Amanda M. Blake's Blog, page 21

Storm the Castle

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I’m not sure where this comes from except a series of images in my head, perhaps inspired by the heavy hand with cinematic pop I’ve been consuming lately. It’s forceful and lots of melodramatic, but that’s how I like it.

STORM THE CASTLE

Barren land from cliff to shore

Smoke and stone, chained dragon fire

You think you’re a king

You deserve so much more

But you’re wearing the crown of a thief and a liar.

You call me princess, but man, I’m a queen

You call me child but I am a warrior of the wild

You think you’re the king

And though my crown remains unseen

I am your end, destruction reviled.

The armies stand, but not for you

The earth, it turns and will turn without you

Your people call for a different name

How long did you think they’d endure you?

Doors won’t keep me out

Raise your sword

I’ll charge the gate

I give my word.

I’ll storm the castle

I’ll storm the castle

I’ll storm the castle

I’ll storm the castle.

Where once was green, you turn to gray

Not even wolves still roam our woods

Your eyes are green, what once were gray

Your daughters weep, wraiths in black hoods.

You call them trophies, you touch them gold

Cold metal under gold hands, no warmth in your skin

You call us playthings, silk skirts to be sold

You lock your walls against me, but I’m coming in.

Empires rise, empires fall

You have gained and lost it all

You’ve done as any tyrant does

You beg to me to be deposed.

Open the door, false king, false friend

Let coins pour into the streets like grain

All false kings come to ignoble ends

I’m shaking off the dust, shaking off the chains.

You call me a woman

Better were I a man

You call me a girl

But I am the dragon.

I’ll storm the castle

I’ll storm the castle

I’ll storm the castle

I’ll storm the castle.

The Long Walk

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It’s been a hot minute since I wrote a song, but now I have three. They usually happen in clusters like this. I’m overworded from NaNoWriMo, so I’m not sure how much anything works, and mood-wise I’m a wreck, but I’ll take what I can get right now.

Another in my personal ‘paralysis’ subgenre, aka ‘poor you, please get over yourself,’ but it’s bound to happen now and then.

THE LONG WALK

When I was young, I was ready to fight

But now I lie down with fire dying inside

Watching everyone else taking sides

And still wishing that I could fight

I’m tired

I thought I’d have so much more I could do

But now it takes everything just to get through

I’m tired.

Not a day goes by

That I don’t think of dropping everything

And walking away

I don’t even know where I’d be walking to

Just away.

Away.

And I’d see all the things I don’t see on my screen

And I’d talk to the people who say what they mean

Or maybe I wouldn’t talk at all, to anyone or anything.

I’d just go till the rubber wore off my shoes

Until the world grew much bigger than squares of bad news

Until the road cut out at the end of the views.

I’d go until my soles were bloody and red

Until all of the madness flew out of my head

Deep down I know it would end when I’m dead.

But at least I’d know it was real.

Because if I have to be tired,

Do I have to be too tired to feel?

The course of my life, it moves chair to chair

And the truth of it is that I end up nowhere

Back where I start, ambition fades in midair

As I move back the goal posts as far as I dare

I’m tired

Once I dreamed much farther than this

And those dreams couldn’t fit on an end-of-life list

I’m tired.

Not a day goes by

That I don’t think of dropping everything

And walking away

I don’t even know where I’d be walking to

Just away.

Away.

Leaving isn’t the answer, but I don’t know how long I can stay

At night I’m too tired from the fires of the day

But I can’t go to sleep, knowing that it all starts again

And that I’ll never be what I thought I’d be then

Because we’ll never be what we couldn’t have been

So should I just throw it all away anyway?

I’d see all the things I don’t see on my screen

And I’d talk to the people who say what they mean

Or maybe I wouldn’t talk at all, to anyone or anything.

I’d just go till the rubber wore off my shoes

Until the world grew much bigger than squares of bad news

Until the road cut out at the end of the views.

I’d go until my soles were bloody and red

Until all of the madness flew out of my head

Deep down I know it would end when I’m dead.

But at least I’d know it was real.

Because if I have to be tired,

Do I have to be too tired to feel?

ROSE RED blurb reveal

[image error]I don’t think I’ll ever like a blurb as much as I like the one for Thorns. I initially didn’t like the one I’d put together for Rose Red, but after some back-and-forth with my alpha reader, I sat on it for a while, then turned it into something that works.

Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as the first few versions of Nocturne‘s blurb. I fixed that one seriously last minute. Rose Red‘s is last minute, too, but at least most of it was already  in place. Just had to rework the first main paragraph.

 

 

Hair as black as night, skin as white as bone, lips as red as blood…

Just because the princess wakes up doesn’t mean she’s saved.

After Sylvaine and the Sleeping Kingdom awaken from their enchantments, the Hunter Brotherhood struggles to help the cursed population adjust to life in the modern world.

But when Sylvaine turns up in New York City with no explanation, then goes missing, the search leads Olivia, Griffin, and companions old and new deeper into even darker stories, grim tales with more endings that haven’t gone as planned.

From giant rats to stolen hearts, it turns out saving princesses isn’t as simple as a kiss.

ROSE RED Cover Reveal

I know it’s been a while since I last updated. I had computer troubles and needed to send it out for repairs. It took a lot longer than I thought it was going to, because I just told myself I’d wait until I got it back before doing any blogging. Joke’s on me, I guess.

So we can start with the soft reveal of ROSE RED. I think it’ll be a bit late coming out–mid to late November instead of end of October. I’m just starting on the proofreading, and then it’s got to be formatted and I need to get a proof sent to me before I publish.

Until then, whet your appetite on the gorgeous, white-gothic cover of ROSE RED, the second book in the Thorns series, a custom by Covers by Combs. The fairy/folk tale inspirations for this one are Beauty and the Beast (of course), Snow White (but oddly enough, not Snow White and Rose Red, which is a Bearskin tale–just borrowed the name), and the Nutcracker.

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What Are You Wearing to the End of the World?

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If I keep going like this, I could have a whole album of apocalypse songs.

WHAT ARE YOU WEARING TO THE END OF THE WORLD?

Everything falling to pieces around you

The core of the apple has gone to the worms

The surface is cracked but the planet still turns

The Earth will do just fine without us.

But what will we decimate into our chaos?

How else to sully our decadent names?

Arsenic apple pie and murdering games

In prosperity and in plastic we trust.

Chorus:

On this day of our Lord, I ask only one thing

The chains are all rattling, the pendulum swings

The roses are dying and thorns are unfurled

What are you wearing to the end of the world?

Leather and lace go with shame and disgrace

The meteor falls in red fire silk

Volcanoes are flowing with honey and milk

But the milk is laced with sweet poison

Stilettos in pockets and the heels of our shoes

Pistols spin in pistoning security machines

Bad boys go worse and the good girls go mean

Here’s the handbasket to hearse into hell in.

Chorus:

On this day of our Lord, I ask only one thing

The chains are all rattling and the pendulum swings

The roses are dying and thorns are unfurled

What are you wearing to the end of the world?

They’re serving a feast speared with silver-lined spoons

The glazes look fine but taste of ash and of dust

The golden-gild cages are tarnished in rust

But we cannot break open any of our locks.

Dressed to the nines and down to the wire

The fur is all fake, blood-mined diamonds and stones

We’re dancing on shoes worn down to the bone

The servants keep turning back all of the clocks.

Bridge:

The masque of the red death holds sway over all

When the apocalypse hits, we head for the mall

The Beast has a number and our number’s come up

There are debts to be paid. On your knees, ante up

Hell is just empty and the devils all here

Amputated hands steer a carnival wheel.

We know what we’ve done, no more acts of contrition.

Lay back in the earth and think on your sin.

Chorus:

On this day of our Lord, I ask only one thing

The chains are all rattling and the pendulum swings

The roses are dying and thorns are unfurled

What are you wearing to the end of the world?

Cape May: An Introspective

[image error]There are a number of things that went into the creation of DEEP DOWN, the undeniably bleak horror novel that I finished last March and that should come out sometime next year. The main inspiration was my own depression, and that desire—I’m sure there’s a German word for it—to just stop one’s life and get off.

For me, I wanted to go into my closet, shut off the light, close the door, and never come out. For others, it might be to climb into bed, pull the sheets over your head, and never wake up. Sometimes, I want to just step out the door and start walking. Not to any place in particular, and with very few possessions. I’d be picked by crows in a week, I’m sure. The point is escape, but I’m not sure it’s escape with the intent to survive.

That was the premise of DEEP DOWN, the concept, but it didn’t really turn into an idea for a while. Not until the first time I saw an episode in Season 3 of THE BLACKLIST, “Cape May.”

