Going to Dark Places

I’m not a particular “dark” guy in real life. I’m pretty pleasant actually. I like puns (too much) and goofy humor (much too much) and I’m usually looking for the proverbial silver lining. I wouldn’t say I’m a hopeless optimist because I don’t necessarily see the glass as “half full” rather than “half empty.” Rather, I see the value in being able to have access to clean water at all.

Point is that my fiction can often go in dark places, and my choices of films and books for entertainment often go some dark places as well. I’m guessing those are the outlets for my more vicious side that I keep penned up almost all the time…so much so that I forget there might be a monster buried in my mental basement.

So I find it interesting that when I started this blog, my “The Gathering Storm” series was more serious and dark-tinged (though with flashes of humor and levity, too) and the one-shot stories were more light-hearted and even silly at times.

But as I look at the current list of stories on the blog (here) I can’t help but notice that while the first three one-shot stories were pretty sunny overall (focusing on humor more often than nastiness), there’s only been one truly light-hearted story in that list since then (Mild-Mannered). The others are serious, and in many cases they are downright grim in their subject matter.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that (unless of course you guys begin to feel I’m getting too dark and gritty at some point), but it is interesting. I still have levity in the stories, and wit where it fits, but the world of the Whethermen has definitely trended toward the serious.

I mean, for God’s sake, my daughter said, “Daddy, write a story called ‘Fishboy and Madman Strike Again’ OK?” And as I begin writing it, there is already a huge note of menace and threat in it. I have a title like that from my little girl, and I can’t find a humorous angle.

Maybe I’m just being contrary, as my daughter so often is with me, in some form of unintentional passive-aggressiveness.

Anyway, we’ll see where Fishboy and Madman go. I never planned to write it for my little girl, since even if I played the humor route, any levity I might introduce would be too adult for her ears or would go right over her head. (But this does remind me that I should probably write some kid-oriented stories that perhaps I can read to her now and in the future).

As I noted a couple days ago, the next chapter of “The Gathering Storm” is almost ready. Today I figure I’ll finally get that last scene written, even with the distraction of starting things rolling with the Fishboy and Madman story.

Stay tuned, citizens of New Judah…