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The Soul Institute is Published

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on December 16, 2015 by Michael D. SmithMay 16, 2020

The Soul Institute by Michael D. Smith“Back away from the novel and slowly put your hands on top of the Internet. Keep your mind where I can see it.”

Sooner or later you come to this point. The time has finally arrived to push the novel out there.

A bestselling if somewhat unhinged novelist founds a small coastal Texas university dedicated to the study of the human psyche. Appointed writer in residence at the whim of the director, computer technician Himal Steina realizes his dream of mythic sanctuary at the vast foggy Soul Institute, falling in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses but unaware that he’s blundering into a catastrophic jumble of power lust, romantic chaos, drug abuse, and gang violence.

The Soul Institute is my aircraft carrier flagship novel. I do think this is my best work, and it’s karmically important for me to publish TSI after either eleven or twenty-four years of work, take your pick once you see my calculations below. Since September I’ve more or less put all my energy into a final revision and publication effort. This novel isn’t science fiction, not even the bizarre “what if” social commentary of CommWealth’s dystopian economy, but like almost anything I write, The Soul Institute is farcical / over the top / serious / psychological / tragic / absurd. And hopefully funny. I try to navigate through the drafts of a novel by amplifying those sections I feel have good flowing energy, and cutting those parts that drag, no matter how necessary they might at first seem to the book’s structure. But I figure if something bores me as I reread it, it can’t really be necessary. If you reread your work with a feel for whether energy is leaping off the page, you eventually coalesce around the emotionally correct parts that are necessary. The point is that I think the entirety of The Soul Institute is now high energy.

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Posted in Character Images, Collapse and Delusion, CommWealth, Double Dragon Publishing, Dreams, Editing, Excerpts, Jack Commer, Literary, Novels, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Sortmind, Sortmind Press, The First Twenty Steps, The Soul Institute, The University of Mars, Trip to Mars, Writing, Writing Process | 1 Reply

CommWealth Paperbacks–and Nancy’s Review

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on September 3, 2015 by Michael D. SmithMay 16, 2020

CommWealth the paperback by Michael D. SmithCommWealth is now available from Amazon in paperback format, in addition to Kindle eBook format.

In addition, the paperback and a variety of eBook formats are available from the publisher, Class Act Books.

I received some initial copies Tuesday morning, September 1, and they look fantastic.  My wife Nancy was so impressed that she updated her review several times during the day:

 

Dr. Nancy Remp Smith's Review of CommWealth Paperback

writing copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith
Nancy image copyright 2015 by Nancy Remp Smith

The novel CommWealth is available from:
Class Act Books in paperback and in eBook formats
Amazon in Kindle format and paperback

Posted in Black Comedy, CommWealth, Dystopia, Literary, Novels, Publishing, Reviews, Writing | Leave a reply

Allan Confronts the Three Thugs

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on August 30, 2015 by Michael D. SmithMay 16, 2020
Xander Horranger copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Xander Horranger, former Forensic Squad actor and sleazeball who demands Richard Stapke’s entire literary output

An excerpt from CommWealth:

Allan parked the Maserati on Walnut Street and slammed the door with what he hoped was appropriate showdown force. A few customers on the patio looked up, then went back to their beers and chessmen. Allan sprang over the bushes onto the concrete patio. A lovely young woman gave him a sidelong glance, then snickered to her friends.

“Xander, man, we need to talk,” Allan said, moving towards Xander’s usual table. Xander’s back was to him, his ragged dark hair below his collar, his beer mug gleaming in the afternoon sun.

Chunky Darco Stevens raised his own mug. Plater Hampton squinted beneath his thunderhead of wiry gray hair. “Allan, man!” Plater said. “We’re on our fifth pitcher, man!”

“Xander, we need to talk,” Allan repeated.

Xander slowly turned. “Make it quick, buddy, I’m a busy man these days.”

Plater Hampton copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Plater Hampton, Xander Horranger’s gangly, weak-willed confederate

Allan took the empty chair to Xander’s right. “Pour me a beer, man,” he ordered Plater.

Time to reassert a little authority. These twits have been screwing Forensic Squad from the beginning. Dammit, I used to have the upper hand with these guys! Now they sass me! All they ever do is sit here at Lastor’s and guzzle beer! They aren’t actors! They aren’t artists! How’d I ever get mixed up with these jerks?

Plater shrugged. “Don’t got no empty mug, man. Ask goddamn Suzy.”

