Why I Write Horror

It has been asked of me, more than once, by multiple peoples:

“How can someone like you, who loves peace, non-violence, and animals; how can you write the horrible things you do in your books?”

This question is most often presented after someone reads about either The Lansquin or The Red Dragon, the two vivisecting blood crazed villains from The Twighlight Manor series.

My answer to that question: As writers we write what we know. Every writer will tell you that they get their ideas from events of their own lives. I am no different than they. As my fans, friends, and family all know, I am more outspoken for animals rights than the average animal rights activist.

Ask anyone who knows me personally, and they will warn you to stay clear of that subject with me. They warn you for good reason. I was only 6 years old when I began my early protests. I lived on a chicken farm. We ate chicken. One day when I was 6 years old it occurred to me that my beloved babies in the yard and the food on the table were both called chicken, because they were in fact the very same thing. I stopped eating chicken and turkey that same day. About a year later I found out that steak was cow, and I stopped eating that as well. By the time I was 8 years old I had become a devote vegan, and have been so ever since. What does this have to do with me writing horror? I’m getting to that.

As most of you know, I had already written the first 2 volumes of The Twighlight Manor series by the time I was 8 years old. Those early stories of cute talking animals and Herbie-esce living cars, were markedly different from the later rewrites that dripped of horror and blood. Friends Are Forever, originally written in 1978, has undergone 3 major rewrites since it’s first creation, each more grim than the last. Why?

By 1982, I heard news stories of a young girl who refused to dissect frogs in science class. The school expelled her, even though she was only 12 years old. The story mesmerized me. It was one of the few times in my life that I became truly interested in watching the news. I began to tell anyone I could about the evils of frog dissection.

When I was 12 years old, I was with my mom, while she was visiting one of her Avon customers. Who was also one of Maine’s most dramatic and outspoken PETA members. I listened for 2 hours as she retold her latest adventures of rescuing a circus donkey, followed by her latest craze: she was hell bent on telling the world about the horrors of a company known as Proctor & Gamble. It was the first time I had ever heard of them. At this time, almost no one knew anything about P&G’s vivisection and Draize testing, as the horror of this fact had only been just discovered that same year. My mom and me went home that day with a carload of pamphlets about PETA and animal rights and how evil animal testing was.

Over the next few months, I sent for every free pamphlet, brochure, magazine, and catalog I could find about the animal rights movement. By the end of the year, the first revision of volume one of The Twighlight Manor series, Friends Are Forever, had been written. Into the series had been added a new set of characters. The cars were no longer living cars, but now had owners who had taken on the characteristics the cars had had. That same year I would start writing The Wild Years.

the new characters included also a new planet into The Twighlight Manor solar system: Planet Diona, and its formidable scientists who had infiltrated the earth. Testing lab scientists on Earth, were no longer humans, but now aliens. A later, rewrite would change this, and instead of animals, the alien scientist would do word for word everything that P&G did, only my scientist would do it to humans.

In 1993, The Twighlight Manor series took its final turn, becoming what it is known as today, when the addition of a prime villain known as The Lansquin was added to the series. The Lansquin was everything in my book that Proctor and Gamble was in real life. Every bloody glorified horror straight from the laboratories of Proctor & Gamble went straight into my books, under the guise of a deranged madmen bent of torturing every human to cross his path. His reason? For the good of science. For the good of mankind.

And that is how I came to write horror.

Though I write a wide range of other things, including children’s books and romance, it is for my Twighlight Manor series and it’s M rated graphic tales of horror that I am most well known. Yes, I love animals. Yes, I hate war and promote world peace. Yes, I abhor fighting and violence. And yes, I write some of the most graphic tales of gore ever written. Why? It is because I love animals and hate fighting that I write what I do: to open readers’ eyes, so that they too, may come to hate fighting and love peace. Peace for all, including peace for those who cannot speak for themselves. I speak for the animals. I write the tales they themselves cannot tell. I write in memory of those who died for the name of science, for the good of mankind. That is why I write horror, so that the animal who have died at the hands of P&G scientists, may not have died in vain.

~~Wendy.

FAQ: What is Space Dock 13?

What is Space Dock 13?

Other than my web site you mean?

