Review: Monster, She Wrote

 

“Monster, She Wrote” - that book title sounds like a story in which it turns out that Jessica Fletcher was actually a vampire who killed all those people to get a drink (and come to think of it, that would be a cool story). It is, actually, the title of a non-fiction book about women in horror literature, written by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson.

 

I stumbled over this gem by accident, seeing it mentioned in an e-book bundle which I didn’t buy in the end. Yet, this one and a second book caught my attention, so I looked them up on Amazon, and I bought them. In essence, this book simply lists important female writers of horror, speculative fiction, and dark fantasy, sorted by the time they lived in. What makes it so interesting is that those women often have started whole genres or were very influential during their time, yet are hardly mentioned any longer today.

Women wrote an amazing amount of horror and weird pulp, for instance, but they are hardly mentioned in discussions about it. A woman wrote speculative fiction about an alternate reality in the seventeenth century and that’s barely mentioned by fans of speculative fiction (who might also disagree that Mary Shelley wrote any - because ‘women, am I right’).

 

It was a joy to read about the way women write those stories, about how they write about transgression while actually transgressing, too, because at their time women weren’t supposed to write stories. How they understand the weird at the outskirts of society, which is so important for Lovecraftian fiction, for example, because they are out there at the outskirts themselves to a degree (even more so if they themselves are not white).

It was also a joy to get all those reading tips, because they’ve opened a world of new possibilities for me. Not only does every entry give a list of books by the author, but also of similar stories and sometimes biographies and movies. I enjoyed that very much.

 

The book is very thorough, giving a list of authors by the time they were writing in, breaking up the last few hundred years (remember that woman from the seventeenth century?) into chunks of time in which writing was similar, such as the gothic period or the horror boom of the 1980s. It’s also giving a nice look into the possible future of horror (although the authors couldn’t foresee the 2020 pandemic).

I like the structure of each entry - first, a little biographical section, talking about the women’s birthplace, upbringing, and general life. Then there’s a section about their writing. What topics were they using, what specifics did they prefer, what kind of horror did they describe? Finally, there’s a section with reading and, sometimes, watching suggestions. The structure is the same throughout - from the very first to the very last personal entry.

The last part of the book - the look into the future of those topics - is a little different, of course. There, the big topics of horror, speculative fiction, and dark fantasy are in the focus and the authors speak about the modern writers who have focused on them, have shaped and reshaped them, made them fresh again. This, of course, comes with more reading suggestions which are very welcome.

Especially these last few years, horror has come back as a genre of interest for many, so it’s good to look at all those old themes and tropes and to see how they can be updated to fit with the times. Of course, the old haunted mansion is not longer great - or is it? Even an old dog can learn new tricks and even an old trope can still work in a master’s or mistress’s hands.

 

Quite some of the stories listed as ‘required reading’ in American schools are not that familiar to me - the only of the stories listed there I ever had to read for school was “The Lottery” during an English class (which is a class to learn a second language, not the same as English classes in the US or the UK). Since I’m German, I’ve had a different list of ‘must reads’ in school - which, sadly, covered very few horror stories. Yet, I can still catch up and pick up a couple of the books mentioned there - at least those still around and hopefully around as e-books.

So far, I’m certainly adding more Shirley Jackson to my ‘to read’ list, together with “The Woman in Black” and a few other modern entries. I might even try to pick up a copy of “The Burning World” - that first piece of speculative fiction with an alternate reality. Perhaps I’ll retry my hand at Anne Rice’s books, too - although I very much gave up after “Queen of the Damned” once. I also think I have “The Mysteries of Udolpho” by Ann Radcliffe in an e-book collection of gothic novels - now I want to know how that guy was killed by a statue if there’s no supernatural entity around.

 

But even if you’re familiar with most of the texts, how familiar are you with the women, sometimes using male pen names, who have written them? How much do you know about their pasts, their lives, the problems they faced in real life - unlike or like their heroines and heroes? Many female authors have hardly been discussed, their lives disregarded - just as their stories are disregarded more often than not.

