Ozmentality

Article on FLASH FICTION CHRONICLES, and another interview!

2009-09-03T04:25:50Z

My blog on writing horror flash, "Flash of Fear," went up today at Flash Fiction Chronicles. You'll also find there dozens of other articles offering advice on writing flash of all kinds, so go over and look around. My own brief contribution barely scratches the tip of the machete, so look for a "Flash of Fear Part II" and "Son of Flash of Fear" and "Return of Flash of Fear" at future dates.

Also published today is an interview with yours truly on The Examiner. RPG Examiner Michael Tresca asked me questions about role-playing, teaching, and my forthcoming novel.

An Interview and a Review

2009-08-24T03:22:55Z

On Friday, August 21 author Frederic S. Durbin posted an interview with me on his weblog. You can read it here: http://fredericsdurbin.wordpress.com/ . It mostly concerns writing flash fiction, with additional observations on the writing life in general.

Check out some of Durbin's other posts while you're there: I can virtually guarantee you'll be enthralled. His own musings on life as a writer of fantasy fiction are insightful, encouraging, and often profound. His evocations of life as a boy in rural Illinois in the 1970s are every bit as fine as Bradbury's own reminiscences of growing up in that neck of the woods in the early part of the last century. You'll find observations about Tolkien, beautiful passages of nature writing (here is a man whose native love of trees and the rural countryside are equal to Tolkien's own), and lots of discoveries of the fantastic in ordinary surroundings. I never miss one of his posts. (Incidentally, if you look in the archives of this weblog, you'll find an interview of Durbin I posted back on May 14, 2008.)

Also, you can skip on over to the online news magazine The Examiner to read a feature article by Michael Tresca on my serial Knight Terrors: The (Mis)Adventures of Smoke the Dragon here: http://www.examiner.com/x-6911-RPG-Examiner~y2009m8d16-Knight-Terrors-The-MisAdventures-of-Smoke-the-Dragon . Tresca is one of the leading reviewers on Amazon as well as being The Examiner's resident RPG expert. He is a spot-on reviewer, and if you've ever found one of his reviews helpful, please give him a vote over on Amazon.

Remembering the Wood Pile

2009-07-31T04:33:59Z

The “wood pile” behind my Nan and Grandad’s trailer-cabin in the woods was mostly dirt, left over from when the trailer was installed. The wood came from the pine trees that had been cut down to make room for the trailer. The trunks were buried under the heaping dirt mound, giving the wood pile its foundation and shape.

It wasn’t so big, really, but to my cousins and me it was our own private mountain fortress. How many times did we flop down on it for cover as Injuns shot arrows at us, then return fire over its crest with our woodknot guns? Or other times the woodknots were machine guns and we were fighting Nazis.

But most often we played on the wood pile with our small toys, dumping out buckets and buckets of plastic army men and knights and dinosaurs and cowboys and indians, Star Wars figures and G.I. Joes. Epic battles were waged on that wood pile, wars that transcended time and space: a band of horseback gunslingers taking down a t-rex? Why not? We could fix the timeline when we were back in school.

Sometimes a small, porous hole would open up in the wood pile, a dark cavity tunneling down through the buttresses of the gnarled, worm-gnawed wood. Erosion and the pressure of many small feet would cause these holes to open. In scale with our action figures they were gaping caverns–and if a figure happened to fall down one, abandon all hope of ever getting it back.

Years later, when we were all grown up, builders used the dirt from the wood pile in building an addition to the trailer. My Nan recalled fondly the army men and cowboys that the diggers turned up in the dirt. Long lost soldiers stirred from their graves, testaments to those microcosmic battles that were the biggest thing in a ten-year-old boy’s life.

Summer Update

2009-06-02T21:19:47Z

How the time slips by! A confluence of events these past two months has kept me from posting (not least of which was a new addition to the family!), so here is a brief update on the writing front:

Four chapters of Knight Terrors: The (Mis)Adventures of Smoke the Dragon have now posted online, with chapter five due tomorrow (Wed. June 3) http://knighterrors.blogspot.com.

My tenth flash piece for Every Day Fiction, "Tower of Baubles," posted today (Tues. June 2). www.everydayfiction.com I also had a flash there on May 22: "The Bride's Tail." All of my flashes for EDF can be accessed by searching my name on their website.

Marking my first time as a featured cover author, my haunted-house story "The House on Waterloo Lane" made its debut in the May issue of Arkham Tales. It is available for free as a .pdf file at www.arkhamtales.com

Also had a flash at Flashes in the Dark: Horror Flash Fiction in Daily Doses on April 3: "Bloody Pan." www.flashesinthedark.com And a poem in the latest issue of Aoife's Kiss. I think that's all the new publications to date (perhaps I should update the bibliography soon).

Film Adaptations

2009-03-05T20:29:38Z

It is a well worn truism: The book is better than the movie. Almost always.

As a graduate student, I enrolled in a seminar that examined selected prose works and their film adaptations, and learned that “better” isn’t exactly the right word. The book is always different than the movie. A truly “faithful” adaptation is, to some extent, impossible because books and film are two very different mediums. There are some things books can do extremely well and some things that the visual medium of film can do extremely well; each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses.

That having been said, books usually are better than the movies. I am glad that a whole generation went gaga over the Harry Potter books at a young age, because they have experienced this early on and are thus less likely to grow into the sort of person who would say, “I don’t need to read the book; there’s a movie.” Maybe eight out of ten (this is not based on hard data, just anecdotal evidence) Harry Potter fans will admit that while they love the movies, the movies are not as good as the books. They would not trade their reading experience of those books for any film.

I will share a personal experience to illustrate just one way that books, by collaborating with the imagination of the reader, can achieve an effect that movies almost never can approach.

When I was eight years old, my favorite books were the Narnia chronicles by C.S. Lewis. I stayed up late at night, curled up with a reading flashlight on the top bunk of my bed (I did not share my room with a sibling, but I liked sleeping up high in the bunk bed—it was like having my own tree house). To this day, nearly thirty years later, I vividly recall the night I read a scene in The Horse and His Boy. The protagonist (whose name does slip my mind after three decades), a young boy on the run, is outside the city at night. Because the city gates are closed at sunset, he cannot get back into the city, and ends up spending the night out among the tombs. He sits there on the sand, cold and alone and in the dark, surrounded by hundreds of these stone tombs—like rounded stucco huts, each with a single opening in the front. He is overcome with fear—each of those open doors is like a darker hole in the darkness, from any one of which something might silently emerge, especially when his back is to it. Each way he turns, there are always other inky-black openings at his back.

Reading this, I felt chills, my skin crawled, and all the other pleasantly unpleasant physiological sensations brought on by a good ghost story. I had a hard time falling asleep that night.

The protagonist’s salvation was a small, black cat that slinked out of the desert and curled up to his back. For the rest of the night, he was okay—even, I think, managed to fall asleep—because he had company now, another set of eyes, someone watching his back. The reader inferred that the cat was the good lion Aslan in disguise. My solution was the same—I snuck out of bed, hunted down our pet cat, and locked her in the room with me. Our family pet was not Aslan, but for me she was, that night.

Disney and Walden Media are now in the process of making the film adaptations of the Narnia books. I can confidently predict that when they get around to The Horse and His Boy, and if they faithfully recreate that scene, it will pale in comparison to my reading experience.

Had I never read the book, I can imagine seeing that scene for the first time on the big screen. Even if it were well-done, I cannot imagine it being one of the most memorable scenes in the film. It would be interesting and compelling while it was happening—the audience wonders, along with the protagonist, if anything will come slinking or slithering from one of those tombs. When nothing does, and the only thing that shows up is a cat, we will be relieved (or disappointed) and forget about it as the narrative sweeps us along. It would certainly not be a scene we would isolate and remember days or weeks or years later.

