Tag Archives: Questionable Minds

May 1, 2024 · 5:15 am

A tale of two cons

I prefer not to book two cons on two successive weekends. However I got in at Virginia’s Ravencon (the last weekend in April) this year, then I qualified for FantaSci the previous weekend; as it’s a Durham con, I couldn’t resist.

Being local turned out to have its downside. With Plushie needing all those eyedrops for his glaucoma, I wasn’t comfortable hanging out and around the con as I would normally. I confined myself to being there for panels and on Friday the stretch between them. Then Saturday, after my last panel I came home. A shame — I was finding it a low key, enjoyable con, and reconnected with several friends in the biz. I also screwed up and didn’t get a sale table for my books. Next year I will plan better and stay longer. And hopefully sell stuff. I’ll probably have more stories to tell about it.

Ravencon is 2.5 hours away so going home between panels wasn’t an issue. And I did reserve a sale table. But first, the photos:

My favorite cosplayer: Darth Barbie!

Like Con-Gregate last year, handselling proved very effective. I was close to one of the entrances to “Author Alley” which helped — steady foot traffic — and I have no qualms about calling on people to buy my wares. The purchasing pattern was different from last year, when Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast was the big hit. This time, nothing. I sold copies of Undead Sexist Cliches and several copies of Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan I purchased way back when. The winner, though, was Questionable Minds with eight copies sold. A lot of credit goes to Sam Collins’ eyecatching cover—

— but my writing gets some credit too. Several people read the back of the book, said they loved the premise and paid.

As if that wasn’t enough fun, I got several compliments for my comments as a panelist and a couple of people bought books based on that alone. Plus meeting various writer friends including Samantha Bryant and Venessa Giunta (whom I know online but haven’t met in the flesh before). I also had a good conversation with my neighbors, Paul DIckinson Russell, who had an author’s alley table for his first book (cover by Rana Gainer) and his buddy Lisa Hodorovych, a suspense author giving him advice on his first handselling experience.

The downside? I’ve had “get bookmarks or business cards” as a to-do item for a while and never gotten around to it. Big mistake: several people asked for one so they could find my books online later. I shall rectify that before my next con, which unfortunately won’t be until next year.

Much as I’d like to go to lots and lots of cons, I do have obligations at home — and I enjoy spending weekends with TYG and the pets. Plus I don’t sell enough books to cover my costs (at least not yet); they are deductible, of course, but there’s still a limit to how much I can afford. I’m looking forward to figuring it out.

Bonus image: Wisp looking plaintively at TYG while I was gone.

#SFWApro. All rights to cover images remain with current holders.

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March 13, 2024 · 5:15 am

Context and reference in historical fantasy

One of the things that sometimes bugs me about historical novels is that they do a lot of telling. There’s a reference to politics, pop culture, famous people, whatever and we get a quick info-drop about what it means. It doesn’t take me out of the story but I do notice it.

Reflecting on the feedback on Let No Man Put Asunder and Southern Discomfort (as I work on editing it, I’ve been reading a few chapters to my writing group), I’m wondering if I don’t go too far the other way. Sure, I try not to make it completely incomprehensible — I don’t want people breaking off reading to Google it — but I don’t explain things unless there’s a logical reason for someone to bring them up in conversation or think about what they mean.

Part of that may be that I lived through the 1970s. Even though I know, intellectually, that to a 30-year-old today, the mid-seventies are as far behind them as the 1930s were to me, I think I still assume they’ll know more than they do. Even if someone grasps the broad outlines, it’s easy to misunderstand the details, as this post about the 1920s discusses. Thinking back, I was a lot more “tell” when I was writing Questionable Minds because I know how much stuff people don’t know.Working on my Doc Savage history, Savage Adventures, I’ve been more aware of how strange the past gets after a few decades. As I discuss in Chapter Three, the 1930s were an era when the British Empire still dominated the world; the Depression dominated America; Jim Crow was the law of much of the land; radio was a dominant mass medium and still cutting edge tech; strong men performing on stage and barnstorming pilots were cool entertainment; nobody was certain space travel would ever be attainable; and antibiotics didn’t exist.

I’m testing out my thoughts by rewriting one chapter of Southern Discomfort I thought I’d finished satisfactorily. I’m spelling out relevant material the audience might not know, such as the FBI’s long history of trying to break the civil rights movement and the 1915 Leo Frank lynching. I think I’ve done it without bogging down in an info-dump; hopefully I can read it to the group soon and get feedback. If it works, I’ll keep doing the same to the other chapters.