Allan spotted Suzy across the patio. “Hey, Suzy, I need a mug!”

Suzy grimaced, balancing ten mugs on a tray. “Hold your damn horses, for Chrissakes.”

Well, at least she’s got that low cut German thing on today. Nice.

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Posted in Black Comedy, Character Images, CommWealth, Dystopia, Excerpts, Literary, Novels, Satire, Writing | Leave a reply

Allan Larson’s Cabaret

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on August 27, 2015 by Michael D. SmithMay 16, 2020
Erica Thora, Close Up copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Erica Thora, unavailable actress

In my just-published novel CommWealth, Allan Larson browbeats the Forensic Squad acting troupe into staging an infantile play he’s written called Cabaret. (Though he swears his play has nothing to do with the 1972 movie of the same name, one has one’s suspicions.) Several lines of Cabaret find their way into the novel, but I’d forgotten that long ago, while working on initial notes for CommWealth, I’d assembled a sample play from which I could draw consistent quotes as needed. Allan Larson’s four-act effort is all of 939 words (87 of which are the title and numerous dramatis personae listed at the beginning) and reads like classic theater of the absurd, which has always fascinated me. Some of Cabaret seems to come from early plot notes transcribed into dialog. It’s always fun to unearth something you’d forgotten writing and to find yourself thoroughly amused by it. But I’ll refrain from providing a laugh track for the following.

CABARET
A Play in Four Acts
by Allan Larson

Dramatis Personae:

Carl Mindblow, a race car driver
Bonnie Mindblow, his German wife
Friedrich Xylophone, Carl’s mechanic
TC, a German drunkard
Emory Buell, a German musician
Frank Kafka, another mechanic
Billy Marsdenoillamp, an American race car driver
Doomboat Plowgryu, a mysterious tourist
Lila Astorque, a French writer
Jim Paiston, a race car driver
Akardy Slighstone, a motorcyclist
Pains Lurl, a sexaholic artist
Lappa Carugfuest, a German sensualist
Mary Beth Houckfkj, a Hungarian mathematician
Bonnie Kafka, an enigmatic figure

ACT 1

Carl: We’re here, safe in the house, but we’re sick, we’re all dying!
Bonnie: Of what?
Carl: Of tuberculosis, of course!
TC: Damn, do you mean to tell me you guys remember your lines?
Emory: Maybe the audience will come back!
TC: Get ‘em a little drunker and they won’t notice!
Bonnie: Won’t notice the tuberculosis?
Carl: Which of us really is Franz Kafka, or was, in a previous life? Which of us will die coughing our guts right out?
TC: Forget it. Blow me, Bonnie!
Bonnie: But I don’t remember the words!
Carl: Don’t worry, we’ll just ad lib!
Bonnie: But–I can’t do that!
Carl: Hey, TC–what’s Bonnie’s next line? She can’t remember!
TC: Nobody can remember their lines! We’re all high, I tell you!
Carl: But the audience is gone! There’s only three people left!
TC: Hey, Emory! You got any hint as to what this play’s about—
Emory: Well, it was obvious the twit girl will become Bonnie in Cabaret, of course. Even though the character was intended to be Lila–
TC: Then again, maybe Lila would play the part–would that be ironic!
Carl: It would express so much!
Bonnie: I am a German housewife!
Carl: But you see … as a race driver named Carl … and …
TC: I don’t believe it! Where’s Friedrich?
Friedrich: As Bonnie turns from a German housewife into the steamiest lay on the planet.
Carl: She’ll know everything!
TC: Do you dare show it to her?

ACT 2

Jill Constantine copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Jill Constantine, reluctant actress

Friedrich: I fear I must sabotage Carl’s car.
Emory: But why?
Friedrich: Because I am the mechanic who works on Carl’s car.
Emory: But the race is today!
Friedrich: Carl must die.
TC: But the young woman driver gives her umbrella to me. She complies with the correct grace.
Emory: Would she like a ride home.
Lappa Carugfuest: I say no thanks.
Friedrich: Everything is free. You just ask for it.
Emory: It is a very nasty December day.
Lappa: Give me warmth against the nasty cold dampness.
Emory: Was I Franz Kafka in a former life.
Lappa: Brown buried room in the nasty winter–do I even have a house yet.
TC: I set out to write a play based on these experiences.
Emory: But Carl has an attitude–afraid to know directly himself, he struts around and feels superior to others on the basis of–
Friedrich: I bury myself in the latest can.

