Andrew Marc Rowe's Blog, page 4

Criticism

Hola flamingos!

I thought I’d take some time to write a little blurb about criticism, now that I’m back to reading more than I was for the longest time. I’ve considered writing reviews of movies, of video games, of all kinds of different media in the past, but the only thing I find myself wanting to write reviews for turns out to be books.

I usually only write five star reviews these days. In fact, I only do that. My own moral compass has been shifting towards the fifth star and staying there. What brought it into focus was a two star review for my debut novel, The Yoga of Strength. I’ll even link to the dud review right here. The title of the review is ‘Needs an editor’ (when I brought the review to my editor with Atmosphere Press, Nick Courtright, he had a bit of a scoff, and not in the Newfoundland English meaning of that word (a meal)). For further reading on why it might morally behoove one to only give five-star reviews if one deigns to write one, I’d recommend reading my friend and fellow author Jon’s blog post.

In truth, The Yoga of Strength is without a doubt my ‘roughest’ work. I feel like my work has improved since then, though I feel The Yoga of Strength has more heart than anything I’ve written since. But still, the book has a 4.14 out of 5 star average rating out of 49 reviews, including a few glowing five stars like this one. Not too shabby. I’ve even given it to people after they’ve read some of my more recent work and I’ve received glowing compliments on it.

But that review, that two star clunker, has always stuck in my craw. How could this person hate my work, the thing I poured all of my heart and soul into, that much? A few of the things he mentions I even consider features, not bugs. My ego, the early parts of it anyway, the fragile stuff I grew when I was my daughter’s age (four) and which used to command me to throw myself on the floor in a bawling heap, was bruised quite heartily.

Still, I graciously thanked him for his review via e-mail, even though he said in his two star review that he should have given it one star (thanks, brother!) He told me that my reaction was better than some of the ones he received for his ‘honest’ reviews, usually authors furious with him for being so ‘mean.’ As an aside, the Loki in me didn’t let it go completely. After reading his excoriation of my language as a mixture of fine wine and motor oil, my next series written was a bawdy tale set in a medieval world where flowery language and absolutely filthy jokes stand next to one another. I dedicated the first book in that series, Top Man, to him. I said, ‘I couldn’t have done it without him.’

How’s that for lemons into lemonade?

My most recent series, The Thoth Quadrilogy, nears its end. At least, I’ve almost finished the first draft of the last book in that series. It’s a tale about an apocalypse that I started during the pandemic. Another bawdy tale, it’s told from first person and, like all of my work, it’s not exactly conventional (fellow author Dennis Liggio wrote of the first two books in series, ‘the most fucked up shit I’ve ever read, and I’m on the Internet’). Based on what he’s written about the books, it’s not because it’s a one-note dick joke. It’s partly because of the philosophical content that goes with the writing. Limerick-esque humor and deep existentialism make strange bedfellows, though perhaps not without reason (see halo and pile of poop coming out of flamingo above). There are some heavy undertones (it’s an apocalypse after all) and a lot of those undertones are about the life-shattering nature of sexual assault and how we live out our trauma eternally until we deal with it. Sure, it bounces back and forth between absolutely ridiculous jokes about Kool-Aid being the Elixir of Immortality and fourth-wall breaking humour that would give Monty Python a run for its money, but some of the stuff is quite serious.

Similar subject matter came up in The Yoga of Strength. And similar stuff re: sexual assault was taken apart as being clumsily handled. The myriad assumptions that entered into the reviews offered, both in terms of the author’s own participation in art (or lack thereof) and the lack of rationality in how people sometimes deal with abuse, became apparent. To wit: some people thought it was handled well, some people thought it was handled poorly.

Before I started writing, I made a decision that I would write the things that my unconscious brought to life. In fact, ‘learning to write’ involved me turning off all of my critical faculties and trusting that what came out of me would be true and good art. For me, the artistic process has been akin to riding a bike, as in, it requires a doing and not a thinking about doing. I don’t break it down, plot it out, write backstories, do all of these things that work for other people. Courage has been the guiding factor in my own writing, and part of that courage is to leap from the cliff and assume that everything will turn out in the end.

It does. At least, that’s my experience. I still go through enormous moments of self-doubt, of self-discouragement, of absolutely terrifying moments where I think I’ve completely missed the boat. And then I just keep writing and the plot resolves itself. Almost invariably in ways I did not expect.

Kind of like life, I find.

And still people are not going to like what I create. I will get the nasty reviews to go with the glowing ones, the things that are one word shy of an assault on my grandmother to go with the ‘you’ve changed my life’ starry-eyed expressions that make me wonder whether I might start a cult.

The truth, it seems, is that all art is in the eye of the beholder. But I cannot in good conscience do to others what I feel is done to me when I receive nasty reviews. I’m not going to get into the psychology of projection, which I have discovered in my own mind, but I would rather put flowers than rat shite into the world if I can avoid it. If something is really not worth my time, why say anything at all?