Strangely, very little of “Cape May” actually relates to my novel at all. The flint spark comes, I think, not from the story but from James Spader’s performance in the episode. It gave me a rope to hold in the dark. From there, I went my own way, of course. But I recently resumed my effort to get through Season 3 of BLACKLIST by way of starting the whole series over again, so I was able to revisit “Cape May.”

I have trouble with serial dramas. It has to do with my emotional energy in the evenings, and the emotional requirements necessary to follow television drama. It’s why I generally don’t binge-watch shows; it’s why I prefer standard procedurals and one-off reality shows most evenings; and it’s why I sometimes get stuck in a viewing loop, because rewatches take much less energy than new viewings. I’ve yet to get through Season 2 of SUPERNATURAL, and not because I don’t like the show, whereas I’ve watched CSI:NY multiple times over. Similarly, I’ve had trouble getting past a certain point in BLACKLIST, despite my enchantment with Spader’s Raymond Reddington. It’s the two-part episodes that do it. That’s not just a 45-minute commitment. That’s a movie-length commitment, and I just can’t take the suspense.

I’m exaggerating–because this personal failing sometimes amuses me–but not by much.

I was looking forward to re-watching “Cape May” again, though, so I soldiered on to get there.

I love episodes like “Cape May.” You know the kind. The one that deviates from all other episodes of the series, one where the writers and the actors really get to stretch their legs in another direction. An experimental, genre-bending episode. All the other episodes are names of Red’s blacklisters, but “Cape May” is simply a place. It’s a moment out of time, out of sequence, and it has nothing to do with Red’s list or the task force’s actions. It has none of the carefully curated music that I’ve loved about BLACKLIST from the beginning, so much that I’ve made a playlist. It stands out in a series that is essentially an action-thriller conspiracy procedural, albeit with season-long story arcs to tie them all together.

We open to Reddington quite unlike the vibrant, larger-than-life figure who can anecdote his way through every encounter. His eyes have no life, his face shows his age, his uniform is rumpled. He is a man in pain, a man dead with grief that is not mere sadness.

In that grief, he leaves everything behind and breaks into an abandoned seaside hotel that’s fallen into disrepair. There’s not a soul to be seen except for the old man with a metal detector searching the sand, then the woman at the edge of the ocean who removes her coat, her necklace, then walks straight in.

For those familiar with the BLACKLIST background, the notes of this story immediately ring a bell, but here Redddington dives into the water and drags the woman from the sea, bringing her into the parlor to warm up by the fire, his arms around her. The woman is almost catatonic, murmuring about someone with whom she spoke harsh words before his implied death. Reddington has briefly been given a purpose, but she already looks dead.

What I love most about this episode is that it is, at its heart, a ghost story. The abandoned hotel is the perfect haunted house, American gothic to the driftwood; Red is a haunted man. And ghost stories, when done right, are about human hearts, human grief, not specters and spirits, which is part of what I loved so much about THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE Netflix series. Ghost stories are so difficult to do well, but I’ve always wanted to write a good haunting.

BLACKLIST is not a supernatural show. When it feels like it treads the line of supernatural, that’s just science reaching the level of science fiction, a sense of ‘this is the future now.’ But ghosts don’t have to be supernatural fixtures. Like I said, the hotel feels like a haunted house, but in the end, it’s Red who’s haunted, his heart and mind that creates the ghosts.

The entire episode’s dialogue is spare, as is the setting—more like a play than a television show. Red and the woman speak in parallels, the exact meaning intentionally vague—Are Red and the woman talking about Red and Elizabeth or about Red and the woman herself? The answer is always yes, because history repeats itself. History haunts. Red tells so many stories of the people and places he’s encountered, outlandish experiences, but it’s the stories he doesn’t want to tell that haunt him. He is a killer, a principled sociopath. The woman is a killer, even less scrupulous, but with enough room in her killer’s heart for a daughter. They speak as killers speak to each other, ships passing in the night, a nod to each other in their respective, unique pain—the only deaths that have caused this pain, when they themselves are reapers.

Even the episode’s action sequence plays very differently than the usual BLACKLIST operations. These are people who work best alone but who ally themselves for the moment. They aren’t self-righteously blustering and bombastic like the FBI, and Red is in no state for theatrics. It’s just Red and the woman, quiet killers, quiet reapers. There’s minimal dialogue in the sequence, no headsets and walkie-talkies, no music except in the survivalist set-up. Everyone moves in silence and shadows, as though the house and the killers themselves are ghosts haunting the encroaching mercenaries, a sense enhanced by all the white-sheet-covered furniture between which they stalk each other.

