Ancient Logic

Initial Walk by Morgan Crooks (2019) As the light rail car picked up speed, Morris felt his heart race increase. On the speakers, the jangling guitars marking the start of REM’s It’s the End of The World played. “What is this about anyway?” King County Advisory Executive Marrion Tims zipped up the front of her dark purple uniform and grimaced. “Did you watch the videos?” “The cartoons?” Now Tims’ eyes blazed. “Instructional videos and mandated onboarding material.” A glint of something bright attracted Morris’ attention. Far to the south, close to Tacoma, something flared in the bright blue sky. “What the hell was that?” “We don’t have a lot of time and I need to know whether you’re ready for the fight.” “I’d like to know what’s happening.” The windows rattled in the Link Light Rail’s frames and Morris heard a faint thud. On the horizon the glint dimmed as he caught sight of the first trail of smoke. “Are we under attack?” Capitol Hill by Morgan Crooks (20...

The title of this post (and the panel I’m participating in for Arisia 2019) come from a random exchange between Thor and Drax in last year’s “Infinity War” movie. It’s what Thor replies when to Drax when the always literal-minded hero doubts the existence of Niðavellir its forge. It’s a funny throw-away line and the title of this post because I think there’s always been a bit of defensiveness on my part when I add some invented vocabulary to a story of mine. Nidavellir from Avengers: Infinity War (2018) The art and craft of inventing new languages has a surprisingly long history. A 12th century nun by the Saint Hildegard is credited with one of the first (sadly incompletely recorded) constructed language. There was also a period during the Enlightenment when the creation of ‘philosophical languages,’ meant to resolve age-old problems and reshape society, were the vogue. Gottfried Leibniz, for example, tried to a create a language that was logically self-consistent. The task prove...

Dear J, This is my third and final letter to you. You haven't replied to any of my previous messages and while I didn't expect you to, I think my desire to reach out to you has run its course. Perhaps not soon enough for your taste, but there it is. Glint Horizontal by Morgan Crooks (2017) My intention in writing to you was never to hector or convince you of anything. The course you have taken with your writing is your own and, frankly, I celebrate it. Rather, it was my hope that we could have extended our conversation after that one meeting. Those who know far more than I about literary critique have cautioned of the perils in assuming intention in the work of others but nevertheless I cannot but help read some echo of our brief conversation in some of your current work. Perhaps a certain perversity or even an obstinate disregard animated your recent writing. Perhaps this is hubris but your use of a certain style in recent stories suggests you have also placed some th...

As my final pre-Arisia post, I'd like to tackle ghosts. Metaphorically, of course, because ghosts are intangible and also don't exist.  Spectral Ripples by Morgan Crooks (2013) (picture of Chihuly sculpture) I don't believe in ghosts. Not the sort of ghosts, anyway, that float around decaying old mansions or scare impressionable media personalities. Physics, at least the way I've grown up understanding it, precludes the existence of energy that cannot be detected reliably. Put another way, physicist Brian Cox stated  that if ghosts existed the Large Hadron Collider would have almost certainly found one by now. So, when I say I'm a fan of ghost stories and tales of haunted houses, am I being hypocritical? Possibly, but I also think one can appreciate ghosts and haunted houses in a different way. Even though they might not exist in a 'peer-reviewed' and 'experimentally replicable' fashion, phantoms absolutely exist as a potent symbol of t...

In addition to a panel on writing horror, macabre, and supernatural tales, for Arisia 2018, I'm also in a panel entitled "Emotional Impact - Making Readers Care!" End of Day by Morgan Crooks (2017) Assuming for a moment I've written stories containing characters readers care about, what advice could I give to aspiring writers? To repeat a bit from last post, my big three pieces of advice are rather simple and self-evident: Read Everything Write as Much as Possible Reflect on Your Art To paraphrase from the previous writing advice post, read  everything simply means an aspiring writer must first be a diligent reader. You must be a fan of those books generating a strong emotional response. As you begin to figure out what you like and don't like in stories and other types of literature, begin to  write . I do not think you need to write every single day to be a writer. I also don't think you somehow stop being a writer if you put down the pen (so t...

I'm wary offering advice to other writers.  First of all I've got the whole imposter syndrome thing and whatever advice I give feels like a good way of revealing how little I know about anything. Second, what I've learned mostly relates to solving problems in my own writing. What advice does a dog have to offer to a duck on how to swim?  Spiral Structure by Morgan Crooks (2017) However, for Arisia 2018, I'll be participating on a panel of doing just that - giving advice to aspiring horror writers about writing horror. So, what truths can I impart? Some advice feels absolutely true, if a bit self-evident. You must read . If you're trying to write horror then you must read horror. Not just one novel. Not just one author. You should make a sincere effort to read everything by everyone. The more recent the better. The classics are always going to be there, but if you want a sense of where your stories could fit, you need to see what is being published ...

