HOW TO BE AN AUTHOR

Roger Zelazny, ghost here.

You scoff.  Be my guest ...

it makes it so much easier for us.

There is more to reality than you are capable of comprehending ...

after all, you are but flesh.

In like manner, there is more to becoming an Author than being a mere Writer.

 You and the rest of mankind, are quite sure what is possible and what is impossible.

In the daylight.

 When the night descends, the stride of your thoughts is not quite so confident.

Not so Roland.

He is much like an animal. I do not mean that as an insult.

He takes what comes at face value, not forcing it to fit into any preconceived notions Man teaches as Science.

He deals with what comes without protesting that it cannot be, only seeing what is and adapting.

Perhaps that is why we ghosts are drawn to him. In him is that quality that Stubbs expressed in MOBY DICK:

“I know not what all may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

Not that he is overly optimistic about the world around him.

 

Despite being part Lakota Sioux, he still reads the Bible by his bedside. He often quotes:

“They sleep not, except that they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away unless they cause
Some to fall.

For they eat the bread of wickedness
And drink the wine of violence.”

That is Proverbs 4:16-17 for those of you interested in such things.

In life I was not.

I thought the love of God was like the light burning from the stars:

cold and distant.

Now, that I am a ghost …. but no.

There are secrets the dead may not share with the living.

But the secrets on how to write well … they I can share with you.

Oh, you are wondering who Roger Zelazny is.

Don’t be embarrassed. In life I wondered the same thing.

Once the name, Roger Zelazny, drew crowds.

I made somewhat of a splash in Science Fiction in the sixties,

 

endured and evolved in the seventies and eighties.

 

 I went the way of all flesh mid-way through the nineties in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

And Roland mourned me as a distant older brother gone over the crest of the hill before him, leaving him cold and alone.

Oh, and I inspired him to take up the pen and follow my steps into weaving tales in the genre I call Science Fantasy.

That I sparked the idea in him to be a writer drew me to him.

It was his gentle, quiet, amused nature that has made me stay.

 

  He looks on all the awkwardness of life with a sly smile that says, “You expected water to run uphill?”

Another more important question:

What makes one tale live, vibrant and riveting, and another merely flat, lifeless words on paper?

Not that any of us have a sure idea, although the ghost of Hemingway is glaring at me.

 

But we had a close enough glimpse of the answer to make a living at what we loved to do:

 Write.

What is the answer?

A joyous cry: “Come see what I found!”

If you can bring anew the childlike sense of wonder and awe to your readers that the poisons of living have drained from them,

 

 you will have a loyal following that will not quit.

What words will do that?

Certainly not the same sing-song repeat and rinse of someone else’s bestseller.

The words must tilt the reader’s expectations on its ear. Did you notice I said reader?

Not readers.

You are talking to only one at the campfire of their imagination and curiosity. If you think of your audience as readers, you will talk AT them not TO them.

The author/reader relationship is intimate: friend to friend. “Look at this, man!”

One friend sharing with another something fantastic and wondrous:

The meaning of life in the skating sparks of the sun along the uneven facets of a piece of rock candy …

or striking fire down the razored spirals of a unicorn’s tusk.

If you are drawn to write, you do not need to be told the basics. You already have absorbed them from the masters:

Stirring plots, memorable characters, and absorbing ideas.

You must tap the humanity of the situations, of the people struggling against the tide of events.

Remember this is the Microwave Culture.

Your prose must be lean and spare, yet sing with the poetry of mystery and suspense. How do you do that?

Mind your surroundings.

Nothing is ever wasted to a real writer. Circumstances suggest. Events coalesce.

 

The story will begin to flow like a shadow along the floor of your unconscious.

Once you have seen their shapes, the stories will exist as ghosts for you until you have pinned them to the paper.

 

Perhaps that is why there are so many ghosts of writers in the Shadowlands.

We made our living from ghosts, so reciprocity demands its due.

Sometimes you will have to post a Help Wanted Ad in your unconscious to apply for positions in the story and events that have called out to you.

