Posts Tagged 'History'
The Importance of History
Posted: June 30, 2021 in Living and Life, Reflections, Social Activism
Tags: 4th of July, activism, anti-Semitism, critical race theory, General Miley, History, holidays, Independence Day, living and life, Politics, politics and leadership, proper decisions, race, race relations, racial violence, racism, reflections, social activisim, United States of America, work
Recently, the United States celebrated the first occurrence of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. For those unaware, Juneteenth commemorates when General Gordon Granger of the Union Army entered Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865 and announced the end of slavery there. This was two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, though often emancipation had to be enforced by Union soldiers. Nevertheless, many African Americans count June 19th, known as Juneteenth, Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Emancipation Day, as the day slavery ended and for celebrating African American culture.
President Biden signing the holiday into law makes Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. And hopefully, both holidays will now serve as opportunities to educate the masses on the history of African Americans in the United States and what they've gone through. It could even make for an interesting discussion when we contrast it with July 4th, Independence Day, which will be in just a few days.
That is, if teachers in certain states aren't kept from talking about the stories behind Juneteenth and MLK Jr. Day by law.
If you're from outside the United States or just haven't heard, many state legislatures are enacting laws to try and keep teachers in those states from teaching Critical Race Theory, or any form of in-depth discussion of race's effect on the history and culture of the United States. Opponents say that CRT or any other form of in-depth discussion as "left-wing propaganda" or "trying to shame white people for actions of the past." Some of these bills have been passed into law, which might technically make discussion of why we have these holidays technically illegal.
Which worries me, because as we've seen, ignorance isn't bliss. It only furthers divisions.
You probably heard of this, but recently, a certain United States congrresswoman compared mask mandates in the US to the Yellow Star worn by Jews in Nazi Germany and Nazi-controlled areas. This same congresswoman then defended herself, saying that any rational Jewish person would agree with her.
Well, I may be eccentric, but I am Jewish and I consider myself rational. And I think there's a huge difference between public health measures that are meant to protect people from disease–you know, like having proper sewage disposal systems rather than letting poop contaminate our drinking water and cause cholera outbreaks like what happened in 19th-century London?–and measures that were meant to isolate and stigmatize people of a minority religion, keep them from most professions and taking part in a nation's political, economic and social circles. These same people were then forbidden to practice their religion, forced into tiny communities and concentration camps, and endured harsh slave labor and systematic murder.
Last I checked, no one is trying to do any of that with people who don't wear masks or aren't vaccinated. Governments and businesses just want people to continue following measures taken to keep people from getting sick. You know, like not mixing poop into your drinking water? Victorian Londoners learned that one the hard way!
Anyway, that congresswoman realized she made a mistake, went to the Holocaust Museum in DC, and publicly apologized for her comments. And I want to believe she's at least learned some kind of lesson from this. But I know that there were plenty of people who backed up her ignorance when she was defending herself, and would have resisted any attempts for her, or for themselves, to find out that why what they said and did was wrong.
I can only chalk some of this response to blatant white supremacy and anti-Semitism. It is part of it, no doubt, but ignorance has played its part as well. Since the Civil War, many history textbooks have been written with the aim of keeping people ignorant of the actual causes of the war, the horrors of slavery, or why things are still very unequal. And while Holocaust education has made great strides since WWII, it's not emphasized enough if the level of ignorance displayed by our elected leaders is anything to go by.
(Not to mention the number of Holocaust deniers out there.)
Look, I'm white. I may not be treated as such sometimes because of my religion (anti-Semitism is weird that way), but I am white. And I've never once felt ashamed of my skin color due to learning of how white people treated black people in the past. Our fifth grade history unit mainly focused on the slave trade, Underground Railroad, and the Civil War, and I feel like it allowed me to feel more empathetic to African Americans. At the same time, I wish I had learned about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, which was basically an American pogrom, or the coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, which I'm still fuzzy on.
Both events, by the way, I only learned about in the last year! And that doesn't sit right with me.
From the way I've been writing this, you would think that I'm going to conclude that a better handle on history would solve these problems. I wish it were so easy. There has to be a multi-pronged approach to fixing not just the ignorance of the past, but the divisions and pain of the present so they don't continue into the future. But teaching a history that takes in multiple perspectives, follows more than one or a few groups, and takes a look on how those histories affect our modern day world and culture, would be one of those prongs.
