Overbury Ink

Number 38 is a story about the intersecting lives of a serial-killer and his 38th victim. Luca “The Rock” Marrone, the serial-killer is a character from the pages of Blank Death, the first book in the Blank Must Die Trilogy. Number 38 is a new short story from Ian Eliot LeWinter, writer and creative strategist of the duo Brothers of the Silence with his partner writer & illustrator Don Richmond. The Blank Must Die Trilogy was set in motion in May 2009 when Blank Death debuted as the first graphic novel in history to launch and be continuously unveiled on Facebook and Twitter. The story is rich with mythic iconography, psychopathic megalomania, ghosts, murder and bloodshed.

Savannah bounded up the wide brownstone steps, ending at the foot of the heavy oak doors, each inlaid with iron sprites.

“Hurry up, you two,” she called back, slipping into the house and out of sight.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mark noticed that Frank was not by his side and he turned. Frank was standing at the curb in front of the house, his arms held tightly across his chest and his mouth twisted into a frown.

“What?” Mark asked.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Frank started. “You know about this world. You’ve seen what it can do.” His voice was tense and there was a crispness to the way he said his words.

“Yes I have. And that’s why I’m okay with all of this. Vannah is smart and resourceful. She’s listened to every word we’ve said and I daresay she’ll do a far better job of staying on task than either of us would.” He shrugged, as if to say some things were beyond their control. “She won’t ever be unsupervised…not for a moment.”

“She’s only ten years old.” Frank waved his hand toward the heavy doors, but it was an empty gesture, as if he already knew that his last statement didn’t matter.
“I want her to go over the plan one more time, Mark, and I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Fine,” Mark conceded. “Just remember how important this is. We need to show her how much we trust her to make good choices and to be responsible. If we take this away from her…now…here, I’m worried about how it might affect our relationship.”

“That’s why I want to stick to the rules. We have a good plan and we need to stay with it.” He looked down and shifted his feet. “Also — and I wasn’t going to tell you this — I’ve arranged for Ms. Grievous to be outside, within view of the taxi-stand, when Ms. V. gets to the museum.”

*******

“Heiltsuk.” Luca was standing just inside the massive Grand Gallery of the American Museum of Natural History, toward the front of the Haida Canoe. A primitive wooden dog, black and sinister, grinned out from the under the bow, secured there with a dowel by its maker two centuries before. The museum itself buzzed around him like a hive, typical for a Saturday afternoon, its bees replaced with families and strollers and mobs of children.

Luca scanned the Visitor Guide looking at the list of current exhibitions. He touched every picture, whispering its title.

“Silk Spider,” he said, his words barely audible. The thick, meaty fingers of his right hand hovered over the picture of the odd golden cloth. “She might like that. Yes. It was made from the silk of over one million spiders. Hmmm.

“No. Not spiders. Maybe butterflies? Yes. Flight feels right. She would like flight because…she…can…soar!” His voice grew louder with this last sentence, but he caught himself and lowered it. His finger lingered near the picture of the Clipper butterfly, quietly tracing in the air the white circular markings covering its wings.

“Wait. No. Hmmm. Not butterflies…No.” All at once his eyes lit up and they darted across the page. “That’s it. Birds. She likes birds.” He smiled. In the middle of the page was an adult American Kestrel. Its blue-gray wings bent aggressively, scooping up air and looking thoroughly menacing. “That’s where we’ll find her.”

He reached the stairwell, but he paused before entering. Off to his left a family of four crowded around a stroller, trying to decided where to go next. One of the children was a young girl about Savannah’s age.

Luca moved off to the side and feigned a search for something inside his backpack. Watching for clues of flight.

*******

As her cab pulled up to the Central Park West entrance of the American Museum of Natural History, Savannah spied Ms. Grievous, standing in shadow, partly behind one of the great columns.