SFREADER 2008 Contest Winners

2009-03-01T21:48:55Z

First place, "On a Clear Day, You Can See All the Way to Conspiracy", Desmond Warzel
Second Place, "Mary, Mary Quite Contrary", Sarah Higbee
Third Place, "Cat Got Your Tongue, Evil Got Your Eye", Nicholas Ozment

The stories will be posted at www.sfreader.com later this week.

Updates in Smoke

2009-03-01T06:34:44Z

The second installment of my serial Knight Terrors: The (Mis)Adventures of Smoke the Dragon is now posted. You can see "A Whiff of Smoke" (as well as chapter one and the introduction) here: http://knighterrors.blogspot.com.

I'm hoping I'll get some lively comments on this one. If you enjoy Discworld, Robert Asprin's Myth series, John DeChancie's Castle Perilous books, The Princess Bride, or Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland--maybe you should check out Knight Terrors.

Abandoned Towers, the online and print magazine of Cyberwizard Productions, is hosting it. This summer the entire series will be collected and published in book form. I hope to make it down to San Jose this year to launch it at World Fantasy Con.

The editor has commissioned an artist to do illustrations for each chapter; those should be going up soon! Can't wait to see a visual interpretation of my characters.

What is GOING ON?

2009-02-12T06:50:06Z

I just caught some troubling news over on Jordan Lapp's blog Without Really Trying www.withoutreallytrying.com that The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has run into a major snag. Anderson News, the company that distributes the venerable magazine, is suspending all operations.

This just on the heels of the news that Realms of Fantasy, the only slick fantasy magazine currently on newsstands, is folding in April.

There may soon not be a single fantasy outlet on the newsstands. Here's what I don't understand: we live in the era of Harry Potter, Eragon, LOTR books and films, World of Warcraft--we're awash in fantasy--you'd think the demand would be more, not less!

Story places in top ten!

2009-02-09T06:20:09Z

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" has placed in the top ten in the 2008 Preditors and Editors Readers Poll, in the category Fantasy/Science-Fiction Short Story. The image above is my virtual plaque. Thanks to all who voted! The story can be read here: http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/fantasy/smoke.html

SMOKE IS ALIVE!

2009-02-02T04:27:45Z

THE FIRST CHAPTER IS LIVE...

http://knighterrors.blogspot.com

To read it is free. And all your base are belong to us.

If you enjoy humorous fantasy, check it out. If you know someone who does, why not pass along the link? Smoke: Stumble him, Digg him, Tweet him; just don't call him late to dinner.

Updated Bibliography

2009-01-16T03:23:32Z

Fiction

Venus Takes Many Forms (Everyday Weirdness January 15 2009) *ONLINE* http://everydayweirdness.com/
The Little Star (Residential Aliens Issue 11 December 2008) *ONLINE* http://residentialaliens.blogspot.com/2008/11/little-star.html
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (Abandoned Towers September 2008) *ONLINE* http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/ [14th in 2008 Preditors and Editors Readers Poll/ sf short story category]
The Words of Angels are Filtered Through Human Mouths (Dreams & Nightmares 81 September 2008)
The Manifestation (Every Day Fiction August 21, 2008) *ONLINE* http://www.everydayfiction.com/the-manifestation-by-nicholas-ozment/
The Only Difference Between Men and Boys (Every Day Fiction July 21, 2008) *ONLINE* www.everydayfiction.com [Most read EDF story--34,000 hits and counting] (Anthologized in Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 Every Day Publishing November 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-9810584-0-5 Hardcover, 978-0-9810584-1-2 Trade Paperback)
Trefalgar the Giant and the Ape-Men of Haunted Wood (Clone Pod June 14, 2008) *ONLINE* http://www.clonepod.org/
Family Tree (Spaceports and Spidersilk Vol. 1, Issue 2 June 2008) *ONLINE* http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/spacesilk/familytree.htm
Frank Hunter versus The Crawling Brains (Membra Disjecta Vol. 1, Issue 2 April 2008) *ONLINE* www.membradisjecta.com
The Man Who Loved Squirrels (Every Day Fiction May 5, 2008) *ONLINE* www.everydayfiction.com
Uncle Lester Had a Hammer (Every Day Fiction February 27, 2008) *ONLINE* www.everydayfiction.com (Anthologized in Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 Every Day Publishing November 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-9810584-0-5 Hardcover, 978-0-9810584-1-2 Trade Paperback)
Spring Break: An After-XMas Special (Every Day Fiction December 30, 2007) *ONLINE* www.everydayfiction.com
Where There's Smoke, There's Heartburn (Blood, Blade, and Thruster 3, October 2007) *FREE PDF* www.bbtmagazine.com
Jacobson's Monster (Written Word Online 5, October 2007) *ONLINE* http://www.writtenwordmag.com/
Behind the Curtain (Every Day Fiction October 30, 2007) *ONLINE* [EDF Top Twenty-Five] www.everydayfiction.com
Dead Dog (Pseudopod Episode 055, September 14, 2007) *PODCAST ONLINE* www.pseudopod.org
Trolls: A Story in Five Phone Calls (DemonMinds September 13, 2007) *ONLINE* [2007 DemondMinds Editors' Top Five Pick] http://www.demonminds.com/tales/Trolls_a_story_in_five_phone_calls.html
Stihdjia (Dragons, Knights, and Angels 45, Jun 2007) *ONLINE* http://www.dkamagazine.com/item.php?sub_id=2406
The Parking Meter (Dragons, Knights, and Angels 41, Feb 2007) *ONLINE* http://www.dkamagazine.com/item.php?sub_id=2295
Them Eyes (Pseudopod Episode 022, January 26, 2007) *PODCAST ONLINE* www.pseudopod.org
The Evolution of Claus (Susurrus: The Literature of Madness Dec 2006) *ONLINE* http://www.susurrusmagazine.com/4vol2/rightmain.htm
Sarah's Spring: A Fable (Raven Electrick Dec 2006) *TEXT and AUDIO ONLINE* http://www.ravenelectrick.com/ssraven/sarahsspring.html

Poetry

About the Type (The Smoking Poet Summer 2008) *ONLINE* http://thesmokingpoet.tripod.com/
A Dying Poet, Mindful of His Legacy, to a Visiting Admirer (The Smoking Poet Summer 2008) *ONLINE* http://thesmokingpoet.tripod.com/
The Red Mummy (The Willows Vol. II Iss. 2, Jul-Aug 2008)
Faeries' Hoax (Weird Tales Issue 347, Nov-Dec 2007)
Brainy Conversation (The Willows Issue 1, May 2007)
Knight in the Garden (Daikaijuzine 2.5, Apr 2007) *ONLINE* www.daikaijuzine.com
Nude (Erotic Tales 2 EroticTales Publications, May 2007 ISBN-13: 9780977778881) Also available in ebook: http://www.justusrouxebooks.com/erotictales21.html
Inter(son)net (True Romance Vol. 146 No. 4, Apr 2006)
If Life Gives You Bloodsucking Freaks... (Weird Tales Issue 338, Jan-Feb 2006)
Escape (Weird Tales Issue 336, Dec 2004)
The Prairie Whales Are All Extinct (Mythic Delirium Issue 11, Summer/Fall 2004) [Hon. Mention Year's Best Fantasy & Horror]
Roach Phobia (Weird Tales Issue 327, Spring 2002)
If I've Ever Stumbled... (Weird Tales Issue 322, Winter 2000/2001)
Little Monsters (EOTU EZine The Horror Issue Oct 2000) *ONLINE* http://www.clamcity.com/pg21monsters.html

Nonfiction

Gandalf's Staff, Prospero's Books: The Ethics of Magic in Tolkien and Shakespeare (Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language McFarland Press, 2007 ISBN: 978-0-7864-2827-4)
"Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall" by Frank Belknap Long: An Appreciation (The ED SF Project) *ONLINE* http://edsfproject.blogspot.com/2006/04/humpty-dumpty-had-great-fall-by-frank.html

Book and Movie Reviews

Down in the Cellar www.downinthecellar.com
Manning's Manly Movies www.manning.coldfusionvideo.com

Story nominated in P&E Readers Poll

2009-01-10T03:44:56Z

My story "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" has been nominated in the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll, in the category short story/fantasy or science fiction.