I’ll also keep it in mind working on the rewrite of Let No Man Put Asunder. I think it’s more a matter there of overloading on the pop culture references but I did get feedback complaints some of them needed context. Not as much — a reference to Ingrid Bergman kissing Cary Grant in Notorious shouldn’t need to come with a plot synopsis (I hope).

Wish me luck. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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January 10, 2024 · 5:29 am

Let No Man Put Asunder and the “menace” plot

In the introduction to Lester Dent’s Weird Adventures of the Blond Adder, Dent expert Will Murray mentions that the 1933 stories fell into a sub-genre pulp magazine editors were calling the “menace” story. Murray quotes literary agent Lurton Blassingame, who cites Phantom of the Opera, Hound of the Baskervilles and the Fu Manchu novels.“In this type of story,” Blessingame said, “some person or thing hangs a veil of horror over the characters in this story; we never know when this menace will strike but we do know it will continue to commit depredations until the hero does his stuff and overcomes it in the final climax.” An editor Murray quotes says the figure can be a mystery until the climax or, as in Dracula or Fu Manchu, the heroes know who he is but still can’t stop him from striking.

For example in the first Blond Adder story Nace goes out into the woods to meet someone. A man comes running up to him, bound and gagged, and suddenly explodes. Several more people explode later in the story, but who’s behind it? What does he want? How does he do it?

Dent applied this approach in a number of Doc Savage yarns. in The Flaming Falcons the eponymous bone-grey birds appear and people drop dead, then the birds explode in a ball of fire. Not all mysterious-death stories in the series qualify: the disintegrator in Land of Terror is a formidable weapon but it’s treated as just that, a super-weapon, where the matter-destroying Red Snow feels more terrifying and mysterious. I think the latter novel qualifies.

The “menace” motif didn’t disappear with the pulps. It has a lot in common with slasher films; Freddie Kruger and Michael Myers both seem to qualify as the menace that “will continue to commit depredations” until defeated. Scooby-Doo would seem to qualify: lurking figures like the Phantom Shadow or the Ghost Clown threatening everyone until the masks are pulled off. Classic Joker stories such as his first appearance in Batman #1, “The Laughing Fish” or “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” fit the menace sub-genre: the Joker’s out there and he’s going to kill with a smile until Batman finally stops him.Clearly it’s a trope that still works. Which brings me to its presence in my own work. Questionable Minds, for instance is very much in the menace mode. Jack the Ripper, enhanced by psychic powers is out there killing; nobody knows where he’ll strike, nobody knows why, and nobody seems able to stop him.  Southern Discomfort, out later this year, has menace elements too. Readers know the villain is Gwalchmai, out for revenge on Olwen McAlister but we don’t know why. Maria, Olwen and the other characters have no idea. All they know is that they’re under attack: a flock of aggressive ravens, a kelpie, a barghuest, hanging a black teenager in his bedroom, putting a hospital into magical sleep so he can confront Maria.

Then there’s my work in progress, Let No Man Put Asunder. In the first chapter, Mandy Buchanan and Paul Templar find themselves mentally linked, and the target of the mysterious Community of All. From that point on they’re on the run from magicians, martial artists, vampires and elves out to capture them for the Community. Their enemies are ruthless, relentless and powerful; when Mandy tries driving them out of town it turns out space has been warped so they can’t leave.

Just having menace isn’t enough by itself though. At some point the heroes have to fight back; at some point they have to get answers, even if the answers raise more questions. Dent gave a hypothetical example where the protagonist learns the bad guys are kidnapping someone named Elmer. They rescue Elmer, but he’s a ring-tailed monkey; why would they steal a monkey? And why are the rings on the tail painted on? Saving Elmer’s a win but the hero doesn’t even know why it matters.

About a third of the way through this draft, I realized I didn’t have enough menace: once the cops came on board it was too talky. This is a problem I’ve seen in some published books, that once the authorities realize you’re right and start helping, things get too easy. I went back and rewrote to keep Paul and Mandy (not a couple by the way, she’s more the big sister he desperately needs) on their own and in peril for much longer. But at a certain point just flinging peril at them wasn’t enough; as Dent says, action has to do more than move your protagonist over the scenery. They begin to push back, have some wins, but then the Community of All ups the game and things end up worse.

At that point though, my ability to write it seemed to fade. I think part of the problem was that I was still moving them over the scenery; the individual battles were fine but they were interchangeable. The plot wasn’t moving enough. Hence my decision to move to the end. It’s an imperfect end but it reveals the stakes and the nature of the Community of All. That”s much better than having vague ideas in my head, even if I change what’s on the page completely (as Sherlock Holmes says, “any truth is better than indefinite doubt”).

I’m sure that when I finish the second draft, it’ll still be a menace story. But the menace will have a much stronger arc.