“I knew it,” she thought to herself. “I knew they’d arrange something. Okay, that’s alright…but they are gonna hear it tonight.” She rolled down the window. “Hi, Ms. Grievous,” she waved. “How are you today?”

Savannah got out and paid. Then, she walked over to Ms. Grievous and hugged the tall, young woman, who was a bit embarrassed at being found out so easily.
Ms. Grevious chuckled. “It’s good to see you to Savannah. It’s been such a long time since yesterday afternoon, I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Whatever.” Savannah rolled her eyes, playfully. She stepped back and fussed with her outfit, smoothing it and smiled, winking.

*******

“NO!” The young girl’s voice echoed loudly enough to be heard by everyone around her. She shook her head furiously. Her father’s shoulders slumped and he let out a long sigh.

“Do not raise your voice to your father, young lady,” her mother hissed, and when she spoke her husband cringed even more.

Turning her back on her mother, the young girl spoke directly to her father, affecting a loving disposition. “Daddy…I don’t want to see the butterflies. I don’t want to see anything more. I’m tired … can’t we just go home?”

“Rude and manipulative little wench,” Luca breathed. “Mother would know what to do. But no, no, no, you’ll never do. You’ll be too tough to make good stew.” A distorted smile crept across Luca’s face and he giggled for rhyming when he had not intended to. “Shhhh…not you, not you…too tough to make a good stew,” he whispered, rubbing his thigh.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Number 38 is a story about the intersecting lives of a serial-killer and his 38th victim. Luca “The Rock” Marrone, the serial-killer is a character from the pages of Blank Death, the first book in the Blank Must Die Trilogy. Number 38 is a new short story from Ian Eliot LeWinter, writer and creative strategist of the duo Brothers of the Silence with his partner writer & illustrator Don Richmond. The Blank Must Die Trilogy was set in motion in May 2009 when Blank Death debuted as the first graphic novel in history to launch and be continuously unveiled on Facebook and Twitter. The story is rich with mythic iconography, psychopathic megalomania, ghosts, murder and bloodshed.

Luca sat at his bench, “It is time.” He thought to himself. “But who can you be? Are you an adult? No… you feel younger, much younger. Maybe innocent and unaware of the evils that surround you. Yes. You feel protected.”
Almost subconsciously, his hands began to work. His workspace was carefully prepared, all of his tools neatly arranged on both sides of the table. He had mallets and punches and shears. Trim knives and straight knives and round knives and cutters, a splitter, a bevel, and a sewing needle with clear nylon thread.


In the middle of the table were two square pieces of supple, prepared hide.


Taking the first square and taping it to the table, Luca gently drew the outline of a girl doll in a flaring dress directly onto its surface, stopping to erase and redraw several sections until he was satisfied. He then removed the tape, picked up the skin and cut out the effigy.


“Yes. You are most definitely a gift, a girl, a gift, a girl. A little girl wearing a pearl.” He chuckled.


He used the second square of hide to make an identical figure from a tracing of the first. Then, starting at the feet, he began to sew the two together.


“Mother is going to be very mad at me if the soup is bad again. She will punish me with the clamps and the nails. She’ll make me wear the face.”


Using the clear nylon, he carefully knitted a line of close, tight stitches, creating a rigid seam. When the job was nearly completed, Luca reached across the table and picked up a flattened brown paper bag.


“Her clothes, her hair, her skin.” He opened it up, pulled out a handful of shredded, multi-colored fibers and stuffed them into the doll.


“And 37 becomes 38.” He squeezed the doll open and pushed in the stuffing until it was puffy and full. “Just as 38 will become 39.” He then sewed up the rest of the hide into a finished figure of a young girl.


Luca stared at the faceless figure lying on the bench. He drew his fingers across it in a gentle caress, paying close attention to how it felt.


“Maybe I was too rough.” He murmured softly. “Maybe I bruised the meat, made it tough. Mother has not been happy. She made me wear the clamps all day. She made me bleed.”