Otherwise, nothing will change. No matter our background, us and our descendants will not receive a history that'll help us deal with the modern world. We'll just receive some stories with lies, propaganda and fairytales mixed in. And teaching fiction as truth helps no one.
General Mark Miley testifying before Congress on why critical race theory is taught at West Point.
And we also have to learn why certain circles, mainly composed of white conservatives, have come out so strong against CRT. To quote General Mark Miley, who recently testified before Congress on critical race theory being taught at West Point, "I want to understand white rage–and I'm white." This pairs very well with what my recently retired boss, who is African-American, gave as the reason why we needed a European American group in our organization, alongside groups for African-American, Latinx, Asian Americans, Native American, LGBT, veterans, and disabled employees,* "We need to have EVERYBODY at the table."
I completely agree. We need everybody at the table. Because all Americans are at the table. And we need to be better able to understand each other if we want this country to continue on. Otherwise, there's a good chance that, like a table with rotten legs, it'll simply collapse.
Thanks for reading this essay, everyone. I know this was a rather unusual sort of post for me to write, but given current events in this country, I felt it was necessary. I look forward to discussion in the comments, but I only ask that you keep things civil. After all, the only things that are supposed to intimidate or scare people on this blog are me and my stories! The comments section are neither.
Until next time, Followers of Fear, thanks for reading, and pleasant nightmares.
*For those who don't know, my day job is at a supply agency where I work in an office that promotes diversity and inclusion in the workforce. My main duties involve getting accommodations for disabled employees so they can do their jobs, arranging interpreting for deaf employees, and assisting with programs meant to highlight the contributions and accomplishments of the various groups above. It's a fulfilling job in many different ways.
Chapbooks: What are They, and Why Do Authors Make Them?
Posted: December 2, 2020 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
Tags: Amazon, Arthurian legend, Arthurian literature, Arthuriana, authors, chapbook, chapbooks, ebook, fantasy, History, King Arthur, King Arthur legend, marketing, Mother of the King, novelette, self-publishing, writing
I've mentioned a few times that "Mother of the King" and any other short(er) stories I self-publish over the next year will only be available in print as chapbooks to be sold at conventions and other events. The conventions and other events part is easy to understand, but I'm sure some of you have wondered what a chapbook is. Well, as promised, I'm going to explain what those are and why authors make them.
To put it simply, a chapbook is a small pamphlet or booklet of 40 pages or less, either folded from a giant piece of paper or stapled together from several sheets of paper (fun fact: the latter is known as saddle-stitching). The practice of making and selling chapbooks began around the 16th century and were named after the men who sold them, chapmen, who were early traveling salesmen and dealers. Modern chapbooks are often made by authors using printers and staplers, or assembled in print shops and sold at events or sometimes in specialty bookstores.
So, that's what a chapbook is. Why do we have them? Why would an author make them?
Well, chapbooks were originally printed for working class families who could read but couldn't afford books on their own (even with the printing press, those things were expensive). They were easy to transport and helpful in disseminating ideas, information, entertainment and (often inaccurate) history into popular culture. They were also used to develop literacy, much like comic books and graphic novels help teens and people who don't speak a nation's native language learn and develop language and reading skills.
"The Chapbook, promotional poster" by MCAD Library is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Fast forward to today. Books are cheaper and libraries exist, but chapbooks are still around. They've been especially popular during the past couple of decades in certain circles thanks to copying and printing technology. For the first time, people could sell their stories and poetry directly to the people without the aid of a major publisher or someone who owned a printing press. It was kind of an early form of self-publishing, if you think about it.
With people making chapbooks and small circulation magazines from home, the chapbook has made something of a comeback. And though it's still not as popular as the your regular hundred-plus page book, they're still being put out every year. Authors and poets like how easy and cheap they are, and how they can make something of a profit from them while also giving potential fans something quick to enjoy and maybe get hooked on their work. Like I said, a form of self-publishing, though some presses also do chapbooks alongside regular books.
And presses and authors aren't the only ones who have seen value in these little booklets. There are bookstores that sell chapbooks alongside regular paperbacks, events devoted to them as an artform (looking at you, NYC/CUNY Chapbook Festival), and major publishers using them as advertising tools for their catalogs. And sometimes, depending on the chapbook, who made it, the method of production, and how many exist, these babies can go for quite a bit of money. Sometimes hundreds of dollars.