#SFWApro. Art top to bottom: unknown, James Bama, Neal Adams, Samantha Collins. All rights to images remain with current holder.

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May 17, 2023 · 5:10 am

Magic in fantasy: use vs. works

Back last December on Camestros Felapton’s blog (I don’t remember the specific post) there was a comment about two ways of approaching magic in fiction: “it seems to me that some ways of thinking about magic are ontological/analytical, and some are teleological/practical. How does the magic “work” vs how the magic is used. Which is most important to you as a reader/reviewer/critic? Which is most important to the writers creating these systems? Which is most important to the people who live in the worlds created by the writers? There isn’t a single right answer.”

Stories about how magic works would include, of course, the many stories with magic systems: the Mistborn books, Alan Moore’s tedious Promethea comics (very much about his theories of magic), D&D novels. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry where wizards draw power from an individual’s life force. Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories. A. Merritt’s science fantasies.

The Silver Age Dr. Strange stories by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (who was probably the prime mover ont he project) are much more about how magic is used.  What’s important is that Stephen Strange uses magic to stand between us and the dark forces: Baron Mordo, Dormammu, Nightmare, Umar and Taboo, Tyrant of the Eighth Dimension.

Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books likewise focus on magic in action: the bad guys using it to hurt people, Harry using it to protect them, as in the first book in the series, Storm Front. In Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, what matters is Conan fighting the magic, not how it works.That doesn’t mean “magic has no rules” (the standard complaint by those science fiction fans who dislike fantasy). The Dresden books give us magic rules but the system isn’t the important thing; Ditko’s Dr. Strange stories use magic consistently, they just don’t spell them out. Conversely, stories that emphasize magic systems usually deal with how magic is used: the Lord Darcy stories are all about Darcy and his sidekick Sean using magic to solve crime.

Some stories are a mix of both. In Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, there’s a lot about the rules of magic; protagonist Norman wins because he’s able to analyze them logically and apply them more effectively than his adversaries. However it’s also about how magic is used: stay-at-home wives working sorcery covertly to advance their husband’s careers.

In Southern Discomfort I deal with the rules enough to keep things consistent but I’m much more interested in what magic does. In Questionable Minds, the rules governing psychic power are much more important. In Let No Man Put Asunder, it’s all about how it’s used: there are multiple character operating under different magic system so the rules are a free-for-all (though individual characters’ skills stay consistent).No real deep insights, I know, but I still find Camestros’ comment interesting.

#SFWApro. Images top to bottom by Rodney Matthews, Steve Ditko, Lee Macleod and Samantha Collins. All rights remain with current holders.

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February 3, 2023 · 3:56 pm

Thinking a lot gets very tiring

Seriously. I put in a good week’s work and by the end of every day I feel wiped. Not quite as bad as Sgt. Rock, but still exhausted. But it is, as they say, a good tired. I even got in slightly more hours than I’d planned to, which will make up for whenever my schedule goes south later this month.

I added 4,ooo words to my rewrite of Let No Man Put Asunder. It’s holding together surprisingly well considering I’m really pantsing it — finish one scene, think what comes next, jump on that. It may turn out I’ve plotted myself into an unworkable hole but it’s going A-OK so far. Fun too.

I worked on Mage’s Masquerade which has reached the point I need plotting rather than pantsing. I think I’ve solved the main flaws in the last draft and I got halfway through the next one.

I worked on a werewolf comedy short story, Inherit the Howling Night, but I’m not sure there’s a story there yet. Or maybe ever. But I’ve thought that before and proven myself wrong after a few more drafts. Another (untitled) story — an unusual riff on Jekyll and Hyde — has characters and a message, but no real plot. Hopefully I can find one.

I finished Bleeding Blue and sent it off to F&SF. I admit I’m not hopeful — I’ve never gotten better than “Thanks, try again some time” but why not start off with a prestige market? And hey, even with a no, that’s my first finished short story of 2023, already subbed. Regrettably the market-guide website Ralan.com shut down this week — they were easily the best guide to which markets were open, when new markets started up and so on. There are alternatives but none I like as much.

I looked at Shopify, the online-sales app, and it should be doable to integrate it with this website. By the end of the month I hope to have stuff up for direct sale. Doesn’t mean anyone’ll be buying but as with F&SF, there’s no reason not to try.

And my new plan for managing email — basically devote an hour at the end of the week to going through whatever hasn’t been opened — is working well.The romance anthology Starlit Bridges is now out, with my Wodehouse Murder Case included. You can buy it in ebook or paperback. And I have more Con-Tinual panels available, one on writing in the Roaring Twenties, one on how to write psychic detectives, as in Questionable Minds.

