A few more final thoughts (for now at least) on the creepy-kid genre.

While I focus on fictional accounts, there are unfortunately numerous examples of real-life prominent cases of violence and terror perpetrated by children and adolescents. One of the Boston Marathon bombers was merely nineteen. Vicious crimes are committed by teenage males (usually), sometimes individually and sometimes in packs. School shootings are now a fairly regular event, and their occurrence leaves us shaking out heads in confusion looking for reasons why these things happen.

We are destined to be confused after each and every occurrence because there are multiple reasons for each one, and these reasons differ across events. In addition, there will always be unknowns in each occurrence which we simply cannot identify. This missing data is frustrating because we cannot fill the gaps and we want to know – we want to be assured that this situation cannot happen to us. We want to think, well it’s no wonder this terrible thing happened, look at how he lived…or look at his parents – their lives are a mess, or it’s drugs, I tell ya…

Chances are, many of these variables or other related factors play a role in the disturbing acts of youth - or none of them do. More likely, though, the etiology is an unpredictable combination of genetics, biology, parenting skills, family dysfunction, abuse, alcoholism, mentally ill parents, individual child factors like poor social skills or coping skills or reasoning skills, neurological issues, violent TV preferences, living in a violent neighborhood, an absent father, the proliferation of automatic weapons… we can go on and on. And, this interacting combination of factors will vary from kid to kid. The same risk factors might produce drug abuse in one teenager and an eating disorder in another. Likewise, there can be multiple risk factors that vary across kids which promote the same problem.

For many parents, you don’t need supernatural events to watch your beloved child struggle on a day to day basis. The emotional distress in a child is enough to ravage parental hopes and dreams. The sense of panic doesn’t relent as parents watch their children grow despondent or become fearful or descend into a nightmare of self-destructive behavior.

When I went to college, I had it in my head that I would major in something like political science and then go to law school and become a lawyer. My freshman year I took an Introduction to Psychology class as an elective. I fell in love with the topic. I found myself really interested in developmental issues – the stages that kids go through as they mature, the skills they learn to navigate their world, how they mature in their cognitive or reasoning abilities – you name it, I found it fascinating. This class changed my life trajectory. I was intrigued with how kids develop and became drawn to examine factors that might play a role when things go wrong. I started studying and researching the moral and social reasoning in delinquent adolescents. This lead to working with adolescents to improve self-control skills and anger-management skills. Somewhere along the way, my professional interests shifted to kids who seemed to function okay on the outside but who struggle internally with anxiety and stress. From there, it was only a short jump to focusing on youth with chronic health conditions and any related adjustment problems or adherence problems. While some of this work was conducted in a clinical setting, the vast majority of my work occurred in academic settings. That is, as a university professor, most of my professional work emphasized the training of graduate students and conducting research on these very topics.

You’re probably wondering, what’s the point of all this?

Well, here goes.

There is one thing I can say about my life with absolute certainty: I am sure glad I didn’t become a lawyer.

This career has been very fulfilling. It has been an honor to work with graduate students in order to train them as counselors and psychologists. My work with teenagers and their families has also been very rewarding. I’ve seen kids learn new skills and make sense of their experiences. Sometimes, I’ve seen the impact of therapy through the eyes of my students – when they are excited in their reports of client improvement. These are truly remarkable moments.

Since I have been writing horror novels on the side, so to speak, I have tried very much to incorporate these observations. In Birth Offering, I wanted Ryan to experience a lack of certainty about what is going on with him. I wanted his mother’s concern that he is developing a mental illness to feel palpable to the reader. My incorporation of these notions into a horror story worked pretty well, I think.  Incidentally, I will have a novella published next year by Damnation Books, entitled Dead Works (this is the first unofficial/official announcement, I guess), and the story line addresses this topic more directly. The entire novel takes place within the context of a therapy session between a doctoral psychology student and his 13-year old client. The focal point of the story is essentially this: is the client being haunted or is he developing a mental illness?

Well, I apologize for a certain lack of cohesion in this entry. There is a certain connection with the topic of the past two posts, mainly in terms of how “it all fits”. Now, if I can just figure out what it all means…

As I’ve written about in an earlier blog, I can trace my enjoyment of the creepy kid sub-genre back to around 1960 where my six-year old self was terrified, yet simultaneously fascinated, by the movie trailer (or coming attractions as they were called then) of the Village of the Damned. The thought that kids could be monsters (not a surprise to my mom and dad, I’m sure) both scared me and thrilled me.

