Magen Cubed's Blog, page 37

My interview on G.R. Yeates

Recently I had the opportunity to be interviewed by G.R. Yeates, as part of a series with the authors of Phobophobia from Dark Continents. I had a chance to speak about Star Trek, philosophy, and my story, Y is for Ymophobia. Here's a bit of that interview now for your skimming pleasure.

Your story in the Phobophobia anthology is about Ymophobia – the fear of contrariety. Whilst reading it, I was reminded of Darren Aronofsky's Pi – any influence there or were your sources different?

I originally wanted to write something about the fear of mirrors when I received the letter Y, but the alphabet didn't have that in the cards for me. Instead I ended up using reflections as a way to manifest that fear of contrariety so it worked out, but mirrors were still the real anchor for the story, at least in my mind. I was aware of the similarities to Pi at the time (Aronofsky's one of my favourite directors as a matter of fact), but it wasn't really present in my thoughts as I worked through the story.

Elias Paulson is loosely based on, among others, John Nash. At the time I was researching Game Theory and the RAND Corporation, and developing an interest in the mathematical principles of predicting behaviors.  I wasted many an afternoon on Adam Curtis documentaries and John Nash interviews on the subject, trying to tease out a clinical use of these principles that still managed to sound vaguely convincing coming from a layman like me. (I guess you could say this is more A Beautiful Mind than Pi.)

You can read the rest of the interview at G.R. Yeates' website.

27 reasons you decided to write a novel

1. Fight Club.

2. David Cronenberg.

3. Radiohead.

4. David Attenborough.

5. Hellraiser.

6. Fight Club.

7. The Pass This On video by the Knife.

8. Ramiro R.

9. The cover of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance by Lessie.

10. Japanese medical fetishism horror comics.

11. Hellraiser: Inferno.

12. Fight Club.

13. Lykke Li.

14. Rob Zombie.

15. The Box by Takashi Miike.

16. Donnie Darko.

17. Darren Aronofsky.

18. Fight Club.

19. Supernatural seasons one through five.

20. Elvis Presley.

21. Ichi the Killer by Hideo Yamamoto.

22. Franz Kafka.

23. Alan Moore.

24. Maynard James Keenan.

25. Guillermo del Toro.

26. Fight Club.

27. Insert reason here.

New fiction: The Cosmonaut

If you're looking for horror today, I don't have any. Sorry. Sometimes it just happens.

My surreal speculative fiction story The Cosmonaut has been published this week by NONTRUE, a place for strange and colorful fiction. This is the first story I've published online this year, and I'm pretty happy with it. It follows the life of Yuli, a future-boy faced with the magic and mystery of advanced space travel, who sees visions of a cosmonaut falling from Heaven.

Downstairs on bare feet, Yuli went to the table where Grandfather smoked his pipe and read the morning paper over Grandmother's black coffee and toast. Every day he asked them if they had seen the cosmonaut falling from Heaven or his space ship, and every time Grandmother just laughed. For seven mornings the cosmonaut never fell, and on the eighth night, he vanished. Home again, Yuli drew pictures of his angel cosmonaut in pencil and crayon, pinning them to his bedroom walls and onto the refrigerator for Mother. She only smiled. At bedtime he prayed to God for the angel cosmonaut to return, but God wasn't listening.

Read the rest of The Cosmonaut today at NONTRUE.

Phobophobia: The reviews are in

There are two new reviews up this week for my latest appearance, Phobophobia from Dark Continents. Here are some of my favorite parts, which just happen to be about my story, Y is for Ymophobia. Good times to be had by all.

From The Ginger Nuts of Horror,

This is a warning tale for all you mathematicians out there searching for the answers to everything.  Sometimes the search for the ultimate truth will give you an answer you don't want to find. This is a nice mind-bending tale, with a subtle nod to Hellraiser.

And Paul Woodward,

Smart savvy stories such as Ymophobia (fear of contrariety) about a mathematician but doesn't let the maths lead the story.

You can read both reviews in full at Ginger Nuts of Horror and Paul Woodward's web page.

Coming Attractions: The Doll

 

I've made a living taking care of other people. I walk the dog, I pick up the dry-cleaning, I schedule the dinners and shop for the groceries. I balance the checkbook and make sure the fresh-brewed designer coffee is the correct balance of milk and sweetener. I refill prescriptions and sign holiday cards, and make sure Mother gets her birthday gifts on time. I make sure their lives are so well-lived, the tiniest of details taken care of, I don't have the time to worry about my own.