#SFWApro. Covers top-to-bottom by Joe Kubert, unknown (sorry!) and Samantha Collins, all rights remain with current holders.

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January 28, 2023 · 5:16 am

The Three Faces of Dr. Jekyll: Movies

My novel Questionable Minds makes big use of Jekyll and Hyde, as I discuss in this blog-tour post. When I recently bought the 1931 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE on Blu-Ray, I decided to follow-up with two other adaptations, the 1941 remake with Spencer Tracy and 1960’s THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL.The 1931 version opens with Dr. Jekyll’s POV — his elegant house, his hands on the piano, his servants — after which the good doctor (Fredric March) lectures to a crowd of fascinated students and disgruntled old farts about how science will someday separate the human and the animal that intermingle with us, creating a superior person free of base instinct, able to rise to the heights of intellect and virtue. It’s a common Victorian view and expresses director Robert Mamoulian’s concept of Hyde as an evolutionary throwback, hence his brutish appearance in the still below with Miriam Hopkins.Jekyll isn’t all about the science though: he’s passionately in love with his fiancee Muriel (Rose Hobart) which is the root of all his troubles. He’s clearly ready to get it on with her but that’s not acceptable for an upper-class Victorian couple and her stuffy, overbearing father won’t allow them to speed up all rites, rituals and waiting periods that precede a Victorian marriage. When he meets sex worker/music-hall entertainer Ivy (Hopkins) she’s obviously up for relieving his sexual tension but though he likes the idea, he’s too good to stray from Muriel. But if he were to liberate the lower half of his nature, take on a persona that doesn’t care for convention, that couldn’t be recognized … And so Hyde is born.

Initially almost childlike — there’s a great scene where Hyde feels rain on his face for the first time and delights in it — Hyde stakes out his claim to Ivy fast. She’s intrigued to have a wealthy man to keep her, turned on some by his swagger … but before long the darker side of our buried self emerges. Hyde becomes an abusive gaslighter (if that sort of thing is at all triggering, neither this nor the 1941 film is the movie for you) and it’s obvious Ivy’s taking a long walk on a short pier. As for Jekyll, he’s ready to return to Muriel but Hyde is now too strong to restrain …

While this isn’t a faithful adaptation (which is good: Stevenson’s book is not cinematic), it captures the essential element that Jekyll wants to be Hyde; cutting free from respectability liberates him, though some of what gets free he’d prefer to keep caged. March, a Broadway leading man in light comic roles, wasn’t Paramount’s first choice for the role — they wanted John Barrymore, who played it in a 1920s version — but he’s marvelous, snagging the only Oscar acting award for horror until Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins is also very good as the tragic Ivy and the rest of the cast does solid work. Being a pre-code film, it’s also highly suggestive; this Blu-Ray restores several cuts made to please the censors on re-release, and also to trim it for length. “Do you want your eyes and your soul to be blasted by a sight that would stagger the devil himself?”

 

When Spencer Tracy took the role (according to the 1931 Blu-Ray’s commentary track) he wanted to play Jekyll as an ordinary man who succumbs to drink or drugs and starts living a wild life; that was too raw for MGM so they bought the rights to remake the 1931 version instead, then kept the earlier film from re-release for decades to avoid competition. The 1941 take is better than I remembered but still inferior to the March. The opening comes off almost like an attempt to refute its predecessor: rather than Spencer Tracy’s Jekyll giving a lecture, we have a clergyman (C. Aubrey Smith) celebrating Queen Victoria and how she’s helped England triumph over “gross sensuality.” Society’s prudery isn’t the problem, it’s Jekyll giving in to that gross sensuality that destroyed him.

This reflects the Production Code being in play but also MGM’s house style, which requires everything be classier and glossier than at other studios: where Ivy is a low-class woman in a low-class music hall, Ivy (Ingrid Bergman) here is a barmaid in a much more elegant venue. In any case, Jekyll’s initial issue is less sex than classic mad science complaints: nobody approves or supports his research into the boundaries between good and evil in our soul — the very fact he thinks science can tackle the soul is an outrage! His prospective father-in-law is an old-fashioned chap, shocked by the PDAs between Jekyll and his fiancee (Lana Turner, bland as usual), but he’s one of the good guys, not the stuffy, overbearing marplot of the first film. However, when Jekyll grows frustrated it occurs to him there’s one way he could become friends with Ivy without anyone knowing …

Unlike the first film, there’s no makeup change between Jekyll’s two identities. This is effective at times, such as Tracy’s facial expressions after his initial transformation, but the complete incredulity the two men are one and the same becomes baffling. However Tracy does deliver on a creepy, less overt abuser, constantly talking in a whisper when he’s Hyde but intimidating nonetheless. Bergman’s Ivy mostly doesn’t work: she can’t quite pull off the fun-loving working girl (her more tormented party girl in Notorious works better) and her accent is way off. However she’s amazing in the later scenes when a friend’s suggestion they go out for some fun is met by terror: what if Hyde sees me? What if he disapproves of what I’m doing? It conveys “abuse” without anything overt. Overall, though, not a patch on the 1931. “Your ideas are different than mine — it will be a charming experience to change them.”

