news about the author, artist, and musician
We have, as promised, switched out the short story we posted last month for an excerpt from one of my novels (‘Waves’). We will try to do this every month. No real explanation of the piece is needed; it’s simply a chapter with a bit of action involving a couple thugs who’ve been set on our protagonist.
The piece is, as before, on our ‘Tales’ page.
In 1957, the summer between first and second grade, I sat in the back of my folks’ Plymouth station wagon and read the Classics Illustrated comic of ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’ We were on our way to New Orleans for a gymnastics meet in which my sisters were competing.
It was the only time I’ve ever been to New Orleans—or that far west—but I remember it quite vividly. Especially the ducks in the pond across from our motel! What would be more likely to make an impression on a seven-year-old, after all?
That was sort of my introduction to great literature and I was soon reading the ‘real’ books, not that a number of other Classics Illustrated titles didn’t pass through our home. Clues to go look for the books, at times, or to avoid them!
When I was twelve, one of their ‘special issues’ came out. These were titles that were not adapted from fiction but covered some historic or scientific topic. I picked up ‘Prehistoric World’ and it changed my life. Really.
Like any kid, I was interested in prehistoric animals, dinosaurs, etc. There was more to this comic, though. The greater part of it was dedicated to the ancestry of man. I met Australopithecus and Pithecanthropus (now Homo erectus) and those Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons and all the rest and I was hooked. Visits to the library meant bringing home books on anthropology and I plowed through a lot of thick volumes for a couple years there—when we moved from Columbus Ohio to Florida when I was fourteen, I didn’t have as much access to good libraries.
And, of course, I had a beach that required my occasional attention.
I’ll note that ‘Prehistoric World’ had a quite good explanation of genetics and evolution, as well. Good enough that I could figure out what they were talking about, anyway! It was completely new stuff to me.
I very much intended to go into anthropology all through high school. That sort of slipped into the whole history/art history thing when I got to college and decided I didn’t really want to be the scientist that much. And by the time I finished college, I decided I’d rather create and went off to paint pictures.
But I’m still fascinated by ‘cave men’ and the story of the human race. Knowing whence we came connects us to each other, to the world and to the universe. The same stars have shone on our ‘family’ for billions of years and, at some point, we looked up and reached for them.
Ah, to have been there at that moment!
All the above was first written and posted elsewhere a decade ago, but I felt it worth recycling. Since then, I have written a science fiction time travel novel in which I was able to indulge that youthful interest in our ancestors by visiting a tribe of Neanderthals. That would be ‘When Man Was Young.’ I’ve also dropped early humans (or their relatives, to be more exact) into some of my fantasy novels. And yes, the dwarfs of my entire Izan mythos are essentially small Neanderthals.
I use a couple pen names in addition to my ‘real’ name of Stephen Brooke. Being pen names, they are, in essence, fictional characters. Anything they might say about themselves is made up.
This is true, to some extent, of this name too. Stephen Brooke, the author, is really another character—one based on a true story, we might say! Keep in mind that he is fictional; he isn’t really me and his truth isn’t my truth. My own truth is private and shall so remain.
A short excerpt from my time travel novel, “When Man Was Young.” Our characters are exploring a cave. Spear Maker is a youthful Neanderthal.
The lad hesitated at the entrance. “Does Great Bear live here?” he asked. He was attempting to sound more calm than he felt, I thought.
“Not now,” Raven informed him. “It’s not time to sleep yet.”
Spear Maker nodded his head. He’d picked that up from us. Crouching, he followed Condor into the passage.
“Great Bear?” I whispered to Raven as we went in after him.
“I’ve been told all about him,” he replied. “Great Bear hibernates in a vast cavern far below the world and brings spring when he awakens. He is son and mate of Earth, who is mother to all.”
“Oh.” We sidled along for a few seconds. “Are there other gods?”
“I’m not certain. I haven’t figured out the point of some of the stories I’ve been told. The sun and moon and maybe the stars have a meaning, but I don’t know if they are gods as you and I know the word. There seems to be an animistic view of the world.” He chuckled. It sounded odd in this space. “My main source is Rabbit so I’m not inclined to take any of it too seriously.”
Little Rabbit would be entirely likely to make up anything she didn’t know. She had the makings of a religious leader.
I am not a fan of the ‘modern’ zombie—the version largely based on those that appeared in Romero’s ground-breaking horror film, “The Night of the Living Dead.” These are not controlled by anyone, the way the classic zombie was, but are simply reanimated dead with their own agenda. Typically, that agenda is to eat us.