If you would like to cast a vote, go here: http://www.critters.org/predpoll/ (Polling is open until January 14th.)

If you have not yet read the story, it is at Abandoned Towers here: http://cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/ On the left-hand side of the page under Online Content, select "Fantasy." Then click on the book. Then click on the story--you're there!

If you vote in the P&E poll, could I persuade you to cast a vote for Every Day Poets in the Poetry Zine category? Last I checked, EDP is running fourth--quite impressive, considering we've only been online for two months! You can visit EDP at http://www.everydaypoets.com

Happy New Year!

Smoke is Flying High

2008-09-21T21:36:44Z

Before I drop my big news, let me recommend you check out a neat new webzine, Abandoned Towers. Great fiction and poetry can be found there in numerous genres. Whether fantasy is your first love, or mystery is more to your liking, or westerns are your way of relaxing, AT probably has something you'll enjoy.

Now, while you're there, click on the Fantasy portal to read the new Smoke story, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It's a laugh riot, promise.

Okay, that isn't the big news. What with the hissing and scratching, I think it's time to let this cat out of the bag. . .Smoke has landed a book contract!

I've signed a contract for a collection of stories about Smoke and his friends, and his enemies--the whole crazy cast. Cyberwizard Productions will be publishing said book late next summer or fall (there's a good chance we'll have the official release at World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, California). So, stay tuned.

For those who have no idea who--or what--Smoke is, a brief introduction: Smoke is a dragon. He's curmudgeonly, threatens to eat people a lot, but somewhere under his scaly exterior, he has a good heart. He is, much to his grudging annoyance, often recruited for his draconic talents by the wizard Ropespor. He's even had to overcome his phobia of knights enough to work with Sir Roger and Roger's squire, Blug--lest the nefarious man-fiend Radnoxious overthrow Mentolarcz, Liptonia, and all of Wohon.

Smoke first appeared in Blood, Blade, and Thruster issue 3 last October (sandwiched right between interviews with Joe Hill and George R.R. Martin!), in the story "Where There's Smoke, There's Heartburn."

Here is a teaser exerpt from "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", which can be read now at Abandoned Towers:

Smoke padded to the entrance of his den and, blinking in the light of dawn, peered out. Not forty yards from the cave stood a large troll, his head nearly level with the second vertebra of Smoke’s neck. He was wearing a dirty loincloth and a glittering vestment of chain mail—the latter part being especially unusual for a troll.

The troll was admiring Smoke’s collection of suits of armor. These were propped up on poles and arranged in a long row beside the path, like tin-man scarecrows. The steel tableau had been donated—quite against their will—by knights who had, with misguided zeal, given Smoke a hard time.

The troll scratched a warty buttock, flashed a yellow-toothed grin and pointed with his club at a suit of armor. “Dat one was a customer of mine. Him too. Oh, dey claimed to be pious, didn’t dey? Hah! Dis one offered extra if I could arrange a tryst wit’ a virgin and a unicorn!”

“What do you want?” Smoke’s voice rumbled from the shadows of the cave.

The troll spun around. “I only want what’s mine. Dem’s my property you got in dere. I’m fairly askin’ you to send ‘em on out, ‘n I’ll trouble you no more.”

“What do you want with fairies?”

“Well, dat’d be my business. I stay out of yours, ‘n you stay out of mine. Dat seems fair.”

To emphasize his point, the troll slowly thumped the club he gripped in his right hand onto the palm of his left.

The club was, in fact, a small tree, its branches just showing the first buds of spring.

Smoke looked at the tree in the troll’s hand, then at the hole in the earth where the lone tree on his cliff had grown. His eyes grew wide and his neck reared up out of the cave.

“You—KILLED—my only greenery!!!”

"What's your creativity?" quiz

2008-09-07T00:38:38Z

I took the quiz on Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD) Magazine's webpage. You can take the quiz (prepared by Steph Kraner) here: http://www.gudmagazine.com/quizzes/creativity/

Here was my result:

"What if?" creativity: You're creative, but not weird or creepy. Well, at least not usually. Odds are you have your moments of both, but on the whole you live a pretty normal life and see your forays into your imagination as either a hobby or a profession, but not a way of living.

ANNOUNCEMENT: EVERY DAY POETS

2008-09-02T04:21:06Z

EVERY DAY POETS, the brand-new sister site to the hugely-successful EVERY DAY FICTION, is now open for submissions. Yours truly is one of the editors / slush readers. Here is the official Press Release:

About Every Day Poets

http://www.everydaypoets.com

Every Day Poets is a magazine that specializes in bringing you fine, short poetry.

Starting on 1st November 2008, Every day at 12:01am Pacific Time (8am GMT), we will be publishing a new poem of up to 60 lines/500 words or fewer that can be read during your lunch hour, on transit, or even over breakfast.

Feel free to browse around the site, check out our archives as they grow, or even sign up to receive a poem in your inbox... every day!

And if you are a poet, why not send us your best work? We are open for submissions now.

EDF interviews Ozment

2008-08-16T04:05:19Z

EVERY DAY FICTION has posted an interview with me today, after my story was the most read on their site last month. Apparently, "The Only Difference Between Men and Boys" had over 5,000 readers in one day!

Here's the link to read the interview (and see a sexy pic of me with a cigar):

http://www.everydayfiction.com/interview-with-nicholas-ozment/

What got you hooked?

2008-07-05T07:24:25Z

So, from your earliest memories, which book got you hooked on sci-fi, fantasy, or horror?

For me, it was...

Fantasy: second grade, reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I remember being at daycare, and being annoyed that the daycare mom was sending us all outside to play in the yard, when all I wanted to do was keep my nose buried between the pages and continue following the adventures of the Pevensie children.

Sci-fi (also kinda fantasy): third grade, The Warlord of Mars. I became an Edgar Rice Burroughs disciple. After I was supposed to be in bed asleep, I'd sneak down by the door, sprawl out on the carpet, and read my Grandad's old hardcover edition by the narrow band of light coming in from the hall. If I heard one of my parents come out of their room down the hall, I'd scramble back to the bed and jump in under the sheets. Then I'd creep stealthily back, needing to know what exploits John Carter would be up to next in his heroic quest to save his red martian princess, Dejah Thoris. I was so immersed in the world of Barsoom that, until maybe the fifth grade, I really thought that if I stretched out my arms to the red planet and concentrated hard enough, I could be whisked there too. But I never knew enough about astronomy to identify which light in the sky it was (my luck, I would've wound up on Venus).