Hammer took a shot at the story with THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960), starring Paul Massie as a Jekyll so obsessed with his research into human behavior he’s neglecting his wife Kitty (Dawn Addams) who’s consoling herself with Jekyll’s spendthrift friend, Allen (Christopher Lee), who has no qualms with banging Jekyll’s wife while also begging Jekyll to cover Allen’s gambling losses. In the best traditions of mad science, Jekyll tests his personality altering drug on himself and becomes Hyde (his beard disappears, then reappears when he turns back). A smirking, self-indulgent prick, Hyde flirts with Kitty and becomes a friend to Allen, who initiates him into the wild side of London life. However Jekyll’s smoldering resentment when he realizes Allen is cuckolding him soon becomes Hyde’s plan for revenge …

Wolf Mankowicz wanted to write this as an indictment of Victorian hypocrisy (which he assumed was a new take on the material) but the director wanted a different take and the disagreement (according to the book The Hammer Story) tanked the film. Backstage conflicts aside, I think that having made the love triangle the core of the film, they don’t explore that angle: what if Hyde makes a serious play for Kitty? Was Kitty always a bad girl or did she hook up with Allen due to Jekyll’s neglect? Instead the triangle just makes a distraction from the story rather than enhancing it. “That’s what your kind of woman wants in a man, Kitty — complete and utter freedom from shame.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders. You can buy Questionable Minds as an ebook or paperback.  Here’s an excerpt with my protagonist confronting Edward Hyde.

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January 13, 2023 · 4:17 pm

A smoother cruise this week than last

I wrote a week ago that the first week of 2023 felt like a shakedown cruise. This week the ship seemed to stabilize. We still had a lot of distractions but the work went well despite that.

The big distractions came Tuesday. Snowdrop had peed on the couch the night TYG kept him indoors and she could still smell it. We had someone come in to clean the couch off, after which we and the dogs had to stay off it for several hours while it dried.

Unfortunately that resulted in me and the pups sitting on the other couch for most of the afternoon. It’s much harder to work on my computer around them — the couch arms are too high to rest the computer there for instance — so I wound up doing some research reading instead.

We also had someone come in to check out the chimney as well. It has some damage which make it unwise to use the fireplace so TYG wanted a price estimate on repairs. Suffice to say, repairs would cost more than we want to spend, given that we didn’t use the chimney much even when it was in good shape. However if either of us gets a big payday down the road we might reconsider.

Thursday I’d planned to run out to the library and pick up the new Elric book I’d reserved, otherwise the reservation would have expired. That turned into a much larger expedition as I also wound up getting Trixie’s prescription food from the vet, plus food shopping done, plus picking up a prescription. TYG is away this weekend at an alumni event out of town — she left mid-morning — so I’ll be sticking home with the dogs and not going out. That saves me having to crate Plushie — he gets up to mischief otherwise – or the slight possibility something happens to me while driving and then there’s no-one here for the dogs until Monday.

Anyway, that bulked up the trip until I had no focus left for work by the time I got home. Still, I did get quite a bit done this week:

I redrafted a story I last worked on a couple of years ago, before Undead Sexist Cliches, Aliens Are Here and Questionable Minds sucked up so much time. It’s a long way from good yet, but I see more potential in the tale of a ruthless, objectivist businessman and his mysterious nemesis. Currently untitled.

I got several thousand words further in Impossible Takes A Little Longer, getting a lot of Reveals out of the way before things move into the climax (Hitchcock recommended that, so nobody’s distracted from the action by waiting for exposition). I stopped when it became time to move against the bad guys because I’ve no idea what they’re going to do. Hopefully it’ll come to me when I resume.

My research reading involved a couple of urban fantasies I’ll be reviewing soon, Fae of Fortune by John P. Logsdon and Eric Quinn Knowles and rereading Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn. I prefer doing that kind of reading outside of writing hours but with so many to-do things distracting me, I compromised.

I got about 3,000 words further into Let No Man Put Asunder. I also read the first two or three thousand words to the writing group who gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up plus some feedback I’ll be discussing soon.

So go me! Let’s hope next week is as productive.