ACT 3

Allan Larson copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

The playwright Allan Larson

Billy Marsdenoillamp: I came in around 11 AM for a cup of tea. Some woman was pleasant to me. For a long time she’s been trying to be professional with me. But I haven’t seen her since we met on the street in July.
Doomboat Plowgryu: And she feels no real need to be with anyone, though she’s interested from a very distant emotional place now. But don’t reveal.
Billy: Hadn’t expected to find Akardy here, though.
Lila Astorque: He seems very confused by her arrival, and now she wishes she hadn’t come. Yet she resolves to be a real friend now.
Jim Paiston: Man, I am gonna race!
Akardy Slighstone: Man, I am gonna race!
Pains Lurl: I think she needs the work.
Akardy: They could probably be friends now. The thing with Rupert is over.
Billy: He always spends his mornings here!
Pains: And yet strangely serene.
Jim: Some things remain untouched, and nobody knows why.
Lila: Oh, that’s conversation for you!
Billy: And yet, I am comfortable with his inner self.
Lila: Mystically stable, longing for that sort of relationship–though he knows he doesn’t really want it.
Akardy: Everyone knows that his work is the theater, but he knows he’s cheating.

ACT 4

Carl: I need to get something heavy out of the back. Who will volunteer to help?
TC: You know I can bring your wife to orgasm, you are just an American.
Carl: So Bonnie has kissed you?
TC: I would say so. Albeit not very well.
Bonnie (enters room and kisses TC): Bang me!
Carl: You know why … ever since I first came in here …
TC: Come with me to my car, Bonnie. Let us do the awkward walking to my car.
Bonnie: Where are we going?
Carl: Stop!
TC: You have a race, Carl. Friedrich has prepared your car well. Meanwhile, there is a curious erotic fear going on here that I wish to explore.
Bonnie: I unfortunately wish to explore it as well.
TC: She’s apparently going through with it.
Bonnie: Perhaps he shall wish to explore my box!
Carl: Well, then it’s only fair to warn you that I have been attracted to Pains.
Bonnie: Yet everyone can see that it is more or less shallow.
Carl: Baby, I want to be Number One in your life!
TC: Yet he can’t stop now.
Bonnie: I am practically babbling!
Carl: But I sense an underlying victory.
TC: And I, an underlying excitement.
Bonnie: I am ready, my Knight. Just light the marijuana.
TC: You can expect a report on a very detailed lovemaking session here, based on my point of view.

copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

The novel CommWealth is available from:
Class Act Books in paperback and in eBook formats
Amazon in Kindle format and paperback

Posted in Black Comedy, Character Images, CommWealth, Dystopia, Literary, Novels, Plays, Satire, Writing, Writing Process | Leave a reply

CommWealth is Published

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on August 16, 2015 by Michael D. SmithMay 16, 2020

CommWealth, a novel by Michael D. SmithDystopian? Black comedy? Literary? Mainstream, contemporary–what on earth do those terms really mean? CommWealth has been published by Class Act Books. Describing a society in which all forms of property have been banned so that a deeper sharing can take place between citizens, CommWealth isn’t science fiction but is just as bizarre.

The novel is available from Class Act Books in paperback and in EPUB, MobiPocket (Kindle), and PDF eBook formats. It’s also available from Amazon as a Kindle eBook and in paperback. The cover features one of my paintings of the characters, Property, or The Cup of Fog. More background can be found on my CommWealth web page.

Introduced six months ago, the CommWealth system has outlawed private property. Playwright Allan Larson has adjusted well to this new society, easily claiming umbrellas, mansions, and Porsches from fellow citizens. Any object from your house to the clothes you’re wearing can be demanded by anyone, to be enjoyed for thirty days before anyone else can request it.

Allan Larson copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Allan Larson, Forensic Squad actor and playwright

Still obsessed with his ex-girlfriend Lisa, Allan invokes the laws of CommWealth to demand ownership of her. When bicycle mechanic and fledgling actor Richard Stapke discloses that he’s secretly been writing novels and plays for years, Allan incautiously spreads the word that Richard’s a genius, with the result that an official CommWealth claim is made of Richard’s entire literary output. The resulting five-volume Stapke Intimacies brings to light a twisted history of betrayals, double agents, and murder that propel members of the Forensic Squad theatrical troupe into a suicidal revolution.

