(This piece was written for the HWA Newsletter, and will appear in the next issue. However, I decided to post it here as well since I'd like all of Michael's family and friends to have a chance at reading it.)

Back in early 2007, a young author e-mailed me to ask if I'd read his debut novel. I'd never heard of him, but he was a Southern California local and I liked the enthusiasm evident even in his e-mail query, so I said yes.

I say "Yes" to a lot of these requests. I will now sheepishly admit that I often don't finish the books. They're usually decent enough, but my time is scarce and I really want to be wowed.

This book - a thing called I Will Rise, by Michael Louis Calvillo - did more than wow me. It left me delirious and frankly envious. It was that brilliant, unique new voice you always hope for when you pick up a book by someone you've never heard of. I immediately agreed to provide Michael with a blurb, and here's what I said: "I Will Rise is like the bastard lovechild of William S. Burroughs and Bentley Little, and is the biggest waiting-to-be-discovered cult novel of the decade. It's hip, witty, scary, strange, apocalyptic, sad, and full of beautifully observed moments. In a perfect world, American readers would already be slavering in anticipation of whatever Michael Louis Calvillo puts out next."

That was an easy blurb to write, because I meant every word.

Not long after, I met Michael for the first time, at a signing at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, California. I don't mind admitting that I was immediately smitten, but in that platonic, "God, I adore this guy's energy and talent and obvious love for what he's doing" kind of way. He had a funny, nervous manner that I found completely endearing. That mad energy got him in a little bit of hot water early on - a few HWA stalwarts got a trifle irritated with his frequent posts about I Will Rise on the organization's message board - and that irritation just left him baffled. He began one response with, "Doth I offend?" He loved his writing so much - and I don't mean that in an egomaniacal way, rather this was a guy who found such obvious great joy in the act - that he seemed unable to understand why others didn't relish every mention of one of his books as much as he did.

In 2009, Michael was ready to spring his second novel, As Fate Would Have It, on an unsuspecting world, and he asked me if I might consider doing the afterword. I read the manuscript and was hooked immediately. The book was quirky and disturbing and funny and insightful and experimental. Michael wasn't afraid to break the fourth wall and speak directly to the reader and have a bit of word play fun. One of my favorite lines comes near the front, as the first victim (the book is about the crossed fates of a cannibalistic gourmet chef and a pathetic young heroin addict) waits for her date to bring her a glass of wine: "She felt a tingle of warmth in her heart (groin)." In ten words, Michael had summed up the way a lot of people mistake sex for love better than books that made that theme their sole subject, and he did it in a way that made me laugh out loud. I told him that although this book deserved an afterword by someone who was much bigger than I was, that I would be honored to provide it.

(Amusing side note on As Fate Would Have It: Some time after the book was released as a signed/limited hardcover, I received a curious paperback in the mail called The Application of Heat: Observations and Recipes for the Discerning Gourmand. I was literally typing an e-mail to the sender suggesting that I'd been sent this in error when I flipped through the book - which looked for all the world like some technical cooking book - and saw a recipe titled "Prime Morton With Potatoes". It was only then that I remembered that the lettered edition of Fate was supposed to come with this "cookbook", which incorporated into recipes the names of those who had received the lettered editions. The joke was definitely on me!)

But reading Michael's work and knowing him through signings and parties was nothing compared to seeing him read his work. First off, he made cool little giveaways (see the "menu" illustration below) and often brought food, which was doled out by his gorgeous wife Michelle. Then the Mad Genius Himself got to work. When he read, Michael was like some walking bomb, winding itself up to a constant detonation. He would pace rapidly back and forth and fire those words out like a human machine-gun. I soon made sure that I saw him read at every possible opportunity and he was always amazing. In Brighton, England, at the 2010 World Horror Convention, he read a story (I'm embarrassed to admit I don't know the name) which struck me as vaguely ridiculous - something about a man who is caught by a cult and turned into a rampaging and very horny beast - but his performance of the story turned it into the most addictive kind of art. Michael always left his audience wanting more.

