Fiction and nonfiction

An update video on recent work, and a recording of my short story The Eagle Hunt.

Challenges Surmounted…So Far

Going on two years since my last post, I’m rattling, shaky, and loose in some places, but I’m still rolling forward.  Slowly.

I could be accused of living in my own world entirely, and it would be true.  But my response to such accusations has always been, “Why not?”  When forced to choose between fantasy and grim reality, with its thousands of worries, fears, shames, and dysfunctions, who could blame me, in my fragility, for moving bag and baggage into the last refuge available, which, unlike most others I have experienced, never lets me down?  (Plus it’s free.)

I’ve spent the past two years sequestered in that refuge of creation and self-expression, and it, along with my faith, has kept me alive.

Along with appearing successfully as Blanche Hudson in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (yes, you read that right), the main creative project I worked on through this time was Flickers, the epistolary short novel chronicling an interval–very similar to the challenging one I faced and continue to face—in the life of the protagonist, Philip Griffin, a warehouse packing clerk, living and struggling in the early twentieth century.  Deeply shy, even avoidant; sorely lacking in self-confidence and with no idea who he is, Philip’s dreary life takes a dramatic turn when he falls in love with Lucinda Styles, the niece of his sister’s employer, Eugenia Styles.  Lucinda is staying with Philip’s sister, Cora, prior to her arranged marriage to Edgar Bothwicke, CEO of Bothwicke Printing—which will allow for a merger between Bothwicke Printing and Styles Publishing; a merger necessary for the survival of the latter company.  It goes without saying that Eugenia Styles is hell-bent on seeing both the marriage and the merger through—but the first hurdle in her path is, naturally, Philip’s instant infatuation with Lucinda, whom he views as his female fantasy incarnate.  Unsettled in his complacent existence by these new, unfamiliar emotions, Philip soon finds himself unable to reconcile the fact of Lucinda’s inaccessibility to the point that he retreats into a dream world; in this case, the world of silent films, in which, like Walter Mitty, he sees himself as the hero of his own personal swashbuckling adventure/thriller tales.  How much Philip’s romanticized visions of those around him—particularly Lucinda and her unappealing suitor—actually mirror the characters themselves (or do not) is the theme of the story.

I admit that the completed (not finished, never finished) manuscript of Flickers (so-called due to this nickname for early movies) is much darker than it would probably need to be.  What could have been a sensitive portrait of a young man’s attempts to cope with unfulfilled fantasies morphed somewhere along the line into a blood-and-thunder melodrama typical of the times in which the story is set.

And that is exactly the way I planned it.

Come on, now…this is Craig, after all. 

I’ve never been content to let well-enough alone and tell stories about real people living real lives and facing real problems.  I’ve always had to push it—to increase, as with a digital photograph, the brightness and contrast of gray truth to the level of stark black-and-white.  Larger-than-life, oft-times outrageously campy…that’s my style.  So lynch me.

Which is why I’ll never succeed in the world of “serious” writing.  This was affirmed to me about a year and a half ago by a professor of creative writing at my alma mater, with whom I conferred about continuing my education in this field.  His (not unkind) response was, at least the way I heard it, “Don’t waste your time”.  In essence, I am not a highbrow writer, I was never meant to be a highbrow writer, and I never will be a highbrow writer.  And that’s okay, because having nodded through some highbrow writing in my time, I don’t really want to be a highbrow writer.  Yes, those MFAs and Ph.Ds might get published in the occasional moldy collegiate journal, but, aside from a few other MFAs and Ph.D’s…who really gives a shit?

On the other hand, the 1979 cult bestseller Flowers in the Attic, by the late V.C. Andrews, is still in print.  You do the math.  Let me tell you something—I like that story.  I liked the book, the 1987 movie, and the recent Lifetime remake.  I know it’s rather over-the-top and creepy in its subject matter and presentation, but that being said, it’s a terrific story about survival.  A story about surviving as a child locked away in the attic of a great mansion, abandoned by your mother and abused by a crazy grandmother, is still a story about survival.  And it happens all the time.  Just look at the news.  Different strokes for different folks.  I say tomato…etc, etc.  That’s my kind of literature, with a beginning, middle, and a satisfying end.  Sure, I admire people like, say, Flannery O’Connor, but I could never write anything to approach her stories like The Enduring Chill or Greenleaf.  I could never hope to achieve anything on the level of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, or Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (a personal favorite), or even five levels below them, so why knock myself out trying?  Why not, instead, write in my own individual style of gothic surrealism and if deeper themes emerge, fine.  Even with Flickers, the subtext is there despite the melodramatic trappings—they don’t hurt it at all.  So, again, I ask…why not?

It’s yet another way in which I am learning to accept my own limitations.  Fiction will always be my first love, although I have done some autobiographical writing which I would daresay is a lot better…but fiction is just flat-out more fun.