In this excerpt, CommWealth Inspector Jonathan Hardy investigates a possible Hoarding charge against bicycle mechanic Richard Stapke:

Jonathan Hardy copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Jonathan Hardy, CommWealth Inspector 30

“Mr. Stapke,” Hardy said, tapping something ominous into his laptop, “let’s assume that your entire last statement was hypothetical. In that hypothetical case, in which you are a mere bicycle mechanic, of course you owe no Writer’s Tax. But, since you do have writing, and since you are a writer, you owe seventeen percent.”

Richard opened his mouth and shut it. “Seventeen percent? Hypothetically speaking, seventeen percent of what?”

“Of your output, of course. Let’s say you produce two hundred pages per month, maybe fifty-thousand words, as you do seem quite prolific. Of that, seventeen percent, or thirty-four pages, or eighty-five hundred words, would be sent to the CommWealth Central Tax Assessor’s Office.”

Richard Stapke copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Richard Stapke, owner of Richard’s Bicycle Repair and fledgling Forensic Squad actor

“What?” Richard and Allan both cried.

“If you produce more than say, five hundred pages a month—if you’re a real barn burner, that is, it goes up to fifty percent. So, of course, it’s best to stay around two to three hundred. We know that nobody wants to lose half his writing.”

“What?” Richard repeated. “You send—actual writing—to…to…”

“To the CCTA’s Office. On the last day of the month you simply upload your entire month’s output to the CCTA web site, which in turn sends it to the CommWealth Cultural Redistribution Office. That office determines the seventeen percent tax and distributes it to needy writers all over the country, then refunds the remaining eighty-three percent back to you.”

“My—God!”

“You see, there are many unfortunate writers who would like to be able to create, but who are, for some reason or another, blocked from doing so. It’s a most distressful situation. I’m sure you can relate to that, Mr. Stapke. You know how difficult it is to produce great writing, and how easily it is to get blocked or sidetracked.”

Erica Thora copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Erica Thora, Richard’s model girlfriend

Richard frowned. “No, I don’t know that.”

Hardy cleared his throat. “It hardly needs to be stated that there are vast quantities of unpublished material in this country that are hidden away. People tend to Hoard their writing like dark secrets. Well, what we’re doing with the Writer’s Tax Program is to bring those dark secrets out into the open, and get them into the hands of needy writers who can then have them published under their own names.”

“I don’t believe this! Are you saying this only applies to unpublished material?”

“Of course—although anything a writer produces on a given day is by definition unpublished. It doesn’t even matter if a writer has a contract to write that particular work—it’s still considered taxable by the CCTA. As soon as it’s produced, seventeen percent—or whatever the percentage comes out to be—is ours. And, I should add, you must surrender all your copies of those taxable pages for CCTA inspection—paper, CD, flash drive, or whatever—because they officially cease to be yours in any way.”

Richard shook his head. “Forget it…forget it…”

“And it has to be the best seventeen percent of your writing—no low quality toss-offs and then shuffling that to the CCTA. The Cultural Redistribution Office uses the CommLit program, which has all sorts of fascinating algorithms for comparing the quality of different sections of your writing—and it always gets your best seventeen percent.”

Copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

CommWealth Character Images

Posted in Black Comedy, Character Images, CommWealth, Dystopia, Literary, Novels, Painting, Publishing, Writing | 1 Reply

My Ancient and Unfortunately Unshakable Visualization of the Solar System

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on July 12, 2015 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

1. Concerning My Ongoing, Erroneous, but Somehow Charming Conception That the Solar System Really Does Look Like This 1959 Space Map

1959 Modern Space MapThis childhood map of the solar system has remained locked in my mind since I was seven. Whenever I think of any planet, whenever I see a news report on a planetary probe, whenever I read about a planet in a novel, or write about it in one of my own, I see that planet and all its siblings floating to the right of that way-too-small sun exactly as depicted here.

This map dominated my childhood Draft One of The Martian Marauders in 1965-66. When Jack pilots the Typhoon I to Mars, he simply heads a few inches north. When his ship is destroyed over Mercury, Jack and brother Joe can easily drift in a space lifeboat to Earth in a couple days, and when the two are subsequently captured on Earth, they’re taken to a Venusian prison which is of course just a little bit northwest.

