William Meikle's Blog: Latest - Posts Tagged "sigils-and-totems"

The black bird has been with me for a long time - around 50 years now.

I think I first saw The Maltese Falcon in around 1963.

My granddad was a big Bogart fan, and I remember long Sunday afternoons spent sitting at his feet watching movies on the tiny black and white TV that was the norm back in the UK in the early Sixties. Back then everything was Britain was still in black and white - the Beatles were about to change all that, but Bogey would stay eternally gray and eternally Sam Spade for me. Even at that early age there was something about the snappy dialogue and the larger than life character that spoke to me.

I saw the film several times before I got round to reading the book - aged around 12 so about 1970. In much the same way as the film had, the book also spoke to me, touched something in me - the stuff that dreams are made of if you like.

When I started writing for myself, back in school, my voice was heavily influenced by teenage longings - I hadn't learned enough of the ways of the world to be confident and sparse, I wanted to be flowery and intense and intellectual.

University, then ten years of being a corporate drone quickly drummed that nonsense out of me. I developed cynicism and from that my own voice started to emerge, enough to ensure I could cope with being an adult but not yet enough to turn me into a writer.

The booze did that. Booze and nightmares and a new wife that understood me better than I did myself.

The booze is part and parcel of being brought up in a working class environment in the West of Scotland. Beer came easy to me in my late teens, a love affair I still have to this day. Whisky I had to work a little harder at, but I persevered and developed a taste for single malts that means my habit is largely curtailed by the expense. It doesn't mean I don't get the thirst though.

The new wife came along in the late '80s a couple of years after the old one and I realized we didn't really get on very well and went our seperate ways. Sue saw that my drinking was getting out of control, and liked me well enough to help me do something about it. 28 years later, she's still helping.

The nightmare? I've been having it off and on since I was a boy. It's of a bird - a huge, black, bird. The stuff that dreams are made of.
In the nightmare I'm on the edge of a high sea cliff. I feel the wind on my face, taste salt spray, smell cut grass and flowers. I feel like if I could just give myself to the wind I could fly.

Then it comes, from blue, snow covered mountains way to the north, a black speck at first, getting bigger fast. Before I know it it is on me, enfolding me in feathers. It lowers its head, almost like a dragon, and puts its beak near my ear. It whispers.

I had the dream many times, and always woke up at this point.

Then, in 1991, I heard what it said.

"Will we talk about the black bird?"

The next morning, for the first time since 1976, I wrote a story. It wasn't a very good story, but something had been woken up, and the day after that I wrote another, a wee ghost story. It didn't have a black bird in it, but it did have some jazz, and a sultry broad, a murder and some dancing. When that one made me 100 pounds in a ghost story competition, I was on my way.

The bird comes back and whispers to me every couple of years - I've come to think of it as my spirit guide. Although it terrifies me, it also reassures me in a weird kind of way. As long as it's around, I'll still be a writer and not just a drunk with weird ideas he can't express.

One of its recent whispers led to one of the most personal things I've ever written, in BROKEN SIGIL

Will we talk about the black bird?

It’s a simple enough concept.

There are houses like this all over the world. Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary. But some, those who suffer, some know better. They are drawn to the places where what ails them can be eased.

If you have the will, the fortitude, you can peer into another life, where the dead are not gone, where you can see that they thrive and go on, in the dreams that stuff is made of.

There it is in a nutshell. There are houses where people can go to get in touch with their dead loved ones.

But this gives me lots of things to play with. To even get inside a room, you need a sigil; a tattoo or carving on your skin, and a totem, a memento of your loved one. Then there’s the fact that your loved one might be a parallel universe version rather than the one you actually know.

And where do these houses come from? What’s behind the walls? How do they work? Why do they work? And who chooses the concierges who run them? Or fixes them when they don’t work?

So I’ve got all that to play with, plus the fact that the houses can exist anywhere, at any time. They’re like lots of boxy, multi-faceted Tardis, spread across space time, places and situations into which I can hook in characters and stories.

I've also started linking it through to some of my other characters and ongoing work, so there's sigils and totems stories featuring members of the Seton family, Derek Adams, the Midnight Eye, and Carnacki. Augustus Seton will be getting involved in 16th C Scotland soon too.