When he opened the front door the sun came blazing through with a thud, temporarily blinding him as he left the house to begin his search.


*******

“Savannah, come on, let’s go. Time for breakfast,” Mark yelled from the bottom of the stairs.


Mark heard a shriek of excitement. A young girl called down, “Are we? Are we? Are we?”


He looked across the table at Frank, and peered over his glasses, an eyebrow raised. “Much to my chagrin,” he said.
Frank smiled a big broad smile that made his eyes sparkle. “I’ve always loved how you put on a big frump whenever Vannah wants to go to Home Town Buffet. It’s like you think you need to play counter to her joy.”


“But the food is awful.”


“It’s not that bad… just simple, unflavored, and overcooked. It could be worse.”


“How could it be worse?” Mark held his hands out, palms up.


Savannah exploded into the room, giggling and whirling and dancing and singing. “Off we go, off we go, no ears for us, not like Van Gogh. We’re hungry now, for yummy food, we have to leave, please don’t be rude.”


Frank grimaced. “What are you singing young lady?” Savannah stopped abruptly in mid twirl and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He shook his head. “You could be trapped in a living hell where every single meal you eat for the rest of your life came from there?”


“Well there is that, Mark retorted. “You are kind of butch and all, but Kampe you are not.”


“It’s a nonsense poem, Frank…Mark, who’s Kampe?” Savannah asked as she bit down on a piece of apple. “Are we gonna go or WHAT!?” she yelled and then giggled out of control.


Frank watched as the young girl moved gracefully about the room. Her long, French braid, whipped back and forth around her head, in unison with the cotton sundress she wore over her jeans. “She’s all blues and greens,” he thought. “Her favorite colors.”


“Let’s go,” he said, and she danced all the way to the car.


*******


Sitting at the simple table with too many plates of food in front of them, Mark, Frank, and Savannah made an odd picture — the two large men sitting on one side and the animated young girl sitting on the other.


“So Ms. V., have you completed the final draft of your Information Gathering Plan?” It was Mark who asked this question and the follow up. “I’m only asking because today’s the day and you should get approval prior to implementation.”


Savannah peered over her glasses with a fork-full of Belgian waffle hanging in mid-air. She was affectedly business-like. “I did it last night, of course. I thought you agreed that I didn’t have to show it to you again. I was just going to finish getting ready and go when we got home.”


(TO BE CONTINUED).

A new back story fleshed out by Ian Eliot LeWinter of Blank Must Die Blank – The Graphic Novel, is part one of a trilogy. Ian LeWinter is the writer and creative strategist. Don Richmond is the writer & illustrator. Blank was set in motion in May 2009 as the first graphic novel in history to launch and be continuously unveiled on Facebook and Twitter. The story is rich with mythic iconography, psychopathic megalomania, ghosts, murder and bloodshed. Number 38 sheds light on Luca “The Rock” Marrone, his evolution into the serial “Soup Pot Killer” and prior to his influence on the young John Blank.

Number 38
This room was unlike any other room, anywhere else in the world.

It was such a reflection of the twisted mind within that you often couldn’t tell where “he” ended and “it” began. And how that room appeared, depended upon what time of day it was and how the light was playing across, “the wall.”

But, regardless of all of that, every time you entered the room the first thing you always looked at, could never look away from, was right in front of you. The ceiling swept up away from you and westwards toward a large wall 20 feet high and 50 feet wide at the back of the room, with a row of long thin windows along the top.
It had once been nothing more then a large white wall, at least that had been its state the last time anyone else had seen it.

But not now, not anymore.

Now it was crudely striped red, beginning on the left side and working right. There were 37 stripes that took up a bit more then half of the wall. But to call them stripes was to be kind. These were only stripes in that they were tall, contiguous, and somewhat in a line, side-by-side. These were stripes that were also splashes of gore.

And, while they may have vaguely resembled stripes, they were in actuality, his trophies.

