When Magic is not Enough

I have not written many fantasy stories over the years. Most of my stories fall into the mystery/crime and science fiction genres. The few stories I've written that might be considered Fantasy tend to be plotted more like historicals, such as the Kira stories, which are set in the Bronze Age and follow a female warrior (pre Xena), or the Tawa stories, which feature an indigenous North American girl transported to a prehistoric Europe. They feature ancient tribes and fabulous creatures, sometimes edging into science fantasy, as in the case of "Twilight Journey," but rarely involve traditional magic, which is at the heart of classic high fantasy.

But not all my fantasy stories are bereft of magic. A few feature traditional magic prominently or have plots in which magic is central to the story. In "The Demon of Don't Ask," which appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, the magical system was provided to me because it was set in a shared universe. In other stories, I have been on my own and I did what I always do -- research research research. Yes, I do love to research.

The book I most often turned to for magical verisimilitude was The Magician's Companion by Bill Whitcomb. It contains all that's needed for myriad magical systems, plus provides the tools to customize one's own system. Even in those stories where spells and incantations were not used, it helped in setting up a mindset for those characters to whom dwelling in a magical world was as natural as breathing.

Another book that has proved very helpful over the years is Magic: An Occult Primer by David Conway. This book I have had a very long time. I purchased it from a bookstore in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in the mid 70s. At the time, I was stationed at Ft Devens. On the weekends, when were given time off, we spent our time in various little towns. Littleton was the nicest town we visited, but it was out of the way, and Fitchburg was more convenient. One of the attractions was that there was a bookstore within walking distance of the motel. This was the main book I used as source material when writing Murderer in Shadow, fourth book in the DCI Arthur Ravyn series. Though it is a cozy police procedural novel and not fantasy, the setting is an English village where magic (or the belief in it) is part of everyday life.

Magic is not always confined to books. Some people believe in magic just as others hold to Christianity, Islam or Science. I don't believe in magic myself, but as the protagonist of Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife (filmed as Burn Witch Burn-US and Night of the Eagle-UK) discovered, reality is not as important as belief. And I have known a few people personally who followed Wicca and Paganism. And, once, I met a young man who had been cursed by a bruja, a Mexican witch.

At the time, I handled payroll for about 500 people, and the young man was one of our laborers. One day, his supervisor came to me and told me Juan was having some performance and behavioral issues. That was too bad, I said, because he seemed like a nice young man and had always been a model employee, but what did that have to do with me? Certainly, they were not thinking of terminating him without giving him a chance to redeem himself? After all, we had a lot of long-time employees that were professional goldbricks and ne'er-do-wells, and they were still on the job, at least when they deigned to put in a workday. No, you don't understand, I was told, Juan has been cursed by a witch, and I need you to lift the curse.

I don't often tell people I'm a writer, but word gets around. Mostly, it's because I don't want to read their manuscripts and screenplays. But, as I found out, there are other reasons. I said I did not want to get involved, that I did not believe in curses, and that, even if I did believe in curses, there was nothing I could do about lifting one. But, in the end, I was drafted into the scheme to free Juan from the power of the witch, who, as it turned out, was his girlfriend's grandmother, a bruja of great power from the interior of Mexico and who disliked him intensely.

The supervisor had no idea what we going to to do, but I did. I arranged for the supervisor to bring him to my office that Friday. That gave me a little time to research Mexican magic. Not surprisingly, I had just the book I needed in my library. Friday rolled around, and Juan appeared in my office on time, and, much to Juan's surprise and consternation, I dismissed the supervisor.

For someone as young and impressionable as Juan, a supervisor was almost a demigod. For me to dismiss him, and him obey as quickly as he did, elevated me in the young man's eyes. Most employees never darkened headquarters' door, so it was almost as if Juan had been transported to some supernal realm. And to Juan I was...well, I was odd. I wore a glittering blue coat, a silk cravat with an Eye of Horus pin and a fez with a mystical symbol on it. For the past few days, the supervisor had played me up as a master of the occult. From the look in Juan's eyes, I judged he had reached the proper mindset.

Belief is everything, and when it came to magic and the occult Juan had belief in spades. During my talk with him, I learned that his girlfriend's grandmother did not approve him as a suitor. He had been a bit doubtful about her at first but understood her terrible powers when he saw a goat floating upside-down with candles on its hooves. And that was not all the wonders she showed him...yes, she was very good at manipulation. Then she cursed him and he knew he was doomed. All the bad luck and misfortune was all the proof he needed, but he still loved the girl.

