#ReadingLife: The Twisted Ones

 

Sharing more spooky reads! This one's a personal favorite that I read back in 2019, and which I still think about every time I hear a woodpecker tapping away on a tree trunk. 

Because I'm a masochist, I gave myself a firm Christmas Eve release date for Golden Eagle. I wanted to give myself a full month for editing and proofing, which meant that, with Halloween looming, I was sweating that deadline. I still had the entirety of the multi-cut-scene action finale of the novel to write, and mental exhaustion set in hard. One of my strategies in that kind of situation is to keep a book that I'm reading at my desk, and work in short bursts. I write a few hundred words, then pick up my Kindle and read a few pages. Instead of the drag of checking email or scrolling social media, reading fiction in this instance helps keep the brain muscles working, and enables me to power through high-octane chapters. In 2019, I downloaded The Twisted Ones on a whim, and it helped me finish the office building/Ingraham Institute showdowns in Golden Eagle. It also became one of my favorite horror novels. 

T. Kingfisher's prose is a deft blend of casual, intimate, and literary. Colorful and lyrical descriptions are brought down to earth through the immediate familiarity her first-person narrators establish in the opening paragraphs. It's a kind of comfortable intimacy that persists through the course of the novel, and which makes us terrified for the main character - "Mouse" in this instance - as the familiar and the quaint and the safe give way to gasp-inducing horror. Kingfisher is good: she's clever but doesn't need to flex those muscles in a braggadocious way; her writing is easy. You slide into it right away and never want to leave. Best of all, and a rarity in horror fiction: her characters are likeable. The mains, yes, but the supporting cast, too. 

I won't offer spoilers in case you want to go read the book (and you should!), but the basic premise is that our main character, nicknamed Mouse, inherits a junk-filled house after her great-uncle dies, and she makes the trek with her dog out into the woods to start sorting through the detritus of his hoarding streak. Initially, the unsettling occurrences can be chalked up to a new, unfamiliar place, and the typical noise characteristic of all forests. But things quickly go sideways from there. (Like I said before, woodpeckers weird me out a little to this day, after reading the book.) Amidst the scares, Mouse makes friends with her kindly neighbors, and, no worries, the dog makes it to the end; that's one spoiler I don't think you'll mind. 

Reading this book felt like stumbling upon a horror novel written specifically to meet my tastes: well-rounded, likeable characters, creepy-crawly atmosphere, legitimate scares, but a positive ending. As much as I love spooky stories, I do so hate dour or dire endings. I'm a weeny that way. 

This spooky season, I hope to read A House With Good Bones by the same author. I also want to recommend her novel The Hollow Places, which scared the heck out of me, and also gave me a whole new outlook on river otters (IYKYK).

#TeaserTuesday: Church People

 The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

It was quiet in the way of all churches, steps careful, voices hushed. But inevitably loud because of the sheer scope of the place: the high, vaulted ceilings and all its secret nooks and angles trebled each tiny sound into a constant wall of not-unpleasant white noise. A pair of old, stooped women were lighting candles. Two pews ahead and to the left, a young man sat with his head bent and his hands clasped, lips moving soundlessly in what looked to be fervent prayer.

Aidan had thought about praying, when he first sat down, but only because he’d been bowled over by the beauty of the place. Its blue-and-white check marble floors; its gold-set frescoes; its gleaming organ pipes as tall and awe-inspiring as the tubular towers of Oz. There was something…reverent…about the air in here. It smelled of candlewax, and linseed oil, but something rarified, too, that spooked him a little. Like when he was a kid, and Maggie had taken him into a fancy store, and told him, sweetly but firmly, not to touch anything. His boots had left muddy scuffs on the tile, and he was half-tempted to get down on his knees and mop the streaks up with his sleeve.