The writing itself is very good. The sentences are fluid, the book is easily readable. It’s a pleasant read, especially for a non-fiction book, as those often tend to be a bit dry. Then there’s the very pleasant illustrations with every chapter, even every section. The book looks very nice even on a simple black-and-white e-reader. The printed version or the e-book read on a devise with a colour screen will undoubtedly look even better. I was after the text, not after the looks, but this might be one of the few books transferred to my Kindle Fire as well, although I keep that one mostly for my audio books.

Speaking of audio books - there’s an audio version of this book as well and I’m looking forward to listening to it while I’m doing other things, like drawing or plotting. I can definitely recommend it.

 

“Monster, She Wrote” is a book I enjoyed reading very much. I can recommend it both to people who want a good non-fiction read for a change and to people who are looking for more information on women in horror, speculative fiction, and dark fantasy. It’s a very comprehensive book on the topic and offers a selection of interesting authors and texts from the very beginning of horror to the modern day you might want to check out.

Joy Through Discipline

 

Yes, I know, this sounds more like an argument for any kind of kinky sex (and I’m not judging - you do you in the bedroom and elsewhere!), but it’s a strange thing which happened to me these last few weeks. When I disciplined myself in order to get more written and make a dent into my stack of already-plotted stories, I rediscovered the joy of writing.

 

For quite a long time in my life, I’ve been a discovery writer. I have evolved from that by now, plotting a basic structure for my story, deciding on the scenes I wish to write and where they should be in the story, yet it’s still at the root of my writing. I enjoy the thrill of jumping in and writing things.

While my mum was still alive and I only had a little contact with my parents daily on the phone, that was an easy thing to do. Most of my day was free for writing, I could write what, when, and for how long I wanted.

When she died, things changed greatly for me. My alone-time was limited much more and it was hard to get around that to write again. For over a year, I hardly got any work done - first the death, then the move (mine and my dad’s), then his heart surgery and recovery, then the lingering inflammation he carried for a while. Things were difficult.

 

Afterwards, my alone-time grew a little again, but not all that much. I needed to reorganize myself. During this time, I experimented not only with doing a basic plot structure for my new projects, I also tried out the pomodoro method and found it pretty useful. Yet, I didn’t really get into it.

It was only recently that I returned to that idea. Plot structures, a simple line of scenes collected in chapters, are regular for me now, but I struggled with getting things to page. Both “Grey Eminence” and “Ignition Rites”, plotted and ready, resisted me. I found it hard to get one chapter a day done, let alone more.

After I’d finished editing “The Eye Vol. 1” in the middle of November, I decided I had to change my work ethics. Instead of listening to music or YouTube videos or TV, I decided to keep a silence while I was writing. No more distraction from work.

I continued writing “Ignition Rites” (I’d slogged my way through “Grey Eminence” before that) and I kept to my new rules. To my surprise, this enabled me to write two chapters of 3,000+ words a day! I ended November with a little over 50,000 words written - my quota for a full month, not for half of one.

I’ve also entered December very well, getting through the remainder of “Ignition Rites” and starting on another collection of three novellas - “Flatmates & Spies”. With this one done, my releases for the next year will all be finished - they’ll only need editing before release. As it looks at the moment, I will definitely be done with the manuscript soon, having reached my high goal of being all set for the next year before this one is ended.

 

So far, so good, I’ve become more productive. But what about the joy?

Well, when I came up with the idea of using the pomodoro method and not having any background noise while I was writing, I thought it would be tedious. That I would force myself to do it every day. That it would feel as if I was missing something. The opposite happened.

Without any outside distraction (the few ‘normal’ sounds of life outside don’t count for me), I could focus much, much better on my writing. I could write about 1,000 worlds per pomodoro unit, meaning I could finish a chapter in about three units, roughly one-and-a-half hours. Writing three hours a day and spending less than another on a first re-read (I try to do that before starting the next chapter to erase easy mistakes and set my new word goal), I could be more productive than I had been for a long time.

Instead of feeling tedious, it felt invigorating. I was getting somewhere, the chapters-to-write part of my plot lines grew shorter and shorter. Finishing all those books I had plotted already suddenly felt much more manageable than before. And I had a true feeling of accomplishment, looking at my word tracker every evening of the week, seeing the nice, long lines of colour filling it now.