He was prolific; while he was teaching high school and socializing with his wife and their lovely daughter Deja, he was also churning out stories and books and columns and blog posts at an astonishing pace. Sometimes I worried that he was overdoing it - a couple of the later books feel rushed to me - but I was still flabbergasted that he never found major success. He and I both pursued the same agent at one point; the agent turned me down, but signed Michael. Sadly, the agent was unable to find the bigger home that Michael's work deserved.

In late 2010, I saw Michael at a signing, and was dismayed to see he was having difficulty walking (he was using a cane) and was obviously in great pain. "Sciatica," he told me the doctors had diagnosed. After he left, I told my significant other Ricky Grove (who is also a Calvillo fan) that I'd had stuntman friends who'd suffered from sciatica, and it didn't look like that.

Unfortunately, I was right. In December, Michael was diagnosed with CUP, or cancer undiagnosed primary, an aggressive form of cancer which is difficult to treat and has a high mortality rate.

I was thunderstruck. Michael was 36 years old, with a loving family and a promising career as one of the most unique voices in genre fiction. This was simply unthinkable.

Michael's fight began...and what a fight it was. He saw experts at UCLA and City of Hope. He and Michelle considered alternative healing and nutrition-based therapies. He underwent multiple surgeries and various forms of chemotherapy and radiation. For a while in 2011 he was pronounced "stable", and most of us began to wonder if he'd beaten the Big C (if anyone could do it, it was him). When I saw him in 2011, he was thinner and using crutches to get around, but he was as vibrant and excited as ever.

But by the end of 2011, it was apparent that his condition wasn't as stable as we'd hoped. He and Michelle kept an online journal of Michael's journey ( http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/michaelcalvillo ), and there seemed to be more and more unexpected trips to emergency wards. Tumors continued to develop, and in March of 2012 he developed ascites, a condition in which fluid fills the abdomen. In April he spent ten days in ICU, went home...but soon returned to the ICU. On the morning of Monday, April 30th, 2012, a self-induced coma finally led to Michael's passing. He was 37.

For the 16 months that he lived with his diagnosis, Michael's indomitable spirit and vitality were never brighter. Even though he was often in intense pain and weakness, he continued to teach, to socialize with his family and friends, to attend conventions...and of course to write.

In his 2010 collection Blood & Gristle, the title work turns out to actually be a non-fiction meditation on death. With eerie foresight, he ponders, "...what if I visit a doctor and he tells me I have some devouring, aggressive form of cancer...?" He notes, "...real death is anything but cool and I am extremely sensitive about it and it actually makes me all kinds of ill. Though I am a horror fanatic, I am a big, big baby when it comes to the real thing...And I can't stop the thoughts...that in life we are nothing but rotting biology, we are nothing but hot blood and steaming gristle, and in death, when everything cools and congeals, we are nothing at all."

Michael, I'm still here to tell you: You are far from nothing at all. You showed all of us the face of extraordinary bravery and deternination in your fight, and your zest for writing will remain a source of inspiration to your writer friends. Your books - I Will Rise, As Fate Would Have It, Blood & Gristle, Bleed for You, Death & Desire in the Age of Women, 7 Brains, Lambs, and Birdbox - will live on for years to come, and I'm guessing will be imitated by lesser talents but never equaled, certainly never surpassed. Those of us who knew you in person will carry your memory with us throughout our lives, and be thankful for the opportunity to have known you.

This is where I should say RIP, Michael Louis Calvillo...but I suspect you never had the least interest in resting peacefully, and far be it from me to suggest you should now. Kick some eternal ass, MLC.

I'm a native and lifelong Californian with a serious affection for my native state. California fascinates me - historically, demographically, naturally, architecturally. It's bigger than some countries, and yet contains so many cultures and so many different landscapes.

