Way Too Many Horror Movies

August 8, 2022 / F.T. McKinstry / 2 Comments

Hi campers. Still hanging in there? I hope so.

I am finally working on the third book in The Fylking, after a hiatus. Sometimes life plays hardball; other times, it takes a while for a novel to brood. In this case, it’s both. I’m cool with that.

The title is still eluding me. Something about warlocks, masters, veils, crows, I don’t know. Whenever I choose something, five minutes later I’m tossing it in the bin with a scowl. But fear not. When I get more deeply into the story, the real title will no doubt make itself known with a flourish.

So I am back in the zone, apparently. Late last night, while getting ready for bed, I casually glanced into the other room and noticed something weird. High up on a window curtain, tucked into a fold, was a dark blotch, frayed at the edges, several inches in diameter. How long has that been there? I wondered.

Chilled, I peered at it. An enormous spider? No, this isn’t Australia. A scorpion? Not a Bolivian jungle, either. Oh! Maybe a little brown bat, clinging there. That could happen.

Things got darker. A stain, perhaps—but of what, way up there? Blood wouldn’t look like that. Still peering. Flesh-eating bacteria? The blotch seemed to move as I stared at it. I imagined it shooting out with unbelievable speed and latching onto me like an Alien facehugger. Maybe it’s mold. Yeah, extraterrestrial mold. It’ll slowly spread until it consumes me, the entire neighborhood, the planet.

I swear, it’s moving.

The cat is asleep on the chair underneath the curtain. Suspiciously.

Finally, I ventured over there to have a look. And then, with a shock, I realized just how far out into the water I had drifted. The culprit? An ornament of a flying gargoyle that’s been hanging from the moulding above the curtain for, I don’t know, fifteen years probably. Hey, if you look at something long enough, you forget about it. Right?

Seriously, though. What just happened?

Here’s a thought. The faculties that drive me to write dark fantasy also have me staring at the blur of a cobwebbed Gothic Christmas ornament for ten minutes like a protagonist in Stranger Things.

Put another way, the gulf between one’s perception of reality when they’re wearing their glasses or not is vast, murky and full of monsters.

Or, I just watch too many horror movies.

Goblins and Creepy Horses

December 16, 2015July 25, 2017 / F.T. McKinstry / 2 Comments

Lone Mountain Moon

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. ~ Albert Einstein

One of my favorite things about writing is bringing the stories into visual art. I find this every bit as challenging as I do writing; in either case, the final product, while possibly beautiful, never matches my imagination. A fantasy novel is a spectacular source of imagery, and all the more interesting to create because it’s made up. The real world has some references, but it can also limit things. There’s a weird sort of comfort in having more stories and paintings in my heart than I’ll ever bring into focus.

Here are some recent creations, inspired by my latest novel Outpost, Book One in The Fylking.

Goblins of Wyrvith Forest

Nasty, foul-mouthed, malevolent creatures, goblins. You would not want to cross their path, let alone offend them. Arcmael, the protagonist of Outpost, does both. He is a seer and a servant of the Fylking, immortal, unseen warlords who hold dominion over the realm. For love of a friend, Arcmael shatters his vows to his immortal masters. This puts him on the bad side of the Otherworld, where most beings revere the Fylking as gods. This includes goblins, who revere nothing.

Truss him up!
Drag him hither!
Bind his limbs!
Make him slither!

Poor Arcmael. The goblins capture him and he must make an even greater sacrifice to escape their palace. But I won’t spoil that.

Between the Worlds

Rose Moon

A while back, I drew a series of images to accompany verses that appear in the Chronicles of Ealiron. This collection is called “The Solar Breath,” and one of the images is called “Rose Moon.” The accompanying verse goes like this:

Rose Moon loves the ancient oak
Strewn with chamomile and light
Tall white horses thundering
O’er meadowsweet and rue.

Recently, while contemplating nothing in particular, this image came to mind, particularly the creepy little horses. Otherworldly, in fact. Aha. I grabbed them, put them into the “Lone Mountain” painting, tricked it out in magical storms and mists, and I got “Between the Worlds.”

No end to the trouble I can get into.

Outpost, Book One in The Fylking.

A race of immortal warriors who live by the sword.
A gate between the worlds.
Warriors, royals, seers and warlocks living in uneasy peace on one side of the Veil.
Until now.

Hemlock and Editing

August 1, 2013August 1, 2013 / F.T. McKinstry / 2 Comments

Hemlock

I recently came upon a series of amazing photos of animals camouflaged in their natural environments. They are very good at this. True to form, my cat Hemlock can vanish like a ghost when she’s of a mind.

So I just finished editing my latest novel. By “finished” I mean for the time being, because well, my publisher was waiting and I can only tinker with it for so long. Stephen King says it nicely: “To write is human, to edit is divine.” Yes, and I’m burnt. But while basking in the warm glow of having handed the beastie over to my editor, I had an interesting thought.

Mistakes hide in manuscripts in much the same way creatures camouflage themselves in the wilds. A missing or a wrong word is not as beautiful as Hemlock, of course. But I have to acknowledge how clever words are at hiding in seemingly harmless passages. It’s a testament to the power of the imagination that one can look at that egregious grammatical blunder sixty five times and not see it. Then suddenly, like magic, there it is sitting in the garden under the bushes.

They shapeshift too, you know. But that’s another story.