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Asylum and Mirage and the Long Compositions

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on February 1, 2023 by Michael D. SmithFebruary 1, 2023

Asylum and Mirage, soon to be published, is my eighteenth novel, though some of its ideas and plot go back to 1985’s unpublished Parts I and II. To look back at my writing history, I made a list of novel composition dates from earliest drafts to either publication or abandonment. But I hadn’t expected to be taken aback by these statistics.

Novels in Order of Composition

  1. Nova Scotia, 1973-1974 (unpublished)
  2. The Fifty-First State of Consciousness, 1973 (unpublished)
  3. Akard Drearstone, 1976-2017
  4. The University of Mars, 1980-2009 (unpublished)
  5. Zarreich and subsequent versions, 1981-1983 (unpublished)
  6. Parts I and II and subsequent versions, 1985-1992 (unpublished)
  7. The Martian Marauders, 1965 childhood draft, 1986-2020
  8. Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, 1986-2020
  9. Sortmind, 1987-2019
  10. CommWealth, 1990-2020
  11. The Soul Institute, 1994-2020
  12. Nonprofit Chronowar, 2000-2020
  13. Jump Grenade, 1967 childhood draft, 2008-2019
  14. Collapse and Delusion, 2011-2020
  15. The Wounded Frontier, 2012-2020
  16. The SolGrid Rebellion, 2014-2020
  17. Balloon Ship Armageddon, 2018-2021
  18. Asylum and Mirage, 2021-2023

 

Longest Periods from First Draft to Publication/Abandonment

  1. The Martian Marauders by Michael D. SmithThe Martian Marauders, 34 years from its 1986 adult version, but 55 from its eighth-grade 1965 rough draft
  2. Jump Grenade, 11 years from 2008, but 42 from its original 1967 idea
  3. Akard Drearstone, 41 years
  4. Parts I and II ideas influencing 2023’s Asylum and Mirage, 38 years
  5. Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, 34 years
  6. Sortmind, 32 years
  7. CommWealth, 30 years
  8. The University of Mars, 29 years (2009 resurrection attempt unpublished)
  9. The Soul Institute, 26 years
  10. Nonprofit Chronowar, 20 years
  11. Collapse and Delusion, 9 years
  12. The Wounded Frontier, 8 years

 

Surprising New Clarity

Look at the epochs that have defined so many of my projects. In contrast, the last four Jack Commer series books went quickly, the way good what-if plots should unfold. Collapse and Delusion and The Wounded Frontier came out much faster than the above totals indicate, considering their original publisher delays and demise, and their eventual Sortmind Press republishing in 2020:

  • Collapse and Delusion, 16 months, Jan. 2011 to May 2012 accepted MS.
  • The Wounded Frontier, 13 months, Nov. 2012 to Dec. 2013 accepted MS.
  • The SolGrid Rebellion, 33 months, Aug. 2014 to May 2017 accepted MS
  • Balloon Ship Armageddon, 33 months, May 2018 to Feb. 2021 publication

 

Three Themes

  1. Desire to revisit or fix old work, sometimes for positive, sometimes for negative reasons.
  2. Difficulty figuring out what I want to say, the first draft of The Soul Institute being a prime example, but Asylum and Mirage being right up there with it insofar as idea gestation from 1985 goes; the actual new novel has been 19 months.
  3. But that fun SF unfolds very quickly due to the compelling what-if at the heart of the story.

 

A Certain Karmic Method?

These statistics point to a certain karmic method I’ve used to try to understand things, and while I can’t say it’s been a good or bad technique, it’s somehow been a built-in function in my life. Not that it couldn’t change from here on out, and maybe should.

Seeing so many books taking decades to come to fruition has been eye-opening, and ties into a new urge to write some quick, high-energy SF. So I just wrote up my initial notes for Supreme Commander Laurie, Book One of a new Supreme Commander Laurie series. I want to use the series to explore whatever’s on my mind. The two Lauries will have a role in both Laurie’s and Jack Commer’s series universes, so Jack will still occasionally appear.

copyright 2023 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in Asylum and Mirage, Martian Marauders, Novels, Publishing, Science Fiction, Supreme Commander Laurie, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Asylum and Mirage: Current Conditions

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on October 19, 2022 by Michael D. SmithOctober 19, 2022

Dave Raavenscorr copyright 2022 by Michael D. SmithArtist Dave Raavenscorr picks up what he thinks is a college girl, but flees in panic when he discovers she’s Dr. Marina Nunn, chair of the Lake University Music Department and a refugee from the Reunion brainwashing catastrophe at Linstar two years ago.

His best friend, devotee of the arts Reva McKee, throws a party at Dave’s quirky art warehouse to celebrate his first one-man show. Her former boyfriend, poet and county bureaucrat Thomas Tanner, crosses swords with her new lover, the charismatic Marshall Singletree who escaped hallucinatory Reunion consciousness to offer his teachings at Lake. Dave shows up late, plastered and paranoid from his tryst with Marina, who follows him to crash the party.

I’ve finished Draft 3.3 of Asylum and Mirage, the third pass of this draft, and overall it works well. Draft 3.4 won’t just be one more simple editing, either; I want to see what other associations arise, especially for the last chapters.

Draft 2 was 95,649 words, 339 pages. Draft 3.3 is now is 83,509 words, 299 pages. So I’ve saved a reader 12,140 words–and most of this was just cutting out unneeded verbiage and strengthening the text. This last draft did clean out some other unnecessary exposition or repetition of earlier chapter explanations, but probably not more than two or three pages’ worth.

Asylum and Mirage Experimental Cover 1 copyright 2022 by Michael D. SmithAfter playing with the triptych photos of my June 2005 painting exhibit, I came up with what seems like a good wraparound cover. It also works as eBook front cover only. I may well use this one; there’s no obligation to try out fifteen or twenty different versions (as I’ve agonizingly done before) if I think I’ve really hit on something.

Not only does choosing a title solidify your feel for the novel as you continue to work on it, a good cover is a beacon for pushing it out into the world. Using the 2005 exhibit makes this book even more personal.

I’ve been thinking Spring 2023 for a publication date, but if Draft 3.4, 3.5, and on feel like they’re morphing into the manuscript (which even 3.3 is threatening to do), I may have this out before the end of the year.

I used the short web page blurb for the back cover–didn’t want to clutter that space–but I came up with the 145-word blurb at the top of this page that I like.

Asylum copyright 2022 by Michael D. SmithI’m appreciating the October 2022 painting Asylum more and more. Maybe it isn’t a life-altering perspective or a stunning work of art, but it’s a good meditation. Yes, there probably should be a follow-up painting Mirage pointing in a very new direction.

It’s sometimes hard to see what the value of a painting is right away. And the process of painting it can be frustrating and exhausting, so I tend to be living inside the hassle even when I declare the painting finished.

What really got to me as I started the painting was the idea that I’ve arranged all sorts of obstacles to real creation. I have tricks, styles, methods, repetitions, all of which are unfreedom. Those methods should just be tools that I keep adding to, and they should never get in the way.

Publication of Asylum and Mirage is on the horizon. That means strengthening my overview of this work, not only to improve and integrate the final version, but to consider what this novel means to my life now. I can also consider what obstacles I’ve placed in front of my writing–less than visual art, I see, but it will be fruitful to contemplate this question.

Copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in Acrylic, Art Process, Asylum and Mirage, Caspra Coronae, Character Images, Novels, Painting, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Are You Ready for AI Authors?

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on July 28, 2022 by Michael D. SmithJuly 30, 2022

Collapse and Delusion 1065 copyrihgt 2020 by Michael D. SmithThis is not really a review of How to Market a Book: Overperform in a Crowded Market by Richard Fayet, free on Kindle, but the book is a useful guide and it did inspire further thoughts on something I’d been mulling for a while, namely, this post on AI. I also picked up a useful tip about creating a new series in my existing Jack Commer universe, and I’m looking forward to further brainstorming on that.

So if I can summarize the marketing advice in this book as I understand it:

  • Find an up-and-coming fiction genre niche.
  • Research that niche and write to it. Don’t stray into new niches that scatter your brand.
  • In the chosen niche, create a series, with an initial set of 3 novels released 30 days apart to take advantage of Amazon’s algorithms favoring new releases.
  • Write 4 series novels a year and publicize each through your mailing list.
  • When the series begins to get overripe, create a new series in the same universe to retain reader interest.
  • Sales and royalties accumulate.

 

But … don’t you think that we’ll soon have AI software that will be able to complete all aspects of this process with lightning elegance? The techniques are already here; just Google “AI book writing software” or “GPT-3.” Also see:

  • openai.com
  • Books by AI (GPT-3)
  • OpenAI’s new language generator GPT-3 is shockingly good—and completely mindless.

 

Soon there won’t be any need for human intervention. Those first three novels are generated in nanoseconds, along with a fascinating AI author bio. Software owners accumulate the royalties.

The more precise the niche and its rules, the easier it is to replicate the formula for success. And if new niches or conditions develop, won’t the AI need only a couple seconds to adjust and output a new bestselling series by the weekend? Will its readers care whether it’s created by you, or by a fascinating new AI author?

What do you discover about yourself when you write a book? Do you really think there’s a formula that works every time? What does the AI discover about itself in the process of writing a book? And what’s that worth to you?

copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in Dystopia, Essays, Marketing, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Asylum and Mirage: The Draft 2 Milestone

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on June 17, 2022 by Michael D. SmithJune 17, 2022
Caspra Coronae copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Caspra Coronae, 31, former video artist, now a pleasant Nullity addict

A naïve and disconnected artist gives a party to celebrate his success, only to find himself drafted that same night into a mindless war against the Reunion, an apparently unstoppable army of hallucinatory consciousness.

I’ve finished Draft 2 and closed it off, even though I could go back and tweak it further, or try for a different ending. But I’m declaring this version done in favor of setting the foundation for Draft 3. Four synopses (six-page full summary; cut to three pages; cut to long teaser; further cut to web overview) have already put the novel into fresh perspective. Working with the eight main character descriptions, and starting to make drawings of them (five of eight so far) has also been contributing to Draft 3.

No matter that I’d just like to make this thing fall into place and be done with it, Asylum and Mirage is simply not finished. That’s okay. Calling this second draft done is saying I want to be open to anything that leads this novel to its correct ending.

Reva Veils McKee copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Reva Veils McKee, 31, website designer, book club host, and art maven

It may seem odd to begin assessing Draft 2 before I reread it, but even though I’m in that delightful space where I’ve forgotten much of the structure and wording of the earlier scenes, I have a growing sense of overview. I can see some things to consider:

  1. I’m still unsure (and I see this mentioned as well in my first blog post about the novel) whether the whole aspect of “who’s hallucinating what” has any real substance. Just how scary is this hallucination/Reunion stuff? Does it really hold together psychologically? Can a reader really get into it?
  2. The character of Marina Nicker Nunn, so vibrant and strange in the first part of the novel, still seems more or less abandoned in the second part, even after two drafts. Marina has resisted further exploration after her brilliant beginning. Why?
  3. Dave also needs some work. I can’t just have him “realize his inner powers,” he must demand Reva out of all the stress of the night. He’s reluctantly dragged into responsibility the same way he knows he has to take charge of a truly terrible painting and stick with it until it’s right.
  4. All the characters in fact need further deepening. I think I kept trying to stretch a plot that so far really hasn’t jelled over characters who can’t keep up with it–or maybe they’ve gone on strike because they don’t want to keep up with it.
  5. The last chapter, a transcript in which characters discuss what’s just happened to them, was a way of patching up the end of Draft 2. It repaired an initial final chapter which I declared was the worst thing I’ve ever written. This transcript won’t be in a final version, but it did showcase the concerns the characters have at the end of the book, as well as the reservations they voiced in their previous interviews. And it pointed to yet another chapter I need to write from Dave’s omniscience. That’s for draft 3. Meanwhile, this transcript felt like a satisfactory conclusion to Draft 2, and it resonates with my own questions about the nature of the Reunion evil. It also led to the realization that there really can’t be a tidy ending to senseless evil.