Criticism, it seems to me, is an exploration of one’s own philosophy of life. I think that critics play an important role, though in my darker moments I think that Keaton’s Birdman soliloquy hit the nail on the head. When we criticize, we don’t really take any risks, unless those criticisms are so out of left field that we get excommunicated from society for expressing them. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that the nasty ones always get more upvotes than the positive ones. There’s more… juice, in writing controversial things. Or perhaps people think you’re being more honest when you look on the dark side of life. It’s partly the reason why the media makes so much money from the polarization of society, it seems to me.

For me, writing five star reviews isn’t just to amp others up. It’s providing an honest assessment of a person’s expression. People go on and on about how ‘the real world’ isn’t a place where everyone gets a gold star, and in truth, it’s not. But in my corner of the world, I choose which wolf to feed. And though I might notice small blemishes, spelling errors, usage errors, or unbelievable aspects of a tale as I’m reading, I generally don’t let those dictate my assessment.

If you’re entering the arena, if you put on your armour and prepare for battle, you deserve five stars. At least, I’ll be there to give them to you.

Review - The Eye Of The World by Robert Jordan

Preamble

The Wheel Of Time has been one of those epics that I normally avoid for the sheer time commitment involved with reading them. The longest series I’ve ever read was The Dark Tower. At seven books in length, Stephen King's opus does remain one of the more satisfying reads I’ve experienced. Robert Jordan’s story is twice that length, at least in term of the number of books. The philosophical implications of the story had always intrigued me, though – reincarnation, the nature of reality, more mythological symbolism than you can shake a stick at. I had previously tried to listen to the original audiobook a few years ago, but distractions pulled me away from it. The new fantastic Amazon series coupled with a serious new walking habit saw me burn through the new audiobook version narrated by Rosamund Pike (Moraine from the show) in less than a month.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

Review – 5/5

There’s a character who enters the story about halfway through the book, perhaps more. His name is Loial, he’s an ogier (housebroken ogre?), which is to say he’s a plodding nerd with a sense of time that’s completely alien to human beings. He is around 90 years old and he’s still considered an adolescent in ogier society. He takes his time in the grand tradition of the Ents from The Lord Of The Rings, and makes an untold number of references to how he doesn’t like to be hurried. Loial is considered hot-blooded for an ogier, which is an ongoing joke, given how bloody turgid and slow he is about doing things.

I have a feeling that Robert Jordan drew on his own artistic sensibilities when he created Loial.

One of the criticisms that is leveled at The Wheel Of Time is that the prose is dense and long-winded, and it gets worse as the series goes on. I’m still listening to the second book, so I can’t say to what degree it’s warranted overall in the series, but I think there’s a level of charm to that that I can appreciate now, and probably would not have been able to stand when I was younger. Especially on audiobook, during my hour to hour and a half walks that I try to work in each day. Sometimes you can lose focus thinking about other things, and you come back to find out that Jordan is still describing the masonry work on some castle that was destroyed centuries before in the world of the story.

To some extent, I’m kidding. From a personal level, I know that I do not have the patience to write in the way that Jordan does. The pacing is glacial, and I sometimes think on the heavy Eastern influence on the writing. It starts as a classic Western battle of good vs. evil vibe, but it seems to me that there are Taoist themes that influence the book, and not just because there is a yin yang element to much of the magic system and beyond. Even the name of the series, The Wheel Of Time, evokes something circular, and it turns out all of these folks are reincarnating over and over again. In the show, a climactic battle takes place over a yin yang symbol, and I believe the story itself has the symbol on the spine of some of the paperbacks or on the pages (one of the drawbacks of listening to the book is that I miss this kind of thing, as well as the way any of these fantasy words are spelled).

Maybe it’s because my own experience entering into these philosophical realms was coupled with a meditation practice that I picked up seven years ago or so. But it seems that even the writing itself is paced at a steady in and out breathing pace that would fit as one sits in zazen meditation (Zen being a blended offshoot of Taoism and Buddhism, to simplify it to a degree).

That’s a bit heady, so to break it down a bit: the first book is well plotted, the characterization is extremely rich (some of the best I’ve encountered), and you end up caring a great deal for the people in the book. I admit that this might be because of the involvement that the show induced in me – I restarted this book around the same time I started watching the drip feed of the show from Amazon. When I first encountered it, I felt like the big bad might be too Sauron-y for my taste, and it does wear its Tolkien influence on its sleeve. But if you’re going to crib from anyone, might as well lift from the best.

Tolkien’s work is mythological in structure, more so than most modern fantasy, and The Wheel Of Time gets full points here. Only where Tolkien was influenced by Christian and Norse and Celtic mythologies, Jordan’s goes a bit more global in scope. I think I saw something where Jordan was called the ‘American Tolkien,’ and having read this book, I think I get why. Like the country, it is a melting pot of influences, and there are some clear call outs to Arthurian legend as well as the Eastern ideas of the unified duality of the world. And a whole bunch besides.

When I was listening to the book, I was concerned as to whether there was going to be any real pay off at the end of The Eye Of The World, or if it would feel more like ‘Chapter One’ of the story. But I shouldn’t have worried – the ending is satisfying and full, but it does leave you wanting more. I’m invested at this point and have already clocked through several hours of The Great Hunt, book two in the series.