But he didn’t know how to pray. Other than a few desperate mental declarations of oh God at moments of crisis, he’d never called upon the man upstairs. Had never been to bible study, nor learned any of the hymns. His people were not church people – “church” meant club meetings, in his world. Mercy was Catholic, and doubtless could have offered guidance, but Mercy was still at the hospital, battling an infection.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Sitting here, resting in this place, was clarifying in a secular way, too. He hadn’t known when he first entered that his heart was pounding, but knew it had been now, as he felt it slow and steady in his chest, his breaths even, and deep, and unencumbered. 

In outlaw MC culture, official club meetings are called "church," and they take place in a special meeting room dubbed the "chapel." Throughout the Dartmoor Series, the fate of the club has been decided in a series of quiet, out of the way meetings between only a handful of members, but voted into practice at church. It's fitting, then, that Aidan hears three versions of the unvarnished, apolitical truth of the club, and his father's role in it, inside an actual church. 

In this scene, which is one of my favorites of the novel, Aidan entertains three visitors. Ghost, obviously, and necessarily, because this scene is about them, and the fragile, newborn attempt at something like an honest relationship between men - of equals - rather than father and son. But I didn't want to start with Ghost. 

I like the caution and intricacy of Ghost being three steps removed. Ian notifies Ava, who in turn notifies Ghost: Ghost knows he's made a mess of everything, perhaps irrevocably, and he's come to slink in quietly. Ava's perspective here was necessary, because she's the only other person who knows what it's like to be Ghost's child. She's always been more resilient than Aidan in that regard, but she's also colder by nature, and grew up with both parents; she doesn't have the maternal abandonment issues that have always plagued Aidan. 

Ian's presence is necessary, too. He loves Ghost, but his perception of him is wholly different than that of any Lean Dog. His line to Aidan is one I've been wanting to use for a long time. 

“Our perceptions of people are all relative, I suppose.” His gaze, though soft, drilled straight into Aidan with a force that left him wanting to sway backward. “It’s all about perspective. Ghost is perhaps not a good man, but he’s the best man I’ve ever known personally.”

#ReadingLife: Horror Movie

It's spooky season, and that calls for spooky reads. My most recent is a new release from a popular, but new-to-me author: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay.

In short: yes, I would recommend it for horror fans. It's brief, punchy, and manipulates the timeline to best effect to keep you curious and engaged and turning the pages. It also manages to build dread toward a certain turning point, and then completely subvert expectations when the promised scene finally arrives.  

But it's also very meta - as in too meta. The narrator's self-awareness borders on navel-gazing, and, while I believe this to be deliberate, that we are supposed to empathize, but not sympathize nor like him, I had my Jeff Winger moments while reading. 

I look at horror through two broad lenses. The horror is either the culmination of a character's actions and choices, or the horror is something external, an event or an affliction that happens to the character, and then drives the narrative from a reactive point of view. For an example: remember that old movie The Blob with Steve McQueen? The blob that falls to earth in a meteor is an external horror that preys upon the film's victims. Compare that to The Fly, where the horror is the direct result of ambition, hubris, and human error. 

All horror is most effective when it preys not just upon our instinctual, automatic fears of our environment, of oddities and the uncanny, but our fears of ourselves as well. Our insecurities, and jealousies, and personal failings. Short tempers, and prejudices, and past traumas. That's why I've never cared for slasher films: the horror is entirely external; terrifying, yes, but the internal horrors have to be manufactured by a false sense of security, or lapses in judgement: teenagers having sex in a car, turning down the wrong road, failing to look behind them. It's a senseless sort of violence - which of course is naturally occurring in real life, but which, in fiction, fails to provide satisfaction or something upon which to ruminate. 

Horror Movie is a story within a story: a script for a film within the story of the film's making, and the transformation from boy to monster unfolds in both narratives. It's a transformation that is wonderfully effective. It's a clever book, though it perhaps revels in this too much; in places, it's anything but subtle. 

