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Mondays Are Hell: The Demons of Novels Past Pt. 1

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Okay, I’ve been writing for 20 years. Yes. Well, actually, I’ve been writing all of my life. But twenty years ago, I wrote my first novel. The Dream of the Archer. If you can call it a novel. Actually, it was an experience. Like climbing Everest. Like drinking Starbucks until you can’t feel your teeth. Like watching Firefly.

An experience. Are you experienced? The Dream of the Archer was David Lynch meets Lord of the Rings meets Pulp Fiction. It was postmodern Shakespeare, part novel, part play, first person, third person, in verse, shattering the third wall. And it had a demon in it. Jezerel Stone. My villain, Eljer Wetnight, summoned him. Eljer, as in the toilet. I used to name all my villains after toilets. Eljer Wetnight. Feral Sloan. St. John Regal. Toilets.

 

(My friend would go into a bathroom and laugh because as he did his business, he would see the name of the toilet and think of my villains. Ha.)

Anyway, Jezerel Stone has a quote in The Dream of the Archer, and of course, this is wordy, and won’t make sense, and is in the guts of a book that will never be published. Oh, how my writing has improved. However, it is one of my most favorite passages, and as any writer can tell you, throw nothing away. And it captures what I want to say about demons today.

A little set up. Jezerel Stone has possessed a boy whose parents were slaughtered and who is in pain. And the boy is about to watch soldiers from this horrific army do terrible things to our hero and his princess. And this is what Jezerel Stone says to this poor boy:

Look boy, look at what they will do, and watch carefully. This is not my doing, this is not the work of the devil, this is done by your own kind, and really, these men are good people, though you won’t remember such things when you see them cutting off the fingers of the man and raping the woman. You will forget that, but I shall not, because that makes it all the more enjoyable, all the more ironic. These same men have given food to the poor, have helped old people with their houses, have been caring and kind to their family, and now they will do these evil things and hate themselves for it. Watch, boy, and learn, and remember too, the men who did the evil things to your family, were good people as well.

I’ve said it before in my other demon post that demons are a nice idea. We can put the evil on fictional characters of pure darkness.

But in this world, the truth is far more mundane. The most terrible crimes imaginable have been committed by simple human beings. Not demons. Human beings who were good, gave into evil, and were most likely good after that. Hitler probably liked to pet puppies.

Ah, how confusing, this hard, old world. How tragic. And yet, how grand. Because 98% of the people you will meet are just trying to get through and aren’t evil at all. The other 2%?

My father was a policeman for over thirty years and most of the time, he saw police work as being a lot like working those mean streets of Mayberry. When asked which show captured police work, my dad wouldn’t say The Wire, or Hillstreet Blues, or NYPD Blue. Nope. He would say The Andy Griffith Show.

However, my dad did help arrest true evil. I won’t go into this man’s crimes. I don’t want to haunt you, but they were horrible. He did demonic things to old women. You can connect the dots.

True evil is out there. Soulless. Destroyed. But human. And perhaps that is more disturbing than any demon we can come up with.

I’ll leave you with a passage from The Dream of the Archer, from that same scene.

The Americans would find the archer and the princess and they would do things to them, things that Jezerel Stone knew all about. The demon understood the great secret, the secret that even Eljer Wetnight and his magic would never discover. That even though demons and other things were expert torturers and killers, the blackest things on the Stair had learned their arts from people; that without humans, in the end, none of the demons and their kind would have known what to do. Wetnight and his people would do terrifically horrible things to the archer and the princess, and Stone would watch and learn and perhaps centuries later he would imitate them. For now, he would watch and enjoy the revulsion the boy would feel as he looked at them. Not the pain the boy would feel, remembering what the American soldiers had done to his own family, not that sick pain which would send Stone scurrying on top of the boy, out of the suffering, but the revulsion as the boy understood that this is what people could do to one another.

Bree Ervin’s Angels Everywhere

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When I met Bree Ervin, well, everyone has a “how I met Bree Ervin” story, but here is mine.  I was walking through a crowded hotel lobby at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference, and I bumped into this red-headed demon, who said, and I quote, “I’m Bree, and I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to meet you.”  And meet me she did.  We talked about God, atheism, faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these…is love.  I love Bree Ervin.  She is a dynamo: writer, publicist, wife, mother, poet, warrior, queen.  And so, I enlisted her to write a blog on angels, thinking she would say no.

She said yes.  This is the result.  Take it away, Bree!

* * *

The truth is, I don’t believe in angels. I don’t believe in God. Or Hell. Or Demons. Or the Devil either. I am an Atheist.

I tell you this to establish a baseline for what comes next.

Angels are everywhere.

That might seem like a contradiction.  After all didn’t I open with the promise of not believing in angels, with the statement that I am a militant Atheist?