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December 28, 2022 · 5:10 am

The password for 2022 is: recalled to life

Sitting here at the end of the year, it really feels that way. It was a good year for me and TYG in multiple ways.

It started out with lots of room to improve. TYG got a massive, urgent project in her lap starting in January and it kept her running at top speed through March. Then she spent a couple of months on another demanding project, after which she happily jumped to a new job with more pay for a less insane workload. Not that it still doesn’t get extreme but she has more free time to go out with me, go out with friends, sit and read and she’s relishing it.

Needless to say, when she’s happier and less stressed, I’m happier and less stressed. Plus I’m happier to see her happier.

And while covid is hardly gone — a lot of our friends finally came down with it this year — getting vaxxed and boosted has left us both confident enough to resume a lot of normal stuff like going to art museums and eating out. Not to mention finally visiting the North Carolina Zoo.

Coupled with TYG’s added time we’ve been having an official date night every week (usually on weekends) to do something couple-ish, whether it’s watching a movie, taking a walk without the dogs or playing board games. I think it’s really boosting the pleasure we take in our marriage (not that we were miserable before or anything like that).

One of my goals for 2022 was to end the year with more money than I started with. I managed that, partly because I signed up for Social Security early: the payout is slightly less but the added number of payments over the next few years compensates for that.

This was a good year for writing. I got some wonderful compliments on my work from one of my paying clients and I self-published or sold way more than any time in recent memory. For example, The Aliens Are Here is now out.Questionable Minds is available in ebook on Amazon or other retailers.The Savage Year came out at Metastellar. Death Is Like a Box of Chocolates is live on Metastellar. And I finished four short stories this year; my goal was six, but four is closer than I usually manage.

Plus, of course, I kicked off the year by self-publishing Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers.

Along with my writing here I’m still blogging regularly at Atomic Junk Shop and doing panels for Con-Tinual.

Plus 2022 included the usual stuff — eating, reading, playing with pets, snuggling with TYG — and what used to be usual, such as visiting my family in Florida.

What lies ahead in 2023? Well no-one can be certain but I’ll be back with my hopes in my Sunday blog post.

#SFWApro. Questionable Minds cover by Samantha Collins, Undead Sexist Cliches by Kemp Ward, rights are mine.

 

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December 27, 2022 · 5:11 am

Questionable Minds: Nowhere to Hyde

Last week’s sample section of Questionable Minds gave the beginning of the novel. It’s the one I opted to use for the blog tour. The second section is from the middle of the book: Jack the Ripper has Sir Simon’s daughter Ann hostage and has offered to trade her for either Dr. Jekyll or Edward Hyde. Simon’s convinced he can use Jekyll lure Jack into a trap; Jekyll declines, so Simon drags him to Simon’s home by force.

I think the scene is effective though for obvious reasons I don’t think it’s as shocking for us as for Simon because we know about the true relationship of Jekyll and Hyde already. Excerpt comes after Samantha Collins’ cover.“Dr. Jekyll’s eyes fluttered open, then snapped wide. He scrambled up from the sitting room divan, eyes fixed on Simon, barring the path to the door. Simon forced himself to meet Jekyll’s eyes. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, doctor. But I must insist you join me for dinner.”

“You cannot begin to comprehend what you ask.”

“It’s only ninety minutes to wait—and every precaution has been taken.” Simon slid his life-preserver into his hand as Jekyll took a step towards him. “You won’t grass me again, doctor. I’m sorry, but my daughter’s life—”

“I don’t give a damn about your daughter.”

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life hunted by Jack the Ripper? Hyde was willing to chance my plan; are you less brave than he?”

“How dare you?” Jekyll’s fists clenched. “Hyde, courageous? You mistake the savagery of an ignoble brute for bravery!”

“Be that as it may—”

“Or is that why you stick up for him?” Jekyll’s eyes narrowed. “Because you envy that savagery?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t waste your time lying, Taggart, there’s not a man alive doesn’t wish to be Hyde in the back of his mind.” Jekyll hunched over, watching Simon like—he couldn’t say what. “Free of responsibility, acknowledging no law, no restriction, no duty.”

“What the devil are you talking about? Control yourself, Jekyll.”

“Control, ha!” Jekyll threw back his head and laughed. “Self-control is nothing but a measure of how greatly we fear our own desires. Look at me, always so pious around my little gaggle of whores—”

“Doctor, please!”

