Zworsky's Children

My new novel, Zworsky's Children, will be available on July 11. 

It was an idea I had since 2017. It started with a 60 Minutes segment on antibiotic resistance. Then I watched a PBS Nova episode (I won't say what it's about because that would spoil the novel). But I didn't have a story, just some ideas. It wasn't until I read Stephen King's On Writing when I started writing the book. I had written two novels before this and a bunch of screenplays. But King's book gave me the courage to write without an outline.

In On Writing, King says to write 1000 words a day until the novel is finished. (I think he might have said at least 6 days a week). But I wrote everyday.

The first few days of writing were fun. But when I got to the third day, I started to panic because I didn't know if I could write 1000 words each day.  What do I say? What am I writing? Then I remembered what King said: Write with the door shut. Even if these 1000 words suck, no one will read it. I always think that when I write. It is okay to be messy and to experiment. Ernest Hemingway famously said the first draft of anything is shit. So I just plowed ahead until I finished the first draft, which I completed in the summer of 2019 and was over 100,000 words.

Writing without an outline might not be everyone's method. I read James Patterson outlines his novels, which is amazing given how many books he's written. But for me, once I have a spark of an idea, I dive into the unknown and see where I end up. I keep the door shut until I am ready to share it.

I have written the Zworsky's Children series (three books total). The second book will be available next year, and I just wrote the first draft of the third book. For those of you who decide to read it, I do hope you enjoy the story. I wrote it with a lot of heart. See the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Kill Park

My new short story will be available to purchase as an eBook on April 26. This is another story of mine that takes place in Burghville and is connected to my first novel THE POSTCARD.

Stacking and chopping firewood is nothing new for the Ferguson brothers. It’s a routine they have to endure every fall before winter comes barreling through the Hudson Valley. But on this day, after slicing a short log, they discover something mysterious inside it that will haunt them forever. . . .

Writing this story reminded me of stacking cords of wood for our wood-burning stove, growing up in upstate New York. Unsure why, but I thought . . . what would happen if a character chopped a log in half and found something weird inside it? 

I went with that thought and wrote KILL PARK. I hope you enjoy the story. There will be no paperback version since it is only 40 pages. 

Happy chopping....

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The Aging Movie Star in the Horror and Sci-Fi Genres

A recurring theme of the horror/sci-fi film genre is the figure of the old and wise character who is often performed by the aging star actor. This character is typically a doctor or scientist, and holds knowledge of the monster, alien, and/or of character's superpowers. These characters are often highly educated, speak very intelligently, dress professionally, and have a calming presence for spectators. They often arrive in the narrative with pivotal information that motivates and drives the plot forward.
 
Consider the movie Them! (1954) one of the first atomic-age monster films, which casts aging star Edmund Gwenn as Doctor Harold Medford, an entomologist, who discovers that the mutant ants are powerless without their antennae. Even though the scientific discourse in the film seems be a bit obvious, the knowledge of the mutant has to pass through Medford as the figure of knowledge to legitimatize it's narrative exposition.

In the 1970s and 1980s, there seemed to be a plethora of horror/sci-fi films with the aging star as the figure of knowledge and reason. For example, John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) starred Donald Pleasence as Dr. Samuel Loomis, Michael Myers' psychiatrist. It is Dr. Loomis who knows Michael's condition and intentions that he will kill his sister and believes he is the only one knows how to stop him.

 

In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), it is the Overlook Hotel's chef, Dick Hallorann (played by Scatman Crothers), who discloses to Danny's that they both have the gift of "shining," the power to telepathically read each others thoughts as well as seeing premonitions. In this case, Hallorann is not a scientist or doctor, but the figure who has a direct pipeline to the Overlook hotel's past. 

 

In David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983), Herbert Lom plays neurologist Dr. Sam Weizak as the figure of the older erudite man who provides knowledge to viewers about Johnny Smith's (Christopher Walken) power of seeing a person's future through physical contact. 

As a side note: The Dead Zone has a fantastic and creepy opening credit sequence where the lettering of the title's typography slowly appears on the screen over images of the town of Castle Rock, Maine. Here the title sequence emphasize the letters' negative space, which reflects the concept of "the dead zone," a void in the future that Johnny cannot predict-such as the ending of the film. 
 
We also find the casting of the aging actor as the conveyer of knowledge in fantasy/science fiction films. Most famous is the casting of Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). Ben plays the figure of the aging Jedi Knight who explains to young Luke about Darth Vader and the Clone Wars.

Even the political sci-fi thriller Children of Men (2006) casts Michael Caine as an aging hippie cartoonist, Jasper Palmer.  Palmer as the conveyer of knowledge and comic relief helps propose the plan for Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) and Theo Faron's (Clive Barker) escape.

As such, the icon of the aging star plays an important function in the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres as the communicator of knowledge, wisdom and reason.

The role of the aging star actor also raises the question of science fiction and horror films as occupying a B-film status. Certainly many sci-fi, superhero and horror films are produced with high quality, especially given the power of today's special effects. And many of these fables and story worlds are well written, and inform us about our own experiences of everyday life on planet earth.

But given that the overall body of work of these older actors is not often associated with fantasy and horror films suggests how the presence of an aging star can help legitimize a film's exploration of topics such as mutant bugs, telepathy, monsters, and other forces beyond the everyday world.