Cody McFadyen

On the rare occasion that I get writer’s block, one of the things I use to get the words rolling again is “Once upon a time.”

“Once upon a time,” I’ll think. I’ll look around the room and spot, perhaps, my DVD player. “Once upon a time a guy sat down to watch a DVD.”

What DVD?

“Okay, it was Cannibal Holocaust. Jim wasn’t really into gore movies, but he’d lost a bet with a friend about whether or not he could devour an entire watermelon in one sitting, so there he was.”

Then what?

“Well, he decided he needed some liquid courage to watch the hideously violent film (he really didn’t like gory films). When he went to the refrigerator, the beer was gone.”

Why? Who drank it? Him?

“No, the beer was one of six twelve packs polished off at the poker party the evening before. The poker party, by the way, was something Jim and his friends had put together a year before. Instead of playing for money, they put a ‘Fear Factor’ spin on it. Hence the watermelon, hence Cannibal Holocaust. Hence no beer. Jim decided he’d have to go buy some, so he went to the store.”

In what? A car, a truck a van?

“Beat up ten-speed bicycle. He lost the car a few months earlier in a similar poker game. (Yes, Jim has a gambling problem.) So he takes off on his ten speed, to buy some beer. It’s the middle of the night, but the 7-11 isn’t far. However, just as he’s about to turn off his street, he hears a blood curdling scream and a naked woman bursts out of the house on the corner and races across the lawn. A man runs after her, wielding a hatchet…”

And so on. It’s a silly exercise, but it almost never fails. The key is to try and go left when you’d normally go right. Lots of sudden ninety-degree angles and improbability. I swear, it’s like WD 40 for the mind.

Of course, we never get to find out what happened to Jim. Did he save the girl? Did he shrug and cycle on? If we want to get complex about it, maybe this is what happens:

“Jim leaps off his bike and gives chase to the man with the hatchet, but gets there too late to save the girl. The hatchet gets buried in her skull twice before Jim manages to tackle the bad guy. A brutal fight ensues, a violent, desperate, knock-down drag-out . Jim is at the losing end, being strangled to death, when his grasping hand finds the handle of the hatchet. He grips it hard, yanks it out of the poor girl’s head, and chops at the bad guy, again and again, lost in his own hysteria, fury, and desperation. When the police arrive, they find him there, hatchet in hand, wild-eyed, standing above two dead bodies.

The cops, of course, end up assuming he was the original assailant, and he is arrested. No evidence to the contrary is found, and Jim goes to death row – all because he went out to buy some beer. He never does get to watch Cannibal Holocaust. He never gambles again.”

Try it sometime. Give yourself a license to imagine the ridiculous or the strange or whatever, without censor, and see if helps.

A final one, in honor of it being Halloween:

Once upon a time, two kids came to my door for Halloween Candy. They came alone, and they were never seen again. The very next day, the dirt in the crawl space of my basement was freshly turned, so freshly turned.

Are these two things related?

I don’t know. I truly don’t. I can’t remember.

But my fingernails are dirty, so dirty, and I am… I am…

So happy.

Happy Halloween and happy reading.

(I've been guest blogging at a site hosted by my publisher, and the below is one of those recent postings.)

One of the problems I’ve run into in writing twisted books about serial killers is that people seem to assume all writers heed the advice to - generally spoken in a Morgan-Freeman-being-God kind of voice - WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.

Seriously, I once had neighbors that kept me at arm’s length after they heard what I write about. I guess they thought I must know something about being a serial killer, or at least enjoy the concept in a fantasy sense. One Halloween they got up the gumption to talk to me, and asked me what costume I was planning to wear.

“Oh, I’m already in costume,” I replied.

They frowned, puzzled. “What do you mean?” The husband asked.

“Well, I’m going as a serial killer. They’re monsters that wear people costumes, get it? ” Then I let my left eye twitch, followed by some hearty, back-slapping laughter that ended as suddenly as it had begun.

I know, I know. It was mean. But their attitude had been pissing me off for a year, so I gave into my pettier impulses. We had no further interaction.

The point is, ‘Write what you know’, while sound advice, can’t always be applied. Sometimes, you have to ‘write what you think you know’ or ‘write what you can surmise.’ When it comes to something as twisted and alien as a serial killer, the best I can do is to try and understand them by comparing their experience to something more human. For example: I’ve had experience with drug addicts. I’ve watched that craving, the kind that opens up a hole in people that they’ll use anything to fill. They’ll pack anything in that hole, from their self respect to their family’s love, and often do. So I took that experience, which I can at least relate to on some level, and applied it to understanding a serial killer. I imagined having that same kind of craving and need to kill other human beings, and I did my best to relate it.

But did I know it? Of course not. And I hope I never do.

This also pops up in writing the character of Smoky Barrett. I’m a guy, she’s a woman, I write her in the first person. What’s more, she’s a woman who’s experienced rape, and half of her face was disfigured by her attacker. Well, I’ve gotten an email or two from female readers accusing me of writing such a character so I could ‘experience her rape vicariously’. I would probably have found this devastating, had I not gotten a letter early on from a woman who did, in fact, experience being raped and disfigured in her home. It’s one of only two actual snail-mail letters I’ve received from readers (email rules the day), and in it she thanked me for my portrayal of the main character. She said it made her feel good to read about someone else overcoming that and getting on with their life, too.

I can’t know what she went through, and would never claim that understanding. I tried, instead, to tap into what I have experienced and observed on the subject of human suffering, and did my best to convey that. I’m pleased where it worked, and offer my most sincere middle finger to those ladies who wrote me those emails, few though they were.

Not all writing is about what you know. In fact, for me, a lot of writing is about the opportunity to try and understand those things you find a mystery.

In the end, I think that’s a big part of what keeps me writing. Hopefully, it’s part of what keeps you reading, too.

One of the great things about living in Colorado is having my brother in close proximity - he lives about five minutes away. My brother and I probably should have been twins, we just get along like that. We don't have rivalry issues and we always have a great time hanging out.

Last Friday he came over and we proceeded to get mildly drunk down in the (mancave)basement office. Once we were appropriately soused, we put on Gladiator, the one with Russell Crowe. What an absolutely amazing movie. It hits you (or me, at least) on different levels. There's the male end of the movie - war, the arena fights - but in the most important ways I never feel like the savagery is glorified. A great example of this is a very quick scene during the first big arena spectacle in Rome. They're reenacting the battle of Carthage and it's just horrific. At one point Maximus (Crowe's character) hacks off a couple of heads and the camera cuts to Joaquin Phoenix (the emperor). He sticks his tongue out and clenches his teeth in this pure, visceral reaction that seems ENTIRELY sexual. It makes you pause in horror (or it did me, at least), and then, a second later, go 'DAMN Ridley Scott is a great director!'

It's a small touch, there and gone in a flash, but it makes you recoil. Perhaps you were like those in the stands, enjoying the fighting and the dying as a spectacle-once-removed. Then that tongue comes out and you go 'Oh, right, this is horrible!'

Why is this on a writer's blog? Inspiration comes from all kinds of places,that's why. There are also many different kinds of inspiration. In this case, I was inspired by the idea that a short moment could become such a sledgehammer. I thought about it off and on all the next day.

A single, well-placed thought can become an atom bomb or a black hole, if the context is right. I'm already considering how to use this in my current novel.

Speaking of which, Abandoned (the fourth book in the Smoky Barrett series) will be out at the end of this month. I'm looking forward to what everyone thinks.

Back to salt mines, which are growing colder by the day. Colorado is not California - nor should it be.