Retrograde

It’s a scientific fact that if you take your foot off the gas, you’ll lose momentum. The same applies if you cease to continue applying yourself to forward motion. To your home. To your job. To your relationships. To your physical, mental and/or spiritual health. It’s not all uphill, but ongoing effort is required.

Was it George Washington who said complacency is democracy’s greatest enemy? Somebody said it, and democracy is one thing. A large thing, granted, but the statement fits all to which we mortals aspire. I don’t mean to chide anyone for skipping a nightly prayer or a daily vitamin here; this isn’t a reprimand. It’s a theory.

My favourite villain at present is the bad guy in Sleepy Hollow. He’s a super-successful industry magnate who has recently gained immortality through nefarious means (he sold his soul to the Devil, then reneged on the deal by stealing the Philosopher’s Stone). During a dream sequence at the start of one episode, he pontificated on humanity’s need, nay desire, for a shepherd. He talked of our reluctance to apply ourselves to the labour of self-government, our abhorrence to think for ourselves, and our inherent propensity to take the easy route. That route, regrettably, leads to complacency. From there, society goes downhill pretty steadily. Eventually, we lose what others fought to preserve or achieve in hope of creating a better world for us—their children. Finally, when enough momentum has been lost, things like the US election and Brexit happen, and we all wake up in the 1950s.

Are we truly going backward? Have we allowed our society to regress beyond redemption? Do we really have to start over, to regain ground first broken for us then lost through our own negligence? Sure seems like it ... but maybe it’s a matter of perception.

Every once in a while (too often for my taste), the planet Mercury goes into retrograde. This happens when Mercury’s orbit, which is smaller and faster than Earth’s, takes it past us and into a spin that makes it appear as if the tiny planet is moving backward across our night sky. It messes with technology and communications (don’t ask me how) until Mercury catches up with us ... or we catch up to Mercury. Again, it’s a matter of perception.

And that’s my point. We may appear as if we’re moving backward, but in truth we continue to move forward. Even as hatred and avarice seem to be gaining strength, the majority who oppose these recessive traits are amassing to fight them. At the very least, we’re maintaining orbit, and in time, when enough collective energy gathers to push us ahead once more, we’ll come out of social retrograde.

In the meantime, maintain your cool. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. Blame no one. Take responsibility. Work hard. Remember your divinity. Express gratitude. Breathe. Tell someone you love them. Be the change you want to see. Trust your heart. Let’s continue moving forward, wide awake and aware.

With love,

Dark Dynasty

Of course I’ve seen the new Star Wars movie! Of course it’s a blast! J.J. Abrams directed and Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote—how can it fail?

It doesn’t … except perhaps in the most critical area of an epic battle between good and evil.

The villain is a petulant adolescent rather than a deeply disturbed and thoroughly traumatized adult.

Sigh.

The kid tries his best to be rotten, but he’s up against a legend, and even if Darth Vader became a pop icon instead of a modern-day Mephistopheles, he still packed a heavier punch in a galaxy far, far away than the reedy stripling who swears to avenge him.

Um, he doesn’t need avenging, kid. He was redeemed at the end of Episode VI.

So here’s hoping that we get some back story in the next movie, because without a darned good reason for his subversive behaviour in this one, I have a problem with a baddie who needs a timeout and a good spanking.

The Empire Strikes Back remains my favourite of the franchise. All hail Lord Vader!

Big Bad Wolfe

My best bad guy is a vampire named Darius Wolfe. Few of my devoted followers have met him, but I have seen him through the eyes of too many of his victims to think him anything less than the most villainous villain I have ever written.

And he’s totally good with it.

The stories about him are always told through the eyes of someone else. That will never change. Unlike Julian Scott-Tyler or Ariel Black, it’s a waste of his time for Darius to tell his side of anything. He expects unquestioning acceptance that he does everything for a reason and woe befall anyone who opposes him. I’m uncertain if he’s a psycho or a sociopath; I’d have to consult an expert on whether he fits into a category or is in a league of his own, and I’m not going there because my go-to defence of “I’m just the scribe” might not survive the scrutiny.

Besides, he’s too much fun to write. I’d stopped for a while, three and a half volumes into a series about the woman bound to serve him that may yet see the light of day, albeit in a different way than originally penned. He popped up in last year’s story of a hit man who discovers a girl washed up on the beach, and a couple of weeks ago, I heard from the woman he married when he was still a mortal (I can’t say he was ever truly human). I’ve been working with her since then, telling her side of the tale, and wouldn’t you know, he was a rat bastard in mortality as well. Maybe even worse, given what he did to become immortal.