Not bad for a cheap little booklet that was often recycled as toilet paper after the buyers were done with the story (yeah, that's true. As well as strips of old newspapers. Beats a stick or a corn cob though, right?).
Anyway, I don't expect to make hundreds of dollars off chapbooks of my work. Especially when they'll still be available as ebooks online. But as I said above, they'd be a good way to get my work out to more people. For events out of town, they could help fund those trips. And let's face it, they could be fun to have and to show off at my next convention. Whenever that is. Damn you, COVID-19!
Anyway, that's a chapbook. A form of literature with a cool history and a revival in an age when people can control when stories come out. A diverse artform that takes very little time to make and enjoy. And I hope I can start making them (or going to the print shop to make them) very soon.
In the meantime, I already have one story out in a digital format, so it's kind of like a chapbook. Yeah, you knew this was coming. My Arthurian fantasy novelette, "Mother of the King," is out now and available as an e-book. The story is about the fabled return of King Arthur, told from the point of view of the woman chosen to be his mother. It's been out barely two days, and it's already garnering some great reviews! I'll include the links below, so check it out!
That's all for now, my Followers of Fear. I'm off with a priestess, a dragon and a Deep One to find Arthur's casket. Until next time, good night, happy reading and pleasant nightmares!
Mother of the King: Amazon US, Amazon CAN, Amazon UK
Some Interesting Things About "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
Posted: October 26, 2020 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: celebrities, comedy, Disney, dullahan, films, ghost story, historical figures, History, horror, MacGuffin, reflections, scary stuff, sequels, short story, Sleepy Hollow, Sleepy Hollow (TV series), television shows, The Headless Horsemen, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton, Washington Irving, writing
"The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane" by John Quidor, 1858
Recently, I rewatched a movie inspired by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that I first saw a teen. The movie was better in my memory, but it did get me interested in the original Washington Irving short story. Which, I realized, I'd never actually read. The closest I ever came was a version that had been updated for the 21st century and dumbed down for kids. As it was America's first ghost story and I'm a horror writer from America, I figured I should correct that.
So, I read the short story. And then I did some research into the story's background and influences, as well as some of the other adaptations (I will maintain to my death that the best version is the TV series Sleepy Hollow, and not the Disney cartoon or the Tim Burton film). And once again, following my interests has led me both down a rabbit hole and to an idea for a new story.
Still my preferred adaptation.
But first, let me tell you some things about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that may surprise you. Turns out, there's a lot about this story than most realize.
For instance, there really were two historical figures named Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel. Yeah, they were real people. Washington Irving liked to name characters after people he met. For Katrina Van Tassel, she was the daughter of a family Irving stayed overnight with, and was charmed enough by her to immortalize her in fiction. I wonder how she felt about her character being a flirty MacGuffin whose father's fortunes and lands were more relevant than her appearance or lack of a personality.
As for Ichabod Crane, he was a colonel in the US Army who served for nearly five decades (yes, I believe that's where the TV show got the idea to make him a Revolutionary soldier as well). However, his character was likely based on an actual schoolteacher, Jesse Merwin, who taught in Kinderhook, New York and came from Connecticut, like the fictional Crane did. So…yay for namesakes?
Speaking of Washington Irving, he's buried in the real town of Sleepy Hollow. Yeah, that's true. They even worked that into the movie I mentioned at the top of the post (though they left a lot of questions in their wake).
But the biggest surprise I found out about America's first ghost story? It's not a ghost story.
Now I know what you're thinking. But hear me out: while it's regarded as a ghost story by many, this is mostly because the Headless Horseman and his midnight chase of Crane has entered the public consciousness more than any other aspect of the story. In reality, the Horseman plays only a minor role until the story's climax.
Disney's Headless Horseman. Traumatizing children and contributing to the confusion over the story since 1949.
So what is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, if not a ghost story? Why, it's a somewhat comedic tale of two self-centered men vying for the hand of the local squire's daughter and the cunning trick one uses to get ahead of the other.