 

Marina Nicker Nunn copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Marina Nicker Nunn, 43, promiscuous chair of the Lake University Music Department

Though these are all real problems, none really daunts me. A metaphor I’ve been using is how I make a drawing more intense over successive passes, making the colors even more vivid until I get a certain holistic feeling about the sketch and I know it’s done, it’s what I want. Thus Draft 2 is a few cycles away from being “impassioned” with color and line.

Probably the only true way to impassion any novel is to keep deepening those characters.

The unspoken fear inside Dave’s 167 partygoers works; but what the Reunion really is, or if it could be ended, I haven’t confronted yet. I joke about Star Trek movie villains being evil because they have tattoos and huge spaceships with narrow walkways stretching without guardrails across thousand-foot drops–but is my Reunion much different from that stock villain?

This may be an important step: the realization that such insanity cannot be conquered directly. It worked in my novel CommWealth because everyone was secretly relieved to see the property-less society die; people chose to rally to a sane new authority echoing their true values. Just because Caspra realized she was deluded to have Merged with the Reunion doesn’t explain much. “Pulling the Reunion’s plug” is too easy an ending. But maybe like Dave, she’s introduced another dose of poison into the Reunion.

Dave’s unwritten chapter could be an homage to that seductive telepathy. How he fully understands his captors, the brainwashed Colonel and Mrs. Markham, and Merges with them, flowing into the entire Reunion, polluting its evil, somehow hoodwinking it.

Somehow. As you can see, I have a lot to figure out here.

Copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

 The Asylum and Mirage webpage

Posted in Asylum and Mirage, Caspra Coronae, Character Images, Dystopia, Literary, Novels, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Progress: Asylum and Mirage and the Title Change

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on April 25, 2022 by Michael D. SmithApril 25, 2022

AAM Draft 2 Notes copyright 2022 by Michael D. SmithCaspra Coronae is now, halfway through its second draft, Asylum and Mirage. Hanging the essence of a novel on its title is important, and while Caspra Coronae has a lovely sound, it doesn’t convey anything about this novel, and would only do so if the book were all about a character named Caspra. She has a major role in this novel, but can’t carry the whole thing.

I wanted a title that hooks into the book’s inherent unease. As I threw out hundreds of words, “Asylum,” with its connotation of somewhat fragile sanctuary, kept recurring as a top choice. Then “Mirage” surfaced–dangerously wrong perception despite an undertone of attraction and loveliness.

The first part of the book: Anxiety, dread, foreboding. Hallucination, denial, illusion, fantasy.

The second part: Pattern, topology, investigation, art. Bravery, awakening, liberation.

So a naïve and disconnected artist gives a party to celebrate his new success, only to find himself drafted that same night into an unwinnable war against a savage, mind-manipulating entity calling itself the Reunion. Dave Raavenscorr’s hundred fifty partygoers, unable to acknowledge the growing hallucinations of the Reunion’s advance patrols, expect the charming Dr. Marshall Singletree to lead them on continual Migrations away from a formless catastrophe.

The Reunion has swallowed cities and towns in the south, and the armies of the brainwashed are now marching north to the college town of Lake Grafton. Two major governments have failed to stop the Reunion and have fallen. We are now ruled by a Third Constitution which is proving even more inept in dealing with the threat.

Nullity is a drug that can ward off hallucinations, but it’s highly addictive. Almost fifty percent of the population is now addicted to Nullity. The remaining half, worried about succumbing to Reunion phantasms, find themselves assigned as caretakers of these addicts.

In preparation for Draft 2, I had a glorious ride interviewing the novel’s characters, first as a group–not very satisfying–and then in five more interviews with either individuals (Caspra and Marina) or in pairs (Reva and Kina, Dave and Al, Thomas and Walter). Combining Dave with Al, and Thomas with Walter, truly liberated energy for Draft 2, and forced me to combine the dark and light sides of those characters.

It took me a while to admit that I also needed to combine Reva, Singletree’s lover, and Kina, Singletree’s daughter. I’d unconsciously known for a long time that the similarity between the two women precluded either having a satisfactory ending. Thus no Singletree daughter now exists; much plot had to be torn up not only for Kina but also for Al, an addict who kept adding inexplicable self-awareness to the point of evolving into a boring demi-god, and Walter, the most over-the-top, nasty evil jerk you could imagine.

I removed Marina from any point-of-view narration so there are now only four narrators: Dave, Caspra, Reva, and Thomas. This sets Marina up to be a much more unknowable force. The character combinations also posit a rational ending that completely eluded the first draft. Though the ending’s exact form remains up in the air, I feel the characters will point me there.

We now have a more ensemble-focused cast. Here are four female, then four male characters:

Reva McKee, 31

She’s a website designer who’s mapped Reunion movements, but by the time the book opens, the Third Constitution’s ban on the Internet has rendered her career meaningless. Now she investigates the art galleries in the idyllic college town of Lake Grafton and develops influential contacts. She gets Dave Raavenscorr, her new friend, his first Lake Grafton show, and she assists him in his art career and in developing the huge warehouse studio he’s just bought. She also starts a book club to honor the Great Migrator from the Reunion, Marshall Singletree, and soon becomes his lover.

Tall, long-legged, clear-voiced, with intoxicating dark green eyes, her short dark hair framing a sharp chin, Reva is breathtaking. Her stunning good looks and heroine aura radiate elegance, sexual confidence, and nobility. But she’s full of self-doubt, struggling to be a nice girl and repress herself even as she gives off that erotic vibe. The much older Marshall gets hold of her and forces her to reassess her life, and then, right when she’s vulnerable, her so-called friend Dave erupts with his own seductive powers.

Caspra Coronae, 31

Caspra is a former video artist, now a Nullity addict sponsored by Dr. Marina Nunn. Over the past ten years she’s been drifting through numerous dull clerical jobs in the Lake Grafton area. She’s petite, with brown, almond-shaped eyes set in a pleasant Nordic face. Her high, soft voice often seems hesitant, but one finds unexpected power behind it.

Dave knew her in high school, but only regarded her as an adolescent sex fantasy. When he meets her for the first time in fourteen years in Chapter Two, he becomes unglued, even as Caspra, who ought to show proper respect to any Nonaddicted, scorns him as “that immature dweeb from French class.” She’s an artist at heart, a patient observer of the chaos around her, and she takes pains to distance herself from the rest of the vulgar Nullity addicts populating this book. In fact, Dave has trouble believing that Caspra is really addicted, in her tight black evening dress slit far down in the front, in her high heels and fake pearls, her long blond hair elegantly done up behind her slender neck.

Marina Nunn, 43

Chair of the Music Department at Lake University, at 5’5” and 125 pounds Marina can look childlike at forty-three, which is why Dave at first assumes she’s a college girl. She has an odd round face and hurting eyes so dark brown they seem entirely black. Her disheveled hair is deep russet streaked with gold, and her voice is musical and expressive. She can disguise her great figure with loose brown sweaters, or blatantly present herself at Dave’s art opening in just three articles of clothing: two knee-high boots and a shiny unzipped silver jumpsuit, tight over the ample bust and excellently snug at the waist.

Like Reva, Marina has many art gallery contacts. She poses for life drawing classes, where she picks up so many young men that any horny college boy knows what she can offer and where to find her. She tells Dave, to his consternation, that he’s the only man she can say no to. She has incredible naïve courage, grappling with monstrous inner forces as she prepares her notes for an opera called Reunion Topology. Her out-of-control energies shock Dave’s partygoers, but she never resists displaying her ridiculous side–or her scary side. She finds it amusing that everyone at the university looks down on her as a whore, even as they acknowledge her academic expertise and power.

Jasmine Sung, 24

Jasmine is a music graduate student. She began working at Dexter Graphics a week ago where she met Leon Winter and became his lover that same night. She’s short, with tiny hands, liquid brown eyes, and silver hair in a cute bowl around her head. For Dave’s party she’s chosen a bright blue sweater outlining her unusually huge and voluptuous breasts. She has plastic blue eight-pointed stars on her sandals, and speaks in a startling baby girl voice. Jasmine feels complete; she lives in the moment and doesn’t think she needs to learn anything. One gets the impression that, bubbly on the surface, she long ago sank into a twilit realm where sex and death are the only remaining themes. She’s worried about her hallucinations and thinks small doses of her addict’s Nullity will keep her on track. When she volunteers for a special assignment, poet Thomas Tanner hands her a .38 revolver.

Dave Raavenscorr, 31

Dave is an artist who’s begun to sell his large canvases through a gallery Reva found for him. He’s also lined up a syndicated comic strip set to start in January of the coming year. He’s patiently saved enough money to buy a downtown Lake Grafton warehouse which has lain dormant for decades, and he’s just moved in with help from Reva and a former coworker, Leon Winter. New to town, Dave is clueless about Lake University, but starts drifting onto campus hoping to pick up women. He never succeeds until he meets Music Department Chair Marina Nunn.

Dave has prematurely graying hair matching deep-set gray eyes. He’s tall and lean, with a chiseled passionate face, big bony hands, a powerful chest, and huge biceps.  All this would be impressive if he’d just stand straight, but he always seems to be hunching over to disguise his power. His eyes are dazed, his mouth loose, the planes of his otherwise hard face quivering. His nervous gestures make onlookers wince; his hands are unusually expressive, constantly describing structures in the air in perfect cadence with his rapid speech. He can come across as a scruffy overgrown sixth grader.

Reva had initially been disturbed by, and attracted to, his mixture of childishness and secret wisdom. Her magnetic surge towards Dave had initially been strong, but she finally convinced herself that he was destined to be a great friend, not a sexual partner. Over the last few months Dave and Reva have developed a nourishing friendship. He’s supported her book club and she promotes his art any way she can.

Everyone pegs Dave as a laid-back guy, but he’s a mystery to himself and perhaps even a destructive force. He creates art in raw power mode but presents it in puppy mode. The Third Constitution Army may even have a say about his muddled personality.

Thomas Tanner, 29

Thomas gives nightly poetry readings in Lake Grafton coffee shops and bars. His topics include his leaking dishwasher and the existential whine of his air conditioner. He’s well-published in the Lake University Tiresias. He’s 5’10”, with thin brown hair and a receding hairline. His overly thin face is lopsided with a constant irritating grin. Reva considers that his mesmerizing dark blue eyes had probably been what kept her dating him so long. By day Thomas is the assistant manager of the Frankston County Procurement Department. He has a photographic memory and attends all Marshall Singletree’s colloquia. He worships the Great Migrator, as Singletree is known. Thomas thinks he alone understands that philosophy.

Jealous that his former girlfriend Reva is such good friends with Dave, Thomas considers himself in competition with Dave for the title of Foremost Creator. He also can’t acknowledge how furious he is with the Great Migrator for stealing his girlfriend Reva three weeks ago. For Dave’s party, Thomas wears a rumpled rock group T-shirt and overly tight and none too clean jeans, with a huge golden V-shaped belt buckle pointing to his penile bulge. Like Jasmine, fearing the Reunion and hallucinations, he’s been taking calculated risks with his addict’s Nullity. And then something snaps him from mediocre poet into junior varsity psychopath.

Leon Winter, 27

Leon Winter is Marshall Singletree’s main assistant. An imaging software expert, he abandoned his Freestone College computer job when Freestone fell to the Reunion. Rescuing Singletree from the Freestone horror and Migrating hundreds of miles with him, Leon then found work in a graphics shop where he befriended coworker Dave. He’s charismatic, charming, smart and kind, with a smooth, almost feminine face, clear blue eyes, and short blond hair. He’s extremely attractive to women, and coworker Jasmine succumbs to him within a week of starting work at Dexter Graphics.