The original idea for Flickers was to illustrate it with photos of scenes in miniature, suitable to the silent film era, as actual silent film slides; a concept in keeping with the theme of Philip’s vicarious obsession with the movies he imagines himself and others in.  I’ve retained that concept, but have decided to go a step further and use real people for these shots, actors from the local talent pool, appropriately dressed on real-life “sets”.  It would basically be like shooting something less than a movie to create something more than a graphic novel.  I hope.  Anyway…next year I’d like to try it.

The other creative project which kept me busy throughout the latter half of 2013 was building my own chess set, something I had wanted to do for a long time.  The concept, like that of Flickers, revolved around the world of vintage movies.

I made half the pieces to represent the forces behind putting together a film—producer, director, editor, and so on.  The other half is populated by the actors in the film.  The pawns are framed script pages (moviemakers) and, on the thespian side, shots from the “film” being made, featuring the actors in various individual scenes.

I know…I’m not a character on The Big Bang Theory, but I should be.  Anyway…I kind of resemble Sheldon with facial hair.  Or so I’ve been told.

The chess set turned out to be one of the centerpieces of my art studio, Creations by Craig.  Yes, for six months I had an art studio that I moved into in late March and opened at the first of May.  I had been thinking about taking space at a local gallery for some time, and when I learned of opportunities to rent at the gallery, this particular space hit me immediately as perfect for two reasons.  One, the colors.  Red, black and white is a recurring color scheme in my visual work, and that is exactly how the room was painted.  The second reason was that it had just been vacated by a member of my church.  Those reasons were enough for me.  On its official opening May second, I made three sales, which, as I understand, is very good for this area.

I closed Creations by Craig in September of 2014.  I did this basically because I found that I don’t like doing art in a studio.  I like doing it at home.  Also, in the Canton, Ohio, area, there is no sustained interest in paying for art.  Not enough to justify paying the monthly studio rent.  Lesson learned, no regrets.

Looking ahead, I know what I would like to accomplish next year, namely laying out the background of a new concept, The Eerie Series. (More on that later.)  Over the summer and early fall, I realized an idea which has simmered for a few years, and only recently worked itself into a story that I felt compelled to write as soon as possible, as a play.  Titled The Blue Candle, it combines my ever-present goth ambiance with something of a spiritual undertone.  In short, I tried getting deep while staying fun, even a little deeper than I did with Flickers.  Maybe I have hopes of ending up highbrow after all.  Nah.

And now, aside from the Eerie Series, there are my last few major projects coming to completion; along with the editing of Flickers, the backstage murder mystery Closing Night, which has been picked up for local production in August, 2015 , as Below the Surface and Dot’s Journey were so successfully mounted inthe spring and fall of 2013, respectively.  (For more information on Dot’s Journey, look under Thinking Man’s Theatre.) 

A rehearsal still from “Dot’s Journey”, my film noir take on THE WIZARD OF OZ, performed by the Canal Fulton Players aboard the St. Helena III in 2013.

I didn’t mention Below the Surface being produced?  I guess I didn’t.  That was my first full-length play, which I started writing in 1997 and finally “released” in staged reading form in 2011.  Like most of my other work, it treads the same tightrope between legitimate and melo-drama in its tale of a super-dysfunctional family, a sudden murder, plenty of psychological suspense, and just plain psychos.  The play was picked up by the Victorian Players of Youngstown, who gave it about the best, most respectful, and successful a first production as one could wish for, even unto asking me whether one of the characters would have magazines on her coffee table. 

A rehearsal shot from my play “Below the Surface” at the Victorian Players Theatre, Youngstown, Ohio, 2013

As with Dot’s Journey, the experience proved both unforgettable and highly therapeutic.  And humbling.  And nerve-wracking.  To sit in the midst of a paying audience, watching such talented people bringing my work to life; to know that they invested many hours of their time and energy into something that only existed because of me…that was and is heady stuff.  They will never know how much it meant at that particular time.  I can never thank them enough.

The Pack, the 2012 project which began in a blaze of ambition as my first “consigned” work, has now been quietly retired, unreleased.  This graphic novel, or Film in Print, is problematic to me because while there are good things in it, I feel that the whole is less than the sum of its parts.  A companion piece to Flickers, which followed on the heels of it, this Depression-era story of a young music teacher dismissed from his job for a suspected affair with a student never really clicked with me, in spite of my every effort to personalize it.  I was eventually informed by the party interested in publishing it that his publishing days were over for the moment.  Bummer.  As I indicated, there are some really good scenes and characters in it, but I am not sure that the story was entirely within my range or that I was completely up to realizing its demands visually.  Maybe it’s better than I think.  I don’t know.  That’s the curse of being a critic of one’s own work.