The name Space Dock 13, like everything else, comes from the Twighlight Manor stories. As I said before, the Twighlight Manor is some what of a base camp for the aliens who live there. The #13 figures in strongly with the Manor’s history. Constuction for the Manor began in 1313, after a space craft was sent off course and crashed on Earth. During it’s construction 13 workers were killed when one of the walls crumbled. The Manor was abandoned and went unfinished. Years later, construction resumed, and it was the first Emporor Swanzen, who officaly made the Manor the space dock of planet Earth. His son Vielder added to the Manor, what would become one of the key elements behind the Manor’s curse…a giant floor clock. The clock sits in the front parlor, and at eight feet tall, it towers forbodingly over all who enter the front doors. The clock was said to fore tell doom, predicting the deaths of those who had at some point set foot in the Manor.

Vielder, was a merciless tyrant, his reign was one of terror. Vielder’s most famous additions to the Manor were two grizly rooms now boarded up…the first was known as “The Head Room”, and as it’s name implies was the room which stored his human head collection. Vielder saw the planet earth as a primative planet, and humans were nothing more to him, than alien animals waiting to be slaughtered and added to his ever growing trophy collection.

A second room added by Vielder, remained undiscovered for nearly 400 years. Upon aquiring the Manor in the late 1800’s, EelKat had every room, every item, every book, and every artifact cataloged. During that time, was discovered a room that EelKat cataloged as “The Wax Museum”. It was quite simply a room filled with what on first sight appeared to very life like waxworks. They were, in actuallity, taxidermed creatures from around the galaxy, many humans and earth animals make up part of the collection as well. Oddly though, while the room and the older figures were put there by Vielder in the 1400’s, EelKat’s scientists claimed that most of the human figures had been added in only the last 100 years, during the 1700-1800’s. And in the 150 years since the room’s discovery, it’s collection has nearly doubled in size. “The Wax Museum” remains one of the Manor’s darkest mysteries…who are the bodies? how do they get there? and who is continueing to expand Vielder’s horrid collection 400 years after his death? Since I’m writing the story, I know the answer to that….shockingly, the story’s darkest villain, is also one of it’s best loved heroes.

So what does any of ths have to do with Space Dock 13? Vielder’s reign of terror was the bloodiest ever seen, though not nearly as horrific as the murder’s comited by the book’s as of yet unidentified vilain…known only as The Lansquin’s most devoted follower: The Red Dragon The people began to call the Twighlight Manor, Space Dock 13, after the death of King Vielder. Vielder’s death marked the end of his reign of terror, and the beginning of a series of murders, marked by their horrific, yet artist, public display, and a madman’s riddles written with the blood of his victims. While Vielder’s murder was not the first, it was the first to include the now trademarked blood riddles. This first riddle told of a lost key, a cursed rhyme, and a 3′O clock chime of death. The words had no known meaning, until the next death that soon followed.

After the mysterious murder of King Vielder, the giant floor clock stopped working properly. Many clockmakers have since been brought in, the clock taken apart, even it’s gears removed in order to stop it from running at all, but nothing has ever stopped it from it’s new funtion. Upon Vielder’s death the clock began running backwards, keeping time as usual, just now in reverse. It no longer chimed on the hour, it makes no sound at all. No one ever winds the clock, and after having it’s gears removed, no one knows how it contiunes to run. Posessed is how it’s explained. Exorcists were brought in, and the clock still kept on running, keeping perfect time, going steadly on, ever backwards.

Than one day, it stopped. A small clattering sound was heard, and the inhabitants in the parlor at the time, figured the gears had finally run down…but it had not, the hands of the clock began to move ahead rapidly until reaching 3 O’clock and for the first time since Vielder’s death, it chimed, 3 simple chimes, than began to run just as normal as any other clock. Normal that is until, when twelve hours later it reached 3′O clock again and chimed thirteen times instead, than went back to running in reverse once again.

The curse of the clock, was thus seen for the first time…for death had stuck yet again, now in time with the thirteenth chime. Since that day, every person who sets foot in the Manor, even for a second, the clock knows the time of their death, and tells all who are in the parlor to hear. If ever you hear the parlor clock chimeing 3″O clock, than keeping time in perfect order, you know that some one somewhere will die twelve hours later when the clock chimes thirteen. And because of the clock’s thirteen chime, came the name Space Dock 13.