Horror: This one's harder, because I read Scholastic collections of ghost stories and spooky tales voraciously. I can't think of a particular author, originally. I do remember the first book that actually awoke in me a kind of existential dread. It was actually a children's picture book about a boy coming home from school past a corn field, and the scarecrow starts following him home. I was reading it at our cub-scout den mother's house, the last boy waiting for his mom to pick him up as the evening wore on. I must have been very tired, and somewhat feverish, perhaps: but that night I, a naive fifth grader, first feared death. I think, sometimes, that scarecrow's still waiting for me out there, somewhere. Sooner or later, he follows us all home.

"Trefalgar the Giant and the Ape-Men of Haunted Wood"

2008-06-15T00:48:27Z

My first story of Trefalgar the Giant can be heard now at Clone Pod: www.clonepod.org . It is Episode 12.

Looks like I'm in some good company: aside from the fine authors already featured, Neil Gaiman has a story forthcoming in the Clone Pod pipeline.

An Interview With Frederic S. Durbin

2008-05-15T03:37:48Z

Frederic S. Durbin’s novel Dragonfly was first published by Arkham House. A selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, it was recently released in paperback by Ace Fantasy. A dark fantasy that is a paean to Halloween, it features the adventures of the eleven-year-old titular protagonist in the underground realm of Harvest Moon, which is populated by werewolves, vampires, and far worse. It is, by turns, the stuff of nightmares and a celebration of all that is wonderful about that time of year when leaves turn, jack-o-lanterns light the front-porch steps, a chill comes into the air, and people cavort as creatures of the night.

A native of Taylorville, Illinois, Durbin has taught English conversation and writing at Niigata University in Japan for the past sixteen years. He is also a regular contributor to publications like The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Cricket (for children), and Cicada (for young adults).

OZMENT’S HOUSE OF TWILIGHT: How did you become a writer?

FREDERIC S. DURBIN: From earliest childhood, I was immersed in the world of Story. My parents were both readers. My dad opened our town’s first bookstore, and my mom built libraries at our four elementary schools at a time when they had none. So my parents were book-lovers, committed to books. They read to me, I read to them, and my mom especially was adamant about keeping the TV off when I was awake. I didn’t watch any TV until I was probably six or seven years old—and then very selectively. That’s almost unheard of in our society.
Wanting to write is a natural reaction to reading, I think. How can you love the adventure of escaping into Story and not want to be a part of creating it yourself?

OHOT: What drew you to speculative and “weird” fiction?

FSD: Dad was always writing things, mostly for his own amusement—beginnings of a lot of science-fiction and fantasy novels. I would read those as a kid and draw illustrations for them. He loved Fortean subjects, and I loved to hear him talk about them. I knew names like Roger Patterson, Loch Ness, Roswell, and Tunguska long before I knew who the President was. I’m sure that’s where most of my “weirdness” in fiction came from. I was thrilled at the idea that the world was full of monsters and mysteries. That, plus I got a healthy dose of the good old fairy tales, straight from Andersen and the Grimms, not the cleaned-up versions.

Dad was a dreamer, but he never finished or polished his writing. It was Mom who taught me persistence and the business end of writing. She was constantly submitting her stories to children’s publishers. That opened my eyes to the concept that you could write stories and get paid for it. So that’s what I wanted to do, as far back as I can remember.

As for speculative fiction, I think it was the book covers that drew me in. Every day after school, I’d be in our bookstore, and I’d see these fascinating covers that invited me into magical lands and seemed to tell stories all by themselves. Gervasio Gallardo—I’ll still buy any book if he did the cover. Naturally, I wanted to pick up those books and see what was inside.

OHOT: Your author’s bio notes that the images that would become Dragonfly first began to take shape on the beaches of Japan. Dragonfly, though, is a book firmly rooted in Midwestern America, specifically the rural Illinois where you grew up. How did your experience in Japan inspire you?

FSD: That line in the bio is a little misleading. You’re absolutely right that Dragonfly is a rural Midwestern American book, though I didn’t know that until people from other parts of the country started telling me that. It’s like how none of us think we ourselves have any noticeable accent.

The bio is referring specifically to the timing. I was in Japan when the ideas for this book took hold of me. In fact, I can point to one specific grove of trees on the campus of Niigata University as the place where I first knew I wanted to write this story. “That’s the birthplace of Dragonfly,” I say. But if Dragonfly sprouted there, its seeds are certainly Illinois seeds.

That’s not to say that Japan hasn’t inspired other writing. One of my Cricket stories is set in a long-ago fantasy Japan, and “A Tale of Silences,” which is my first attempt at literary fiction, is set in a mountain village in Japan in 1970.

You can’t not be influenced by where you live. When I write fantasy now, it’s colored and informed by the experience of living in a different culture, of learning a foreign language. I can write about Otherworlds and strange beings better now because I’ve been there, I’ve been one.

OHOT: How has your rural upbringing influenced your writing?

FSD: When you read a book, you can tell what the writer really loves, can’t you? When you read what I write, I think it’s pretty clear that I love trees, green spaces, caverns, ruins, mossy stones, and the way light looks at different times of day and night. There’s a closeness to natural settings in my stories. There are always branches brushing the walls; there’s a sense of soil under the floorboards and ground water gurgling beneath that, and the moon coming up outside. There are lots of animals.

One delightful thing about the rural Midwest is that we have the sunny, upper surface of things—big sky, open fields, honest horizons keeping their polite distance. But then we’ve got these secret spaces: old farmhouses with attics and basements, barns, whispery hedgerows, and the creeks cutting across the land, overshadowed by thick, dark timber. Three steps out of the field, and you’re in this hidden world of shadows. The land itself is like a perfect model for a story.

And in my fiction, there’s very little technology. I write technology much like a hobbit would. Take the machines in Dragonfly—the balloon, for example. It’s plausible, but it’s sort of pseudo-technology, like something from a Dr. Seuss illustration, with impossible pipes held up by wires, etc. It’s technology that I hope satisfies the child’s mind in us, which to me is more important than the adult mind. The plausibility is for adults, but the essence of things has to satisfy the child. In Dragonfly, the bad guys travel around in a coach with big, zigzag-toothed gears for wheels—for going up and down staircases, the text explains. It’s been pointed out to me that that wouldn’t work, the teeth wouldn’t nicely fit the stairs. But it feels really good to my child-mind. See what I mean?

There’s a simplicity to my writing, too. It’s not the sophistication of the seacoasts. It’s a Midwest solidity—probably an innocence. Look at the characters in Dragonfly, at their relationships. These are Midwestern folks. When Dragonfly’s parents are mistaken about the right way to live, where are they? One’s on the East Coast doing business, one’s on the West Coast making movies, both neglecting their family. That’s probably an unintentional revelation of my own values—and prejudices.

OHOT: Dragonfly took shape around 1992. It’s been fourteen years since you wrote your first published novel. Are there any others in the works? And can fans of Dragonfly anticipate a return to Harvest Moon?

FSD: In order: Ouch, ouch, yes, and sort of. When I wrote Dragonfly, I loved it myself, but I feared it would be unsellable. It was too dark and densely-written for YA, too warm and happy for horror. So immediately after it was written, and long before it was published, I started writing another novel that I believed in but that I also thought would sell. The present working title is The Fires of the Deep, but that’s likely to change; it’s been pointed out that’s really similar to a Vernor Vinge title. It’s a sprawling heroic fantasy that I’ve been working on for, yes, about fourteen years. In various incarnations, it’s gone out to publishers, agents, and friendly test-readers, and no one is quite satisfied with it yet, including me. But don’t feel too sorry for me—I’ve learned a lot, and I think it’s only a draft away from being ready. I suspect it might be my Big Life Work, the first book in a series. The lesson for aspiring writers is: you know all the horror stories you hear about second novels? They’re true! I thought it would be a lot easier the second time around, but it turned out to be a lot harder, and I don’t think I’d better even get into why—that would take a sizable essay. Harder, I said, but not impossible! Like all writing, it just takes time and persistence.