This day began with a slight startle.

The sound of a backfiring truck on the street, somewhere outside the windows that lined the north and south walls of the room were the first bits of consciousness to slither into Luca’s brain.

“Uuhhurrrralllll” was the first sound he made.

The first notion to enter his mind, started as a, “buh”. Then again, “buhhhhshull.” Then it came to him. “Basil. Hummmm. Basil, that’s exactly what I need. I have to try basil with some thing young and tender.”

It had been almost three months since the serial killer, one Jeffrey Pearland of the Associated Press had monikered, “The Soup Pot Killer,” had made a batch of his favorite concoction. What he called: “Death’s-Head Soup.”

*******

In the same county, but on the other side, and in a very different room, a young girl also felt the first sound of her day seep gently into her mind.

It started softly as it was programmed to do, crickets chirping in the distance. Then in subtle, digitally-mastered layers, the sounds of birds warbling and small waves crashing and a light wind humming through trees melded together to gently prod the sleeping beauty awake.

“Mmmmmmmmm”, was her first sound and it came out like a hum.

As she did almost every single morning since she’d gotten the clock radio, Savannah thought of birds. By the ripe age of nine years old, the second adopted child of Frank and Mark Stubbins had awakened to the sound of birds twelve hundred and seventy-seven times.

And it had changed her life, how much so remained to be seen. But for now, that experience formed the underpinning of her most developing curiosity, Ornithology. Although she couldn’t tell you when exactly it started, currently it was her most important obsession.

“Gyrfalcon.” She said aloud into the heavy silence of her sleepy room. “You are the most important bird. The largest of all Falcons, it is the female who dominates, almost 35% larger then her male counterparts. She is the warrior.”

Savannah rolled onto her side where a great book lay open and the picture of a majestic white bird in flight dominated the page with these words underneath, “Gyrfalcon, adult white morph, Nome, Alaska”.

Pictures and drawings of all kinds of birds covered the walls of her room. She had books and CD’s and DVD’s and subscriptions to various bird watching organizations and her dad’s even let her subscribe to “Bird Watcher’s Digest” this year.

*******

And he was hungry.

That’s how it started for him, what the beginnings of the urges looked like — urges that would grow so loud that they would drown out every other thought in his mind. At some point, when enough time had passed since his last foray, Luca would start to hear whispers in his mind.

And though he could barely hear them at first, they affected him as if he was in a classroom and a long-nailed female was dragging her talons down the chalkboard.
The thoughts would gnaw at him and, in the beginning, he could ignore them, he could pretend he didn’t hear them, or he could drown them out with busyness. For this reason he was often busy with one or another of his many hobbies.

“It’s not time yet”, he thought to himself. “I can feel you inside me somewhere, but I haven’t heard your name yet, or seen your face.”

(TO BE CONTINUED).

Find out more:
Twitter: @BlankMustDie
Web: JohnBlankMustDie.com
Blog: blanktheblog
Facebook Fan Page

I aim to misbehave… but first: The Stars, the wrestlers, the Super Heros, the gear, the costumes, the fans, the gaming, the artists – all great reasons to come out to a ComicCon. I hit the floor at this year in Toronto – decked out in BlankMustDie gear, giving out cards and finding who is new and interesting in the comic and graphic novel world. Lots of representatives from indie publications, and quite a few that are publishing solely online.

Chris & Jeff of Dressed for Success comics – released every Wednesday on-line. Alex Corbett and Walter Andrewkowski, two guys thrown together by chance, now making their way in a crazy universe one adventure at a time. All the while trying to stay one step ahead of the mafia and with the hopes of turning a profit. Kinda India Jones adventure, but in space.



