Trollwind Journal

I’ve been playing around with some character drawings for an upcoming project.  Here are some preliminary sketches of one of the main characters.

While I was at the coffee shop this morning, the writing was just not coming to me.  After several minutes trying to will ideas into my head, I decided to give up and do a little drawing in Illustrator.  Being the Halloween season, a scarecrow seemed the natural choice.

Tales of the supernatural and macabre hold a strong fascination for many because we love the mystery, the anticipation and the tingle along our spines when things get creepy.  The weird tale is about the unknown, be it the monsters that lurk just beyond our site in an ancient cellar or the depths of madness in a murderer’s eyes.

What it is not is about shock and gore.  While these definitely have their place within the genre, they are best used sparingly.  I liken them to peppers in cooking.  A little chili pepper can bring out the flavors of a dish, but slathering habanero peppers over anything will simply kill any and all flavor leaving only unbearable heat.  It is no longer a meal, but a test of fortitude.  This is where slasher films fail.  They test the viewer’s fortitude instead of stimulating their imagination.  While there’s a chance we may remember a particularly gruesome scene or vivid image, the rest of the story is forgotten.  On the other hand, a movie like Sixth Sense stays with us in its entirety because of the story and atmosphere hold just as much importance as the surprise ending and the few gory images.  Horror to me needs to be smarter than some bogeyman with an axe jumping out of nowhere to stimulate feeling of excitement, dread, and on occasion the terror that shakes your very belief on the order of the world.

To truly understand the genre, I recommend any horror enthusiast to check out some of the masters from the early days of the weird tale.  I guess early is a rather subjective notion, since the many of the primal myths of mankind contain all of the elements of horror tales and ghost stories.  Out of necessity, I’m also leaving out those writers whose stories are not technically classified as horror, but have had a lasting influence on the genre such as Goethe, Dante, and Lord Dunsany.

Edgar Allan Poe
This is an obvious pick, but he was the true master of the genre.  His stories are so varied in subtlety and technique that one could spend a lifetime studying his influence.  There’s not much that I can add here but to urge you to read or reread as much of Poe’s work as you can get your hands on.

Bram Stoker
Best known for Dracula, Stoker wrote a number of quality short horror stories that all have his flair for drama and Irish intensity.  His tales bear a close resemblance to those of Poe, but are pleasurable reads.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
He didn’t just do Sherlock Holmes tales.  Doyle was a firm believer in fairies and the supernatural and his horror stories reflect this.  At times his short stories fall short, and he may not master the horror genre as surely as his detective tales, but most of them are very good.

H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft brought in a whole mythology of cosmic beings into the horror genre that few writers of any field have been able to best.  Adept at both the solitary ghost story and tales where the fate of mankind is in constant peril, Lovecraft lays on a thick coat of his maddening imagery and cyclopean vocabulary to produce some truly memorable tales.  While characters may be flat in his work, the visceral nature of his prose is something to behold, but for the love of all that is eldritch, never to emulate.  People tend to either love him or hate him.

Algernon Blackwood
Blackwood wrote some great horror tales.  In my mind, The Willows and The Wendigo are true classics and perfect examples of creating atmosphere.  In some of his other stories, Blackwood fails by trying to explain away mysteries in pseudo-scientific terms and his use of the occult terminology of the day can be distracting.  All in all, though, very quality reads.

J. Sheridan LeFanu
It took me a long time to appreciate LeFanu.  His sentences are sometimes repetitive and his style is at times distracting, he does not wrap everything up in nice neat packages for his readers, so many things go unexplained and on occasion you get the feeling that the story you are reading is trying to push some covert moral lesson.

All that being said, LeFanu is one of the true masters of the weird tale.  His stories are firmly placed in the real world and once in a while something uncanny slips through.  Carmilla is one of the top vampire tales, and Green Tea and the Familiar are classics.

M.R. James
M.R. James was a respected scholar on medieval manuscripts and cathedral who liked to tell ghost stories to friends at Christmastide.  The resulting tales are intellectual yet casual with just enough historical background to make whatever is about to happen entirely plausible and all the more disturbing.  James’ approach is subtler than any other authors on this list and each tale gently leads the reader step-by-step to the inevitable conclusion.  His stories are a true treat to read and are antithetical of much of the horror fiction out today

Other Authors of Note
Two authors that are important in the field and deserve mention here are Anne Radcliffe and Arthur Machen.  Unfortunately, I have not had the pleasure of reading any of their works (but for one of Machen’s short stories).  E.F. Benson is another significant contributor, and though I’ve read through a book of his stories, it was so long ago that I cannot remember any of them clearly… I don’t know if that reflects on me or on the writing.  Frankenstein is another must read, but there’s not much else from Mary Shelley’s work to speak of.  Nathanial Hawthorne wrote several eerie tales and some people love them.  To me they are so puritanically dull and dreadful that I could not make it through a couple of short stories, let alone The House of Seven Gables.