“Never admitting how much I wanted to squeeze those jiggling titties, feel their skilled, eager hands on my—”

“Good god man, I know you’re afraid—” Simon grabbed Jekyll by the shoulders and shook him hard “—but spouting balderdash won’t—”

Simon didn’t even see the blow that smashed into his jaw and sent him sprawling. He started to regain his feet, only to witness a sight that froze him on his knees. Jekyll’s delicately boned face was swelling into heavy, bestial features; his eyes seemed to sink back into his head. Hair and eyes darkening, skin coarsening, body shrinking even as Jekyll’s muscles grew hard and corded under his clothes.

It—isn’t—possible! A mesmeric illusion, or— Even as he thought the words, Simon knew them for a lie.

“Hello, Taggart.” Hyde bowed mockingly from within Jekyll’s coat. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to see you—but under the circumstances, I’d be lying, wouldn’t I?” Simon could only watch, mute and amazed, as Hyde rolled up the jacket sleeves. “Damn him. I bought a whole new wardrobe, and he disposed of it, so convinced he was he’d seen the last of me.

“Well, aren’t you going to club me unconscious? Or try? To save your poor, poor daughter?”

“You’re a murderer, a rapist, a blackmailer.” Simon backed away, out of Hyde’s reach. “Whatever Jack has in mind, it’s only what you deserve.”

“This may surprise you, but I don’t find that much of an argument.” Calmly, Hyde began on his trouser legs. “I bear you no ill-will for the effort, mark you—I’d do the same in your place—but I place too high price on my own skin to cooperate.”

“Ann is only a child. A girl.”

“That matters not a whit to me.” His eyes met Simon’s, and the shock, the impossibility of what had just happened, hit Simon once again. “Utterson and Poole looked much the same when they learned the truth—now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I don’t think so.” Simon slid his gun into his hand. ‘”You won’t get very far if I put a couple of bullets into you.”

“And if I scream aloud to Jack that it’s a trap?”

“You’d have to be conscious for that. You won’t be.”

“I’m not easy prey, Taggart.” Hyde’s expression managed to be savage and calculating at the same time. “If we struggle and you kill me, Bolt will gut Miss Taggart like a trout.”

“Why? What does Jack want with you?” Wait. The Greek god at the opera. “He wants your power. The secret that lets you change your face.” Then Simon shook his head. “Bolt leaves his victims mindless; how did you survive?” And if the change is physical, why did I see Bolt’s true face at the Dovecote?

Hyde shrugged. “I’m not as other mentalists, Taggart, surely you can see that. Why not put down the gun, and we can discuss it like rational men.”

“You? Rational?”

“Where my own self-interest is involved, completely.” Simon didn’t move. “It would be to our mutual advantage.”

“I disagree. But talk if you wish.”

“As you will. Tell me, did you happen to catch that dreadful play about me last year? Where ‘Mr. Hode’ turns into a sniveling coward once ‘Dr. Stevenson’ finally draws a gun and stands up to him?

Hyde moved so swiftly Simon didn’t realize he’d thrown a vase until it knocked his gun hand wide. Before he could recover, Hyde was there, fingers closing crushingly on both Simon’s wrists, shaking gun and life-preserver free. Simon hit the floor with Hyde on top of him. Hairy, powerful fingers wrapped around Simon’s throat. “I don’t think it was true to life, Taggart—do you?”

#SFWA pro. Questionable Minds available as an ebook or paperback, so why not order a copy today?

 

 

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December 13, 2022 · 5:03 am

Does this really sell books?

One of the things I tried as part of a Questionable Minds blog tour (participants listed at the bottom of this post) was to provide a sample from the book the hosting blogs could post. As I know I’ve mentioned (but I can’t find the link just now), I waved between the opening section of the book and a later scene. So guess what? This week you get the opening;  next week you get the other. Sample begins after Samantha Collins’ cover illustration.“Simon Taggart’s plunge into the abyss happened in an instant.

Col. Moran, seated at the dining table on Simon’s left, had said something to the Duke of Falsworth about a fellow hunter Moran had known in India committing suicide. Falsworth snidely observed that given the man’s debts, hanging himself had been the only possible solution.

And suddenly Simon was standing in the drawing room again. Staring up at Agnes in her white nightgown, hanging from the ceiling with her tongue protruding, her face blackened. Rage consumed him at the memory, rage at the men who’d brought about his wife’s death. Pearson Bartlett, mesmerist. The Guvnor, who’d given Bartlett his orders. And behind them, the unknown man who’d paid to have Agnes slain.

It was the scent of mutton that snapped him back to the Montworths’ dining room, a scent rising from the porcelain serving platter levitating through the air before him. Steered by Amanda Montworth’s vril, the platter bore the roast saddle of mutton down the long dining-room table. Her grey eyes were fixed on the platter, of course, as levitators depended on sight to focus their vril. The eyes of her parents and eleven uneasy guests were also watchful as the dish approached the epergne, the massive candelabra at the table’s center. Simon knew he wasn’t the only guest imagining what a shower of spilled gravy would do to their formal black waistcoats, jackets and white gloves, or the women’s elegant dresses.

