Vince Churchill's Blog, page 8

So beautiful. As a writer, the question is - is this where the...

So beautiful. As a writer, the question is - is this where the story starts, or where it ends?

I think the female form is the most incredible, alluring,...

I think the female form is the most incredible, alluring, mysterious, and inexhaustible landscape in the world. Images like this only make me smile at the limitless power and beauty. 

As a writer of dark fiction, I often get caught up in an...

As a writer of dark fiction, I often get caught up in an outrageous plot idea for a new book, rarely giving even the briefest of thoughts to the characters I would need to create to pull the story off. Not that creating memorable or effective characters is something I consider one of my strengths, but I seem to have developed a knack for it, and surprisingly, with both genders. I don’t tend to spend much prep time on characters before starting a novel. I tend to just make up folks as I go. Now, every once in a while I have a character mapped out prior to starting, and often it’s a minor one, such as The Recluse, a character I’m excited about in my current project SIETE. I’m not sure when or why the idea struck me for this character, but I know he’ll bring something special to the book no matter the relatively small part he’ll have to play. And the funny thing is I know much more about The Recluse than I do most of my main characters for this barroom brawl between good and evil. 

So, I’m not going to think too hard about something that seems to come easy to me. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? But it only seemed fair to take a moment and identify that a wagon with great wheels without good horses to pull it doesn’t get very far, does it?

Then again, no need for great characters without a killer story to drop them into so they can play.

Just sayin’.

Loved this image the moment I laid eyes on it. Very intriguing...

Loved this image the moment I laid eyes on it. Very intriguing take on the eternal chess match between God and the Devil. It’s a near perfect representation of my current novel-in-progress, SIETE. 

Down the road, I can only hope the completed version has an equally cool cover.

Photo

2015 is going to be a make or break year in my life. I’m...

2015 is going to be a make or break year in my life. I’m 52 years old & I’m still evolving personally and creatively, and I need to accept that evolution is intertwined. 

I’m into my latest book, but haunted daily by the best script idea I’ve had since The Butcher Bride. I sent a couple of hours today continuing to flesh the idea out for CAGES. Part of me wishes I could find a talented screenwriter to write it, but I know either I do it or it doesn’t get written. I R-E-A-L-L-Y want to make movies but the Land of Lincoln is so fucking far from Hollywood on so many levels, the thought is overwhelming. I’m gonna have to come to grips with the fact that if I’m ever going to become a filmmaker, I’m going to have to create my own world from scratch. So crazy, but perhaps exactly the adventure I really need to survive Midwestern living. And that’s why my life feels like its been on a tetter totter for the past year. As much as I want to make it happen, deep down I don’t believe I can. 

My head and heart aren’t at war. They just have no anchor.

No more chasing $$$ for me. Just not gonna to do it. No more...

No more chasing $$$ for me. Just not gonna to do it. No more reminding folks who said they were putting checks in the mail to actually do that process. And no more putting myself under the gun to actually NEED promised but fictional money. I’m just sick and tired of selling my own books. I’m going to make things very simple in 2015: I’m going to write books & scripts. I’m going to find an agent to help me sell my work to the best possible publisher, and I’m going to break into at least one area of writing that I’d love to do. No more, and no less. Selling books from the trunk of my car is O-V-E-R. And no more conventions unless my publisher is taking care of the details & writing the checks.

I’m a writer, not a collector. I should have never allowed it to get personal, but perhaps that was for the best. It’s certainly been a potent wake-up call. I guess I needed it.

Back to writing. That is all.

Okay, so, let’s get a couple of things straight right from...

Okay, so, let’s get a couple of things straight right from the get-go. I consider my books to be movies for the written page. I really do. The second thing is what many readers consider as a carnival trick when it comes to blending genres comes second natural to me.

Despite growing up in my local public library, movies and television have been my biggest inspirations. I believe it’s from many of my favorite movies that my knack for blending genres sprang. So often when I was younger, and reading the likes of Robin Hood or The Three Musketeers, I found myself wanting to do my own versions, but sometimes the ideas twisted into weird variations. It was just how my imagination worked, and all kinds of cool stuff often fused in my mind. It’s like, why write a book about vikings, and then an outer space adventure, when you could just write something like Outlander? Bingo!

