by Glen Krisch
I can see how someone's world can become both microscopically small, yet still fraught with anxiety. The world can be frightening, if you let it. The key is to not transpose your lack of comfort over a given situation with something akin to fear. I know this won't make sense to most people, but to those of you who can relate, I hope it will make sense. And if you can relate, I hope you also understand that fear is a choice.
So, anyway, in "Sudden Sanctuary" Claudia is forced from her comfort, and she soon realizes that she must again regain some similar form of comfort for her to carry on. It's a bleak and twisted journey, and in the end, Claudia finds her sanctuary.
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So Close to Home
I decided to write So Close to Home for a zombie anthology that had a strict word limit of (I think) two thousand words. I can't remember which anthology it was, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise in writerly self-control.
I had never written a zombie story before So Close to Home. Some people consider my novel Where Darkness Dwells to be a zombie novel. If anything, the monsters in that novel are second-cousins to traditional zombies. They are undead, sure, but only because they have never died. Their fate is a curse and a damnation. So, similar, yes, but only tangentially.
At any rate, normally no wanting to follow the rules of the horror genre, or the zombie mythos in particular, I came up with a subtle idea I think put a new (or at least a slightly varied-from-the-norm) take on the zombie apocalypse.
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Winterlochen Academy
Some story ideas stem from misunderstandings. "Winterlochen Academy" is a perfect example. I once heard my wife talking to her co-worker about her daughter's boarding school. I don't remember the school's actual name, but what I did hear was Winterlochen Academy. Immediately, my mind began creating this fictional boarding school. The setting would be an isolated island in one of the upper Great Lakes. An old, stuck-in-time village would both support, and be supported by, the school. And winterlochen, a word I made up, sounded like a lake mired in perpetual winter. So I decided to write a story about a winter that never lifted. Spring would become Summer, and yet the snow would remain. Would worsen, even.
That in itself sounded fairly frightening. Isolation horror at its finest. But what else could possibly go wrong? What if this everlasting winter brought about the awakening of a long-dormant beast? I added this detail, but the beast needed a purpose, otherwise its addition would be superfluous.
One of the main characters, Dr. Howard Julian says this of the monster:
"They have a role, as we all do. It is their role to clean the planet of the remaining populations. As the ice sheets retreat, and Spring dawns again, the beasts leave behind a pristine landscape. Though they are only awakened sporadically, they live quite extravagantly for that short while."
Extravagantly, indeed.
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No Man's Dominion
Sometimes an odd phrase will pop into my head and I'll have to write it down. I'm forever filling my pockets with little bits of paper filled with scrawled notes I might or might not understand when I finally get back to reading them. One of these odd phrases was:
"Grandmother's first bloody tear fell that morning."
Yes, it's the opening line to No Man's Dominion. I didn't know what I would do with the line, but I knew it would be the beginning of a story. I don't explain much about this particular apocalypse, except for the bloody tears, and I kind of like it that way. The world's fallen apart, but in some ways technology has continued to advance. There are horse-drawn wagons, but at the same time, there's a new music-listening device called the iBud. People in this story are crude and simple and spout the given political doctrine as if it were scripture. It's an extrapolation of current events, a distorted look into a maybe future. Or is it?
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A Prodigal Apocalypse
This story about the Grant brothers, and the ones that have followed and will continue to follow, has been brewing in me since 1993. That's when, while on a college trip, we entered the town of Alexandria Missouri. It had just been wiped off the map by the great floods that summer. Mud streaked the remaining teetering walls of the meager downtown to the second floor windows. You can read more about the historical context here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_of_1993
I've toyed with the storyline on and off since then. The idea has grown and evolved into something far greater than just a devastating flood. The events of the story now encompass the entire world and the end of civilization.
My plan is two write a sprawling trilogy that will let me play with this varied and fruitful landscape. I'm in the middle of writing the first novel: Arkadium Rising, Brother's Keeper Book 1. This is an expansion of the novella, Brother's Keeper. The novella is actually an expansion/extensive revision of A Prodigal Apocalypse.
I thought about revising this story to my current understanding of the overarching plot. But I didn't. Some details didn't carry over to the expanded novella, which can be fun to discover, and there are some characters that haven't yet arrived on the scene during this short story. I kind of like it that way. This story works on its own, and is something of an artifact from the time I wrote it.
I did two main things in revising this story into the novella that became Brother's Keeper. One: I made the storyline linear. I like nonlinear storytelling, but in some cases a more direct method adds to a story's clarity. And two: I added characters in the novella (Delaney in particular) so the narrative didn't have to rely on Jason's thoughts to propel the plot.
See what can happen to a story idea if a writer doesn't get to it right away? Some ideas rot on the vine, even if they were fully developed and ready for the proverbial prime time. Some ideas wither; either they were weak to begin with, or the author didn't do the necessary work to nurture it. In the case of Jason and Marcus Grant, the idea has lingered in the shadows for the last twenty years, and I'll write about their tumultuous relationship over a projected 1000+ pages.
I've written other stories in the mythos, most notably Gleaners (also included in this collection). That story details events during the second novel in the trilogy, a book that takes place five years after the first. The third novel is about the Grant brothers a quarter century after the end of civilization.
The first novel (Arkadium Rising) is long-delayed. After shooting myself in the foot in the past, I won't pinpoint an exact release date, but I'm still hopeful for the end of 2013.
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Publishing History
"Gleaners" first appeared in Through the Eyes of Strays from Dog Horn Publishing*
"Sudden Sanctuary" first appeared in Through the Eyes of Strays from Dog Horn Publishing*
"So Close to Home" first appeared in Shroud Magazine #8, reprinted in Commitment and Other Tales of Madness
"Winterlochen Academy" first appeared in Through the Eyes of Strays from Dog Horn Publishing*
"No Man's Dominion" first appeared in Through the Eyes of Strays from Dog Horn Publishing*
"Brother's Keeper" First appearance
*All stories that appeared in Through the Eyes of Strays were originally edited by Alexa Radcliffe-Hart.
Copyright © by Glen Krisch
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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