While skimming over the story excerpts that I’ve posted on this blog, I can’t help but to shamefully roll my eyes at my editorial skills…or lack thereof, especially concerning the excerpts for The Blackening and Ghosts of Cleveland. Needless to say, a ton of errors have been fixed since I originally posted these excerpts and I plan on reposting the updated text to their respective entries soon.
The most difficult messes to clean are the ones made yourself.
I’m not a big fan of what I refer to as “made to order” writing. I’ve written a novel and eight short stories thus far – not to mention a novella and two other short stories in varying degrees of completion – and I usually write whatever the hell I feel like writing about. Usually, an idea strikes me, I say, “Holy crap! That’s awesome!’ before firing up the laptop that has a screen held precariously to the keyboard by copious amounts of electrical tape.
However, I recently discovered that a small press publisher is taking submissions for an upcoming zombie anthology book. Yes, you heard me right. Zombies.
Zombies – at one time – were cool. But ever since 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and George Romero’s Land of the Dead, zombies have done little more but piss me off. They seem to be an excuse to throw together a cheap capitalization of their popularity, usually in the form of uninspired remakes. From what I’ve read thus far, zombies in horror fiction haven’t fared much better.
I never wanted to write a zombie story. Never. Nope. No way. I like to stick primarily with the supernatural and Lovecraftian horror elements such as fear of the unknown, insanity, extra-dimensional abnormalities and unimaginable monstrosities from beyond time and space. But opportunity is opportunity, right? How can I ever achieve my dreams of writing horror fiction for a living if I reject this latest chance for exposure? How can I ever hope to get my mangled teeth fixed up if I spit in the face of opportunity? How can I ever hope to afford that elusive Cleveland Browns coat I’ve wanted since I was ten years old? I guess you get the idea.
So I grudgingly sat in front of my crumbling laptop and started to write…a zombie story. A zombie story, so help me God. And you know what? It’s turning out much, much better than I dared to dream. These characters have developed lives of their own and refuse to do what I planned for them to do. These unpredictable and damaged characters are the central focus of the story, not the zombies. I also think I’ve created a unique twist to how these zombies are made that is firmly rooted in reality.
So what am I trying to say? Sometimes – but not all the time – writing a story “made to order” can be a good thing. You never know what the imagination can do unless you use it.
As some of you may or may not know, The Blackening is my first completed novel, and – to this day – remains my only finished novel. It’s a brutal, uncompromising look at how the scars of racism haunt the protagonist as he slowly unravels the terrible truth behind a school shooting.
Tha Blackening is both a labor of love and hate for me. While I still believe it is the best work I’ve ever written, I also dumped two-plus years of emotional heartache and loss into those characters and the unholy horrors they face. Along the way, I somehow wrote a deeply poetic yet hopelessly suicidal – almost nihilistic – reflection of society.
The novel contains four pieces of artwork that I penciled, each one representing the four parts that the story is split into. I will have to modify them in order to remove potential spoilers, but I will post them sometime later on. Firstly, here is the scanned image of my rough sketch for the cover:
Since I have the IQ of a dusty broom when it comes to digital imaging, my good friend (and the Madman of Manchester, England) Tim Sinclair stepped in. Working from my sketch idea, he started a new image in Photoshop and built it up from there:
Pssst…that’s Tim himself as the cover “models.” Many thanks go to Tim for working on it and putting up with copious amounts of my constructive criticisms and suggestions as he went along.
Unfortunately, due to Tim’s time constraints, I haven’t been able to work with him further as I would like; he really is a swell guy and it was a joy working alongside him. I have several pencil sketches of promotional artwork for The Blackening – as well as those aforementioned interior pieces – that just need a little love in Photoshop. Here’s a sampling of these pieces:
Anybody I know willing to lend their Photoshopping skills, I pay a reasonable rate of gratitude…because it’s all I can afford.
When I feel inspired enough to do so (AKA a little less lazy), I’ll post an excerpt from The Blackening.
Daryl Brownell's Domain of the Disturbing 