The Space Map influenced the solar system disasters which I rendered so eloquently in that 8th grade version of The Martian Marauders:

Since the year 2020 the solar system seemed to be breaking down. In 2020 many famous asteroids were flung into the sun. In 2021, the planet Pluto was hurled from our solar system, never to return. Scientists and astronomers traced it to a fiery end when it was swept into a sun near our solar system in 2028. In 2023 Neptune, somehow becoming radioactive, blew up, hurling pieces at Uranus, which a few months later hurled itself into the sun, and in doing so, just missed Earth. Perhaps the most tragic and symbolic disaster occurred in 2031 when the most beautiful and graceful planet, Saturn, collided with the strongest and mightiest planet, Jupiter, in a blinding flash of light occurring about midnight on July 15, 2031.

In 2033, the earth became unfit for man, who was forced to journey to and live on Mars.

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Posted in Astronomy, Early Writing, Jack Commer, Martian Marauders, Novels, Science Fiction, Writing | 2 Replies

Either the Orange Rhinoceros Tarot or the Sortmind Tarot

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on June 30, 2015 by Michael D. SmithAugust 31, 2019

Ace of Notebooks copyright 2015 by Michael D. SmithA new Tarot Card page on sortmind.com showcases a handful of the seventy-eight cards in my eccentric Tarot deck, which really doesn’t have a name so I guess two rough draft names will do for now. Sometime in 2000 the owner of a New Age bookstore in Dallas dared me to make my own set of Tarot cards, producing a pack of blank cards for me to start with. It took me three years from 2001-2004 to finish the set in black ink on card stock, each card 4.75” x 2.75”.

There are twenty-nine Major Arcana and four suits: Shapes, Notebooks, Strange Bishops, and Nudes, but not all the suits are complete. I had no fixed rules in doing this project and by the time I figured I’d made too many Major Arcana I decided I could skip a few cards in each suit. So nobody gets a full run from Ace to King, but so what? One of the Strange Bishops does list the missing cards.

Balloon Ship Armageddon copyright 2015 by Michael D. SmithSomehow the whole collection has an autobiographical feel. Included in the Major Arcana are homages to the twelve novels I’d written up to that time, including the most recent effort, Nonprofit Ladies, which I later changed to Nonprofit Chronowar.

I’ve done some Tarot readings with this deck and they really do seem to be psychically informative!

I’ve only digitally colorized twelve of the original black and white cards, and will do more from time to time and post them on the Tarot Card page. But I don’t want that page to get unwieldy, and I only want to colorize when it seems fun, so I doubt I’ll finish the deck anytime soon. The fact that some cards are better than others also enters into the equation; a few are dazzling gifts from the universe, or so it seems to me at least, and they should come first. I colorized a couple cards just because I was writing a blog post and wanted an illustration; a card would come to mind, so I’d colorize it for that post.

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Posted in Art Process, Drawing, Novels, Sortmind, Tarot Cards | Leave a reply

The Official Portrait

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on June 15, 2015 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

Jack Commer, the Official Portrait, oil on claybord, 36" x 24," copyright 2015 by Michael D. SmithJack Commer, the Official Portrait overpaints a despised pencil image. I’d entered the original October 2006 drawing, “Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, United System Space Force, ca. Summer 2036,” into a “Superheroes” art contest in Denison, Texas that fall and I’ve regretted it since. This is where I learned that I don’t do contests. Art and writing are not contests!

I’ve wanted to obliterate that drawing for many years. It represented the worst impulses of the Summer Art Career and a long time ago I deleted it from sortmind.com in shame. It’s too yucky even to show as a “before” picture. Though I wanted Jack to appear regal, he comes off looking as if he just woke up and threw on the nearest filthy torn bathrobe he could find, all the while holding his chin high like an arrogant son of a bitch. While two by three feet is a good size for an official oil portrait, it was too large for the pencil drawing, which came off as thoroughly pretentious.

Having said that, I do admit that in using some of the drawing as the basis for the oil painting I decided to follow through on the farcical aspects of official oil portraits, portraying Jack as a USSF-commissioned artist in the spring of 2036 might have, in celebration of Jack’s eventual victory in the war against the Alpha Centaurians. So somehow this painting rewrites the nasty contest bombasticality of 2006. It also supplies us with a tradition-encrusted art object which we can picture Jack’s defiant son Jonathan James theatrically obliterating with a heat blaster, as he does at the beginning of Book Six, Commer of the Rebellion.

