Remember That Line In Funny Girl: 'HEY MR. KEANEY HERE I AM?' WELL, HERE I AM!

See I'm talking about a chance--a chance to be up there with the Gods of writing, with the bestselling authors. Those iconic authors whose work we savour. I read them, you read them, we all read their works, but hey Mister, give me a chance too, huh?

Remember that scene in Funny Girl when Barbra Streisand playing Fanny Brice wants to audition for a show and she sings the song about being the greatest star ‘only no one knows it?’

Well that's what this blog post is about. There are so many of us wanting to be noticed, wanting our writing seen by all.

I feel I have something to say, something new and different. I'm another voice crying in bookdom's wilderness, I'm building a fan base but I also want to sing: MR. KEANEY, HERE I AM (Funny Girl again).

I studied acting many years ago and auditioned for a couple of off Broadway shows, it was fun and terrifying at the same time. It's a tough business show business, but you can audition for big shows for big producers too sometimes. I don't think writing is like that. That's what I'd like to see different.

Showing up for an open audition is straight forward. The producers, stage managers are either there or they're not. They're going to give you a shot or not. You'll know it or you won't, no guessing.

Now, I don't want you to think I focus on this all the time because I don't. I'm too much of a realist and a pragmatist. I work hard and will continue to do so.

I am writing the sequel to my novel now and am enjoying every minute of it even though it's tough. Nothing comes easy in this life and that's a good thing because it keeps us on our toes and focused.

So if everything remains the same and I have to continue to promote myself and my writing I'll do it because there's no way I would stop, not now, not ever, after all the show must go on!

Love Unmasked

He dwelled alone, the last of a vanished people.

When he was a boy he used to hunt with his father and the other men, but by the time he reached manhood he found himself alone.

Generally he kept to himself, sometimes even singing in the quiet of his cave. Song gladdened his heart a bit though he wouldn’t have understood why.

He didn’t expect his life to change but it did, for on one seemingly ordinary day when he was going to the river to fish, he saw a woman.

He had seen women before although he had no memory of it.

The woman screamed when she saw him, waving her hands and yelling at him.

He thought he quite disgusted her so he covered his face with his hands. He would have apologized had he known speech, but he didn’t, his people had few words, not that they knew them as words.

He realized he frightened her for she was crying and trying to flee from him. So he picked up a large palm leaf and covered most of his face.

Then he called to her, peering at her over the top just to see if she had calmed down.

She had. Although it looked as though it wouldn’t take her long to get started all over again.

I’m sorry.

No, not words articulated or even thought of, just a feeling in his heart.

He left then, he hurried back to his cave beneath the cliffs along the sand dunes where he would have peace and quiet--the peace and quiet of his solitary life.

He fell asleep, dozing without having sung anything for he had no heart to.

When he woke he fashioned a leaf into something else. He cut out holes for his eyes and placed it over his face.

He was pleased with himself for he knew if he saw the girl again, he’d put it on for he had fixed it in such a way it that it would stay in place.

He did see her occasionally, always putting the mask on, in order not to frighten her.

After a while a kind of friendship of mutual respect evolved between the two creatures who were actually a young Neanderthal male and a young Homosapien female.

There were things he knew about his world which was her world too, and he tried to tell her, but she couldn’t understand though she did try.

His world was older than hers and there were many lessons about what to eat and drink, he thought her ill informed and he worried lest she be harmed.

Eventually he found her dead from the bad water he had tried to warn her of.

He knew sleep from death and he knew she was no longer in the world of the living. From this long sleep she would never awaken.

How he wept for her, mourning this friend he had lost.

He would bid her farewell; this was a barely remembered memory he had. For when one of the clan died, there was a kind of ceremony.

And so there was for his friend.

He picked flowers and leaves for her passage. For that was the right thing to do.

He arranged a blanket of leaves over her body. The flowers were for her face. These he had woven together while chanting something he barely remembered from his boyhood.

