R. J. Crowther Jr.

Another year had passed and the mortal coil loosens, its curves wider and less restrained .   I'm glad to say goodbye to the revolution past, surely the most cruel of my life, with the loss of my father a month ago, of my cat Brown Jenkins at all of thirteen years, and a nasty car wreck that now seems like ancient history.  All these events were powerful reminders of my mortality, and I ache to feel young again, to not hear the tick of the pendulum like the ever-present clock in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of Red Death."

But I have dreams to carry me forward, so many loved ones, and for those things I am forever grateful.  Ahead of me I have another year to hone my craft of writing.   My number one wish for this year--that I'll finally finish the rewrite of Crucifer and turn in a manuscript that I can be proud of, not to mention make my agent gasp with delight, as opposed to cough up a hairball.   My first act of the new natal year was to recommit myself to my writing, with a certain knowledge that each day I squander, is a day that makes my art less likely to see fruition.   I don't want to go to the grave with a computer full of unpublished and unpublishable dregs.  Only the heavens know the measure of my days, and the time to focus is now.  The inkwell of my soul needs draining.

Thirty years ago, on May 25th, Ridley Scott's ALIEN redefined horror and SF, by creating an astonishing hybrid of the two.  It's tagline was, "In Space, no one can hear you scream," but the screams still echo through the spaces between the stars.  My favorite horror film of all time, it was my first experience with sublime horror.  The beauty, the grotesqueness, and the terror transfixed me.  The alien ship with it's biomechanical bridge was so bizarre, and yet so real it punched a hole in my psyche.  I remember praying the beautiful, tough, Ripley would survive, while waiting, white-knuckled, for every transcendent encounter with the xenomorph.  It was also my first encounter with the nightmarish, erotic imagination of H.R. Giger, and my love affair with his art continues to this day.

I was only twelve the first time I saw Alien, all alone, late at night, while it played on HBO, and for weeks I peered at the stars and shivered.  I had heard of many miracles of light in Sunday school--now I  knew there were dark miracles too.  It was only later that I appreciated the film's claustrophobia, its sexual overtones, the phallic horror and subversive pregnancy motif.  I imagine it makes women particularly queasy, even as one of their own conquers the phallus with teeth.  But did it ever make them think twice about pregnancy--about that little life-form kicking inside them, feeding off their blood through a slimy umbilicus?  Did it make men squirm at the thought of being raped?  Worse, the rapist had acid blood; exhaust pipes fed it's lungs--the monster was dark technology incarnate.  With its dripping, projectile mouth, the penetration and invasion--what could possibly be more horrific?  Oh, yes, there's always incubation.

On it's 25th anniversary, I experienced Alien as it was meant to be seen--a pristine, restored print in a darkened theater.  The shock and awe left me trembling and grinning like a madman.  So here's to Ridley Scott for giving us Alien, and to Giger's Oscar-winning vision as its art director. 

Happy 30th Birthday, Alien.















Alien images copyright 20th Century Fox, 1979, 2003.

Yesterday, May 13^th, after a long battle with terminal brain cancer, my father, Bob Crowther, Sr., passed away. It’s so hard for me to accept that my dad is gone, that I’ll never see him holding my mom, playing with his dogs, or hunkered over a book with a purring cat on his lap, picking tomatoes and squash from his garden, or hug him again.

The last few months, especially the last couple weeks, were almost unbearable, but I'm feeling some peace knowing his suffering is over.  Still, I miss him terribly--I love him so much.  He believed in me even when I lost faith in myself. Before he died, he told me, “Never give up on your writing. You’ll only be a failure in my eyes if you give up on your dream.” Just writing those words--the tears come again.

Our family meant more to him than life itself, and my mother was always his “Princess.” Even after 43 year of marriage, I could still drive up to their house in Alpine and find him walking with my mother through the wildflowers and red-barked Manzanita, holding hands like newlyweds. If it wasn't for him, I'd never have appreciated that the natural world is a web of miracles. He loved nature, had a degree in marine biology, and was a class away from completing a second in botany. He survived the horrors of the Vietnam war, and returned to protest it, and was a man of peace with a passion for books from science texts to thrillers.