In the meantime, I launched a few smaller projects that turned out to be just what I needed—not demanding, but unique enough to fulfill the creative urge while I recharged my batteries.  First, I indulged another long-harbored interest—writing puppet plays.  I’ve always adored puppets, and when I read that one of my prime inspirations, the late Edward Gorey, wrote and produced these along with his gargantuan body of other work, I felt the time was right to give it a go.  So I wrote three short plays around Mr. Teeth and the other puppets I made a few years ago…and they turned out very well, at least in my regard.  I would love to see them mounted someday…maybe as the centerpiece amid an evening of old-fashioned vaudeville acts.  I even had fun with the titles; Mr. Teeth and the Quagmire Affair…Mr. Teeth and the Befuddlement of the Fallen Star…Mr. Teeth and the Canine Caper, or, the Bride of Mr. Teeth.

The other small project, also newly published through lulu.com, is a storybook based on the short film The Terrible Mr. Teeth, which I had great fun making in 2011.  This time around, the story features the puppets I made in the lead roles, intermingled with the secondary characters from the film version.   What a gas it’s been!  Mr. Teeth returns to terrorize the beautiful Angelica Morningsong as The Girl and Justin Evergood as The Boy, with support from Madame Nightshade as The Girl’s Mother.  What this really is, is a fulfillment of a creative yen from childhood to make puppets and stories around them similar to those I found in a series of lavishly illustrated puppet “board books” which retold the classic fairy tales.  As a little tyke, I was utterly awed by the detail of these puppet characters, exquisitely costumed and carefully posed amid beautifully detailed miniature scenery.  Alas, I only ever had one of the books—Pinocchio—and had to wait until a year ago to finally obtain the others in the collection through ordering them used online.  From these I received my inspiration to remake Mr. Teeth in the mold of the puppet storybooks that I spent long summer afternoons as a child of seven yearning for.  Some dreams do come true!

The Terrible Mr. Teeth is now published through lulu.com and is available for purchase here.

Also last summer, I dabbled in the art of terrariums and assemblage.  Terrariums have intrigued me since childhood—something about the idea of a miniature world preserved under glass always has; hence, my fascination with dioramas—and about a month ago I decided to try my hand at it.  I started simple, after doing the requisite research on exactly how to go about it, and these first three turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.  As always, the scenes are tinged with touches of the morbid, mysterious, and macabre.  What else would you expect from Creations by Craig?  (BTW, the terrarium at left is not one I created, but it is very much in the style I aim for.  More pics to come as I continue to build them.)

Assemblage is not a new endeavor for me, but it was only in the last year that I learned it had a name, this juxtaposing of various mixed media to present an overall shared theme.  I have long been telling stories through mixed media, but it wasn’t until the artist Joseph Cornell came to my attention, with his fascinating “boxes”, or collage art under glass, that I saw a new realm of possibilities for it.  Exploring his work (seen below) provided a huge dose of fresh inspiration.

An artist’s work is never done.  Thank God.

GRYMWYCK Portion Two Progress

I’m about halfway through writing the text for the second installment of Grymwyck, which I’ve decided to title Preparing for the Sojourn.  In this segment, Belinda Nathan goes back to her hometown of Hastings, Ohio (I’ve given the locale an actual setting) to get her belongings stored and packed for her move to Grymwyck.  Much of this first half has been devoted to character development for Belinda, focusing on her thoughts and memories of her deceased parents and her former boyfriend, Sean Fellowes, who runs into her unexpectedly in Hastings.  The writing so far has gone smoothly and quickly.  My main concerns are plausibility and consistency in the story.  With the shadow of the supernatural falling throughout, I hope to present as much logic for the characters’ actions and the various events as possible.  I suppose that will make the end effect all that much stronger.

I withdrew the first book, or pilot for the series, Arrival, temporarily to make some changes and revisions.  I wasn’t happy with the layout, for one thing.  Too bad my friend Joe already bought a copy; the updated version is much better to look at visually, with the photographs “wrapped” by the text.  I redid the layouts this way on all my other projects as well, last week, and even updated and republished Dot’s Journey.  Call me obsessive-compulsive, but I just like the knowledge that all my projects are in the same format.  Consistency, you know.

I also made out an extensive, detailed timeline for all my writing/art projects, beginning at present, in November 2009 and ending in February 2011.  Everything in this current “season” is listed and scheduled as far as when I will write this chapter or begin that photo shoot.  This has made it much easier for me to concentrate, one month or week at a time, on what needs to be done for which story. 

I’m pleased with my progress so far…Grymwyck–Arrival will be republished next week, and I’m about halfway through both Grymwyck–Preparing…Sojourn and WeeWee and Somebody.  I aim to self-publish WW&S by my birthday, 2010, and Preparing/Sojourn on the first of next year (2011) along with Echo Forest, which I plan to start on in April 2010.