Was the woman ghost or grief? Just because something isn’t there doesn’t mean it isn’t real. There was no rescue, no fight, no woman. Red was alone, yet he experienced them; they were real enough. His internal haunting remains unresolved, but there is, ultimately, catharsis—an exorcism, in acknowledging what truths he spoke to himself in the darkness.

“Cape May,” like a good haunting, lingers, depending on James Spader’s charisma even when Red is at his least flashy and most human—a fallen Icarus, crushed by the weight of his failure. Red himself, in shedding his previous life and living a shiftless criminal life, is a kind of a ghost himself, for all that he seems so lifelike. It is when Red stops, when the plummeting of his restless momentum reaches its inevitable, abrupt end, that Spader’s performance transcends an already brilliant role. No tricks. No gimmicks. No slick talk or stories. Just a man who can’t wrap enough layers of charm, class, and ruthlessness to protect himself from his own fallibility.

In pulling “Cape May” out of the BLACKLIST formula, stripping it down to the grain, we get something that’s not just good but might actually be great.

And we get a hell of a good ghost story.

The Smiling Man

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I know it’s been quiet here for a while. I actually wrote three songs in the interim, but they were part of DRIFT, and I haven’t decided what to do with them there yet or whether to share them here before putting DRIFT out there.

But I did manage to throw together a little something over the last few days.

I love writing horror songs, because it really forces me to focus on atmosphere instead of plot, and they require a great economy of words – which is not my strength.

Bodies

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After seeing MIDSOMMAR in the theater, I have a few Thoughts.

Bodies don’t bother me.

Oh, my body bothers me, but that’s different. I’m not talking about attractiveness. I’m talking about the very idea that we have flesh instead of silicone and Botox.

Wrinkles. Stretch marks. Cellulite. Sagging. Freckles. Scars. Zits. Mucus. These things don’t bother me.

I don’t understand why, when someone old or fat or conventionally undesirable wears something that shows their skin or takes off their clothes for a role, people say ‘God, I did not want to see that.’ I’m noticing a lot of old men and old women going naked in horror movies, and I think it’s supposed to incite the fear of mortality, the repulsion of ageing bodies.

When I see naked bodies, I’m not scared of my own unattractiveness, nor does it trigger the fear of my own mortality. If anything, full frontal of average bodies is a relief, and the nakedness of the old is comforting. Because it’s not as bad as people say it’s going to be. A little more flesh, a little less collagen. That’s it.

It’s not like we don’t already know what bodies look like. Our own. Other people’s by the shapes under and against their clothes.

It’s not scary at all.

We need to confront the fear of our own bodies, associated with sex and separate from it. Because let’s face it, most of our experience with our own nakedness have nothing to do with sex. I think we’d be less afraid of nudity if we had more of it divorced from sex and divorced from attractiveness. It’s sad that this thing we all have is so repulsive in our own sight that we rate ourselves out of ever seeing it. The rest of what we have access to is overwhelmingly young or surgically sculpted.

Confront your reactions, and look again.

Fear

[image error]I’m always afraid when I start something new. There is comfort in working on old projects, whether editing, proofreading, or even continuing an old story through a new book. In editing and proofreading, the work is already there. I just have to move it around, spruce it up, make it pretty. When continuing an established work, like the Thorns series, my characters, my backstories, my world-building, my tone and style, they’ve already been established. I have more springboards to work from, even when I’m creating new canon. That’s also what’s nice about fanfiction (and the Thorns series could be considered fanfiction, of a kind, given it’s a fairy tale mash-up).

But when I start from scratch on a completely new, standalone story, I always start afraid. I was afraid when I started horror story DEEP DOWN earlier this year (technically continued it from what I’d put down a year before, but still kind of terrified). And I’m afraid now that I’m starting American gothic fairy tale DRIFT.

Everything I write sounds like it comes from me – at least, to me it does – but the styles still shift from one kind of story to the next, because to a certain degree, form follows function. Think of it as the filter of the story. You can have the same director of photography and notice the trends, but the filter changes the impressions and moods. And it’s so important to how the story is felt and received.

New characters. People who have populated my head like ghosts quietly solidify and come to life, and they never end up quite the way I imagined them. New settings. New themes. New endings. New problems.

