An author I like recently said that writing a novel (or any other large work) is like a cartoon character sprinting on air, having just run off a cliff. Run and run and you can keep running as long as you don’t look down. Keep your eyes on the Road Runner, fixate on the goal, on the ideal and you can defy physics, you can deny the fact that gravity wants to dash you on the rocks and that the ACME rocket strapped to your ass will surely detonate. Eye on the Road Runner.

I think I looked down.

A couple days left in my break and the amount of concrete pay dirt I have to show, for my grand little epic, is not all that much. Home was not as good a work space as I thought. Distractions and distractions. Then, I tried helping a loved one who’s family was in a crisis. Stress and stress.

Was all this enough to force one into contemplating suicide? No. Not this one. However, I did down a pack of Pop Rocks (a stocking stuffer) and washed it down with a Coke. It was a ridiculous, strawberry flavored cry for help…or maybe I just wanted to test an urban legend. My head did not blow up.

But the above mentioned crisis has ended well. So that is at rest.

Today I drove to a coffee shop, the one with the outlet for my computer, the one in the downtown brick building on a downtown street, the one with a good window view. I left my cell phone elsewhere. I cursed, at first, but enjoyed the blessed disconnection. No calls. No internet. Just me and the work and the snow accumulating outside and watching the shop owners deal with it from my window perch.

The only time I’m not worried about writing, is when I’m actually working on it. I can scare myself silly when I think about working on it. But now I was lost in working out the problems in my head. I had a bead on the Road Runner. I was just starting to think, I’ve got you now, you feathery bastard.

My rocket pack did not explode. That’s a good day.

I watched a woman across the coffee house. She was angrily talking to someone, a poor someone that had to sit through that rant. I couldn’t hear. I don’t know what she was mad about. But I could tell from her body language, that I did not like her. Just the body language. All jerky, over animated, over emphasized (and not in a cartoonishly fun way) hand gestures and the way she gave a sharp nod at the end of each imaginary paragraph or point, telling the listener that they agree even before they can respond. At the height of whatever monologue she was giving (and do the words or subject matter even matter?) her hand gestures got positively Hitler-esque. The type of angry person who thinks the rest of the world is obligated to let her fume on them – negative energy pollution and never mind your neighbor. It’s an overindulgent kind of anger…like overindulgent angst or brooding…you act like you don’t like it, but you really do – it’s a sweet/sour dessert.

Body language is important.

At some point prior, I would have had to actually listen in on the conversation to realize I didn’t like this lady. But as you go along in life, you find shortcuts in everything and now the body language sufficed, to let me know ahead of time, that this chick was ten shades of odious and I could feel that presence across the room, curdling the cream in my Overpriced-White-Chocolate-Pretentious-Mocha.

I don’t know how far back I started observing people so much…but you never know when something useful will float by: a character quirk, a phrase, a peculiar syntax, a weird anecdote, etc.

I waited until the coffee shop closed. Now it was late and dark and no traffic. Lots of snow though. But I like driving through the snow (especially when there is little traffic). I’m good at driving in the snow. I find it relaxing. I’m good at using the skid and knowing when to start stopping. It’s not a loss of control, but a more anticipatory sort of control. Add on the MP3 player and it becomes surreal in a lucid, sharp-minded way – white snow and skeletal branches reaching for the moon.

But I’ve already gone on long enough…

Maybe tomorrow I’ll explain some of the potty humor in Dante’s Inferno.

Now I’ll either go to sleep or go back to work. If I keep my eyes on the Road Runner, I can defy physics.

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New year. Happy new year? Sad new year? Or maybe just a new year and happiness and sadness are holidays that don’t know of a calendar.

Anyway – I’m starting this new year with a newly published story. Click “FOR POOR LUCY” to go and read my second story posted on the British web magazine, Bloodlust UK. Just scroll down, I think my story is the last listed in this issue.

