Inspirations: Black Dog Asylum

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Truly terrifying, isn’t he?

Fierce.

Fluffy. Wait, fluffy?

Not, really what one thinks of when trying to find inspiration for a story relating to a deadly black dog, but this is what I got. This mop-top, tiny old man of dog that likes to stare at me, just like this, while I work.

In truth, it was a combination of two images that brought on the inspiration for my submission to the anthology Tales of the Black Dog.

The image of the left of this beautiful cane corso just struck my heart. The dog is stunning, regal, and, I’d imagine when provoked, incredibly terrifying to look at. The other image just seemed a little eerie to me and then the thought struck: what if the black dogs in my legend were set to guard the unwanted souls locked away in an asylum?

That was all it took. The idea spawned a first draft that was less than thrilling, comments from beta readers that helped me find better focus for a second draft that worked beautifully with both the legend and the message I was trying to convey. Black Dog Asylum is now one of four short stories featured in Corrugated Sky’s anthology Tales of the Black Dog and my second published work of fiction (the first was a short piece in the October 2009 edition of Bards and Sages Quarterly).

Everyone has to start somewhere, right? This is my ‘somewhere’ – a tale of terror sure to make your hackles rise.