In one corner, you have Ichabod Crane, the educated but superstitious outsider who uses his learning and guile to ingratiate himself into the town, feed his gluttonous appetite and maybe marry into a wealthy lifestyle. In the other, you have Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the local tough who is more brawny than intelligent but is stubborn and cunning, and may be just as interested in Katrina Van Tassel as he is in her inheritance. Neither one is exactly likable, but it's fun to see these two go to extremes just to marry Katrina.
And while most adaptations paint the Horseman as a supernatural entity, the original story strongly hints that Brom was dressed up as the Horseman to scare the superstitious Ichabod out of town, which is why the latter disappeared from Sleepy Hollow. In fact, the first feature film adaptation of the story, the 1922 silent film The Headless Horseman, explicitly shows Brom taking off the costume after Ichabod runs for his life for New York City.
As I said though, the Horseman, which is likely based on the Irish myth of the dullahan and other European myths of headless horsemen (trust me, there are a few, though the dullahan's the most famous), is what made it into pop culture more than anything else, and may play a key role in why the story is still famous today. That, and the Disney cartoon, but mostly the Horseman.
In any case, all this has given me my own ideas for a sequel story to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And while I'm working hard on that, I thought I'd mention this all now. Because let's face it, it's all so fascinating. Also, I probably won't have time to mention it in the post announcing the completion of the first draft. Might as well do it here.
But tell me, what's your take on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? Did you know any of this stuff? What's your favorite adaptation? Let's discuss.
That's all for now. I'll be at work on the story if you need me. Until next time, Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares!
Halfway Through the Victorian England Story!!!
Posted: May 18, 2020 in Novella, Progress Report, Writing
Tags: editing, entertainment, gaslamp fantasy, Gothic fiction, Gothic horror, historical fiction, History, horror, ideas, Jack the Ripper, living and life, novel, novella, progress report, reflections, River of Wrath, Rose, scary stuff, The Pure World Comes, Victorian age, Victorian England, Victorian era, writing
London Bridge and Parliament in the 1890s, right around the time this story is taking place.
Evening! Or is it morning? I'm not sure, it's a late-night writing binge and time becomes meaningless after one of those. Anyway, as you can tell from the title of this post, I'm halfway through this super-important story set in my beloved Victorian England that I've been hinting and mentioning for God knows how long. And now I'm halfway through the damn thing, I think it's time I talked a bit about it.
So, first let me tell you what this story is called. After a lot of deliberation and one or two placeholder titles, I'm calling this story The Pure World Comes. The story follows a young maid named Shirley Dobbins who goes to work for a mad scientist, and what occurs while in his employ.
In terms of genre, I think it's a mix of Gothic horror and gaslamp fantasy (a subgenre I might need to write an article about another day). But it's so much more than that, at least to me. It's also a distillation of everything I've learned over the years about the reign and age of Queen Victoria, and I think it shows in the text.
It's also an excuse for me to reveal the identity of the man I believe was Jack the Ripper. Yeah, that's right, I have a person in mind whom I believe was Jack the Ripper, and I found a way to make it part of the story without shoehorning it in! Who is it, you ask? Well, you'll have to hope the story gets published so you can find out.
And now, onto the page and word count (because of course I'm including that. You guys know me, after all). In terms of 8.5×11 pages, with 12-point Times New Roman font and double-spacing, The Pure World Comes is about 128 pages at this point. And in terms of word count, it's 36,376 words. Yeah. You know how I consider novels as stories at sixty-thousand words or higher? I have a feeling this will be a novel by the time I'm done instead of a novella. Pulling another River of Wrath here, I guess (and yes, I will edit that soon).
Whatever it ends up being at the end, I'll hopefully have it done by the close of May. Mid-June at latest. In the meantime though, I'm heading to bed. It's late (or is it early?), and I need my ugly sleep if I'm going to get anything accomplished tomorrow.
And in the meantime, expect something big Thursday morning, my Followers of Fear. I have something special planned, something I think you'll be excited for. Keep an eye out and stay tuned.
Also, signed copies of my novel Rose are still available! Send an email to ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com to inquire about placing an order.
Anyway, that's all for now. Goodnight, and until next time, pleasant nightmares!
Why Every Horror Fan Should Know about the Grand Guignol Theater
Posted: October 16, 2019 in Scary Stuff
Tags: celebrities, gore, Grand Guignol, History, horror, horror theater, murder, Paris, psychological drama, psychological horror, rape, scary stuff, sexual assault, slasher, Sweeney Todd, the Holocaust, theater, WWII/Holocaust
A poster from a play from the Grand Guignol.