It never does any good to talk True Believers out of anything, so I did not even try. Instead, I gave him the magical parchment I had prepared, had him read it seven times while facing each of the four cardinal points, then told him to burn it in a copper vessel I'd brought to work. We took the ashes outside, buried them in the shade of a cactus, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to the four cardinal points. Afterwards, I gave him several small white stones and had him arrange them in a cross over the ashes. 

After that, I heard nothing but good reports about Juan. He was back to being the good employee he had been before being cursed. He also got back together with his girlfriend. The grandmother still thought him an idiot and did not approve, but she had no hold over Juan. He believed his magic was greater than hers, and that was all there was to it.

I really wish I could say that Juan got promoted, that he and the girl got married and that they went on to a long and happy life. Yeah, I wish. We don't need witches or curses to bring tragedy into our lives. Juan had never been part of a gang, though gangs were a part of his culture. Often, avoiding a gang is as dangerous as joining a gang. In July of that year, shortly after the holiday, Juan did not show up for work. A few days later, his body was found in the trunk of a stolen car abandoned out on Otay Lakes Road. The murder remains unsolved.

More than a Thousand Words

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen told us late in the 19th Century, "A thousand words does not leave the same deep impression as one good deed." Today, thanks to the San Antonio Light hawking its pictorial coverage of the Great War in 1918, we have the phrase as "a picture is worth a thousand words." Fiction magazines used to illustrate stories with drawings, paintings and even lithographs, but these days, with fiction magazines all but gone, the relationship between story and art is mostly limited to the book cover, which may or may not actually illustrate some aspect of the story. Usually, it's more along the lines of "inspired by" or "suggested by" rather than actually illustrating; in the case of the great Richard Powers, it was more "I captured the spirit of the book" or "The book is really weird and so is my painting."

We usually think of the story creating the art, but it can also flow the other way, the art inspiring the words. This is what happened when Edwin Markham saw French artist Jean-François Millet's painting L'homme à la houe and wrote the powerful poem "The Man with the Hoe." When I took a creative writing class at Castle Park High School (it was the first of its kind in the district, strictly experimental) we used a book called Pictures for Writing. This approach was particularly helpful for class members who could write well, but had problems finding inspiration. There were a few other books in the series. The problem that some had with the technique, however, was that they could not get beyond whatever they saw in the picture. Others did quite well transferring the old journalist's mantra of "5W's & an H" (Who, What, Where, When, Why & How) to discover the hidden story. My only problem was that every picture inspired me to write a science fiction or fantasy story; these days, however, it would have been a mystery/suspense story. There were times when I almost felt sorry for Mr Ligon (our teacher) when he read my story, looked at the assigned photo and shook his head in dismay and confusion. 

Back in the 80's and 90's, I was very active in the small press movement, a kind of counter-traditional publishing that evolved in the later part of the 19th Century. It often took the form of publishing one's own work, but small or "craft" presses also came into being. Until the 60's, when specialized paperbacks took over from the pulps and traditional publishers discovered a new market, science fiction and fantasy novels were published by the likes of Shasta Press and Gnome Books, after first being serialized in genre magazines. Alas, the small press is no more, for which I blame the Internet and Amazon, my usual Black Hats for things that cannot be blamed on the Usual Suspects...fans of The Lone Gunmen will understand. Most of that involvement on my part was as author and publisher, but I also sometimes snuck in as an artist.

However, I never tried to pass myself off as an "artist;" I usually told myself I was just an illustrator, an interpreter of someone else's talent. I read the stories and tried to give the author's words life, choosing just that particular moment that would emphasize the action or distill the essence of the story into vivid graphics. It was just a hobby and I was flattered that people asked me to help them out with their projects. I hope I succeeded more often that I failed. Here are a few of my efforts from published stories:

A Plant-man from a re-issue
 of one of ERB's Barsoom stories.

A sorcerer brings doom upon a city

Pirates attack in this space opera.

A strange cloaked figure wanders through a Celtic land.

