Bhagwan @ Large

In the wee dark hours of the now

This last weekend I was in Las Vegas, getting to know and experience the culture of Horror writers. Not horror fandom, that I know all to well. But instead the creative methods and disciplines of those who purvey and portray that which goes bump in the night.

Why, you might ask? You’re a science fiction guy, you proclaim. You make video games, get back in your box!

Alas, I cannot. My fiction has been described as dark far too often, and some of my closest friends do not want to read my words on a regular basis. I have been known to say “I don’t write happy,” and it’s true that even the more uplifting of my short fiction has a serious edge to it.

Horror was the original category of storytelling. It’s one of the reasons I believe we evolved language in the first place, to express concepts besides basic hierarchical needs. It’s all well and good to relate the size and appearance of the bear, but to get across why you should be afraid of it takes art and imagination.

(You should, by the way. Because though most bears are pleasant, simple denizens of the wild places, they in no way recognize homo sapiens sapiens as a dominant omnivore. In fact, the only animal that instinctively hunts humans is a bear. The most efficient non-dinosaur predator of prehistory was a bear, and I’m still not positive that one’s not going to eat me as I walk to the bus.)

But I digress (seriously, BEARS). The markets I’m submitting to like my prose, but can’t really find a place for it among their standard offerings. Broadening my portfolio can only help get the words out, and in truth I’m relieved to find more monsters in spirit roaming the halls of conventions. Mind you, I’ll never stop writing about superheroes and spaceships, but now I can relax and let the darkness flow.

There are several such stories germinating in the festering madness of my mind right now. Tales so stark and uncompromising they threaten to chase away the two books I should be finishing when I sit down not to write. I’m afraid of one, and amused by the other. As I prep for next month’s big fiction gathering, I feel I’ll have a lot more to talk about than before last weekend.

Of course, imagine how much more productive a trip it would be if I could just finish the damn books.

Time to make video games. I’m fairly sure there are no bears in my office today.

They mostly come out at night. Mostly.

Merely Nearly Really Ready

Today’s sub-conscious story exercise comes from the realm of apocalyptic underwater dystopia.

It may seem odd to describe your inner thought processes this way, but it’s how my broken brain works. I’ve mentioned before that I am a lucid dreamer. Since my memory only goes back so far, it’s something I’ve always been able to do, and the dreams I can take control of are particularly powerful when I don’t.

This morning was something of an oddity for me, as I knew it was a “go” right away. My in-dream memory told me that I’d been in this situation before, as our ragtag flotilla approached the cave system and it’s frog-like occupants on whatever watercraft we had. I and several others swam ahead and began negotiating for the supplies we’d need to continue our journey, and dream me knew I was about to be betrayed. Making the best deal I possibly could, I returned to warn folks knowing that this dreamscape does not end well.

But here’s the kicker–I had not been there before. So dream and real me were responding to an unremembered dream, something that rarely happens. And since I knew it was going to be a bad one, it’s a dream I’ve suppressed for some reason. We’re about to be ambushed and enslaved for a long time by a technologically superior race, and most of us aren’t going to make it out.

Now the dream fragments, and I wake up briefly as a defense mechanism. I’ve learned over the years that shifting my physical position will either alter or completely cancel the dreamstate, sending it down paths more of my choosing. For some reason, this does not happen today, and “awake” me is still under the control of the subconscious mind. I can’t move, and the only “action” I can take is to re-submerge myself in the dream and ride it out.

In different characters. Still lucid, I play out 4 different viewpoint scenarios, each with a minor rebellion or act of courage that does not end well. As a whole, “we” advance through the dreamscape fairly well, if fatally. Each time, I wake up, still in the same position, and with no real options other than diving back in.

In case you were wondering, this does NOT count as a nightmare for me. Those are really weird.

On my last trip in, I realize that my perspective of our aquatic landscape has been shifting ever deeper on successive episodes. We are now a fully amphibious people, but are still recognizably the same individuals that floated into a trap. This incongruity is what I need to take control, so I do. But now that I’ve got it, I no longer have enough context to materially affect the scenario. I surface for the last time, fully wake, and let out a long breath.

Time for the emotional after action report. I trundle downstairs and read further in the two books I’m cycling on my Kindle. The Author has threaded three very long novels together with about a 3 months staggering of plot in each, and I’m halfway through the first two when I begin. I realized what he was doing yesterday afternoon, and was interested enough to attempt reading all three at the same time. I moved another 15% in the second one, finished the first, then set them aside to get ready for the creative portion of my day.

While I’m reading, I’m also processing what happened in the dream world. It’s still bothering me that I couldn’t take control when I usually do, but it’s not the first time that’s happened. I’ve layered three full dream lines before, conscious of at least two, with one being an example of my aforementioned nightmares. This is nowhere in that league, but I should have been able to at least move things around a bit. Being able to both control the dream and not affect it >is< something new, and has to mean something.

Then it hits me. I was coming at it from the wrong direction–the important part wasn’t the beginning of the dream, it was the end. Being underwater and surfacing was the relevant portion, and now I know when I had this dream before. It was 6 years ago, when I got the idea for a new story about genetically modified, amphibious mammalian humanoids living in an enclosed ecosphere. They have all those adjectives because they knew exactly who and what they are, just not why. I have that dream in my head right now, and it’s the poster child for what my subconscious mind is capable of.

Although dream experiences fuel my creative process, I’m still not good enough to translate this one fully into text. There are complexities and textures to the emotions of the dream I’m not sure I can consciously express, and I ‘tasted’ them again last night. What I have been able to do is one of the most complete outlines I’ve ever worked up, and a lot of the hard science fiction I’ve worked on over the last couple years has found itself tied to the overall universe of that story. My thoughts on what the ‘self” is, how an alien race thinks and acts, all are informed by this story. It’s even crept into some of my work for hire, but not so much that I can’t still call it my own.

I’m not ready to write that book yet. It’s going to be a huge volume, the most immersive project I’ve ever done. I’ll only be able to do that once I learn how to get the “easy” books in front of and resonating with readers. I’d like to get paid for it too, really paid, so it’s by no means a “first novel.”

But it’s a lot closer now that I’ve seen how someone writing his 43rd, 44th, and 45th novels dealt with the big picture. That he’s written 8 more since in those same 6 years is fuel for the fires of ambition. I’ve written two, and started three others.

I’m not ashamed to admit that my internal monologue was somewhat disparaging last night of the prolific man’s work product. I was too heavily grounded in the parts of his books I don’t like instead of focusing on what I do. His characters, their very real motivations and problems, and the HUGE tapestry he gets to work with.

10 minutes and 93 words ago I did the math. 53 books. 2 more on the way. 14 about the same character. I am an ant cursing the ground for being solid, desperately trying to find the scent trail he’s laid down for me instead of opening my eyes to wonder.

It’s time to get to work.