Finding Focus

 I think I need to pause before I travel further into the year 2017 and the advance of the stories. At this point I knew I had something, this little world I was building, but I hadn't been sure yet on how to proceed. See, at this point, I had committed to paper a history that stretched from 1867 to 2014. The earliest date is the year the Mortenson Party came into the valley system they would name the Bajazid. The latest story, "My Thoughts on What Happened to Timmy Carmichael", was told in that later year. Of these stories, there was not much linking them beyond the location. A simple rundown of these, in order of writing, would be:

"Where Lies Hope" - a quiet story focused on the tragedy of one family between the years 1869 to 1874. In that story, I named only the family and there only the father, Hugh Goff, and his daughter, Hope. Others are mentioned within but not by name. I have many of those names now, such as the Marshal and some of the Mortenson men as well as both doctors mentioned. At that time, they were just bit players in the shadows of this story about the fungus in the house of Hugh Goff.

"My Thoughts on What Happened to Timmy Carmichael" is a reminiscence from a man who in his youth, was associated with a church group starting up a "scouting" club for their youth groups. The timeline dealt with in this story extends from the late 1980s unto that moment of reflection in 2014. This story discusses the death of one boy in that fateful meadow and the ramifications that had on all the boys and camp counselors over the years. I have only barely pursued following the kids who were on that trip. I know a lot of their fates, mentioned in that story, but I don't have their stories yet leaving me with lots of opportunity here.

"I'll Always Be With You, Boys" is a conversation that takes place in the late summer of 1888, a couple of months after a dinner where the last six Sultans met ("Sultans" will be explained someday here or, better yet, I won't and just pretend I did). This is the story of one, Alexander Gitney, formerly a Zouave with the Army of Massachusetts, He has a confession to make and a boon to ask of the one man whom he hates more in this world than anything, a one William Nesmith, former Colonel with the Confederacy. This though is not their conflict. If anything, it is the last remaining glue between them. In this story I lay out the primary history of the Mortenson Expedition and outline a host of potential things to follow up on. The Goffs are mentioned as well as just an awful lot of names dropped, many of which over time have been fleshed out.

"Shadows in the Afternoon" takes a look, through a series of 15 sonnets, at the gallows erected by the side of the courthouse in Baird's Holler and of some of those who swung there. The time span in this story is roughly that of the town, from 1867 to 1890... and maybe a few weeks further. There are an awful lot of story seeds sprinkled through here which haunt me 'cause I can't get to all of them fast enough... a common problem I'm experiencing.

"The Little Metal Man" takes place in 1979 and involves the Miller family on vacation from the small town in Massachusetts they live, where the father, a West Point officer and combat veteran, works as a professor. On their trek to the theme parks of California, the father takes up the mountain because this trip is for camping and exploring... and one of his fellow professors has heard of this valley and is obsessed by it so why not visit it to rub it in, right? Well, they get a visitor during their picnic who tries to steal one of the action figures the little boy is playing with, saying they must leave one if they want to leave the valley in peace. The antagonist in this, one Willard Reams, was one of the first characters I conceived and planned big things for. I haven't really come back to him yet but a hint in one story. The time will come.

"In A Meadow" takes place in 1874 and is based directly on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's classic "In A Grove", a tale that has inspired ever so many movies and TV episodes, including the Akira Kurasawa classic "Rashomon". There are many ways to adapt this tale. I chose to keep the exact same structure, same numbered paragraphs, but in my dear little meadow. This story introduced Leopold Tarkenfeld and his accomplice Richard "Dickie" Donnelly, both of whom have become very important characters and the events therein have influenced ever so much.

"Anger" happens over three days in 2008 and is currently connected to the other stories by geography and the fact that the protagonist went to the same church as did Timmy Carmichael, but was in the high school age group of boys who camped in the valley two weeks earlier (the tragedy occurred with the middle-school aged kids).

"The Witch of Pitt's Junction" takes place on the night of April 18, 1886. This was the first story in which I made sure my mention of the moon's phase was accurate, something I have since tried hard to do because, well, I'm writing a history here.

Now on all of these, or most, I do touch deeper in time in reflection to build the story, build what needs to be, but these are the dates of primary concern. What does that leave me though at this point? Seven stories written over a very broad expanse of story-time with connective tissue between those tales only beginning to develop. Or, in other words, I had seven stories and that's pretty much it. There was no true history here or anything, nothing too strong and I was around this time trying to figure out how to present these, present the whole of these Tales.

Here is the trouble. There are no new ideas, just ways of expressing them. That is a truism that any who choose to tell tales must recognize. If one is looking to develop something bigger, beyond a simple tale, what was one to do? I did not have any idea for a novel, besides one for Willard Reams that still sits at the back of my mind, but nothing more than shorts beyond that. I could feel this world building in and around me all the time, but what was I going to do? Just have a bunch of stories in a setting or make it work together and if so, how?