I can recommend this to anyone who is ogier in nature. If you’re more the quicksilver type, it might prove a bore. I don’t consider myself an ogier, but I think the grey hairs on my head are starting to denote a sea change in my own sensibility.

You can check out The Eye Of The World on the 'zon here.

The Bawdy Bard Launch!

Heya folks!

It's the Christmas season, and I wanted to do something special for members of my mailing list. I am here to offer you a free download of my latest book. It's not even on Amazon yet, that's how exclusive this is. It's called The Bawdy Bard: A Gutter Sonata and it is without a doubt my favourite thing I have written.

Who’s got two thumbs, a lute, and magical powers?

This guy. The decidedly anonymous bawdy bard is a man who seems to have it all: more ale and wenches than a hedonistic degenerate knows what to do with. All is well in his world – at least when he rolls into Io’s Breath, a frozen city on the edge of the kingdom of his birth.

When a commission for a fancy new lute leads the bawdy bard into a meeting with the Duke of Io’s Breath, the bard’s silver tongue and carefree attitude gets him selected for the job of a lifetime. In the shadow of an impending war, the foul-mouthed musician must decide whether the lure of position and riches is worth dredging up his past.

As the memories – and identity – of a life he left behind come rushing back, the bard treks across the land to meet his destiny. Is his musical magic strong enough to put diplomatic end to a war before it’s even begun? And what of the battle that rages within? Can our man in fancy tights deal with demons of days gone by with a song and a dance?

Hold on to your floppy feathered hats.

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The Great Feather Caper Launch!

Welcome to December 2021!

It’s here - the book you didn’t know you needed to read. Following on the heels of The Weighing Of The Heart: A Cautionary Tale (Book One of The Thoth Trilogy), the story of Thoth, Akins, Water Lily and all the rest of the anachronistic perverted pantheon of Egyptian deities continues with The Great Feather Caper: A Divine Send-Up (Book Two of The Thoth Quadrilogy). The first book described as ‘the most fucked up shit [he’s] ever read’ by Dennis Liggio in the Foreword to The Great Feather Caper, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to pique your interest for this second volume. So I’ll just let Thoth take over beneath the break…

Your ripped yet birdy pal/narrator Thoth here. Again. Well, my brother Set has gone and done it - he's set off the plague to end all plagues, all because he could not get over his incel-based rage. But all is not lost, because when it comes to the end of the world, there always seems to be an asterisk attached, invariably some hero who wrecks the villain's plans for domination and... yawn. Whatever, I'm not even interested in unpacking my brother's psychology here. You'll have to read the book for that.

On the one hand, we have party pooper Set and his mummy pal Djet, intent on making things... bad. On the other, we have Akins and Water Lily, two unlikely dreamers who must do what only ancient myth-based heroes can do: save the world by traveling to the underworld. On the third hand - wait, no that's not right. But on the third appendage, there is a host of Ancient Egyptian deities, ranging from my unrequited love Hathor to the no-nonsense feline Bastet to the wondrous Goddess of Truth Maat to... speaking of pooping, have a look at Anubis, God of Death. Sheesh, what happened to you? Again, maybe read the book.

When things get hairy, I transmute them to feathery. I'm the Lord of the Alchemists, after all. And my acolytes Akins and Water Lily are going to need all the help they can get if they're going to travel to the seediest and raunchiest place in the multiverse, the Duat, and pull of the heist of Eternity when they steal the Feather of - hey, wait a minute. What am I doing, exposing the plot here like a pervert in a trenchcoat?

How many times have I gotta remind you to read the book?

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Review - Midnight Mass (2021)

I tried recommending Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass to a friend yesterday. His response, after I told him vampires were involved, that I had lost him at horror. It’s funny, how we like to lump things into genres, to pre-judge things based on categorization. I am guilty of it too, from time to time. I would say horror is my favourite genre of film, but if I have to pick what’s next, I would rarely select a biopic, for example. Nonetheless, I think horror might be a secondary genre to what this show is.

Christian mythology is almost a term of abuse in the modern world I inhabit. Most people I know are not religious. Secular is how I was raised and it is a way of being that I view as being opposed to what I might term ‘orthodox zealotry.’ Basically, the taking of the Bible as a literal historical account is ‘the norm,’ if one identifies as religious. But as Joseph Campbell once put it,

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”

Midnight Mass is a mythological attempt to reconcile these two opposing views, that of the atheist and the theist, to find something human and transcendent within the muck of religious tradition and the existential questions that lead us to seek them out in the first place. It is done in a masterful way, a slow build up of circumstance and strange miracles and occurrences that reach a fever pitch. It all ends with a wonderful bang.

The vampire, as a metaphor, can be seen as a clinging to the life of the body. In itself, it represents a lack of faith in reality - in death - as being anything but a horrendous, God-awful thing. In my view, the reason that the vampire is so effective in this movie is that it gives a backdrop for the people of the sleepy little village of Crockett Island, is that it brings to the fore all of the shadows that hide beneath our veneers of propriety. It is the shadow of the psyche manifest, almost like a ‘bad trip’ come to life.