Sean Lefebvre and IanMaclean – writer and illustrator for Armitage Mills A story of 6 men and families who secretly run the town using their money, influence and power. Once you see the book, you MUST check the web site

Promises Promises by J.R. Faulkner – Promises Promises is a glib look at diet, fitness and all the struggles and successes that come with achieving a healthy lifestyle. Promises Fitness is the name of the posh suburban club staffed by Fiona and Trish, two well meaning and cheeky fitness professionals, doing their best to keep a very resistant membership in peek condition. It’s bright, witty and hits a very different market than most of the other show presenters.

Brian Evinou is the artist and writer for Don River. A 24 page tale of mysterious suicides surrounding an elusive young girl down by the river. Check out his Blog


Ken Turner, a Canadian film maker and animation artist put together a great indie book called: Eye Candy Volume 1: the Village Idioms. A gruesome look at common expressions, living up to it’s title of eye candy. Find him at his blog


One of my fav reads from this show is: the Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks written by Max Brooks and illustrated by Ibraim Roberson. In his book we follow the millennia of zombie attacks from prehistoric man, Ancient Egyptian mummies, Roman armies to the French Foreign Legion and modern California.



Also a special mention to the Rebel Legion whose Jedi representative made a huge impression on my 3 year old – so much that he picked up the courage to blast 4 Storm Troopers passing by.

and I also bravely stood with a towering Klingon from KAG Kanada

I even scored some props for being a Browncoat sympathizer – especially since Jewel Staite of Firefly was a special guest at the show. Jewel – as charming in person as she played on screen – and the Southern Ontario Browncoats (S.O.B.’s) blog is just starting up and were scoring photos from fans at the show. Hit their site and send them Big Dam S.O.B.’s some support- here

The Brothers of the Silence, Don Richmond and Ian LeWinter are the minds behind Blank Death, the first part of the Blank Must Die trilogy. Check it out at Blank Must Die



…their appreciation can be millennia away from liking your writing, even if they’ve read you before, even if they love your other words.


It’s not like the relationship between a comedian and his audience at a comedy club. I suspect that when most people make a decision to go out into the world and pay money to listen to a comedian, they are predisposed to cracking up. When I go into a club I’m in a good mood, telling jokes, laughing and ready to be amused. I’ve actually noticed that when I’m in a club, I’m more prone to find even lame jokes funnier.

But that’s not the way that it is between the reader and the word. The lily is far less gilded.

When we read, we look at the story and the structure and the sentences and the individual words. We thrill when we read a new word that we’ve never seen before. We learn it and own it and stand a bit taller knowing that we are now one word deeper into the secret society of people who read.



We who read take all of that seriously… if we are going to plunk down our hard-earned cash, the writer better deliver. With books, not all things are created equal.

Francis Bacon mused that, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, attentively, and with diligence.

I think that if a group of words can come together and make it along the arduous journey into the printed world, then it deserves its due. Not that everything ever printed is great, it’s not. Mr. Bacon was right — only a few works that have the stuff to be great, to be the story you read over and over again.

I’ve had one of those since I was a kid. It started with my first words. Bilbo Baggins and his journey to find the ring were first, not read by myself but my mom (this is all her fault). I was hooked. So hooked, in fact, that the first books I read, “all by myself” were the trilogy that followed. And for the next 15 years of my life I read those four books every year.



I can honestly say that Mr. Tolkien changed my life, expanded my world, and implanted the early inklings of writing and its mysteries into my soul. As a writer I live in that rich world in my head, the world that my creations come from, and it was J.R.R. who laid the first rebar and poured the initial slab.

All writers have their own Lord of the Word that were part of the foundation of their beginnings. Most have many. Inspiration can come from any place; in fact many of the things we read often have nothing directly to do with what we ourselves write about. But they add richness and depth to our understanding of the world.

We read books about history, about serial killers, about irrigation methods and the science of virology. We want to make sure our science makes a modicum of sense, that the things we really don’t know anything about still sound plausible. We’re geeks for the information, we groove on the truth of things. Stephen King’s longtime associate Russ Dorr, for example, makes the generous portions of materials science, nuclear physics, and medicine that King serves up real as possible. He’s the geek behind the geek.