If you can check out just one of these gifted authors this Halloween season, I truly urge you to do so to get in the proper spirit and experience the forefathers of horror.

The leaves have yet to turn, the days still hot, but pumpkin patches and corn mazes pop up out of nowhere along the side of the road, witches and skeletons (not to mention the devilish candy that taunts without mercy) haunt our favorite stores, and the smell of cinnamon and caramel roll in like a winter fog to remind us October is here.  Though it is all blatant commercialism, the response it creates goes much deeper.   We find a little candle spark go on inside as the child inside begins to stir and our thoughts slowly drift to those things unseen.  The wonderful feeling of goosebumps, the potential for the unexpected around every corner, the memory of ghosts from the distant past and tales of the unknown all create a sense of mystery and wonder that carries on throughout the winter.

This month, I will be celebrating all things Halloween here at Trollwind.com.  Short tales of ghosties, spooky drawings and animations, random musings on the holiday and photos of Jack-o-Lanterns plus whatever costumes we decide to torture the pugs with this season will show up here throughout October.  Given my love of food rivals my love of writing, some random Halloween goody recipes may make their way onto the journal.

Happy October and Happy Halloween!

The primal sea giant, Aegir is the latest to fall victim to what I call my selective mythology.  His home beneath the waves is a sactuary to all and he is friend to the Aesir even though he is married to the terrible sea goddess, Ran.  I like that…  The tale in the Lokasenna where the gods gather for a feast in his hall lit only by gold to forge an alliance, he agrees only after Thor is sent off to retrieve a big enough cauldron to brew the beer from Hymir.  Snorri Sturlusson, the greatest skald of all, tells us that Aegir was also known as Hler and Gymir.  Hler is not oft mentioned but for his giant kin, while Gymir plays a significant role in Freyr’s wooing of Gerd.

Yet the writer inside of me can’t just leave these characters be.  The fragmentary way that Scandinavian myths have been passed down to us is too tempting for filling in the blanks to try to get the real story.  Some people are fond of using archaeological or linguistic evidence and the whole scholarly approach, but not me.  I’m more interested in the quality of the fleshed out tale… if I’m going to retell these myths, they’ve got to be consistent and interesting right?  Over the last few years, I’ve plucked the choicest morsels from any number of sources including sources not at all related to Scandinavian myth and legend.  Any one tale I write may be influenced by the Eddas, Saxo, John Gardner and perhaps even H.P. Lovecraft or M.R. James.

So Aegir shall become ripped apart from his other namesakes, for they have their own stories to tell.  The myths in which they are involved are distinct enough in flavor to hold their own.  Aegir, when I am through with him, will be friend to the Vanir and Jotunns and at a truce with much of the Aesir (I don’t think that he gets along too smashingly with Thor, who battles his daughters on occasion).  Also, with utter respect to Viktor Rydberg, I can’t even comprehend the idea of all the juicy tales concerning Ran, Angrboda, Heidh, and Gullveig being about the same giantess.  I have so many tales planned for each of them that it would a shame to shakle them into one story.

Aegir and his wife may lose a little depth and complexity, but I don’t think so.  I think they will grow into crisper focus, just like they were to the local men and women living on the coasts of the North Sea when gods, giants and other wights controlled the weather and natural surroundings.  Either that, or they’ll just seem cooler to me.

As much as I like to think of myself as a good person, sometimes my actions clearly show that I am not.  I want to be, but I am too much of a coward to truly do any good.

This evening, a black cat wandered into our yard.  I could not tell at first, but it was seriously injured and looked like he had been hit by a car.  He was walking around and meowing like a normal cat, yet by the severity of the wounds it looked like the most humane thing to do would be to put him down.  He seemed very friendly and sweet even though he must have been in a great deal of pain.

It being the weekend, I knew that Animal Control wouldn’t come out to pick him up and I didn’t think it was a good idea to feed him and I couldn’t bring myself to touch him.  Not knowing what else to do, I went inside the house and closed the door behind me, leaving the cat on his own.  When I told my wife about the cat, she immediately called Animal Control and promptly got the answer we expected.  They didn’t have sufficient staff and they would not be able to send someone out.