Do not worry. Within the hour, your unconscious mind will have them lining up for you to consider.

Read your work aloud.

Hear the clumsy prose misstep that jars your ears? A sentence is too long? Make them two. A word unneeded? Remove it.

 

 Sand your prose as a sculptor would his carving.

Give your characters life by giving them a new take on what it means to be human, to be fully alive.

 

Most people you pass on the streets are sleepwalking from long years of debt and unfulfilled passion.

Give them hope that there is more out there, that each corner could reveal the start of an adventure that might shorten their lives but awaken their souls.

Do that and you will become more than a writer. You will become an author.
***

BE MORE THAN A WRITER_GHOST OF ROGER ZELAZNY

Be sure and enter Roland's TRICK OR TREAT GHOST OF A CHANCE CONTEST, will you?

Lovecraft has been whispering something about visiting you in your dreams.

Ah, we ghosts do care for Roland. But more of that later.

Did not Leonora Roy do a marvelous image for him?

The ghost of Hemingway is presently keeping him company on one of Roland's blood runs.

Hemingway is reminded of his own days driving an ambulance in WWI when he accompanies Roland.

So it is left up to me to talk to you mortal writers.

Most of you are scoffing that the ghost of Roger Zelazny is currently typing his thoughts to you. Impossible you say.

You, and the rest of mankind, are quite sure what is possible and what is impossible.

In the daylight.

When the night descends, the stride of your thoughts is not quite so confident.

Not so Roland.

He is much like an animal. I do not mean that as an insult.

He takes what comes at face value, not forcing it to fit into any preconceived notions Man teaches as Science.

He deals with what comes without protesting that it cannot be, only seeing what is and adapting.

Perhaps that is why we ghosts are drawn to him. In him is that quality that Stubbs expressed in MOBY DICK :

“I know not what all may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

Not that he is overly optimistic about the world around him. For being part Lakota Sioux, he still reads the Bible by his bedside. He often quotes :

“They sleep not, except that they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away unless they cause
Some to fall.

For they eat the bread of wickedness
And drink the wine of violence.”

That is Proverbs 4:16-17 for those of you interested in such things.
In life I was not.

I thought the love of God was like the light burning from the stars :

cold and distant.

Now, that I am a ghost …

but no.

There are some secrets the dead may not share with the living.

But the secrets on how to write well … they I can share with you.

Oh, you are wondering who I am.

Don’t be embarrassed. In life I wondered the same thing.

As I wrote earlier: I am Roger Zelazny.

I made somewhat of a splash in Science Fiction in the sixties, endured and evolved in the seventies and eighties. I went the way of all flesh mid-way through the nineties in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

And Roland mourned me as a distant older brother gone over the crest of the hill before him, leaving him cold and alone.

Oh, and I inspired him to take up the pen and follow my steps into weaving tales in the genre I call Science Fantasy.

That I sparked the idea in him to be a writer drew me to him.

It was his gentle, quiet, amused nature that has made me stay. He looks on all the awkwardness of life with a sly smile that says, “You expected water to run uphill?”

But now I have an important question for you reading:

What makes one tale live, vibrant and riveting, and another merely flat, lifeless words on paper?

Not that any of us have a sure idea, although Hemingway would glare at me for writing that. But we had a close enough glimpse of the answer to make a living at what we loved to do:

Write.

What is the answer?

A joyous cry: “Come see what I found!”

If you can bring anew the childlike sense of wonder and awe to your readers that the poisons of living have drained from them, you will have a loyal following that will not quit.

What words will do that?

Certainly not the same sing-song repeat and rinse of someone else’s bestseller.
The words must tilt the reader’s expectations on its ear. Did you notice I said reader?

Not readers.

You are talking to only one at the campfire of their imagination and curiosity. If you think of your audience as readers, you will talk AT them not TO them.

The author/reader relationship is intimate : friend to friend. “Look at this, man!”

One friend sharing with another something fantastic and wondrous :

The meaning of life in the skating sparks of the sun along the uneven facets of a piece of rock candy …

or striking fire down the razored spirals of a unicorn’s tusk.