As a drive-in baby, one of my earliest movie memories was delighting at the cool wild west/dinosaur adventure, The Valley of Gwangi. For a young boy, nothing was cooler than combining cowboys with dinosaurs in the same movie. Or what about the Sinbad flicks with high seas adventures littered with monsters, skeleton warriors, and magic? Who doesn’t want to create stuff like that? In the mid-70’s, Clint Eastwood’s minor classic High Plains Drifter branded my brain forever, and was the primal force behind my second novel, the outer space western The Blackest Heart. As a writer, I take the responsibility of entertaining my readers very seriously. I’ve always felt when I please myself during the creative process, then I’m onto something fun. Twisting and blending two or more genres together is certainly one way to deliver a more unique vision for horror, erotica, action, and space opera. And the truth is, I often play the “wouldn’t it be cool?” game. I remember doing it back when I was in high school. Wouldn’t be cool if I wrote a book that combined Star Trek with Dawn of the Dead?

Sounded way cool to me. And long before Brian Keene kicked off the current zombie lit avalanche, I wrote the first draft of The Star Dead, which would later turn out to be my first novel, the sci-fi zombie tale The Dead Shall Inherit The Earth. The premise was simple - a group of mercenaries are hired to bring back the remains of plague victims back to Earth for scientific study and along the way a freak space storm re-animate the bodies and mayhem ensues. I got to make up E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. No research for me - no scratch that. I’d been doing years of research sitting in front of my tv watching Captain Kirk, Space 1999, and Battlestar Galactica. My brain had already absorbed the likes of Night of the Living Dead & Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (two more brain branding drive-in classics) and I was still having nightmares from a recent viewing of Dawn of The Dead. And there I was, a high schooler with the coolest idea ever. I was going to write a story combining the wide open adventure of deep space with the terrifying horror of zombies. Nearly 30 years later, X-Box magazine recognized my childhood creation as one of the top zombie triumphs in books, film and games.

Genre blending seems so natural to me, but then again, why did it take so long to combine soft serve ice cream with favorite candy bars to create a Blizzard?

I do think some genres are tougher to blend successfully. Horror and comedy is probably the toughest to balance, but it can be done. For me, Don Knotts’ The Ghost and Mr. Chicken stands as the perfect example of a comedy blended with a haunted house tale. If there’s an equivalent novel, I’m not familiar with it.

So, I put zombies in outer space in my first book. For my second book, The Blackest Heart, I was inspired by revenge driven creations such as Batman, The Crow, and the fore-mentioned High Plains Drifter. I wanted to create a gunslinging hero with otherworldly powers, but only the vastness of futuristic space travel offered me the opportunity to create a murderous cyborg and a vicious gang of mutants. Injecting the western elements felt natural. And again I used outer space as a blank canvas to allow my imagination to have free reign. I’m sure when I was mulling over the idea for my book, The Far Frontier by William Rotsler was a great influence on me, as were the Outlaw Josie Wales and Mad Max.

All my books have genre swirls, though it was never my deliberate intention for them to be that way. That’s just how they turned out, and all for the better. My novel The Butcher Bride is a delicious blend of erotic horror. Is there anything better than sex and horror? Really? That opened up the door for Hyde, which is equal parts thriller and Story of O. My latest, Goodnight, My Sweet, is an end of the world love story. One lone genre just isn’t interesting enough for me to write.

And even though I recognize the overwhelming influence of film and television, my book shelves are full of awesome genre blenders that fed into my own vein of creativity. The Hot Blood erotic horror series, the Razored Saddles anthology, Steve Perry’s magnificent Matador novels, Robert McCammon’s The Wolf’s Hour, and Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead.

 Some say genre blenders. I say really cool.

Creatively, this is who I am.

Creatively, this is who I am.

This image represents my current nemesis - a ghoulish, black tar...

This image represents my current nemesis - a ghoulish, black tar blend of depression, stress, underachievement, and holiday blues. It’s a tremendous anchor dragging down my creative energy and positive motivation. I’m wasting valuable time I could & should be investing in new projects, but, unfortunately, this is the worst time of year to find a publisher and search for an agent. I’ve started a new novel, but it feels like my emergency brake is on. I have to force myself to write, and when I do, I know it’s not my best effort, with results in less than stellar performance. I suppose the good thing is that I don’t have the dreaded Writer’s Block, but I certainly have a serious case of Writer’s Blues…