When all was done, and she lay under a blanket of leaves with the flowers covering her face, he put his own mask back on out of respect for her.

Then because he had to and because he didn’t think she’d mind he gently exposed her lips, only her lips so that he might kiss them.

They were cold and soft and their touch made him weep.

His tears fell upon her flowered mask, his tears of sadness and of loss.

Mostly they were tears of love, unlived and unfulfilled.

And if he knew anything at all, he knew he would remember a mask of flowers and the still, cold lips of a woman he had loved.

~*~

Neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago, around the same time Homosapiens evolved. Although Neanderthals were ultimately displaced by Homosapiens, genetic markers proved that we co-existed at the same time for 1,000 years.

Dr. Todd Rae,

Evolutionary Anthropologist 

Roehampton University, London

©Copyright 2011 Carole Gill

word count 800

Horror Reviewer Andy Boylan: The House on Blackstone Moor: 'Gloriously Gothic, Refreshingly Brutal, Honestly Horrific And A Great Read'

Andy Boylan, horror film and book reviewer and author of Concilium Sanguinarius reviewed my novel on his blog.

Here is some of what he had to say. Please visit Taliesin Meets the Vampires to read the entire review
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2011/08/house-on-blackstone-moor-review.html


From the review:


"The House on Blackstone Moor is very much a book of two halves...


In short the first half of the book is a gothic joy as Rose is tortured but that torture always carries a glimmer of hope. Gill makes Rose a strong voice, even though she is a vulnerable character and as she faces the murder of her family by her father, her placement in an institution, the hints of the abuse she suffered and her gaining the governess position at Blackstone – with children too old for their age – a gothic mystery is weaved and then dyed as red as the blood spilt from a bird as she catches the children drinking from its headless body.

As she, and thus we, discovers the truth… the family are vampires (bar the father who is the vampiric son of a fallen angel and the source of the vampirism) and they are working at bringing her into the fold... the story shifts and it becomes the book of two parts that I mentioned. Gone is the nineteenth century veneer (gone also is the glimmer of hope I mentioned) and the story morphs into something akin to Clive Barker in a period costume. There is devil worship, hate filled spirits, betrayal and a host of dark (pitch black) secrets to emerge, we even get a battle of fallen angels. The reason for mentioning Barker, is not only because of the visceral nature of the horror but because, like Barker, it seems that Gill cannot have her heroine suffer enough. Just as you think she cannot suffer another indignity then another is found and Rose suffers and suffers.

I for one found this gloriously gothic, refreshingly brutal, honestly horrific and a great read. I look forward to the sequel. 7.5 out of 10. "

~*~

Yup, I can live with that!

Books Like I Write! Ah, I Am Doing Something Right!

'Carole, I was wondering if you know of any other authors here who write books in the same style/genre you do? With reading your book I really want to find more authors who write 19th century horror/gothic type books. Such a nice change from horror I typically read...'

 

- Dianna Mattscheck.

 

Well, Dianna thank you!

I did by the way answer Dianna's question and I'm thinking of a lot more authors for her. Sadly many of the novels I’m going to suggest are at best reprints.

You see that’s what motivated me to write The House on Blackstone Moor in the first place.

‘Gothic romance was supposedly dead and in an advanced state of decomposition.’

I didn’t agree with that and did research I found then and still find readers on message boards not only discussing their favourite gothic romance writers but wanting to know where they can purchase reprints.

Why reprints I thought? Why aren’t new books published today for today’s reader?

By that I mean this: our world moves faster than it did. It’s also a darker more frightening place we live in. Therefore, I felt that gothic romance written for today’s reader should be darker, bolder—much more intense than in previous years.

In other words it should have storylines and characters that would have prevented it from being published years ago!

Masterpieces like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are brilliant books in my opinion. Yet I do feel that each has darkness that would be far darker if written today.

Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights has Cathy’s coffin opened because he can’t bear to be apart from her. Now that’s dark!