In looking at the types of stories that are out there, ones that build up and become something bigger, I noticed a few things. Hell, I'd been noticing this all my life. One of the main story series structures that has been oh so strong for oh so long is the lone hero who battles all odds, faces all conflicts with a strong chin, a rugged appearance and a strong mono-syllable name or one that identified strength such as Stone, Rock, Hammer or other trite bullshit like that. Thing is, these are a freakin' dime a dozen and I see very little difference between Jason Borne, James Bond, Jack Reacher, John Wick, et al. This was definitely not something I wanted to ever even approach because there needs to be some hint of reality in a story, even in a speculative tale. That one guy can take the punishment these characters do without ever pausing to catch their breaths or even take a leak, as well as the expertise they all seem to share (they all seem to have served in very elite branches that trained them all to do the jobs that no one else could do except some roguish guy whose name starts with the letter "J"). I did not want to rehash hash that has been cooked so long it lacks any original flavor.

Another idea I discounted right away was the idea of a team. Be it a special force of highly talented and skilled agents, each one with a specified skill that comes into play always when needed led by a charismatic man who is capable of doing all their jobs alone... or a school or academy where such a team is assembled, always again on that same concept. No, I'm not knocking Harry Potter or the X-Men... in fact, those are the two best examples of such an institution development idea. Even the idea of a team assembled for a great quest to Mordor was out of the question. As with the Lone Anti-Hero, the assembled team is limited in what it could do because, well, if your doing this as a novel series, you get one "original" story which is the origin, same as the others following usually one primary with the team in close support. After that, you have the same story repeated over and again. Being usually these stories often end up with world threatening problems, that means the sequel is, well, gosh, how do you beat saving the world. Also, and this goes triple for the lone wolf and less so for teams such as the Avengers or Justice League, fantastical groups meant for fantastical sagas because the Avengers are meant for that level. A secret agent who saves the world on Monday, then, for the sequel is back to save the world on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the trilogy is complete because in this whole wide world, apparently world saving is something only a few are capable of doing and that's why they are the only ones to call. Besides, if you save the world in every episode.. yawn...

Since I'm not doing a one-off and it is already established that I do not have any pretense of a primary character, my next option was the J. Mitchener route of relating a linear narrative taking the reader through the whole history of this place with a centered narrative structure such as following one family or clan. That wasn't going to happen either because I had already started with multiple perspectives from divers origins without a central theme or plot to weave throughout the whole. Besides, I was teaching myself to write, knowing I needed to get some blisters on my fingers before I felt I should take a stab at something bigger. I felt I needed to hone my craft and I also did not want to spend years building a big, singular story and then saying to the world "Look at me!" Such a linear perspective for this history was a big no-go. I felt, and still do, that I needed to have some work out there first, some credits to my name and that was not going to happen if I was invested in a long term project. Besides, these Tales were not appearing to me in any such fashion.

What to do then? I wanted to tell this history but I had no central plot or theme or character strain running through. How would I connect them? Well, I figured, how about creating the history as a collection of independent stories which, when read in conjunction with other stories, would start leading the readers to look for the connecting tissues between them. As for a central focus, a "character" that would travel with me through the whole of this, I decided that the location itself is that character, that anchor that holds all together. I just had to find a way to connect them and as these first eight stories revealed to me, that is just what was happening.

In other words, when a Reader picks up a Tale of the Bajazid, I want them to nod gently upon reading and feel the sweet warmth a good weird tale brings. Then perhaps that Reader comes upon another story so sub-titled as to indicate its presence in these Tales and upon reading it thinks it's a nice, sweet, uplifting tale of horror and depravity and wonders only faintly the connections. On that third story, he begins to wonder deeper as a minor character in one of those stories read becomes the lead of this with hints dropped of the existence of the other. In other words, I want the readers to realize themselves they are in a special place and that there are threads that tie every one of these stories together.

This has been borne out to be the experience so far with those readers I use to get reaction from (there were three, then two, but I found a third from a very different background, a Kenyan immigrant and one of the most wonderful women I know). One, my buddy who brought me to the altar of the Mythos, knew what I was getting into. The other, a young bookworm where I work, I rely mainly on for reaction and whether she glares at me the morning after I hand her a story. The one I lost was a clerk at the convenience store closest to my mountain road, but sometimes people get fired and go away. The new reader, she's only about 12 stories in right now and she is the first to be reading these in the temporal order they would appear, specifically because I want to hear her reactions to the stories as they grow. Going into this, she knew nothing other than I was writing (and had started selling) stories. Now her whole family is apparently fighting over them but I haven't had a chance to pick her brain to see what she's getting, how she's connecting them.

I am going to at this point jump into the future a bit and say that the first publication to accept me, Weirdbook, has seen now 20 of these Tales and upon finishing them, contacted me with the understanding they were all on the same "canvas". That right there told me that I might be on a solid path here to creating a series somewhat unique, one wherein the location is the primary connective tissue and the stories together build the history. This, that very recognition developed over the course of reading these Tales, is exactly what I'm hoping to build. Compared to the structures and concept plans pointed out above, be it trying to establish a series or writing the "Great American Novel" that I may or may not someday finish, this structure allows me to do what I want, go where I will, create how I may and basically experiment with the caveat that all stems from this place and That Which Damned.

As I proceed in this journey, I'll try to point out some connections, ones that are important in the relation of that story and how it came to be. I do not plan on going too deep into most of these beyond broad outlines except for two reasons: 1) if the story has been published and out for a while, I might discuss details which need to be revealed to explain other things and 2) when the story itself is a structural story, one where I am either compelled or want to boast upon insofar as the weird things I'm doing with structure.