He’s writing a book called Hallucinatory Evil, and Singletree regards him as the only person capable of being his successor. Leon got into legal trouble with the County over his last addict, whom he’d talked out of his addiction to Nullity; the addict then sold the unused doses and wound up murdered in a parking lot. At Dave’s party Leon comes off as patronizing to Reva, and she begins to wonder what sort of compartmentalization, what sort of duplicity, he might be capable of.

Marshall Singletree, 55

Singletree is the Great Migrator from unspeakable psychic disasters in the south. Short, balding on top, with long silver hair to the sides, he has a smooth, hard head, mesmerizing brown eyes, a cruel mouth, a strong upper body, and a deep authoritative voice. He looks like a truck driver, or a dock worker, or a wrestler. Fleeing the Reunion conquest of Linstar, a major city four hundred miles south, he settled at Freestone College eighty miles north of the doomed city to study the Reunion phenomenon up close. There he wrote a bestselling book about why the calamity unfolded. Yet just a few months ago Freestone itself was overrun by the Reunion, and Singletree barely escaped with his young protégée Leon. At Lake University, he’s been awarded an honorary professorship and gives a colloquium every Friday afternoon.

Reva McKee founds a book club in honor of Singletree’s book and his philosophy. He then takes her as his lover, overwhelming her with romance and sexual satisfaction. But he has a shadow side cleverly concealed by fame and charisma. He fakes it with false modesty, claiming not to crow about himself while crowing about himself. He declares himself a bulwark against the Reunion, but can only think in terms of Migration from the enemy until such time as his followers become ready to turn and fight–although everyone knows nobody will ever be ready. Singletree has gotten quite comfortable with decades in the role of the strong man, but when Reva abandons him, he collapses in a second.

copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Interview with the Burlcron/Mercer/Singletree
Before starting Draft 1, I interviewed the Singletree archetype and discovered how his Shadow nature forecasts the downfall of the Great Migrator.

Caspra Coronae Draft One Blast-Off
The post includes the history of this long undertaking through the start of Draft 1.

Walter’s Farewell Soliloquy–to Himself and to Draft 1 Caspra Coronae
Walter merges into another character and exits the novel, but not before delivering a fine Shakespearian soliloquy at Marina’s request.

Posted in Asylum and Mirage, Caspra Coronae, Dystopia, Novels, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Walter’s Farewell Soliloquy–to Himself and to Draft 1 Caspra Coronae

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on February 26, 2022 by Michael D. SmithJune 17, 2022

Drawing 1-25-21 copyright by Michael D. SmithWhen I recently re-interviewed the main characters of Caspra Coronae, it became obvious to all of us that Walter’s evil machinations and his over-the-top, humiliating death were merely dull plot. And that in fact the entire Part 2 of the novel was dull plot. Worse, it besmirched some intriguing character development in Part 1. Music professor Marina Nicker Nunn, who herself got thoroughly lost somewhere in Part 2, then suggested I make a fifty-page Shakespearean soliloquy for Walter out of his endless Part 2 ruminations on his metaphysical nastiness, and I decided to take up her challenge. Well, it’s not fifty pages, and it’s not iambic pentameter, but possibly I can channel a little Walt Whitman. So Walter gets merged into another character and exits the novel. I hope that what follows is an honorable farewell to a character who’s been in this book’s planning for years.

Somehow, rendered into verse, Walter’s chatter becomes an overview of the themes of Caspra Coronae even as I’m cutting this verbiage from the book. It does tell a story of sorts. Meanwhile I’ll thoroughly restructure the book before embarking on Draft 2.

 

It was totally black. No lights anywhere.
I took yet another rest among the trees,
broken right ankle blazing with pain.
I was definitively not holing up with Dave
in some suicidal Alamo-type disaster.
In the end it was just common sense that convinced me
to limp out of there on my own.

For Caspra Coronae didn’t really want to murder all our remaining soldiers.
She was so much more compassionate than that.
It was delightful to recognize her as OverGeneral of the Reunion,
the mistress of all wise brainwashing,
when all this time I’d worried where I’d fit in the hierarchy
and what cruel Master might squat at the top.

Surely the omniscient, luscious Caspra had forgiven me
for trying to rape and kill her, hadn’t she?
After all, wouldn’t a low-level Reunion agent like myself
naturally think it my duty to celebrate newfound Merge
via ritual murder of a brainless albeit sexy addict?

The enlightened and compassionate Goddess
must’ve understood I’d been overexcited by my new powers.
Certainly my continual ballooning of Merge was Caspra’s way
of offering Full Enlightenment to her most loyal subject.
For wasn’t she signaling to me, and indeed to all the Reunion,
I understand and love you, my darling irreplaceable Walter?

Yes, why wouldn’t the OverGeneral invite me to her bed
in celebration of her imminent victory?

In any case my Merge was really starting to work now.
Dave was certainly no match for Caspra,
and in a few hours he’d be freaking
as fifty thousand Reunion soldiers closed in on him.
It would’ve been interesting to Merge with the bastard
because sometimes I could get into the guy’s head
and snap some inner switch even I didn’t understand
and Dave would babble and I’d manipulate him for hours.

Caspra obviously wanted me to set up Reunion Headquarters.
I’d offer Dave’s giant art warehouse for this purpose
and Caspra would be quite pleased
with this gesture of total obeisance to her.

After all, as Dave’s addict
I was part-owner of that warehouse with all its lovely abstract paintings,
and once Dave was dead, there were legal precedents
for the property to be fully deeded to the bereft addict,
especially in the light of the addict’s excellent growing Merge
and his infinite faithfulness to the Reunion.

That meant I already owned the warehouse,
which included Dave’s huge bed up there.
Yes, Caspra would enjoy that.
I was really quite talented
in pleasing women in bed; all the ladies sensed that.
I took a ragged breath, filled with new desire.
Thank God this war was over
and one could look to the fulfillment of all one’s erotic needs.

There was the dark warehouse; would I need a key?
Or would Caspra telekinetically unlock it from afar?
Or was she waiting for me there now?
Surely I could get a least a cheap bottle of wine from a drugstore.
Maybe some fairly decent cheese, and crackers?
Also a couple boxes of ribbed, lubricated condoms?
On the other hand, wouldn’t the OverGeneral of the Reunion
laugh at the need for condoms?
Who cared about STD’s or pregnancy
now that final victory was at hand?

In fact, it might well be that Caspra wanted
to bear my son and groom him as the next OverGeneral.
I didn’t mind not being OverGeneral myself.
What a thankless task that would be.
Simply being Caspra’s eternal consort would be enough.
Of course fathering a line of Reunion OverGenerals definitely had its appeal.

I raised my right arm in stiff salute to the Goddess herself.
For surely that was Caspra up there singing out her blessing:
For you are to be Merged into Reunion, dear one.
This does involve the cessation of your consciousness.
You resist me? You refuse my voluptuous body in bed?
You refuse my shells and bombs penetrating your pretty paradise?

I hadn’t thought my Merge was that extensive yet.
I didn’t know how I could know so much in such detail.
The stress of impending death
propelled me to higher levels of Merge.
But the chilling thought came that maybe
this was how Caspra removed Merge
as punishment for all my broken trust with her.

Would I come out of this with an obedient, spastic body,
but no conscious soul? Would I even care I was alive
after Caspra Coronae shoved me into ecstasy
and scooped out my brains and adorned herself
with the remnants of my junior varsity Reunion glory,
leaving raw void for me?

How should I regard having every thought examined
and then feel that thought’s exact opposite,
its negation, jammed rough into my mind,
demolishing my entire structure
in an ever-growing flood of insanity?

I looked down at the 9 mm pistol
and thought of doing the job myself.
So much less panic in the end.
Easier on everyone.

Yes, I’d always been the outsider,
never quite competent enough
to truly be a part of Caspra’s Army of the Reunion.
Instead I was delegated to spy duty,
the most menial task in the hierarchy.
Spies had to repress themselves, act at least marginally good.
I was terrible at it so I went around killing people and screwing things up.

I was on the wrong side of the Reunion and the wrong side of Dave.
If I ran to embrace either, both would start firing.

But now I sensed trouble in the Reunion ranks.
One division had pulled out of the attack to senselessly maraud east.
Other troops began to fire upon each other.
There were riots behind me,
and shells of blue-green gas landed on friendly forces.
There were mass desertions as I reeled with the intensity of my own Merge.

New shells shrieked down and exploded.
Acrid smoke rose, and homeowners fell all around me.
Hundreds of tanks churned ahead of machine-gunning troops,
plowing up houses and trees as searchlights whipped all over the sky.
And I saw that the puffy blue-green explosions were God.

For I was touching God as He came to the opening battle of the Apocalypse.
I watched the hand of God move over the battlefield
wiping out life wherever it lingered,
rolling the tanks over the trenches, raising the proud hallucinatory gases.
I knew I’d united everything, I the spy had united all the Reunion,
all their fracturing armies, I knew them all, I read them all.

But even I was surprised to recall
the techniques I’d used to insert myself into Dave’s mind.
How easy it had been to paralyze his thoughts,
to know precisely where to reach in
and make the son of a bitch as evil as me,
to make him worship death and dread the same way I did.

I had the switch in my grasp but dared not touch it.
Gaps in the Merge kept that particular horror from me,
had prevented me from knowing that she intended
to perform the highest torture on her most loyal lieutenant.

Loyal? Hell, no, I’d run from Caspra. Betrayed her.
Why had I never been able to obey my Goddess?
I tried to rip into her mind but found a solid white egg at her center,
impenetrable, twenty miles across and weighing millions of tons.

Then why wouldn’t I remove my own Merge?
Surely as part of Caspra’s army I had to execute all her commands.
But maybe I was following them,
maybe I was unraveling my own Merge according to her plan from the start.

Thousands of muzzle flashes lit the gloaming sunset.
It was lovely, hypnotic.
Bright shell explosions blossomed everywhere.
Just one shell, I prayed, one shell to strike this tower square,
to wipe this dying ember of civilization.

A final ray of sunset shot through the stone towers
floodlighting my blackened toad face
as I invaded that celebration to strangle all minds.
Screams and booms and muzzle blasts merged into worldwide roar,
and I rose to the center of the entire short-circuited universe,
for now an entire army came to me,
white Reunion men tossing grappling hooks,
hoisting themselves to the next level, then the next.

I controlled them all, my mind slipping into their patterns,
accelerating faster than I’d ever imagined they could.
I had no idea what to do with the power I had over my people,
I knew I could fly right out of here, fly right off that balcony,
and my unconscious commands would spool out on their own forever.

There was spine-freezing predation in the beast’s dark eyes.
Everyone knew I could regain complete control,
could exercise my full terrible Merge,
the speechless horror it created in all those I touched,
the grisly things people had done
even while sickened to perform them in my name.

Sure it was a game; there was nothing magical about it.
It just took time and attention and energy
to figure out how to dig into a loose mind
and flip it your way in seconds.
The fraud works because deep down we all want it to.

I flowed into them all, suggested the scam, sprang the change.
Thousands of bullets traced hot vectors through me,
negating every thought and memory,
each bullet a particle of matter canceling
its corresponding particle of antimatter within me.
I spread further and further into the cosmos.
So it was peace to remove my Merge.
I never would’ve guessed that.

copyright 2022 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in Asylum and Mirage, Caspra Coronae, Dystopia, Interviews, Novels, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

The Damage Patrol Quartet: Four Stories

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on December 23, 2021 by Michael D. SmithDecember 23, 2021

The Damage Patrol Quartet copyright 2022 by Michael D. SmithA feckless young architect falls in with a sixteen-year-old’s dubious trucking venture. Drug-addled Randy bemoans his fate as a slave employee in New Fascist Australia. An archeologist arrives on a tiny artificial gravity platform to give a scholarly lecture to barbarian colonists. And the Conscious Reach Corporation sets out to cure an entire city’s mental illness.