<lj-cut text="Read more">
 
Today I returned home to Los Angeles from visiting my dad and stepmother in Santa Clara, near San Jose (about an hour south of San Francisco). Last week I'd driven up via the long and interminably dull stretch of the 5 freeway, which places a premium on speed over scenery, but I opted to return down the slower but far more visually interesting Highway 101, the historic El Camino Real, which takes a traveler past Monterey and through Salinas (John Steinbeck country), through small farming towns and lovely verdant hills, and on through San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara before turning inland and heading through the SoCal metrosprawl's outer fringes and into the heart of my home.

As I traveled the 101 today, I occasionally snapped a photo with my digital camera out the window. If these photos seem slightly blurry, my apologies - but that's bound to happen when a picture is snapped from a moving vehicle traveling at 75 miles per hour.

Just south of San Jose, the first of the farm country sets in: Gilroy, where the fields you can glimpse in this photo are probably planted with the area's famed garlic crops:


A little farther on, houses have become even scarcer, and grapes and orchards replace the lower crops, as we enter the Monterey wine country:


Although my heart will always belong to Southern California, there's no denying the simple beauty of the green hills of the northern part of the state, studded with the occasional spreading tree:


The weather was just right for driving with the windows down, and the panoply of smells was amazing: Tangy sage, the briny sea, the rich odor of fertilizer...and one of my favorite scents, eucalyptus. I've driven through this eucalyptus grove just outside Monterey before, and I'm always fascinated by it. Why is it there? Who planted it? Of course I could google this and undoubtedly find the answer, but I'd rather imagine my own, thank you.


As I came down from the hills and rounded a curve heading toward the Monterey shore, the weather began to change. I could see the low overcast waiting for me just ahead:


Past Monterey, the 101 heads inland again, and the gray skies reverted to their former blue. At one point, the rolling farmlands off to the east of the freeway were suddenly replaced by a surreal landscape of literally hundreds of oil derricks, most looking old and rusted, but still toiling away to bring the precious stuff to the surface. Oil? Out here in the middle of farmland?!


Near San Luis Obispo - about the halfway point of my trip - I passed the famed Madonna Inn, an architectural oddity I must stop at one day. If you don't know about the Madonna Inn, check out the crazy rooms at this joint. Hmmm...the Caveman? The Tack Room? I love the idea that in the middle of California is this decorator's ode to America the Melting Pot.


And then there are the not-famous curiosities to be glimpsed along the way. Is this a turreted castle nestled in among the hillside brush to the east of the freeway?

Past San Luis Obispo and her delightful architectural specimens, the road once again heads out to the shoreline as it approaches Santa Barbara. The overcast reappeared, but this time it was low-lying enough to shroud the hills ahead:


After Santa Barbara, the 101 continues to hug the coastline for a few more miles before turning inland at Ventura. And because this marks the gateway to the L.A. sprawl, the traffic abruptly stopped and it took me over an hour to make the final forty miles...but what the hell, it was traffic in L.A.

It felt like home to me.

My new novella Wild Girls is now free on Amazon for the next 72 hours. Now let's see what happens...

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Girls-ebook/dp/B00777X22M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329037301&sr=8-1

After a lot of deliberation and discussion, I've decided it's time for me to take the self-published Kindle plunge. Yes, I've done it once before, with my anthology Halloween Spirits, but that was a collection of (mostly) reprint stories by big names. That book has done well for me...but I've been hesitant to try with a solo title, because I wasn't convinced I could sell more than a handful of copies.

The time has come to give it a shot, though, so I'm pleased to announce that, on February 12 (that's right - TWO DAYS FROM NOW!), I will be unleashing my novella Wild Girls on unsuspecting Kindles everywhere. For the first three days of its release, it will be free - that's right, totally effin' FREE - then will move to its regular princessly sum of 99 cents.

Since this is a self-publishing venture, I've decided to promote it with...a self-interview! It's an exciting new concept! Here we go:

So, Lisa, tell us a little about Wild Girls.

It's a novella that I've always thought of as one part parody, one part serious thriller, and two parts live hand grenade.