Sure. But in this, like in most things in life, you have to look a little closer.

I don’t believe in semi-divine beings with wings and a penchant for fighting over God’s favor. I find there is quite enough of that down here in the human realm, why sully up the heavens with it?

And yet, it turns out that angels, real honest to goodness angels are, in fact, everywhere. And no, I’m not talking about the Victoria’s Secret babes either, they’re even more improbable than the little godlets we all get so worked up about.

I mean angels. Real angels.

Let me explain.

Angel means messenger.

It comes from the Greek – ἄγγελος and before that, the Hebrew – מלאך. Both of these words mean messenger. In fact, if you read the Bible in its original form you will discover that most of the angels described in its pages are not supernatural, paranormal beings with wings – but people. That’s all, just people. People with a message.

Some of these angels became prophets or priests. Some were just one time runners. Many became scapegoats.

I tell you this, not to take away whatever magic or power you wish to imbue the world with, because while I may not believe in God or angels, I do believe in Magic. No, I tell you this to open your eyes and mind and heart to the magic and power that really is here.
Because when we break through the semantics of what we’d like an angel to be, to discover what an angel actually is, a shift happens. A very important shift.

Suddenly angels are everywhere.

When we begin to look at the world, and the people around us, as if they might hold a piece of the divinity we seek, we open ourselves to a new realm of possibility. It is one that we do not have to tithe for, or pray for, or be judged by. It is not one we have to fear. It is, instead, a reality of exaltation.

When you see the person making your morning latte not as a loser who couldn’t do any better, but as a piece of the divine, who just might be carrying a message for you, your perception shifts. You listen closer, you open yourself more, you see deeper.

Then, one day, the full shift comes and you realize that if all of these people that you interact with on a daily basis are part of the divine, then you must be too. If they are your angels, your messengers, then you are theirs. All at once it matters what you say and how you act.

When we see each other not as competition, but as compatriots all trapped in the same endless maze, it becomes that little bit easier to offer a helping hand. When we start to really account for all the help we receive every day from friends, family and anonymous strangers, it goes beyond that and becomes a genuine obligation.

Aaron Ritchey’s book, The Never Prayer, asks the question, “When do we struggle to change the world and when do we let go and embrace life’s broken beauty?”

When we open our eyes to the miracles of life all around us, when we open our hearts to the messages laid out before us, when we begin to see the angels everywhere – the answer becomes simple. We struggle to change the world, always. For we are the angels we’ve been waiting for.

Bree Ervin can be found ranting at her blog, working at her website, and wasting time at facebook/bannedthoughts and on twitter @thinkbanned where she believes she is an angel of common sense.

Thanks, Bree, I owe you my life.  And dude, you used Greek and Hebrew on my website.  I’m so in love with you again.

I Get Psychotic and Bloodthirsty with Lynda Hilburn

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I was there, ground zero, at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2007 Gold Conference, at the First Sale Panel. And who was there? Lynda Hilburn. Talking about her novel that follows a psychologist who begins to treat a vampire. What a great idea. High concept. Brilliant. I was a little jealous. And so intrigued. Imagine my dizziness, when Lynda agreed to an interview. I was dizzy, dizzy I tell you. And her bio is amazing. We had so much to talk about! Music, writing, mental illness! Maybe she could help me. She did. We chatted. Wonderful.

Taken from her website, she’s been a rock-and-roll singer/musician, a typesetter/copy editor for various newspapers and magazines, a professional psychic/tarot reader, a licensed psychotherapist, a certified clinical hypnotherapist, a newspaper columnist, a university instructor, a workshop presenter and a fiction writer.

Yeah, pinch me, I’m dreaming.

Want to know about The Vampire Shrink? Here is a little teaser. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. Now about the book.

Kismet Knight, PhD, doesn’t believe in the paranormal. She especially doesn’t believe in vampires, but she begins to wise up when she is introduced to a handsome man named Devereux who claims to be 800 years old. Kismet doesn’t buy his vampire story, but she also can’t explain why she has such odd reactions and feelings when he is near. Then a client almost completely drained of blood staggers into her waiting room and two angry men force their way into her office, causing her to consider the possibility that she has run afoul of a vampire underworld. Enter FBI profiler Alan Stevens, who warns her that vampires are very real, and one is a murderer—a murderer who is after her.

On to the interview, my pretties.
Aaron: Lynda, when we chatted, you said writing and publishing were harder than being a musician. How so? I mean, I know we’ve had authors who have flamed out as grand and as soaked in gin as Jim Morrison in a Paris bathtub, but I was so surprised at your comment. We writers are such dapper, sophisticated, conservative types of people. Dang, no sarcasm font. How is being a writer harder than being a musician?