There’s another novel I wrote as a National Novel Writing Month book. It seems everybody and his dog is doing NaNoWriMo these days! I wrote it for adults, but I’m now re-casting it as a YA book, which is what it wanted to be all along. I also have a YA novel currently under consideration at Cricket Books.

Finally, what I'm really excited about now is a collaborative project I'm working on with two friends, both of them accomplished fantasy and horror writers. We're writing interrelated stories set in the modern world, often using each others' characters. Our working title is Unsung Heroes. The idea is that the eternal battle between good and evil is going on all around us, but most people can't see spirit entities. Monstrous evil beings, existing partly in another dimension, prey upon humans. The force that defends humanity, unknown, unseen in the night mists, is called the Shadow Guard. Powerful and wise, the Shadow Guard recognizes that there are some humans with gifts--psychic powers or unusual physical or mental abilities. These special ones, because of their gifts, are in a position to be able to fight against the predatory malevolents, but at the same time are vulnerable, highly visible to the evil beings. The Shadow Guard recruits and trains these people to be "shadowbenders"--warriors of various skills in the ongoing conflict. It's fascinating to bring three visions, three storytelling styles to the same book, and I truly think the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We’re starting to see some interest from publishers, and we’re all psyched about it, e-mailing one another and trying to get the whole thing fine-tuned. What’s great about it is it’s been a way for us to “play.” We’ve been working off and on with it for about six years, producing new stories when the inspiration strikes. Our big motivation has always been to “wow” each other, to add surprising new dimensions. Then we all started noticing, “Hey! When you’re just having a ball with storytelling, you do some of your best work!” I hope we’ll be able to introduce it to the public soon. [Ed. note: The first Unsung Heroes story will debut in issue 8 of Ozment's House of Twilight]

About a sequel to Dragonfly: I’ve always intended to do that. The book’s ending pretty much screams “A sequel is coming!” I didn’t pursue it for a long time because I was engrossed in other projects, but not long ago, a writer friend told me about a dream she had. The minute I heard about this ominous figure in her dream, I knew it was going to be Dragonfly’s next adversary—so I’ve got my villain. I recently talked with April Derleth at Arkham House, and she is open to the idea of a sequel, although Arkham House always has a very full publishing schedule. So it will have to be a good sequel. It won’t be a return to Hallowe’en, though. I’m going to pick on another season of the year.

OHOT: Which authors have most influenced you?

FSD: A college friend read The Lord of the Rings for her first time just before Peter Jackson’s movies came out, and she remarked that Tolkien’s writing sounded a lot like mine. (Pause for laughter.) Gee, I wonder why. First and foremost is Tolkien. LOTR transported me to this grand other place. When you’re twelve, these places like Middle-earth become as important to you as the world you live in. That’s why I write fantasy: in the hope of offering such Otherplaces for other readers to adventure in.

Charlotte’s Web is the first book I can remember that made me cry. It also taught me how a book’s ending can be sad and intensely beautiful at the same time, all accomplished with the power of language and character and Story.

Watership Down, when I was in fifth grade, convinced me that I’d just read the greatest book in the world and that my reading life would be all downhill from then on. Thank goodness I went straight from Richard Adams to Tolkien—no one lesser could have redeemed the situation!

Lord Dunsany with his lyric beauty, Clark Ashton Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs—they took me to lost worlds of wonder. Burroughs is what little boys did before there were video games: you could do the same scaling of cliffs, the same last-second dodging from dinosaurs’ jaws—but you did it in your imagination.

H.P. Lovecraft was a perennial favorite. I’m sure my love of dark atmosphere and decaying buildings comes from him. One reviewer at a semi-prozine took me to task for naming such an unlikely pair as Tolkien and Lovecraft as my influences, but there is a connection. They both wrote of horrible Things sleeping in the Earth’s deep places that ought not to be disturbed. What is the Watcher in the Water outside Moria if not one of the Great Old Ones?

If we’re talking authors that directly influenced Dragonfly: Peter S. Beagle, with his Midnight Carnival in The Last Unicorn; Struwwelpeter, by Heinrich Hoffmann (anyone who was terrorized by that cautionary book as a kid will know where Mr. Snicker in Dragonfly came from); and Ray Bradbury, in Something Wicked This Way Comes. In that book, Mr. Cougar and Mr. Dark’s carnival is a whole lot like my Harvest Moon bunch—and the bad guys even fly around in a balloon! Several people have told me my style reminds them of Ray Bradbury’s. Our “way of moving the camera is the same,” as one friend puts it. I suppose it’s natural, since we’re both Illinois boys from small towns. We seem to think a lot of the same things are numinous.

OHOT: You are a regular contributor of fantasy stories and fairy tales to Cricket and Cicada. When you have an idea, how or when do you know if it’s going to work best for a YA audience or an adult readership? Do your fairy tales and your darker works like “The Bone Man” (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Dec. 07) come from “different” parts of your psyche?

FSD: I don’t have a clue how the mind works. It amazes me how we can store the tiniest details for years and years without ever once accessing them or consciously remembering them, and then they come back to us, triggered by a scent, a voice, a place, or a glimpsed object from childhood—or in a dream.

My gut feeling is that my stories all come from the same place in my psyche. The evidence I’d present is the ones out there and published. When I’m writing YA, I don’t write “for children.” I write stories that grab hold of me, that I’d like to read—period. Look at my Cricket stories: all but one involve murder, monsters, destruction, and/or the threat of death for the main character. Age level affects how much dark detail and violence I actually show, but my core material doesn’t change. When I wrote “The Bone Man,” a friend snickered and said, “I bet this one isn’t going to Cricket!” No—but framed just a little differently, it certainly could be a children’s story. It still appeals to the child-mind in me. That’s precisely why it works at all. When we experience any story viscerally, it’s the child in us experiencing it. So in that sense, I’m always writing for children.

About stories fitting different markets, I almost always start out thinking of the magazine I’m aiming for. I wrote “The Gift” for Mooreeffoc. I wrote “The Bone Man” for MFSF. It’s like I hold up a Cricket-shaped basket and catch an idea that’s the right size to fit the basket. That’s why they tell you to study magazines you’re planning to submit to. What happened with “A Tale of Silences” was that I started out writing it for Cricket, and a little way in, I realized it wasn’t the right-sized story for pre-teens. Telling it required too many subtle details about the main character and his life. It spilled over the edges of the basket, but it fit the Cicada-shaped basket I had nearby.

But no, I think that all the ideas, all the stories come flowing up from the same enchanted river. And they’re all for “children.”

OHOT: That would come as a surprise to some parents reading a story like “The Bone Man.” You say it could be told from a slightly different angle and be fine for a magazine like Cricket, but I suspect many parents would look at this story and think, “Even with the violent ending toned down, this would give my child nightmares.”

FSD: I was talking about the core horror element in “The Bone Man,” not the plot. If I were writing it for a children’s market, I wouldn’t make the main character a hit man. He wouldn’t have a gun. The beginning, middle, and ending would all be different. I don’t want to give away the story for those who haven’t read it, but I’d argue that what really makes the tale scary—its central idea—could be used in a children’s story. Because, again, it’s the child in all of us who hungers for that sort of thing. If we weren’t children deep inside, we’d have no use for a story like this. When people truly bury or abandon or forget their child-mind, they turn away from fiction altogether. A story, after all, is a bunch of lies, “no more yielding than a dream.” Children live and play there. That twelve-year-old inside us goes and lives in Middle-earth.

