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Literary Underworld Ramblings

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If this writing doesn’t work out, maybe Shrews and I can become a pro wrestling tag team.


In an effort to raise awareness of our consortium of writers at the Literary Underworld, we’re offering guest blog appearances on the craft of writing.  Today, Steven Shrewsbury invades the Ramblings with his ideas on violence in writing.  If you haven’t read any of his work, please check out his books at http://www.literaryunderworld.com/  Use this code LUBLOGTOUR  and receive a special discount on your purchase.  Thanks for supporting independent authors.  Without further ado, here’s Shrews:

TEMPERING THE BLADES?

I’m author Steven Shrewsbury and I’m filling in today. Let’s talk violence.

I’ve been told that my sword & sorcery works and horror novels are too violent. Some say the violence is extreme and shouldn’t be put in such close quarters where sexual situations just occurred, much less dialogue with God or demons. My usual answer to these statements is, “Ever read the Bible?”

Now, my work could never be confused with Biblical scripts, but I mention this to let the reader know they might need to grow a pair. Okay, it’s only a story. It cannot hurt the reader. Much. Yes, sometimes violence one reads can stay with a casual reader, an act so revolting or crazy it pops up in the mind later at work or during dinner. Fine. While that isn’t what I go for, to gross out or make the smashed potatoes hit the wall via projectile vomiting, I do desire to entertain and tell a story that might last in the mind. One might say, “That Shrews, he goes to far.” However others say, “That Shrews, I bet he’s a crazy bastard. I bet he’s fun to have a beer with.” It’s the latter. Trust me. Most days, anyhow.

That said, even a writer who likes to sling the entrails and mix up heads on bodies after decapitations feels that tempering the violence is a good idea. If the story degenerates into describing battles or an act of murder over and over with such vapid detail, at times, one will wonder if the writer penned it with his pants around his ankles. It’s my natural inclination to use humor (albeit dark at times) along with the violence and spread it out as the story unfolds, but also to make it credible. I’m not using Green Lantern Rings or powers endowed by a Yellow Sun, but usually iron and steel. Things bend and break under such force and usually, its more fun to describe the will behind the steel that made such an incision.

Real life is screwier than fiction, I’ve heard tell. I’ve never been in a sword fight in my life, and I bet that’d be pretty scary to face down a man (or woman) who has been. That is reality, not pulling a blade and making a mess. The person behind the instrument can invoke bravery or cowardice.

What one will do in a given situation, that is interesting. Wouldn’t one want to run? Sure. Would we really stand and fight if given the chance? Maybe. I love to relate the story of the hero in Robert E. Howard’s “The HOOVED THING” for it is set against the usual H.P. Lovecraft setting: New England, unspeakable horror, a monster out to get us all. This time, though, the main guy isn’t an erudite man from Mass who will commit suicide rather than face the ultimate horror. The lead character in Howard’s tale (shockingly) is a strapping Texan who grabs from a curio cabinet a sword blessed by a saint (lucky!!!) and decides, screw it, I must fight this thing or it will kill everyone else. Do or die, gung ho! The line “Fear can become so intense it defeats itself.” What courage. What a guy. What balls. Ya gotta root for that fella and hope YOU have that kind of stones in such a case. It isn’t high art, but it makes the point, literally.

Is violence bad? Sure. It hurts. Emotional scars run pretty deep, and might last longer than the Vicoden can ebb away a broken limb. Frankly, I’ll say what many might not want to: Violence is good for a story, and it makes it more interesting if used properly. Forget S&S or horror, but pure action or thrillers, a fight breaks out or the weapon is drawn, the game is afoot like a motherf—okay, I already did a blog on foul language in fiction, so I digress.