Few were the days with 3,000 or less words - only when I had other things to do that day and couldn’t devote all the time to writing. On most days, the tracker was filled or almost filled, displaying a number with a five or a six in front of it (my novellas have a chapter goal of 2,500+, my novels one of 3,000+, so the end result for a day should be 5,000 - 6,000+).

Instead of feeling like I was under-achieving with my goals, I started to over-achieve. The 50,000 words set for a full month could be completed in a half-month. Clearly, that made a novel (60,000+ words) or a collection of novellas (also around 60,000 words) per month a definitely possibility. More than that, even, but I also would eventually have to set time aside for plotting again.

 

The feeling of accomplishment, of having done something, also influenced my spare time. Instead of feeling that I should also write on the weekend, that I should try to write in the evening, too, to make up for the slack during the day, I could finally give myself time off. After eight to ten chapters a week, I could certainly take the weekend off and do what I wanted. I could certainly spend my evening doing what I liked instead of trying to squeeze in more writing while I was getting tired, given I’d already written two chapters.

With this, the joy came back to writing for me. The joy of opening the text document at the beginning of the day, of opening Campfire Pro to see where I was. The joy of reading through the rough description of the next scene and then transforming it into a real scene in my mind and on the page. I found joy in turning to the computer and the keyboard, joy I’d been missing ever since my life changed. No longer was I ‘making’ myself write, I was writing because I wanted to, I was looking forward to the moment when I could start it, could dive in again, could turn a vague idea into a story. That, of course, made it much easier to write even more.

 

The joy has returned to me through the discipline of making writing the most important thing on most of my days. Instead of letting myself get distracted, I focus on my stories and there’s nothing else while I’m writing - no music, no background noise. It brings me joy and satisfaction again and I am very grateful for that.

The Horrors of Dracula - Hammer Edition

 When I was a teen and I started getting into horror movies (a little late, being the scaredy cat I was), a large chunk of the movies I could easily lay my hands on were Hammer horror movies. “The Reptile”, “Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter”, and, of course, “Dracula”. That’s why the Hammer horror movies have a very special place in my heart even today.

 

Why were the Hammer movies so easy to get? Well, by the time I got into horror movies, VCRs were around and private TV stations were coming to Germany. Old movies, like the 1960s and 1970s Hammer movies weren’t too expensive to get, so they often were put up for late-night features at those private stations. Since I’ve always been very good at programming a VCR, I could tape the movies at night and then watch them later. I also saw a lot of AIP movies (including the two Dr. Phibes ones or the wonderful horror comedy called “The Raven”) and other horror movies from that period. Yet, Hammer stood out for me.

I didn’t quite realize why then, but was reminded of it when I recently watched a YouTube video about Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” which mentioned that this movie actually used an aesthetic derived from Hammer horror: muted colours for everything but the overly bright and overly red blood.

 

I will be honest - even when I was a teen, Hammer movies usually didn’t scare me too much. While blood and gore (and sex) featured in them as heavily as was allowed at the time of their making, the mid- to late eighties were certainly a time when people were used to more of both. What stuck with me, however, was the acting. The movies had many good actors in them - quite often from before a time when those actors had gotten really famous - and those actors carried roles which would have been weak when played with less skill.

Recently, I added to my rather small Hammer DVD collection. I had the first and the fifth official “Dracula” movie, “Captain Kronos”, and “Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb” (an interesting version of Bram Stoker’s “The Jewel of Seven Stars”). I added a DVD collection with the first three “Dracula” movies (there are more, but not all of them are officially considered to be part of the series these days) and two DVDs with the fourth and sixth movie. The sixth one is still ‘18+’ here in Germany, but after watching it, I couldn’t say why.

Of course, all of the movies are very much ‘in name only’ (safe for Captain Kronos - there is no book version of that one around). That was what Hammer was all about. People would have fainted from shock, had they ever made a movie with a famous book’s name in the title and actually followed the story from the book. If you watched a Hammer version of Dracula or Frankenstein or another story that was famous, you didn’t expect for it to be close to the original in any way. You expected blood, gore, and as many bare bosoms as they could fit into it.