Lynda: Thanks for interviewing me, Aaron. I really enjoyed our telephone conversation. Maybe being a writer isn’t harder than being a musician, but my experience of writing and publishing has proven to be much more ego-denting, neurosis-stoking and challenging than singing/performing in front of large crowds. And that’s saying something, because I suffered from severe performance anxiety for years when I started singing as an adolescent — stomach-twisting, cold-sweat-pouring-down-my-chest, can’t-stray-far-from-a-bathroom panic and fear-of-impending-death performance anxiety. I really thought nothing could be worse than that. I was wrong.

Spilling my guts onto appropriately formatted pages and sending them off to hostile aliens (agents, editors) to read and critique, in hopes of getting “the deal,” makes vocal performance feel like a day at the spa. As a singer/musician, if I had an off night and flubbed a performance, it was over. I didn’t have to revisit it. Unless, of course, some sadistic soul recorded me and my sub-par performance was immortalized on You Tube forever. But writing a book means my work is constantly available for the reading pleasure – or displeasure – of potentially millions of people (hey, an author has to dream big, doesn’t she?), most of whom aren’t shy about sharing their wide-ranging opinions. The stuff of nightmares, to be sure. I don’t believe authors who say they don’t read reviews and/or have sufficiently tough skin, so therefore they’re unaffected by the opinions of others. Right. We writers have elevated the quest for outer validation to an art form. Give me a drunk and rowdy crowd at the local VFW Hall anytime.

Aaron: So The Vampire Shrink has seen it all. It’s been small pubbed, e-pubbed, and resurrected again, coming out in April 2012. It’s been shot up, stabbed, burned, put under the bed, drug back out, tortured, nearly staked by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and yet has emerged, victorious. It is the Rasputin of books. And, keep in mind, a bestseller. Tell us all a little of that book’s journey. I find it jaw-dropping.

Lynda: LOL, Aaron. That about sums it up. I started writing The Vampire Shrink in 2005 just for fun after meeting with a young client in my counseling practice who talked about wanting to join a non-human group. I’ve been a vampire book fan forever, so listening to her story made me wonder what it would be like to find a gorgeous bloodsucker sitting in my waiting room. I went home that night and started typing.

Being relatively new to fiction writing (I’d mostly focused on nonfiction previously), I had little knowledge of fiction/publishing rules. So, with the encouragement of my various critique groups, after I completed 3 chapters I began sending out query letters. It never occurred to me that I needed to wait until the manuscript was complete. The response was good. Many agents/editors asked for the full. Yikes. I had to come clean and say the book wasn’t finished. I was told to get back in touch when it was, so I wrote like a fiend, completing a draft within months. Several agents held onto the ms, saying they were “thinking about” the book. Finally, one agent – the jr. agent of a big NY agency – offered representation. I was on my way!

Despite multiple rewrites and initial enthusiasm from the jr. agent, nobody wanted the book as it was written. At that time, “blended genres” wasn’t happening. I was told to “pick one genre, take out all the others, and resubmit.” My jr. agent’s boss told me to “put the book under the bed and write something else and we’ll start over.” What? You’re kidding, right?

Soon a critique partner told me about a small publisher seeking submissions. Without talking to my agent, I subbed to this small pub. They wanted to buy the book yesterday. My agent wasn’t happy. He asked me to investigate their distribution, which made no sense to me. Why did I care if their books were actually in book stores? Yeah, I know. LOL. Silly me. After months of contract negotiations, I signed on the dotted line. I was ecstatic! I would be a published author!

Uh-huh. Problems began immediately and continued. The small pub released Shrink in 2007 and Dark Harvest, which used to be book #2 in the series, in 2008. Then we parted ways. My agent and I also said good-bye.

After those endings, I spoke with many agents. They all told me it was “impossible” to move a series from one house to another. I was devastated and certain I’d had the shortest publishing career on record. Confused and depressed, I stopped writing for months.
At the end of 2009, I began noticing people like JA Konrath blogging about self-publishing. Self-publishing? Really? I thought that was a last resort? Apparently not anymore. In early 2010, with Joe’s encouragement, I had the books (I retained the e-rights) re-edited and uploaded on Amazon and Smashwords. Within a month they became Amazon bestsellers and I was making more money from my books than from my work as a psychotherapist.

My bestseller status drew the attention of an even bigger NY agent (Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group) who offered representation. He said he was sure he could sell the series to another house. He did (and got me an amazing advance). After nerve-wracking legal wrestling with the previous small pub to get my print rights back, I finally signed a joint 3-book deal with Quercus Books, UK (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s first publisher) and Sterling Publishing (Barnes & Noble) USA.