If you are drawn to write, you do not need to be told the basics. You already have absorbed them from the masters :

Stirring plots, memorable characters, and absorbing ideas.

You must tap the humanity of the situations, of the people struggling against the tide of events.

Remember this is the Microwave Culture.

Your prose must be lean and spare, yet sing with the poetry of mystery and suspense. How do you do that?

Mind your surroundings.

Nothing is ever wasted to a real writer. Circumstances suggest. Events coalesce. The story will begin to flow like a shadow along the floor of your unconscious.

Once you have seen their shapes, the stories will exist as ghosts for you until you have pinned them to the paper. Perhaps that is why there are so many ghosts of writers in the Shadowlands.

We made our living from ghosts, so reciprocity demands its due.

Sometimes you will have to post a Help Wanted Ad in your unconscious to apply for positions in the story and events that have called out to you.

Do not worry. Within the hour, your unconscious mind will have them lining up for you to consider.

Read your work aloud.

Hear the clumsy prose misstep that jars your ears? A sentence is too long? Make them two. A word unneeded? Remove it. Sand your prose as a sculptor would his carving.

Give your characters life by giving them a new take on what it means to be human, to be fully alive. Most people you pass on the streets are sleepwalking from long years of debt and unfulfilled passion.

Give them hope that there is more out there, that each corner could reveal the start of an adventure that might shorten their lives but awaken their souls.

Do that and you will become more than a writer. You will become an author.

Want to read more on how to be an author? Buy GHOST WRITERS IN THE SKY:

http://www.amazon.com/GHOST-WRITERS-THE-SKY-ebook/dp/B006Z1MAP6

I have several chapters in it as does the ghost of Hemingway, Twain, Faulkner, even Bruce Lee and Groucho Marx!
***

SILENTLY WE KNELL IN THE MOUTH OF DEATH

You, and the rest of mankind, are quite sure what is possible and what is impossible.

In the daylight.

When the night descends, the stride of your thoughts is not quite so confident.

Not so Roland.

He is much like an animal. I do not mean that as an insult.

He takes what comes at face value, not forcing it to fit into any preconceived notions Man teaches as Science.

He deals with what comes without protesting that it cannot be, only seeing what is and adapting.

Perhaps that is why we ghosts are drawn to him. In him is that quality that Stubbs expressed in MOBY DICK :

“I know not what all may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

Not that he is overly optimistic about the world around him. For being part Lakota Sioux, he still reads the Bible by his bedside. He often quotes :

“They sleep not, except that they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away unless they cause
Some to fall.

For they eat the bread of wickedness
And drink the wine of violence.”

That is Proverbs 4:16-17 for those of you interested in such things.
In life I was not.

I thought the love of God was like the light burning from the stars :

cold and distant.

Now, that I am a ghost …. but no.

There are secrets the dead may not share with the living.

But the secrets on how to write well … they I can share with you.

Oh, you are wondering who I am.

Don’t be embarrassed. In life I wondered the same thing.

I am Roger Zelazny.

I made somewhat of a splash in Science Fiction in the sixties, endured and evolved in the seventies and eighties. I went the way of all flesh mid-way through the nineties in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

And Roland mourned me as a distant older brother gone over the crest of the hill before him, leaving him cold and alone.

Oh, and I inspired him to take up the pen and follow my steps into weaving tales in the genre I call Science Fantasy.

That I sparked the idea in him to be a writer drew me to him.

It was his gentle, quiet, amused nature that has made me stay. He looks on all the awkwardness of life with a sly smile that says, “You expected water to run uphill?”

Another more important question :

What makes one tale live, vibrant and riveting, and another merely flat, lifeless words on paper?

Not that any of us have a sure idea, although Hemingway is glaring at me. But we had a close enough glimpse of the answer to make a living at what we loved to do :

write.

What is the answer?

A joyous cry : “Come see what I found!”

If you can bring anew the childlike sense of wonder and awe to your readers that the poisons of living have drained from them, you will have a loyal following that will not quit.

