'Arabesque' and the Cynic

This book was my first immersion in a satirical take on a fairy tale (or fairy tales in general). I was still in college and stumbled across a book required for an English class I wasn't taking and thought the blurb and some of the text I sampled looked pretty damned good, so I bought it.

And I was right. 

The book was Briar Rose by Robert Coover, an American writer who wrote a good number of fairy tale retellings with a postmodern angle. This book was a really short one, but its approach to reimagining the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale caught me completely off-guard once I started reading it.

It was, by far, the most cynical take on a beloved fairy tale I've ever read, and I'm glad I took that chance in the university bookstore. I loved the book. I loved its weirdness, its satire (not the gentler Horatian satire, either, but more along the lines of my preferred kind: Juvenalian like Jonathan Swift's kind of satire), and especially its non-linear storytelling.

Since the focus was on the sleeping princess, the book was a long immersion in the princess's dreams. And they were alternately dark, hypnotic, horrifying, and sensual. I've seen readers react to the book and criticize it as misogynistic, but to me it read more like an anti-fairy tale. No HEA except in dreams.

And the writing style, being postmodern, was distant and aloof -- cold, almost. I LOVED IT. The POV was one most readers nowadays loathe, which was the third person omniscient, so the perspective is wide-ranging and all-encompassing in order for the slightly bitter tone to make a full impact.

It was the main inspiration for my own attempt at writing a cynical take on Snow White while also weaving a number of other fairy tales and myths into the plot to create my own version of entrapment and manipulation. The difference between Arabesque and Briar Rose is that the princes do find their HEA in the end. 

I remember working with an editor back in the day after JMS Books accepted the manuscript, and I apparently confused him with the mix of fairy tale samples -- especially in the woodland scene. We went back and forth over those, and I ended up trimming a few things that I thought were too much while he suggested removing them entirely. 

But I didn't write them into the scene for no reason, though, and needed to show how disillusionment was beginning to grip Alarick after years of being taught happy endings for virtuous characters in those childhood tales. Also I wanted to maintain that dream-like feel that escalates inside the cottage. 

As the blurb notes, this book was all about homophobia, misogyny, and conversion therapy, which I explored via Roald's ordeal and even Ulrike's descent into madness via metaphors and analogies. Even symbolism, i.e., the strange flowers being hawked at the open air market.

I really enjoyed writing this book, and I'd love to write something like this again down the line (now that I'm much older and even more cynical). I guess this would make my only attempt at writing something postmodern-ish, and now I'm jonesing to get another book by Robert Coover (like Pricksongs and Descants). 

Arabesque is currently 50% off in e-book format through the end of October. For a copy, the book page is over yonder. 

'The Twilight Lover' Gallery Page Now Up (Plus Other Updates)

I'll be posting stuff about the books on sale this month next weekend. We're down the final stretch, and The Twilight Lover will be out in less than a month (whoop!). I just finalized the manuscript and hit publish on the print book, and now I can really focus on the newest WiP.

Anyway, I finally put together a gallery page for The Twilight Lover, and it's over here. 

I wasn't kidding when I said in that gallery page that this book was one of the most fun I've ever had, writing it. I hope readers enjoy it as much as I did as I dive back in and work through a darker book. 

I dumped my first attempt at writing the opening chapter for Doppelgänger as the epistolary approach wasn't working as well as I'd hoped. It's now being written in a more standard first-person narrative, and it's also a contemporary setting.  

Trying to write something modern that's also a lot closer to realism than my previous efforts has always been a challenge. I've never been one for realistic fiction. I tried with Icarus in Flight, Banshee, and The Glass Minstrel, and while I'm proud as all hell of those books, I'm not keen on repeating the experience. It's just not me. 

Doppelgänger will be closer to Banshee in treatment (both books are first person POV), but the fantasy / paranormal elements will be in the minority. At least I have those to lean on for a fuller expression of my brain's weird turns, and I expect to continue along these lines in future contemporary books. I did mention that there's a germ of an idea for a future story in the Nightshade universe, and it's starting to feel more and more likely. 