Sometimes, I drew illustrations that I would use as a basis for a story, or sometimes I gave them to friends who mined them for stories and poems. However, most of those drawings and paintings I no longer have. This was back in the day before computers and scanners were part of my life. I sent out originals of the works, which were gifts to friends (other small press writers and publishers), whether of not they used them. I do still have a few, though:

For one reason or another, some of them dealing with trauma, others with the more mundane issues of life and and time and events beyond control (and not a little ennui, admittedly), I put away the pens and pencils and papers for a long time. I suppose if there is one thing that can be said with absolute certainty, it's that nothing remains the same, that everything changes. Everything that goes away comes around again, which is why I try to never throw anything away. So, in 2020, I got the drawing bug again. The difference is that, with the demise of the small press, there went my social life. With just a couple of exceptions, everyone I knew from my small press decades have either moved on to other endeavors or passed away. So, now, if the new drawings are to inspire new stories, it will all be up to me...unless others volunteer. 

She haunts the bayou, lingering in the moist darkness
as she watches isolated points of light, the tiny lanterns
of those whose shacks are far from civilization.
And she waits...

The Canvyrn leads an unhappy life, enslaved and
mistreated by its arrogant and foppish rider;
one day there will surely be a reckoning...

The Davyn and its rider lead caravans across the shifting sands
of the Great Sand Sea. Though the Davyn has a 360 range of
view and wears goggles to keep his vision clear, the desert is
a dangerous place, full of perils, from savage marauders
to ancient evils...

Stories Told Around the Campfire

Beneath Strange Stars, a collection of tales from
40+ years of writing, presenting stories in
various genres, in both print & e-book editions
Click the highlighted text for links

Recently I gathered together more than two dozen (out of 300) short stories into a collection titled Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales. A couple of the stories had their start in the late Sixties and early Seventies, a few of much more recent vintage, but most hailed from the Eighties, Nineties and Naughts, when I went through a creative period where I was finishing a short story, many in various series, every few days. Here is my introduction to that collection:

Concerning Stories Told Around the Campfire

It’s all about the stories.

And the characters who live in them.

And the readers who live through them.

Regardless of cultural conventions and popular sayings, the job of Storyteller has to be at least the third oldest profession. First came the Hunter who tracked and slew Dinner, then the Cook who made Dinner palatable and something to look forward to; then, as the tribe sat around the campfire digesting Dinner, the Storyteller rose and told of spirit animals, great heroes, and beings who danced upon the mountaintops with footfalls of thunder.

On the other hand, it may have been the Hunters would not go out until the story of the Great Hunt had been painted upon the cave walls, which would make Storyteller the oldest profession, the Hunter second. And the third oldest profession? That would be the unsuccessful hunter who returned to the cave and chucked a spear into the Storyteller’s chest – the first Critic.

Telling stories is somewhat less dangerous these days as we sit around the campfire that is our sun, though, of course, one must still be wary of Critics, dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous reviews. Most writers seek fame and/or fortune but find neither, and almost all fall by the wayside, disappointed or burnt-out. Only two kinds of writers continue to write year after year – those who prosper and achieve a kind of fame, even if only as a frog in a small pond, and those who persevere simply because they cannot stop writing.

I am not the first kind of writer.

And I’ve not been the first kind of writer for a long time,

Some kids played baseball or basketball; I told stories, much to the chagrin of parents and consternation of teachers. Even before I learned to read, which I did at an early age (Uncle Bob was well-intentioned but his reading aloud of comic books left much to be desired), I told stories, which meant convincing other kids that a monster lived under the woodpile, or that a dinosaur had wandered down Seventeenth Street in National City at midnight, or that the Victorian house we all passed twice daily to and from Highland Elementary was haunted.

The first story I remember writing, where I made a conscious effort to employ such literary devices as plot, characterization and dialogue was “The Mouse in the Haunted House,” written in first  grade, a standard haunted house tale with all the usual weird goings on, but told from the viewpoint of the mouse who dwelt therein.

I thought it was a pretty good story. Mrs Hamilton, my teacher, was not so sure, and thus began trips to the school psychologist (all the rage in the Fifties for the misunderstood youth of America). Well, I did call her “Horrible Hamilton,” so, looking back, maybe I would have ended up in that office anyway.

Valiant Defenders Fighting Horrible Hamilton
AKA me in First Grade

       My next foray into fiction, a much more serious attempt, was a couple of years later, as part of a class assignment. Mrs Decker (we had no pejorative terms for her because she was a wonderful teacher) showed a series of photographs and asked us to choose one and write a short story.

The photo that impressed me was of a pure white bird with bright red eyes. As soon as I saw it, the plot for a story flashed into my mind, and the result was “The White Raven.” Yes, ravens are black, I know it now just as I did then, but the story was about a white raven, and the plot not only revealed why he was white and had red eyes, but also explained that shadowy building seen in the background – yes, another haunted house.