What words will do that?

Certainly not the same sing-song repeat and rinse of someone else’s bestseller.
The words must tilt the reader’s expectations on its ear. Did you notice I said reader?

Not readers.

You are talking to only one at the campfire of their imagination and curiosity. If you think of your audience as readers, you will talk AT them not TO them.

The author/reader relationship is intimate : friend to friend. “Look at this, man!”

One friend sharing with another something fantastic and wondrous :

The meaning of life in the skating sparks of the sun along the uneven facets of a piece of rock candy …

or striking fire down the razored spirals of a unicorn’s tusk.

If you are drawn to write, you do not need to be told the basics. You already have absorbed them from the masters :

Stirring plots, memorable characters, and absorbing ideas.

You must tap the humanity of the situations, of the people struggling against the tide of events.

Remember this is the Microwave Culture.

Your prose must be lean and spare, yet sing with the poetry of mystery and suspense. How do you do that?

Mind your surroundings.

Nothing is ever wasted to a real writer. Circumstances suggest. Events coalesce. The story will begin to flow like a shadow along the floor of your unconscious.

Once you have seen their shapes, the stories will exist as ghosts for you until you have pinned them to the paper. Perhaps that is why there are so many ghosts of writers in the Shadowlands.

We made our living from ghosts, so reciprocity demands its due.

Sometimes you will have to post a Help Wanted Ad in your unconscious to apply for positions in the story and events that have called out to you.

Do not worry. Within the hour, your unconscious mind will have them lining up for you to consider.

Read your work aloud.

Hear the clumsy prose misstep that jars your ears? A sentence is too long? Make them two. A word unneeded? Remove it. Sand your prose as a sculptor would his carving.

Give your characters life by giving them a new take on what it means to be human, to be fully alive. Most people you pass on the streets are sleepwalking from long years of debt and unfulfilled passion.

Give them hope that there is more out there, that each corner could reveal the start of an adventure that might shorten their lives but awaken their souls.

Do that and you will become more than a writer. You will become an author.
***

MAGIC, HORROR, AND OTHERWORLD BEAUTY

What draws us to write?

It is a solitary sojourn. Most of us will never receive world acclaim ... nor do we expect it.

What then propels us on this journey? What swept you up when you first started to read for yourself? How often do you find a book which conjures that same spirit within you now?

Not often I would wager.

I believe we write to create that world which spellbound us into reading in the first place. What voices called out to us then? What lessons did they teach us?

For me the voices were :

Magic, horror, and otherworld beauty

These three sirens dominated my solitary reading of choice during my high school years. And their voices can be heard in the background of all that I write. Like the three fates, they weave the tapestry of my unconscious muse.

As a young child, I wandered alone into Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY. In junior high, I joined the League of Five and group reading with BEAU GESTE and DR. FU MANCHU. In high school, I was alone again in my reading, open to any influence that caught my fancy.

The authors of those years were my unknowing mentors in how to write well. And oddly enough it was an artist who led me in the land where they all dwelt : Frank Frazetta. And he painted the first road sign on my path to becoming a writer :

1) OTHERWORLD BEAUTY WILL HAUNT YOU, BRINGING YOU BACK TO THE BEGINNING. {AND DON'T FORGET THE EYES.}

EERIE #23 : THE EGYPTIAN PRINCESS
When I spotted the cover to EERIE#23 with Frazetta's "Egyptian Princess" in a used book store, I was spellbound. Yes, she was clothing-challenged. But it were her eyes that ensnared me. And my encounter with her made me quite a few dollars lighter. EERIE #23, even back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth, was a collector's item.

From that moment on, I noticed eyes : weary ones , dull ones, evaluating ones, and those who were black windows into the nothingness that lived in the souls of those who possessed them.

As I began to write, I realized eyes could be the shorthand definition of the characters owning them. I noticed that when the eyes of strangers boldly met mine, it often meant the same thing as when Nixon proclaimed, "I am not a crook." I started counting my silverware.