The most obvious example of this is Bev Keane, the ‘officious intermeddler,’ as legal language would describe her. She is the lady who does all the ‘right’ things, is the priest’s number one helper, and yet is harbouring so much judgment and self-righteousness it is clear that there is no one more deluded about the nature of God in the entire community than her. She gets right on board with the vampire, as her unexamined shadow finds a perfect way of manifesting with the help of the creature of the night.

The vampire itself doesn’t say a word. It has great leathery wings and, though Father Paul, his first ‘convert,’ does mention that the creature is speaking with him, he is mostly a mute animal. He calls it an angel, and in a metaphorical sense, he is absolutely right. He is the avenging angel, come to quite metaphorically burn out the rot at the heart of the small community of Crockett Island.

Flanagan has plenty to say about the various assumptions that we make about death while we cling to life. Riley, the prodigal son who comes home from prison after serving his sentence for drunkenly killing a woman with his car, finds that his experience has robbed him of any faith. In spite of studying all of the religious traditions of the world while he is inside, he believes that there is nothing. Every night he is haunted by the corpse of the girl that he killed. He tells Erin, his confidant in a town that shuns him, that he as lost all faith, in spite of having been a good little altar boy as a child. Erin, at least halfway through the show, is a bog-standard ‘good Christian,’ who believes in the ‘standard’ literal interpretation of Heaven. She thinks that she’ll be reunited with the ‘body-based’ version of all of her loved ones, that the trappings of their identity and egos will be in this ‘good place’ where none of the evil of the world can touch.

The true climax of the story might seem at first blush to be all of the people who were not swayed by the promise of everlasting life from the vampire, the ones who decided to burn the whole place down and force all of the ghouls to face the sunrise. But to me, that is not really it. The real triumph is Erin’s experience of enlightenment, the recollection of her true self as she lies dying. This is foreshadowed by the priest himself, when he talks about how Good Friday was indeed a good thing, how the death of Jesus, though it seemed to be this moment of great suffering, was a triumph. But he was reading it literally. In her final moments, Erin sees the metaphor for what it is… and gives us all a taste.

A truly wonderful mini-series, and definitely worth a watch.

The Weighing Of The Heart Launch!

Welcome to the lonesome October!

Can you smell that in the air, amongst the rotting vegetation and pine trees? Smells like a new bawdy mythological horror comedy fantasy series (cause it ain’t a genre if it don’t bend).

The Weighing Of The Heart: A Cautionary Tale (Book One of The Thoth Quadrilogy) is now live and available on Amazon. Here is some of the early buzz about the book:

"The newest ribald tale from Andrew Marc Rowe will shock and surprise you - because who would expect this? Egyptian gods run amok! Venereal zombie apocalypse! Fourth wall shattered! Andrew Marc Rowe at his best!" Dennis Liggio, author of I Kill Monsters

"'The Weighing of the Heart' is an Egyptian sex-joke comic-metaphysical adventure, and at each crotch-and-penis joke you will be tempted to declare it farce. Yet... the villains are presented real choices, the heroes stand at moments of decision that are moral and moving. And while the narrator is joking in the background, riffing on dicks and asses, he's deciding just what it all weighs in those damned divine scales." Raymond St. Elmo, author of The Quest For The Five Clans

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What do you think of the book? Drop a comment in the box below!

The nuts and bolts of writing... ️

“The way of the mystic and the way of the artist are related, except that the mystic doesn’t have a craft.”

Jean Erdman Campbell

Hi there, it’s been a while…

One of the things that always made me wonder when I was reading books in my early days was a pretty common question: how do they do it? How do authors come up with the stuff they write? It was a mystery to me for most of my life, and I assumed it had something to do with talents and gifts and all of that stuff. Then, when I actually started trying to do it myself, I ran into a somewhat telling interview with Stephen King. Basically, the interviewer asked him, 'why do you write all this horrific stuff?' His response was agile and somewhat mystifying. He said, 'what makes you think I have a choice?'

I didn't really get that in the early days. I still am not sure I fully understand it now, but I feel like I'm living it, because I think that is part of the creative process. It's baked right into it. The mystery of creation itself never goes. Where do stories come from? It's all well and good to say something along the lines of 'I am writing a zombie story about a guy in London who becomes patient zero and somehow does not lose his reasoning faculties... also there's a sentient crow that escapes from a lab in the U.S. and spreads mayhem' (true story, by the way - stay tuned for that bizarro caper). But I never really set out to write that story - rather, the story is what it is and it's up to me to deliver it. I heard Elizabeth Gilbert speak about a phenomenon on a podcast, wherein she was writing a story with the exact same elements as Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder some time before it was released. Then she got distracted from it for a few years. When she came back to it, she realized Patchett’s book was out and was almost identical to the one she had previously started. In her estimation, the stories are already written and if you miss your chance, someone else gets the inspiration.