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I don’t generally like short story collections. I prefer the long, developed narrative of a novel and don’t like the abrupt shifts to totally new characters and plot. When I see a story collection tacked onto an author’s list on Amazon, I figure they or their publisher just want to pad the list with lower-grade work.

But after listening to audio versions of two excellent Cory Doctorow short story collections (Overclocked: More Stories of the Future Present, and Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment), I was struck by how the stories strengthen each other. If they don’t cover the exact same theme, the stories share a unified tone and worldview.

So I was inspired to offer four of my best stories, similarly unified in their plot twists and dreamlike perceptions. They’re also an homage to my childhood writing in that, like many of my kid writings, they’re influenced by the Twilight Zone, one of my two great childhood inspirations, the other being nineteen-fifties Grade B science fiction movies.

I’d been hesitant about this project until I got into it, but this endeavor has turned out to be much more rewarding than I’d first envisioned. All four stories have been open to new edits and improvements, even the two already published elsewhere. As far as I can see there are no other stories to add, and no other story collections I want to do. I’m primarily a novelist, and think of stories as idea test beds or novel practice. So I don’t have that many stories since my college experiments.

I just received the first proof copies of The Damage Patrol Quartet, and I find the short book absolutely lovely, much more important to me than I expected when I set out to do this project in September.

Two were previously published: “Roadblock” (Ethernet, 2013) and “Perpetual Starlit Night” in Twisted Tails VII (Double Dragon Publishing, 2013). Two, “Roadblock” and “Randy and Laura,” were originally part of longer novel drafts.

The Damage Patrol Quartet Wraparound Cover copyright 2021 by Michael D. SmithRoadblock

A feckless architectural school graduate falls in with a sixteen-year-old’s dubious trucking venture that takes them to the rural south in deep night. There they encounter a massive roadblock, and construction strikers with the power to eradicate all light.

“Roadblock” was originally a chapter in Zarreich, a sprawling, unpublishable rough draft novel that incorporated dozens of my most bewildering dreams, and which led an army of confused characters across endless psychic minefields. In this story, it’s pretty obvious that Oceanmouth is the perfect psychological dream companion.

Randy and Laura

Randy lives in the drug-addled delusion that he’s a slave employee at New Fascist Australia Toll Road Number One. Laura, who also works at the urban American gas station generating this fantasy, hopes to save enough cash at the menial job to escape both Randy and her tyrannical father, whom Randy worships as the NFA Gasoline Minister.

“Randy and Laura” also sprang from a dream, and would still work as a flashback to Randy Perrine’s bizarre past in my novel Sortmind, from which this story originated. But it would’ve merely been a long detour if I’d kept it in the novel.

 Perpetual Starlit Night

Archeologist Sairjin ShiriKor arrives on a tiny artificial gravity platform in deep space to give a scholarly lecture. But the barbarian colonists scoff at her evident delusion that she’s anything but a criminal sent to be incarcerated on the changeless and apparently motionless platform.

A big plus to including this story in The Damage Patrol Quartet is leaving “Perpetual Starlit Night” as is, the perfect surreal story, no further explanations needed. Recently I’d had the idea of turning this previously published work into the first four chapters of a novel, and I came up with a fairly detailed plot for what would happen as Sairjin slowly accepted her inexplicable new life. But I’m not sure I ever deeply wanted to expand the story; it seems more fitting to have closure on it and put it out the way it is. In any case, having it here as a story doesn’t preclude later making it into a novel. I have to admit that something about the Shi Idnin character does beckon.

Damage Patrol

The Conscious Reach Corporation sets out to cure an entire city’s mental illness, one tormented soul at a time. IT technician Lucy earns a promotion to head the Damage Patrol unit, but her uncanny ability to reach inside the wounded and burn out their traumas leads her to the evil at the root of the corporation.

What can you say about a story that unfolded in half a second as you walked to lunch in downtown Dallas? What if you really had to update thousands and thousands of psychological messes? Who gave you that authority?

copyright 2021 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in Black Comedy, Dreams, Dystopia, Literary, Perpetual Starlit Night, Science Fiction, Sortmind, Stories, The Damage Patrol Quartet, Twisted Tails, Writing, Zarreich | Leave a reply

A Writing Biography, Part IV: The Perfect Cube and Beyond

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on November 2, 2021 by Michael D. SmithNovember 2, 2021

Recapping Part III as the Author Seeks Sympathy for How Terribly Difficult This Post Has Been

May 13, 1968 PaperweightIn rereading Writing Biographies I-III I’m struck by how they stand outside my usual self-description. I remember all that history, but it was as if someone else interviewed me and wrote it up. Yet I haven’t felt up to doing Part IV, even though I’ve collected notes for this post since September 2014. Gluing high school and college consciousness together is problematic; I don’t know who’s going to make sense of, then interview, the 1968 adolescent who graduates from Rice six years later as a semi-mature young man.

It was fitting to end Part III with December 1967. I definitely learned to write that year. The lengthy 1967 letters between me and my friend Sabin Russell showed both of us mastering language and quirky, open, satirical, conversational styles–but there was little spark of adult consciousness yet.

It’s tempting to throw in way too much into this post, but, just as with Biographies I-III, this isn’t the place to expound on America in the 60’s, historical events of the time, the history of the counterculture, or my own biography, Rice University life, or the billion themes and influences of these years. Or to deride how adolescent so much of this writing was by its author’s very nature. My story summaries below try to put them in the best light possible, but feel free to wince.

The Salamander Raid, Two Cube Stories, and Claiming the Writer

The Perfect Cube copyright 2021 by Michael D. SmithAs mentioned in the Part II post, even as a fifth grader I had a sense of myself as a writer; I felt quite professional in turning out weekly science fiction stories. But during the Part III years I imploded and ceased to think of myself that way. Then 1968 opened up wondrously, and a sad little parable popped out in April, “The Salamander Raid,” about biologists hunting salamanders to extinction. The story marked a stunning change in self-awareness. I still didn’t dare call myself a writer, but I’d just written something that I recognized as a leap forward. Note that I also needed my English teacher to affirm that.

Another major step came in December. One night I lay miserably sick in bed, feverishly immersed in two events of the previous day; the first was the play I’d acted in for English class, Beckett’s Act Without Words, in which the main character stacks and sits upon various-sized cubes. The second was two red transparent dice I’d been examining before bed. I considered the number 27, a perfect cube, the cube root being 3. In the story that flowed out, a man invents and exhibits an absolutely perfect cube, not only in its 4” x 4” x 4” dimensions, but, much like the mathematical concept of a perfect cube, the object is implied to have mystical attributes. It’s so perfect it must be stored in full vacuum in a bell jar. But an angry young man (of course) smashes the jar, and the cube dissolves as the young man declares that “The world is not a place for perfect things.” I submitted “The Perfect Cube” as extra credit to my English teacher and her praise of it threatened to go to my head.

Mickey and Sabin in Chicago, August 1968 (Before the Convention)

Mickey and Sabin in Chicago, August 1968 (Before the Convention)

I knew I had something important here, though. As I wrote Sabin in June 1969: “I honestly feel ‘The Perfect Cube’ is the best thing I have ever written. Its dreamlike quality, its absurdity, its crazy logic, even the concept of absolute perfection as embodied in the Cube, have strangely appealed to me. Others have also found it interesting … And thinking deeper, I thought that it gave a sort of melancholy feeling that there is a serious basic flaw in life that cannot be corrected … Somehow I feel that I didn’t even write it, that it was written for me. It’s the weirdest idea I’ve ever thought of.”

It still seems scarcely conceivable how, even after coming up with “The Perfect Cube,” I failed to assert I was a writer. But the story propelled me onto new paths. The following month I wrote “The Individual,” about a man arrested for being a true individual, and March saw the high-energy satire “Farewell, Dear Toothbrush,” exploring the agony of consigning a loyal but spent toothbrush to the wastebasket. I also came up with an anti-war mockery of heroic World War II movies, “War is Hades!”

But “The Perfect Cube” nagged at me, and in May 1969 I followed up with “The Return of the Perfect Cube.” I have no memory of this sequel; all I can recall is that it was chaotic and echoed recent depression, and that I left it in penciled rough draft. Yet this didn’t matter. I’d at least attempted to get out something honest and up-to-date about myself. 2021 note to myself: Having something turn out poorly was just as instructive as having something turn out perfectly. It now strikes me as significant that in May 1969, after what was more or less a failure, I finally declared that I was a writer.

The Burning

Since “Farewell, Dear Toothbrush” and the sequel to “The Perfect Cube” no longer exist, I’ll take a slight detour to wonder at myself for burning some of this stuff in 1976, after reading Melville’s advice in Pierre, or the Ambiguities to burn your crappy writing so it mixes back into the unconscious, or whatever he said. I did get rid of some real junk, as well as rough drafts taking up space in my writing folders, but there’s much other writing I regret losing. In a couple cases I was able to reconstruct lost items, and I wrote off the loss of rough drafts as no big deal. I chose the victims in 1976 based on how adolescent they sounded to my so-called mature Akard Drearstone consciousness. I only burned items from 1968-1973, keeping everything from 1974 on.

Absurdity

My writing has always had absurdist elements. In looking over some old Sabin letters I came across a note about my 1969 high school assignment to research Theater of the Absurd and Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. I felt I was coming home, in the same way I so quickly took to perspective drawing in the seventh grade. Why haven’t I seen this more clearly before? I’ve often declared, for instance, that my literary work Sortmind isn’t really science fiction; but the absurdist elements and the underlying satire make it impossible to regard Sortmind as a depiction of normal reality. Likewise Akard Drearstone, CommWealth, and The Soul Institute are in no way normal. The Jack Commer science fiction series is true to its space opera functions, but even then, the background is outrageous. This thread goes through almost all the stories mentioned in this post. It’s intriguing to note that anything attempting to depict fully straight reality is generally a failure.

June 1969 saw “Barney’s Missile,” in which Barney’s job is to sit in a cockpit atop a nuclear missile and ride it on a breathtaking journey to the enemy’s capital city. He doesn’t even know there’s a war starting, but is exhilarated with his space flight. That’s another story I burned; wish I still had it. In October came “The Mathematician,” in which a zealous math student is killed by police for hoarding math library books. In November’s “The Man Who Believed in Antarctica,” a derelict on a park bench tells our young narrator that he’s going to Antarctica because no war has ever been fought there. Not bad, but in retrospect a creative-writin’-teacher-pleasin’ sort of story. Then came another effort burned in 1976 which I wish I’d kept so I could reexamine its dismal dullness: December 1969’s “The Party,” a ponderous attempt to explain how a kid at a society party philosophically knows he must kill himself. I berated myself for this one at the time, noting that I was “groping for my emotions in my Roget’s Thesaurus.”

Voices

JournalsMy senior year included a Fall 1969 creative writing class, which was demanding, highly beneficial, and life-altering, though it also had some of the drawbacks of any such class, like communal consciousness, sloganeering exhortations to write, sitting under trees to record “sense impressions,” and genuflection before Best Methods as Handed Down by Them. But the advice to keep a writing journal changed everything.

I’d initially resisted keeping a journal the same way I resist Facebook and Twitter now. A journal seemed antithetical to my writing methods, but I did see the need to keep writing ideas organized, so from November 1969 through January 1970 I made notes on 3 x 5 cards. Then I finally broke down and transcribed the cards into a silver spiral notebook, the first of what became scores of official writing journals. I had no journal voice at first, and the first notes were strident, mawkish, cute, or unwritable. Sometime in April 1970 I found my journal voice, though, and that was quite miraculous. I had a story-writing voice that was still pretty stiff and distant, though it could open up in satire. I had a Sabin-letter-writing voice that was loose and free and constantly developing. It was only slightly akin to the new journal voice, however. I won’t say that the journal voice was completely free; there were certainly things I wouldn’t discuss in there, but even those barriers broke down by the time I got to Rice later that year.