So now there’s the old trade paperback from the small pub, the UK hardcover, the UK kindle edition, the USA trade paperback, the USA Nook edition, an Australian trade paperback and soon a UK mass market version floating around out there. Yikes. Oh, yeah. And a German version I sold myself.

Whew. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Aaron: How did you survive the roller coaster of believing in The Vampire Shrink, and getting traction in the publishing industry, and yet, having to survive setback after setback? Was there fist shaking at the heavens? Midnight binges of cookie-dough ice cream? Trips of oblivion into the abyss of reality television? What pulled you through?

Lynda: Lots of fist-shaking, temper tantrums and chocolate eating. During the worst time, I pretty much gave up and felt sorry for myself. I wallowed in the best solitary, junk-food-fueled pity parties. My wonderful writer friends kept encouraging me to hang on, and without their emotional support, I probably wouldn’t have experimented with self-publishing in 2010, which changed everything.

Aaron: You and I, very different. You wrote a book and courageously tried to get it published, while I wrote thousands of books and hid them under my bed. Where they gnashed their teeth in the darkness. Knowing what you know now, would you suggest braving the treacherous waters of the publishing industry earlier rather than later? Wait, or don’t wait? What do you think?

Lynda: You’re so funny. The treacherous waters of the publishing industry continue to churn. These days there are more options for authors, although it does seem true that fewer large, print deals are being offered. I think if getting a print contract is important, an author should pursue that. If not, or if that desire hasn’t happened, looking into self/indie publishing is a great idea (even though that arena is changing by the minute). One of the main complaints about self/indie publishing is that some of the books aren’t ready for prime time. I’m an advocate for sending a book through as many appropriate and helpful eyes (critique partners, critique groups, beta readers) as possible, along with having it edited professionally at least once, before taking the next step on your chosen path. Everyone needs an editor. But, simply because a print deal hasn’t been offered yet isn’t a good enough reason to hide your book under the bed. (Get those books out of there, Aaron! Or get them night guards for that gnashing problem.)

Aaron: As a psychotherapist, and that is one word for Lynda. My mom is a psycho therapist. Two words. Kidding. Anyway, Lynda, as a psychotherapist, would you see a vampire as a client? With the understanding that it wouldn’t try to eat you. Or get all sparkly. Do you think you could help a vampire? Professionally.

Lynda: My son says the same thing about me. I’ll give the disclaimer that I still HOPE to meet a real vampire (which is why I created my vampire lust object, Devereux), while not believing they actually exist. I think real vampires would be a separate, alien species. Unless there were strong remnants of humanity present, I can’t imagine I’d have a clue as to how to connect with such an exotic creature. I’d probably be much more helpful as a snack than as a counselor.

Aaron: Have you met vampires? And no, I don’t mean actual long-toothed denizens of the night. But more like psychic vampires.

Lynda: Absolutely. Psychic vampires abound. And there are many varieties. My favorite is the sociopathic emo psychic vampire. These individuals stalk their prey with cold dispassion, both drawn to and afraid of authentic emotion, draining the feeling essence from their victims, leaving empty husks behind (metaphorically). I’ve met several gurus and self-proclaimed masters who fit this description. Then there are the drama queens who generate so much emotional chaos that we’re forced to either fortify our boundaries to the point of exhaustion or risk having our energy sucked to feed the gluttonous monster. If you spend time with someone, then feel depressed and fatigued after they’re gone, you’ve likely encountered a psychic vampire. For some reason, lots of us choose psychic vampires for mates, and it’s virtually impossible to live with one without becoming physically or mentally ill. But they’re so entertaining. Maybe we all have a drop of the psychic vampire in us.
Aaron: For you, what is the absolute best part of writing? What is the absolute worst part? And if you could, would you give up writing to be a world-famous singer\songwriter? Like Lady Gaga. Kidding, kidding. Everyone knows that Katy Perry is THE firework to follow.

Lynda: The absolute best part of writing is having written. Seriously. I love looking at the last sentence of the last paragraph of the last page. I’m not one of those writers who revel in the writing process. For me, it’s manual labor. And I’ve discovered that I function best connected to others during the siege. If I’m too isolated, withdrawn, my creativity suffers. About the world-famous singer question? I don’t think so. I really gave that a good shot a couple of times when I was younger. That lifestyle brought out the worst in me in every way. Bad habits, etc. I miss singing but not enough to hang out in bars to do it. Besides, in my car, I’m the greatest singer in the universe. Why mess with perfection? LOL

Thanks so much, Lynda!  And I gotta point out the awesome blurb from Kelley Armstrong on your book.  You go girlfriend!  All you vamps out there, check out The Vampire Shrink Today!  And the sequel, Blood Therapy.  See  below.  Awesome!

Cover for Lynda's new book

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