In Jane Eyre, the mad Bertha Rochester locked in a tower and Edward Rochester wishing to marry anyway (and we sympathesize) is dark! But today, both of these novels might be a great deal darker!

Rebecca by the incomparable Daphne DuMaurier is very intense it’s full of strange and mysterious questions that niggle at us. Just what was the relationship between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca the woman she worked for? Why is Mrs. Danvers as passionate about wishing to see the second wife killed? Why does she hug a dead woman’s clothes and taunt the second wife the way she does?

Had that been written more recently those questions would not only have been answered, but would have been clearly spelled out.

That’s the whole point of this post. Gothic romance can and must have a rebirth BECAUSE THE READERS ARE THERE!

I’m not talking about paranormal romance with racy bits. I’m making the case for all the elements of gothic romance: the sweeping narrative, the sharply defined characters, the dark mystery to be incorporated into novels that are powerful and intense and that are most definitely for today’s readers.

Thanks so much!

Just A Necromantic At Heart

          He had seen every film she ever made. How she lit up the screen, this platinum blonde, this beautiful angel who was giving Jean Harlow a run for her money. But then she killed herself. No one knew why.

          Film Star Mabel Morton Found Dead!

          The headlines made Harold sick. Really ill, no kidding around. He spent six weeks in L.A.'s St. Vincent’s nut ward-- admitting diagnosis: nervous breakdown.

          It was when he was recovering that he got the idea. It was the West Indian orderly who put him on to it.

          “What’s wrong with you man? You look to be pining away.”

          Harold spilled his guts in a manner of speaking telling him all that was in his heart.

          “I loved her. She didn’t know me, naturally but I seen every film she ever made!”

          “Ah you want to raise her up, that’s what you want to do. You need to do necromancy.”

          “And she’ll be alive again; she’ll come back from the dead?”

          “My brother has this shop…”

          He bought himself the necromancer book down on Overa Street and got to work practicing spells. He raised up some dead mice and roaches too. He even raised up a couple of people at the Eternal Rest Funeral home.

He realized he could have gotten into a lot of trouble. But he didn’t care. He was too intent on his purpose.

          Okay, she’s been planted for more than six weeks, but she’d still be sort of okay, he reasoned.

          He drives out to Forest Lawn Cemetery to dig her up. It’s hard, he’s sweating, and gasping too sometimes because there’s a caretaker but miracle of miracles no one bothers him. He gets her dug up.

          There’s a lot to chant and some of it hard to pronounce but he does it.

          The lid finally opens, he can’t believe it, he’s rubbing his hands and crying. His heart is racing he’s got sweat glands he didn’t know about.

          And then it happens. He hears movement from inside the coffin, sure enough the lid opens. Ever the gentleman, he helps her out of the coffin. Then he takes a good look at her in the light of his flashlight.

          He tries not to gasp. There’s been damage. One eye is history, there's just a socket with stuff crawling inside and her face is fucked up--like her muscles are gone.

          “I love you anyway!”

          Suddenly the grave next to hers starts vibrating so much the tombstone dips.

          Harold doesn’t wait around to see what else happens--he’s half carrying her to his car.

          He puts her in the front seat and just as he goes to get in, he sees a man standing at the cemetery gates, a big feller dressed in a suit. But the thing is, he looks peculiar—kind of muddy and half- assed looking and worst of all, he’s looking at them, straight at them!

          Harold slams his foot down on the accelerator.

“We’ll be home before you know it!”

After a few minutes he starts to calm down. It’s then that he notices the stench.

          Rot.

          “It’s okay, Mabel. I’ll get used to it. There is nothing in this world that would deter the love I have for you. I got all sorts of perfume ready."

          Poor Harold.

          They get to his house.

          “I’m going to carry you over the doorstep! Oh I know we're not married yet, but we can pretend, can’t we?”

          He’s really prepared. He’s got champagne and a wedding cake.