Uhhh...what? "Live hand grenade"?

It takes a pretty raw look at certain gender stereotypes in horror and flips 'em all upside-down.

Okay. And it's a parody?

Of "extreme fiction". 

So is it funny?

If you have a very, very black sense of humor. 

It's about female serial killers, right? 

Yep.

There aren't exactly tons of female serial killers out there, though...

Well, not that we know of. The first story I ever sold ("Sane Reaction", which appeared in Dark Voices 6) was about a female serial killer, and it hypothesized that women might operate less from ego gratification than male killers, so they'd be less likely to essentially want to be caught. Now, mind you, I know there are no women out there operating like my ladies - we'd be hearing about them on the news - but that's why it's called "fiction".

Why did you decide to self-publish this? What, you couldn't sell it so you dumped it onto the vast Amazon wasteland?

I did write this novella a few years ago, but I've been sitting on it ever since, thinking that it needed just the right publisher - it didn't seem right for any of the wonderful presses I've worked with in the past, nor did it seem suited to any of the ones I haven't worked with. I finally decided that I just might be the perfect publisher for it. So here it is.

Why didn't it seem right for other publishers? Is it offensive in some way?

Well...yeah, it might be. One early reader told me not to publish it, and I considered that the ultimate affirmation that I HAD to publish it. It twists some of the ugliest parts of so-called "extreme fiction" - the rape and mutilation - in ways that I hope will cause certain readers to blurt out, "But...but...this is just not right!"  I will consider my work done at that point.

What are those two objects on the cover?

A pine cone and Mr. Nightstick.

I'm sorry I asked.

No you're not.

Will it win you another Stoker Award?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! God, sometimes I crack myself up.

Are you deliberately releasing it in time for Valentine's Day? That's kind of effed up.

Yes, it is. Thanks, Lisa. 

You're welcome, Lisa. 

Ahh yes, it's that time of year again when HWA's business turns largely towards the Bram Stoker Awards. The preliminary ballot has been released, and the discussions have started. Let the games begin!

Every year, many of the same comments appear. "The Stokers are meaningless," runs a popular one...which of course presents the delightful philosophical conundrum of conferring meaning by mentioning it in the first place. One author recently referred to the Stokers as "whack", and hey - I suppose given how much I grumble about the Oscars every year, I can't deny anyone else their opinion, even if I think it's somewhat lacking in tact to publicly espouse same. The most perplexing complaint I've heard voiced was that winning a Stoker wouldn't get anyone a major publishing deal. Frankly, it never occurred to me that any award would garner someone a publishing deal; in my naivete, I think writing a kickass and marketable book (and having it submitted by a great agent) is how that usually happens.

But the one I really like, and that I hear spouted every year without fail, is the one that goes like this: The Stoker Awards mean nothing to the publishing industry.

I can only assume anyone who believes that has never paid much attention to mass market paperback horror novels.

Submitted for your approval: Evidence #1:



It took me about two minutes in my bookstore's horror section (yes, the Iliad has one!) to pull these books. What do they have in common?: Every single one of them mentions "Bram Stoker Award" somewhere on the cover. Now, granted - there are a lot of Leisure titles in that stack, and if you want to make a joke about that being why Leisure crashed and burned, I'll laugh with you. But not all of them are Leisure. Why, look - there's a Bantam Spectra title (of a Brian Keene book, no less!) with the attribution "Bram Stoker Award-winning author" splashed right on the front cover. Here's one for a Bill Gagliani book which touts the fact that he was a finalist:



And check out this one, from Alice Henderson's Voracious:



Wow - this isn't even about the author or the book, but someone else who is blurbing the book. 

This sure seems like a lot of references to something no one cares about, doesn't it?

And this, I suppose, is ultimately why the Stokers - and nearly any other award you can name - are hotly debated every year: Because they do have value. Are awards crass? Sure. Do they often bring out the worst in people, sometimes even those who are nominated? You bet. But can their effectivenes as a promotional tool be denied? As much as we all might sometimes wish that it weren't so...it is. Our culture loves awards, and they're here to stay. 