The plot runs along two concurrent timelines, past and present. In the past, our narrator is a young, broke graduate in need of a job, approached by a college friend and her creative partner about a mostly-silent role in the indie horror movie they're filming. In the present, uploaded clips from the original, never-released movie go viral online, and a Hollywood reboot is in the making, set to use the narrator, in a few scenes, as his original "Thin Kid" character. The original script tells the tale of a group of four high school friends, one of whom is the Thin Kid. At the film's opening, his three friends lead him through the woods to an abandoned school building, where they take him to an empty classroom, put a mask on him, and force him to stay put. Over time, through rituals of bullying, dehumanizing, and even a little blood magic, the Thin Kid becomes an actual, physical monster, and seeks his revenge. 

It's a direct, and easily translatable metaphor, but the script includes the twist I mentioned earlier. The narrator recalls a particular scene that he describes as "wild," and context clues leave the reader with the assumption that it's a scene of wild violence. Monster carnage. I won't spoil it, but it instead is the cleverest scene in the whole novel. It breaks the fourth wall in a way that really works, and leaves us reflecting on all the ways in which we consume horror; to such a degree that it left me squirming and delighted at the same time. 

The main character's present-day voice is the narration of an audiobook, a conceit that seems absurd at the end of the novel, and leaves me asking - again, effectively - is this supposed to be an actual audiobook? Was it narrated from a prison cell? Or merely in our narrator's head? Does the final transformation take place in a real, physical sense? Or is it more masking? In that sense, the one-two punch of a revolting scene alongside an ambiguous outcome at the novel's end checks every horror box. It elevates the novel from a sequence of uncomfortable and unsettling events to an outright scare. 

While I liked the book, I can't say I liked any of the characters - and that's okay. In fact, I'd argue that's beside the point when it comes to horror. Sometimes you come across a horror novel in which you fall in love with the characters, but horror's main objective is to establish a sense of intimacy; to help you know the players in the novel, whether or not you like them or loathe them. And the thing about expertly-fleshed out characters we loathe...we usually find at least some kernel of our own truth within their stories. Be it a passing thought, or an action, or a reaction, every character in a horror novel offers us glimmers of the things we don't like about ourselves. That, then, is the most horrifying part of all. 

LHM: Beautiful

The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

Relief washed over Mercy as elation, and with it came the ugly dizziness of blood loss. He turned, and carefully lowered himself to sit on the edge of the dock, boots dangling over the edge. He lifted his arm – lead-heavy, no longer painful, only dragging, which wasn’t a good sign, he knew – so that Ava could sit down beside him, and tuck herself beneath it. She was shivering as though cold, despite the hot, sweaty feel of her cheek when she pressed it down on his shoulder.

“Good job, Mama.” He tried to pat her waist, but his hand didn’t want to cooperate.

In the water, Big Son had begun his death roll.

“You, too.” She turned her head and pressed her lips to his shoulder before resettling, her warm, familiar weight better than any drug against his side.

Mercy’s head felt cotton-stuffed, dry, and floaty, like he’d taken morphine. But it was pleasant. Dreamy. “He really is beautiful, isn’t he?”

“He is, baby,” Ava agreed. “Like you.”

LHM: The Skeleton King Once More

 The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

 

“Are you sure about this?”

It was so unusual a question coming from Michael that Walsh paused and gave it due consideration. He was already seated at the head of the table, but hadn’t gotten comfortable: he didn’t figure it would be his chair for long.

Michael stood at the door, his back to it, one hand on the knob, ready to usher in their brothers.

Who might not consider Walsh their brother in about ten minutes.

Was he sure about this?

Other than Michael, he hadn’t yet told anyone about what he was about to say at church. Michael was a very good listener, but not the best advice-giver. That was probably part of the reason Walsh hadn’t tried to bring anyone else into his confidence. He wasn’t looking for anyone to take a side, here. He’d like to escape with his life, to live out his days with Emmie and Violet, in whatever shape those days would take once he’d lost the club’s support. But otherwise, he wasn’t picky. Michael had said he wouldn’t let anyone kill him; that was enough. It was clear, now, that he could not sit idly by in Knoxville, lying to his brothers, while New York and New Orleans decided the future of the club he’d dedicated himself to. He would play his part, and play it as well as the other Dogs would allow him to.