I’ve spent the last two days with my family, and the sadness is balmed by the relief that my dad has been released.  My companion, D., has been there for me, offering love and comfort, and has lost a friend and the closest thing to a father he ever knew.  I struggle to comfort my sister, who is near inconsolable, and shared a closeness with my dad second only to my mom’s. He was my sister's best friend, her hero, her Dad.  My sister, her partner, Cheryl, and I were rotating helping care for him at home, and doing what we could to help my mom and support her, but the great and terrible bulk of the burden fell on my mother's shoulders.  Morning and night, day after day, she loved and cared for him, barely sleeping and allowing him to pass from this world with dignity.

My dad's greatest fear was that he would lose his mind, and second that he would not be able to control his body.  Near the end, both those horrors became real for him, but he and my mother faced them with incredible courage.  It was like watching a sand castle erode as the tide came in, slowly, relentlessly, until the core dissolved.   Nothing could be more terrible. But he was never alone; was able to be at home, with his Princess, children, and the animals that he loved so much.

When he passed, my mom was sitting at his side, reading him the 23rd Psalm from her worn, heavily underlined Bible. My mother lost the love of her life, but she's at peace now too, and has this calmness and strength that can only be called heroic.  Now my dad is beyond fear, and I believe his soul is happy, near my mom, because for him, that is all the heaven he needs.

I've been locked in self-isolation for months now, wrestling with the twin horns of family tragedy and the slash-and-burn rewrite of Crucifer.   The greatest challenge has been fortifying a psychic wall in my head, so I can work through the former while making progress on the latter.  Most of the time, I feel like that proverbial kid in Holland, who sticks his finger in a hole in a dike to keep back the flood.   But the water leaks around my finger, splashes on my boots, and soaks into the soil of my writing.  I find the scenes which were already becoming more emotional, now are lit with a blue filter of sorrow.   And the city, which more than ever is a major character, has grown more immense, more ominous, a colder God who hears the cries of his children, but won't blot the tears from their eyes.  And the power of trancendent love, the desperate search for meaning, has grown, well, more desperate.

One thing my agent told me she loved when she read the last draft of Crucifer, was the Gothic, Noir atmosphere of the novel.  I had worked hard to build up the shadows and capture the Noir atmosphere, but the city still didn't feel alive.   She knew I've been invovled in the Goth subculture for years, and suggested I expand the Gothic imagery.   I had always intended the the third act to be a radical transition, from future noir to a Gigeresque, Gothic nightmare, but the first two acts were only half-fleshed by comparison.  My agent had the solution,  the old, "write what you know," so I'm pouring my Gothic soul into the book.  Now, there are even a couple scenes set in a futuristic Goth club, built inside a retrofitted church, where genetically modified children of the night dance in the shadow of a crucifix, the marble cross backlit by a green laser nimbus.   I've unleashed my love for the baroque and grotesque, and one word keeps coming back to me--sublime.  I want my would-be readers to touch the sublime, that feeling of awe, wonder and dread, and if they feel it once or twice while reading the book, then my efforts won't be for nothing.  Have you ever knelt in a Gothic cathedral, looked up at the vaulted ceiling soaring overhead, or stood at the edge of a giant cliff, gazing at the waves crashing below?  This is the feeling I am striving to capture.   And love, to feel the transcendent power of love, so real that when it's lost, it rips apart the fabric of your being.

For your amusement, here are a few pictures of me taken at Goth clubs.  "Write what you know?"  More like, "write what you live."  The first was taken on January 31st of this year, at  a Cybergoth event held at Club Sabbat in San Diego.  The second was taken a few years back, outside Bar Sinister in Los Angeles, with my friend, Damon Drew.


Rob at Club Sabbat


Rob and Damon Drew

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

200 years today since the birth of Mr. Poe,  the father of the modern detective story, the modern horror story, and the master of the American Gothic tradition.  Pause and gaze into his eyes--what do you see?  Perhaps you'll find a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief, a genius, haunted not so much by lack of recognition, but by the agonizing loss of wife, Virginia Clemm, who died a year before this famous portrait was taken.   In life and death she was his muse, his sine qua non.  The tragedy and truth of Poe is that our greatest achievements are born out of love, our bright shining moments and epiphanies of horror.    When mortality becomes personal, and the frail cocoon of life is rent before our eyes, only then do we finally glimpse immortality.   Art is a transcription of that revelation.