So, as I decided to start writing horror fiction, I guess it was no surprise that a kid would be the main protagonist in my first (and subsequent) efforts. Not to be outdone by other writers, I ended up with multiple kid characters in my debut novel, Birth Offering. The main character is Ryan Perry, my hero and, if you take a look, the kid who is in frequent peril. So, he satisfies the youth as hero character – well actually he more than satisfies the youthful hero description (I ended up really liking this kid). On the other end of the divide – the creepy kid character – Birth Offering has not one but three creepy kids. These fit the supernatural end of the creepy-kid spectrum. One ghostly apparition and two “feral” kids who are a lot more than just feral. These two kids, Hugo and Max, are my favorite creations. While they do not have a tremendous amount of “page-time”, their presence is hinted at frequently, and their actions are downright ghastly. A review on Amazon called Max a “thoroughly unsettling portrait”. I am really pleased with this description – I really wanted to aim for something like this.

I really focused on trying to create credible youth characters in Birth Offering. In the case of my hero, Ryan Perry, this meant making him seem like a typical kid despite the fact that he constantly faced extraordinary circumstances. He had to be smart and brave enough to consider and engage in dangerous courses of action and be in great physical shape to endure some excruciating consequences of those actions. He had to be impulsive enough and, there is no kind way of saying it, immature enough to engage in some stupid courses of action and also whine about the consequences. He had to be inexperienced enough to be flustered by the presence of a pretty girl – enough so that he could completely lose sight of the fact that something supernatural is intent on killing him.

My task for creating Hugo and Max was not that much different. These kids were monsters, but their actions and their behaviors had to be tempered with those that made them look very much like 12 and 9 year old boys. There was the selfishness and sullenness that comes with a 12 year old that was incorporated into Hugo’s character, and the cuteness that defined Max. The grounded characteristics really provided an extreme contrast to the horrifying nature of their actions when the deeds become evident. 

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”

That was my initial thought as I started typing this blog on my laptop. The content of this piece, and maybe a few pieces in a row if things go according to plan, is the impact of having children and adolescents as characters in novels – especially horror novels. I know I’ve addressed this in some capacity before (hence the question), but I keep coming around to it because of one influence or another.

There are two ways, at least, where youth as character influence horror fiction. The first is child or teen as hero - or what quickly becomes child or teen in peril as the action progresses. I think this is a throwback to our youthful days when we read children’s books or YA books in which we had this kind of character. They’re still around in significant numbers in today’s youth fiction (e.g., the Harry Potter series capitalizes on this approach very successfully). Stephen King also makes fair use of kids in his novels. They stand bravely head to head with monsters, aliens, demons, or ghosts with aplomb that adults can’t begin to muster. King even ups the ante of terror for his regular readers because he has managed to kill off an underage character on multiple occasions. With king, you never really know if a kid is going to survive – or escape unscathed. All by way of saying, youth-as-hero or youth-in-peril strikes a chord – adventures we’ve come to enjoy and expect based at least in part on our reminiscences from youthful reading pastimes. Let’s face it, though, the youth in peril motif is a cheap terror. Most adults will feel a slightly heightened sense of anxiety if a well-drawn young character is in jeopardy as compared to that of an adult character.

The second “youthful” influence in horror is when the kid is the source of the horror - the “creepy kid” sub-genre of horror. They are the serial killers, the demonically possessed, the sources of the haunting, the dead, the vampires (as in Salem’s Lot, not those tiring paranormal romance stories), and so on. These characters “work” in horror fiction precisely because this behavior is so counter to our expectations of how young people should act.

There are numerous fictional accounts of these kids, and some are as old as the hills. My favorite “early” example is Turn of the Screw. The main focus, of course, of this work is whether the young governess is mentally ill and hallucinating when she encounters the evil presence of Quint and Miss Jessel. The alternative is that the ghosts are indeed real. I’ve always been intrigued by the behavior of Miles and Flora – the two kids. Are they complicit in the activity of the ghosts or unwittingly (or maybe purposely) gaslighting the governess? I may be reading way too much into this, but I always had my suspicions about those two kids.  Miles, after all, had just been expelled from school because of something unspeakable.

Okay, I’m rambling way too much here. I’ll continue with the creepy kid sub-genre in my next blog.