Topics: King Vielder, The Twighlight Manor, The Twighlight Manor Library

Twighlight Manor Research: Two Heads

Those who know my Twighlight Manor series,  know that it’s prime villain, The Red Dragon (as he calls himself) is a man with 2 faces and 4 arms; a conjoined twins born during the 1600′s and treated like animals, who as adults became the mass murder (s) behind the bloodbath that took place within the walls of The Manor, forever marking it as a cuesed house. While the series’ most notorious and bloody villain, I do not use him very often in my stories. I am currently working on editing “Love, Lust, Madness” , and (spoiler) The Red Dragon has resurfaced in this story, after not being used in a Twighlight Manor story, since Sir Roderic’s “accident” in 1984.

Well, seeing how I’ll being useing the Red Dragon once again, after so long of not writing about him, I decided to do some research into his “deformity”  in hopes of learning possibly why he was born as he was, and to thus better write about him. Well, in 1984 I had not the internet, so I was very limited in my research about his birth. In the end I was only able to find referances to this type of birth happening twice, both in Russia, and both in the early 1900′s, and this info came to me from Guiness World Records. Now I have the internet and just seconds into my search I cam across info about Abigail and Brittany Hensel. OMG! I have never seen real pictures of anyone like this before! When I created the Red Dragon, I had no idea that it was even possible that anyone could be born like this! I don’t know why, but seeing these girls, just changed my way of thinking about The Red Dragon. I have had a hard time writing him into my stories, becaused his deforminty seemed so unplusible. I think I may start useing him more often

~~EK

Rant: When Did Gothic Go To Hell?

What happened to Gothic? Where did it go? And who are the black clothed demons that took it’s place? There are times when I get totally pissed over little things. This is one of them. I have been a fan of Gothic since the mid 1970′s. My entire life has been built around Gothic. I wear 13th century gowns of rose velvet. Haunted houses are more than a hobby, they are the core of my existance. Top hats and frock coats are part of my daily wardrobe. I wear burnoose and houplandres and cockscombs. Men I love are romantic owners of haunted house dressed ala Vincent Price. At age 9 my favorite book was Jane Eyre. Gothic flows through my viens. More than half of my fiction books are Gothics written from the 1850′s through the 1970′s.

So what brings on this rant? I just did a Google search for Gothic fiction, because a search on Harlequin’s website revealed that they no longer sell Gothic fiction. You know what I got back as results? Vampires. Death. Sex fetish cloths and weapons. Death. Black leather. Death. Demons. Death. Grim Reapers. Death. Blood lust. Death. Suicide. Death. Depression. Death. More Death. And, well death again. Not one single book. No romance. No haunted houses. No 13th century fashions. In other words, not one single solitary thing that is Gothic.

From what I can tell of Google search, the Gothic of today is nothing like the Gothic I grew up with as a child. Where is the romance? Where are the castles? Where are the handom men in poet blouses and frock coats? When did Gothic die and go to hell? When did Gothic raise from the depths of hell and return as a pit of demonic blackness of suicide and depression? When did Gothic stop being Gothic and start being Satanic?

Where has Gothic gone, and what is this grim blackness that claims to be Gothic today?

~~EK

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Writing The Latest Segment of The Twighlight Manor Series and Looking for Your Advice: 1920s, Gansters, RumRunners, Crime Lords…

I just joined a new challenge, to write a romance story for the month of February, actually I just created the challenge , now I have to go through with it… anyways, I started about 4 new stories, got past 2 pages each and quite cause they just weren’t “clicking” for me , than I remembered a story I wanted to write years ago, but never did, cause no matter how I tried, I couldn’t write crime fiction… well, I just realized I was going about it all wrong back than, cause it’s not really a crime story, it’s a love story, a romance, set in the midst of crime… ahh-huh! now I have my romance story to write for February…here’s the problem:the “hero” or rather anti-hero, Vwoodell Swanzen, is a crime lord, the leader of a 1920′s gang and owner of a gambling house which is really the front for his “real” opperation: drug-smuggling, moonshine/bootlegging, and gun-runningthe main character, Jasmine Ridley, is a young girl, 16 at the start of the story, but in her early 20′s once the story really gets going; who has runs away from an abusive orphanage with dreams of Hollywood, singing, and being in the movies… on her way to Hollywood she stops off at this gambling house hoping to get a temp job as a singer and ends up staying on there, eventualy becoming the gang-leader’s “girl”.

okay, now here’s where you guys come in… I don’t know anything about the 1920′s and 1930′s… I need some tips on gangsters and crime lords of the era, as well as info on just regular everyday life… does anyone have any info they could offer, or maybe links to sites that might help me?

here’s a few basic questions I have, I’ll add more later as I think of them, but to get started with:

First off, the drug smuggleing:

What kinds of drugs were in use at this time?