OHOT: You mentioned that you grew up reading Grimm’s fairy tales—the real stuff, not the expurgated versions. Do you think a dose of terror is healthy for young imaginations?

FSD: We have to be very careful how we define “terror.” It is most definitely not healthy to expose children to the cruelty, gore, and sickness that run so rampant today in the horror genre. A friend of mine says, “It matters what images we put into our minds, because we’ll never, ever get them out.” That’s true for adults, and it’s even truer for minds that are young, impressionable, and in full absorption mode.
That having been said, it’s also true that no one can shelter kids from scary ideas. Kids will encounter horror. On the one hand, they have life experiences: pets die, relatives die, people get hurt, and you always hear things. On the other hand, kids seek out horror. There’s a monster in the basement, they know, because they’ve got their ears pressed to the basement door, they’ve opened it a crack, they’ve tiptoed down to the third, squeaky step. Kids will find things to be terrified of. I was so scared of a moss troll doll that my mom had to hide it in a drawer. Every year or so I’d beg her to get it out again, and she’d finally oblige, and I’d be so scared she’d have to hide it again. See? It’s the moth to the flame. Kids passionately want to be scared in a safe environment.

That environment is the key. If a child is happy and secure, with parents who behave like parents, he or she has a sense of perspective. There’s a line between real life and the Dark Woods. In that situation, yes, fictional horror can be a delight and, like any good story, can help kids grow. But I make a distinction here between scary stories and the sick, disturbing stories of cruelty—those aren’t good for anyone. And I can only pray God help the children who don’t have a healthy, safe environment. As fantasists, with our stories of dedication, love, and the triumph of goodness, we try to throw those kids a lifeline.

OHOT: At first you weren’t sure if there would be a market for a work like Dragonfly, being that it had too much horror for YA and too much warmth and happiness for the horror market. Some reviews of the book I have read express that same ambivalence—while their overall assessment of the book is enthusiastic, they are not sure how to “categorize” it. The protagonist is an eleven-year-old girl, but much of what she experiences is quite horrific, up to and including the threat of murder and the violent death of someone she holds dear. Arkham House, Sci Fi Book Club, and Ace all marketed it as straight horror/dark fantasy. Do you find it appeals more to a certain age or audience in particular?

FSD: I have no conclusive evidence, no demographic statistics to go on. I can only tell you what I’ve learned from fan letters, from readers I’ve met, and from what I’ve found when I’ve Googled myself. The book seems to have an audience among young women, from junior high through their twenties. I’m not sure what that means. It could be that more girls than boys write fan letters and discuss what they’re reading on their blogs. These readers tend to find the Arkham House edition in libraries, receive it from relatives, hear about it from friends, or find the Ace paperback in a store. It makes sense, I guess, that the female protagonist would appeal to females. There’s a widespread belief that many boys will shun a girl protagonist. I don’t know if that’s true or not; it never was for me.

Anyway, I think these younger readers like the book’s honesty and complexity. Many seem to judge by the cover that it’s going to be too “young” for them, but then it deals with dark themes and doesn’t pull punches.

The other audience group I’ve encountered are collectors of Arkham House books, and believe me, they’re the most passionate collectors of anything on Earth! The ones I’ve met have been men, my age or older. They’re reading it, of course, because it’s an Arkham House book.
So, I don’t know. I heard from a businessman who read Dragonfly on his commuter train to work; I’ve heard from senior citizens; I’ve heard from a few moms who liked it but are going to put it away until their kids are older (like my troll in the drawer). I think the letter that affected me most deeply was from someone who read Dragonfly at a dark time in her life, and it reminded her that some battles are worth fighting, that there are good reasons to keep walking until you get out of the tunnel. I was stunned, because I never thought of it as an inspirational book. The effect it had on her is simply a testimony to the power of Story. We humans need good stories. Writing books is something that’s very worthwhile. If I’m ever discouraged about my writing, I’ll get out her letter again.

OHOT: The title character of Dragonfly is an eleven-year-old girl. You are a single man, no children, in your late twenties when you wrote it. Why the decision to take on a narrator so different from you, and how did you get into her head and make her voice authentic?

FSD: People have asked me this question from the minute the book was published, so I had time to consider it right after having written the book; and honestly, I cannot remember ever making a decision to cast the main character as a girl. That’s simply who she was when she showed up. The book really began with two names: Dragonfly and Mothkin. She was who she was, and he was who he was. I didn’t sit around thinking of what they should be like.

I can try to guess at subconscious, instinctive factors that may have influenced the selection—or arrival—of a preteen girl as the protagonist. For one thing, it has to be a kid. The book is all about childhood fears, so I needed someone who would be feeling them most keenly—a child. But as you get into the book, you realize that she’s actually telling the story years later, as an adult. That allowed me to filter the sharp, vivid, immediate childhood experiences of the story through the experience and insights of a grown woman. I’m glad I didn’t plan that, or even think about, before I wrote the book, because it’s a pretty ambitious thing to try in a first novel. The book is too wordy and overwritten in places—that can happen before a writer is old enough to learn some restraint. On the other hand, it has a dewiness that I couldn’t reproduce today.

Second, there’s the fact that men simply like women. When you write a book, you spend a long, long time with the main character. You can only do it if you enjoy being with that character. It’s fun spending time with the female mind.

Finally, though, we come back to the fact that the character is eleven and twelve years old. There’s really not much difference between an imaginative, book-loving eleven-year-old girl and a boy of the same description. I was that boy, so I had no trouble writing the girl. I just put myself into the part and wrote the character as if it were me. She doesn’t do anything in the book that’s uniquely “female.”

I mentioned the trouble I’ve had writing the huge, sprawling novel that I started right after I finished Dragonfly. Ironically, the main character in that one is a man close to my age—but I’ve had a lot more trouble getting him to seem real. I think it’s because I’ve been a kid. I’ve had the childhood fears. I haven’t been through a lot of political intrigue and war—so in the second book, I’m trying to write things I know little about.

OHOT: Having been a lifelong fan of Lovecraft, how did it feel to have your first novel brought out by Arkham House?

FSD: Like an impossible dream come true! When I first finished the book, I sent it out to all the big houses, one by one. After a round of rejections, I put it away and worked on other things for awhile. At the advice of a writing workshop leader, I went to a university library and used Literary Marketplace to locate about fifteen or so publishers who might possibly be interested. Since Arkham House begins with “A,” it was near the top of my list. I took the information down, but I regarded it as this legendary place, a dwelling in “inapproachable light.” I never thought I’d have a ghost of a chance there, so I didn’t send them the book until I’d exhausted just about every other publisher on my list. Finally, I thought “What have I got to lose?” and sent it to them. A blurb I read somewhere said Arkham House didn’t want to see unagented manuscripts; it typically no longer did single-author books except for those of the old masters; and it generally preferred collections of short stories by well-established writers—not novels from unknowns. If I’d read that before sending my novel off, I never would have sent it.
I submitted it from Taylorville, using that as my return address, and I went back to Japan to teach. When a letter eventually came from Peter Ruber, my mom saw his name on the envelope and mistook him for one of my college friends; it sat on the kitchen table for a week or so, until Mom had several more letters to forward to me. That letter said they were quite interested and would be making a final decision soon. Now Mom knew what to look for, and when they made that decision, she called me in Japan in the middle of the night. I’ll never forget that feeling—and telling my writing students the next day in class that my first novel had been accepted. That was the first year the university had let me teach creative writing, and the students were thrilled for me!