Stories to come:

“Teddy Bear Rex” in the spring issue of ELM (Eureka Literary Magazine)

“Poe Goes to the Singles Bar” in Raven men’s magazine (February issue)

My advisor says that I’ve done more research for my Creative Writing Thesis than anyone else she has had. She has “advised” me to make up a sort of bibliography of the literature and texts that have gone into all this. It’s to beaf up my written proposal and serve as a sort of FU to the English program goombas who sneer at fiction and think we’re a bunch of con artists (it’s true, but so what!) who don’t work hard (I say someone has to write what they read). I’ll make a proper bibliography later, right now, here is a list of various works that (in small or large parts) have gone into my epic poem (Souls Unsure for those just tuning in):

The Inferno of Dante (the Robert Pinsky translation)

Dante’s Inferno by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders (this tells the same poem but gives a modern adaptation to the words, people, and places…and is set in a city that eerily resembles L.A. – which seems fitting to me – with wood carvings that look like the originals…but with the same modern context – very fun read)

The Most Evil Men and Women in History by Miranda Twiss (Barnes and Noble is a really dangerous place for me to go…I CANNOT walk by the bargain rack and not purchase a piece of non fiction like this…because I know it will go into a story…and indeed this one will as the Blood Countess will make a cameo in my book.)

The Book of Vodou by Leah Gordon (another bargain bullet in the perforated body of my funds…)

Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn by Karen McCarthy Brown (A very helpful biography of a voodoo priestess in…well the title says.)

Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament by Philip S. Johnston (this book details the semi-obscure underworld/Limbo I’ve set my story in, Sheol)

A Dictionary of Angels by Gustav Davidson

Malleus Maleficarum by Jacobus Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer (translated, it means “The Hammer of Witchcraft,” and is the text guidebook that the Inquesition used to hunt demons and witches from Medieval times on – translated by Montague Summers, a famous “vampire scholar and hunter” of the late 19th/early 20th century – it’s great the things you can find on Ebay!)

From the Ashes of Angels by Andrew Collins (crazy quasi-ancient conspiracy book on how fallen angels controlled mankind…I really only skimmed it for any angelic details I could use…other than that, it makes a handy door stop)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (I really liked the movie adaptation, but have not read the whole book yet. I skimmed the chapters with the voodoo priestess character for details.)

The Crow by J. O’ Barr (Read about the author…or watch the painful interview in the special features of the movie adaptation’s DVD, to find out the very dark, painful, and genuine place that this story came from…)

The Book of Ballads edited by Charles Vess (takes a bunch of ancient ballads from the British Isles and puts them in comic book form…and then gives the actual ballad at the end of each story)

The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction and Television by Atara Stein (I love when a scholar doesn’t mind mixing their culture and pop culture. This book not only delves into the interesting characteristics of this dark and pensive archetype, but also illustrates how perfvasive it is in modern culture – from lit to film to Buffy to the Terminator.)

Since most of the poetry I read is by Poe (and most of my more impressive bits of my vocab come from his works), he is certainly an influence too – Neil Gaiman as well (particularly his Sandman graphic novels – taken collectively, they are a massive epic all their own – as well as his short story, “Murder Mysteries”). Scroll down the the December 5th entry to get an idea of some of the other works, songs, and lyrics that pull the little strings in my head.

There is certainly more…but those are the books on my mind or on hand at the moment.

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Sometimes, I go out on idea mining expeditions. I hunt for images – little pictures to put into words and save for a rainy day. I might go to a book store and look through an art book or maybe take a peek at the strange and freaky action figures you can find at Spencer’s and Hot Topics. Then I take out my handy journal. Maybe I describe the image. Maybe I add something else to it or just take one element from it or maybe it gives me a totally divergent idea.

A few days ago I did some image mining (or grave-digging or whatever euphemism you’d like) for my epic, Souls Unsure. The underworld that will be therein explored (Sheol) is a shadowy and strange place…it gives me a lot of room to fool around with imagery, both narrative and surreal (and even surreally narrative). So here are some of the captured images, the writer’s equivalent to sketches. Some might go in the book…some might drift to other places entirely

Four pretty angels sit in a row – pretty plumes perfectly groomed. The holy quartet, all identical down to the pretty white dresses, all intently study identical books. Pages turn in unison by identical hands. The fourth face looks up at your approach, flashing a demonic grin…

Leviathan coils under the city. She coils and twists beneath the Plutonian streets of Sheol. She grows and expands, more coils and scales, growing since stars were infants. Now every tunnel, every sewer, every underworld chasm, every toilet in Sheol is crammed with those coils. She hasn’t seen her entire body since before that Flood.