I think I’ve stumbled into something that could keep me busy for a few years.

The first two novellas that used the concept, BROKEN SIGIL and PENTACLE were both well received and a third THE JOB is now available in ebook. There’s a new novel that expands the idea further, SONGS OF DREAMING GODS, where a house is lying empty in the town center of St. Johns, Newfoundland after a brutal ritual murder, and, coming soon, THE BOATHOUSE, where the rooms are on an old whaling boat in a derelict shed and seem connected to an old chess set, and the arrival of a hurricane. Alonside them, there's a growing number of short stories, including the title story in my latest CARNACKI collection, THE EDINBURGH TOWNHOUSE.

I’ve also got an idea for a big honking fantasy trilogy using the concept, but that’ll have to wait until I’ve got time to do it justice.

Wish me luck, I’m about to knock on the door again.

A couple of years back in BROKEN SIGIL I wrote about a very strange house in New York. The Job is about another of these houses, following the same rules, but with a different set of problems to solve. It’s set in Scotland, and features Dave, a burglar in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

It’s a story that features many of the things I love – it’s got some Scottish history, a supernatural element, some guitar playing and singing, and Glasgow, an old stomping ground of mine. What’s not to like?

The House is out of sorts, its power corrupted by men after influence and wealth. Dave wanted some of that wealth for himself, but the house has other ideas. It has a problem. And it's Dave’s job to fix it… by any means necessary.

There are houses like this all over the world. Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary. But some, those who suffer… some know better. They are drawn to the places where what ails them can be eased.

If you have the will, the fortitude, you can peer into another life, where the dead are not gone, where you can see that they thrive and go on, in the dreams that stuff is made of.

Dave Wilson is down on his luck, with gambling debts coming due. He takes on a risky burglary at a Scottish country house, but the job goes badly wrong, and all too soon Dave is embroiled in a fight he wants no part of—an ages-old battle for ownership of the house.

Opposing factions are at work, and both want Dave's help. There are demons to fight, both metaphorical and literal, and there are hard choices to be made, if Dave has the strength to make them.

The three Sigils and Totems novellas are now available in a compiled ebook collection from Crossroad Press ( paperback on its way)

It’s a simple enough concept.

There are houses like this all over the world. Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary. But some, those who suffer, some know better. They are drawn to the places where what ails them can be eased.

If you have the will, the fortitude, you can peer into another life, where the dead are not gone, where you can see that they thrive and go on, in the dreams that stuff is made of.

There it is in a nutshell. There are houses where people can go to get in touch with their dead loved ones.

But this gives me lots of things to play with. To even get inside a room, you need a sigil; a tattoo or carving on your skin, and a totem, a memento of your loved one. Then there’s the fact that your loved one might be a parallel universe version rather than the one you actually know.

And where do these houses come from? What’s behind the walls? How do they work? Why do they work? And who chooses the concierges who run them? Or fixes them when they don’t work?

So I’ve got all that to play with, plus the fact that the houses can exist anywhere, at any time. They’re like lots of boxy, multi-faceted Tardis, spread across space time, places and situations into which I can hook in characters and stories.

I've also started linking it through to some of my other characters and ongoing work, so there's sigils and totems stories featuring members of the Seton family, Derek Adams, the Midnight Eye, and Carnacki. Augustus Seton will be getting involved in 16th C Scotland soon too.

I think I’ve stumbled into something that could keep me busy for a few years.

The novellas that used the concept, BROKEN SIGIL, THE JOB and PENTACLE were well received and are in standalone ebooks, and also collected in a single omnibus edition. There’s a novel that expands the idea further, SONGS OF DREAMING GODS, where a house is lying empty in the town center of St. Johns, Newfoundland after a brutal ritual murder, and, coming soon, THE BOATHOUSE, where the rooms are on an old whaling boat in a derelict shed and seem connected to an old chess set, and the arrival of a hurricane. Alonside them, there's a growing number of short stories, including the title story in my latest CARNACKI collection, THE EDINBURGH TOWNHOUSE.

I’ve also got an idea for a big honking fantasy trilogy using the concept, but that’ll have to wait until I’ve got time to do it justice.

Wish me luck, I’m about to knock on the door again.