The Little People

I just love little people.  Really, I do.  Figurines, action figures, models…they all fascinate me.  I remember vividly my collection of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe warriors, and their castles and vehicles.  It was a vast collection, and I recall it very fondly. 

It is packed away in a corner of my parents’ basement now, but I have plans to go through it in the near future and organize it, along with all my other scads of action figures, and my Super Powers figurines, and their ilk.  I’ve thought about putting them in the community garage sales that my parents’ neighborhood holds every August, but I honestly don’t know if I can bring myself to do it yet.  I still have an emotional attachment to those toys, and a part of me feels disloyal at passing them off to kids who probably won’t appreciate or care for them half as much as I did.  Maybe I want to go through them one more time just for the sheer pleasure of holding them in my hands again, and reliving those memories of endless afternoons of enjoyment that they gave me.

I suppose I would be remiss to explain why I am including this post in this blog, when at first glance, it doesn’t look to have anything to do with my own personal artwork and writing.  The simple fact is, it has everything to do with my own work.  My time spent playing with action figures, making up stories, working out plots and direction of sorts…this all proved to pay off as I reached adulthood and began to write plays and novels and to link my artwork with them.  I will admit that I was a real tyrant as a kid when my friends were over and we played together with my miniature empire…my main problem was that my friend(s) didn’t put any thought into the adventures we acted out.  They didn’t spend time thinking up plots, or how to use each character to his/her best advantage…they just went at it, usually so roughly that I hollered bloody murder.  I didn’t want my figures slammed into each other over and over to simulate battle; I preferred just to pose them and let the battle take place in my mind.  And anyway, these toys were my childhood friends as much as Steven, Jason or Adam.  I would not allow anyone to abuse them. 

Gradually, as was to be expected, I set aside the He-Man figures and the castles and the Super Powers and their company when I started to grow up.  But my passion for little people far from waned.  On the contrary, I became interested in creating my own miniature worlds by drawing characters I either made up, or admired from various movies or books I enjoyed.  I spent my adolescence and early youth making paper dolls rather than dating or partying or sneaking out at night to TP my neighbors’ houses with friends.  This didn’t help me then, socially, but as I look at my life now, I can see exactly how much good it did me in the long run.

Today, I am a passionate designer/sculptor of the miniature personage, and of environments for them.  Some of my best friends nowadays are Sculpy, cardboard and toothpicks.  I can literally lose hours at a time as I work to realize my vision of a character I have thought up, a set for a story I am writing. 

My love for the performing arts…for drama and old movies, especially thrillers and mysteries…is the thread which ties all of my creative work together.  The three-dimensional stagings are my writing brought to life, and they form a drama to be photographed and included throughout the play, novel, etc., that they represent, to enhance it.  I will admit that I’ve never yet run across any other work that is quite like what I do. 

My obsession with miniatures and tiny characters is so intense that I frequently dream of walking through a shopping mall, searching avidly for the perfect set of figurines in different hobby/novelty stores, and usually not finding them.  One dream was so vivid that I felt compelled to create a set of new miniature people based on the ones I saw in it.  That set will be featured in the photographs for my upcoming illustrated play, Closing Night, probably sometime next year.

This morning, I shopped on Ebay for miniature model people to use as “extras” and minor supporting characters in my dramatic dioramas.  I wound up investing in 250 little figures…two hundred unpainted…and I can’t wait for the day when I open my mailbox to find them there.  Two hundred and fifty tiny doses of inspiration are on their way to me, from China, no less.

It’s the little things in life, you know.  😉

Preparations for GRYMWYCK Vol. II Begin

It feels so good to finally be able to settle back into the routine of relaxing and working on my personal projects in the evenings!  I never really shelved any of my writing/artwork during my recent hectic exploits as an actor…not even at the most chaotic of times.  I couldn’t.  I had no choice but to keep at them.  This past weekend, prior to the Saturday performance of the play I did that just closed, I went to Pat Catan’s and found some really cool accessories and such for the Grymwyck set, inside and out.  Also more Sculpy to create the three new characters who will appear in the second installment of the series.  Can’t wait to get started!

Interim Projects

Since I’m occupied with acting these days, I don’t want to get enmeshed in anything brand-new or demanding where writing/art is concerned.  But those energies still have to be channelled somehow, so what I’ve been doing is concentrating, in my spare time, on the miniature figure tokens for Closing Night, and the minimal sets for the dioramas that will make up the illustrations; in addition, I’m designing a town for the setting of Julian Mumford Mysteries.  I’ve never done that before, and it’s fun. 

Autumn Woods, aerial view

I’ve named the town Autumn Woods, and it is in Ohio, somewhere in the northeast region here where I live.  So, those pursuits have given me something to do in the rare moments when I’m offstage.