Through the high school years and into Rice I had yet another voice, deliberately pompous but strangely grounding: the aphorisms of Oliver the Giant Cat, which could be either satire or serious musings. Though I burned the fair copies of four binders of aphorisms, I found the rough drafts stored at my parents’ house in 1981. The five volumes of this era were: Live, and Strive for Happiness! (1969); Green Rainbows and Elephant Tracks in the Morning Mist (1970); The Odyssey of the Perfect Whirlpool (1971); Playground! (1972); and Spasm of Terror (February to October 1972, rough draft in a notebook, never finished).

Obligation Versus Energy

High school methods of writing included working off those early note cards or ideas in the new journal, but the flood of fresh awareness and early successes, and my willingness to open up to dreams like “The Perfect Cube,” meant that such notes no longer felt like the strained obligation of earlier plans, as, for instance, Summer 1967’s grim outline of writing projects. (Back to Part III if necessary.) Nevertheless, dire undercurrents of “should” continued for the next few years, probably up to the time of writing my novel Nova Scotia in 1973. I had not yet learned to follow the high energy; I hadn’t figured out that if an idea has no underlying energy, it’s not writable. Having energy doesn’t automatically make it easy, either. You have to be sensitive to where the energy is forming, and take on the task with vigor, whether it’s all spelled out for you or whether it demands experimentation, failure, and rethinking.

1970 stories were a mix of miraculously inspired plots, often from dreams, as well as those poorly-constructed obligation trips. January’s “Mr. Gray” was a somewhat sanctimonious riff on a man I saw drawing cash from a walk-up bank booth, notable for at least trying to muse on people outside myself. Published in our school literary magazine’s Brotherhood Issue (well-meaning middle-class high school kid consciousness), it seemed to bring me to the attention of the school as a writer. Hey, I did get a writing award and $5.00 in a school assembly at the end of the year.

March’s “The Bombers” came from a dream in which narrator-me and my friend plant bombs wherever we want, blowing up things and people as a practical joke, until one day I’m suddenly consumed with guilt. Another one burned to my regret. April saw a dream turned into the nightmare draft of “Underground,” in which soldiers must remove 40,000 dead Vietnam servicemen from an underground garage. Draft 2 in January 1971 was published in Rice’s literary magazine. At my former high school advisor’s insistence, in June 1971 I sent Version 3 to a literary magazine called The Leprechaun–but the submission came back “addressee unknown” and I joked that even the post office rejected my story. This was my first submission outside of school and the first time I’d seen Writer’s Market.

I also regret burning “Nice,” a precise document of where I was in April 1970, a bitter satire of everything being “nice,” including flooring our family Pontiac to 70 mph on a suburban road. But I discovered a new sense of revision consciousness with this one and kept polishing the draft over and over. My AP English teacher just wrote “Nice!” as a comment; I could tell she didn’t understand male teen angst.

I wish I still had August 1970’s “Another View of the Nonconformist,” for the same reason I’d still like to have “The Party.” This was a fairly long screed about the Man Alone in Nature who moves into a circular stone house in the woods. He considers it symbolic of ancient Greece and Primeval Truth–except that he’s haunted by the Race Track of Insane, Mechanized Society which he knows he’ll never escape. Yuck.

October 1970’s “Silhouette” was notable as the first story where I tried to write anything about sex. All I remember are stairs like an Aztec temple, and the guy and girl always finding obstacles and suffering. The writing was chaotic and unsatisfying. Of course I burned it in 1976, though I wish I still had it.

November 1970’s “Sam is Coming Home” was a major story, which I still have, taken from a nightmare in which I actually killed myself. Sabin was the model for the rational Sam in opposition to the troubled narrator. Writing this out seemed to fully answer a lot of adolescent torment. This story was carelessly shoveled into the first draft of Sortmind in 1987, though later mercifully removed.

The Cube Process copyright 2021 by Michael D. SmithEarly Rice style followed the high school writing methods, with a marked resurgence of attending to obligations instead of following writing energy. Thus I had various plans I either forced myself to write or else abandoned in guilt. But apparently I got so tired of suffering my first semester at Rice that I assumed a sort of airy philosophical stance, which I consciously based on the admonition to be cheerful in Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.

January 1971’s “I Am a Freshwater Fish, and Water Diffuses In” is probably the best example of obligation-writing; I’d been down on myself for putting it off since the previous October. Something about a guy who designs toilet paper, then seeks some mystical experience on the beach. Yay. Burned 1976.

March’s “The Disgusting Bastard” was a decent story, albeit written in a smirking, creative-writing class style. The brainless (“unreliable”) narrator hears apartment neighbors Orange and Fitz arguing about Orange’s cringing personality, and Fitz eventually kills Orange. In “Flexible Contradiction,” Mortimer seeks what the title suggests at a society lady’s mansion, to everyone’s displeasure. A goofy story of no importance other than to illustrate my mastery of cheerful equilibrium.

May’s Total Annihilation: Camouflage! is a play in which a high school romantic quadrilateral is likened to negotiations between warring European powers. Funny, and a much better-executed illustration of my emotional distancing, it was later performed in two different venues at Rice and eventually became a blog post.

But my above-it-all posture would blow up over the coming summer. When I got home from my first year at Rice, I feared I was losing a good friend to drugs, and things got terribly serious. Fall writings started reflecting that, such as September’s “The Nearest, Most Easily Available Hurricane,” in which five boys drive to the city despite dire hurricane warnings. Two do psychedelics and when the hurricane hits so do the rest, going entirely crazy while the destruction mounts. All are killed but the narrator, who’s also poised to buy the farm any second.

October’s “Prelude, Hurricane, Disorientation, Upheaval, Winter,” has the narrator, after a semester of running mazes at The Institution, return home to parents who force him to work in a factory. Rebelling, he links up with his problematic girlfriend, but after severe weather destroys the entire area, he wakes up in his wrecked back yard to see the girl dead. Oh boy. “Elaborate Pantomime” laid out a Twilight Zone-like plot where a young student is teased about his preparations for nuclear war, but then it turns out to be real. Or did he just go psycho?

Wiess Cracks, Theater, and Collaboration

Goodbye Crack, 5/5/72 copyright 1972 by Michael D, SmithIn the Fall 1971 semester of my sophomore year at Rice, I jumped at the chance to edit The Wiess Crack, abandoned by its current editor. I saw Wiess College’s lame humor magazine becoming a real literary investigation. This led to a new practice of collaboration with friends and other writers, in the Crack as well as in plays that Cosmic Productions put on over the following years. There were deadlines, improvisations, last-minute decisions, chores, successes and failures. The blog post for the Wiess Crack goes into much detail. The magazine dominated my last three years at Rice.

January 1972 saw “The Desirable Fuck,” a short horror piece about mindless drugged-up twits just a notch above barnyard animals. Over spring break I labored on “Father/Children,” the first time I included a father figure (in this case me playing someone killed years ago from hallucinogenic drug warfare, having left my mind-scrambled teenage kid narrator behind), and a disturbing conjecture about how future generations might cope with drug-induced brain damage.

During this difficult semester, which included a course postulating that I’d actually have time to read all of Dostoyevsky, I began dropping some deeper psychic anchors for both visual art and writing. The most astonishing writing wasn’t fiction, but thirty-one single-spaced typewritten pages of “The Story of My Life Since November 18, 1972,” a letter to Sabin which I composed on the electric Wiess Crack typewriter over three days during spring break, well into the early mornings. What began as an attempt to record three months of events since my last letter to Sabin turned into a turbocharged mission to write out everything. The letter was a gift from the universe that allowed me to reexamine and redefine myself.

That spring several of us decided to put on a couple plays, one of which was Total Annihilation, in which I played the War Correspondent. The experience of working with what we eventually called Cosmic Productions, and the energies released in collaboration and acting, sparked immense and welcome creative upheavals, and we performed the two plays three times in March to good crowds. This first taste of the theater has informed all my writing since then.

On reaching home in May, I worked at McDonald’s for a few weeks, determined to prove I could hold down a job and earn my own way in some small measure. I wrote a cycle of ten poems, centered around recent self-transformation, which I worshipped–and which Sabin lambasted as the writing of an “incurable romantic.” At night I hung out with my suburban Chicago buddies who seemed so well-grounded in earthy urban existence; they were refreshing, nourishing, and necessary. During sophomore year the level of superficial jokiness had increased between members of my Rice group, probably from Wiess Crack consciousness, the plays, and the Rice milieu itself, and I was forcefully struck by the contrast between the unpretentious, survival-oriented Chicago gang and my airy, jokey, intellectual Rice friends. Balancing between these two poles had a definite influence on my writing; possibly shifting back and forth between the two helped me eventually integrate comedy and tragedy. More below.

The Counterculture, Sloppiness, and Experimentation

Imverted Cube copyright 2021 by Michael D, SmithIt would take a completely different essay to factor in the role of late sixties’ cultural cataclysms, social, political, artistic, and musical, as they affected my writing. How they influenced the precise satire of “The Individual” or “The Mathematician” in 1969, versus what effect they had on my summer 1973 work on Nova Scotia, with the Watergate apocalypse blaring in the background, is difficult to calculate. Of course they were major stimuli–I can hardly imagine not having been blown away by seeing 2001 in March 1969–but I can’t help feeling that my writing trajectory wasn’t nudged too far by the culture around me.

Yet a certain psychic vagueness manifested itself during my interactions with freak and hippie culture, and though I still sought to honestly explore, looking back I can see where a sloppy style took hold. Maybe this arose from a need not to know myself, to stay unfocused, but I think it was also inspired by the ease with which rock music lyrics frequently veered into the dazzlingly incomprehensible. It was probably further influenced by counterculture authors emulating this trend.

So I blasted out a lot of blurry, pyrotechnic, experimental quasi-fiction, along with endless stream-of-consciousness harangues in the journal and on the typewriter through 1975. Not until September 1976, a few hundred pages into my novel Akard Drearstone, was I able to reconnect with clear prose. Melville may have been right after all; immediately after the great garbage can burning of old writing in the summer of 1976, Akard rocketed into astonishing unknown territory.

The important exception to this sloppiness, akin to medieval monks copying ancient Greek and Roman texts for the day when reason would return to the world, was my unbending dedication to brutally clear and expressive poetry, especially from 1971 to 1973. Every word, every punctuation mark, was carefully evaluated for maximum impact. I kept my precision intact in poetry and it would eventually return to my prose.

The original subtitle of this post was “Sensitive Stories Bludgeoned by the Wiess Crack,” but that isn’t a fair description of this era. Few of my stories could be described as “sensitive,” in fact, that description might only apply to “The Salamander Raid.” But I was always aiming for something serious. I considered humor a nice sideline, even though it was definitely part of my personality and was amplified in letters to Sabin. If I wrote a long poetic panegyric to Oliver the Giant Cat, or smirked out a “Farewell, Dear Toothbrush,” I thoroughly enjoyed the ballooning energy, laughing my head off as I reread and reread those pieces, but I didn’t think I should import that sort of flippancy into what I considered the serious stuff.

Even so, as outlined above, my writing had always included absurdist elements. Not for nothing was The Twilight Zone one of my two great childhood inspirations, the other being 1950’s Grade B science fiction movies. Dreams and their illogic were always a notable source for story ideas, and my best writing throughout this era usually had uncanny twists, distorted perceptions, and bizarre underpinnings. But it wasn’t humorous.

In any case I didn’t take well to numerous Wiess Crack contributions from my two main contributors, Bear and Joe, especially the last-minute ones I had to take that were slightly more advanced versions of the chuckle-along style of the old Wiess Crack mode I’d just finished overthrowing. Before long my vision of a serious literary investigation into the philosophical aspects of surreal consciousness was polluted by dull Rice boy “Gotcha Dumbass” entertainment; there was even a Crack by that title.