The more I learn about Arkham House, the more honored I am. I’m in such amazing company among writers they’ve published. Part of me still can’t believe that I’m communicating directly with April Derleth, daughter of August Derleth. And I will forever be grateful to Mr. Ruber, who pulled Dragonfly out of the slush pile and went to bat for me.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-04T20:55:44Z

I haven't posted in a while, so here's the first for the New Year. I've been busy teaching three sections of College Reading and Writing (known in common vernacular as freshman composition). The new semester starts up in about a week (oh, winter break, how fleeting thou art). Seventy-five new students...Boy, that's a lot of names to learn.

My humorous fantasy piece "Where There's Smoke, There's Heartburn" finally sees the light of day in the latest issue of BLOOD, BLADE & THRUSTER. It can be viewed or downloaded for free here: http://www.bbtmagazine.com/bbt-3/. My story has the fine distinction of appearing between the Cosplay girl and an interview with Joe Hill. Also noteworthy: This is, alas, BBT's final issue. It also features an interview with George RR Martin and some fine stories and poems. The cover art, as always, is eye-popping. Well worth checking out, even if I weren't in it. (And it's FREE!)

The new issue of WEIRD TALES hitting the stands this month (Issue #347 of the longest-running pulp magazine) includes my poem "The Faeries' Hoax." It was inspired by some reading I did on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his father, who was committed to an insane asylum where he drew pictures of faeries on letters to his son. Doyle Sr. allegedly thought he was drawing them from life. Of course, years later Doyle Jr. was taken in by the Cottingley Fairy Hoax, and an idea for a poem was born...

Finally, check out www.everydayfiction.com. EVERY DAY FICTION runs a new flash fiction story (under 1,000 words) every day. They have published two of my stories in the past three months.

I wish you all a Happy New Year (and since we'll have a new president by the end of it, 'twill be a Happy Year indeed).

2007 World Fantasy Convention

2007-10-28T06:21:09Z

I'll be attending the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY next week (Nov. 1-5). On Saturday at 10:00 AM, I'll be on the panel "Tolkien as a Horror Writer."

SFReader Web Ring

2007-07-26T17:36:59Z

The SFReader Ring

Previous Site : Random Site : Next Site : List Sites

Why the Critics Got 300 Wrong

2007-07-15T06:44:48Z

Ever since the movie 300 came out and did record-breaking box office, historians and professors have been pontificating on talk shows about its historical inaccuracies. The film’s blatant historical distortions were also a favorite saw of many film critics—especially critics of the snootier New Yorker variety.

I’m here to tell you that many of these learned and well-intentioned arbiters of historical faithfulness missed the point. They managed, thanks to a certain scholarly myopia, to overlook the obvious.

The obvious element they missed is simply this: the framework of the story itself. The movie begins and ends with a voice-over narrator, the lone survivor who is also the Spartans’ bard, minstrel, storyteller. He is recounting events to Greeks who were not present, and what we are seeing portrayed on screen is the legend forming in the minds of the storyteller’s audience.

The movie’s stylized look should make it apparent we are not in “reality” here. From the stark, otherworldly scenery to the “monsters” to the near-superhuman Spartans themselves, this is myth brought to life. A myth inspired by historical events, granted. But what the scholars are doing, strangely enough, is to criticize the legend for not being an accurate portrayal of the events that inspired it.

What may have thrown some critics is that they harbored expectations generated by other recent adaptations of history and legend. In recent retellings of the war of Troy, the Beowulf legend, King Arthur—to cite a few—Hollywood moviemakers took a deconstructionist approach, striving to realistically portray (at least “realistically” by Hollywood standards) the historical events that gave rise to those legends.

Zack Snyder’s approach—and that of Frank Miller in his graphic novel on which the movie is based—is the polar opposite. These are the events as later storytellers would imagine them; it is not a deconstruction but a conjuration. Case in point: when the Persians released a rhinoceros on the battlefield, it likely would have been the first time any Spartan had seen such an animal. Thus the rhino that lumbers across the screen looks like some prehistoric beast or a monster out of Lord of the Rings. This isn’t just a rhino; it’s the archetypal Rhino. Ditto the archetypal Elephants, Warriors, God-Kings.

As far as I know, no critic was silly enough to point out that “the historical Xerxes was not nine feet tall.” Such a statement would be the sort made by an imbecile. But the underlying reason for Xerxes literally towering over Leonidas is part and parcel with other “inaccuracies” that are roundly criticized. In the retelling of the story, a divine god-king might well have been imagined as a giant, physically reflecting his metaphoric stature.

To underline my argument, it may be helpful to recall another film based on another Miller graphic novel: Sin City. That movie was also stylized, raising up cops and thugs, crime bosses and prostitutes, to the mythic proportions of superheroes and villains. The reception of most critics to this work was favorable, in some cases enthusiastically glowing. To my knowledge, nary a critic lambasted Sin City by saying, “The city portrayed here is inaccurate; there is not a city in the world like this. There are not child molesters who look like goblins with yellow skin. There is nowhere in America a prostitution ring run by women who are ninja warriors.” That would be the criticism of a babbling idiot. Yet critics and scholars have been lining up to lob such gripes against 300.

Granted, Sin City was not named New York City or Las Vegas, but it clearly referenced such modern-day American cities in a highly romanticized, black-and-white way. The approach in 300 is parallel, congruous, one-and-the-same with the Sin City treatment, only the referent is not a modern-day Gotham but an event that occurred three millennia ago.

A brief caveat: While I think it misguided to criticize 300 on historical grounds, I realize that some people criticize it for a perceived political message. Some have pointed out that the rousing speech to rally the troops at the end sounds cobbled together from sound bytes of President Bush’s speeches promoting the war in Iraq. I will not deny that the president—with the necessary help of speechwriters, who have a far better grasp of the language—has manipulated words to couch questionable foreign policy in the feel-good rhetoric of fighting for freedom and democracy.

Yes, but these could also have been words spoken by those in the minority in the 1930s who argued for the United States to join their allies in opposing the expansionist aims of Germany and Japan. These could have been words spoken by revolutionists in the American colonies. These are words that could have been spoken by any opposition movement against any dictatorship or oppressive government. Let’s not surrender these words to self-serving politicians. Or else we’ll be good as admitting that such rhetoric has been poisoned beyond rehabilitation by those who misuse and abuse it.

A final note—if I may return to the historical issue for a moment: I understand that any Spartan speaking such freedom-and-democracy rhetoric would have had a far different, greatly curtailed understanding of democracy—the vote of propertied males. The general consensus of our founding fathers was a small step forward, hobbled with its own flaws and limitations. We have evolved our concept of freedom to include people of all races and classes and both genders—though in some cases that evolution has occurred only within the last eighty years. Perhaps we are reading too much into, imposing our own values on, the actions of primitive Spartans. But it cannot be argued but that those cruel warriors gave cultured Athenians the protection necessary to begin the process toward the legal freedoms we possess today. And this metaphoric, mythical story may be useful in reminding us that these freedoms are never secure—there will always be those, often within the very system meant to protect our rights, who will try to curtail those rights if we passively allow them to do so. One need only turn on the news for a few minutes to be reminded of that: CIA “family jewels,” FBI abuses of Patriot Act powers, NSA abuses of warrantless wiretapping, a president’s overstepping of executive authority in ways too numerous to recount here. It is often forgotten that the founding fathers, while concerned about Americans protecting their new country from foreign invaders, were equally concerned that they protect their freedoms from tyrants who always, inevitably will try to rise up from within.