Alan Watts, a philosophical entertainer to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for his influence on my life, once said that you could create a genius school, where day after day geniuses are streaming out, to the point where everybody was a genius, if you had two things: teachers who taught the students the technical skill in question, and teachers who showed the students how to get out of their own way. While I think it would be beyond the pale to label one's self genius (I think they call it an ego-verload), there seems to me to be something of merit to that idea when it comes to learning one's own artistic process. The first part is a simple but not easy - technical skill in pretty much any field can be taught, as long as the student has the discipline to make learning a big part of their life. The second part, the getting out of one's own way... now this is where the whole thing gets interesting.

Personally, I started with the first bit. The technical skills of expression were available to me, as I was learning the art of writing through my day job as a lawyer - not exactly fiction, but certainly I shot for impeccable style (good enough to put before a judge, anyway). I also (surprise surprise) read fiction for fun, and there are only so many times you can read good and bad pacing, plot, characterization, etc. until you start to osmotically understand what makes an interesting story. Then there’s the discipline to practice writing stories.

There was a book I read, called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, that is more like a motivational coach than anything that's going to help you develop good grammar and sentence structure and that kind of thing (Strunk and White's The Elements of Style can do you for that one). The War Of Art is an extremely enlightening text and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn any form of art. It's very basic - butt in chair, no excuses. Do your work every day. He also speaks of the force, Resistance, that comes up and tries to throw a stick in our spokes - whether through addiction to substances, to bending the rules so one can make time for social plans, to loafing and Netflixing one’s self to death, to doing everything it can to keep us from writing. Somehow, there's always a comfortable thing that calls to us and tries to get us to give up on our dreams.

It seems silly, to believe in such a force as Resistance, or some foe with whom to do battle, because it starts skating into metaphysical territory. It's pretty much like saying that there is a force in this universe like the Muse, who smiles on us when we are seated in our chairs and doing our work, who shines down inspiration on her devotees - which is exactly how Pressfield describes it. Things just start to click after a while. Even though we've been writing page after page of less-than-pedestrian trash, somehow small worthwhile bits start to eke in. Without even planning it, we get glimpses of some vast treasure pile beyond the veil from which we are being fed coins.

But all the while, there is what I would call an experience of crushing self-doubt. Of being an impostor. Because, come on! You keep sitting down and writing and nothing but garbage keeps flowing out. No matter which way you try to slice the apple, the thing is mealy and rotten. There's nothing of substance, nothing that makes you feel like you are getting anywhere. Those stories you've been telling yourself about how useless you are - these are proving to be true. And yet, in spite of what seems like failure after failure, you keep putting your butt in the chair. This part requires grit - it's like trying to lose weight and in spite of all of your diligent efforts with food and exercise, the scale doesn't move. For months and years on end.

Grit aside, what about the second bit, the getting out of one's own way? As far as I have seen it, it comes down to a question of identity: who is the person getting in whose way? How can you get in your own way if you are singular being? In terms of self-doubt, there is a self and there is a doubter - a schism. Doesn't getting in one's own way require two separate things, one trying to go forward and another to get in the way? This is where the individual circumstances of the writer's process comes into focus. Each one of us has a unique way of creating art, as totally ours as anyone else's belongs to them. And - here is the important bit - none is better than the other. For example, in his book, On Writing, Stephen King was less than glowing about writing classes and groups. Verbatim, he said that he was ‘doubtful about writing classes, but not entirely against them.’ According to him, these writer’s groups that offer shared critiques of snippets of your work are distractions that pull you away from writing the thing. And, he said, ‘What about those critiques? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry.’ Per King, the real lessons that you need to learn are are learned with the door to your office closed. It's great to have people who take the business of writing seriously in a peer group, but unless you are making those mistakes yourself and analyzing your own work, you are not going to get a felt understanding of what makes a good story. I’m reminded of Carl Jung’s statement about a patient in psychotherapy, that ‘anything he has not acquired himself he will not believe in the long run, and what he takes over from authority merely keeps him infantile.’ But that’s just one line of thought, associated with a single writer. Other people, like Chuck Palahniuk, spent a great deal of time in writing groups over the years, learning from all kinds of established authors and others like him. His work is obviously of high caliber, as I think most would consider King's stuff. It seems he does not share King's opinion of the value of writing groups, though - it’s my understanding that he regularly offers writing workshops as part of his thing.

Then you have guys like Alan Watts, who just let everything flow and whose assistant said after his death that the editing was down to a couple of periods and punctuation here and there of the first draft. It came out, as it were, pretty much fully formed. Sure, it wasn’t fiction, but in my opinion, this off-the-cuff writing is absolutely wonderful.