          “I haven’t spared any expense.”

          Mabel’s staring at him and it’s enough, even if she's only got one eye now.

          “Mabel! If it is possible I love you more than I ever did! I don’t know what it is. You are mine forever now. Forever and ever. We will never be parted.”

          Just then there’s a major knock at the door and Harold gasps. Mabel turns her head. “Ralph?”

          She doesn’t articulate the name clearly; it’s kind of a mumbled mushy sound. But it’s the first words she’s spoken since she’s been dug up.

          Harold has bolted the door meanwhile. He sees it’s the guy from the cemetery gates. The guy’s dead no doubt about it. He’s got the same slack jaw with bits missing here and there just like Mabel has!

          “Go away!”

          The sound of an animal like roar as the door flies open. The guy sees Mabel and pushes Harold out of the way. “Mabel…!”

          Harold’s heart sinks because she answers!

          “Ralph!”

          They both stumble toward each other and embrace.

          Harold has already begun looking for a weapon, something with which to defend himself against this monstrous interloper.

               But that’s when Ralph rips his heart out, just tears it out of his chest. 

          “Schmuck.”

          If there was one thing in life, Ralph never liked it was a rival. Hence the suicide pact.

          Oh yeah, are you kidding? Ralph and Mabel—high school sweethearts and then she gets famous and he gets left behind.

          It hadn’t been easy to talk her into it, but she finally agreed.

          Only now he sees a look of utter disgust on her face “Look babe, we come back different. Just the way it is.” With that he snaps off one of Harold’s arms. “It ain’t like faggy vampires or nothin’ no sir; the real undead are fucking zombies with a taste for flesh! Here, try it.”

          She turns away, but he’s persistent. “Just take a bite.”

          At last she does.

          Ralph smiles. “Gee Mabel you was always  such a lady, that’s what I loved about you! But that don’t matter no more, come on, dig in!” 

927 words

© Copyright 2011 Carole Gill

My Gothic Romantic Fiction Would Give Your Granny A Heart Attack!



Well it would, so whatever you do, please don't let her read it or your Aunt Harriet either!

My fiction is dark and frightening. The timeless battle between good and evil is played out graphically in my first novel and a lot more so in the sequel, Unholy Testament.

If Satan, demons, and fallen angels appeared in The House on Blackstone Moor and the issue of child abuse was discussed, this isn't light reading. Women get raped; there are orgies of violence and human sacrifices. And guess what? The sequel goes a heck of a lot further.

Unholy Testament which I'm writing now contains the thorough and unflinching confession by an evil demon, Eco who appeared in the first novel. His confessions are graphic, he seeks to put all his evil cards on the table for a particular reason, whether he is sincere or not is another question.

Also Satan is again depicted in all his Satanic evil and is more of a main character.

There's also a lot more sex in it, much more.

Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because I want everyone to start understanding that a new wave of gothic romantic fiction is being written and is being published. The old gothic romance genre is no more; there is something a hell of lot more powerful coming for readers who want something different.

The new gothic romance isn't paranormal romance; there isn't a bare chested man on any cover either. This is a whole other taco.

The dark, intense storylines are brimming with sexual situations and images of evil that will shock some, so be warned now.

Just don't let Granny near my fiction, okay?!



Friday Flash: LE GROTESQUE

In Paris' Latin Quarter, on the Rue Grégoire de Tours there was a brothel. Actually there were many brothels, but none like this one.

This is many years ago before the war. It was a rather unique establishment for it employed ladies who were considered to be human oddities.

Such things exist in the world and always have done. There are people who for whatever reason also enjoy freak shows; mankind sadly has always had the need for such things.

 It must quite make those who feel inferior feel better about themselves when they study those persons society denotes as ‘freaks.’

 The name of the brothel was Le Grotesque which means what you think it does.  

 One of Le Grotesque’s ladies was a woman known as Helena who had been employed in various circuses since childhood, her mother had left her with a circus, actually she had abandoned her in a zoo and someone brought her to a circus.