It is all of these ideas and bits of unrelated information and conversations, and introspection, and concerns, and joys that come together in the whirling dervish of our minds to make new words. We write to save the world from itself. We write to end the world as a lesson.

Whatever the story, message and projection of ourselves that we put forth into words, most of us are equally thankful for the gift that we can share — and for our journey to create it.


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Read Blank the Blog – Castration House

The Brothers of the Silence, Don Richmond and Ian LeWinter are the minds behind Blank Death, the first part of the Blank Must Die trilogy. Check it out at Blank Must Die

…Or, at least until we’re satisfied that you completely understand what we are trying to tell you. And here is a cool bit of truth: not only are the victim-related narratives slanted by psychological imperatives, but when we get our hands on ‘em and run ‘em through our filters, they are changed once again.

Robert Bloch, Thomas Harris, Tobe Hooper, and Kim Henkel did just that with the narratives surrounding the Edward Theodore Gein case. I first came across Gein in my search to learn more about serial-killers as the basis of a story I’m working on. I’d never read of his murders or even heard his name before, and I was surprised to find that his true life crimes were the inspiration for the books Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs, and later the movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

“How could I have missed this guy?” I thought. So I read what I could find about him.

As serial killers go, Gein was an example of quality over quantity. He was only found responsible for killing two people (though he was only tried and convicted for one). And in the years after his apprehension, further investigations only pointed to the possibility that he may have killed two or three more. In serial-killer terms a death count of four is barely worth honorable mention. What made Gein’s crimes so memorable, even if he wasn’t, was not his level of productivity — it was what he did with skin and body parts of his victims and the 40 or so corpses he disinterred (I leave the research details to you).

Here is a man whose name no one wants to remember, yet his legacy lives on in the twisted works of modern fiction writers. And those works don’t recount the real events or give notice to the real man — and yet, they do. Even Robert Bloch was surprised years later when he “discovered how closely the imaginary character [he'd] created resembled the real Ed Gein, both in overt act and apparent motivation.” He conceded that “the notion that the man next door may be a monster” was the genesis for his most famous work.

Again, I want to stress that none of the writers who drew from the Gein murders wrote about them faithfully. No one exactly described Gein’s methods. No one carefully detailed Gein’s madness the way a biographer would. And that’s perfectly okay, for as you well know, it is not always important to get the specific data right, but it is supremely important to get the motivations spot on. It is not the realm of logical reason that binds us; it is the realm of emotional reason to which we are beholden.

Goethe observed, “Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.” He knew our identities must give way to our work. We are the becoming ones. We aren’t encouraged, we are required to feel what’s happening in what we are going to write about. We might not have to live through the original experience, but we must imagine it. Not casually. We have to deeply explore how someone could hate so much or be so afraid. We can’t just chalk it up to madness. That’s the door out that others are allowed to use.

Instead, we are the killer, the victim, the police officer, and the neighbor. We are obliged to dwell on what it feels like, what it sounds like, what it smells like. We are forced to go inside, to seek out our own terrors, to connect with the things that revolt us. We see the horrific fear of the victim and taste the orgasmic delight of the killer at the same moment of death, and we feel the nausea when the neighbor finds the body. Within only ourselves we are compelled to find the unique and individual voices of everyone affected. However twisted, however distorted our accounts become, their underpinnings cannot ring untrue. Only then will our characters’ motivations appear plausible.

Which is one of the reasons we write: to discover the inner machinery of human behavior. That’s why the Gein case was such a gem: his unique story required a daunting level of psychological and emotional research. Unearthing the motivations of a madman like Gein is like excavating the remains of a newfound Egyptian tomb — it can make you wealthy, but there’s a curse attached. His was a twisted tale. Paydirt for the emotionally courageous.