Here's my process: I just sit down and write. I do not judge, I do not self-criticize, I do not assume that the first draft is always shit, as Mr. Hemingway allegedly declared. Been there, done that - got the t-shirt. I have to let it flow exactly as it wants to flow. It does not come out absolutely perfectly, but it comes out eerily better than I could have hoped. It's bizarre how things fit into each other when the book or story is finished. I don't outline, but I do ‘get’ book names and chapter titles in advance. When I say ‘get,’ I’m being as woo as a sage-smudging aficionado talking about ‘wisdom downloads from the great beyond.’ I usually won't know why a book is titled the way it is, nor even what the themes or messages or any of it is about, and then I finish writing the last chapter and realize that it has turned out to be a totally perfect title or subtitle, more appropriate than anything I might have come up with after the fact. It turns out that releasing the reins into the chaos of the mystery has dumped a perfectly ordered text into my lap. In those moments, I sit back and wonder at the existence of Pressfield's Muse or Gilbert’s idea about the independence of stories. The book seems to already have been written, I'm just on obstetric duty. Then I go through several drafts and have an editor who evaluates and gives criticism when I'm ready to give it up. That said, I have yet to rewrite an entire section of a story in its totality. But the idea of never rewriting anything as a general rule can seem amateurish, depending on whose opinion you read about the craft.

Herein lies the problem with dogma, or some traditional method of teaching of a skill in this part of the artistic arena: it always started as someone else's experience. If you want to learn how to write like Mr. X, then buy Mr. X's book on writing. Follow it to a tee and you may get a nice clone. But if your own process, which is by its nature unique to you, does not jive with dogma and you want to make it fit into the box that Mr. X says it should, you are getting in your own way. You are cutting yourself off at the knees because you're not letting the mystery flow where it wants to go. It takes courage, sure, because you might feel like you're actually going your own way, off into a vast unknown. In fact, you are - and that’s a good thing. Joseph Campbell once said that if you can see your path laid out in front of you, that’s not your path - it’s somebody else’s. In my universe, that repeated stepping out over the cliff like the Fool on the 0 of the tarot deck: that is the only way I can do it properly, be it life or writing. It’s the only way the Muse will smile on me and let me into the vast treasure trove beyond the veil. I spent years paying my dues, fighting the war of art, and now I have a peaceful method that produces stories with which I am happy - they are the kind of stories I would love to read. Many of my readers enjoy them, and like anything, there are some who do not. I do not frequently feel like an impostor anymore, though, because the stories are me, through and through. The only way one feels like an impostor when one is being one's self is because there is a split between identities - that wasn't me, that was Patricia, to quote the film Split. But who is the real self and who is the impostor? Does this divide actually exist? In my world, buying into the impostor thing is abdicating my responsibility to live a purposeful life. That is not going in one's own way but rather getting in one's own way.

This is a heretical opinion, I know. You have to maintain crushing self-doubt to be an artist, do you not? Certainly the memes on Facebook say so. But for me, the process of writing is about self-liberation. It's about an affirmative 'yes' to life, of no longer doubting that I am capable. Self-doubt was my dragon in this arena, to use Hero's Journey mythological terminology. But, in those same psycho-mythological terms, when you slay the dragon, you gain its power - you become the owner of its pile of gold. I played the impostor for most of my adult life - as a younger man I not only thought that living in fear was the only way forward, but I was certain I was never going to be good enough. That I would never have what it takes to be a writer. And yet, here I am, doing what I'm doing, and am quite happy to have finally found my voice. I am proudly me, an integrated being, moving forward in my own way.

Of course, it ain’t all rainbows and sunshine - nothing in life is. As Campbell said about walking your path, the birds still shit on you from time to time. But the value - the pure unadulterated wonder that comes from following your soul’s calling - it’s way more gratifying than anything Resistance has on its menu of short-term highs, addictions, and comforting paths to general malaise.

There it is, my writing process in a nutshell. It's my method - and it's not recommended. What is recommended is the first bit, if you have a dream of creating art. Grit and determination. Don't ever let Resistance take you down - you'll figure out how to get out of your own way eventually. I also recommend Jimmy Buffett's take on it.

Drop your comments in the box below if you have any thoughts!

Andrew

Ahoy Mateys! Today's The Day! ‍☠️

Yarr,

'Tis I, Rowe, yer captain speakin'. Comin' in hotter den a bucket 'o chum in a Tortuga afternoon sun, The Cutlass Swoon: A New World Romance (Book One of The Davy Jones Trilogy), has launched! I even wrote a song for the occasion! Check it out right here:

To get your copy of the book, check out these links:

Kindle editionPaperback

I hope you enjoy!

Much love,

Andrew

Pervy Terror Trio Review - Shingles 1-3

Preamble

I was doing keyword research for Amazon ads for my bawdy Druid Trilogy when I stumbled across the Shingles series. Basically Goosebumps for adults, Shingles is as dirty hilarious as it gets. My mission over the next few months is to read through the entire series, which shouldn’t take so long given that they’re relatively quick reads, about a hundred pages each. I’m splitting them into triple batches, thus the Pervy Terror Trio title for these posts.

For background, I have vivid memories of reading Goosebumps in my bed well into the wee hours when I was supposed to be sleeping. Any time there was a Scholastic book fair at school, I always insisted Mudder get us a copy (by ‘Mudder’ I mean Mom, by ‘us’ I mean me – Newfoundland English). In short, I was a fiend for R.L. Stine’s books as a kid (at least the Goosebumps ones, the series targeted at older kids and their pubescent neuroses – Fear Street – was shite as far as my young mind was concerned). I also am as big a fan of blue comedy as you might find, gleefully absorbing Adam Sandler CDs and filthy stand-up as I aged.