 So disfigured was Helena that the circus was quite happy to employ her.

“Ah,” they said. “She’ll pull them in with that face! Those massive folds of extra skin and the twisted features will do it!”

Yes they were very happy.

Over time, the child was passed from one circus to another, her life was horrific and more cruel than we can imagine.

 Eventually she came under the eye of the couple that ran the unique brothel, Madame and Monsieur Ducat who were themselves disfigured. They had for a time also been employed in various freak shows.

“Come away from this place. You will live well, all our young ladies do. Why stay here?”

Helena wasn’t sure, but she went. What’s another freak show, she thought. When she got there she decided to make the best of it. She felt happy to no longer be on display; being jeered and harassed was awful.  

“I shall have my own boudoir and fine clothes to wear, and if I must satisfy a client, I shall. Truly I have been violated all of my life in various ways, this is just another!”

Most of the clients behaved themselves but for the odd incident. The police were called when things got out of hand.

 The years passed, one day not different than another it seemed but then a special day dawned, the day Helena happened to meet a young man by the name of Raymond.  

The meeting was preceded by Mme Ductat advising Helena that Raymond thought he was disfigured. 

“He thinks he’s a proper monster, Helena. He really does. From what he has told us he has had a hard life, raised by true monsters, horrible people who bullied him and punished him for nothing. You see he came to detest himself as he does today. I thought…” 

Helena understood and nodded. “Yes of course, I should not object in the slightest.”

 Actually she was interested in meeting this man because she felt terribly sorry. Imagine, she thought, a perfectly formed man who thinks of himself as a beast! 

The two finally met and Helena was quite taken with him for he was unusually handsome.  

When he came in and shyly introduced himself she blushed. Under her extra flaps of skin and twisted features, he could not read her emotions. Had he been able to he wouldn’t have taken her hand to kiss it.

She was so overcome by the kiss, she startled him.

 “Yes,” he said. “I know I am hideous and I realize that is the reason you pull away, but please don’t.”

 Helena shook her head. “You are not! You are handsome!" she said. He said nothing but only smiled.

 "Monsieur, please! How can you bear to look at me?”

Her question so heartfelt, so pitiful struck Raymond hard and he wept. Where he had for years held himself back from showing emotion he now broke down:

 “I was raised in a terrible home, I’ve only known cruelty my entire life, hearts that are filled with hatred and not love. I can tell yours is brimming with kindness and I am glad!”

“But you just met me Monsieur!”

 “Please, I have been coming to places like this for years; it is the only time I feel I am accepted and if that gave me some joy, nothing prepared me for this moment for now, looking into your kind eyes I feel love, real love at long last!”

 They embraced. And if they embraced one another physically they also embraced one another’s love.

 He took her to live with him, promising to love her for the rest of his life.

 But the story does not end there.

 Sometime later they happened to go to a fair. In one of the stalls was an old man, a fortune teller. As soon as he looked at them he smiled. “Your future is mapped out for you, but you will need this.”

 He showed them a mirror. “This is a special mirror,” he said. “You can see truth in it, only truth and nothing more. You see there is a spell within the beveled glass.”

 They were afraid, that is Helena was but not Raymond.

 “Yes! Alright we shall look!”

He gazed into the mirror first for Helena wished to wait.

“It is not possible,” he cried! “How can this be me, my face is hideous!”

Helena smiled. “It is how you really look my beloved.”

 He went to hand her the mirror but she would not take it. “I know the truth all too well,” she said.

 Just then he caught her reflection in the mirror and he shouted.

“But you’re beautiful. I see your beauty now, you are perfect!”

 He handed her the mirror to look too, and she did. “My face isn't damaged!"

 At last she could see her own pure heart.

 When they turned to thank the old man they found they were alone. As for the mirror all that remained was some very fine silvery dust.