Mrs Hamilton would have sent me to the school shrink, or sent a note home to my mother, or both, but Mrs Decker was a much more perspicacious person. She entered the short story into a district writing contest and it won first prize.

Using photos and art as sources of inspiration is a technique I’ve turned to many times in the six decades since I saw “The White Raven,” either photographs and paintings by others, or drawings of my own. I often sketch characters and scenes and keep them near me while I write. In high school, this visual technique was adopted by Mr Phil Ligon, my journalism, photography and creative writing teacher, and we used Pictures for Writing by David A. Sohn as an unofficial textbook.

  

During high school, also, I wrote a story called “On the Moor,” about a publisher motoring through the misty wilds of Scotland who comes to a bad end. The story is not important (and it’s probably a good thing that it is mostly lost) except in that it started a chain of events that affects me even now. I had typed it on my Remington Quietwriter and was reading it in homeroom class one day. Mr Robert Vigil noticed I was not frantically trying to finish homework assignments from the day before (yes, I was one of those students) and he asked to read what I had written.

I was hesitant. I am at heart very shy, a trait most writers seek to overcome. A few years ago, I attended a social gathering at the San Diego Public Library for local authors. It was very crowded and you could not go anywhere without bumping into either an author or his ego. A few were my age or older, but most were younger, adept at networking and socializing, both on- and off-line. The way they aggressively worked the room, trying to hustle copies of their own books and forge relationships, you would have thought the room was filled with editors and publishers rather than desperate writers.

My experience is that most writers are extroverts, and those who are not Big Names are often driven by a kind of desperation that will make them buttonhole and glad-hand any possibly useful stranger not fast enough to get away. When I attended the World Fantasy Convention in Tucson (1991), I had the great pleasure of seeing the room worked by a master of the art, my friend, the late t. Winter-Damon, with whom I worked on a few projects. No editor, publisher or writer could escape him. When I remarked on his outgoing nature to his wife, Diane, she laughed and said: “Yeah, Tim can work a room like a two-dollar hooker at a Shriner’s convention. You can bet he’s going to end up with at least a half-dozen contracts.” It’s an enviable skill.

But I digress. At the time Mr Vigil asked to see the story, my private writing was still a private matter. But he was a pleasant person and asked nicely, and I did not feel he would ridicule me, which is every young teen’s second greatest fear. So I let him read it. When he saw me the next day, he handed the story back, said he had liked it very much, and asked me, “Have you ever heard of a writer named H.P. Lovecraft?”

I had not, but I soon would, and that long-dead fantasy writer would eventually loom large in my life and writing. Through high school and college, and on into adulthood, I read and re-read Lovecraft’s stories, eventually branching out to the other writers of his era, as well as modern writers also under his spell.

About that time Mr Vigil asked to see “On the Moor,” I was encouraged to apply to the local paper, the Chula Vista Star-News, as a book reviewer. Publisher Lowell Blankfort was looking for a hip student’s point of view at a time when the counter-culture was in full swing, but what he got instead was me. I sent him some sample reviews, he liked what he read, and I was hired. Well, “hired” is a relative term since there was no pay, but I did get to keep the books.

Publication in the Star-News brought a kind of notoriety, and people who had overlooked me started to notice I was alive. But I kept writing the reviews anyway. Back in those days, newspapers were still very big, especially community newspapers like the Star-News. Everyone in Chula Vista subscribed, if only to keep up to date with high school sports.  The Star-News (founded 1882) is still around, but, sadly, time has not been kinder to it than any other local paper, though it manages to maintain a kind of faded glory. Because of my book reviews, I was asked to work on the Trojan Trumpet, the school newspaper, which led to formal journalism training, photography and creative writing.

All those activities taught me about writing, but even more about publishing.  I started submitting stories to science fiction and mystery magazines I had been reading for years, but not with much success, though I was able to place articles and poems with smaller journals. There were more than four dozen major digest magazines publishing science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror and detective stories, and many dozens more little and literary magazines. Of course, that was then, for now there are three science fiction magazines and two mystery magazines, and even they are not what they once were.

Even in the waning years of fiction (I didn’t know it then, but I do now) I published regularly, even though mostly in magazines familiar to just a handful of people. While publications like The Writer, Writers’ Digest and Writers’ Marketplace played a big role in submissions, smaller publications like File 550, the Gila Queen’s Guide to Markets, and, most especially, Scavenger’s Newsletter played an even bigger role.