 

When it comes to “Captain Kronos”, certainly one of the lesser-known vampire movies Hammer made, I’m still sad it wasn’t enough of a success to become another series - the 2004 comic mini-series based on it was great and there was a lot of space for more vampire hunting by Captain Kronos (who, in addition, was played by a German actor of some renown over here). Captain Kronos would have been the first original series made by Hammer - but it wasn’t to be.

“Dracula”, on the other hand, was one of the big draws when it came to Hammer Films. They made an especially good choice with two actors chosen for the first movie: Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing (who was far more badass in the Hammer version, too). Lee read up on the character he was supposed to play and, despite the movie being nothing like the book, he managed to understand the character and to give it a vivacity which befits a vampire (how thirsty for life and the lovely throats of women do you have to be to get out of your coffin every night?). Lee played Dracula as an un-dead man who knew about his influence on women and who used it ruthlessly for his own wants and needs. One look at him, one touch of his hand, and the woman was completely under his thrall. Women only - but imagine having Dracula go for both men and women in the 1960s…

Lee became synonymous with Dracula for a lot of movie-goers, which wasn’t always pleasant for him. Being typecast is not a good thing for any actor and Lee was capable of a lot more than playing the vampire count. Yet, he also was so much Dracula in people’s minds that Hammer would pay him well for reprising the role, realizing that their Dracula movies only worked out successfully with him in that role. It would, however, be until the jump into the future (the then-present day) that he’d be reunited with Peter Cushing again, who would then play his opponent for two more movies, playing a descendant of the original Van Helsing.

 

Are the Hammer movies cheesy by today’s standards? Yes, they are. They’re also still fun to watch, though. After receiving my DVDs recently, I spent two evenings re-watching the movies and was well-entertained. Being able to look at the surroundings, the costumes, the sets as well as the story, I found that the Hammer style (muted colours for everything but the blood) actually makes a lot of sense. The blood is unnaturally red - it doesn’t look like blood, once you think about it. Yet, it jumps out at you with every bite of Dracula, with every look at his blood-smeared mouth, at the litres of blood streaming from the lesser vampires’ (usually women’s) chests when they get impaled while giving a very amusing ‘orgasm’ impression.

Then there’s the gore factor. Considering the technology available at the time - only practical effects, since CGI was nothing more than a producer’s dream then -, the death scenes of Dracula especially were impressive. As the main villain of the stories, Dracula never was simply impaled (until the beginning of “Dracula A.D. 1972”, that is, when it’s not his final end); he was forced into sunlight, drowned under ice, hit by lightning and burned, and other unpleasant things. His skin and flesh would then peel from the body as he slowly was turned into a mere skeleton and, finally, into a heap of ashes which would, some way or other, be resurrected later. It looks rather realistic, even by modern standards.

 

When you find yourself with some time on your hands and can catch a Hammer movie on TV or find a cheap DVD or video download (YouTube carries quite some of the movies, I think), give them a chance. They might not outright scare you, but they’ll definitely keep you entertained.

Revisiting Jeremy Brett's Holmes

 

Between 1984 and 1994, two thirds of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle were adapted for TV by Granada Television, a British television company. Their screenplays stayed reasonably close to the stories, too, only changing what needed to be changed to adapt a written story to a visual medium. Sherlock Holmes was played throughout all episodes and the feature-length films by Jeremy Brett who has ruled supreme as Sherlock Holmes in the minds of many viewers ever since.

 

I was a preteen when the TV series aired in Germany (having been born in 1974) and so Jeremy Brett became very much the third Sherlock Holmes I ever saw (following Basil Rathbone and Christopher Lee, the latter in a British-German co-production playing very loose with the characters and stories).

I suspect that I only ever saw a handful of the episodes, since I can’t remember much past the second season from re-watching them on DVD recently. The explanation, upon checking the series on Wikipedia, can of course be that the first two seasons were produced in the early eighties whereas the last two seasons were produced about ten years later. Be it as it may, I only got a glimpse of sorts at Brett’s delivery of the character then and have never looked at the series again until quite recently.