I’m afraid to start because I’m afraid it’s all going to come out wrong. I’m not going to get the tone right. The style won’t work with me. The ending will be weak. I’m not going to be able to get from point A to point B.

This fear is not irrational. I’ve failed before.

I succeed more often than not these days, and a lot of the problems can be fixed in editing. But NOCTURNE needed several complete rewrites, not just edits, although I salvaged much from the original drafts. The beginning of THORNS was reworked multiple times because it never felt quite right. I’m going to have to rewrite WAR HOUSE (I was actually going to do that this summer, but DRIFT felt more solid to me). I have a trilogy that I tried ten years ago that never got off the ground, and though I love the concept, I’m still not sure how to salvage it.

I really could get this wrong. And if I do, it might feel like writing the first draft was a waste of my time, since I would either have to let it go or try again later. I already feel like my writing time is strained as it is without having to write things more than once.

But God, it might go right. Or right enough. And even if it goes wrong and I have to rewrite, that’s still a solution. Not my favorite solution, but it’s something.

That’s why, no matter how scared I am to begin, I just do it. I just write the words, day after terrifying day, until I’m finished.

Until I determine it’s ready to prepare for publication, I remind myself that everything I write is just for me. No one has to see it. No one can judge it. I don’t even edit until everything’s finished, because I can’t assess details until I understand the larger picture. It’s all about getting the words down. Fear is an empty page, and as Jodi Picoult says, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

I can either work with what I have – which I think I’m actually quite good at doing – or I don’t work with anything at all. The story remains in my head instead of getting exorcised, and no one can judge it, but also, no one can read it. And that doesn’t serve anyone.

So yeah, I’m afraid of writing. I’m also afraid of what happens when I don’t. So I sit down in front of my fear, and I start writing anyway.

Dead Ends

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I tried to write a hitchhiker ghost song a while back, but it didn’t really work, and I had to put the idea back in the box for a while.

Last month, I tried writing one again, and this time it came together into something coherent.

I’m fascinated by ghost stories, because they’re so difficult to do well. Ghost poetry’s a little different – all about atmosphere. It’s so delightfully creepy and sad and sexy all at the same time. The hitchhiker ghost urban legend is one that’s stuck visually in my mind, so it was a pleasure to find an outlet. I’m quite happy with it.

DEAD ENDS

Black leather jacket and long white dress

Silk flutters like wind through the mist

Don’t have no home, don’t have no address

Picking up the girl with a tear and a kiss.

Sparkling eyes and pale blue lips

Can’t help but tear your gaze from the road

A corsage goes dry on another girl’s wrist

But whispers remind you that you’ll soon grow old

I offer you a moment

I offer you a chance

I know it’s not allowed, sir

But would you like to have this dance?

Chorus:

I wander a long and lonely highway

Can’t stay in one place, can’t linger in one town

Hitching rides without a destination

Legs are tired but feet never touch the ground

You’ll see me in the rearview mirror

But I’m not there when you turn around.

Ride with you until the moon descends

And I’ll be wandering until the road dead-ends.

Never had my moment in the sun

Cold gray steel and headlights stained with blood

Silk dress still white as winter for so long

I touch your hand, just looking for some love

Back seat steams, my skin’s as cold as ice

Ghosts from your lips as you bring your heat inside

Steal your breath to remember my own life

That someone like you stole in a car like the one you ride

I offered you a moment

In the dark you heard my voice

You know it’s not allowed, sir

But remember, you made the choice.

Chorus:

I wander a long and lonely highway

Can’t stay in one place, can’t linger in one town

Hitching rides without a destination

Legs are tired but feet never touch the ground

You’ll see me in the rearview mirror

But I’m never there when you turn around.

Ride with you until the moon descends

And I’ll be wandering until the road dead-ends.

Bridge:

They find your body in the back seat

Of your wayward hitcher car

Don’t you know not to pick up strangers?

You never know who they are

Now you’re cold as your ghostly lover

Your journey ends, but mine’s still so far

I’m still cold, your ghostly lover

God, why does it have to be so far?

[whisper] I want to feel alive

I offer you a moment

Die a little more each night

I know it’s not allowed, sir

But I don’t want to do what’s right.

Chorus:

I wander a long and lonely highway

Can’t stay in one place, can’t linger in one town

Hitching rides without a destination

Legs are tired but feet never touch the ground

You’ll see me in the rearview mirror

But I’m never there when you turn around.

Ride with you until the moon descends

And I’ll be wandering until the road dead-ends.