Also, each month, I am continuing to write, illustrate and post a new chapter for WeeWee and Somebody.  Hard to believe, but I’m almost due to start work on another one.

THE HOUSE DOWN THE LANE Update

I’ve completed the photo shoot for THDTL…also have shopped for the insert shots online, through free stock photography sites.  I’m pleased with how it’s turning out so far.  Now it’s time to start putting it all together!

Priscilla and Ardis enter the mysterious house down the lane

Priscilla confronts occupants of the house to try to find out what has happened to Ardis

The Widow Velmoore and her servants menace Priscilla

Byron and Lucrece are uneasy with a stranger in the house

Priscilla and her husband, Dr. Colin Herrington, are cornered by the residents of the house down the lane

Season II–The Next Two Years of My Writing Projects

After much deliberation, I’ve finally settled on what I want to do creatively for what will probably be the next two years.  I’m not ready to begin these projects yet, but I have done prewriting on almost all of them, so I have a good idea as to where I want to go with them.  Now, this is, of course, barring any dramatic developments in my life…i.e., getting suddenly rich and famous from one of my current books available…or dying…or going into a coma.  But I’ve thought it over, and these projects kept circling in my mind enough that I feel it’s their time to be realized.  By the way…a true writer will agree with me when I say that it’s not difficult to come up with something to write about…rather, it’s finding the time to do the writing.  I have endless ideas, and I keep them in my binder labeled “The Trunk”, and I add to them whenever inspiration strikes again.  I can’t say that all of them will eventually morph into published works, but the fact remains that I have almost never wanted for subjects.

So…here we go.  First up–the second installment of Grymwyck.  The first book in the series was just published and made available on lulu.com, and it went so well that I’m really eager to continue.  I’m not sure yet of the title, but the plotline will deal with the journey back home by the heroine, Belinda Nathan, to get her possessions together for the move to Grymwyck, so that she can take up her duties as Margaret Wetherby’s personal secretary. 

Belinda Nathan in GRYMWYCK I-ARRIVAL

In the process, more will be revealed about Belinda’s past, including her relationship with Sean Fellowes, her ex-boyfriend, who is briefly mentioned in Arrival.  Sean and Belinda will meet up unexpectedly, and Belinda will literally run from him.  Back at Grymwyck, she will face more drama from the various residents; Katherine will be in rare form as jealousy takes over when Lucas offers Belinda an old manuscript to proofread, and at the end of the episode, a character will fall deathly ill.  Hint:  it’s not Margaret, who will only be glimpsed briefly in this one…her shadow will fall throughout, however, as Belinda argues with herself as to whether she really saw what she thinks she did at the end of Arrival, when she stood outside of Margaret’s room.  This second book will have the same format as the first, with photography of the character sculptures against miniature backgrounds as illustrations.

WeeWee and Somebody is a direct throwback to my childhood, when I did a lot of cartooning and sketching.  I did a whole series of drawings around this duo…a living popsicle named WeeWee and his witchlike friend/mother figure, simply known as Somebody.  These cartoons were a huge hit with my parents and relatives, and when I had a dream about them the other night, I thought maybe it was time to revive them.  My intention is to make WeeWee and Somebody the subjects of a children’s book that adults can appreciate…or an adult’s book that children can appreciate.  This time around, WeeWee will be a very reclusive ten-year-old boy who gained his nickname through being unusually small at birth.  (Also, he can’t hit the commode when he pees.) 

WeeWee

WeeWee’s parents are getting a divorce, and he is sent to live for a while with his aunt, whom his parents have always scornfully described as “trying to be somebody”.  Aunt Somebody is a tart-tongued wealthy matron, former actress and recovered alcoholic who begins to develop a meaningful friendship with WeeWee…until her estranged daughter returns suddenly, demanding money, and threatening to publish a tell-all memoir of her childhood, during which her mother was tyrannical and abusive, if she doesn’t get it.  The illustrations in this book, I think, will be simple pen-and-ink sketches, in homage to the story’s original conception as a comic strip.  Also, I have plans to publish the story chapter by chapter in blog format, and then in book form when completed. 

My next project–the true centerpiece of this “season”, will be considerably darker…quite possibly the darkest I have ever attempted, and I only hope that I have the fortitude to see it through.  Echo Forest–A Film in Print, will have as its foundation the true story of sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens, who was tortured to death by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, and her children in Indianapolis in 1965.  The case has haunted me ever since I first learned of it when a friend of mine sent me the link for the trailer of a recent film based on it, titled An American Crime. 

This is the trailer for The Girl Next Door, another film (oddly enough, released during the same year as AAC–2007) which is based on horror author Jack Ketchum’s fictionalization of the case.