A child approaches under the spectral street lamp. You see no face in the Ignis Fatuus glow. No face at all. Writhing insects form the facial features, each undulation an expression. His voice buzzes to you before you can tell yourself to wake up…

The freak legion writhed through the allies, away from the other shades. Lost souls amongst lost souls. Dirty bandages, crusted and soaked in old humors, covered their faces and hands, trailed like regrets from their feet. The cloth fetters surely hid things grotesque. Moans and cries off the walls. I ran up to one, tore away the clotted cloth. I freed her face, exposed it to the dying light no one had remembered to rage against. Beautiful…a statuesque face. “Grotesque!” she growled. “Hideous,” she hissed. She clutched the tattered bandages to her perfect face and caught up to her fellows, all gorgeous I surmise. Souls who sought perfection. Self hate is a wicked thing, in this place…where the mind’s eye is more powerful than Medusa’s gaze; where similes can cut and metaphors can kill.

The Babylon-like sky scrapper pierces Sheol’s cloud cover like a contaminated syringe. And then it broke off, in half. Denied. Even up there you can’t see the stars.

The childling shades flutter about with the moths in the dark. They ask for bedtime stories, always ask for bedtime stories, flutter and float for time eternal. They’ve heard all the once-upon-a-time’s, but can’t find any happily-ever-after’s.

The marble bust stares at you, in front of the ancient doors. One is older than the other, but you can’t recall. At every approach, it puts a finger to its marble lips. Shhhhhhh. Do you open the door.

The priest shade stands at the decaying cathedral, constantly looking for an opening in the sky. Shadow spawned tentacles ensnare every wraithling child who passes by. He adds them to his chthonic chorus, adds them to the mournful, melodious, keening, cry. Each note must be perfect and he spurs them on with whips from his tendrils. The choir keens in a collective voice the sound of moonlight striking a gem. “It has to be perfect,” the priest mutters to himself, “Must be perfect…Heaven will open the door…must be perfect…Heaven will call…must be perfect…”

The headless statue perched on the woman’s shoulders, covering her eyes with its hands. No eyes between the two of them, they stumbled through the streets of Sheol…

An angel, all pallid and wan – its emaciated body strapped to a stone pillar, cracked and stained dark. Her feathers, as dry as parchment inscribed with now illegible secrets, is sparse and falling out. Once upon a time, she glowed. Before the once divine creature, stands a lithe and graceful form, hair long and red, back to you. Dark. Draped in a luxuriant, sable coat of fur, it squeezes a rose in one hand and holds various sharp implements betwixt its fingers in the other. Both hands drip blood. And the lithe shadow deftly goes to work. Hands fly with the careful, loving motion of a painter. The angel screams. You rush forward, shouting. The shadow turns, giving you one gleaming eye over the shoulder. But in the next breath, in the land with no breath, it disperses into a dozen gore spattered doves, in all directions. Gone. The angel is only a husk. They can scream for eons after they die.

Her lips, covered in too much lipstick, trembled enticingly/repellently. The parts of many dolls littered her shelves – hands and arms and torsos and shark dead glass eyes gazing. Round her neck entwined an open locket, each half containing two letters, spelling FA-LL. The twin serpents, crawling out of her eye sockets stretched their coils, begging me to come closer…

Beneath your feet hops a fat frog, green slime and gleaming grime. It’s not a dragon fly. It’s not a horse fly. No. The delicate leg and crystalline wing of a pixy juts out from gelatinous lips of the thing, twitching.

Christmas has come and gone and I have not posted.

Some quick highlights…Christmas was low key, but fun. I got lots of DVD’s and a cool book of ancient ballads developed to comic book form. I also got a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Private Stock (I’ll never go back now). A few nights ago, I spilled a large tub of cocktail sauce out of the fridge…it landed on its side and rocketed its contents in a cone, soaking everything in that acrid cocktail smell, for a good nine feet. I whipped down everything…and then defined IRONY when I cleaned a bottle of Windex.

And now…on to the Lenore Mouse Death count. My beautifully iridescent pet has been a busy little rodent processor. The official count please:

LENORE’S”align=”Left”> DEATH COUNT: Hey Boys and Girls! Itchy says, “Lenore is a beast!!! She’s eaten 67 mice so far. The only way to deal with inevitable oblivion is to get piss drunk. Yes…sweat, sweat alcohol to carry me into netherworld…to make me forget my wasted life of blowing up cats…to dull razor pain of the monotony of life…

…stay in school kids.”