I spent seven years living Mr. Cumming's life for him. Now he's gone. Without someone to take care of, I don't know what to do.

You're Kyle Dade, professional secretary and personal assistant. After seven years of faithful service to your employer, Mr. Cummings, he's found dead on the outskirts of town of an apparent hit-and-run. Once he's gone, you are left with nothing. Just a blank little apartment and a desk outside of his office, where the corporate vultures have already scraped his name from the door. Then you're summoned to his will-reading, and a crate is dropped off at your apartment. Inside the crate is a Real Doll with a note pinned to her dress. Her name is Jocelyn with a perfect face, like a Barbie doll made real, and eyes that follow you and a scratching little voice that whispers bloody things to you at night.

And you know then that your life is about to take a very dark turn.

And to my personal assistant Kyle Dade, I leave you my most cherished possession, Jocelyn. May you love and care for her as you have for me all these years.

Because when you spend seven years cleaning up after someone else, you deserve to make your own messes for a change.

The Doll is a comic, written by me and illustrated by Anna Yoken. Expect one of your own later this year.

The curious case of my life in books

I never wanted to write books.

I grew up wanting to write comics. Not necessarily super hero comics (although my 13-year-old self would have loved it), but just comic stories. Horror, crime, low-volume dramas about ironic 20-somethings, whatever. I just wanted a piece of it. Somewhere along the way, comics ended up in my rearview mirror. There are a lot of reasons for that, but I won't go into them now. Instead I stumbled into short story writing, and for one reason or another, stayed. From there, I stumbled into novel writing. Then one novel seeded the idea for another novel, then another. I'm now in the process of drafting two other novellas. I still don't quite know how it happened.

This is why I don't feel fit to talk about books, most of the time. It doesn't feel like I have much to say about an industry I never wanted to be a part of. (That and I kind of hate book blogs, but that's neither here nor there.) I don't even feel the urge to have any of my novels published properly, not really. The idea makes me a bit queasy, like I've just crashed some fancy wedding reception and I'm waiting for hotel security to chase me out. People say that I do things with some literary sensibilities, but I wouldn't really know. I feel like the fifth wheel, the odd man out. I shouldn't even really be here.

This year, I'm working on getting back to my roots. I have at least one comic I would like to do with my friend Anna Yoken, about Real Dolls and body horror and hookers tied to kitchen chairs. It should be fun, if nothing else. I have another comic in the works called Black Out, about werewolves and bikers and gypsies, but I don't have an illustrator for that project yet. I might not find one. We'll see how it goes. I just know that I'd like to get back to what I know, and what feels right. It feels like a good time to try.

But as long as I keep having ideas for short stories and books, I'll keep writing them. I just, you know — don't know why.

Flesh Trap: What you might've missed

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If you haven't been following my serial novel Flesh Trap, this is what you might have missed.

Chapter Nineteen

There was no sleeping on Saturday night. Casey left the glass on the floor and the table overturned. Joel would have hated that. On Sunday morning Casey took his pills, left three messages on Joel's phone, and didn't sleep. He ate the leftover meal Joel had cooked, microwaving the baked pasta with meat sauce and eating it alone at the kitchen table. The apartment was silent. For once, Casey hated it. On Sunday night he cleaned up the mess he made in the bedroom, put on his shoes and left.

At Jay's Diner Casey drank coffee and wrote in his journal. Harold sat in the booth across from him, long and skinny with his lip-ring and mess of greased hair. His skin stuck to the leather seat where his colorful t-shirt and cargo shorts showed, making a squeaking sound when he covered his mouth to cough. Up close he had a white stud in his nose and gold irises, details Casey had taken for granted under the dingy light of the Grab-N-Go. There was a neat square carved into his chest, heart thumping wildly between his splintered ribs, peeled open like knotted fingers. The blood trickling from the corner of Harold's eyes made Casey lean away as it began to pool on the scratched tabletop. Harold licked his dry lips.

"Hey," Harold said wetly, mouth beginning to fill with blood. It oozed down his chin to collect with all the rest, running off the table and onto the floor. "I think you left something at the store, man."