I don’t plan to dramatize or fictionalize Likens’s ordeal; rather, I would like to go a step further and use it as a cautionary tale for the leading character in my own story, Kit MacGuire, who is being severely abused by her father.  In nearby Echo Forest stands an old house where a young girl named Susan suffered a fate similar to that of Likens at the hands of her stepmother and stepsiblings.  Kit eventually enters the house out of curiosity, and experiences a flashback in time to when Susan was murdered.  The experience shows her, uncompromisingly, what could happen to Kit herself if she doesn’t inform the authorities of her father’s treatment, which, until now, she has been too proud to do.  The graphics of the “film” will be of digital photographs of mixed-media dioramas and miscellaneous stock images, and drawings.                                                  

Sylvia Marie Likens, 1949-1965

Gertrude Baniszewski

I’ve often thought about creating a fictional sleuth to appear in several shorter stories, a la Agatha Christie with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.  Julian Mumford, a youngish, dry-witted, rather prickly gay writer, is my own sleuth (and alter ego).  Instead of the detective angle, though, I would like to make Julian more of a “reconstructor” of the crimes and their backstories.  The stories’ appeal won’t be so much in the whodunit as the why and howdunit.  Through Julian’s creative speculation, all is revealed…with a disclaimer, of course, that he has taken liberties with the actual facts of the cases, some of which are never disclosed.  I have three to five short plays in the trunk that would benefit well from this format; murder mysteries that don’t quite stand on their own well enough to be developed fully.  With Mr. Mumford on board, however, I think they could be quite entertaining.  The stories would, over time, involve everything from poisoned wine to a ghostly figure in waterfront fog to a homage to Psycho.  Julian Mumford Mysteries will be a photonovel anthology, with the characters and settings created in miniature dioramas and digitally photographed…except for Julian himself.  I’m toying with the idea of inserting fragmentary photos of my own features and hands to represent Julian.    I would like to set the stories in my local area of Ohio, and have already begun creating a fictional town, Autumn Woods, for this purpose.

Rounding out the season will be Closing Night–A Play with Pictures, which will be something of a comedy-mystery focusing on a murder during a final dress rehearsal of an awful play.  The story will focus less on the actual murder and investigation than the various personalities in the theatre where the play is being performed; the actors, the director, the tech people, and all the insanity and eccentricity behind what it means to be part of show business.  Having spent many years as an actor myself, I feel confident that I’ve seen more than enough to be able to make the story realistic…and fun.  The script will be enhanced by unpainted sculptures of the characters, photographed in black-and-white on a minimalist background/set.

I aim to self-publish all of these works except the play, Closing Night, preferring to wait until it gets a production and therefore, gets a final polishing.

So, there it is…I’m going to be busy, and I’m excited.  As I mentioned, I feel I’m looking at close to two years to realize, fully, all of these projects, but this may vary according to their degree of difficulty and/or other events in my life.  In any case, I’ll do my best to post updates on each one when the time comes.  😉

End of the First Season–Part II

Just a couple of weeks ago, I finalized and published my second book, titled Grymwyck–A PhotoNovel in Portions–Portion One: Arrival.  This work is styled somewhat in the same format as Dot’s Journey, except that it is more of a full-fledged novella with photographs. 

The Grymwyck project has been in progress for about three years.  It all began when I bought a dollhouse…something I’d wanted since I was a kid…go figure.  This particular dollhouse had belonged to a local lady who had decorated it in the style of a cutesy Victorian townhouse, with dainty little flowerboxes and a coat of mauve paint.  All of that went immediately when I began to work my personal brand of morbid magic on it.  I repainted it a stone gray, and drew on crumbling bricks to give it an aged, disrepaired look.  The flower boxes stayed, but I ripped out the dainty little flowers and replaced them with Spanish moss, which hung down to give the house a neglected and unkempt appearance.

Grymwyck, outside view

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I tend toward the Gothic, the macabre, the Hitchcockian and Tim Burtonesque in my artwork and writing.  This dollhouse became a showcase for all my unique talents in representing decayed splendor and gone-to-seed elegance. 

The family graveyard

Close-up of the stagnant lily pond on the grounds. Note turtle, duck (had to inject a little brightness) and statue of woman either washing her face or sobbing heartbrokenly.

The Grymwyck dining room. Lucas and Katherine Wetherby at left, their children, Amelia (center) and Thaddeus. Note liquor cabinet. The decanters, in the middle, were filled with water and tea, then sealed.

Belinda Nathan in her room

The upstairs hall. Note suit of armor at left, and Egyptian statues and artifacts; the deceased patriarch of the Holloway-Wetherby clan was a traveler and explorer. Also, I created the miniature chess set at right, from beads.

