Author's Word - Fangs and Claws of the Earth
You may assume that this story took place many years ago, when Goth was new and fresh. On the other hand, it might not.
I was never Goth, really, even though I certainly touched its edges. Most radicals did, one time or another.
This isn’t a story written for Goths, or anyone. Like all my books, it’s only written for me. I will never write a story intended for a target group, for anyone preferring a given genre. I don’t write genres, like you probably have discovered if you have read any of my other books.
This is one more story beyond the veil of mundane human experience. There is hardly any point of reference matching an ordinary existence.
Existence is deep, far deeper than most people suspect or even imagine. Creatures invisible in the light of day roam the night and our collective consciousness. They claim that those beings are just a result of our overactive imagination, even though they’re often proven wrong. Reality is, in truth far more fantastic than fantasy, and we know that, know it in our deepest core.
2016-09-24
I couldn’t make this story, and certainly not its ending work at first. Ten years ago, when I had just about started on what was then the seventh chapter and now is the thirteenth, it just… stopped. I couldn’t continue, no matter what I did. All possible angles felt wrong. I began the story again from the beginning and wrote a completely different first chapter and also changed quite a bit of the story, making Melanie a teacher instead of a cop, but it still didn’t work.
So, I stopped writing on it and delegated it to the drawer for failed and forever unfinished projects.
For some reason, I always strive more to write vampire stories and similar, probably because I work even harder to make them different than I do with my other stories.
Finally, painfully I came up with an ending that I felt might work, and after a slow process lasting several more years it did. My search for the right ending paid off. It isn’t just a satisfactory ending, but one I absolutely cherish. It added a new dimension to the story, one I didn’t imagine when I started out at all. I often know the ending, or has some qualified idea about it. I have even written the ending and even the entire final chapter first on some projects, like Your Own Fate.
But this one waited a long time to reveal itself, until the mist parted, and I finally got the highly anticipated epiphany.
I spent twelve years writing Night on Earth and fifteen writing this. The special ending or even anything resembling it didn’t come to me until well into the last five years. When it did, it felt very logical, and like a natural progression of what had happened earlier.
Yes, it’s such a delight being an author.
Then, I spent six more rewriting it yet again, expanding it into a much longer story. Christine, for instance was really a secondary character, eventually growing in importance as the story developed. Other storylines were also introduced and expanded.
2022-07-02
Rereading it a final time before publishing does convince me it was worth it. The characters are deeper, the events more intense, more believable within the context of the story. Unsatisfactory has become beyond satisfactory, like I always set out to do.
And it has become something new, with a layer added to the myth, like I always wanted.
The first two versions were brief studies. This is an extensive, deeper story.
The poetry is from my collection Secrets.
2023-01-09
Printed version complete 2023-03-27
I walked through the night
Looking for the shadows
In the rain
So much was going on
So much was happening
Before the blood red rain
Fetch the book at