*Trigger warning: this post goes into a lot of dark and uncomfortable topics. If talk of gore, murder, sexual assault and similar subjects upset you, stop reading now. You've been warned.
Have you ever seen any version of Sweeney Todd? Whether you saw a stage production or watched the movie, Sweeney Todd is somewhat of an outlier among famous Broadway musicals. It's dark, bloody, and deals with subject matter other plays don't, such as rape and cannibalism. It's basically a slasher story with singing.
Now, if you're like me (and I assume most of you are, if you're reading this blog), you not only wish there were more plays like Sweeney Todd, but that some of these plays went further in terms of gore and terror. Well, recently I found out that there was a theater dedicated to plays just like that. And it ran for nearly seventy years.
The Grand Guignol Theater was a theater set up in an old Paris chapel in 1897. To summarize its history, the theater at first performed naturalistic plays centered around prostitutes, street thieves and alcoholics. A typical evening at the Grand Guignol would feature five or six short plays, alternating between cynical slice-of-life comedies, horror shows, and more traditional comedies. However, after a change of ownership, the theater began to focus more on horror.
And as time went on, the theater became famous for it. In fact, the Grand Guignol performed over twelve-hundred plays in the course of its existence, focusing on subjects such as insanity, strangulation, rape, leprosy, hypnosis, eye gouging, stabbing, rabies, and so much more. One actress, Paula Maxa, estimated she'd been "murdered" at least ten thousand times in sixty different ways, among other things. To enhance the terror, the theater staff developed a number of techniques to make the horror onstage seem as real as possible, and actors acted as if everything onstage was actually happening.
It wasn't uncommon for audience members to puke or faint during performances.
This was all to the delight of Andre de Lorde, one of the Guignol's writers, who judged his plays based on how many people fainted during a show. Along with psychologist and friend Alfred Binet, he wrote over a hundred plays, all particularly gruesome.
And audiences kept coming back. Like many modern horror fans, they were seeking a thrill. And the Grand Guignol provided. At its peak, celebrities and even royalty visited for shows.
So why did it close? Well, there are a number of theories. By the 1930s, the theater had shifted away from gory shockers to psychological dramas, and attendance began to dip. The rise of movies and TV shows, some of the former being quite gory or sensational themselves, may have also played a part. Theater management even believed revelations about the Holocaust may have played a role, saying "We could never equal Buchenwald."
Whatever the case, the Grand Guignol closed in 1962. Today it's a theater space for a deaf acting troupe.
But while the theater closed, its legacy still exists. Many small theaters and troupes around the world have been formed to preserve the Guignol's legacy and produce their own Guignol-style plays. The Guignol's also made its way into popular culture, and has been referenced in music, movies, books and more.
Still, wouldn't it be amazing if the Grand Guignol was truly revjved? If one of the groups inspired by it managed to achieve the same popularity and staying power as the original theater?
Perhaps someday it will come back. And then perhaps Mr. Sweeney Todd won't be so lonely anymore.
Why You Should be Reading "The Five" by Hallie Rubenhold
Posted: May 12, 2019 in Living and Life, Reflections, Review, Scary Stuff
Tags: authors, entertainment, Hallie Rubenhold, History, horror, Jack the Ripper, living and life, prostitution, reflections, review, Ripperology, scary stuff, social history, The Canonical Five, The Five, Victorian age, Victorian Britain, Victorian England, Victorian era, writing
I've been meaning to write this post for over a week. But as you know from my last post, this past week has been predictably crazy for me.
I heard about Hallie Rubenhold's The Five and was immediately interested. The book retraces the lives of the five victims of Jack the Ripper: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly and proposes to shed a new light on them. I'm no Ripperologist (someone who studies the Ripper murders), not even an amateur one, but I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject and am always interested if someone has discovered something new about the case. And the lives of the five women who made the Ripper famous finally being told? I'm in.
I dove in as soon as I got my copy from the library…and the resulting read blew my mind. You see, for over a hundred and thirty years, the consensus–the one thing that every Ripperologist agrees on–is that the victims were confirmed prostitutes. But is that really the case? Diving into historical records and her understanding of the nineteenth century's social beliefs around women and barely mentioning the Ripper at all, Ms. Rubenhold provides a convincing case to support that we may have been looking at the "Canonical Five"–and thus the Ripper–all wrong. In fact, only the final victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was confirmed to make a living through prostitution, and there's evidence she may have been trafficked at some point.