Margaret Holloway Wetherby, the sinister matriarch of Grymwyck

The side yard, with a sadly abandoned patio table (the one chair is supposed to be on its side). Birdbath in foreground. Autumn leaves denote the season; it's always autumn or winter at Grymwyck.

Crow in barren tree

The front gate, with the Grymwyck "G" crest

The Grymwyck mansion as it appears in the novels

In creating inhabitants for Grymwyck, via the wonderful product Sculpy-3, I did some deep thinking.  Who would live in a dark, gloomy mausoleum of a manse like this if they didn’t have to?  And the question immediately followed–what if they did have to?  And why?

The answers to these questions eventually led me to develop the ten main characters for what has become an ongoing “photonovel”, a serialized story a la the cult 1960s television series Dark Shadows.  Sinister family secrets…ominous characters…Gothic locations…they were all staples of that show, and they are all here, too. 

These people I sculpted and painted became the cast, and Grymwyck was the set.  And with my digital camera, I shot the “pilot” episode which was then fashioned into Arrival, the first book in the Grymwyck series, published through lulu.com and available for review and purchase on my storefront at right.

Clive and Jane, servants at Grymwyck

Prior to beginning the actual writing of Arrival, I painstakingly built character profiles of all the ten main players, and then created a lengthy backstory for them–everything that had happened to the people associated with the Grymwyck mansion for the past thirty years and beyond.  This was an invaluable investment of time, because, as any decent writer will tell you; when you know where you’ve been, you know where you’re going.  I had to know what had happened in my characters’ pasts to know what their futures held. 

Numerous questions and doubts plagued me as I began writing the first book…would I be able to sustain interest in the project over a period of what might be as long as a decade, until all the installments were written and the full story of Grymwyck was told?   Could I keep all the threads of the story straight, and refrain from contradicting myself over time?  Did I have enough plot to spread out over as many as nine installments?  (Although it appears that there will more likely be about six.)

The answer to all these questions has been a fairly confident “I think so”, even though I have never attempted an anthology project like this before.  I have already experienced how my creativity has been stretched and how I have elected to choose paths as a writer that I have never yet traveled.  For instance, two of the main characters in Grymwyck  are adolescents.  I’ve never written anything but adults until now, and so the prospect of entering into the juvenile mind has intrigued me.  Also, Grymwyck deals fairly significantly with elements of the supernatural, something else that I haven’t included in my writing since childhood.  So this has proved an excellent broadening exercise for me.

The story of Grymwyck begins with the arrival of young Belinda Nathan, who is pretty much alone in the world after the untimely death of her parents, at the melancholy and foreboding Grymwyck estate to interview for a position as personal secretary to Grymwyck’s mysterious matriarch, Margaret Holloway Wetherby.  Prior to this, Belinda becomes acquainted with Margaret’s eccentric family…her depressive brother, Job…her put-upon son, Lucas…his alcoholic wife, Katherine…their sheltered and precocious children, Amelia and Thaddeus…the deeply spiritual and proper Cousin Grace Moreland…the hostile servants, Clive and Jane.  Belinda is not expected by anyone at Grymwyck except Margaret herself…and the sinister housekeeper, Jane.  Her reception by Katherine Wetherby is not very welcoming, to say the least, and Lucas, while friendly enough to the girl, hits the ceiling when his daughter, Amelia, mentions Margaret’s former secretary, Jennifer Bowers, who apparently “didn’t work out”.  Hmmm…

Belinda herself is a young woman riddled with self-doubts and dragging quite a load of personal baggage.  Having grown up in the shadow of a severely critical and demanding mother, she questions herself constantly, and compulsively second-guesses the motives behind the words and deeds of others.  Confronted with the various tensions and hostilities of Grymwyck’s residents, Belinda resolves to leave as soon as possible, job or no job…but all that changes after she meets Margaret Holloway Wetherby herself, who lives in a distant attic bedroom and never comes downstairs to mingle with the family…

Katherine Wetherby

I won’t give away more than that now, but I will say that the ending of this first installment, Arrival, should definitely leave readers wanting more.  That’s what it did to me, and I’m the author!

In addition to writing graphic novels and their like, I am a playwright.  In fact, I have more experience writing for the stage than in any other format.  This particular writing “season” actually began with a play, titled Oz After Midnight.  (Yes, last year was really spent with Dorothy and Toto.) 

