Sunday, August 18, 2013

The Satanic Bridegroom

Things have been quiet here at Sniff The Light Fantastic, but for a good reason: the novel that I have been working on for the last four years, The Satanic Bridegroom, is finally complete. Early chapters are posted online here, and an e-book will be made available in October. The genre might be called weird fiction or "literary horror," and the story involves lust, madness and submarines.


The project began four years ago. It had always been my ambition to write a novel, but I never seemed to be able to get beyond ideas and first chapters. I would start a project full of enthusiasm, but the momentum would eventually dissipate, leaving me with nothing. Finally, in 2009, I decided to take a different approach: instead of starting with a vague plan and hoping that inspiration found in the moment of writing would carry me the rest of the way, I carefully outlined every chapter, making myself a blueprint that I only needed to follow.

It was all very workmanlike, but this method turned out to be the key to unlocking my productivity. Previously I had imagined that this sort of process would be a tedious chore with no sense of discovery, but this turned out not to be the case; even if I knew the destination, there was still a feeling of excitement and exploration in getting there. Meanwhile, rather than waiting for inspiration to begin writing, inspiration came when I was already at the keyboard, and I would often find new, unexpected ideas flying to me out of nowhere. Additionally, having my path mapped out ahead of time helped me get through the difficult times—even if I wasn't feeling inspired about a section, I could still move forward and hopefully return to it later to revise it into something better.

The hard part now is letting go. There are still sections which I think could be better, and the urge is there to continue second-guessing and revising, but the time has come to end this project and begin a new one. Overall I'm very pleased with the results; the novel may be dark and strange, but it stands on its own. I find myself chuckling or shivering when rereading it, and that seems to be a very good sign.

Anyway, yet me know what you think! Hopefully you'll enjoy it, but, if it's really terrible, well, the next one will be better.

Fiat lux!