But the willingness to excavate the deepest and darkest aspects of humanity regardless of outcome does not extend to your readers. When a reader picks up your words, they make some kind of agreement to read them. Their contract with your work is different than your own. While they may have a willingness to be moved, to be entertained, they aren’t compelled and their appreciation is far from a lock. (to be continued).

Need more?

follow Ian on Twitter @BlankMustDie

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Read Blank the Blog – Castration House

Ian LeWinter and Don Richmond are The Brothers of the Silence, the creative duo behind “Blank Death” the first in the “Blank Must Die” Trilogy. Check it out at Blank Must Die

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one [writer] persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [writer].” – George Bernard Shaw

Some of us write to set things right. It’s as if we are secretly driven to the street corner, the podium, or the pulpit. Not only do we feel the intense recognition and projected damnation of acts and events that drives us, but also an uncontrollable need to reveal our shortcomings. In the end, we need to know the world knows. Everything is illuminated.

And many of us believe that if we offer up a convincing argument to the world, evidenced and explained, that a new age of enlightenment will dawn and humankind will be saved from itself.  No really, we do believe this, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly. And, we believe it long after it remains reasonable to do so.

As writers our perceptions of the world may be gilded and jaded at the same time, just as the perceptions and projections of the things we write about actually are. Often the descriptions of what occurred are forever altered in the warped fun-house mirror of our minds, genuinely believed to be true and plumb. The distortions are a matter of self-protection.

Orwell believed this. He called the altered perceptions often emerging from the minds of the severely traumatized, “Doublethink”, or in modern psychiatry, “dissociation”. Orwell coined the phrase to mean that one is “exercising the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

Writers often begin the journey of creation with interviews of both the directly and the marginally affected. Those who witness events from a distance, or who were privy to a part of a larger occurrence, often provide clear and accurate descriptions. We hope to piece enough of these accounts together into a ever-clearer montage of the truth, a jig-saw puzzle of reality.

But those we term “victims,” the people whose lives will be forever affected, can only provide us a narrative whose reliability is suspect. And as Orwell was convinced, they convey it with complete conviction and moral certitude. You can’t really be angry with them. We can all understand why some things are too terrible to think about, too terrible to remember. I suspect that every human on earth carries at least one thing, one event, or one memory that they hope to never think of again.

While I don’t blame them, I will always want to write about those very things. Not to hurt them, not to cause them the pain of remembering, but to make sure that whatever it was never happens again. I know I’m too chicken for the street-corner — but give me a sheet of paper any day and I’ll gladly jump up and down on it until you get my point. (To be continued.)

Ian LeWinter – the writer behind Blank Must Die continues his exploration of a writers motivation:

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.” Truman Capote

After our impressions of the world are filtered through our understanding and experiences, thoughts and feelings intertwine — and from those inklings words emerge.

Prolificacy is governed by waves. Sometimes we stare at the screen, page, paper and nothing comes forth. No matter what we do, or how hard we stare, or if we beg, or even if we offer up our first-born: still nothing happens. Then there are times when words fly from everywhere. You find them in the shower, on the toilet, behind the milk, in your pocket, even behind your nephew’s ear. The inspiration can be an unending torrent of thoughts and ideas in word-form screaming to become real. They claw for shape, sensing that if they remain thoughts they will be lost forever.

It is interesting that these periods of vast aridity and rich fertility come and go, not based solely on the availability of our inspirations, but also on the presence of our fears. Fear of starting. Fear of being boring. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear of failing. Fear of succeeding. The flow of imagination and the choke of fear alternate, bringing energy or exhaustion, richness or dearth.

As we age and continue to build our own litanies of “What’s Important To Us” we resist the tendency to narrow the spectrum of people, ideas, events and locations that elicit inspiration. Depending on where you come from and what you’ve experienced, an item may or may not fall within the scope of “the things that get you going.” The decision is entirely personal, as are the methods we employ.