Cake for my author event at Boswell Books this evening.... what a scream

In my post-Birth Offering efforts, two novellas entitled Sweet Aswang and Dead Works, I found myself writing about teenage characters again. While it was intentional with Sweet Aswang, the appearance of a teenager as a main character in Dead Works came out of left field. He was meant to be on the periphery, but his narrative became so engrossing that he moved to center stage. I’ll be writing about these works in the future.

One anecdote from these two projects: when I showed my in-house editor (that is, my daughter – who was around 20 at the time) a draft for Sweet Aswang – which has two adolescents, a boy and a girl - the subsequent exchange went something like this:

Me: “So, what did you think?”

My daughter: “Not bad. But geez, dad, stick with boys. You couldn’t write from a girl’s point of view if your life depended on it.”

She is an honest reviewer; I can say that with certainty.

Well, I just found out that the LED display – the screen part of the laptop (I guess) - has failed. Good news is that it is still under warranty! So, they (the university tech repair folks) are ordering a new one. The hope is, at least on my part, that the part will arrive on Monday and the repair will be completed by Tuesday.

Phew.

Next week is an interesting week. First, our master’s program is going through an accreditation visit by a national organization. This is a huge deal and a stressful process. We are cautiously optimistic, however. The whole shebang takes two days, and much of our time is tied up with organizing and facilitating the process. Nonetheless, I tend to find these things rather interesting. The site visitors will talk with administration, faculty, and students. And, quite frankly, our students really help us shine. They are dynamic and very smart – I enjoy them all.

Then… on Wednesday night (right after the site visit ends), I have my Author Event!

I will do a short reading and answer questions regarding my novel, Birth Offering. Showtime is 7:00 at Boswell Books in Milwaukee. I am hoping for a huge crowd. I am not sure what huge is, but I am hoping for it regardless. I will blog about it later next week. I expect being brain dead on Wednesday night, so nothing will appear at that time – but later in the week….

Hello everyone. I am here to report that my laptop has chosen this moment to behave in a very troubling manner. The tech-folks think that they know the problem and it is a relatively easy fix, but they are conducting a diagnostic something or other to check it out. If their assumption is correct, then it will take a few days to repair. All by way of saying, my blogging and commentaries may be missing, or at best sporadic, during this time period.
I will return, though, with my usual thoughts and insights (or lack thereof) as soon as I can.

I just finished watching Room 237, a documentary developed around various theories of film critics and academics. I must say I enjoyed it tremendously – but not because of the content. There were five or six film experts discussing their individual analyses of the film and pointing out various messages and symbolism. I honestly don’t have the intelligence or the creativity to see all of these symbols while watching films – including this one. Whenever I had to write a paper for high school or college about symbolism in books or movies, I struggled. I relied on the old standbys – light and dark, good and evil. In my high school, which was an all-boys Catholic school, you could get a lot of mileage out of the symbolism of Christ figures in literature (e.g., think Simon in the Lord of the Flies – amazing how I still remember that).

These film experts were way out of my league. They were describing how the film version of the Shining represented genocide (of the American Indians, of the Jews by Hitler), the history of humankind, minotaur symbolism (I didn’t quite get this), and my personal favorite – how Kubrick was informing the world that he worked for NASA and faked the pictures of the moon landing in the summer of 1969.

Evidently, Stanley Kubrick was a very particular film maker. Anything in a particular shot had a meaning. Nothing is there by accident. So, I guess it is possible to comb over every frame of the movie and find various examples to fit a particular symbolism or theme. I don’t know. As I’ve said, this stuff is way beyond me, so I will leave it to the experts. I can say that the film was enjoyable as these narrators were pointing out all of this symbolism.

The most enjoyable portions, however, were the spooky shots that I never noticed before. For instance, when Danny and Wendy were watching Summer of ’42 on the TV in the lobby, there is no electric cord. When Jack goes into the manager’s office for his interview at the beginning of the film, there is a window behind the manager’s head. So? Well, from the preceding shot, you can see that this window is impossible. The structure of the hotel would have made that office internal to the building – so no window with a view. Finally, some guy had the idea to play the movie backwards and superimpose the backwards film over the film as it played the correct way. I mean, who would think of doing this? Nonetheless, some guy did. And, the outcome was pretty interesting… I’ll let you see it for yourself.