Casey's vision cleared like the snap of fingers. Black to Technicolor, his skin was hot and his stomach tight with the urge to retch. He was alone at his table with his open notebook, pen and coffee cup, ink smudging his knuckles between journal entries.

4/6/10

I dreamt about Dad and Mariska yesterday. Joel won't answer my messages. I don't know what I'm going to do.

Looking at what he'd written, Casey sighed. Blinked, rubbed Harold's face from his eyes and felt sick with himself.

Chapter Twenty-Six

You remember when we first met, right?

I was still going to my old therapist then, Dr. Jones, the one who thought my problems were all rooted in sexual relationships. Which was bullshit, but whatever. He thought it was would be a good idea to look into support groups for rape survivors, because it would help me with my guilt about my sister. I kept trying to tell him it wouldn't work, because me and Mariska were fine that way. But I wasn't sleeping anymore, and anything was better than nothing, so I said okay. You were still working on your thesis, remember? You were volunteering through the community outreach center then, having these meetings in the basketball court after the youth mentor group left. It was always too cold and the chairs were three-hundred years old, and the coffee tasted like shit, but you just kept coming in every week. You were always smiling back then. You looked so much younger. I mean, I know you were younger, but, I just. You were – I don't know, you were happy then. You were good.

Every Thursday night I sat there, in a broken metal fold-up chair and listened to these people talk. It was always the same stories, about pervert uncles or fucked-up cousins or step-dads. I felt like a voyeur for being there, you know? Asking myself why the hell I ever listened to my therapist. But you just listened. I watched you listen, never judging, never asking too much, telling everybody "Nobody gets through life without scars." You never asked me to say anything, week after week. You never called me out, just let me sit there. I just remember you there, too good to be in that grubby little gym, telling people like me that we're all going to be okay, and I just.

It took me a month to get myself together enough to talk to you, after a meeting. People were standing around talking and grazing from the complimentary cookie tray, maybe laughing a little. I remember because I came up to you, reached past you for the coffee pot sitting on the makeshift card-table counter. I said something stupid, like "Whoever made that piss-water needed to have their ass kicked." You laughed and said something like "I'll keep that in mind for next week." I felt like an asshole but you didn't seem to think so. We talked for a while, about next to nothing, and you still didn't think I was an asshole. I knew it then, right then, that I wanted you in my life.

I don't know what I'm doing anymore.

I just need you back, okay?

I just.

I miss you.

That was the message Casey wanted to leave. Staring at his cell phone in the back corner booth of Jay's Diner, he drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Notebook open, he tap-tap-tapped his pen on the blank page. Sherrie kept his cup full, smiled at him with a bounce of her ponytail. He tried to smile back and came up short, and said "Thanks" instead.

For five minutes Casey looked at his phone, Joel's number in the contact list, and finally snapped it shut.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Unlatching the lid Casey pulled it back, wincing at the loud sucking sound that followed. The stench of decay hit them immediately, making Mariska turn away from the gaping throat and the wet flesh that enclosed it. She covered her mouth and fought the urge to retch.

"Oh my god, what is that?"

"No idea, but it's alive. Look, you took biology in college, right? We need to see what it's made of."

"You want me to dissect this? That was thirteen years ago, and I don't even know what I'm doing."

"Mar, please," he begged. "I'm only asking you because I can't do it myself."

Mariska wanted to say No but nodded her head anyway. Mouth still covered, she dragged the blade across a section of flesh, sickened at the way it shivered and shrank back. Casey moved from the table, unable to watch and instead leaned against the nearest cupboard, steadied his breathing. She did the same and pressed the box-cutter into the skin along the side of the box, drawing a long incision that quickly filled with sticky black blood. At the wall Casey's head began to pound. He gritted his teeth and pressed his temple to the cabinet door.

"Keep going," he said gruffly. "It's fine."

Swallowing the taste of vomit, she began to work her blade into the cut, widening it from the metal wall the tissue was fixed to by thick cords of sinew. Beneath the flesh was muscle, dark with decomposition like flank steak rotting in the sun. The gullet in the center sucked and swallowed and from wall to wall the flesh sweated. Inside the box the whole thing pulsed and shook as Mariska severed it from its shell, bleeding fresh and hot onto her blade. Blood dribbled from Casey's nose. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, licking the taste of iron from his top lip. Grunted, pounded a fist against the cabinet door to distract himself from the pain.