Despite what I just said, learning to collaborate with Bear and Joe, and finding gems in other writers, was worth the entire experience. Finishing up senior year with the masterpiece 200-Page Wiess Crack was a psychologically necessary summation of my entire Rice experience. Despite the final semester’s confusion and overwork, this Crack came out clean and direct. I finally did learn the lesson, as I wrote at the time, that “the editor must be a bastard.” By the end of my time at Rice I’d gotten the Crack where I wanted it.

Though I wrote funny things at Rice, I never truly accepted them. It wasn’t until I was thoroughly warmed up on Akard Drearstone, 1976-78, that I discovered how surreal, serious, and humorous elements could mix and support each other.

I’ve often wondered–through never terribly much, and even less since I’ve published several novels–what my style and content would have been if I hadn’t run into the counterculture. The high school style of discovery, distance, satire, and precision gave way to meandering, sometimes irresponsible light shows that may have been necessary experiments at the time but which also added a lot of self-sabotage to the works, and to the chance of finding publishers.

But musing how I might’ve kept high school precision might also be a way of wishing to have stayed a teenager, that I shouldn’t ever have grown beyond that. Well, life intervened and showed new paths. And if something pristine is dented along the way, that’s life as well.

Fall 1972 through May 1973, my junior year at Rice, saw the second season of the Wiess Crack, done more leisurely and maturely. Major stories included October’s “Bloody Death Accident FUCK-UP,” in which our hero sinks into an annihilating death only to be transformed into a mystical entity, and January 1973’s “The Cleaveriad,” something of a novelette and of course based on our group’s incessant watching of Leave it to Beaver reruns. Young Beaver gets addicted to snorting pantyhose and shooting Drano, but at last cleans himself and embarks on a soul journey. The piece was thoroughly satisfying and dominated January’s 80-Page Wiess Crack. This writing was an exception to shunning humor–I just threw myself into this thing and loved the work.

Maybe I felt guilty for having all that fun, though, for within a month I’d returned to shoving out sterile, self-protective efforts like an untitled one-page masterpiece about a guy wearing cowboy boots and sitting in a restaurant watching things. Wow. But this late winter minimalism was badly shaken in the spring when a student in writing class astonished me–and I think the whole class–by doing the exact opposite, pouring out page after page of psychological and emotional insights into the lives of numerous fascinating, complex characters. So, hey, I tried the same with forty handwritten pages of “Five-Pointed Stars,” weaving a lot of male and female characters into an account of a serious car accident I’d walked away from the previous December. At the time I considered “Five-Pointed Stars” more experiment than art, but I note that I’ve never returned to the icy minimalist crap.

So, embracing fun and friends and fresh creation, that spring I collaborated with Joe, along with some good musicians, in writing Beaver’s First Fuck, a rock opera in which Beaver joins a cannibalistic hippie commune, murders his parents, and leads a revolution against the Mayfield bourgeoisie. This was glorious high-energy inspiration, and Cosmic Productions performed the rock opera in April at Wiess before a packed crowd. Imagine me, Gilbert, singing on stage. We also videotaped the production the following spring.

I had more fun collaboration over the summer as my Chicago friend Dan and I effortlessly spun out the plot of the novel Nova Scotia as we drove a panel truck to help a friend move. I quit my graveyard shift Dunkin Donuts job and, buying a 1940’s Royal Deluxe typewriter for $50, spent a month banging out the 116-page novel about Dan and Mike driving a Corvette at 350 m.p.h. from Chicago to Nova Scotia in one night in a demented quest to save the world. Writing a novel was immensely satisfying and answered so many ambitions. The second draft in spring 1974 served as a senior thesis, one of my forty Rice courses. Very fitting.

Kicked into the Future

Wrenches and Marbles copyright 2011 by Michael D. SmithSenior year’s Fall 1973 was a sober, serious time, with the background of the Yom Kippur war, the oil embargo, and Watergate. Fall writings of interest included October 1973’s “Political Revolutions,” from a dream of delivering newspapers to impossibly difficult rural locations. It emphasized dream logic and Wiess Crack readers liked it. In November and December I wrote The Fifty-First State of Consciousness, which I’ve always considered a real novel because it covers so much territory, even though it’s only sixty-three pages. Named like “K.” in The Trial, “G.” explores the fifty-first state of consciousness and links up with its Governor in the ultimate shopping mall metaphor for human consciousness. This was a heartfelt effort, if uneven in its only draft. But one of its later chapters was truly electric and has always seemed like the beginning of my modern novelistic consciousness.

Spring and Summer 1974 writings were a blur of short typewritten ideas and rough draft poems amid the hassle of The 200-Page Wiess Crack, a second draft and manuscript of Nova Scotia, and the Beaver videotape project. After graduating from Rice in May, I decided it was time for this new novelist to seek publishers, and I laboriously revised “Five-Pointed Stars” and a 51st State chapter, “Holy/Unholy,” for submission to literary magazines. Yet after researching some of these magazines at Fondren Library I got so depressed that I abandoned the attempt to enter what looked like a dreary, hopeless writing sweepstakes. I’d venture in again the following year.

In June 1974 I returned to my childhood space pilot Jack Commer in “The Martian Holes,” which covered the evacuation, in the face of the coming destruction of the Earth, of only the rich upper classes to Mars. A swashbuckling lack of focus, fun in itself, but not what I wanted to be doing. It still wound up, along with my 1968 essay on Jack for high school English class, in 2021’s The UR Jack Commer.

Amid plans for marriage, a six-week public health library job in Houston, a new motorcycle, Patty Hearst on the run, the Lester Quartz comic strip, Watergate’s finale and Nixon’s resignation, I relaxed over the summer, painting big canvases like Interstellar Wombat, Insect Brandishing the Jupiter Symphony, and Smiling Nancy–and I deeply relaxed about writing. Despite that ongoing sloppiness, the first parts of a long story, “Space, Time and Tania,” composed right before Nancy and I got married, were delightful. It was the start of regeneration and new exploring. I’d complete it in Dallas, revise it, and it would eventually find a publisher.

copyright 2021 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in A Writing Biography, Akard Drearstone, Dreams, Early Writing, Novels, Plays, Sortmind, Stories, Wiess Cracks, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Interview with the Burlcron/Mercer/Singletree

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on August 3, 2021 by Michael D. SmithJune 17, 2022

As recorded May 30, 2021 at Smith Writing Studios. Alfred Moid Burlcron, a major character in my novel The Soul Institute, emerged as a recurring archetype as I prepared for the novel Caspra Coronae. I interviewed him just after speaking with archetype Aria Laci Coronae, who was delighted to take on the Caspra role in the novel and who also convinced me to change Caspra’s last name to her own. I was uneasy at the thought of the abusive Burlcron playing the shamanic wise man Marshall Singletree (originally named Tarat Lysander Mercer), but I knew Singletree would prove much more fragile than first indicated in the novel, and I hoped Burlcron’s pompous energy would give new insight into the character. But of course Burlcron ran in still more bizarre directions–and unexpectedly strengthened Caspra Coronae.

Session I

The Burlcron Archetype copyright 1996-2021 by Michael D. Smith

The Burlcron Archetype, digitally revamped oil pastel

Mike: Welcome, Alfred, Aria and I just finished up.

Alfred Moid Burlcron: Wow! Aren’t you lucky, to get to interview such a fine piece of ass!

Mike: What?

Burlcron: Oh, don’t sputter all over me! We archetypes are all buddies, we can say anything we want to each other, about each other, whatever we want. It’s all cool. So chill out, dude.

Mike: You–you’re stoned! I can’t believe it! You can’t be stoned for this!

Burlcron: Well, so what if I am? Burlcron was a big doper, y’ know. Only way he could hold his genius together, y’know.

Mike: Oh, man, this is gonna be a disaster. I need you to be Marshall Singletree.

Burlcron: Hell, I can do Singletree. Easy as 1-2-3. Don’t sweat it, man. Hell, you know I won’t do dope when I’m actually onstage.

Mike: Crap! Crap!

Burlcron: And note I’m dressed exactly for Singletree! Yeah, we all know you can’t describe anyone physically worth a damn. But get this: tight white turtleneck over this massive chest! Man, this guy has amazing pecs! The women go nuts for him! And no way the sweater can hide these huge biceps! And look at these forearms like hunks of iron! And these big freakin’ meaty hands!

Mike: Aw, geez, I never authorized Singletree to look like that! You’re Burlcron, fifty-something, balding, slender, taller than what I envisioned Singletree as, as a matter of fact.

Burlcron: Okay, okay, I paid Konceptual Body Design a helluva lot to fashion the ideal Mercer/Singletree character. It hurt, lopping four inches offa me, I tell ya! But I do anything for art. Puff up my pecs like this, musta done ten million reps with the barbells.

Mike: Oh, man. But I guess this will work for Singletree.

Burlcron: Yeah, admit it, dude, this is what you had in your mind’s eye all along. And get a load of these super-tight jeans. Not as tight as Aria’s luscious yoga pants, but you get the genitally-oriented picture, and I’m sure all my lady fans do as well. And I may be middle-aged, but look at this fantastic male tush! And these huge leather boots!

Sound: Bam!

Mike: Dammit, don’t slam them on my coffee table! Dammit, you cracked it!

Burlcron: Just like Mercer or Singletree would crack your puny narrow mind wide open! Face it, man, you need me in this damn book just the way I am! A massive combination of Burlcron and Mercer to become this Marshall Singletree dude! A true leader!

Mike: With flaws, with flaws, remember. Dammit, my coffee’s everywhere, all over my notes!

Burlcron: Hell with it, man. Just crap of the real world. Let’s talk about the damn flaws, man. Do I ever know about flaws! I’m your man for flaws! Like banging Jipo in the Soul Institute meadow where anybody could’ve seen us!

Mike: Dammit, I need help for this novel, and you’re just off on your ego trip!

Burlcron: I’m perfectly in character. Burlcron was nothing but ego trip, and this Singletree guy, well, as far as we all know, he’s just doing a damn good job of hiding his ego trip, even from himself. So … do I get the part?

Mike: Dammit. You know it’s too late for any of the Archetypes to get axed now.

Burlcron: But you get your petty revenge soon, when I get blown away in Part I. Man, that’s a waste of a major archetype, if you ask me.

Mike: I need you to just play the part, as written, as the Burlcron Archetype. Not the Alfred Moid Burlcron of The Soul Institute, but a combination of all those characters: Mercer, Burlcron, Randy Perrine, Larry Cathedral, Waterfall Sequence. Or Don Easterling, Mavory Deltrang, or Alexander Harper. Or Gaspard Toland, Harray Andreality, or the Gasoline Minister.

Burlcron: Hell, I know ’em all. No big deal. Could do this crap in my sleep. So you’re saying you’re not gonna let me ad-lib this thing?

Mike: Oh, hell, of course you can ad-lib, if you stay in character. In the Marshall Singletree character. We even want ad-libbing. It’s the whole channeling thing, you know. But Singletree may turn out to be harder than you think, because he’s really a tragic character, and your last major turn, in The Soul Institute, was comic.

Burlcron: I really got shafted in The Soul Institute. Arrested by the TSI cops, lost my wife, my daughter, everything. Humiliated. All because I wanted the best Soul Institute possible. Piss on that! The only work I’ve had since then is the 2019 Sortmind revision, and I was just needed to overdub a few lines for Gaspard Toland. I hope you remember that even though that was damn minor, I got a Heroes of Consciousness nomination for that bit.

Mike: Yeah, I remember. You really threw all your talents into a minor but necessary role there, and it worked. Thanks for that.