So temper the violence, folks, and try to entertain. Many can do it. Now, I’m off to try and figure out how to write a vampire work without bloodshed or lots of violence. Dunno if that can be done, but I hear racks of books are being sold by authors penning vampy romances, apparently writing with condoms over their heads. Wish me luck. What will come out will probably be a really blood-soaked, brutally real look at the genre, but I promise you this: It won’t be boring and the only sparkling with be the glisten off the blood pooling on the floor tiles in waning candlelight.

Cheers from Central IL

Steven Shrewsbury

Author of OVERKILL, THRALL, HELL BILLY, BEDLAM UNLEASHED and HAWG.

http://sshrewsbury.wordpress.com/

General Posts

Wednesday Afternoon Ramblings

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I’ve stayed out of politics, mostly because I believe it’s become a shell game of mass distraction, but the comments about the 47% from you, Mitt Romney, struck a raw nerve with me.  You want to say that I and people like me expect the government to take care of us.  You say we see ourselves as victims.  You imply we do not take responsibility for our own lives.  Well, let me set you straight.

First and foremost, I wasn’t born the son of a governor with insider connections.  My father is a working man who, until he became disabled, held two and three jobs for most of my life.  He taught me the value of a dollar, the pride of honest labor, and respect for others.  He pushed me to get an education and make something of myself.  He taught me the importance of persistence and the necessity of pursuing dreams for finding inner contentment.  From the actions of your life and the rhetoric of your campaign, I can see your father didn’t teach you these same values, and for that, I’m deeply saddened for you.

You see, your warped perception that wealth is the measure of a person’s worth is simply wrong.  Yes, you’ve made a pile of money buying and dismantling companies, then shipping those jobs overseas.  I’m certain you are quite proud of yourself for all the money you’ve “earned” by doing so.  What you fail to see, what you and your crony capitalist pals fail to grasp, is that you are not following the rules of the free market.  These rules are not enforced by any government; they are not arbitrary; they are not negotiable.  Eventually, markets correct.  When you manipulate a market, as in moving a manufacturing company to a country that subsidizes labor, thereby undercutting the wages of your own consumers, eventually your own market will implode.  The invisible hand may move slowly, but it does move.  One day, you will wake up to find that you can no longer manipulate the market to your benefit.

When that day comes, and I acknowledge that it may or may not occur in your lifetime, you or your children will find that the working class people you so cynically mock as lazy and shiftless have something you and your family can never buy.  We have a deeply-rooted sense of loyalty to our families, our friends, our communities.  We know how to dig in our heels and fight harder because most of us have had to hold multiple jobs throughout our lives.  We don’t need others to cook our meals, drive our cars, keep our schedules, or manage our money.  We’ve had to juggle all of those aspects of our lives on our own because most of us can’t afford to pay someone else to do it for us.  Most of the working people I’ve known, the vast majority, have a deep sense of pride in the jobs they do, no matter how low that job may seem to you.

I may not have as much money as you do, and in every facet of my life I may not measure up to your definition of greatness, but at the end of my life, I’ll be able to look back and say that I gave something to my community, my state, and my country.  Teaching English may not be a glamorous job or lucrative or fun, but I know I’ve enriched other people’s lives.  You, sir, cannot say the same.  Your career, both in the private and public sectors, has been about destroying other people, either by dismantling their business or selling their job overseas.  All of your wealth, all of your power, all of your entitlements are selfish, empty vessels.  I pity your perverted sense of right and wrong.

Before you speak of working class people again, perhaps you should live for a time in our shoes.  One week should suffice.  One week of worry about buying groceries or paying the electric bill would teach you a valuable lesson you’ve never experienced.  One week of ironing your own clothes, buying your own groceries, running your own errands, and toiling for a boss who undervalues your contribution to their organization would do wonders for your outlook on life and family and labor.  Your distorted concepts of working people, men and women who get out of bed each and every morning and work themselves into an early grave for substandard wages just to fulfill obligations to their children and families, is disturbingly arrogant and self-centered.  Your ignorance of humanity is alarming.  For an educated man, you are shockingly stupid.