Rejection can be one of the hardest things for writers to deal with. To newer writers - especially those still looking for that first sale - it can seem like a door slamming over and over, never to be opened wide. To those writers who are established enough to make their living from their art, it can be the depressing difference between paying off the credit card this month or...well, watching the interest pile up.

But there are other ways to look at rejection, too. We hear a lot about using comments supplied in the more thoughtful rejection letters, and certainly that's worth remembering. I've used comments in rejections to great effect; in fact, I credit (in part) rejection comments with helping me to craft the final version of my short story "Tested", which went on to win the Bram Stoker Award.

I'm not a fan of the "dues paying" theory of rejection. Some seem to think that writers need to experience misery and anxiety before they can enjoy the pleasures of success. Sorry, but I say screw that noise. In my own case, I heard that odious, "Well, you're still paying your dues" nonsense until very recently. If my story is going to be rejected, I want to know that it's because the story needs work, not because you think I must undergo some abstract rite of passage. I've been a grown-up for a very long time now, thank you very much.

Now, here's where I offer up my own take on rejections (and I'm sorry, but this is going to apply only to short stories - rejections of novels, novellas, proposals and screenplays are a whole different essay): When you receive a rejection, don't think of it as a minus, but rather as an addition to your library. Every business engaged in selling something needs back stock - that stuff that may sit on the shelves for a while but will eventually sell to a delighted customer - and writing is no different. Just because Editor A has turned down your story, it doesn't mean that Editor B - or even Editor X, Y, or Z - won't love it and take it right away.

Granted, it's entirely possible that the story really isn't as good as you thought it was, and it may never sell...but if that's the case, I'm betting you'll know after getting feedback from a couple of submissions. If three editors in a row tell you the story sucks because of the ending, then you probably need to either fix that ending or delete that puppy permanently from your hard drive.

I'm also not a believer in rushing a rejected story right out into the world again. Sometimes it's just a matter of finding the perfect home for that story. I've sat on stories for years until an editor who I thought might like the story opened submissions to something he or she was working on.

It's also convenient to have a backlog of stories you can keep handy when you get requests for something. I've reached the point in my career where I get a lot of invites to submit to things, and I don't always have the time to write something new, but sometimes a quick check in my digital trunk will unearth some gem that's just right for the invite. I just glanced through a folder on my hard drive of short stories, and saw at least a dozen in there that have never sold. Some probably never will (one, for example, spent too much time referencing events that were topical when it was written), but I know some of them are just waiting for that perfect new home. Who knows? I might even save them for another Lisa Morton collection someday, or I might end up publishing a few myself as free reads for the followers of this blog.

Of course every story you write, including the ones that sell, become part of your library, and it's a rare thrill to be able to sell the same story multiple times...but of course you and I both know that a lot of editors simply don't want reprints. Which is one more reason that unsold stories are assets, not debits.

What it boils down to is this: If you were making, say, beautiful pots instead of finely crafted stories, you'd make up extras to have on hand whenever you went to a festival or show, right? Writing should be no different; you should always have a few extra pieces ready, just waiting for the right buyer. And c'mon - stories are a whole lot easier to store than pots, right? So go start building your library right now.

All of us who write hear popular misconceptions about craft that just make us grit our teeth. One of my favorites is the notion that anyone can write, that it's essentially just talking on paper. This week I was chatting with a gentleman who has a long history as a psychiatrist, and he's written a book about his more unusual experiences; he was perturbed because he'd given the book to exactly one agent (who a friend set him up with), and that agent hadn't gotten back to him...in TWO WHOLE MONTHS, because he's ready to do the talk shows NOW. I bit my tongue and managed not to ask this fellow (who I actually like and whose stories really are interesting) if he thought I could become a psychiatrist after talking to just one person and waiting two months.