Yet, Brett held a certain place in my heart, albeit not the one he should have held. I was probably around eleven by the time the first season aired in Germany, so it was a long time ago. I know I liked it - otherwise, I hardly would remember it any longer. There’s a lot of TV series I loved at that time I can’t even name these days. I can still remember this one - albeit I do remember some things wrong.

Part of this has come from me being a preteen and this being a series for adults. There are things in the episodes which are pretty obvious and clear to me now which I just couldn’t quite understand then.

 

Brett’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was just a muted memory at the back of my mind until recently - other actors taking on the role overshadowed him for one reason or other. Peter Cushing, for instance, who played Sherlock Holmes in one of my favourite versions of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (and in a BBC series which predates Brett’s). Basil Rathbone, of course, whose movies run every now and then during the holiday season. I was pretty taken with Christopher Lee as an actor for quite a while as a teen (still am, he was a very fine actor and amazing person), so I also revisited his turn as Sherlock Holmes in the aforementioned movie (he is also in Hammer’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, playing both Sir Henry and Sir Hugo Baskerville alongside Cushing’s Sherlock Holmes).

 

One important thing about Brett’s interpretation is that it was long before the idea of the ‘asshole genius’ took off ground. For those of you who are not aware of this trope - in a lot of modern TV shows and movies, very intelligent characters (Sherlock Holmes, Dr. House, Sheldon Cooper, and countless others) are shown as being very brash, abrasive, often outright assholes. It’s suggested that both traits - genius-level intelligence and antisocial behaviour - are somehow connected.

Brett’s Sherlock Holmes is not like that. He’s a reserved gentleman who will not immediately project his feelings for everyone to see, but he’s not an inhuman, robotic computer, either. His interactions with Watson are those of two men who have been sharing rooms for a while - they are friends and they interact like friends do, teasing each other, bickering a bit, arguing every now and then, but being comfortable in each other’s presence as well. He is polite, friendly, and kind towards his clients, especially if the clients happen to be women or a little on the helpless side for other reasons. He can also be harsh towards people, but that side is rightfully reserved for the culprits of the stories.

This fits very well with the way Doyle presents Holmes, through Watson’s eyes, in the stories. Doyle was a man of his time and the same goes for Mr. Holmes, who clearly didn’t grow up the right way to show emotions openly. Even though he clearly does eschew quite some social rules of his time, pushing the Bohemian angle of his character - perhaps to annoy his brother Mycroft - he can’t help being the person he is. He might also simply be a reserved person by nature. Doyle himself would certainly not subscribe to the ‘asshole genius’ interpretation.

 

After dropping the first DVD into my DVD drive, I was very surprised by Brett’s interpretation of the character and had to belatedly agree with other people online who had been claiming Brett did the best Sherlock Holmes for a long while already.

I don’t think he did the only good interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, of course. Johnny Lee Miller plays a very good modern Holmes in “Elementary” and I was a fan of “Sherlock” until the fourth season (yes, even all throughout “The Abominable Bride”). Christopher Lee has played both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes rather well. Peter Cushing did a very good Sherlock Holmes, both in the Hammer movie and in the BBC series. Michael Caine playing an actor playing Sherlock Holmes is still cracking me up whenever I watch “Without A Clue”; and Ben Kingsley did a great Dr. Watson who was the real detective and had to play at the bumbling assistant while coaching Caine on the solution of the case.

Yet, Brett has given a wonderful performance as well and I will certainly honour that from now on. I do enjoy the series episodes and I surely do enjoy the feature-length movies. He’s definitely far ahead of many more modern versions of Sherlock Holmes - honestly, stop doing the ‘asshole genius’. That trope has had its time, put it to rest and give us a more human Holmes - and a few other geniuses who don’t think they need to be horrible to other people to show their intelligence.

 

Watch the series with Jeremy Brett (there is a marvellous full collection for a reasonable price around, so you don’t have any excuses not to) and learn from it. Make Sherlock Holmes Great Again!

Constructing a Mystery

 

After last week’s post about motive, means, and opportunity, here is something about the crafting of your main plot in a mystery story. This one does also apply to other mysteries, not just to the whodunit. Whenever your story revolves around a question, you can use these pointers to craft your main plot.