That’s a lot of mice. Way to go, Lenore.

That’s all for now. Look for some strange word sketches and a glimpse into the underworld of my epic tomorrow. Or whenever I wake up.

Ah distractions! I don’t know if I can get this done. I barely have a room (now a work out room/computer room/not really a bedroom anymore). But I need to get things rolling anyway. I wasn’t going to do this…but decided I’d post the Prologue to the epic (it’s not stand-alone enough that I’d submit it as a short story to a publication anyway). So here it is. While it is mostly an epic poem, Souls Unsure will have several prose chapters, little interludes, between the main, poetic sections. One such section is the prologue. Though I plan on visiting some strange and otherwordly places, the story really starts in a much quieter, mundane (and maybe all the more frightening for it) place. So here is the current draft for…

SOULS UNSURE: Prologue

The door opens like a mute scream. She does not remember when she stopped bothering to scream – when beer bottle blows to the head convinced her to be silent, to go inside. And they’ll say the story starts with an old priestess and a chant. They won’t remember. But it begins with a little girl and silent screams full of broken dolls.

He’s in the shadows, in the doorway – framed horror. Dull eyes stare. He never blinks. The Devil never blinks.

No Daddy.

She crosses her legs, pulls the blanket. But her legs are not strong and blankets don’t protect. Closed eyes don’t protect.

He stares and licks his lips. Stands and stares and breaths loudly. She holds her breath. The stuffed animals all face the wall. She doesn’t want them to see. He stands and stares and she holds her breath…

A clank, a mumbled curse, and spilled booze. He always smells of old booze. She’ll smell of old booze. Then, the door closes like a happily-ever-after. But happy endings only happen if the story stops. Death and depravity are two steps past every happily-ever.

Bump. Scrape. Down the stairs.

Bump. Scrape. He limped and lurched when he drank – a penny dreadful shuffle.

Bump. Scrape. The drink put a demon in him, Mama always said, before she was silent, before she went to heaven.

Where are you now Mama?

She creeps out of bed and locks the door. There’ll be hell to pay, but she locks the door. Back in bed, she prays in the flickering yellow light of a street lamp dieing slowly in the night. Prayers to Mama and prayers to God and prayers to all the saints – prayers every time he scrapes up the steps and prayers every time he shadows her doorway – but it always happens. The damage is done; it will just be done again.

Bump. Scrape.

Bump. Scrape.

Outside the door, full of fumes, taboos, and imps perverse, he twists the handle. She prays in desperation. He preys in depravity.

Please God, take me to Heaven. Please God, send him to Hell.

Bangs and shouts and curses. The door groans. She’s all tears and prayers now; tears and prayers and both flow free and translucent between sobs. When you pray that there’s a God, who do you pray to?

The door buckles.

Hands folded to the sky, she always prayed in the same direction. But now she scatters her prayers to all four winds, scatters her prayers to anyone who will listen. Prayers, like radio waves, travel until received. But where do things go when they’ve flown past their purpose? Let us say they go to a place, and that is enough. Let us say we sometimes visit this place in sleep, and that is more than enough.

Through the tears she sees something gather in the blackness above her bed, a patch of something darker still. It materializes, all dark dust and ebony mist, like a fairytale boogeyman. She’s not afraid. She knows real monsters wear masks called Father.

She stares up at it. It gazes down on her. She breaths and it pulses and the breaths match the pulses and at the end of each undulation she sees the outline of a wraithly head and spectral hands in the mist. And she reaches her hand, running it through the phantasmal shape. A sable, wispy finger, from out the cloud, brushes her cheek. The sooty digit mingles with a tear, leaving a muddy-dark trail down the eye.

She looks at it and then the door and continues her prayer. It pulses. Considers. It flashes, faster than a false promise, to the door – through the door – outside the door, a scream.

Bump. Crash.

Bump. Crash.

Bump. Crack.

*****

Flashing reds and blues announce that all is not well in this place where even social workers fear to tread. Black and white cars sit in the gray slush. The snow comes down white, but always ends up gray.

They wheel the man in a stretcher and a neck brace, found him at the bottom of the stairs. Some kind of stroke, they say. May never walk again, they say. Then, they found the girl and the beer bottles and the bruises and they gave each other knowing looks. But the girl did not say a word.