Who would be buying them? How much would they be paying for them?

How exactly would the crime lord get them?

As I’ve got it written now, opimum from China is what they are dealing mostly, just cause that’s the first thing I thought of from remembering the old movies… is this a correct assumption or is it too cliche and not near enough the truth?

on the drug thing… one of his uncles, Dr. Gwaneesh Vangoneese Swanzen, is a doctor with a bad reputation, that’s been well established in other stories, I was thinking he well have a connection with the drug smuggling somehow, but, not sure yet

Moonshine & Bootleg Whiskey:

I saw a real car like this once: an old Ford Wooside, which had a false back seat, that hide a huge tank for trasporting whiskey… seeing that car was what gave me the whole idea for this character in the first place… I loved the car, and wanted to use it in a story, so created a fictional crime lord who I felt should have once owned the car… so question time…

Who exactly was it that would buy the whiskey? and at what prices?

What kind of whiskey was common?

Where did it come from?

I’m planning on it being a kind of crazy rebelous mountain man-type of character from Maine, that does most of the major supplying… would that be believeable?

I know the Kennedy family used to live here in town (where I live) back in that era, and they owned the local carosel… the horses were hollow and the tails unscrewed… it’s a big laugh around here, how for years kids had been riding the merry-go-round on “drunken horses”… I want to include that merry-go-round in the story some how, which is why I choose a moonshine supplyer who lived in Maine, but I’m not actually sure if the whiskey originated in Maine or if they brought it in from out of state

I know where there is an old barn, where the Kennedy family used to hide the “sugar truck” from the feds … what is a sugar truck and how would it have been used?

The gun-running:

What guns? Names, types, uses, etc.

Who would be buying? Why? At what prices?

Where would he get the guns?

Also, one of the “key characters” is a hit-man/body-guard, Esmarald “Blackbird” Muddsburg, who well eventualy take the fall for everything, when the crime lord “vanishs”. The hit man ends up in prison, and refuses to identify the crime lord:

What can you tell me about that job (hit man/body guard) ?

How would a crime lord go about convinceing a person to protect him like that?

What would he pay the hit-man for killing his enemies?

What would he pay him for being a body-guard?

How would the crime lord have gained such loyalty that the hitman would take the fall for the whole crime opperation?

How would people end up on his “hit-list”? (I’m thinking black mail, maybe.)

For what reasons would the crime lord black mail people?

the hit-man is “like family”, his father and the crime lord’s father, grew up together and are like brothers

also, in another story, the hit-man (white) was married to a black woman who was murdered… it was an event that was mentioned as having happened shortly before his going to prison, so the time frame would put her murder to the same time as this story I working on now, so I’m planning to work out the details of that as well… in the other story, he doesn’t say much about it, in fact it’s really hard to even get him to talk about it at all… in the other story, he has just been released from prison (in 1973, as an elderly man)… in that story, I had written that they had orriginally arrested him for owning a slave(a false arrest, but they dug up more of his back ground because of it),… they had thought he was dealing in slave trade as well as everything else he was mixed up in, but it turned out to be false, as the woman was his wife… she was murdered (because of the inter-racial marraiage) a few weeks after he went to prison, but beyound that, I never expanded upon… it seemed plausable for the other story… I can’t change what I already wrote, so now I have to figure out how to actualy pull it together in this one… complicated, but I’ll get it worked out somehow

the one I’m working on now is several years earlier, when she’d still be alive, so I have to go back, and figure out why he married her in the first place, and how they kept their marriage from being known to the locals… and how does that all fit in with the rest of the story

I’m thinking, that their marriage, is why he would have been so loyal to the crime lord: he’d have helped keep the whole event secret somehow… I’m still working on that

there is also the fact that this story is set in Maine, in my home town.
In our town during this era, segragation was practicly unheard of… we had a black school teacher in our public school (my dad, a white boy was in his class) , 2 black fireman (my grandfather was the fire chief at the time), and a black hotel owner… and this was in a predominatly white town. Also, in our town back than was a casino where several “Harlem Jazz” singers preformed. So, while inter-racial marriage was very rare, in this particular town, it was more of a possability than if I set it in another town.