 

Edgar Allan Poe (whose Auguste Dupin predates Sherlock Holmes quite a bit) once wrote in an essay about mystery stories that the best way to write one was from the end to the beginning, meaning by starting with the big reveal of the answer and going back from there. That is a pretty solid suggestion, since the whole story is centred on that plot and on finding the answer. Without knowing what the answer is, there’s no way to lead the way to it.

The very first thing to figure out when you want to write a mystery is, therefore, the solution to it. The answer to the question you’re posing at the beginning is what you’ll use for the story’s culmination. This is the starting point for your main plot, which is all about finding the answer.

 

Let’s focus on a whodunit again for the moment, although the principle works for every mystery story, no matter what the mystery is. In a whodunit, the answer to the mystery is who did the crime. Minor answers are the motive, means, and opportunity I wrote about in last week’s blog post, but the answer everyone wants is the one to the question ‘who did it?’.

This is the point to start with the plot - the murder. How was it committed? Who is the culprit and who is the victim? What was the reason for it? Once you know all about the murder, can retell it the same way your investigator might if you go for the ‘You may wonder why I have asked you all here’ reveal, this part is done. You now know your answer and you can figure out how to present it best.

Let’s go on from here and line up all possible suspects, because you definitely need more than one for it to be a mystery. Who else has motive, means, and opportunity for the murder? Who else hates the victim or stands to gain from their death in any way? Who else can handle the murder weapon and would have access to it? Who else was in the vicinity when the murder happened? Create two tiers of suspects - some with two of the three boxes ticked and some with only one box ticked. Like this, you have a greater range of suspects and your investigator will have to work harder in the middle of the story. Suspects with only one of the three boxes ticked will be out as soon as it becomes clear that they hardly had a way to do the murder. Those with two boxes ticked are more interesting, because they’re the more likely ones. Your murderer will hide in that tier, do the best they can do to hide that tick in the third box which will make them the prime suspect.

Still, the story will be too simple if there’s only those suspects to tick off as the investigator finds them short of one or two of the three aspects. The next step is to create false leads, to make smaller plots which wrap around the big one. In most investigations, there are other things coming to the surface as well - secrets which have nothing to do with the murder, but are still damaging for the ones holding them. The investigator will encounter lies about the three aspects which have nothing to do with the main case, but merely with other things being hidden out of shame or fear. These complications can only be applied after you’ve figured out the suspects, because they’re related to the suspects.

Finally, the beginning. Figure out how to best present the murder, how to place some initial clues for the investigator to start with. Perhaps you wish to introduce the cast first, give the setting a good look, so the audience can focus more on the murder later. Perhaps you want to go right in with the murder. It’s up to you, up to how you want to write it. The murder or the discovery of the murder make for instant action, which is always a good start for a story because you have an instant hook. On the other hand, many mystery readers, especially when you veer into cosy mystery territory or want to copy classic writers like Agatha Christie, like getting eased into the story, like to get a look at the victim while they’re still alive, so they have a better understanding about why someone would want to kill them.

Once you have decided, your main plot is complete from beginning to end. You may now tag on a little epilogue at the end, perhaps to tie up some additional plots, such as a romantic subplot or a personal development of your investigator. Your main plot is done - you are now ready to write the mystery unless you want to work on the secondary plots a little more.

 

This works for other kinds of mystery stories, too. Figure out the answer to your question first, add problems in finding it, flesh out secondary plots, and figure out how to begin the story by posing the question well. If you do so, you will always know which hints there are to drop, which makes it much easier to see when in the story to drop them. You can take the investigator and the audience to the red herrings on the way without losing sight of the actual path to the answer. Finally, you can give them a satisfying climax of the story where the answer is told and the answer told will fit with the clues they have seen along the way.

Make sure you’re giving all vital clues to the audience because they expect that. They want to guess along with the main character, create their own theories and change them as new information becomes available. You don’t have to give them the main character’s theories to the answer, that can wait until the end, but they must have the means to form their own opinion.

 

Mr. Poe clearly was right and it is much better and easier to plot a mystery from the conclusion to the beginning. Whether you wish to write it backwards as well is your decision, but at any rate you will have a solid main plot and the ability to go through the middle without too much trouble about knowing which clues you need to present throughout it.