Thoughts on playing dangerous games…

BY: Mo Irvine
Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand
I enjoy playing Patience. Not in itself a dangerous game, granted, unless someone opens a window and scatters the cards just as you are getting the last numbers out. That could be grounds for murder.

I love the wealth of complexities hidden within this deceptively simple game of cards. Playing out a good game of Patience is a little bit like completing a difficult crossword. Taxing on the brain, but ultimately satisfying. Watching the play of the cards, adding up the suits, guessing what will be dealt next, and what remains hidden. Should I move the red king to that blank space, or maybe wait for the next deal of cards in the hope that a much-needed black king will turn up? Decisions, decisions.

Sometimes, the play flies along, cards falling one on top of the other in a frenzy of excitement. Often I can see no way out, and simply play on in the forlorn hope that the next card I deal won’t signify the end of the game. Disappointment. Death to the dealer. Try again.

But oh, the tightening of muscles as I hunch over screen or table. The anticipation. The hope. Will I or won’t I survive this round? If I can just lay this black four over that red five, then play out the final three cards in my hand…

When I write detective fiction, or sci-fi, the end is usually clear in my mind. I simply have to decide how I am going to manoeuvre my hapless characters from point A to point B (with much death and/or heartache along the way, naturally). But when I write horror, my mind starts out almost as blank as the screen. I begin with one burning idea, one shining phrase, one clever ending – and I have absolutely no idea of the labyrinthine twists and turns that the story will have to make, in order for me to reach the end.

I am on a journey, my mission unclear. All I know is that I want to scare myself, feel that tingle along the spine, let out my breath at the end in a slow whoosh of relief, or catch it sharply in fright as I surreptitiously cast a glance around the shadowed room. Is that a mouse I hear scuttling behind the sofa? Or something far worse, something obscene and scary, something oozing… Something that has entered the room in my absence and which now lurks, biding its time, until I rise from my seat and make my hesitant way across a mile of carpet, trying desperately to reach the false safety of the light switch.

What does all this have to do with playing a card game on one’s own? For me, writing horror is like playing a game of Patience. I hunch, engrossed, over the keyboard, getting to know a person I have imagined, or a scene, or a phrase, or a beginning. I fling down my opening sentences much as I cast down my cards. The progression of the story is never certain. Sometimes I miss something, noticing my error a split second too late. What can I do to retrieve the situation? Should I try? Will things become more – interesting – if I don’t? Often there will be seemingly insurmountable obstacles to overcome. The law of averages dictates to me that there won’t be a much-needed red seven in my hand. Or a loaded gun with which to dispatch the monster. Can one shoot a monster? What if the monster is in one’s head? Or invisible? Or one’s supposed best friend? What of a gun then?

Getting to the bottom of these problems is as satisfying as laying down a good game of Patience. Of course, in Patience, sometimes you lose. And the monster wins. Now isn’t that fun?

I am really pleased to be a part – however small – of Dark Continents Publishing. I have the freedom here to run with scissors, and to watch with interest as the blood spills. And, even better, I know that others will be crouching down to the carpet to watch with me.

The Imminent Demise of the English Language as We Know It.

By John Irvine: a no-account lay-about tea-person

My invitation to join the Dark Continents Publishing team of literary ratbags was unexpected and exciting… not only from the point of view of getting my own books published, but also from the thought that, even in a small way, I might be helping to keep the English language alive around the world for a bit longer. Thank you, Dark Continents Publishing for this opportunity. God herself only knows why this progressive and innovative publisher gave me a (small) virtual desk to waste time at, but they did.
I have no formal literary credentials, serious or otherwise. I have never taken a writing course, nor do I have any university degrees or diplomas. I left school at age fifteen, but had been gifted a love of the language, something I can take no credit for… I love the language so much that I have become a pathetic cringer. Every time I see txt tlk I cringe. I steadfastly refuse to text.
Now, advertisers often use clever remanufactured words to suit their bill boards, but sometimes they just plain get it wrong. Don’t get me started on newspaper reporters and editors. *shudders* Not even BBC announcers, once the very doyens/doyennes of proper English, can no longer be trusted to get it right on air.
On the rare occasions I pontificate on this subject I am often told, sometimes derisively, that language is in a constant pattern of change. I accept that… but do we really want to return all the way to a communication system of grunts and gestures? Do we? How rich would our lives be then?
When my youngest daughter reached eight years old in the early 80s she had not yet formally learned to spell (at school), had not been taught the times tables (learning by rote is restrictive to the education of children apparently), was unable to figure out what clockwise meant because she was accustomed to digital clocks. She’s thirty eight now, still has some difficulty with spelling, grammar and punctuation because it wasn’t taught to her in her early education in Australia. In fact, one of her teachers called me in to bash my ear about helping my daughter with her English and math homework. I had taught her, amongst other things, how to do long division (not in the school curriculum) and the young female teacher was incensed. ‘Don’t you know,’ she ranted, ‘that Sarah doesn’t have to know that stuff. After all, it’s not important that she gets the right answers, only that she tried.’ This attitude still prevails.
I ran an online writers’ group for teens, based in Canada through What If? magazine, for many years. When we first started, members would post their comments and communications in txt tlk. It took me a year to convince them that this was, after all, a writers’ forum and as such we should all be writing in English rather than gibberish. It took a year, but for the following five years I saw not a scrap of txt tlk, and I can only hope that some of my incessant nagging has stuck in their everyday lives. This battle is never going to be won, alas, as we already have at least one generation of teachers and parents who are partially illiterate. And it’s a world-wide trend. I’d hazard a guess and say that a lot of young Chinese speak English more correctly than the rest of us. Perhaps that’s where the future of the English language lies…
So: where will we be in fifty years? What will writers be writing? Will there BE any writers? Will anyone remember HOW to write? The images in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 spring scarily to mind. In fifty years I’ll be 120… it won’t be my problem.