But one of the most irritating myths I encounter - especially among other writers - is the notion that writing to a theme you've been given, or writing from someone else's idea, is some form of prostitution. "Sell-out" is another way of putting it. These writers talk about following their muse and pursuing their art and suffering from writer's block and waiting for inspiration to strike.

To put it very politely: That's a gigantic load of crap.

Sure, if you've glanced at my resume, you know I've spent a big chunk of my writing career working as a hired gun, especially in screenwriting. I've written for frothy children's cartoons that I would never have created on my own. As a screenwriter, I've written (and we're counting here only things that have been produced) horror movies, thrillers, action films, disaster films, science fiction movies, and children's animation.

That's a whole lot of whoring right there. We haven't even gotten into my prose writing yet.

Except I don't think of it as whoring my talents out, nor do I see it as mere craft put into the service of the almighty Buck. Here's why:

To me, the purpose of any fiction writing is to provide a reader with an emotional journey. A plot serves as the vehicle, and characters are needed to drive that vehicle. The characters need to be compelling, and need to be recognizable in some way to the reader, either as parts of themselves or as people they've known. The road for the journey is paved with emotions, anything from horror to love to joy to regret. The superior writer will be able to present all this in a particular style, one that can be recognized almost instantly. The best writer will provide the reader with some insight into their own lives or the world around them.

Does the plot need to be wildly original? Hardly. Look at a few genre classics - Matheson's I Am Legend, or (to slide sideways into another genre), Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice - and you'll see a vampire novel and a book about infidelity, hardly incredibly original ideas for books...but of course the way the stories are presented makes them stand-alone classics.

Now, let's add onto that another element of writing that I don't hear talked about much, and maybe it's something that is just a personal obsession for me: One of the reasons I write is to understand. I think people are the most astonishing things in the universe, and much of what we do baffles me. How, for example, could a man be a hunter and yet cry over the death of his dog? How can the very wealthy be blind to the ailments of the poor? Do women possess any of the violent tendencies that sometimes lead men to become serial killers? Is love for an animal intrinsically less valuable than love for another person? These are all questions that I've pondered in a short story, and occasionally asking the questions in that form has made me feel that I had at least the beginnings of understanding.

So, how does this play into the argument that working as a hired gun is not an act of creative prostitution?

Let's take the last piece I was asked to write where I was provided up front with many of the specifics. This was a short piece which is really less a short story in a themed anthology and more of a chapter in a shared world novel. I had to write about military actions in a zombie/human war, presented in the form of actual military reports. On top of that, I had to keep my story within the bigger arc of an overall story, and I had to coordinate specifics with the other writers in the book.

Why ask me to write a military story? Do I have any experience whatsoever in that area? Absolutely none. Nada. Zip City. I knew writing this would involve a tremendous amount of research, would take up a great deal of time, and would be very difficult. Yes, the editor is an old friend, and yes, the pay would be decent...but those things aren't why I said "yes".

I agreed to write the story because war is a universal human condition, and one I've seldom explored in my past work. I saw the opportunity to explore how soldiers must render the enemy faceless, or give into lethal empathy. I was challenged by the notion of establishing style in the context of stolid military reports, and creating plot and involving characters within that context.

The story was indeed (quite frankly) a bitch to write...but I was more than happy with the end result, since I felt I'd learned a little along the way, maybe about the warrior's mindset, and maybe about my own.

Granted, not all stories a writer is hired to develop are as immediately interesting...but I believe that a writer should be able to take any situation and find something of interest in it. You want me to write a kiddie show about ballerinas who turn into superheroines? I love it, because I get to tell little girls they can be powerful, too. Want me to write a disaster movie? Great, because to me "disaster" could easily be a synonym for "family relations", and I'm going to write you a hell of a study of a troubled family...who just happen to pursue hurricanes. Need a new Halloween novella? Well, now you know I've only just begun to explore that holiday in my fiction.