Finding Shingles was pretty much Christmas in April for me.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

The Ghost Of Hooker Street (Shingles #1) by Robert Bevan – 5/5

Any book that has a six-year-old ingesting opiates and hormone medication while his older sister steals bondage pics of their mother and cocaine from a hidden safe in a rival tween’s father’s bedroom mere pages into the story is alright by me. Coles Notes: the caricature of neglect that surrounds protag chilluns Sarah and Tommy is only the start of this no-holds-barred romp through seedy scene after seedy scene, all ignited by a search for a way to kill Mr. Riley, the black mailman who has stolen their mother from their terrible father.

Why bring up race, you might ask. Well, it plays a pretty significant role. As do drugs, prostitution, murder, pedophilia, domestic abuse, spirit possession, blackmail… in fact, it kind of reminded me of Tales from the Hood, that old horror comedy I loved watching as a teenager. Or even a certain music video from a certain rapper’s certain hit. Murder was the case they gave Lashaunta, the titular hooker ghost.

You see, the kids stumble across Lashaunta’s corpse, only to discover a ring bearing her ghost and the spectre’s own desire for revenge against her murderous pimp, one Shaggy Ballz. In their quest for revenge, perverted priests attempt to rape the children, Ballz gets his comeuppance, a Wendy’s is held up for Frostys and burgers, the ring – and Lashaunta possession – swaps bodies more times than you can spit, Mr. Riley gets his, and yes, Virginia, there is a twistedly happy ending to this fucked up tale.

That’s only scratching the surface of the convoluted plot, which is more of a vehicle for gratuitous filthy and extreme comedy that is so over the top that no one could ever take any of it seriously. If you like to laugh at ridiculous pervy shit, get this book.

Well done, Mr. Bevan. Well done.

Gary’s Children (Shingles #2) by Rick Gualtieri – 5/5

Having read the book, and on closer inspection, I now realize that the big black object in the background of the illustrated cover is a Fleshlight – on sale, no less. Sorry, the Jacklight, the totally different, not getting sued version of a flashlight you can fuck. Still, the mess – those of the dildo persuasion get a better deal than those with cocks seeking a rubbery home.

Which is part of the plot, actually.

Our man in misery, Gary, loser of the pitiable type, likes whacking off. A lot. Mostly because he’s completely inept when it comes to the fairer sex. As a man who found himself afraid of women as a youth, I can totally sympathize with some of Gary’s monologue, which colours the pages coward. Having resigned himself in many ways to his own stunted growth, Gary can’t even muster up the courage to enter a Hello Titty sex shop to buy a Jacklight 2.0, the new and improved version. Instead, he ends up in the second-hand shop next door.

You know the place from every horror movie dealing with cursed objects: weird owner, weird goods, yet one oddly appropriate item that the owner kind of sells to him while seeming detached – apart from a demonic moment of glee when the owner realizes the victim protagonist is about to seal their fate and buy the thing that spells their doom.

In some ways it’s a cautionary tale about cowardice – Gary can’t even be straight up with the shop owner. He pretends he’s getting his Dad a gift for his birthday, and that ‘gift’ ends up being a prototype Jacklight. What ensues is a sexcapade with the pocket pussy that sees Gary haunted by the ghosts of children he could have had – had he impregnated any of the scant few women of his past. These kids soon become mushy grey shades who terrify Gary.

The character portrait is quite well done. We get a glimpse of Gary’s dysfunctional relationship with his mother, which explains some of his fears and distrust of women. We see Gary get tantalized with women throwing themselves at him, and it is insinuated that Gary is actually kind of attractive. Except that each time this happens, the ghosts of future not happening pregnancies show up and tell Gary they would have been born of a potential relationship that seems to be blossoming before him… which itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy. To wit, the curse of the Jacklight is to show Gary the potential for an end to his onanistic frustration and then pulls the rug out from under him.

It’s not a happy finish for Gary, which is kind of common with horror. It’s somewhat Lovecraftian, not in the ‘oh, it’s an octopus, so it’s Cthulhu’ kind of way, but rather because it ends with the protagonist having gone completely insane and landed in a mental institution… which actually was the denouement to a number of Lovecraft’s stories.

Also, the Jacklight sloshes with semen constantly.

The Monkey’s Penis (Shingles #3) by Steve Wetherell – 4/5

Yes, it’s the monkey’s paw story except with a big stuffed monkey dick. That shoots a load when one of the three wishes is expended, finally leaving naught but a limp sausage.

This story was good, but perhaps not quite as impactful as the previous two. It starts improbably enough, with a high school nerd’s alcoholic Mom buying him a $50 stuffed monkey cock for his birthday. It’s enormous, dreamed as perhaps an ape’s cock by our protagonist Chris, and he immediately tries to return it at the same ridiculous kind of curios shop trope as the one in #2. The shop owner refuses, of course, and Chris accidentally wishes for a cock like the monkey penis after Chris’ buddy Stu gets involved.