“I’m sure,” he said, and meant it. Felt calm, steady. “Let them in.”

Aidan was the first through the door, and he sat down beside Walsh, in his new chair, in his new role, his VP patches still shiny-white and clean-threaded on his chest.

It was Aidan who would react the strongest, and Aidan who Walsh felt was owed a pound of flesh for emotional trauma. If Aidan took a swing at him, he was going to sit still and let him take it. 

My approach to storytelling has always been organic. I prefer the gardening process to the meticulous pre-planning method: no detailed outlines that require strict adherence. I know who the character is, what he or she wants, and what he or she is afraid of. When a character - or a couple - is the main focus of a book, I have a handful of scenes that I know must happen in order to move the story along. But when it comes to secondary and tertiary characters, I let them grow and develop as they will. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and so their actions, and the actions of those around them, impact their storylines going forward. 

I feel like this approach could paint a writer into a corner - but for me, it only ever presents opportunities. An idea will feel right in the moment, sometimes inexplicably, and then several books down the line I'll realize just how useful a seemingly small develop has the potential to be. 

Walsh comes to a BIG decision in Lord Have Mercy, one that's been slowly building since The Skeleton King. 

In Fearless, a newly-elected Ghost nominates Walsh as his VP, and that was the obvious and natural choice. Ghost has Plans and Ambitions for the club, and not only is Walsh the Money Man who can make them happen financially, but he's also a steady, serious, thoughtful right-hand man who isn't swayed by emotional arguments. Then, of course, along comes Emmie. And then Violet. I think, deep down, so deep down that he doesn't acknowledge it even to himself for much of the series, Walsh worries that allowing himself to have a family, and to love them - to love them more than he loves his club - makes him weak. His self-containment has been an asset all his life - one that he finally understands, in LHM, as armor. A shield against feeling. One that's been completely unsuccessful: he does love his family, he can't and won't change that, and he's not, in fact, handling the stress of club expansion well at all. Like with Ghost, he spends the course of the series slowly becoming surlier, drinking and smoking more, and sleeping less. 

I loved getting to hand Aidan the VP patches, but that couldn't have happened without the audience understanding, completely, Walsh's decision to step down. I've always blamed my diverting, side-story focus on Walsh as playing favorites, but while writing LHM, that favoritism proved to be the very necessary groundwork needed to retire Walsh as vice president in a believable and emotionally satisfying way. He'll stay on with the club, of course, Money Man and Skeleton King both. And he's very committed to helping Aidan succeed in his stead. 

This scene, where he comes clean to the club, and then walks out declaring that he's going to New Orleans, and then gets hit in the face, is a favorite of mine. 

“I’m not really the president, and going forward, I might not be anything, depending on how the voting shakes out. So I’m not going to give orders. You can stay here if you want, or you can hand over your cut and walk away, or you can…make up your own mind. About what to do next. Ghost is in New York.” He pushed back his chair, and stood, and his legs were steadier, stronger, than he’d hoped. “I’m going to New Orleans.”

Then he turned, walked to the door, opened it, and walked through it.

His heart was beating like a high school drumline, but the steadiness persisted. He’d come to a decision, and it was the correct one. Whatever happened afterward, he was sure of his decision to go south.

He heard footfalls behind him – but not the slow, ground-covering gait he’d expected from Michael. No, these were quick, almost running.

He reached the bar, and turned.

And his face exploded with pain.

A bright, hot, numbing shock of it along the left edge of his jaw, and Walsh had time to be grateful that whoever it wasn’t hadn’t aimed for the eye, and risked knocking him out. Then the momentum of the blow carried him sideways, he tripped, knocked over a stool, and would have hit the floor if he hadn’t fetched up against the bar. He caught himself with a hand braced on the smooth wood surface, and reached to touch his struck face with the other, ready for a second hit.