  

Scavenger’s Newsletter was founded, published and edited by Janet Fox (1940 – 2009) a wonderful writer of fantasy and horror who also excelled as a teacher and poet. Though we never actually met, I almost feel as if I had known her.

If it had not been for Janet dutifully publishing market lists month after month, many of the stories in this book might never have been published. As with other aspects of the writer’s life, the marketzine has been overtaken by the digital age, and though such lists come at us now with the speed of electrons rather than the pace of a trudging mailman, it’s just not the same.

Because of the influence of Lovecraft, I wrote lots of Cthulhu Mythos stories, some slavishly chained to Lovecraft’s archaic and formal style, others in my own developing voice. The Mythos story that finally made a splash was actually a hybrid tale, “The Adventure of the Ancient Gods,” which appeared in a fanzine called Holmesian Federation. Other tales mixed Sherlock Holmes with Star Trek, but mine brought Holmes into contact with Lovecraft’s alien gods. Since the background of that story has been explained in other venues (Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories and Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures), I won’t go into it or its sequels here. One outcome of the story and its sequels was that I was profiled in “Ralph E. Vaughan: Visionary of the Dreamlands,” written for Shoggoth by t. Winter-Damon.

  

Where HP Lovecraft of Providence
first met Mr Sherlock Holmes of 221b Baker Street, London

My friend t. winter-damon actually made me seem
interesting in his interview of me and review of  "The
Dreaming Detective."

It is often harder to sell a second story to an editor than the first, but usually easier to sell the third, even though in the small press world “sell” does not always equal money, and finding a little magazine that actually makes it to the third issue can be difficult. The profile in Shoggoth was a huge ego-boost, but it also caused some editors to look at my stories a little differently when they sailed over the transom. It was never easy submitting a story, but in some cases it became not as difficult.

Just as my drawings revolve around themes and archetypical characters, so do my short stories. In themes, we have alienation, alternate history, ancient cultures, religion, fear, corruption and the feeling of being lost. For my characters, I created Mitsuko, a young woman running from a warlord in an alternate Japan; Kira, a bronze-clad warrior living at the end of the Bronze Age; Tawa of the Sky Clan, a paleo-Indian maiden taken from her home by raiders; and a bevy of loners dwelling on a dead Earth at the end of time.

Before you head off into the stories, let me tell you a tale about Kira, who was my favorite. I started writing about her back in the early 80’s, a tall, muscular woman clad in black leather and bronze armor, a follower of the Triple Goddess, a holder-on to old ways even as the world changed around her, bronze giving way to the new metal iron. Her world was based solidly in the Bronze Age, but was also touched by magick and the gods. With her, I traveled to the edge of the known world and beyond, to America, Australia, Africa, the Orient, the vast necropolis of Nordhelm, and even to the far future. She was a popular character, and I drew many drawings of her in leather skirt and armor based on Mycenaean designs, with her  boots and her weapons historically accurate. I thought we would be together for a very long time, for I had written a score of stories and had ideas for many more, including several novels.

Then Kira went away.

I had suspected the end was coming, for I had seen signs, but it was still shocking when it finally happened. Editors began rejecting the stories. Finally, I received a note from an editor with whom I had never worked, and I knew the end was at hand: 

   

Dear Mr Von: Not a bad story but you can

do better than copy Xena: Warrior Princess,

can’t you?

I was annoyed at the way Xena knocked my Kira series for a loop,
but I got over it...and, no, I did not sue. Seriously?

 

     I did not submit any further Kira stories after that. Kira could prevail against any foe, human or supernatural, but not against the power of  television.

******************

The only thing to add to what's written above is that shortly after I posted a link to the e-book edition on my high school class' Facebook page, one of my former classmates provided me with Mr Vigil's phone number. Shortly afterwards, the Wife and I had a nice, long visit with him. His house is filled with books, as is fitting for a man who has loved literature and reading all his life (it's my excuse too), but I am glad his house had room for one more book, the autographed copy I gave him. I think he was please to see it and very surprised that he had had such a great affect upon my writing life, especially since he only had me for homeroom. I think all teachers hope to have a positive effect on their students' lives, but, quite often, they never know exactly what the effect was or how significant it turned out to be, for time severs us from those we knew in our youth, and seeds planted sometimes require years to bloom. I'm extremely grateful I had the chance to let Mr Vigil know his efforts had not been in vain; I regret, however, that I was not able to tell Mr Ligon the same thing, for he passed away some years ago.