In fact, Polly Nichols was a wife and mother whose family gained lodging in public housing reserved for families with high moral standing; Annie Chapman was upper-middle class with an upwardly-mobile husband; Elisabeth Stride was a Swedish immigrant from a religious background who ran a coffeehouse with her husband; and Catherine Eddowes was educated for most of her younger life and often made life choices on what would allow her the most freedom. Mary Jane Kelly, we don't know, as many of the details she gave of her life were contradictory and possibly fabricated, but she could've come from a respectable background, as she started out as a high-end courtesan, and they don't let just anyone into those circles.
How did these women end up as prostitutes in the popular mind?
Well, in the eyes of nineteenth-century society, any woman who wasn't, by all appearances anyway, a successful wife and mother with the temperance of the saint, a clean and happy household, and only had a sexual side when her husband desired sex, she was a failure as a woman. She was "broken." Which often was equated as a "fallen woman," which was often equated with prostitution. Often, women in these positions had to take up with men who were either not their husbands or had common-law marriages, which was also considered a sort of prostitution.
And for a number of these women, circumstances in their lives forced them to leave families and husbands and often take lives on the streets, without husbands or homes, which meant in society's eyes they were fallen, and therefore likely prostitutes. The newspapers at the time, more concerned with selling than telling the truth, did little or nothing to dissuade that notion, even when friends and acquaintances for the victims came forward and swore in inquests the victims did not resort to prostitution. Thus a belief, and the theory shaped around it, was formed.
This is significant for a number of reasons. From the perspective of history and Ripperology, it totally changes everything we know. Ms. Rubenhold presents a good case that the Canonical Five were actually incapacitated or sleeping and not in any state of mind to fend off an attacker, rather than attacked while soliciting. This changes the entire MO of the Ripper, the field of study around the murders, and over a century's worth of media on the subject (though some of the latter we can still find entertaining, as long as we remind ourselves how much of it is fiction).
But more importantly, this is a feminist triumph in history. For a hundred and thirty years, The Five have been dismissed and looked over except in the context of their deaths and whoever killed them. Even my copy of The Complete Jack the Ripper doesn't go into much detail on their lives. But this book and its author, through hard work and looking over every scrap of documentation available out there, reminds us these women were just women, more often at mercy to forces beyond their control and the double-standard Victorian women faced than willful participants in the world's oldest profession. At least three suffered from alcoholism. One got pregnant out of wedlock and developed syphilis, and was demonized for it. They did everything they could to stay out of the workhouses, which could forever ruin someone who was forced to enter them. They tried to find love and happiness. They tried to get by in an age and place where women on their own had it very hard.
Imagine if AA had been available to the Five and sobriety was understood to be not a choice but hard work. Imagine if, instead of being demonized for leaving their husbands or getting pregnant/diseases out of wedlock, the authorities looked at the men in their lives. Imagine if they were allowed to pursue lives they wanted, rather than what was expected of them, and not shamed for not fulfilling expectations.
This is especially relevant in today's age. Despite a lot of progress, women still have their sexuality used against them socially and legally. Since I finished reading The Five, I've seen several articles and tweets about men getting little or no jail time for rape, simply because there was only one victim and they were unlikely to reoffend. Here in my home state of Ohio, a minor who was raped and impregnated can't get an abortion because of a new restrictive abortion law. Clearly, on some level, society still feels women should be punished for being anything other than the ideal wife and mother, and it's their own fault if they're not.
This is why you should be reading Hallie Rubenhold's The Five: not only does it present convincing new evidence on a century-old case and force us to reevaluate everything we knew, but it's a call to remind us just how much has stayed the same since 1888, and what we can do to improve that in the future. And in the future, if I ever write my own Ripper-themed story, I'll call back to The Five as I write the story, and keep in mind the lives of these women.
So please, check out The Five's page on Amazon, and consider reading it. You'll find it a revelation as much as I did.