Family members were contacted and reports filed. Just one weird thing, said the younger officer to his venerable friend, between bites of cold wind. And they both nodded and recalled the graven image on the girl’s bedroom door. Sketched in ash and burnt in bas relief was a portraiture, a definite shape, that they could not explain but only hearken back to the snow angels made in their youth, hearken back impossibly far to a time and place where snow was still white.

Ours was a forbidden love. Fiery walls and insidious circumstances barred our contact in a kingdom not at all by the sea. But then…I took matters into my own hands. I climbed up the fiber optic vines to her room and…

…yeah…I have internet access again.

And it seems the world of livejournal did indeed go round in my absence. Sorry to hear about you and Jake, Torrie. Congrats Wil and Kris!

What has happened…

…Lenore and I are back in good old Northern Illinois. Nick is back. My little sis, Danielle returned from her acting school in New York (REMINDER – PURCHASE LITTLE SISTER A TASER AND/OR COLLAPSABLE BATON FOR CHRISTMAS).

Before leaving Springfield, I had a fun all nighter with a Shakespeare paper – brought to you by the force of procrastination. I wrote it. Got no sleep. And found (that Saturday) that the Library was closed down and I would not be able to print it. I ended up emailing it to the professor (it may or may not have been late). I got an email back from him a few days ago. GULP. I wasn’t sure what to expect, this being a written-in-one-night paper for a teacher with a dizzying intellect…I certainly didn’t expect what the email said:

Dear Josh:

With your permission, I’d like to nominate your essay for the Marylin Ostrowski Award, given the best critical piece of the semester. You composed nothing short of magnificence–should also present as “paper” and submit for publication (as essay, of course).

Cf. Borges’ sonnet “Everness.” Let’s talk about how best to take your extraordinary piece “public,” so to speak.

Happy Holiday; thanks for all your great work.

Sincerely,

Ethan

Wow. I’m really not learning any good lessons, as far as habits, this semester. My procrastination is only enforced (of course…those single night writings are HELL). On one hand I’m glad, flattered, encouraged. On the other, I find a part of my wishing I could rip out the academic portion of my mind (which apparently works much better than anticipated, and make more room for creative writing).

But it is a confidence boost. And I need it. I am now set up in my room (or what used to be my room) – with my computer and a small library stocked with everything from a thesaurus, to books on angelic lore, to Neil Gaiman comics, to epic poems – and am (tomorrow) starting my frenzied finger typing and sweating and bleeding and maybe sweating blood – to get my thesis done.

In that regard, it’s always nice to look back at encouraging comments on my prior work. To wit (and I need all the wit I can git) I have an old sheet from a past writing class. We all had to write about each others’ writing styles, as if we were writing one of those comments you see on the dust jackets of your favorite novels and the like (it’s a small, close knit group, so we were intimately aware of each others’ literary prowess). My partner, the wonderfully lovely Joanna Beth Tweedy Willmore, wanted extra time to figure out what to say, and, at the end of class read:

“Like Mesner, the last name Doetsch may well become eponymous for the author’s ability to draw readers into worlds from which they may find it happily impossible to return. Joshua Alan invites readers to the outer edge of surrealism where horror, mythology, stand-up, and Mother Angelica won’t agree to meet, but metabolize in a fantastical and satisfying gumbo. You don’t have a hair on your rumpus if you’re not hipwaggin’ it to be the first in line for the next ladleful.”

I was every shade of pleased.

Time to make the gumbo…

Just a note…if you are trying to email me, please leavea message in the coments section of this journal. Hotmail will not open my acount…she will not opent the door…she seems mad…I swear Hotmail…I never strayed…well…I did use the campus email…but she meant nothing to me! I can change!

Please leave a message…

OK – I’m back and its about 9:15.  Lenore is open to the campus…come one come all.  That’s right ladies…Josh’s snake is on display!

Nick’s number is 6809.

Oh and Kris, if you’re reading this – your earings are in Nick’s room.

Hehe…roaming back was fun.  Stepped into the computer lab to check my email…I walked in quietly (do that sometimes) and there were a number of people delerious and lost in uber-studying.  One girl looked up and went, “Ah!  I didn’t think anyone was there…and suddenly there’s a guy wearing a black hat!”  I told here it was a public service I perform, scaring tired college students awake during finals week…and no, I didn’t have a business card.