A notorious late developer; Jason has made it his lifework to learn from the mistakes of those who foolishly developed before him.

To that end he is currently travelling the world to see how many countries he can live, work and write in… before creeping ineptitude and the usual suspects demand he settle down and pay heed to his weakling vegetarian body.

Any attempt by this bio to portray him as a jet-setting, Dandy quaffing deep on the elixir of life is dispelled by the very serious nature of his day job. Jason is an intensive care nurse by trade, and thus much too serious to indulge in anything as frivolous as writing fantasy fiction in his spare time.

Jason currently calls Melbourne, Australia ‘home’.

Something Mean in the Dream Scene – The Red Book, 2010

Hedge Monkey

Coming soon

Okay, the guys want me to write a few words regards the writing process.

Thing is, I regard the writing process, as something one should discuss in hushed tones in the privacy of one’s own home and definitely away from easily offended ears. You know, it’s something you don’t want to make a song and dance about. It’s a bit like suggesting to a room full of your peers that there is another way to fornicate which is NOT the missionary position … which you schedule for every other Thursday … performed (obviously!) with the lights off.

You see, folk just DO NOT want to hear about it!

But I am certain that you are consenting adults … and this is the internet after all! So step on up you little deviant as I lay open my little story for you like a wound that would heal, but for the podgy little fingers that keep delving into it.

Once upon a time I went to university to learn to be a writer. They earnestly procrastinated at me about the noble discipline that is writing. About structure and plot and theme and imagery and the Booker Prize. Somewhere about that time writing stopped being something fun and became something which took up vast tracts of time, cultivated a brooding furrow betwixt the eye brows and required the scrutiny of a group of socially inept fellows to have any merit at all.

So instead I spent the next few years having a gooooood time … then became a nurse.

Ten to twelve years later though it came as a surprise to me to find I had not stopped storytelling. Be it as a Dungeon Master, be it Samhain tales to my unGod children, or be it furious little superhero tales to myself before bedtime. I was still spinning yarns.

So along came Moult World.

See, I was desperate to enjoy writing again just like I used to as a teenager submitting “Judge Dredd” treatments to 2000AD. But this time around I want to do it on my terms … University Dons be damned! After much noble navel gazing I decided to concentrate on the two things about writing I like the most and forget about all that other pretentious paraphernalia. Those two things I love about writing being:

1. entertaining those I love and
2. the lovely little self satisfied glow that comes from finishing a project.

Therefore Moult World was / and is a discipline in writing regular short and to the point episodes. I envision it a bit like those crazy-ass black and white “Flash Gordon” matinees you used to get Saturday mornings … that was back in the day when they used to tell stories to kids instead of just trying to sell them stuff! I wanted each episode of “Moult World” to be first and foremost entertaining and pretty much complete and tasty all by itself.

After about a year of that malarkey, out of the blue came the offer from Chinese Whisperings people.

Of course, my first reaction was “no, I won’t tell you the password to my online bank account” then, when I realised Jodi and Paul were the real deal I said “yes, please, you got the wrong bloke, but I’ll happily stand in for him until he emerges from rehab”.

Welcome to the abattoir where I lay bare the viscera within Something Mean in the Dream Scene.

It’s alright, you’re quite safe … it’s bonds are secure. Tied to that slab it isn’t going anywhere. I know … I know the story is only just a few weeks old. Look close and you can still see the traces of countless rewrites. Scarification on only just warm skin. But now is not the time to get misty eyed and sentimental. Just like patrician Victorian surgeons we must dissect to understand. The spectacle behind the flesh must be revealed … and besides which I’m enjoying this grisly extended metaphor much too much to let it go gently.

As I discuss tomorrow in my piece of public nudity: I try not to linger too much on the writing process.

When Jodi and Paul gave me the story criteria the first thing I needed to establish was genre. The non-verbal body language of their e-mails hinted writing about Hermaphrodite Midget Traders on Alpha-Centauri was out. By implication I also dismissed writing a short story set in my Sword and Sorcery Fantasy Opus: “Axe Land”. Which pretty much meant a contemporary setting with a screwed up idea would be my contribution to Chinese Whisperings.

Going with screwed up idea number one – “Sleep Paralysis” it was.

As a child I experienced many locked in experiences played out somewhere between waking and sleep. I would lie there; awake in a body as responsive to my neurological imperatives as a slice of birthday cake. To this day three (or is it four?) decades later I still clock up about one or two Sleep Paralysis episodes a year.

Now, I would dearly like to say that Sleep Paralysis inflicts only the highest wits of our society, but unfortunately it is a historical and multi-ethnic phenomenon which has been recorded by virtually all written cultures … which basically means me and my phenomenon are not special at all. But as it still gives me the ‘Willies’ it is certainly something well worth a write … thought I.

Now, I just don’t have the office space to labour over too many notes, nor do I have the sobriety of character to immerse myself in a day’s research at the local library. So, when I start a story – I just write. Earth shattering, I know. That first ‘draft’ reads half literate and is an insult to all the laws of grammar and syntax known to the English language … but, this mutant, half-born primeval stew of words gives me ideas, themes and the action’s direction. After act in near automatic-writing … it’s a not so simple matter of putting meat onto the bones.

So now step closer, there are a few anatomical details I would like to bring to your attention.

First up, the flashback to the war and Mitchell as a child. This device was nothing but a piece of subterfuge to give some sense of an entire life blighted by Sleep Paralysis. It also played a little with the Chinese Whisperings’ dynamic … which I like. I thought introducing my selection of character from Jodi’s Mercurial immediately was a little too obvious. By suddenly throwing the reader half a century back in time I hoped to keep them guessing regards the identity that interlocked our two tales. (And to give the editor a heart attack! – Ed)

The second point of ghoulish interest is that initially it was Mrs Wollstonecraft who I inflicted the Sleep Paralysis upon. The trouble was she was just too sympathetic a character. Too likeable in her tea-cosy ways and curtain twitching charm. She was coping with the whole “Not being able to wake” thing just too well. What I needed was someone who did not play so obviously into peoples sympathies.

That’s when the Mitchell aka “The Good Doctor” came into the game plan.

There’s a lot been said about a protagonist who does not quite fit the heroic archetype so I won’t say it here. Suffice to say, the final piece of the puzzle fell in place when Paul noted it seemed to be Mitchell’s ability to “accept” which defined him more than the possibility that the cause of his misgivings may be supernatural in origin.

So then a final word about editors.

The whole adding ‘meat to bones’ process that I use is all very well, but when to stop is an art which eludes me. This is the first time I have ever worked with editors and quite frankly it has been something of a revelation. The so called First Draft I pitched to my Chinese Whisperings overmasters editors was a thing of well chiselled beauty, sporting Adonis like muscles and a fine bronze tan indeed … or so I thought!

Soon I came to realise that First Draft was infact a puny thing, which spoke with a stammer and possessed crazy uncombed hair, nine fingers and two left feet. Through Jodi and Paul’s advice and discussion Something Mean in the Dream Scene truly learnt to rise and walk … hell, even waltz, for itself. Now when I reread that initial story and realise it was a lump of coal compared to the piece they helped me polish.

So that’s how the golem called Something Mean in the Dream Scene came into being. The dissection is over and it is time for the mad scientist to throw the switch and bring to life this cobbled together beast of a story … from here on out … it’s on its own.