Why Writers Love the Victorian Era
Posted: December 12, 2018 in Reflections, Writing
Tags: Angela Misri, authors, bodice rippers, celebrities, Charles Dickens, comic books, Emma, Emma by Kaoru Mori, England, entertainment, films, ghost stories, Gothic fiction, historical fiction, historical romance, History, horror, ideas, Jack the Ripper, living and life, manga, mysteries, mystery/thriller, novel, Queen Victoria, reflections, romance, science fiction, Sherlock Holmes, short story, steampunk, storytelling, television shows, Victorian age, Victorian Britain, Victorian England, Victorian era, writing
There's a certain era of British history that writers write about maybe more than the medieval era. This era witnessed unprecedented growth and change for the British empire, as well as many of the greatest contributions to literature in the past three hundred years. Not to mention a whole lot of material for bodice rippers and horror stories.
I'm talking about the Victorian era. Named, rather obviously, after Queen Victoria, who sat on the British throne from June 1837 until January 1901. This has long been an era of interest to authors of a number of different genres, as well as among the general populace. Every year, hundreds of works of fiction come out set in that era: novels and short stories, movies, TV shows, comic books. We also have at least a couple of new books on any given topic of the era, and there are Victorian enthusiasts all over the world who research that age like crazy and even like to dress up as Victorians.
But what is it about the Victorian era that entrances people? Why do so many authors visit this age to write?* Well, I have a few guesses as to why that is:
The romance and glitz of the era. I think this is our first association with the Victorian age. I don't know where or when this association popped up, but it's the main reason. More than any other reason, there's a romanticism to that age. Perhaps it might have something to do with the number of famous novels that came out during that era. A number of them have romance as an important plot or subplot. And as many of these books have endured the test of time, they've colored our associations of that age.
Which brings me to the next point:
The literature. While I'm not the biggest fan of the Victorians' writing style (racism aside, if he weren't a halfway decent writer, I'd give up on Lovecraft for taking too much after them), it's undeniable that many of the authors from that age left quite a mark on our modern literature. We still read Charles Dickens in classrooms across the world, and there are countless adaptations of A Christmas Carol out there. The Bronte sisters have all created works that have been held up as timeless romances for generations of readers. And as my good friend Angela Misri will tell you, no character has become more synonymous with the word "detective" than Sherlock Holmes. Truly the literature of the age has had an effect on our view of it.
An era of widespread change. Victorian Britain went through an amazing number of changes during Victoria's reign. The most obvious, of course, was this was the age of the Industrial Revolution. Factories and manufacturing became the hub of the economy, and millions moved to the cities to find work. This change also contributed to a number of new work practices, as well as contributing to the overcrowding of cities and the widening gap between the rich and the poor that we still see today. This was also when Britain spread its empire across the world and into new territories, including parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
But there were other changes. For example, who was allowed to vote was widened, women gained many more rights, and education became available to the lower classes. And that's just scratching the surface of the number of changes that occurred while Victoria was on the throne.
And of course, Jack the Ripper's the perfect embodiment of the age's dark side.
Victorian Britain had a dark and dirty underbelly. While most of us associate the era with glitz and romance, there's a darker side to Queen Victoria's age. Poverty was widespread, and many people struggled to make ends meet. Women often had to turn to prostitution just to get a bite to eat or a place to sleep for the night. Many turned to alcohol or opium to numb their troubles. This was the background that allowed Jack the Ripper to hunt down those prostitutes.
On top of that, medicine, cosmetics, and foods were more likely to kill out of you than help you. Opium or arsenic in your gout cure, lead in your foundation, poor refrigeration and rat droppings in your meat. Hell, your clothes could choke you to death and the dyes could stain your skin for months. People bathed only once a week, and the rest of the time they used heavy perfumes to mask the smell. And if you lived in London, you could expect mud and shit to line the roads rather than bricks!
And God help you if you had a mental illness. Or a woman who wanted anything more than being a dutiful wife and mother. You could get locked up and have cold water dumped on your head from great heights while doctors came up with all sorts of crazy reasons for why you were mad. Common reasons include not being religious enough, having faulty menstruation, or masturbating.
Yeah, you laugh, but imagine having to live through it. Pretty nasty, right? It was even worse if you were Irish. The Irish potato famine was going on around this time, and let me tell you, the folks in Parliament could've done a lot more to help out with that.