No, he did not sacrifice his wife. That was Marcel de Chauvigny, who squared off against Julian in the 1890s. Oh, and let’s not forget Raymond de Haven, the bane of Black’s eternal existence. I have a pantheon of vampire baddies to choose from, and of them all, Darius thrills/alarms me the most.

What makes him so scary? Maybe the fact that immortality hasn’t changed him. He wasn’t a mortal so much as he was a dry vampire, waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the potential for limitless power.

I’m writing that story this week. I know how it ends for him (and so does anyone who’s reading this post), but how it ends for Calista, I can’t predict. I hope it ends well for her, but when you’re married to the devil incarnate, being a witch is no guarantee that you’ll survive in one piece.

As with all of my stories, I’ll have to write and see.

Season 3 (Reprise)

Tonight begins season 3 of The Borgias – another in the long line of period pieces featuring a villain who sets my hormones to howling.

I’ve had it bad for Cesare Borgia since my teens. He was such a compelling historic character that it escaped me how his greatness was not translated to film more often (or more successfully). There was a BBC series in the style of “I, Claudius” (i.e., more dialogue than action) produced some years ago that was okaaaaaaaay … but over the past two years, Neil Jordan and Francois Arnaud have done something I never imagined could be done: they’ve made Cesare a sympathetic character. Sympathetic—and sexy as hell.

Bearing in mind that this series is GoT’s competition for gore, glamour and political machination, it actually holds up pretty well in comparison. The finale of season two was wrenching, so I am in as deep a dither over season 3’s premiere tonight as I was two weeks ago over GoT.  I’m still mad for Jaime Lannister, of course, but now I’ve got Cesare to lust over too.

Oh, those bad boys make me feel so good!

Write No Wrong

During tea with a friend the other day, I was asked if I’ve ever considered writing something from the villain’s point of view. It’s a fair question. The villain is always more fun to play, to watch, to fantasize about (okay, that might be too much information), and can be more fun to write. After all, he always thinks he’s the hero. Even if he knows he’s doing wrong, he thinks he does it for the right reasons. It’s in the eye of the beholder, right?

I love my bad guys. They’ve been pretty tame compared to the psychopathic serial killers and die hard terrorists currently fashionable in Hollywood, but they were definitely fun to write. Mind you, my heroes tend toward a little darkness as well. Gosh darn it, even the white knight starring in my current project has a few dents in his armour and I thought he was absolutely pure. I’m hardly disappointed in him, since I know what made the dents, but boy, he’s being more difficult than I thought he’d be and that’s been frustrating.

Anyway, I was reminded of the brouhaha that blew up when Bret Easton Ellis wrote American Psycho back in the 1980s. I didn’t read the book, since I wasn’t at all interested in the workings of a serial killer’s mind, but the controversy made me think about censorship and the right to write. It also shot the book into the media spotlight and made Ellis more famous than he might have been without the fuss, but that’s an ironic aside. More power to him, in fact.

After some deliberation, I concluded that he had done what most writers are driven do: he told the character’s story as the character wanted it told. I suppose he could have refused to tell it, but if he had refused, chances are that someone else would have taken it on and the same uproar would have happened at a later date. Worse, Ellis might have regretted saying ‘No’. Censoring yourself is part of the drill, but when a character is adamant, there’s really no choice but to spin the tale to its finale.

Sting tells the story of a song called “Tomorrow We’ll See”. He had the music all figured out and was waiting for the lyric to come. When it came, it came with a character who happened to be a male transsexual prostitute. Sting fought it, the character fought back, and in the end, won her case by accusing him of judging her harshly based on her circumstance. So he wrote the song. I’m glad he told the story of its genesis—not only is it a favourite of mine for the musical style, but the writer in me completely related to the conflict he faced in finding the words.

My poet friend Nicole has lately begun experimenting with short fiction and was hailed by a character who turned out to be a gigolo. She, like Sting, initially fought it but the man wouldn’t leave her alone. In the end, she produced a piece that revealed the potential for more layers than a mille fois in a guy whom she wasn’t even sure she liked. She’s now considering working more with him down the road … assuming she ever gets through the waitlist of characters lined up behind him.

I guess my point isn’t about censorship so much as it is about the writer’s responsibility to honour the characters who present themselves as they are, not as what may be socially acceptable or politically correct. Truly, I don’t know where they come from. Few of mine reveal themselves in their entirety; I have to work with them before the colour of their hat comes clear. I have, on occasion, declared aloud, “I need a bad guy,” and one graciously appears. They’re imperative in plot development, after all. But sometimes a name will drift past my ear or a face will catch my inner eye and I’ll be curious enough to follow the thread …