I enjoyed the read, but the story was a bit flat after the first two. Chris gets up in class, monkey boner for all to see, gets sent home for having a boner, there’s talk of tucking boners under waistbands rather than tying them to legs with belts – that kind of thing. The rest of the wishes are poorly thought out, and the consequences are as you’d expect from a monkey’s paw tale – unexpectedly awful. Neo Nazis worshipping Chris awful, dystopian hellscape awful.

The turkey is always fucking dry, people!

Still, the story ends happily enough, but it did not feel as well-crafted as the first two. It was more a vehicle for pubescent angst and other high school type shit. It was kind of funny, but not as laugh out loud funny as Hooker Alley, nor was there any moral poignancy like Gary’s Children. If Hooker Alley was Aqua Teen Hunger Force, this was one of the middling episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

You can check out Shingles on the 'zon here.

Hello friend - want to support my writing and other endeavours and don’t want to buy my books? I am always on the lookout for a smooth cup of cacao. Along with sleeping naked in the shower, it gives me strange powers (sexual and otherwise).

All Knotted Up and The Flower Of Creation Launch

Greetings dear readers!

Here we are on October 1, 2020. It’s the full moon. A special one indeed: the Harvest and Hunter’s Moon, all rolled into one. The first one, the bit about the harvest, seems appropriate here, given that I am releasing not one - but two - new books today. All Knotted Up: The Price Of Fame (Book Two of The Druid Trilogy) and The Flower Of Creation: Every Show Needs A Finale (Book Three of The Druid Trilogy) are now available for your reading pleasure. Here’s the snazzy cover art!

This release is especially poignant for me for two reasons. The first has to do with mental health. I wrote The Druid Trilogy during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the isolation was at its worst. In my younger years, I suffered pretty significantly with anxiety and depression (so much so that I ended up traveling to Peru for ayahuasca therapy when I hit my rock bottom). Since returning from South America, I have been in what I would term ‘a good place.’ Life has had its ups and downs - I had a wonderful daughter, I started publishing books, relationship have come and gone. But the truth is that this pandemic put me in a dark place.

I know that I’m not alone in this - plenty of people have had difficulties coping with what’s been going on. But I honestly did not ever expect it to get as bad as it did at the height. Granted, there were other personal issues I had going on at the time - it was kind of like a perfect storm. And yet, throughout, part of the way I dealt with things was to write. If anything good has come out of this pandemic for me, it’s The Druid Trilogy. And to have it completed and available to the world now that the storm has passed… well, it’s something alright.

The second reason this means so much to me is because of reviews I received for the books. During my last few years marketing my work, I added a number of people to my mailing list (you can join here if you haven’t already!) As part of my welcome process, I ask people if they want to join my Advance Reader Team, which is composed of people who agree to read books before their release and offer reviews at launch. Earlier this year I added someone, Erica Jones, who I had no idea ran a book review blog of her own (called The Hearth - you can find it here). I ended up reaching out after she read and reviewed the first books in the series, Top Man: The Epic Wager (A Prequel to The Druid Trilogy) and The Hammer Of The Gods: So You Want To Be A Star (Book One of The Druid Trilogy) (her review of Top Man, her review of The Hammer Of The Gods) She told me that The Hammer Of The Gods was the best book she had read (!) and intimated to me that the books meant a lot to her… as in reading them was a significant experience.

Personally, I understand having this kind of an experience with a book. The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho was such a thing with me that I ended up typing out every word to feel the magic of its creation when I was learning how to write - there was joy, there were tears, there were emotions I never would have believed you could associate with appreciation of a work of art up until that point. After I did my work with The Pilgrimage and started writing The Yoga of Strength, I decided that this is what I wanted to try to do with my work. To inspire people, to touch their hearts.

As a result of Erica’s kind words about The Hammer Of The Gods, I asked Erica if she wanted to read early drafts of All Knotted Up and The Flower Of Creation. She said ‘yes’ and went on to devour both in short order, sending me messages from time to time about her experience with the books (they were all astounding). Again, the effect they were having on her life were beyond my own wildest dreams. Quite literally, I was doing for her with my words what Paulo Coelho did for me. What this means to me is indescribable.

Throughout all of this, we became friends. She even wrote the Foreword to The Flower Of Creation. When the reviews came in, I was completely floored (here’s Erica’s review of All Knotted Up, here’s her review of The Flower Of Creation). I shared them with a few people and there was some mock skepticism about whether they were real or not. My Dad joked that I wrote them myself, my uncle joked that my Mom and Dad wrote them, my friend said to me that they read like overzealous spam and asked if the author was a Nigerian prince looking to share his millions. But the truth is that I lived through all of this with Erica, a now-close friend with whom I have never shared the same room, let alone been within two thousand miles of her.

I’d recommend following The Hearth on Facebook - Erica’s got plenty of reviews (of other people’s work, even! :-P) on there and more to come.

So, yes. A Harvest Moon indeed. If you do pick up any of the books, thank you so much and I hope that you enjoy. Extra good karma for leaving a review when you’re done. ;-)

Much love,

Andrew