I wrote it right before I began work on Dot’s Journey, and it is a more literal re-imagining of the Oz fable, with Dorothy Gale presented this time as a depressed teenager with a deep love for old movies which was instilled in her by her recently deceased mother.  Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, concerned for Dorothy, take her to a Dr. Osborne for psychiatric evaluation.  The smooth-talking physician soon convinces them to leave their niece in his care…especially as in this version, the elder Gales are wealthy.  A kidnapping and ransom plot evolves…just as a twister drops, sweeping Dorothy (and her adopted Japanese brother, Toto–don’t you love it?) away to an Oz threatened by civil war and terrorism.  The story takes off in its familiar direction from there, except, as in the case of Dot’s Journey, the companions that Dorothy meets on her journey to meet the elusive Count Oz (who arrived out of the air just as she did, many years ago) are all human…a very intelligent hobo who seeks a college education…a generous young man whose heart has been broken by the disappearance of his beloved…a mother-dominated motel keeper with no backbone. 

Dorothy, at right, enters an ominous leg of her journey with her friends Jack Strauss (far left), Nick Albright and Toto…her adopted Japanese brother 😉

Somehow, in a crazy way, according to those who’ve read it so far, all of this works really well.  The familiar story is peppered with cameo appearances by the stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and at the climax, the Wicked Witch of the West (dubbed Lavinia Vylecroft) hypnotizes Dorothy into believing that she is a movie star.  It all makes sense in the telling.  😉  I illustrated the script of Oz After Midnight  in the same manner that I did Dot’s Journey and Grymwyck; my first attempt at the medium.  The finished result, a “Play with Pictures”, is something of a hybrid between a novel, a play and a graphic novel; a format all my own.  It’s a lot of fun and just as entertaining to read as it probably would be to see performed…but I am waiting until the play gets a production before I publish it, as nothing polishes a playscript like a full-scale mounting.

The same is true of my very first play, which I have finally submitted, along with Oz After Midnight, for local production.  Originally titled Confined, I worked on this play for over twelve years; the process served as a kind of Playwriting 101 for me…and 200 and 300 and so forth, as my writing grew more polished and the story gained more depth and believability.  I recently reworked this script for about the seven hundred and eighty-fifth time, and rechristened it Below The Surface.  The story tells of the Donovans, a wealthy and affluent family with more than their share of skeletons in the closet, who are paid a visit by one Richard Latimer, a young man with romantic designs on the oldest of the two Donovan daughters, Clarissa.  During his visit, another character winds up dead and Richard finds himself framed for the killing by the autocratic and devious Mr. Donovan, Clarissa’s father, who, along with her hostile mother, will seemingly stop at nothing to prevent any relationship from developing between Richard and Clarissa.  A subplot concerns the recent return by Clarissa’s younger sister, Lydia, from a mental institution.  Think you’ve got it figured out?  I doubt you do.  I probably worked harder on Below The Surface  than I ever did on anything else I’ve ever written, and that is at least partly because I did not know who the characters were when I started writing.  I found out over the next twelve years; an exercise in sustaining interest in a project if ever there was one.  I’m still interested in these people and their story…and I feel that audiences would be, too.  As it is, I illustrated the script with fragmentary photographs of hands…eyes…speaking mouths…which lend a striking and appropriately mysterious effect to the dark and intense storyline.  I’m proud of Below The Surface, even in its present form.  It’s very readable, and I daresay it would be very watchable, as well.  Again, I won’t be publishing this one in book form until it gets a production…hopefully soon.

And that brings us to the final project in this first “season” of what I think of as my earnest efforts at writing.  I wrote this play, The House Down The Lane, three years ago.  It is a melodramatic thriller, my favorite genre, and it turned out fairly well, but I was never happy with the middle section, which was comprised mainly of lengthy monologues.  I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, though, and so I left it alone.  Recently, I came back to it, determined to rework it as I had Below The Surface, and I am just beginning that process now.  I will be illustrating the script as I did the other two, and have the miniature “set” and “characters” ready.  The story centers around the attractive and wealthy Priscilla Herrington, who, after being stranded with her best friend, Ardis Montgomery, by car trouble one stormy night, seeks shelter at an apparently deserted ramshackle house down a nearby lane, natch.  The house, according to Ardis, has quite a reputation, as the family who once inhabited it, the Velmoores, was murdered by burglars thirty years ago…all except for one; the wife and mother, who managed to gun down the burglars, but not in time to save her family.  Before long, Ardis vanishes in the clutch of a fearsome creature who pops out of a cabinet, and Priscilla is confronted with a shotgun by none other than the surviving member of the Velmoore clan…the formidable Widow Velmoore herself.  The plot thickens as the Widow Velmoore’s servants and family members appear, and become very unsettled when they learn that Priscilla’s husband is Dr. Colin Herrington, the head physician at the local looney bin, Warwick Psychiatric Home…and this is just the beginning. 

As with my other work, I have quite an affection for The House Down The Lane, and I look forward to seeing it in a better, more fully-realized version; perhaps, in the future, mounted on the stage.  But for now, I intend to make the script as entertaining and readable as possible, complete with photos of a “production” in miniature, to be published after being given a production for real.

I will post frequent updates, and photos, on my progress.