988 words

© copyright 2011 Carole

Flash Fiction: LOVE AMONG THE DEAD

          The dead dance or didn’t you know that? It only takes a pied piper to raise them up; a flutist and skilled necromancer whose music haunts them, for the dead can be haunted too.  

.         “Come my children, come and dance once more for I shall play you a tune.”

          He loves to see them rise from their graves, those grassy mounds, grown back whole in between his visits and his music.

          Here lies Jonathan, Mary, William…

          But not tonight!  No! Tonight the earth shudders and splits apart just as the first notes are played.

Tombstones tremble as the ground opens up and the dead return.

The night air caresses them, such as they are, rotted or rotting, partially there or mostly not; swollen with gaseous poisons or lean and skeletal.

It blesses them all.

Some are but skeletons. Others more recently buried hardly bear the mark of death; the child of rot and contagion.  

See how the music stirs them. They move slowly, cautiously until at last, some are so roused that they actually try to speak! But often only the sound of creaking bones is heard.

          Some try to weep but find they cannot.

          How I wish I were back in the living world again, free me, won’t you? Let me walk once more upon the earth to live again!

          There is one who does speak, for he is not long dead.  

          “I died young, barely 20. I am returned from war so different than when I left.

          Something stirs, some sound from within somewhere--from one of the great mausoleums high atop the hill; implacable guardians that look down upon this piece of eternity.

Within one of them there is a crypt, covered in faded flowers and dust-draped cobwebs that glisten in the dull blue light. It’s moonlight but because it shines through the azure-stained glass windows it looks blue.

There among the soft blue light she rises from her crypt, the great stone lid sliding away, making a hollow sound. It is death's door.
  “Where are you going daughter?”

          The mother’s softly rasping voice, still asking the daughter where she’s off to even though they have been dead for the past century!

          Still elegant in pearls and velvet ball gown, she is hardly rotted. Decomposition is slower there in those rather grand structures where the rich dwell--dwell, not live.

          The girl, a lovely thing, dressed for her first dance, in a pale pink dress now faded moves slowly forward.

A flower falls, from her once lustrous hair—hair that is matted and dry as old bones,

          She would weep were her eyes whole enough to permit such a thing.

          You see despite the grander entombment, death has still savaged her beauty.

          “Please don’t go out there…”

          The mother again, leaning atop her own burial vault, still looking down upon a world she always judged harshly.

          “You shall not go I say!”

          But the daughter will not listen, for the music calls to her, summoning her onward, and so she will leave her tomb and her mother.

         The flutist urges her forward, not in words--merely in music.

         And so she goes.

 Suddenly, she sees him, there in the moonlight, a young soldier standing and waiting, waiting for her!

          He opens his arms to embrace her.

          “I have come.”

          “Yes.”

          And so they begin to dance, and the mother watches despite everything she does watch.

          They are in love; love has found love though it be in a graveyard.      

          “You shall come to sleep with me in my grave, please?”

          But her mother will not have it!      

          She begins to float down from the mausoleum with all of her dead kin!  

          “Return to us, Gwendolyn, return at once!”

          But she will not for she has felt his embrace such as it is. And though there is the sharp sweetly-sick stench of rot, she is not deterred, for their transformation is only natural, and because they are both fading from this world, they share something. They share death.

          Death you see can be a joiner, a genuine unifying force.

          The being that is Death at last emerges from the graveyard’s shadows to unite the two in love.

          “You are one, sleep in peace!”

          They are forever bound.

          Then, in one loving embrace they hold one another as they slip into his grave where they shall share their memories as well as their love.

          Death and the necromancer leave and the cemetery becomes what it was.

         Even the mother has returned to her crypt with her kinsmen.

The great marble door closes and in the ever increasing daylight, all looks normal.

        Who would guess that love blossomed among the dead, real love—sweetly passionate and eternal, to exist in its own way just as the dead do.
                   

© Copyright 2011 Carole Gill

799 words