Another point to consider is that the crime lord is the older brother of my most often used character, Etiole Swanzen (the drag queen from my NaNo 2006 story)… his family “overlooks” his lifestyle and passes it off as “well he’s an actor, he works in the threater”, and keeps the whole drag queen thing, very hush-hush from the public… the Swanzens are a very close knit family, they value family over anything else, NOTHING comes before family, so no matter what any one of them does the whole rest of the clan is gonna defend him/her… they kind of have the attitude that it’s them against the world

the crime lord is the oldest of 4 brothers, Etiole is the youngest “the baby” of the family… the oldest brother tends to act like “mother hen” to his 3 younger brothers, because their father (Sir Roderic owner of the Twighlight Manor) is not mentally stable and their mother died when they were children, so he kind of took over as patriarch… I guess one thing lend to another and he ended up with an entire crime organization at his beck and call

In another story written about 7 years ago, the drag queen, Etiole, fathers a son, which results in an all out battle between the family and the locals… in that story, the crime lord older brother, ends up adopting the child, it’s actually one of the few times he’s ever had any major role

they got a lot of skeletons in their closets, plenty of reasons why people would try to blackmail them, but Etiole’s being a drag queen is prob’ly the thing that would get the family in the most trouble

when I was thinking blackmail, I was thinking… he might have been the one doing the blackmailing, but thinking about it now, I think it’s more likely, rivals would be blackmailing him, and to protect his family, he’d have the blackmailers killed

feel free to leave you comments, ideas, and suggestions!

thanks millions!

~EK

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Essex Mountain vs The Twighlight Manor

THEY TORE DOWN ESSEX MOUNTAIN SANATORIUM!!!!!!!!
my favorite house!!!!!
HOW COULD THEY???????

My new goal:

rebuild a life-size replica of it in all it’s bloody glory

now all I need is about 10 billion dollars to fund the project

before you ask, for those who don’t know… it was in New Jersey…. they torn it down in 2002, but I just found out about it this morning

Okay, explaination:

I started writing the Twighlight Manor series in 1978… it follows the multi-generational lives of the Swanzen family who built The Twighlight Manor, originally a “palace” for a murerous renegade king, than inherited from him to his phsychotic nephew, Sir Roderic, who himself believed that house to be alive and says it eats people… the guy is insane so most people don’t take him seriously when he tells them not to enter his house cause it’ll eat you, but than no one can explain the dead bodies that show upin the hallways, or the countless people that vanished after entering the Manor…

The stories I write, however are not about the Manor, but Sir Roderic and his family, who live in the Manor over a period of 300 years, all of whom are a bit odd varying from eccentric to outright raving lunatics… nearby the Manor is White Rock Asylum for the criminally insane, (mentioned in my earlier post)owned by Sir Roderic’s cousin Al-Keem… between the 2 is a third big old house, known as EelKat’s House, it is where EelKat© (not me, but the charater from the series)lives. All 3 houses are rumored to be haunted…

Anyways… most of my life has been devoted in some form or another to The Twighlight Manor© series part of that obsession involved tracking down a real life house, with the same architure/look as the Twighlight Manor©… I drew out the floorplans and blueprints back in the 1980′s and than I spent years searching through house pictures, before I found the one that you see on the book cover here…

here’s the pic I drew years ago, back in the 1980′s… when I was looking for a house pic I was looking for a house that looked like this…

than about 10 years later, when I found that pic of Essex Mountain
Sanatorium I couldn’t get over how much it looked like the pic I had drawn of The Manor…. it looks so perfect, of course this one here was edited by me for use on the cover of the book…

My next problem, was that I had found the picture of the perfect house… but that was all I had, a picture, I had no idea where it was or how to find the house in the picture… my goal than became find out where the house was, and than find a way to buy it… (yeah, I dream big)…. anyways, years and years have gone by and than last night, someone sees my sig on a message board and askes me if that was the Essex Mountain
Sanatorium … well of course I have no idea, so they point me to this
page.

yep! that’s it! that’s the house in my sig!
I FINALLY FOUND THE REAL TWIGHLIGHT MANOR!
I am soooo happy, until I read the article…
they tore it down in 2002

I found it and lost it the same day.