But back to Frazetta. His art was vibrant, moody, and on-fire all at once. His paperback book covers led me to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and even to H.P. Lovecraft. And those three authors sketched the second sign post :

2) HISTORY IS NOT WHAT WE THINK - THERE IS MYSTERY AND MAGIC UNDER THE TOMBSTONES.

UNDER THE PYRAMIDS by H.P. Lovecraft (with Harry Houdini)
My hands went into warp speed when I saw the Frazetta cover emblazoned with that title. Frazetta. Harry Houdini. Wow. I didn't know this Lovecraft fellow, but I had to see what kind of supernatural trouble Houdini had gotten into in his Egyptian travels.

And I wasn't disappointed :
The first sentence : "Mystery attracts mystery."

I was hooked. Then, came the terrible imprisonment within an ancient, dark pyramid. The clever escape and the final glimpse of horror :

"The Great Sphinx! God --

that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before . . .

what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?

Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its leering lips in the unsuspected abyss,

fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged . . . that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus . . . the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore paw. . . .

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."

***
From Frazetta, Burroughs, Howard, and Lovecraft ... I learned how history can be made alive and alluring ... and supernatural. It is a lesson that stays with me still.

3) ROGER ZELAZNY'S LORD OF LIGHT :

Perched in the used bookstore shelf right next to a Frazetta cover of a Conan novel was the book that was to teach me that prose could be beautiful and evocative without being stale and stiff. I picked up LORD OF LIGHT and read the first paragraph :

"His followers called him Mahasamatman, and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.

He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Therefore, there was mystery about him."

{It is no accident that my own hero is called Sam.}

Mystery. Evocative imagry. I was hooked.

I became his student -- through his books, his essays, and his poetry.

Some of his words :

"No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words."

"For you see, the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse."

"I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words,
beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is
something to hold back the shadows."

"There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living."

"Occasionally as an author, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which.

You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the firstplace.

Trust your demon."

"I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences. It seems to get the job done. I've written a lot of novels."

And Roger Zelazny led me to this quote by Ernest Hemingway years before it made its way into the latest PREDATOR movie :

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

THE SIGN POST MARKED DIALOGUE :

I have the eye-aching habit of writing long posts, so out of compassion for your eyes, I will leave that sign post to another day.
**************
And here is a glimpse of the Frank Frazetta Museum. His wife was the custodian of it. She died in 2009 after a year's valiant battle against cancer.

The children started savagely fighting over the paintings. Sigh. Charges of burglary and theft were lodged against Frank Jr. by the rest of the family on March 2010. Matters were solved on the surface. But it proved too much for Frank, mourning the loss of his beloved wife of forty years. He died this year on May 10th.

{In early 2000, he suffered a series of strokes, losing dexterity in his right hand. The champion that he was, he taught himself to paint with his left. The painting of the warrior fighting the Mastodon in the arena towards the end of the clip was done with his left hand.}

One of the prizes on my wall of Movie Memorabilia is a Frazetta lithograph of a bear {I like to think of it as Hibbs, the bear with 2 shadows, on a bad day} signed by the artist himself.
*******************

***

{The Frank Frazetta Estate owns all rights to Frank Frazetta's sketchbook.}

WHO STARTED MY DREAM blogfest ...

http://writing-art-and-design.blogspot.com/2011/09/greeting-everyone.html

I was lost. A storm had separated me from my cub scout pack.

The night was not my friend. I had used my one pack of matches to start a small, pathetic fire.

"Hello, the camp," drawled a deep yet protective voice.

"W-Who's there?," I quavered.

A tall man in black from his Stetson down to his boots walked soft out of the darkness. "A friend."

Then, the 10 year old boy I was woke up from his nightmare turned dream. And that tall Texan has been with me ever since.

But the book which gave me hope that I could write?

THIS IMMORTAL by Roger Zelazny :

http://www.amazon.com/This-Immortal-Roger-Zelazny/dp/1596870745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316105099&sr=8-1

If I were to pick a single science fiction author who was the essence of speculative fiction in the 1960's it would be Roger Zelazny. And while he continued to produce quality work, it was this period when both his quality and his intensity were at a peak that few authors ever reach.