So today light a candle for Mr. Poe, set aside a few hours and immerse yourself in his words.   Better yet, read them aloud, and listen to each syllable as it flys from your lips, feel the rhythm and hear the sibilance like rustling leaves .  Let the master cast his wordspell upon you.   As a special tribute, here's a link to Vincent Price reading "The Raven."

The dark rises, the veil is thin, and a drum circle of long-dead hearts beats to the rhythm of the Danse Macabre.  Who says Vampires don't exist?  Who wants to live forever?  Blessed Samhain and Happy Halloween!

Zombie Haiku:

The Halloween countdown continues with my pick for the year's best contribution to Halloween humor, aka "The award for most brains consumed in a single evening."  It's a twisted little book called "Zombie Haiku" which is a first person account of a man's rapid degeneration, after he is infected by a zombie.  The descent is told through a chronological series of Haiku (sadly, not always true to form), but I laughed until my guts fell out and snorted my maggoty brains across the pages.   While I'm on the subject, here's a bit of zombie trivia--the pop-culture notion that zombies crave human brains, as opposed to hungering for human flesh in general, didn't become part of zombie lore until it appeared in the 1985 movie, "Return of the Living Dead," written by Dan O'Bannon--yes, the same O'Bannon who wrote Ridley Scott's "Alien."    Brain-craving, as zombie fans know,  is not part of Romero's undead canon.  The brilliant zombie books of Brian Keene and Max Brooks have gone back to the earlier concept of humanity as a shrieking smorgasbord.

Here's a few choice cuts from the "Zombie Haiku" book.  Shamble over to a bookstore and pick up a copy.

ZOMBIE HAIKU
 
(Existential Zombie--a day in the life)
 
Everything I thought
tastes like chicken
really tastes like man.

There is something fun
about that soft popping sound
when biting fat calves.

The other dead guy
stares at me with a blank look
as we softly moan.

I can see his tongue
move through the hole in his face
that isn't his mouth.
 
I know he can't see
because the room is pitch black
and I have his eyes.*
 
  
(The nursing home)
 
My instinct steers me
to my gourmet dinner feast
a nursing home.
 
Little old ladies
speed away in their wheelchairs,
frightened meals-on-wheels.
 

(Homecoming--shudder--so wrong in so many ways!)
 
I remember home
and I remember my mom,
and her meaty thighs.
 
I loved my momma,
I eat her with my mouth closed,
how she would want it.
 
*My personal favorite
 
All Haiku taken from the book, "Zombie Haiku" by Ryan Mecum, copyright 2008

Halloween Countdown:  "Just After Sunset"

As I'm sure many admirerers of Stephen King know,  his new collection of horror stories, "Just after Sunset," arrives in bookstores on November 11th.  Too late for Halloween, you say?  Would you like an early taste of this bitter fruit?  One of the stories--"N."--has been adapted into a multimedia comic book that you can view for free online.  "N." unfolds in twenty-five episodes, with a preface by the master himself.   The episodes were released this summer, presented as a serial (how did I not hear about this earlier?!).  Each episode plays out through comic book-like frames, with characters drifting across the screen, light shifting though the backgrounds, and fantastic voice acting and sound effects.  It's immersive, it's unnerving, and it's a terrifying experience.  In a publishing first, a DVD with the complete animated graphic novel will be included in "Just After Sunset."

N., as King will tell you, was inspired by Arthur Machen's 'The Great God Pan," a masterpiece that heavily influenced Lovecraft.  King also mentions that "N." is intentionally Lovecraftian, with a modern infusion of psychiatry, namely, an exploration of obsessive-compulsive disorder.   This is the horror of reality disintegrating around you, of your frames of reference blurring, of The Other intruding until there is no other.*  Kill your television, turn down the lights, and click--N. is Here. 

*For another brilliant, reality-rending horror story, may I suggest "Details" by China Mievelle, most recently published in his short story collection, "Looking for Jake." 

When my agent offered to represent me, a supernova of new hope went off within me.  Now the firestorm has blown clear, and I'm focused on my blind spots,  those underdeveloped parts of my book that I hadn't noticed.  After a careful reading, my agent asked for a rewrite.  She discovered several problems that I need to address--a character whose motivation isn’t defined enough, another who starts off with a bang then fizzles with wasted potential, and a subplot that never comes full circle--and must come full circle to give a satisfying conclusion, not to mention set up a sequel.