So, in preparation for Doctor Sleep (which I fear I may not be able to read until Christmas time given my schedule – sigh), watching this movie was a bit of a warm up. An interesting diversion with the Kubrick version, prepping me for the King sequel.

Ernie Chase is a 50-year old homeless alcoholic. He is injured while witnessing a violent confrontation between an inner-city gang and what appears to be a group of well-financed individuals in the pharmaceutical trade. When Ernie regains consciousness, he finds himself recovering from a gunshot wound. Unfortunately for Ernie, during the melee he has been infected with a dangerous virus which requires him to consume human blood to stay alive. He is given a simple choice by his captor; receive continuing treatment for his strange new condition in exchange for lifelong service, or face certain death. So begins Product by Ian McCain.

I will admit to a certain hesitation about reading Product. The plot involves vampires, and as everyone knows, the genre has been overdone this past decade – especially in the form of romantic adolescent vampires. These paranormal romances have monopolized supernatural fiction like an invasive species.

I can safely report that Product does not fit into this category. The vampires can be ruthless and gruesome without the aid of “the product”. So, if you want gore, you’ve got it. More importantly, however, are the additions and extras that Ian McCain brings to vampire lore. As you may have guessed, I haven’t read a lot of vampire stuff in recent years other than the first two books of The Passage trilogy. So, some of these plot elements in Product may be old hat to some people, but to me, these were wonderful new twists. For instance, there is an-depth discussion about how the “Virus” is transmitted, how it operates within the human host, who are the carriers, and what happens if they virus isn’t fed. The discussion was very fascinating, and I was able to suspend disbelief as a result of these “scientific” interludes. In a similar vein (sorry, I couldn’t help that), Mr. McCain presents a couple of breathtaking accounts of what it is like to actually make the transformation from human to an infected vampire, and how it feels to surrender to the urge to dine on human blood. This creativity is the backbone of the story as far as I was concerned, and kept the narrative alive.

One area that was a little shaky for me was Mr. McCain’s choice of narrative mode. The novel starts out in the third person, omniscient voice which fluctuates across the main character Ernie and some inner-city African American gang members.  Periodically, the author tries to ground this omniscient voice with frequent thoughts separated in quotes that are supposed to be indicative of the perspective of a 50-year old alcoholic street person or the preferred dialect of African American youths. These interjections ring completely false within these contexts, and tend towards the stereotyping of characters instead of character development. Also, there were instances during the omniscient narrating when the story loses some of its urgency. Mr. McCain often resorts to telling as opposed to showing during these passages. Interestingly enough, when the author shifts towards a subjective, third person voice, as he does when he describes the experiences of a Romanian boy named Antonios (you’ll have to read the story to understand how he shows up) and the experiences of Tayvon, a young gang member who becomes infected, the narrative really takes off. As a matter of fact, some of the strongest passages in the book involve the accounts of Antonios and Tayvon. The imagery is vivid and the urgency for all of the characters is heightened.

Overall, I liked this story. As it turns out, this is the first of a series. I suspect that more developments will occur during the next book, along with further insights into characters that are left hanging. I’ll rate this one a 3.5 and round it up to 4.0. Vampire fans out there? Don’t pass this one up.

When I read The Shining, I was ecstatic. Here was probably the scariest novel I had ever read, and coming on the heels of Carrie and Salem’s Lot, I anticipated having a lifetime of unbelievably good reads coming from the mind of Stephen King. The latter expectation did not come true however, and I realize I was placing the author on a pedestal of my own lofty expectations.  After all, impressions vary as to what is scary. In addition, King is only human after all, and he wouldn’t always hit it out of the park. The best baseball players are successful only 35% of the time. Why would I expect him to be in top form all of the time.  Besides, I never took into account that my 20 year old self (or however old I was when I read The Shining) would change over the years after facing new experiences - all of which would color my viewpoints and reactions to what I read. 

While King and I have had our ups and downs (and we’re currently on the ups as I’ve really enjoyed the past three or four releases), one thing has remained true and that is my perception of The Shining. It still is one of my scariest reads. I haven’t reread it in probably 25 years, however, and I’m apprehensive about doing it. So, I think I will jump right into Doctor Sleep without sitting down to The Shining first. I’ll ground this reading experience as it is occurring to the character, Danny. Evidently, this is based many decades after the incidents that took place in the Overlook Hotel. So, I will treat it the same way – experience this plot many years after experiencing the horrors at that hotel.