This Immortal (AKA Call Me Conrad) is his first novel (closely tied with The Dream Master). It remains a masterpiece four decades after winning a Hugo award and in many ways it defined the themes that haunted Zelazny's writing for years to come.

Zelazny is fascinated with a certain form of divinity -

not the kind that 'is and has always been,' but with intelligent creatures that somehow 'graduate' from a more normal, mundane state.

In this novel the hero is Conrad Nimikos, a Greek, born on Christmas Eve, one leg shorter than the other, and altogether too much hair. In Greek terms, he was one of the kallikanzaroi, mischievous satyrs who exist to irritate both the human and the divine.

Zelazny never tells us how old Nimikos is, but he has lived long enough to have had several names and seen the Earth suffer a nuclear war and start to pick up the pieces.


This is an Odyssey we have been invited on, and everywhere we look Greek legends will appear just in time to cause unexpected torments and provide opportunities for Herculean efforts.

Even though this is a story told in wry fashion, Zelazny manages to use it to explore the meaning of grief. Sorrow for lost friends, loved ones, and an abiding sense of loss for an Earth that at the time of its writing was only showing faint glimmerings of it's future challenges.

This is a poignant book where Zelazny manages an exquisite balance between attitude and affection.

Small wonder that the book has been in print since its writing. Or that a host of other writers will confess to having been influenced by it.

Roger Zelazny gave form and substance to my Texan protector in the night.
***
ONLY 14 MORE DAYS TO WIN A FREE STEPHEN KING AUTOGRAPH!! WRITE A REVIEW FOR ONE OF MY BOOKS TO ENTER NOW!
***

WHAT WAS YOUR SIREN'S CALL?

What draws us to write?

It is a solitary sojourn. Most of us will never receive world acclaim ...

nor do we expect it.

What then propels us on this journey?

What swept you up when you first started to read for yourself? How often do you find a book which conjures that same spirit within you now?

Not often I would wager.

I believe we write to create that world which spellbound us into reading in the first place. What voices called out to us then? What lessons did they teach us?

For me the voices were :

Magic,

Horror,

and Otherworld Beauty

These three sirens dominated my solitary reading of choice during my high school years. And their voices can be heard in the background of all that I write. Like the three fates, they weave the tapestry of my unconscious muse.

As a young child, I wandered alone into Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY. In junior high, I joined the League of Five and group reading with BEAU GESTE and DR. FU MANCHU. In high school, I was alone again in my reading, open to any influence that caught my fancy.

The authors of those years were my unknowing mentors in how to write well. And oddly enough it was an artist who led me in the land where they all dwelt : Frank Frazetta. And he painted the first road sign on my path to becoming a writer :

1) OTHERWORLD BEAUTY WILL HAUNT YOU, BRINGING YOU BACK TO THE BEGINNING. {AND DON'T FORGET THE EYES.}

EERIE #23 : THE EGYPTIAN PRINCESS
When I spotted the cover to EERIE#23 with Frazetta's "Egyptian Princess" in a used book store, I was spellbound. Yes, she was clothing-challenged. But it were her eyes that ensnared me. And my encounter with her made me quite a few dollars lighter. EERIE #23, even back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth, was a collector's item.

From that moment on, I noticed eyes : weary ones , dull ones, evaluating ones, and those who were black windows into the nothingness that lived in the souls of those who possessed them.

As I began to write, I realized eyes could be the shorthand definition of the characters owning them. I noticed that when the eyes of strangers boldly met mine, it often meant the same thing as when Nixon proclaimed, "I am not a crook." I started counting my silverware.

But back to Frazetta. His art was vibrant, moody, and on-fire all at once. His paperback book covers led me to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and even to H.P. Lovecraft. And those three authors sketched the second sign post :

2) HISTORY IS NOT WHAT WE THINK - THERE IS MYSTERY AND MAGIC UNDER THE TOMBSTONES.