….odd, I had no idea that the pic I’ve been throwing around and calling The Twighlight Manor was an asylum… fitting though

Me:

Sir Roderic’s youngest son, the drag queen Etiole, with his son Phozeen:

Emperor Blue of Planet Crystonia:

Writer’s Inspiration: Birds of Prey

Birds are often the inspiration behind much of my writings. Birds of Prey are great for striking horror into the hearts of man.

Blackbird (Esmerald Muddsburg) is of course written with birds in mind. The Veurox, in his case. The Veurox of Black African Eagle is an awe inspiring bird, cruel and merciless, it is the species of eagle known for attacking and carrying away small children, once one was caught on camera, attacking and lifting off the ground one of National Geographic ’s research writer’s and her photographer. These birds are noted for their cruelty even to their young…while they may hatch out 3 or 4 eggs, only the largest and strongest chick well survive to adulthood, eating the smaller ones in order to survive. Yet in spite of their fierceness, their cruelty, their utter merciless modes of hunting, the Veurox is an amazingly beautiful bird. Blackest jewels for feathers, gleaming like sequins in the sunlight, glint black eyes, tremendous gunmetal black talons, and the ability to soar over the highest mountains of Africa, they are an inspiring bird to write about. To write about Blackbird, the villainous morphic Phooka, without writing about the Veurox would be impossible, for they are one.

Writing Exercise: What If You Were a Phooka?

What is a Phooka? For those of you who do not know, a Phooka is NOT a 6 foot invisable white rabbit named Harvey, that is a Pooka, with a “P” not a fffffff sounding “Ph”. Phooka’s happen to be my specialty, since I write about them. For anyone familiar with Blackbird of the Twighlight Manor or White Rock Asylum, you know that a Phooka is a human-like creature from the race of Fearie. Phooka’s by nature have deathly pale skin, shaggy unkept black hair, bird-like talons were their fingernails should be, and cold black eyes minus of any whites.

That is what a Phooka looks like should you ever see a Phooka in it’s natural state. However, you most likely will never see one looking as such.

Phookas are shapeshifters, they can look like anything (any living creature that is) or anyone.

Blackbird, of course gets his name for the obviouse reason…his creature of choice is the Black African Eagle—the rare and deadly man-eating Veuroux, freared by the natives. The Eagle that originated the myth that eagle carry off babies and kill them. For most specis of eagle, this is nothing more than a myth, but the Veuroux of Africa, carries off not only babies and small children…in 1968, one attacked and carried of a reporter for The National Geographic Magazine (look it up, they caught it on camera and used it for the cover of I belive the December issue that year)

I created the character Esmerald Mudsburg a.k.a. Blackbird based entirly on that cover of NGMag, and than set out looking for an answer to just exactly what he was. Fearie historian Brian Froud, came up with the answer for me…Blackbird was a Phooka.

According the Froud, Phookas often take the form of black horses, and are known for throughing their riders with the intent to kill.

They have also been known to take on the form of great black dogs and red-eyed wolves, the famous mythacl dog from Hell, Black Shuck (the dog that haughts you dreams and causes nightmares), is believed to be a Phooka.

Like most Fearie races, Phookas are rarely good, often mischivous, and sometimes down right evil. In their humeoid form, they almost always wear black, and in their animal or bird forms, they nearly always choice a creature with black fur or feathers.

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So, now that you know what a Phooka is, back to the original question….

What If You Were a Phooka? What form would you take and why? Would you, like Blackbird and Shuck, reign terror in the hearts of men? Would you be one of the practical jokers…the type to think it’s funny to push a man off the cliff, note realizeing that unlike Fearies, humanes drop to their death? Or would you be one of the rare few who, like Harvey, enjoys the company of humans and takes on a friendly form?