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Posted in Art Process, Character Images, Commer of the Rebellion, Drawing, Jack Commer, Novels, Painting, Science Fiction, The SolGrid Rebellion | Leave a reply

The Sortmind Conversion Project

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on June 12, 2015 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

I’ve spent two and a half months moving sortmind.com from its ancient FrontPage HTML incarnation to WordPress–as a page-format site, not a blog. The new site focuses on the Jack Commer science fiction series, CommWealth, and other publishable novels, and on the best of my paintings and drawings.

While I developed a certain amount of web skills from 1999 to 2015, including HTML, css, rudimentary JavaScript, and a vast appreciation of image work and how much I still have to learn about it, the concept of maintaining static pages which could only be edited on whichever computer was still capable of running my prehistoric FrontPage 2000–which has since evolved to some other software whose name I can never remember–was definitely dead a long time ago.

I launched the site in October 1999 and it just kept growing. Even as I finagled and focused it, sortmind.com become more and more archival and unwieldy. Over the years I aggregated way too much, including hundreds of drawings and paintings I was happy to add at the time, but which overwhelm anyone looking through the site. I went far beyond the stated goal of showcasing some sample work.

I did restructure sortmind.com’s format entirely in 2014, playing up the Jack Commer series and giving the site a much more modern appearance, and I’m still proud of the glorious hassle of the months-long result. But by 2014 I had hundreds of individual pages, and if it can be believed I restructured them all one-by-one, employing vast checklists to keep track of the changes. I could have streamlined some of this effort by making fuller use of some of the software’s previous century functionality, but I was already saying goodbye to FrontPage 2000 with all its strengths and its messy HTML quirks, and it seemed fastest to just get the 2014 project done manually.

All along I knew my FrontPage editing techniques were doomed. The demise of my Windows 7 laptop and the fact that my Windows 8 laptop refused to load FrontPage 2000 was a definite signal from the universe.

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Posted in Jack Commer, Marketing, Novels, Publishing, Science Fiction, Sortmind, Writing Process | Leave a reply

Homage Part 2: The Zarreich Enigma

Sortmind Blog - Michael D. Smith Posted on April 19, 2015 by Michael D. SmithDecember 25, 2024

Zarreich Tarot Card copyright 2015 by Michael D. SmithAs I did with my previous University of Mars post, I culled this essay from its original sortmind.com page. With the advantage of further perspective, I’m editing it considerably from the 2006 musings I made after scanning and editing the typewritten 1982 rough draft. Zarreich was an insanely fertile experiment, disjointed, psychically over the top, and often embarrassing. At the time I considered it a literary novel, but I think it would really be classified “Horror.” In contrast to The University of Mars, it’s faintly possible I might return to this one day and make it into a modern novel.

The Nightmare City of Zarreich

An adolescent is sent to live in a small town with his grandmother, only to discover that all his memories have been wiped. He panics, commits a murder and saws up the body, then finds himself a member of a secret commune remembered only in dreams.

In the spring of 1981 I wanted to create a vast psychological novel that would go far beyond my first four novelistic ventures. That spring saw my final tired work on my endlessly revised third novel, Akard Drearstone, and the abandonment of my fourth, The University of Mars, which at the time had reached a dead end.

The nightmare city of Zarreich had been kicking around in dreams for years. In preparation for the novel I typed out one hundred more “Other World” dreams I’d recorded over the previous decade, dreams that seemed to point to the existence of a concrete alternate world accessed through dreaming. Integrating a huge number of these dreams into the novel–I think twenty-two made it in–was a severe challenge to organizing any rational plot.

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Posted in Akard Drearstone, Dreams, Early Writing, Editing, Novels, The University of Mars, Writing, Writing Process, Zarreich | 8 Replies

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Michael's books

Why Meditate: Working with Thoughts and Emotions
4 of 5 stars
Why Meditate: Working with Thoughts and Emotions
by Matthieu Ricard
WordPress Web Design for Dummies
4 of 5 stars
WordPress Web Design for Dummies
by Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...
5 of 5 stars
Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...
by Philip Plait
Using Joomla!
3 of 5 stars
Using Joomla!
by Ron Severdia
Serpent's Tooth
5 of 5 stars
Serpent's Tooth
by Toni V. Sweeney
On a cruise Melissa bonds with an older man, Travis, who turns out to be a famous celebrity in hiding from a once successful life. But by degrees we become aware that his enormous success came at the price of bonding with demonic forces...

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