UNDER THE PYRAMIDS by H.P. Lovecraft (with Harry Houdini)
My hands went into warp speed when I saw the Frazetta cover emblazoned with that title. Frazetta. Harry Houdini. Wow. I didn't know this Lovecraft fellow, but I had to see what kind of supernatural trouble Houdini had gotten into in his Egyptian travels.

And I wasn't disappointed :
The first sentence : "Mystery attracts mystery."

I was hooked. Then, came the terrible imprisonment within an ancient, dark pyramid. The clever escape and the final glimpse of horror :

"The Great Sphinx! God --

that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before . . .

what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?

Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its leering lips in the unsuspected abyss,

fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged . . . that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus . . . the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore paw. . . .

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."

***
From Frazetta, Burroughs, Howard, and Lovecraft ... I learned how history can be made alive and alluring ... and supernatural. It is a lesson that stays with me still.

3) ROGER ZELAZNY'S LORD OF LIGHT :

Perched in the used bookstore shelf right next to a Frazetta cover of a Conan novel was the book that was to teach me that prose could be beautiful and evocative without being stale and stiff. I picked up LORD OF LIGHT and read the first paragraph :

"His followers called him Mahasamatman, and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.

He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Therefore, there was mystery about him."

{It is no accident that my own hero is called Sam.}

Mystery. Evocative imagry. I was hooked.

I became his student -- through his books, his essays, and his poetry.

Some of his words :

"No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words."

"For you see, the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse."

"I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words,
beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is
something to hold back the shadows."

"There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living."

"Occasionally as an author, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which.

You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the firstplace.

Trust your demon."

"I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences. It seems to get the job done. I've written a lot of novels."

And Roger Zelazny led me to this quote by Ernest Hemingway years before it made its way into the latest PREDATOR movie :

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

THE SIGN POST MARKED DIALOGUE :

I have the eye-aching habit of writing long posts, so out of compassion for your eyes, I will leave that sign post to another day.
**************
And here is a glimpse of the Frank Frazetta Museum. His wife was the custodian of it. She died in 2009 after a year's valiant battle against cancer.

The children started savagely fighting over the paintings. Sigh. Charges of burglary and theft were lodged against Frank Jr. by the rest of the family on March 2010. Matters were solved on the surface. But it proved too much for Frank, mourning the loss of his beloved wife of forty years. He died this year on May 10th.

{In early 2000, he suffered a series of strokes, losing dexterity in his right hand. The champion that he was, he taught himself to paint with his left. The painting of the warrior fighting the Mastodon in the arena towards the end of the clip was done with his left hand.}

One of the prizes on my wall of Movie Memorabilia is a Frazetta lithograph of a bear {I like to think of it as Hibbs, the bear with 2 shadows, on a bad day} signed by the artist himself.
*******************

***

{The Frank Frazetta Estate owns all rights to Frank Frazetta's sketchbook.}

MAGIC, HORROR, AND OTHERWORLD BEAUTY

What draws us to write?

It is a solitary sojourn. Most of us will never receive world acclaim ... nor do we expect it.

What then propels us on this journey? What swept you up when you first started to read for yourself? How often do you find a book which conjures that same spirit within you now?

Not often I would wager.

I believe we write to create that world which spellbound us into reading in the first place. What voices called out to us then? What lessons did they teach us?

For me the voices were :

Magic, horror, and otherworld beauty

These three sirens dominated my solitary reading of choice during my high school years. And their voices can be heard in the background of all that I write. Like the three fates, they weave the tapestry of my unconscious muse.

As a young child, I wandered alone into Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY. In junior high, I joined the League of Five and group reading with BEAU GESTE and DR. FU MANCHU. In high school, I was alone again in my reading, open to any influence that caught my fancy.