Now if THAT happens, I'll be squeezing it somewhere in the calendar as I'd like to see a more even balanced release schedule involving both historical fantasy and contemporary fantasy. Beyond A House of Profane Gods, there are no new stories percolating somewhere (not counting that one for the Nightshade plotbunny), but I'm actively scouring through images for potential story prompts. 

October Backlist Bonanza: 'Arabesque' and 'Henning'

And we begin the final quarter of the year, which also happens to be my favorite (the first quarter comes second, obvs) with the nights lengthening and the temperatures dropping. For this month, we've got two more books on the half-off throne:

ARABESQUE

An ambitious young princess, Ulrike, turns to the dark arts in order to become queen despite her younger sister's warnings of a fatal consequence to mortgaging her soul. She succeeds, yet Ulrike finds herself trapped in a hateful marriage, her mind slowly being devoured by her powers, while conceiving and giving birth to a boy.

Alarick -- "the bastard prince" -- becomes the court's favorite object of mockery because of the scandal of his conception, his mother's spiraling madness compounding his ordeal. When Alarick falls in love with a childhood friend, Roald von Thiessen, the added sin of an unnatural romance gets caught up in a tumultuous aristocratic environment that's rife with hypocrisy, cruelty, betrayal, and murder.

Forcibly separated from each other during a bloody uprising, Roald and Alarick become helplessly ensnared in nightmarish adventures designed to twist their characters and destroy their minds in the process. The young lovers fight for their souls and a way back to each other in a world weighed down by the forces of dark and light magic, and gods grapple with each other over mortal destinies.

Arabesque is more than a gothic, homoerotic retelling of the Snow White folktale. It is also a dark allegory exploring contemporary issues such as misogyny, homophobia, and conversion therapy.

and

HENNING

Book 1: The Hunted Prince: Young Henning Babkis has learned not to consider himself to be anything special. Ignored and taken for granted by his family, his education suffering as a result of their neglect, he nevertheless struggles to fit in and improve himself, though with unimpressive results. He's also learned not to expect anything more for himself, convinced that he's doomed to live his life in a deep closet, surrounded by people who don't care and who'd have given him a lot of grief if they were to find out he's gay.

Things come to a sudden head when Henning's fifteenth birthday rolls around. An unexpected and terrifying attack by a creature from another world shakes up his quiet life, and Norbert steps forward with remarkable and shocking revelations as to Henning's true identity. And from a boy who's grown up to think himself as a nobody, Henning discovers a previous life in a world called Wintergrave -- a world of magic, romance, and danger.

In the company of a motley bunch of former warriors, Henning must reclaim his former life and regain his powers in order to defeat an old threat. But in order to do that, he needs to convince a certain former lieutenant that the two of them were deeply bonded before and need to reform their connection now in order to get their powers back. The wrinkle? Ellery Thomas is in a happy relationship with another boy in this lifetime.

Book 2: Prince of Wintergrave: Being a prince in a past life yields no benefits in the present, Henning has quickly learned. His concerned housemates have made themselves his official, overbearing chaperones, Ellery appears to despise him, and Henning's limited movements slowly wear down his nerves. With his awakening process turning out to be more of a zombie-like stagger, the stakes rise inevitably as undead attacks not only increase in frequency, but also in danger levels.

Henning finds some relief in the company of Alan Scott -- a handsome, smart young man he meets in a store, who displays an earnest interest in Henning. He gradually tears Henning's heartbroken attention away from Ellery, offering him promises of happiness as can only be defined in a boy's first love.

In the meantime, danger now spills over to threaten innocent civilians as they get dragged into monster attacks, making it difficult for Henning and his companions to fight back while raising troubling questions about the walls between worlds being torn down by dark magic. It also reveals the effect of a soul bond on Henning and Ellery's awakening -- that is, each boy's awakening is affected by the other, and the mystery of how and why only get muddier.

As Henning and his companions scramble for answers, it's a mad race against time when things happen that make them suspect Varian of crossing over to their world, searching for Henning.

Both books are 50% off in e-book format through this month, and I'll be posting tidbits about each in the coming days.  

Seeing the Backside of Summer and Welcoming Fall (At Last!)