Burlcron: Look, Mr. Author. Mike. I mean really. I want to live. I don’t think Singletree really needs to die for his sins in the book. Sure he crumbled, sure he turned his back on his own principles, mainly because he wanted to stick it in Claudia more than he wanted to save humanity, but, hell, man, does he really have to die? Couldn’t he just become one more addict that everyone feels really sorry for and like, always freaked out about?

Mike: Interesting. Mercer/Singletree does have to come completely apart psychically in the novel. And if you could handle that scene, maybe there’s no reason he actually has to die. He just becomes a ruin, a passive burden to the new company.

Burlcron: Maybe he gets addicted to Revenge, and gets Walter for a Sponsor! Because Walter could never really prove he was addicted. Get this: Walter really did pull out his gun and point it at Singletree’s head, but he fired and missed! And Billy grabbed the gun away before Walter could fire again. Singletree’s now deaf in his right ear, or something.

Mike: On the other hand, his death at Walter’s hands is completely unexpected and shocking to the party, and shows how completely evil Walter is.

Burlcron: Yeah, but you’ll note that after he dies, the partygoers sort of continue the party just like before. No way that would work in real life, man, even in this weird dystopian society you’ve got going. What would really happen is that someone would call the cops and they’d show up and everyone would go home. Or get taken down to the station. No way Dave would go into his room and open his draft notice, just like that.

Mike: Huh. A convincing argument, I admit. I was truly set to have Singletree die. I see you’re getting into character after all. You’re sounding more like Singletree and not like Alfred Moid now.

Burlcron: Of course, of course! Another possibility is that I survive Walter’s shot, I’m broken and ridiculed like before, but now Walter is assigned as my addict.

Mike: That could lead you two in interesting directions in Part II. Is one of you the Phoxl Head?

Burlcron: Even though everyone knows you don’t want a Head.

Mike: Right. But the question remains: is one or both of you addicted, and who’s the Sponsor then?

Burlcron: In any case, Walter’s attempt on my life is what galvanizes Billy into taking command. Singletree can’t function in the army itself, he’s just sort of a hanger-on.

Mike: Okay, got it. But I really haven’t fully decided if Singletree lives or not.

Burlcron: Damn! Look, if he dies, maybe he comes back like Banquo’s ghost or something! Delivering wise, mystical, scary crap to everyone in the middle of the night, from beyond the grave. Maybe even in the shell hole.

Mike: Well, what he says wouldn’t be wise, because he’s been unmasked as a fool in Part I. Maybe he’d spurt out more nonsense that everyone knows to be idiocy. Ironic comments on what’s happening, like a Greek chorus.

Burlcron: Sheesh. I’ll do it either way, dude. Guess I have to. Don’t remember signin’ a contract, but hell, I need the damn work. You know you got me over a barrel, man.

Mike: C’mon, it ought to be an actor’s challenge, to play “Burlcron” in a different key. You’ll have to develop the weaker/Shadow side of Mercer/Singletree. Faking it, being unknowing and self-deluding.

Burlcron: You’re saying I don’t know how to act that kind of crap right now?

Mike: You’re going to have to work on developing that. Your ego-trip nature right now is preventing you from seeing Singletree’s flaws.

Burlcron: Crap! You can’t psychoanalyze me like that!

Mike: Sure I can. I have to. But I need you to see all this yourself. I mean, here we have Singletree, in all his false modesty about not claiming to be a real leader or a resolution to the Phoxl, nevertheless surrounding himself with worshippers, exerting his charisma to the max, bedding the much younger Reva to Kina’s total consternation, writing this book Liberating the F**k, all the while crowing about himself while claiming not to crow about himself. Claiming to lead humble Migrations with all this philosophical BS, mesmerizing everyone.

Burlcron: So the mother goes down hard. Maybe even needs to die. I can see that. Dammit. Maybe Part II needs to be totally void of Singletree.

Mike: It’s the only way Dave can eventually assume leadership. Otherwise he’d be looking at that Singletree shell and wondering “What would Mercer do?”

Burlcron: Yeah, I get it. Singletree buying the farm means total change.

Mike: And we need Kina numb, not just embarrassed on behalf of her father, pitying him, etc. He succumbed at the party, but then he went out cleanly. Even as a martyr.

Burlcron: Huh. Maybe you’re right.

Mike: I haven’t made my mind up yet, but going back and forth with you on this, I think we need his shocking death, and Billy’s order for Leon to bury the guy out in the pen.

Burlcron: Then won’t Billy also buying the farm in Part II repeat that?

Mike: I don’t think so. Billy will die a hero. And it all shows that innocent Dave, essentially third on the list, really has to ramp himself up to assume command.

Burlcron: Damn. Okay, I guess I can fit into this role and do a good job. Like I’m dressed for the Singletree part already, y’know. I had Konceptual cut four inches cut off my height. Maybe we need more. Like Burlcron is 6’4”, maybe Singletree should be much shorter than six feet. Like 5’9” or something.

Mike: Yeah, maybe.

Burlcron: Hell, I’m gonna need more dope for that.

Session II

Mike: You did it! You’re 5’9” now!

Burlcron: Yeah, it was a trip, all right. Konceptual has this robotic surgeon that whips off another three inches in like half an hour, but staggers it all over the body, like it’s not like they whack off your feet or anything and you know I did the whole thing on my lunch hour ’cause you know I wanna prove like I really want this part and all.

Mike: Great, great. I really appreciate it. You really do come off as Marshall Singletree now.

Burlcron: ’Course on such notice it turned out Konceptual ran outa dope, and all they had was this LSD! What a rush, man!

Mike: What?

Burlcron: Don’t sweat it, man, and it’s a really good thing, really, ’cause I can see that it’s like canceling out the marijuana and so things are getting even more like really, really serious about now and what was really weird was that I didn’t feel any pain with the first hack job ’cause I was so stoned, but man, you feel everything on acid and I shoulda thought of that before taking it but it was all they had and it was like, okay, I’m gonna go through this pain that’s like half an hour they said, but you know it felt like ten thousand years and like I experienced every shred of the pain and like, I didn’t care! You just don’t care anymore! Like, wow!

Mike: I can’t have Marshall Singletree on acid!

Burlcron: Why not, man, because like I’m in complete control now, in fact a lot more in control because like I say I’m canceling out the dope stone right now, which I admit scatters the hell outa your freakin’ mind but now this acid is clean, man, it’s restructuring the very me which I am!

Mike: God, God …

Burlcron: No, like really, I’m clear now! I see how to do this Marshall guy perfectly! I can act on LSD, you know! Anybody can! It’s so simple!

Mike: Maybe we’d better do Session II another time. If there is another time, and if I ever write this goddamn novel!

Burlcron: No, really, man, dig it! We need to throw a lot of really fantastic consciousness into this thing and now I’m it! I’ve got it all! Amazing, really, when you think about it, like, really, I’m both in control and out of control enough to have enough control to look at that cool table of characters you laid out for the novel after our talk last night, I mean really, I’m so in control I can analyze it just like I can analyze a Milton poem for English class! I swear to God!

Mike: Is this what lurks underneath Marshal Singletree’s savior-of-the-human-race exterior?

Burlcron: Yes! Yes! Exactly! The old coot is living the dream! The true spirit of consciousness! But nobody believes him because he’s insane. So he has to hide that. With this tremendous ego trip, and his turtleneck sweater! Like right now I’m amazed at your new table of characters, and for calling the novel Caspra Coronae! That’s what you did decide to call this damn thing and it’s perfect even though it won’t fly and it’s probably just a temporary thing but if you can get Caspra to really open up it’d be even more consciousness! Wow! Man, I saw Aria naked when she went in for her first session and I thought, wow, I mean, wow! She’s perfect for Caspra! Caspra’s so perfect even if what I’m saying can’t possibly make sense! Does that make sense? Man is she a piece! Can you let her know how bad I have the hots for her?

Mike: Well, c’mon, Alfred, look, I have no idea if anything I’m saying now means anything to you–

Burlcron: No! No, of course not! Wow!

Mike: But what I was going to say was that I needed to clarify the characters for the new novel, assign everybody an addict, and incidentally have Al Raavenscorr take on the Tommy Dreech/Bobby Holland role. I think having Al play so many different personas will work out well. From the reader’s standpoint, he’ll initially seem to be acting out of character at each step. That’ll be interesting.

Burlcron: Wow! Yeah! Let me do it! I’ll play both Al and Singletree! A dual role!

Mike: C’mon, man, you know that’s not possible. As for calling the book Caspra Coronae, well, if Caspra grows enough into her character that the novel could support that title, fine. Seeing the madness of crowds from her point of view might carry the book. Maybe not. In any case, it’s a decent working title. Or hell, I might call it something else tomorrow.

Burlcron: Call it Marshall Singletree!

Mike: Dammit, Alfred, are we seriously postulating that Marshall Singletree is insane? That some disturbing force in the Burlcron archetype means that he spends his whole life faking being the strong man, and then when Reva leaves him, he collapses in a second?

Burlcron: I’m not insane! I have control, man, I would never betray your cosmic novel like that! Because once my mind gets really raring, like I’m starting to see how I’d really merge into this Singletree guy cause like he’s really, really together most of the time, it’s just that he can’t handle sex! Well, who can, really, but maybe there’s this thing with his daughter, this Kina babe, like she’s jealous when her dad starts screwing Reva but what if there’s something weird going on with the two of ’em, I mean like Kina and Marshall, just like Burlcron had with his daughter Lisa in The Soul Institute? Which reminds me that I’m not kiddin’, man, I’d really like to get into that Aria Laci Coronae vixen in a second!

Mike: Oh, come on, Alfred, this is really out of line. You need to show respect to the other archetypes.

Burlcron: Well, you can’t have her! Aria and I happen to be great buddies, by the way, and we kid each other about sex all the time! Anyway, she says to me, like in the strictest confidence, man, that you were drooling for her!

Mike: I was not! Sure I was a little embarrassed at first, but so what? And I thought I made myself clear that as the commander of this task force I see all the archetypes as major forces to be respected! If I describe their bodies or their sexual acts it doesn’t have any bearing on my own life, it’s all part of channeling the forces into the novel.

Burlcron: You can’t control us!

Mike: I don’t want to control you. But I can and do send you into battle according to the needs of the novel!

Burlcron: That sounds like total fascism! No wonder this novel sucks! You’re a goddamn militarist is what you are!

Mike: Are you peaking on your LSD yet, mister? Are you going to get some brains back? Because I need you to give me some input on Part II!

Burlcron: Yeah! Bring Singletree back! Even if he’s dead! Maybe he’s just a corpse they carry around, like some holy relic.

Mike: What?

Burlcron: Yeah, like some of the worshippers just can’t let him go. When Billy orders Leon to bury him, Leon refuses and says Singletree’s comin’ with us, man, deal with it, man.

Mike: That’s–brilliant! Like the relics of some medieval saint! During an attack, he’s always carried to safety first!

Burlcron: Then whoever wants to hallucinate that he’s saying really wise BS just sneaks into the tent with the body bag and unzips it!

Mike: Oooh … yuck.

Burlcron: Like that was a real acid insight there, man.

Mike: Maybe he’s in the shell hole with Leon and Dave and Al and whoever.

Burlcron: Everyone’s in the shell hole! The whole main cast!

Mike: Well, that might be a stretch.

Burlcron: Get this: I play Singletree dead and rotting! Because of course the true believers think there can’t be any corruption! But there is! Who’s gonna admit it first?

Mike: And I still have to get everyone to Houston, and Stone Street. They find this old creaky cart and walk it down the I-45 shoulder. It takes them weeks.

Burlcron: They finally find a big wooden coffin and seal me in it, ’cause I do stink now! Kina’s a zombie by now! So’s Reva, but more from missing my huge member in her! I was the best thing she ever had, you know, or at least she thinks that, because of course Al’s really the best thing she’s ever had, but at any rate, and when they get to Stone Street, they put me up on the second floor of the main commune house! I have a room to myself there!