The authors of those years were my unknowing mentors in how to write well. And oddly enough it was an artist who led me in the land where they all dwelt : Frank Frazetta. And he painted the first road sign on my path to becoming a writer :

1) OTHERWORLD BEAUTY WILL HAUNT YOU, BRINGING YOU BACK TO THE BEGINNING. {AND DON'T FORGET THE EYES.}

EERIE #23 : THE EGYPTIAN PRINCESS
When I spotted the cover to EERIE#23 with Frazetta's "Egyptian Princess" in a used book store, I was spellbound. Yes, she was clothing-challenged. But it were her eyes that ensnared me. And my encounter with her made me quite a few dollars lighter. EERIE #23, even back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth, was a collector's item.

From that moment on, I noticed eyes : weary ones , dull ones, evaluating ones, and those who were black windows into the nothingness that lived in the souls of those who possessed them.

As I began to write, I realized eyes could be the shorthand definition of the characters owning them. I noticed that when the eyes of strangers boldly met mine, it often meant the same thing as when Nixon proclaimed, "I am not a crook." I started counting my silverware.

But back to Frazetta. His art was vibrant, moody, and on-fire all at once. His paperback book covers led me to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and even to H.P. Lovecraft. And those three authors sketched the second sign post :

2) HISTORY IS NOT WHAT WE THINK - THERE IS MYSTERY AND MAGIC UNDER THE TOMBSTONES.

UNDER THE PYRAMIDS by H.P. Lovecraft (with Harry Houdini)
My hands went into warp speed when I saw the Frazetta cover emblazoned with that title. Frazetta. Harry Houdini. Wow. I didn't know this Lovecraft fellow, but I had to see what kind of supernatural trouble Houdini had gotten into in his Egyptian travels.

And I wasn't disappointed :
The first sentence : "Mystery attracts mystery."

I was hooked. Then, came the terrible imprisonment within an ancient, dark pyramid. The clever escape and the final glimpse of horror :

"The Great Sphinx! God --

that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before . . .

what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?

Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its leering lips in the unsuspected abyss,

fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged . . . that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus . . . the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore paw. . . .

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."

***
From Frazetta, Burroughs, Howard, and Lovecraft ... I learned how history can be made alive and alluring ... and supernatural. It is a lesson that stays with me still.

3) ROGER ZELAZNY'S LORD OF LIGHT :

Perched in the used bookstore shelf right next to a Frazetta cover of a Conan novel was the book that was to teach me that prose could be beautiful and evocative without being stale and stiff. I picked up LORD OF LIGHT and read the first paragraph :

"His followers called him Mahasamatman, and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.

He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Therefore, there was mystery about him."

{It is no accident that my own hero is called Sam.}

Mystery. Evocative imagry. I was hooked.

I became his student -- through his books, his essays, and his poetry.

Some of his words :

"No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words."

"For you see, the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse."

"I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words,
beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is
something to hold back the shadows."

"There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living."

"Occasionally as an author, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which.

You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the firstplace.

Trust your demon."

"I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences. It seems to get the job done. I've written a lot of novels."

And Roger Zelazny led me to this quote by Ernest Hemingway years before it made its way into the latest PREDATOR movie :

"There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."

THE SIGN POST MARKED DIALOGUE :

I have the eye-aching habit of writing long posts, so out of compassion for your eyes, I will leave that sign post to another day.
**************
And here is a glimpse of the Frank Frazetta Museum. His wife was the custodian of it. She died in 2009 after a year's valiant battle against cancer.

The children started savagely fighting over the paintings. Sigh. Charges of burglary and theft were lodged against Frank Jr. by the rest of the family on March 2010. Matters were solved on the surface. But it proved too much for Frank, mourning the loss of his beloved wife of forty years. He died this year on May 10th.

{In early 2000, he suffered a series of strokes, losing dexterity in his right hand. The champion that he was, he taught himself to paint with his left. The painting of the warrior fighting the Mastodon in the arena towards the end of the clip was done with his left hand.}

One of the prizes on my wall of Movie Memorabilia is a Frazetta lithograph of a bear {I like to think of it as Hibbs, the bear with 2 shadows, on a bad day} signed by the artist himself.
*******************
***

{The Frank Frazetta Estate owns all rights to Frank Frazetta's sketchbook.}