The platter clinked against the epergne and shuddered for a moment, but Amanda, brow furrowed, regained her mental grip. The platter ceased quivering, backed away and settled into the hands of one of the footmen, to be served a la russe, around the table. Amanda gasped slightly as she released control.

“There, isn’t that remarkable, Sir Simon?” Buxom Mrs. Montworth flashed a smile at Simon, the wealthiest of her guests. “I don’t know anyone with the strength of mind my Amanda has, do you? Well, not anyone who is anyone, shall we say?”

“Mother, please,” Amanda said. “This is embarrassing.”

“No, you did quite well.” Simon smiled politely, forbearing to point out that for all the money John Montworth’s ironworks brought in, in London society the Montworths were emphatically not anyone.  Amanda performing a servant’s duties only confirmed that, as the poor girl undoubtedly knew. “A strong mind is—an asset to the Empire.”

“When the turtle soup comes out, Amanda,” Mrs. Montworth went on, “I think you should levitate—”

“Oh, no, my dear Mrs. Montworth,” Simon said quickly, remembering soup spurting from a shattered tureen at another dinner he’d attended. Besides, Amanda had been embarrassed enough. “A girl as lovely and delicate as Amanda, no matter how strong her vril, should be careful not to overexert herself.” As Mrs. Montworth simpered and nodded, Amanda, who looked as delicate as one of her father’s foundry workers, smiled her thanks at Simon.

“That’s enough entertainment for this evening,” John Montworth said in his north-country accent. “Carmody?” Carmody, the butler, gestured for the footmen to resume their duties; it was a faux pas for Montworth to address a servant during dinner, but the past few minutes had utterly nonplussed the staff.

Simon considered Amanda sensible and good-hearted. It wasn’t her fault her vril manifested as a crude, physical ability, nor that her mother was as blind to the social graces as some men to colors. Fortunately, with several months before the start of the Season, the guests had few people they could gossip with—and there’d be much better gossip by January, when the Montworths presented Amanda at court.

#

“‘Preciate your help, Sir Simon.” John Montworth said, clipping off the end of his cigar as a servant filled Simon’s glass. The women had left the room moments before, allowing the men a half-hour or so to indulge themselves. “Mrs. Montworth’s dreadful proud of our girl having vril, she is—I try to tell her to be more discreet but—”

“It’s been a new world these past eight years,” Simon said, savoring Montworth’s peerless port. “Too new to have all the polite niceties of psychic usage down pat.” A courteous lie; everyone knew physical manifestations of mentalist power were completely inappropriate in society.

“You mean like yourself assisting Scotland Yard?” Thin, pallid Ronald Carpenter, Duke of Falsworth, smirked and blew a plume of smoke. “A man of your impeccable pedigree, mingling with the lowest orders? Gilbert and Sullivan could make a wonderful comic opera out of it if you ask me.”

“I don’t believe I did.” Simon’s anger surged up again, but the smile beneath his thin mustache stayed coldly formal. “And there is nothing comical about the beasts who use vril to prey upon others.” Like Pearson Bartlett, who could mesmerize a woman to put a noose around her own neck. “I do my duty to England, nothing more.”

His Grace met Simon’s cold stare, then looked away with affected unconcern. Dukes far outranked baronets, but Falsworth’s title was new, and the man was still insecure. A Taggart was never insecure.

“Men like your Inspector Hudnall have my highest respect,” Moran said to Simon. As usual the colonel had stuck with whiskey instead of port. “In the jungle or the London streets, it takes a sharp man to hunt predators successfully. And who’s better suited than you, Sir Simon, to the sport of hunting mentalists?”

“Hardly sport.” Simon replied. “Unlike you, colonel, I consider hunting man-eaters a public service, not an adventure.”

“But men like that are evolutionary dead ends,” Montworth said. “Thanks to Lady Helena, all mankind—almost all—will ultimately be elevated to a higher plane.” His glance had lit upon Simon at the “almost.” “The murderers, the butchers, the Varneys of the present day will become fairytales, like ogres or Bluebeard, in the world that is to come.”

It was a typical Theosophist sentiment, but Simon found he was in no mood to argue with it.”

And so it begins. Not so much of the horror that’s to follow but it gives the setting and shows where Simon’s character arc starts. Hopefully that’s arresting enough to keep people reading until we get some action — which will be the subject of next week’s post.

#SFWApro. Copyright to image is mine. Questionable Minds is available as an ebook or paperback

 

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