But it was only the one, and as the seconds ticked by, the first cold numbness of the strike warmed, and then flared hot, and the pain crackled in electric arcs along all the affected nerves. The skin was already swelling, tight and hot to the touch, but a quick probe with his tongue proved none of his teeth were loose, and he hadn’t bitten the inside of his cheek. He was going to have one hell of a bruise, but it wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

Anyone in the chapel could have chased him out and hit him, and any of them would have been justified. But when he turned his head, he of course found Aidan standing there.

But it was an Aidan who still looked as vice-presidential as he had in the chapel, save the working and flexing of his right hand. The knuckles were red where he’d struck Walsh, and the way he flattened and then cracked them looked like it hurt.

“You can hit me again, if you want,” Walsh said. “I won’t try to stop you.”

“I will.” That was Michael, sliding in between them, seemingly out of nowhere. “You had your hit. That’s the only one.”

#ThrowbackThursday: Monument of Stones

Alexei didn’t like snow.

He had. Once. The crunch of it beneath his boots recalled rosy cheeks, and panted breaths; shrieks of delight, and the high, bright laughter of his sisters. Mama’s face watching from the window and Papa laughing lower, quieter on the steps, reminding the girls every so often not to throw anything at him too hard. Careful of your brother. Gentle, now. Not too hard. An impromptu snowball fight against the glittering backdrop of the Winter Palace, and the balls small and lobbed softly, the patches of ice pointed out, because a simple bruise could send Alexei straight to bed for weeks. Grisha had returned to his hometown, and there would be no tickle of beard, or murmured words to soothe the pain away now, should he slip and fall.

But that was all in the past: sledding – when he was allowed – and riding with Mama in the sleigh, furs tucked snugly around him. Hot tea soothing cold-nipped noses…all fond, comforting memories overlaid now by the memories of Siberia. Of the too-small house where blackout shades had kept the neighbors from seeing them, while men with rifles kept them from leaving. A prison – a Red prison. And then, later, waking in the pit. Running barefoot through the snow with the scent of blood in his lungs. Bolsheviks; enemies; dinner. 

The teaser here is not from Golden Eagle, but from The Winter Palace, which I managed to add about twelve-hundred words to yesterday! Progress! Words on page! Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, and the necessary glut of research notes weighing on the entire process, there is something undeniably comforting about writing this series. It's the only series I write in which there's not a chorus of haunting little you know what they're gonna complain about? voices chiming unhelpfully in the back of my head while I write. I don't heed those voices, but they're obnoxious; I've gotten really good at predicting what sort of flak a particular novel will draw. But with Sons of Rome, not only do I ignore the doubt - it isn't there to begin with. It's always been an indulgent series to write; it feels like writing just for my own enjoyment, with zero expectation of an audience, and it's therefore a lovely surprise when I share it and have positive responses to it. 

I've known from the get-go that Alexei had an important - a vital - role to play in the series overall, and thanks to a long-held fascination, it was never a hardship to research and incorporate tales of the royal family. But while writing Golden Eagle, I realized how much I was enjoying Alexei as a character. That I liked him. I love all of the characters in this series, and I especially love that so many of them have so much growing and coming into their own to do before the end. I think, when we finally get to the Campus Martius, I might even be proud of our little tsarevich. 

#TeaserTuesday: Haunted

The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

Given my love of horror - of the Classic, Gothic variety, and the more contemporary - and given the violent-by-necessity nature of Dartmoor, I've always tried to lever a bit of the horrific and the fantastic into the way I write certain scenes for that series. The whiff of the supernatural, though Dartmoor's horrors are solidly human. 

For funsies, I searched the word "haunted" to see how many times I used it in Big Son. The answer is four:

“Colin,” Alex prodded, ungently, and Dandridge sent him a cool it look.

Colin dropped his hands, and his expression was haunted. He looked like he’d run here on foot, wan and sweating and spacy.