So, why did she take on my manuscript with these flaws?  Why would she waste her time if it needs so much work?  The answer?  She's not wasting her time because she believes in the book, and sees it not only for what it is, but for what it can become.  A good agent helps a writer clean up a promising manuscript,  a great one unleashes it's potential.  The same holds true for an editor.  I'm fortunate that I have an agent with a keen editorial eye, and know her insights will save me from a slew of rejections.  When an agent asks for revisions (which happens more often than not) it’s called “shaping the manuscript for submission,” but it’s less about shaping than reconstructive surgery.  When my agent told me, "You're not there yet," it felt like a size-twelve boot to the groin, but she said she knows I can get there and told me not to despair.

And I'm not despairing, I'm working my ass off.  I want to prove to her and to myself that her faith in me isn’t wasted.  While waiting for her editorial notes, she told me to reread the manuscript, consider the global criticisms, and make notes of my own for an upcoming phone conference.  A funny thing happened when I reread the manuscript.  Several of the characters shouted at me, sharing stories I had never heard.  The detective with wasted potential vented her rage, furious that I hadn’t let her solve a major crime, when she had the tenacity and intelligence to do so.  Another character told me that if I really loved him, I’d have the courage to show how much he loved my lead protagonist, despite the fact that doing so would destroy his sanity.  I know he’s right, but it hurt like hell because I really do love him, and can’t save him from himself, even though I want to.  When I feel my characters’ pain and frustration, I know I’m on the right track.

I’ve bowed to the voices in my head, and I will get there from here.

Wonderful news!

As of today, Colleen Lindsay is my agent!  Some you who are reading this already know her, and will understand why I'm so excited.  Before she took a job at FinePrint Literary Management, Colleen was a publicist for Del Rey/Ballantine, and as many SF, fantasy and horror writers can attest, she was one of the best damn publicists in the book world.  Now she brings all her expertise to representing writers, and I feel so privileged to have her represent me.   One thing that really impresses me is her attitude toward writers--not only does she see the relationships as partnerships, she wants to help her writers build long term careers.  The official announcement won't go up on her blog until next week, but she kindly gave me permission to break the news here.  For great advice and links on writing, publishing and query letters, I invite you to check out her blog.  

Colleen Lindsay--The Swivet

You'll also find plenty of snark, a good amount of silliness, and a cat-filled window into the daily life of an agent.

Recently, several people have asked what I suspect will become a common question, if I am fortunate enough to earn a readership--not where do you get your ideas, but where do your images come from? One of my big hurdles as a writer, has been the transition from an intensely visual style, to telling character-driven stories with intense visuals. It's the difference between presenting readers with a series of tableaus, and immersing them in a world with people they care about. The truth is, my stories almost always start with images. A rough breakdown of sources for stories would look something like this: 

Images lifted directly from dreams/nightmares                25%
Inspiration from paintings/art                                         25%
Inspiration from images in movies                                  10%
Ideas sparked by reading fiction                                    05%
Ideas inspired by news, non-fiction
and scientific articles:                                                  10%
Real world observations,
people watching, architectural, biological, etc.               15%
Conversations:                                                            10%

Crucifer began with my obsession with H.R. Giger’s masterpiece, Chidhergrun*, a horrifying and beautiful biomechanical crucifixion, with Christ raised up and transformed into a diseased, phallic serpent, and a black vinyl Mary-machine in ecstasy at his feet. The painting also alludes to a passage in the Bible (Numbers 21:6-9) where Moses raises a bronze serpent to save the Israelites, who have been stricken by fiery serpents in punishment for turning their backs on God. There’s a theme of sympathetic magic here, where disease cures disease, and salvation comes from staring into the face of death/evil. The passion story, coupled with this, inspired the central plot of Crucifer--where a drug-addicted, male prostitute (Peter) becomes a Messiah for a world of machines, specifically, a race of biomechanical entities.