Despite the release of a single novel and a few short stories, 2017 has to rank up there as one of the more Stephen King ascendant years. No less than four movies based on his works appeared, including one of the most successful horror films of all time, the first part of IT. 'The Mist' (Stephen King) by Dementall.deviantart.com Of course, with King, for every high, there are plenty of lows and 2017 also provided a number of examples of how to do his works wrong. But let's start with the good stuff. The movie adaptation of IT, directed by Andres Muschietti and starring a number of talented young actors (including Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" fame) really captured, for me, a lot of what I liked about the original novel. Being scary certainly helped, but with King, the horror slice is never really the whole cake. What makes King King, at least for me, is the combination of earthy, believable characters with lurid, "Tales from the Crypt...

As a long, strange year comes to a close, I guess the big emotion I have right now is simple gratitude. I got a bunch of stories published this year, from way back in February with "Killing the First Gods," in the A Book of Blasphemous Words anthology to "Promontory" in the fantastic A Breath in the Sky anthology, to "The Boy in the Picture" and "Implicate Order," in Grievous Angel and Lamplight Magazine respectively. I've never left a year feeling more certain of my dedication of time, emotional energy, and creativity to the act of writing than this year. I don't know what 2018 will bring in terms of my stories but I can't help but feel a degree of cautious optimism. Bone Necklaces by Morgan Crooks (2017) I feel optimistic perhaps because I see how much talent is out there producing the kind of fiction I love reading. It is not possible to list all of the writers active out there right now without feeling I'm slighting s...

Waiting for the opening crawl for Episode VIII, I thought about what I wanted The Last Jedi to include. What stuck in my head was I wanted to 'learn something.' I think I assumed there would be plenty of action, daring rescues, a bit of humor and amazing spectacles. (First SPOILER among many to follow - there are) But, I ask a bit more from movies like Star Wars. As foolish as this perhaps sounds, I wanted this movie to always be about something. More than Rey's parentage or the mystery of Snoke, I wanted some greater message from the experience.  Rose Zico and Finn in Canto Bight. So what did I learn? Towards the end of the movie, Rose prevents Finn from sacrificing his life (most likely in vain). Catching up with her, Finn asks her why. Rose's reply, "to save what I love," stuck with me. In ways both big and small, this movie invested a lot of energy into describing and elaborating upon that message. The heroes are never more heroic than when th...

Earlier this year I finished reading Liu Cixin's Dreams of Forgotten Earth series. It struck me that a trilogy that began as a techno-thriller concerning a message from outer-space quickly morphed into a space-opera set within the solar system, and then by the third book changed to a mind-bending description of the end of the universe. Part of Liu Cixin's gift as a writer is using the plausible speculations to plow ever deeper into the unknown. This is not a series that can be read out of order, as each book lays the groundwork for what comes after.  Petroglyphs by Morgan Crooks (2017) Which got me thinking. How do we classify different types of speculative fiction? I'd like to propose an alternate way of thinking about genre fiction: tiers of vocabulary. This idea is, in part, inspired by how language is approached in the field of education. When writing a lesson or developing a curriculum, an educator will consider what words a prospective student may need in...

At some point in between catching up with The Orville, I paused to watch the new Star Trek television series. It occurred to me that while I enjoyed both series, it's fair to say they are simply two branches of the same tree. Namely the great and spreading arbor that is the Star Trek universe. It interested me that although The Orville is clearly meant as a shameless homage (rip-off?) of Star Trek, its use of certain classically Trekian tropes like the legal struggle over personhood and what it means to be human struck a more immediate and familiar tone than anything I've seen in Discovery so far. And yet, I wouldn't say I enjoy The Orville more than Discovery, in fact far from it. Orville is a decent amount of fun, but Discovery feels like the genuine and sincere look at what made Star Trek Star Trek that Enterprise always wanted to be.  We live in an age of facsimiles. Facsimile food. Facsimile presidents. Facsimile art. In part, this isn't new. No matter h...

So, for the past few days I've been fighting a flu. It sent me home from work and has kept me cooped up in my house with pretty much no break until now. That means that my already weak and compromised anti-cable news system has succumbed to unhealthily amounts of MSNBC and CNN. I didn't watch the Inauguration (didn't see the point) but I watched all the usual talking heads and crowds shots from yesterday's amazing parades. Awesome signs from Women's March Jan. 21st 2017 (Photo by Lauren Shamitz-Crooks) I think this is about the place where a person of my particular background and education is supposed to say something like: "well, this was very encouraging but it won't mean anything unless..." or "I wish there had been a more unified theme to the protest so that we can..." But you know what? I think these parades were just about perfect. My understanding of them is that they were conceived as a statement of protest against the man now ...