Mariska looked up. "Casey?"

"Do it." Casey held himself up against the countertop with shaking arms. He didn't turn to face her.

"Look, we don't need to do this—"

"Cut it open."

Her stomach tightened, ignoring her own trembling hands to peel back the layers of dying tissue. It opened beneath the blade and the box shook and stirred, the throat slapping open and shut, spitting intestinal juices and pink flakes of meat. At the cupboard Casey fought back the scream that climbed its way from his chest. He didn't notice his knees giving under the pain, gripping the cabinet to keep from slipping to the floor.

"Alright. Alright, alright." Mariska slammed down the blade, forced the lid shut in her panic. "I'm not doing this anymore."

She took him by the shoulder, led him to a chair and pushed him into it. Retrieving the soiled dish towel she wiped the blood from his nose and mouth, tipped his head back to try to stop the stream. Casey gasped for breath through the burn on his tongue and in his throat, and waited for his skull to stop throbbing.

"Okay, so, what do we do now?" Mariska asked.

He had no answer. She didn't expect one. Instead she cleaned her brother's face and waited for the frantic sucking inside the box to thin into silence.

There are thirty-eight chapters posted and twenty-five more to go. Start reading Flesh Trap today.

Breaking down the fourth wall

There comes a time in every upright, logically-thinking person's life where one realizes that most of the content we're fed is not only bad, it's bad for us. At least, there should come a time. It helps things get done.

As a child, I consumed. Television, movies, comic books. X-Men, Transfomers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Doug, Batman, Star Trek, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Rocko's Modern Life, The Ren and Stimpy Show. I was informed by Warren Ellis and Tim Burton and Gene Roddenberry and John K. This was just how it was. Yeah, I watched Disney movies too, but I still don't think any of them were all that good until the Toy Story Trilogy and the majority of the Pixar films, but that's another topic entirely. The thing is, I ingested everything that came down the pike, and spent many a lost weekend in the movie theater and comic book store.

Big budget movies, special effects fiestas, comic book tie-ins, the grander and more expensive the better. CGI? Check. Celebrity voice-overs? Check. At least fourteen superfluous explosions? Check, check and check again. I watched so many movies, I don't even remember them all now. Mind you, this was in the mid and late 1990s, too. Long before Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar, and all the spectacles that are jocking for box office superiority as we know it today. This was before Superman Returns and The Dark Knight, and the other expensive flops and money-making juggernauts on either end of the spectrum. This was before Michael Bay peed all over my childhood with the vicious blasphemy of the Transformers Trilogy, which is just an excuse to watch Shia Labeouf wallow in his own ineptitude while the namesakes of franchise sat in the background and twiddled their thumbs.

(I'm not saying Transformers is an inherently brilliant premise or anything. But it's a show about robots, which was then made into a movie about stupid, unlikeable, asshole people. Tell me how this makes any kind of sense. Give me the Cybertronian civil war, or get out.)

Then I reached a point, somewhere in junior high, I think, when it dawned on me. With precious few exceptions, all these movies, comic books and television shows were the same. And worse still, most of them were actually pretty awful. I don't just mean qualitatively awful, I mean detrimental to the development of modern society on the whole. Recycled plot lines, recycled racist stereotypes, recycled sexists tropes. Cliches on top of cliches, explained away because "Sex sells!" or "Middle America won't accept a non-white hero!" or "It's what people want! What are we supposed to do about it? We're just entertainers!" We're all told to want fast cars and generic white heroes and hot girls in cat-suits and a big special effects budget and Greg Land's porn-dressed-as-comics and not a whole lot else, because this is what works. This is what sells. This is what we're giving to our kids, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.

Invincible white men who do no wrong. Women who cry on command and take their clothes off when the plot calls for it, and have a tendency to be raped or killed (or both) just to ruin the male protagonist's day. Colored characters who are always the first to die or turn on the white heroes or be written off as props when there's dead air in a scene. And if you don't like it, you can get out, you're told. Find something else to watch or read or consume. We don't want you here anyway, ruining our enjoyment.