None of this, by the way, is meant to suggest that not writing to a predetermined theme is somehow a lesser creative act. It's not, of course. Listen, I know that Joyce's Ulysses - which I use as example only because many scholars consider it to be the pinnacle of 20th-century writing - didn't start when somebody said, "Hey, Jimmy boy, here's twenty quid to get you started on a story about a woman named Molly Bloom!" But on the other hand, it's also worth noting that Ulysses is based in part on both Joyce's interest in the Greco-Roman myth of Ulysses (Odysseus, in the Greek) and Joyce's own earlier book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I think the next time I hear someone voice that "writing for hire is prostitution" nonsense, I'll point 'em to this essay, and then ask them what they've done to challenge themselves lately. Because if a writer isn't challenging her/himself, then it's just all creative typing...or another form of prostitution.

I'll admit I haven't done much reading this year. I've had multiple deadlines on one job (which hopefully will pay off in lots of books for 2012), and increasingly frantic run-as-fast-as-you-can business on the other (in what I now think of as simply The World's Busiest Bookstore). Most of what I've managed to get in reading-wise this year was by friends.

But even in a good year, one filled with tons of reading by both large and small presses and in multiple genres, I think Greg Chapman's novella The Noctuary would stand out. I started working with Greg this year on the graphic novel Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, which I co-wrote with Rocky Wood; Greg was an Australian artist Rocky asked to illustrate the project. As we were corresponding nearly every day for months, we naturally started to talk about writing, and I read Greg's first novella, Torment, which I thought was very good.

But The Noctuary was something else. Just take a look at the blurb I gave Greg: “Both elegant and visceral, violent and darkly witty, Greg Chapman’s The Noctuary is an insightful look at the processes of creation and the birth of horror. His sinister muse, Meknok, is one of the most intriguing new horror characters since Clive Barker unleashed Pinhead, and indeed The Noctuary is occasionally reminiscent of Barker’s grim beauty, while being very distinctly its own beast. The Noctuary is rich, compelling, and unsettling, and Greg Chapman is obviously a writer in complete possession of his own sinister muse.”

Given how much I liked his book, I was happy to provide Greg a little space in my blog (which is something else I hope to get back to in 2012!) to talk about his work. Enjoy!

**********************************

You might not know this, but I’m also an artist, specialising in comics and graphic novel illustration.

Lisa recently asked me about how I approach a piece of prose and a piece of artwork and for me I find that the two processes overlap quite easily.Being an artist I find it quite easy to visualise a scene when I am writing. When I create a character in my head for a piece of writing, I can literally see them; I can see where they live and in a way I map out my tales as if they are a comic or graphic novel or even a film. That way I can capture the intended mood of a scene properly.

For about 12 months now I’ve been illustrating a non-fiction graphic novel on the history of the persecution of witches. The script was supplied by two writers and apart from a few rare occasions, it’s been easy to interpret the script into a finished illustrated page.

There’s one particular page that called for a crowd of onlookers watching six women being burned at the stake. The script wanted the focus to be on the onlookers; to emphasise the horror on their face. I decided that the expressions on the onlookers faces were more important than the burning women (and there had already been many pages of witches burning throughout the book) so I pulled the image in so there was only a hint of flame. There are about 8-10 onlookers and I strived to make each person’s expression unique. I needed to put what these people down on paper. It’s probably one of my personal favourite pages from the
book.

With my new novella The Noctuary, I imagined the main antagonist, a hellish creature named Meknok, very early on in my head. Since then I’ve actually drawn several pictures of him. I appreciate the reader might imagine him differently in their own mind’s eye, but I created him artistically so as to make him more whole, more real, which in turn helped when I was describing him in the book.

I enjoy drawing and illustrating, but obviously the act is more labour intensive than writing. But when I'm writing and imaging imagery in prose form, the two processes for me are essentially the same.

*************************************

Click here to order The Noctuary - you won't be sorry. I certainly wasn't.

Did you take a guess? #5 was the most popular choice. Well, I'm now here to demolish your preconceived notions and Halloween misinformation. Prepare to be disillusioned...

( Read more... )