For example, consider two different reactions to atrocity. One human response to the abomination of atrocity might be to exile all traces of its existence from consciousness. There have been numerous transgressions against the social contract that, for many, are too heinous to speak aloud or to even let invade their thoughts. They block it. They confine it. And they erase it. The shock of it leaves them traumatically mute and inaccessible.

But equally as prevalent as the employment of denial is the exercise of passion. The former is used to erase, the latter to reveal. People enlist tremendous passion to obsess over an atrocity, to remember it and to tell the truth of it in an attempt to restore order and heal wounds, and, hopefully, to prevent its reoccurrence. Two equally valid, but vastly different ways of dealing with something larger than self. To paraphrase Kant: One man’s reason for dying is another man’s reason for living.

As writers, we are condemned to choose the latter. In this way, some of us write to set things right… (to be continued)

New words from Ian LeWinter – the writer behind Blank Must Die

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.  ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”, is what E.L. Doctorow thought. And last, but not least, Isaac Asimov said, “If my doctor told me I only had six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

Those expressions in their sum total, yet not completely, speak volumes to this gift, curse, burden that you and I share in the written word. Sometimes writing feels like bleeding. Sometimes you can’t type fast enough, you can’t make your brain and your fingers work in perfect harmony getting the thoughts and ideas in your head down in real-time. And sometimes the realness of the world in your head easily competes with your perceptions of the one you live in.s

Often when reading the words of others on our human history, writers become filled with a fire for comment, for their own pronouncement on the ills of mankind. And in these observations and reflections they are oft to regale a specific ill with a torrent of thunderous consternation in sentence, paragraph, and page. Combine a desire to regale with a need to admonish, defend, protect, and remember. Stir in healthy portions of a number of psychopathies. Grind up and add slow, uncontrollable burning desire (when asked why he wrote horror, the writer said, “What makes you think I have a choice.”). Let it all simmer for about 50 years and when you take off the lid you’ll have a look at the mind of a writer. Let me apologize for all of us in advance.

I once made a t-shirt that said, “Writing. The healthy alternative to killing.” I made that t-shirt because I like that statement. I like that the shirt offers my tongue-in-cheek introspection into an exaggerated true feeling. And it is a true feeling, albeit hyperbolic, for me. It brings to fine point a truth in this matter; that in the spectrum of “things that can be done”, while a word and a gun might have the same effect, locution is a stave against incarceration. The fact that I’m a pacifist also makes the gun part rather iffy.

So how does this happen?

For me, the beginning is always observation and interpretation. I see (hear, smell, taste, feel) things, and I think about those things, and I develop opinions (projections) about the things I think about. Some of those judgments and beliefs are all tied up into my ideals, the ones I’m most passionate about, and I feel compelled to put them out there, like I have no choice. (to be continued).

from Archaia Comics
written by Nick Tapalansky
illustrated by Alex Eckman-Lawn
lettered by Thomas Mauer
The once peaceful city of Park Falls has been tainted by a series of gruesome murders and missing persons. Cynthia thinks it’s Zombies – but no one will believe her, yet her information is vital in exploring the mystery. The retired police detective Peters listens to her story but can’t let himself be swayed by her beliefs and the death toll continues to climb.

Volume 1 is the fist half of the town’s struggle for answers. It is a collection of the first 5 issues of the Archaia horror series.

This book is not your typical zombie genre. Murders are happening – but the zombie condition is not being spread the way you’ve been led to believe: People collapse seemly at random, bites do not lead to transmission. Tapalansky is exploring zombies from a new perspective, and the book is as much about the people trying to overcome their own pasts and mistakes while trying to face their current situation.

The art is gritty and dark. It is weighty with feeling – raw drawings are layered over photographs and text – as if the characters are etched out of the blackness.

If you enjoy murder mysteries and want a different twist on the undead – Awakening is well worth a read. Reports claim Volume II should be out by the end of Summer 2010.