Eulogy: Carl Ozment

2007-07-12T15:11:25Z

Carl Adrain Ozment
November 13, 1925 - May 24, 2007

Within a year of my Nan's death, my Grandad followed. Always a fiercely independent, stubborn man, he made it clear to all of us that, with Nan gone, his work on Earth was done and he was ready to go too. He seemed to linger that last year just to make sure his family was going to be okay. Then he said his goodbye and, soon thereafter, went to his reunion in the Great Beyond with his wife of nearly sixty years.

Grandad served on a submarine in World War II. He received a Navy send-off, with the playing of Taps and a 21-gun salute. Another great American is gone, entrusting the future to our hands.

Here are the words I wrote for the funeral. Since I could not be there, my dad--Grandad's only son--read them:

Grandad had an affinity with animals. He was a dog breeder, an exotic bird breeder, a fish breeder. The labyrinth of old pens in the sprawling yard in South Phoenix was a place of mystery and wonder to explore, when we were kids. Grandad and Nan always had dogs, up until the last few years. Even then, all the stray cats of the neighborhood honed in on their yard. When a dog—even a strange dog—met Grandad, that dog immediately knew who was boss. Dogs knew he was the authority. He passed that affinity for animals down to his children and grandchildren. I’ve heard near-miraculous stories of Karen bringing a dying animal back to life. I seem to recall a chicken everyone thought was dead. She warmed it up in the oven and soon it was running around in the yard. She may have missed her calling as a vet.

People, too, showed deference and respect to Grandad—he was the final authority, not just to us grandkids but to our parents, too. You didn’t cross the line or contradict Grandad. Once, when we were driving our ATC’s up and down the road between Grandad and Nan’s cabin and my folks’ land, the neighbor preacher raised a fuss. We’d leave ruts in the road or something. He came over to complain and Grandad said, “You giving my grandkids a hard time?” That was the end of it: the preacher backed down apologetically. He could recognize authority—God and Grandad.

I’ve heard stories that Grandad was a rough, hard man when he was younger, a stern disciplinarian with his kids. He mellowed out as he got older. Thinking back over all my memories of him, I can’t actually remember him yelling at us. I know he did, that Doug and I probably got the belt, when we were raising a ruckus—but those memories have gone back into some inaccessible part of my brain. Or maybe the threat of Grandad’s belt was enough that we never let it get that far—Doug may be able to remember better than me.

All my memories of Grandad, he is a benign authority, sitting regal in his easy chair, like a venerable king observing the merry-making of his subjects. When you walked past him, he might reach out and pinch you, or come up behind you when you were at the table coloring and give you a noogie on the top of your head. Hands never raised in anger but only to make you laugh. I remember him stopping the truck on the drive up to their newly-bought land in Heber, to pull Doug and me out of the back seat and toss us into a snow bank.

I remember him staying up late playing Solitaire or watching Johnny Carson, but he was always the first to rise. Long before anyone else stirred, he’d be sitting at the kitchen table, no light but the first gray light of dawn. Even the morning after Nan’s funeral, when I woke on the bed of couch cushions I’d made on the floor, Grandad was sitting there beside me in his easy chair. He looked down at me and said, “Hello, young man.”

I loved to hear my Grandad talk. He had that Oklahoma accent that in some people can sound mean or slow, but my Grandad, to me, always sounded smart when he talked. “He’s like to get hisself in trouble, that boy is,” he might say, and even peppered with the regional dialect, the statement carried weight and authority. I liked to talk to him about books and the authors I discovered on his shelves. I wish I’d talked to him more.

My Grandad loved to read, though from my earliest memory he always used a big magnifying lens—the Sherlock Holmes kind. Until his eyesight got too bad, he would go through paper-bags full of books. One day when I was in the third grade I pulled a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, one of his favorite authors, down off his shelf, and it changed my life forever. Now I write the kinds of stories he liked to read—westerns and fantasies and science fiction—and I just wish he could read them.

Grandad and Nanny. If she was the flowing river, he was the riverbed, cutting its course through a river valley. And the thing about rivers and beds is that they shape each other, over the years. The riverbed shapes the river by the contours of the land. But the river smoothes rough stones, widens the banks, and the two together change each other and reshape the land. Nan and Grandad are both gone now, but they aren’t. The river valley they formed is here, and the river carries on, now three generations on. Their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren are now making their own marks on the land. One is protecting us in covert operations on faraway seas. A couple are protecting us right here at home. Some are exercising their creativity and skills in the arts, or taking care of hospital patients, or teaching college students, or raising children, or sharing their life-earned wisdom with others. One or two may have hit a rough patch, but they’ll straighten out. It’s a pretty solid valley Grandad and Nan left.

Grandad is again sitting in an easy chair, only this one’s a lot easier. And Nan’s sitting beside him again. And one thing I know for sure. Grandad is proud of us all.

Eulogy

2007-07-11T17:24:12Z

Martha L. Ozment
April 18, 1934 - April 29, 2006

I began this poem the evening I learned my Nan (Martha Ozment, my paternal grandmother) had passed away. I finished it the night before her funeral. The meter’s shaky here and there; one or two of the rhymes may feel forced. But this is the poem I read at her memorial service. I have not changed, nor will I ever change, a word.

Sparklers in Heaven

And there came a day when we lit the fuses

But the firecrackers would not light,

And we tried to plug in the Christmas tree,

But the tree stayed dark as night.

That day we went to hunt Easter eggs,

We searched and searched but none were found.

We blew on the New Year's noisemakers,

But they did not make a sound.

We folded up the Santa suit and laid it

By the witch mask in a drawer.

The joyful cackle through snowy beard or

Witch-wart chin fills the room no more.

We put needles on the coat-hanger wires

But not a single balloon was popped.

We threw the planes with wooden wings,

But like airless things they dropped.

We tried to dig for earthworms,

But the drought had gone too deep,

And we closed up all the storybooks,

left Brementown Musicians fast asleep.

An ice-cream truck came rolling by,

But it played a funeral dirge.

We would've chased it as in days of old,

But no one felt the urge.

And the celebration evaporated

Like a rain puddle on a summer day

Because the leader of the celebration

Had gone away.

"Nanny!" all the children cried, young

And old and young at heart,

"Where's Nanny at? Where's Nanny at?"

Somewhere where we cannot see

A new celebration has begun,

And firecrackers are bursting in multi-

Colored crescendos bigger than the sun.

Balloons the size of supernovas

Are exploding one by one

To herald a new celebration

That has just begun.

Children hunt for pearls of great price,

Their baskets overflowing,

And the lanterns on the Story Tree

With an inner light are glowing.

And the celebrants all giddy-faced

Are washed of every stain

As they see the harvest coming in

From the seeds they sowed in pain.

Overhead a host of seraphim
Dart and dive like kites and planes,
In notes too high for human ears
Singing "Holy! Holy! Our Lord reigns!"

And the noisemaker is a trumpet blasted
By an angel from on high,
And to a brand new celebration
All the hosts of Heaven fly.

The newest guest hands sparklers out
To the angels each and all,
And the stars of a thousand heavens pale
When they light that heavenly hall.

The Master of the celebration
Is turning water into wine,
And a feast to rival any Christmas table
Is spread out for the guests to dine.

And the Host of this celebration is
The spirit at the heart of Holiday--
Born on Christmas day, rose on Easter day,
The King on Halloween to whom
Frightened children pray,
Bestowing hope for new beginnings every
New Year's Day, every wedding day,
Every birthday, even
Every funeral day.

We might strain to listen with other ears
And for a glorious moment might fainlty hear
Familiar laughter from a distant shore
Unclouded by pain, or loss, or fear.

Where's Nanny at?

She, the guest of honor at that celebration
We can imagine but not yet see,
Is a holiday-keeper after God's own heart
Who is finally Home, finally Whole, finally
Free.