The URL for this website plainly states “beerandmonsters”. It’s in the title of the blog. Yet, content has been heavily slanted towards the beer side of the equation, hasn’t it? Also, if you’ve read Sidekicks!, the title of the site may seem somewhat off. After all, “Fangirl” is a post-apocalypse steampunk/western. There’s not a monster anywhere in it. So, what gives?
While I don’t limit myself to any one genre when I write, my heart lies with stories with a more horrific bent. It goes back to my younger years when I was first discovering science-fiction. In the summer of ’77, I saw Star Wars. And, like many folks of my same age, my life was forever changed. I couldn’t find enough sci-fi to slake my sudden thirst. Enter the kid next door, Bruce, and his mother. One summer afternoon I was running around with Bruce outside, pretending to be Luke Skywalker, when Bruce’s mother said something that would be another pinnacle point in my development.
“You know, Stephen, if you like Star Wars so much, you should watch Doctor Who with Bruce and I.”
“Whazzat?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s like Star Wars. But British.”
“Ok!”
Being a real parent, she did something that parents these days don’t do enough of. She went and talked to my mom about it first. You see, back in my day, neighbors, especially parents of kids who were friends, would communicate with each other. To my parents, science-fiction was alien. I think at that point my mother perceived allowing me to see Star Wars as the biggest mistake of her parenting career. Yet, the genie was out of the bottle. So, after grilling Bruce’s mom extensively about the program, I was allowed to watch Doctor Who.
The first episode I ever saw was part one of “The Robots of Death” by Chris Boucher. To go from “Artoo-Deetoo, where are you?” and “Ba-bweep-bob-boop!” to “I m-must k-k-kill! I m-must k-kill” and the high, Asmovian concepts in Doctor Who was mind-blowing for my 4 year-old brain. I didn’t grasp it all, but that made it more intriguing. The hooks sunk in deep.
Star Wars may have introduced me to genre writing, but Doctor Who made me love it. The local PBS station showed primarily the “Hinchcliff/Holmes” era of Who. For those not familiar with that term, “Hinchcliffe/Holmes” refers to the time when Philip Hinchcliffe was the producer of the show, and Bob Holmes was the head writer (what is called “show runner” in NuWho). The episodes were heavily influenced by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Issac Asimov, and John W. Campbell, Jr. The stories tended to be mature, horrific, and often violent. If you were a character in one of those serials, and you weren’t either the Doctor or his companion, chances were high that you weren’t making it through alive.
Most of the time when I write, I’m writing to try and recapture the feeling I had as a kid, watching those cliffhangers. Off and on since 1994, I’ve been writing a series of adventures staring a psychologist/parapsychologist who continually gets pulled into the paranormal. The silhouette on the left hand of the screen? That’s my buddy Pete’s depiction of him. A publisher has been sitting on one of these stories for over a year. I’m hoping to hear some news back regarding the story soon. But I haven’t been idle. About two years ago, I wrote a novella featuring the character. Now I’m expanding that novella into a novel. And the writing is trucking along quite well.
So, that’s what I’m working on now. Hopefully some day the story will be good enough that I can share it with you. Until then, go watch some Doctor Who from the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. I recommend “The Seeds of Doom” or “The Horror of Fang Rock”. I can’t promise you that you’ll like it, but you’ll see where I’m coming from.
Take care!