That's why I started writing as a kid, scribbling out super hero stories and chalking up rough action comics. I took my dissatisfaction for the content made available to me and used it to make content of my own. It's what I still do, when I see a void in the world for the kind of stories I want to enjoy, and set out to write them for myself. I whole-hardheartedly believe that this is what good writing is all about: Taking what pisses you off about the world, and fixing it through fiction. It may not make a lot of money or win you any awards, but it's a step in the right direction. Because if you're just writing More of the Same, just to make money or get famous, you're part of the problem. You're one of the guys putting out racism and sexism and awful stories, and passing it off as truth to kids in movie theaters and comic book stores.

It sucks to wake up one day and realize most of things you love are awful. I know, it happened to me. That's why you go to work to make it better, and support creators of content who do the same.

Failing to live up to expectations at break-neck speed

Somebody said to me the other day, "You'll be well-known one day, I can tell." A few days before that, someone else asked me to describe how I've come to be the successful writer I am today. Even before that, someone else told me that they were surprised by how much I've accomplished at such a young age.

I want to be a nice, normal person and accept these compliments graciously, but I'm not a nice, normal person. I'm me. And because I'm me, all of these statements make me feel weird. Not in a fun, weird-in-my-pants kind of way, just weird.

I hate that kind of weird.

I don't think I'm successful. I don't think I'm accomplished. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I actually was, or how to tell, either. (Do you just wake up one day and feel successful? Do you get a special button for acquiring a certain sense of accomplishment?) I don't think anybody is actually reading anything I'm writing, or would pay good money to read it in the future. There will be no three-book deal. There will be no auctioning off of movie rights. I will never be the bestselling author of anything. I will never be in a position to live comfortably off my writing. I will always be chained to a day job and scraping pennies together to survive.

Why? Because I'm not lucky, marketable or willing to compromise. I do what I set out to do, in my own way, in my own time, and that's it. People like that very rarely get anywhere, and if they do, it's because of dumb luck just as much as anything else. For every Kurt Vonnegut or William S. Burroughs, there's one-hundred shit-awful writers who whore themselves for dollars bills. And I accept that. Same way I always smile and nod, and thank people for the compliments.

But if I wanted to make money, I would have gone to school to be a dentist. Instead I taught myself how to write, because I couldn't think of anything better to do. If I get somewhere along the way, I'll let you know.

Previews of upcoming attractions

 

Your name is Dan.

You're an average college graduate forty-thousand in the hole for your useless degree. You work in a cubicle for an average soul-sucking conglomerate with substantial investments in the black market organ trafficking and global domination markets. Your cubicle neighbor Caleb is the single most obnoxious person on the face of the planet, and suffers under the delusion that you're the best of friends. Your girlfriend Rachel is at least two income tax brackets out of your league, and reminds you of this fact on a near-daily basis. Rachel is probably screwing Caleb, and laughing about it over designer coffee and that brand new car you can't afford on their way to her father's beach house.

Nothing would surprise you anymore.

In the forty-second basement level of your generic office building is the lair of a reanimated corpse, in a cheap suit and a Ramones wig. His name is Fred and he steals organs from the poor and gives them to the rich. He's the closet thing you have to a friend. Everybody else pats you on the head and ignores you. Your boss does it. Your girlfriend does it. Even your doctor does it. The only other person who listens to you is the waitress at the generic faux-Chinese corporate restaurant where you and your coworkers go for lunch every day. Her name is Karla. You're in love with Karla.

Karla drops a fortune cookie off with your bill one day after lunch. You open it and read your fortune, and swallow the sour taste climbing your throat. This, too, doesn't surprise you.

You're fucked.

This is your life.

Little do you know that your life is about to change. Within the week you will eat bad sushi and wake up with a voice in your head that tells you to do crazy things. You will lose your tongue and it will be replaced by a parasite. You will break-up with Rachel. You will ruin Caleb's life. You will end up going on a date with Karla to a club where people have sex with sea creatures. You will be kidnapped by occultists who believe you're the son of their many-tentacled lord, and the doorway to spiritual enlightenment resides in your appendix. You will be reminded why it's handy to be friends with a reanimated corpse. You will burn down Rachel's father's beach house. You will probably burn down your office while you're at it.

And somewhere along the way, people will start listening to you.

This is the premise of Shotgun, my upcoming bizarro novel. Coming soon to a dimension near you.