We went out and I promptly forgot about the cat.  In fact, I didn’t think about him until I was coming back from a late errand and saw a neighborhood cat  cross in front of my car lights.  Then I started to remember.  Not only did I remember seeing the cat earlier in the day, but I remembered when I was walking the dog late two nights previous, I saw a whole bunch of cats sitting in the street.  One by one they got up and walked away, eyeing the dog from a distance.  All but one.  There was a black shadow that could have been a crouched cat or it could have been a spot where the trees blocked the street light.  I would have bet money on the former, and for just a brief second I thought “what if it was a cat hit by a car and the other cats were holding vigil?”  I never took a step closer to figure it out and instead walked back to the house.

Now I know.  Twice I’ve come across this wounded cat, and twice I’ve rationalized and turned my back on him.  I could have done the right thing and taken him to the animal shelter and saved him from suffering.  Instead, I let my fears take over.

If this were one of my stories, I would soon start seeing black cats wherever I went or the other cats would sit in front of my house with their judging eyes until I went mad with guilt.  But this is not fantasy and this is not horror.  This is my life.  So tonight, I sit up at two in the morning writing this, haunted only by guilt and by my weakness.

Maybe I’ll find the cat in the morning and at long last do the right thing.  Then again, maybe I would find myself closing the door.

Like most people, I’ve got a pretty extensive list of books that I need to get around to reading.  Below are the fantasy and science-fiction books that are currently at the top of that list:

1. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

As I am a huge Gaiman fan and am naturally drawn to anything based on Scandinavian myths and legends, this short kid’s book instantly grabbed my attention when Gaiman mentioned he was working on it on his blog.  Unfortunately, it was only released in the UK so I have to wait until September to grab it.

2. The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson

I never heard of Poul Anderson before reading Michael Moorcock’s Wizardry and Wild Romance, but the more I look around for this book, the more I had to have it.  It’s another story set in the Viking Age, a tale of a human child raised by elves and the changeling that had replaced him.  It is often compared to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as both were published around 1954 and drew heavily from Norse mythology.

3. Dune by Frank Herbert

I’m actually quite ashamed that I’ve never got around to reading this one, but there are so many more classic science-fiction novels that I have not gotten to than fantasy novels.

4. The Best of Gene Wolfe by… well, Gene Wolfe

I stumbled upon this collection of Gene Wolfe’s short fiction while looking for a magazine to read while on the airplane back from Alaska. I couldn’t help but to read the first two stories, but then I’ve promised to hold off on the rest until I finish rereading Wolfe’s Latro in the Mist.

5. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

This book has caught my interest. It is about the last remnant of Britain’s primeval forests shortly after the War and a family who has taken an interest in it.

6. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

I read The Last Light of the Sun, and found it to be a pretty decent read. Tigana is set in a fantasy world evocative of medieval Italy. I’m figuring, “Why not?”

7. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

While I have not really been intrigued enough to pick up any of Le Guin’s work (except for her non-fiction books Steering the Craft and The Language of the Night), I feel like I should. The Dispossessed sounds the most interesting of her novels, at least right now.

8. Wonder Tales by Lord Dunsany

I picked up this collection of stories that inspired the likes of Tolkien, Lewis and Lovecraft a couple of years back. It’s currently nestled in a box covered in a fine layer of dust. One of these days I will dig it out and peruse these stories.

The harrowing stretch of having an impossible workload over the last couple of months seems to be winding down and tomorrow, the wife and I are flying off to Alaska to visit with family and celebrate our 1st anniversary.  The plan is to get away from the hectic life, go hiking, check out the wildlife and enjoy the Alaskan summer lifestyle for a week.

My plan?  My plan is to sneak in as much writing and design work for my own site that I can without getting thrown into glacier-bordered waters.  I know I should probably leave the laptop behind and embrace this time off, but I can’t.  While I have neglected my friends, family and even personal health recently… I’ve neglected my creative impulses even longer.  It always starts to haunt me when I stop working.

The first couple of days are fine.  There’s the travel time and the initial period where I catch up on sleep and hang out with family or friends catching up on everything.  By day 2 or 3 though, I start to develop a little itch.  The beautiful scenery begins putting story ideas in my head.  When there’s down-time, my eyes start to wander over to the nearest computer and my fingers start auto-writing with an invisible pencil.

In order to keep from getting neurotic and cranky, I’ll have to find time to take a little time off from my time off to do some writing and design.  As bad as it may sound, it’s what I love to do.  So I’ll have to rely on Monica’s patience and some early mornings, but over the next week or two there should be some changes for the couple of folks who follow this blog.