That is the zombie variant seen in the long-running and popular “The Walking Dead” series. Typically, some sort of disease or other natural cause is cited and the zombies may or may not actually have returned from the dead. As an aside, I’ll mention I did not like the Walking Dead show, at least in part because of the atrocious ‘science.’
In folklore, the zombie is—usually—controlled by some sort of sorcerer. This zombie is not necessarily a reanimated corpse. It can be a living human controlled via drugs and/or hypnosis, but with no will of its own it may certainly seem without life. This is the zombie of Haitian legend though similar incarnations of the concept are found in many cultures.
I’ve never used it in any of my fiction, though there is no reason why I could not. I’ve nothing against it nor even the flesh-eating zombies of the more modern sort. There has been no occasion and, honestly, no particular desire. I have, however, dropped a variety of zombie into a couple stories. This is the possessed corpse.
No, not possessed by a demon. That wouldn’t work with the magical system of my main fantasy world. Spirits of any sort do not exist. What is possible is for a powerful wizard to send a physical part of themselves into a body and control it. Clumsily, perhaps, but they do become its brain. This would involve sending themselves through another world and back again—something requiring great skill and power. It is also dangerous to mesh ones consciousness with that of a decaying body; one could become ‘trapped’ after a fashion. Not permanently, to be sure, as one is always pulled back from other worlds after a time (all things are). But it could be decidedly unpleasant and maybe even damaging to one.
I first used this idea in the second Malvern novel, “Valley of Visions.” There the body of the slain warlord Ko is reanimated by a wizard in an attempt to keep his army together. It is decidedly demoralizing when the old soldier simply falls apart while strutting before his troops! I returned to it in the recent “The Plain of Silver.” There we have an assassin zombie controlled from some distance by a malevolent sorcerer. Of course, I’m not going to tell you how successful it was in its attack, but it certainly did disrupt the wedding of Viscountess Fachalana and Sir Blen. Its stench didn’t help things.
The zombie is not to be confused with any variant on the vampire, which has also never appeared in my novels. Chances are, it never will—there are plenty of other, more sensible menaces I can come up with. I’ll admit, however, that a vampire sprite flitted into one of my short stories. That had nothing to do with my primary fantasy world so we can ignore it.
There is just a tad of ‘retcon’ (retroactive continuity) involved in my current work-in-progres fantasy novel, to be titled “Stones in the Sea.” It does not contradict the previous stories; rather, it adds to our understanding of them. Most notably, I give a fuller explanation of the ‘jewels of the elements’ that have popped up here and there.
But they do remain a bit nebulous in their origin and powers, and that is as it should be. Who are mortals to understand such things? ‘Stones’ should be the earliest novel set in Exura, a world or universe ‘next door’ to ours (all worlds in the infiniverse are, strictly, next door to each other). Most of my fantasy tales are set in Exura, at least in part. This is the universe I referred to as the D-World for some time (at least in my own notes) after the first novels set there, the Donzalo’s Destiny series.
The novel is set some seventy years earlier than the first Malvern book (“Coast of Spears”) and, as with that story, involves an individual passing through the one-way gate located in the South Pacific. After that, things go very differently. I hope to have the book ready to go for a summer release but there are never any guarantees of that sort of thing. And beyond? Way too many projects to even guess what might come.
This Saturday, January 7 2023, marks the official release of my latest novel, “These Remembered Hills.” Ostensibly, this is a mystery novel. Here’s the back cover/advertising blurb:
Yes, he loved these hills, these remembered hills of his youth.
Jim Fry had returned from his four years in the navy, returned to the family farm where his sister had died, broken at the foot of a cliff. An accident. So most believed.
Not her friend, artist Rick Myers. A few days later, Myers is also dead and no one mistakes this for an accident. Through farmland and forest, the cliffs and creeks of the Hocking Hills of southern Ohio, Jim pursues the truth—and the murderers.
The book is available in print everywhere books are sold. ISBN 978-1-937745-85-1. It is also available in print, EPUB, and PDF directly from Arachis Press:
print: https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brooke/these-remembered-hills/paperback/product-g7zgz2.html
EDIT (some time later!): the EPUB and PDF editions are no longer for sale at the Arachis Press store. We have chosen to make them, and all my ebooks, free downloads at the Arachis Press site (arachispress.com).
I’ve been wanting to write a book about the area in southeastern Ohio where I’d done some of my growing up, the hills and hollows and caves, and this was the time for it. Maybe I’ll write a sequel but right now I’ll be getting back to the fantasy novel WIP. There should be another poetry collection release later this year too.
Stephen Brooke 