Granted, the Fall / Autumn Equinox is tomorrow, but I won't have time at all to write a post. 

hand-drawn illustration from Freepik

I began preliminary work on Doppelgänger after hemming and hawing for so long on how best to approach the narrative. It's a return to dark drama, and considering the subject (hell, the title!), I need a very personal touch for the book, and since I've been champing at the bit for another epistolary narrative, I finally settled down on a series of short journal entries from the MC (at the moment named Alec, but that might change). 

Everything right now is a placeholder (character names included), and so far I've only written just over 600 words. 

I was at first planning to get going on this book in October, but as I've given myself all of September to finish polishing up The Twilight Lover and then be lazy for the rest of the month, I feel energized enough (not to mention inspired enough) to at least get the opening page written. I still have time to sit on this and see if I still like it when I look at it next weekend. 

But I love the idea of a character who already feels isolated pouring his thoughts into a banged-up, spiral-bound (generic) notebook for comfort -- hence a return to the epistolary form. The difference between this book and all the other books I've written in this format is that the account is strictly in journal entries and no letters (texts and emails included). 

As before, too, I'm going to have to be careful moving forward with this because dialogue in the traditional sense shouldn't be an extensive part of journal entries -- summaries of conversations and the character's responses to them, yes, but not detailed exchanges. 

The same goes with events that transpire, of course. I still look to books like Dracula as both inspiration on what to do and what NOT to do what with all those looooong, overly detailed recollections in journal entries. The Demeter captain's log entries are the way to go, but Alec's will be more extensive than those as well. And I daresay sinking myself into a new gothic horror book in epistolary form is the way to experience Autumn. 

Another thing I'd like to share is a possible plotbunny for another book set in the Nightshade universe, but it's just a teeny-weenie germ of an idea, and it might not happen at all. I'll play with it some more and see if it promises enough weight and heft for a complete story. If I do add it to my to-do list, there's going to be another shuffling of the calendar. But as always, I'll post about it, regardless.
 

'A Murder of Crows': Art as Vengeance

And here we have bratty novel number two. Luxembourg is an unusual country to choose as the setting for the novel because it's never on anyone's radar, mine included. For this final novel in the Arcana Europa collection, I wanted to use a country I haven't touched on before. Especially since I've written books set in largely four nations I'm far more familiar with time and time again: England, France, Germany, and Italy (primarily Venice). My first attempt at branching out was with The Amaranth Maze (Sweden), and then I decided to challenge myself with yet another location I knew nothing about.

It was a deep dive into Luxembourg's history, in that case, and I was pleasantly surprised to see patterns of migration into the country. 

In case you didn't know, Rembrandt van Rijn tops my list of favorite artists. And with the idea of regional magic being at the core of the Arcana Europa books, I decided to have Dutch magic be in paint. Mathieu's inscriptive magic is something more like minor magic, if you will, as it's a rare talent but very useful in education. As he's from France, which I've already covered in The Flowers of St. Aloysius, I decided not to rehash nature magic that was already explored in that book though it does enjoy a cameo in the end. 

And so this novel is peopled with immigrants who've all settled down nicely in Luxembourg.

a still from the BBC adaptation of Le Fanu's ghost story

Two other things greatly inspired this book's plot: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter" (one of my all-time favorite ghost stories) and Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and divine justice in Greek mythology. 

The former, of course, involves also one of my favorite horror tropes of the demon lover, but its presence in the book is a lot subtler than it was in The Amaranth Maze. However, the dark, brooding atmosphere of the story and the visuals I ran across online from the TV adaptation from 1979 worked perfectly for my inspiration. Rembrandt's portraits were also mined for mood and atmosphere.

"Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime" by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Nemesis is something of a staple in my books, and in this case her presence is closely tied with what I call Dutch magic. Paint and art in this instance aren't only used to capture beauty and emotion, but also to exact vengeance depending on the artist's intent. It was an idea that first came to me when I wrote Ambrose, but it finds full expression in A Murder of Crows. 

A Murder of Crows is now 50% off in e-book format through the end of September. To get your copy, go here for a list of online bookstores.