Mike: And you’re lit by candles all night long!

Burlcron: Yeah! Can you see it? I play myself rotting! With a few really eloquent soliloquies here and there! Like coming from Hades itself! Man, this is the role of a lifetime!

Copyright 2021 by Michael D. Smith

The interview is lightly edited to eliminate Burlcron’s worst vulgarity, and to spell out my abbreviations for various novels. I left intact various character names that I can’t expect a reader to know anything about.

Posted in Asylum and Mirage, Caspra Coronae, Character Images, Dystopia, Interviews, Novels, The Soul Institute, Writing, Writing Process | 1 Reply

Caspra Coronae Draft One Blast-Off

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on July 3, 2021 by Michael D. SmithJune 17, 2022

What is This Thing?

Dave Shows His Paintings copyright 2021 by Michael D. Smith

Dave Shows His Paintings

There were no longer any issues blocking the fiction, and I began Caspra Coronae on June 24. I finally realized that although my plans are incomplete, whatever is unresolved is just going to have to come out during the fiction process. After work on four chapters, it already feels like an entirely new novel, not just a revision of its forebear, the incomplete Notice and Dream Topology, and that version’s older rough draft, Parts I and II.

Nevertheless, right now the only way I can describe this experiment is to quote from the previous novel’s description on sortmind.com:

In Part I a naïve and disconnected artist gives a party to celebrate his career, only to find himself drafted that same night into a mindless war. In Part II he becomes a sergeant leading frightened yuppies against an unstoppable Army of Evil. A partial second draft, Notice and Dream Topology, was revised into a play titled Linstar, which unfortunately proved to be a bombastic failure. However, Notice and Dream Topology, in cutting out Part II, the interminable war itself, has some promise and I may revise it. And I might want to write a completely new Part II.

I don’t have a web page for the new novel and won’t do one until I figure the book out, at least to some degree, after Draft 1. I also haven’t drawn any character portraits yet. But I do have the image cropped from the Tarot Card for Notice and Dream Topology, artist Dave showing off his new art warehouse.

Oddly, the book I’m working on is already 263 pages in length. While I’ve significantly altered the ancient Notice and Dream Topology manuscript with new characters, new chapter divisions, and numerous cuts and rearrangements, in no way can I consider the yet-to-be-revised parts as fiction. The working MS. has a structure I’m both making use of and treating as extended notes for massive change. It’s really just Part I of a novel that was never finished, so whatever Part II follows will be entirely new.

Future blog posts will look at the novel’s ongoing successes and failures, including any moment when I realize the project isn’t working and I abandon it. But I think it’s time to just push this thing out quickly and see what’s there. Caspra Coronae could simply be an experimental herald of some new writing I can’t imagine yet. I need to explore, and if the investigation seems unfocused or too revealing, so be it. There’s nothing to be gained from holding back.

I also see that this particular blog post may come off as psychically unorganized, but this is probably due to my not being sure where the fiction is leading.

It’s intriguing to be in this position. I’ve wondered: if I happened to be a bestselling author, would I be discouraged from trying an experiment like this?

A History in Brief of Not Letting Something Go

  • The first iteration of this project was a short story titled “33” because it was thirty-three pages of bizarre, disconnected dreams that became a warm-up for the first draft of a novel about brainwashing and evil called Parts I and II.
  • I considered Parts I and II a failure but lifted a chapter for Jack Commer, Supreme Commander. That chapter became the basis for the Alpha Centaurian Grid and the fascist Head which figures in the Jack Commer novels; by appropriating that chapter, I felt I’d effectively killed off Parts I and II.
  • But I couldn’t drop the novel and a few years later made a second draft called Notice and Dream Topology. This one was unfinished, rewriting just the rough draft’s Part I, Dave’s party in celebration of his artistic success.
  • Becoming fascinated with playwriting for a while, I then tried to finish Notice and Dream Topology by turning it into a play called Linstar, which is the worst disaster I’ve ever concocted. I forced myself to skim it recently just to make sure I don’t repeat its errors. It can be summed up as: Really Evil People Saying Really Evil Things to Really Confused Good People.
  • A decade passed and I was again struck by the surreal inexplicability of Notice and Dream Topology. Could it possibly function as a standalone novel without further revision, or did it need a new Part II to complete whatever mission it was supposed to have?
  • From 2016 on, between work on the last three Jack Commer novels, I mused on new novel ideas, including investigations of character archetypes from previous novels and a vague, unwritable plot involving reincarnation. Nothing came of all that until I realized that the unfinished Notice and Dream Topology plot could be an ideal vehicle for exploring these archetypes.
  • After completing the Jack Commer series this year, I interviewed five male and five female archetypes. They volunteered plot and character developments I couldn’t have come up with without them; they were also touchingly supportive of each other. In early June I committed to calling the new project Caspra Coronae–more on this odd but lovely choice below. I did confirm that coronae is the plural of corona, for what that’s worth.

 

Obstacles to Writing Caspra Coronae

Old Writing. Is it okay to look at past writings which might be brought up to date as new novels? Is this the way my writing life has been destined to unfold, or is it a way of putting off new explorations? Can there be any explorations in the old stuff? Is looking at old writing similar to how therapy might explore childhood traumas? Backward-looking, but strengthening current foundations?

Caspra Coronae herself. She was a minor character in Notice and Dream Topology, but she had incredible force there as an addict who behaved nothing like one. I like the idea of calling the novel Caspra Coronae so much that I’m trying to think of a way to elevate that minor but fascinating character into something that will make the title work. It’ll be a challenge to figure out how to propel Caspra forward, but her new energies have already risen fast in the first three chapters.

The Evil Problem. The Nature of The Reunion. Notice and Dream Topology concepts never jelled because I never worked out what it all really meant. That may be fine for a puzzling Twilight Zone script, but in making this into a novel I need to be on top of what all that stuff means. Is it evil we’re talking about, or just fear? “The Reunion” is brainwashing, hallucinations, and incomprehensible horror, but whoever is marketing this evil knows how to repackage it in a welcoming way. But what’s its real nature? I don’t really know where to take that. If delusion and the madness of crowds is such a part of human nature, how can a novel plot fix that?

Uncertainty about Part II. Notice and Dream Topology’s mysteries would be intriguing to a reader, who’d naturally await resolution of them in Part II. But though I’ve sketched out eight vaporware chapters of a Part II, I have no more clue than the reader. Part II can’t be a struggle between good and evil that plays out like some video game, as I tried and failed to do in Linstar. We have to have a real reckoning with the fear. We need to keep walking through what the characters would really see, and feel, and do, in the terrible situation where Part II begins.

Literary, or The Final, Novel. In reviewing my published novels, I was struck by a more or less even split between literary and science fiction:

Literary Science Fiction
Akard Drearstone

CommWealth

The First Twenty Steps

Jump Grenade

Sortmind

The Soul Institute

The Martian Marauders

Jack Commer, Supreme Commander

Nonprofit Chronowar

Collapse and Delusion

The Wounded Frontier

The SolGrid Rebellion

Balloon Ship Armageddon

Even if many on the left column have absurdist aspects, that’s just background flavor; all those are literary works. While I don’t rule out more science fiction in the future, or would ban it from a new novel, I need something massive and grounded right now.

I might as well get the fear question out. Is there pressure to make this book any sort of final statement? Despite feeling ageless, I begin to see that not every project will get done. I don’t want to waste any time, or more importantly, any energy on fruitless detours, looking backward to old work, or what I call “quilting,” that is, the enjoyable craftwork of turning out one pleasant, not terribly important, novel after another.

I’ve refused to believe I have nothing left to say. I’ve tried to examine whether declaring that I still have much more writing ahead is mere bravado. But I really don’t feel I’m deceiving myself.

Successes So Far with Caspra Coronae

The ten interviews with the archetypes. The ten archetypes represent recurring character types found in most of my novels. Interviews with them spanning 120 pages were a major contribution and forced me to think of the novel as completely new, not just a revision of the old Notice and Dream Topology. They differ from the interviews I did with Jack Commer characters in that they use insider shorthand about my past writings, and the archetypes focus more on the nature of their personalities rather than the story, although some of them gave me great plot ideas. I may post some of the interviews on the blog anyway. Most of the archetypes become point-of-view narrators. As I started writing, I cut them from ten to eight, but the two cut ones keep clamoring for a say in the novel.

The ensemble nature of the plot. My hope is that each of the eight characters will have equal status and their own evolution in the spotlight. This may or may not prove to be at odds with elevating one of the archetypes, Caspra Coronae, as the title of the book. Does that mean the book has to be mostly about her? What will her function be? In any case Dave’s disastrous party winds up creating an accidental commune, a perfect testbed for ensemble characters.

Strong Part I structure. I can make use of the excellent energies of the original second draft, Notice and Dream Topology, even as I know the new characters will thoroughly transform it. This seems a good way to approach this novel: set up the new situations within the existing structure, even as the characters burn that structure for liftoff fuel. Then they help me launch an unimaginably new Part II into orbit.

Confidence in the fiction flow. You put so much effort into notes and plans, but then the flow of actually writing the fiction makes you realize how relatively unimportant those plans are. The first four chapters have treated the notes I’ve slaved over as almost inconsequential, and yet new energies are flowing which easily integrate these notes, or discard them, at the whim of the muse.

The Main Characters So Far

Four Male and Four Female Archetypes Their Assigned Addicts
Marshall Singletree (55), mystical, charismatic leader of Migrations from Evil Gabriel Aaron (21), passive and doomed, killed at the party
Leon Winter (27), Singletree’s main follower, brilliant, charming, and cold Jasmine Sung (24), Leon’s new girlfriend, who conceals her addict status until she’s assigned to him at the party
David Torus Kroner (31), naïve and immature, but who’s found success as an artist Walter Malloye (31), psychopathic gang leader who assigns himself as Dave’s addict at the party; unclear whether he’s really addicted
Al Raavenscorr (36), apparently an addict, who keeps adding inexplicable self-awareness
Kina Singletree (31), Marshall’s daughter, a majestic woman who diminishes herself as the leader of a silly book club Tarl Deladier (25), Walter’s stooge, assigned at the party
Marina Nicker Nunn (43), music professor, reckless and courageous, daring to experiment with hallucinations that scare everyone else Caspra Coronae, assigned to Marina weeks ago
Reva Veils McKee (29), Marshall Singletree’s new lover Al Raavenscorr, assigned at the party
Caspra Coronae (31), an addict, but unusually composed and intelligent; Dave was obsessed with her in high school.

The What If

I’m still not entirely sure of my What If, the question that propels the novel, though of course that’s never stopped me before.

Maybe the What If is: “What if people wake up to the nature of their own evil, and their own participation in the madness of crowds?” But they won’t know how, I don’t know how, to vanquish that for all time, which is where I’ve thought the novel was supposed to end up. There is no clever sci-fi plot twist that will do that. The best the characters can do is offer a vision of an alternate future.

Another What If comes from interviewing the over-the-top Marina Nicker Nunn:

“In any case I’ve studied all the Marina archetypes from Naomi Kugel in Akard Draft One, through Moolka and Boots Emerson in The Soul Institute and Amy Nortel in Balloon Ship Armageddon, and believe me I’ve definitely got the energy for this part. So many forces within me. I can’t say I really control any of them, but they’re all here at my disposal somehow. In any case, Mr. Mike, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here chatting with you about this wonderful, wonderful novel of yours! I’m definitely up for making it an outstanding success!”

So … what if all these forces start demanding expression, and resolution?

copyright 2021 by Michael D. Smith

Posted in A Writing Biography, Asylum and Mirage, Caspra Coronae, Character Images, Dystopia, Interviews, Literary, Novels, Tarot Cards, Writing, Writing Process | 1 Reply

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