Terry M. West: Squeezing Ink From the Demons

SQUEEZING INK FROM THE DEMONS

By Terry M. West

 

I write stuff. That’s the vocation I have chosen and I have stuck with, even when it hasn’t been particularly rewarding.

I can compose a tale and I have enough empathy inside and talent to sell a character, even if it is a person I have little emotional connection to. Great writers are even better liars. We envision, but we often don’t know. Not really. We are winging it, many times.

We put in what we imagine are the necessary requirements for our characters and then we cross our fingers. There might be a shadow, a truth, of us, the writers, in our players. But they march sometimes with only a slight spark of their God inside and they respond in ways that we imagine are universal or true to their character. And when we go against the commandments, the internal rules that we have set for these pretend people we get either applauded or scorned.

When I committed to HEROIN IN THE MAGIC NOW, I knew I had to go to dark places. My main character, Gary Hack, required more than a flicker of truth. I had to give the bastard one of my ribs.

Everything Gary says or feels is taken directly from me. There are small aspects of Terry M. West in every character I have given birth to. Gary is a clone; a genetically engineered doppelganger.

I have written, but seldom have I bled. For this one, I had to let it all out, and revisit hell. There I had to torture a character, myself, my child, in what might be the cruelest way I can imagine.

There are many times our characters become voodoo dolls in our hands and we put the pins in. But Gary is paying for all of my sins. And no matter how much I have atoned, you do not want to be a sin-eater at my funeral.

Gary has to carry it all, for me. And whether he finds utter defeat or peace at the end, his dark mission has made him the most favored of all of my children.

I love you, Gary Hack; even if you don’t love yourself. I can honestly say that I know exactly what you are going through.

I wrote HEROIN IN THE MAGIC NOW because I felt it was a responsibility. I have been trying to free the pain for years, but did not know how to approach it. I am a horror writer, so the decision to set those familiar demons loose in an imaginary universe seemed like a safe way to dump the chemicals into the ocean.

I have this friend, you see…

It was my solemn responsibility to write HEROIN IN THE MAGIC NOW, but I soon found there was more to say in this piece. There were truths I could cast in the funhouse mirror, here. HEROIN IN THE MAGIC NOW touches on several things, and if you read it, I think you will see that.

It was my responsibility to write this tale, as I said. It is not your responsibility to read it, but I hope you do. You will find truths here, wedged into the fiction like a sword in stone.

But beware because I have talked to a few beta-readers and they are telling me one thing about this tale:

It leaves a mark inside.

Heroin in the Magic Now will available on August 31st from Pleasant Storm Entertainment, Inc. It will be offered for Kindle with a trade paperback to follow shortly.