You are correct about one thing.  I will not be voting for you, but not for the reasons you believe.  It’s not that I want the government to take care of me.  It’s that I cannot and will not offer support to a human being who looks upon the working class with such disdain and contempt.  Hopefully, enough of my fellow working class people will see that as well, and you will lose the election, becoming all you deserve to be, an insignificant footnote to history.

General Posts

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

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This post will probably be more of a venting session than anything because right now I feel frustrated by circumstances.  At what point does a person have credibility?  Is it through sales figures?  Is it based on awards?  Reviews?  Experience?  At this point, I no longer know.  To some extent, I still believe in my abilities as a novelist, but mostly, I feel irrelevant.  I love my books and characters, and so do a decent percentage of the people who’ve read my work, but mostly, I feel like a nobody in the wilderness, trapped in an educational system that drains my creative energy, dulls my skills, and crushes my spirit.  My hope of ever escaping the system through my books wanes with each passing day.

I accept full responsibility for my circumstances.  I did, after all, choose to enter these professions.  I knew I would never get wealthy as an educator, and I knew the odds of ever being successful as a novelist.  What I didn’t know when I began my teaching career was that the system would be overrun by business mindsets that view education as an assembly line process and purposefully seek to burnout educators.  While I didn’t expect to become wealthy, I also didn’t expect to earn less than a fast-food manager while working more hours.  I thought I’d be able to teach my regular load and write at night, and for the first several years, that was possible.  Today, as more and more crap gets piled onto our plates, it’s impossible to find the time to write daily on a book.  I can barely squeeze in a couple of blog entries a week.  Every single day, I feel my skills eroding.

I also accept full responsibility for not doing a better job of shameless self-promotion.  So many others are much better at reminding everyone they meet that they are an award-winning writer or a best-selling novelist or whatever other tag line they use to identify themselves.  I’m simply not comfortable telling others how great I am, and that has held me back.  I’ve remained mired in obscurity because our culture rewards sensationalism, not humility.  I’m foolish for not beating my own drum harder and louder, but honestly, the handful of times I’ve tried it, I’ve felt like a complete jackass.  While I may be one, I don’t like feeling like one.

In the mornings, as I drive to a job I’ve grown to abhor, I look for a little flicker of hope that maybe my books will catch on.  Every time I write a blog entry, I hope that maybe it will draw in enough of the right people.  Each time I get a sale on Kindle, I hope that maybe I’ll cross some threshold in Amazon’s algorithm that triggers an avalanche, but honestly, at this point, I know that’s just a fantasy that keeps me from spiraling into a deep depression.  The flicker of hope fades a little more every day.  It’s a hard way to live, especially when I can still remember a time when I loved teaching and believed with all my heart that my books mattered.

Irrelevance is one of worst feelings I know.  Back in the early days of teaching, I went into the classroom feeling as if what I did truly mattered.  My students wanted to learn.  They pushed me to teach them how to improve their skills.  Now, the vast majority of them do not care.  I’m an obstacle to get around, not a bridge.  The bureaucrats in charge don’t understand or care about writing as a skill for the masses.  If they do care, they express it like an abusive spouse.  My books have a loyal following, but the numbers are simply too small to sustain me, and I’m completely out of ideas for how to spread the word more given my current circumstances.

Perhaps, I need to accept that I’m simply not talented enough.  I’ve never won an award or even been nominated for one.  After 22 years, I still have virtually no credibility in this industry, at least not enough to matter. I’ll finish editing book four and write book five because I’ve made the commitment, but after that, if nothing has changed for the better, I’ll have to examine closely whether or not I want to write another book.  At some point, I have to make a positive change in my life because I can’t continue to live in the absence of hope.  I can’t continue to live without time with the people who matter to me or the things I want to do.  The sacrifices are no longer worth it.  At some point, I have to see some kind of a real return, or I can’t justify continuing with either of these careers.