Next, I asked myself, what type of world does Peter live in?  What sort of world would biomechs build if they took the Christian gospels literally? I poured over Giger’s work, and a second painting obsessed me--Spell II. It inspired the Cathedral of Bones**, the central motif in the last third of the book. I began to dream about these images, and had a series of nightmares, which I worked directly into the narrative. In another life, I was on the road to becoming a priest (obviously, the road not taken) and a series of intense, visionary dreams became my protagonist’s own. St. Thomas Church, a central location in the first two acts of the book, is where I actually studied when preparing to become a priest. A wedding scene in Crucifer, between Peter and a crucifer/acolyte, was a real life experience pushed into the supernatural. Writing a novel is a synthesis, and Peter was a synthesis of four individuals, who collapsed when he suddenly took on a life of his own, but more on the genesis of my characters later.

If Crucifer finds publication, my dream would be to have Chidhergrun on the cover. I hope you find this dissection interesting, and would love to hear about your own writing process.

*Both Chidhergrun, Spell II and hundreds of other Giger images can easily be found with a simple Google image search, but I won’t link to them here because of copyright. You have to look at his Necronomicon retrospectives to truly appreciate their beauty. The gunmetal and dull, moonlit color schemes are lost in most web images. Chidhergrun is ruined by an awful yellow color shift, so do yourself a favor and look at the books.

**Here’s a link to sample chapters of Crucifer. And here is a direct link to the scene that introduces the Cathedral of Bones.

I'm a bit shaken up right now, just a few hours after a car wreck, but the fact that I'm blogging about it, should assure you that I came through relatively unscathed.

I was on my way  to a late night movie, and stopped at  a perilous intersection, where two major streets intersect a third at a sharp angle.  Worse still, the busy streets converge on the summit of a hill.  The light turned green, I hit the accelerator, and was halfway through the intersection when a car ran a red light at high speed and smashed into my own.  I barely saw the headlights rush toward me out of the corner of my eye before the impact jarred my bones.  I tried to swerve out of the way, as it bulldozed toward my door, and the driver T-boned me, slamming my car into traffic on my right.  Horns blared as the other cars careened out of the way,  and I barely missed being struck several more times.  The crunch of steel was jarring, it happened so fast, and the impact threw me against the seat divider.  I seriously bruised my hip, but somehow never lost my grip on the steering wheel.  The back door on the driver's side was crushed like a beer can, and my own door folded in at the back so I couldn't force it open.   Fortunately, my dear passenger wasn't  injured,  and all I could think was "Thank God nobody sat in the back seat."  By the time I got out of the car, and saw the twisted metal, a good Samaritan in a Mecedes pulled over to see if we needed assistance.  Somehow, the car that struck us wasn't destroyed by the impact.  The driver that hit us had pulled over several blocks away, and when he saw me climb out of the car, he squealed away.  I never got a chance to look at his plates for the police report.

Things have been rough recently, and this just left me numb.  I'm struggling to finish my novel, Blood Bound, while dealing with depression, brought on by a beloved friend being sent to the Persian Gulf, and struggling to care for an elderly cat with rapidly declining health.   I rescued Brown Jenkins years ago after he was hit by a car, nursed him to health and have had many wonderful years with him as a companion.  He sleeps each night on my pillow, curled around my head, but each morning when I wake he seems more of a ghost.   He'll only eat when I kneel at his side, sometimes feeding him out of my hand.  Once in a while, just petting him brings on wrenching sobs.  As for my friend who was sent to the gulf, I wear one of his dog tags, and most of the time it works like a talisman to banish my nightmares, the ones I have of him being shot or trapped in a crashing helicopter.  I've prayed more in the past two months than in the past several years, which just goes to show there are few rationalists in the trenches.  One of my goals this year was to quit smoking before my birthday a few weeks ago.  Let's just say I haven't been successful with that one.   I'm burning through more than a pack of Djarum Black cloves a day, which leaves me smelling like incense, or Mom's Easter ham.   I've got to quit and respect the life that's in me.  Trying to be in that writing place has proved an incredible challenge, but I feel like every sentence I write is spit in the eye of fate.

But one thing is abundantly clear as I sit writing this blog--life is painfully fragile.  The car wreck proved the merit of my perhaps cliche life-mantra: live each day like it's your last, because it just might be that.  Tell those you love that you love them, and remember that when you part it might be your last time together.  Live not in fear, and die without regret for the things you never shared, and remember that nothing is more precious than love.   Despite the fact that I write and adore science fiction/horror, I'm still a hopeless romantic...