have two projects going at once. If you get hung up on a detail of one story and don’t know where to go next, switch channels and work on something else for a while. Don’t worry. The wheels will begin to turn again soon enough. Don’t ever give up. Inspiration strikes like lightning and you can never really predict when it will happen or what form it will take. For that matter, keep a pen and something to write on near you at all times (or your smart phone if you want to take notes that way), so you’ll be able to grab the gold before it slips through your fingers.

            And speaking of inspiration, I have no definite answer about where it comes from. I can tell you all about the things that might intentionally bring it about, things like reading great books, watching great movies, or using your own memories as fuel for your work, but what nobody can ever anticipate are the little events in life that cause those wonderful bursts of sudden inspiration. Ideas explode like popcorn at the oddest times. A sentence in a news article can make you speculate about what the world would be like if events happened slightly differently and soon you have a science fiction story on your hands. A stray bit of conversation between strangers at the next table in a restaurant might have you making up entire life histories for characters who didn’t exist a moment ago (that’s how my detective character, Picard, came to be). My point is that anything you see or hear or feel might spark your next big idea, so keep your senses absorbing the world around you.

            I mentioned reading great books a moment ago. By all means, read the bad ones too. Read as much as you can. Read the books you can’t live without reading and read some you think you’ll hate. I read a lot of horror and mystery because those are the genres I write most often, but sometimes I’ll scan through something I’m not the least bit interested in because it exposes me to different styles and subjects. I might even occasionally glance through a cheap romance novel (how many ways can they come up with to use the word “throbbing” anyway?) or a children’s book or revisit something I tried to read years ago but didn’t enjoy at the time. Words are our tools, so we need to see many different ways to use them.

            Concerning those tools, the best way to learn to use them…is to use them! There are no shortcuts. Write a lot and you will get better. There’s no way around the fact that the more you cut with that sword, the sharper it becomes.

            And please, don’t let worrying about writing get in the way of writing. Don’t over think it, and don’t make concrete rules that don’t have to be there at the beginning. If you look around the various writers’ forums on the internet, you’ll see a lot of experienced writers saying a lot of smart things, but you’ll also see a lot of inexperienced writers who aren’t getting any experience because they’re too busy worrying about how to do it right, which keeps them from doing it at all. You’ll get more out of writing 10,000 clumsy, fumbling words than you will out of spending a month planning how to write and fine-tuning your approach and memorizing some silly list of do’s and don’ts before you type the opening line.

            You can have all the self-imposed rules you want, but the rules are yours to follow as you see fit, not limits with which you should restrict yourself from doing what’s best for the story.

            On that note, I’m going to share the best piece of writing advice I’ve ever been given. Several years ago, I was working with a certain publisher for the first time. My first vampire novel was in the editing phase and the editor sent me an email that was one of the hardest to accept messages I’ve ever read. Basically, she felt that my storyline was excellent, but the way I’d written the book needed some major cutting and tightening and a lot of changes. It was a damn good spanking. For about an hour, I sat there in sadness. I was insulted. I loved that story, I was proud of it. Part of me wanted to tell that editor exactly where to stick her suggestions. Then I came to my senses. I really wanted that book to come out. But I wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. How could I adjust my point of view and edit so much of that story that it would feel like I was a doctor about to operate on his own child? Could I really cut that deeply and show so little mercy for the book I’d worked so hard to write in the first place? I needed advice. I contacted Ron Fortier, my first editor and a very good friend. Ron’s advice to me was so simple, but it made so much sense. He said, “Love the story, not the words.”

            That was it. My whole mood lifted and everything was all right. I followed the other editor’s suggestions, reworked much of the book, and eliminated a lot of stylistic clutter. In the end, the finished product was far better than the original manuscript and the essence of the story I had set out to tell was still intact. “Love the story, not the words.”

            Okay, so I’ve now been rambling on for several pages about the process of writing. But how, you might be wondering, do you know if it’s working properly? If you’re writing something that’s good or could eventually be good? I’m sure it’s different for every writer, but here’s how I know I’m on to something promising:                              

             When it affects you as much as you hope it affects the reader. When your characters become as real to you as the people who live next door, when you can hear their voices and see the expressions on their faces and share their sorrows and joys. When they suddenly do things you’d never expect them to do, as if they’ve taken on a life of their own. When you feel remorse for the hellish things you put them through. When you nearly make yourself sick with just how twisted you can make a horror scene. When you write a sex scene so candidly that it turns you on and you’d be embarrassed if your mother read it. When you have to force yourself to kill off a character because you feel like you just can’t do that to them and it seems to you, at that moment, that it’s not just words on a page but a real life or death situation. That’s when I know I’m on the right track.

            I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve made myself cry while writing. I’ve also made myself laugh out loud and scream in anger and pump my fist in victory. That’s when I know it’s working.

            But guess what? I just lied. The truth is I am embarrassed by what I just admitted. And that’s a good thing. Writing should be embarrassing sometimes, because a part of it is being honest in the lies we tell. We make stuff up for a living, but we also use those stories to reflect what we really feel and think and how we react to ideas and events. If something gets to us, makes us cry or scream or smile or laugh or shake in fear or fall in love, we owe it to our readers to use it to make our stories stronger, because if those things bring out those emotions in us, chances are they’ll do it to the readers too.     

Writing is a wonderful and terrible thing at the same time. It can be magnificently rewarding or dreadfully disappointing. One day it will lift your spirit above the highest cloud and the next it will break your heart and stomp the pieces into the dirt. Is it worth it? I think it is, but I can’t make that decision for anybody else.  

Not everyone can write, but some of those who can have no choice. Some of us have to do it. If you’ve managed to read everything I just wrote about the good and the bad of writing and you still want to try to do it, you’re in for quite an experience and I’ll be happy to help if I can. 

See what happens when you ask me to talk about my work?