It lends itself to many genres. This is probably the biggest reason of all: it's adaptable to many stories. Historical fiction, obviously, but you'll find the Victorians appearing in many different kinds of stories. Romances are often set in that world, but also science fiction (steampunk especially), horror stories (Gothic and ghost stories especially, and some cosmic horror too), fantasies (especially ones with fairies or little girls falling down rabbit holes) and of course, mysteries and thrillers.
All these and more are why the Victorians enjoy such staying power in our media. It's a perfect storm of factors for making a time period not only endure in literature, but give it a special cast that makes it interesting to the writer and average person alike.
I actually first fell in love with the Victorians while in college. I read a manga set in Victorian England, and while it was heavy on the romance and glitz, it got me interested. I've kept reading since then, and found out quite a bit more. And seeing as during my research, I've come up with more than a few ideas for stories, all that research will definitely come in handy.
If you would like to dive into the Victorian world and learn a bit about it, here are my recommendations:
If you want a good intro to Victorian England, this might be a good gateway drug for it.
Emma by Kaoru Mori. In no way related to the novel by Jane Austen, this historical romance manga was my first real introduction to the Victorian period. Beautiful art and a simple yet engaging story.
Victorian Britain from The Great Courses. Narrated by Professor Allitt of Emory University, this series of lectures is a great overview of the period for the average visitor.
The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow. You want to know the most about the most notorious serial killer in history and cut through all the rumor and bullshit? This is the book for you.
How to Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman. You want to know what the average life of a Victorian was like? From rich to poor, this is the book for you.
Victoria: A Life by A.N. Wilson. A friend from college sent this to me as a birthday present. It's a rather eye-opening look at Queen Victoria's life and reign.
Unmentionable by Therese O'Neill. Want to know all about Victorian bathroom habits, and the stuff they don't talk about in the bodice rippers or polite society? You will laugh yourself silly with this one. Trust me, I just finished it yesterday, I would know.
Well, I've about talked your ear off on this age. But can you see why? It's a fascinating era, and it's one that's going to continue to show up in fiction for years to come (especially if I can write a good story or two in it). And it's amazing how just one woman's reign, the first in centuries in her country that nearly never happened (seriously, read how she became heir to the throne. It's insane!), has endured as much as it had. Whether romantic and shiny or dark and seedy, there's a story in this era just for you.
Do you enjoy or write about Victorian England? Why? Why do you think it's so popular?
What media do you recommend for anyone wanting to learn about the era?
*I'm not suggesting, by the by, that this age is visited more than any other. One needs only look at the breadth of literature to see that storytellers are drawing from all of known history and even from dark prehistory to tell stories. I just chose Victoria's reign because that one has special importance to me, as you can tell.
Clumsily Finding My Characters' Voices
Posted: August 25, 2018 in Reflections, Writing
Tags: authors, character, character history, character voices, characters, editing, entertainment, History, Inner Dialogue, living and life, London Blitz, reflections, religion, Rose, self-pub authors, short story, writing
Whenever I write through the perspective of a particular character in a story, it's never simply just using my good-ol'-Rami-Ungar-style of narration and pretending to see things through the eyes of said character. I wish it were that simple. Characters, despite being the product of an author's imagination, tend to feel like independent entities who are telling me their stories (if any psychologists or philosophers can explain that to me, I'd love to hear your two cents). Still, transmitting the story from my head, where the story's presented as a movie with narration mixed in, to the page requires me to figure out how that voice manifests on the page.
Sometimes that's easy to figure out. Sometimes it's not.
The past couple of stories I've worked on–Mother of the King, The Night Hitler Came to London, and this novelette I'm working on currently–have been challenging when it comes to figuring out the narrators' voices. This probably has something to do with the fact that the POV characters in these stories have lives that are very different from mine. For the first two, the POV characters have both been British, which I am not. I've been relying on all the British novels, TV shows and movies I've consumed over the years, trying to make them seem British, rather than Americans throwing around British colloquialisms like "bloody hell" or "tosser." And in the case of The Night Hitler Came to London, the two main characters are growing up during the London Blitz, so trying to tap into the mindset living during that particular moment of history isn't the easiest.
Then again, my country has been at war in some way or another since 2001. So perhaps it's a bit easier than I give it credit.
And this current story I'm working on…whoo boy! I'm back to working on a novelette I started between two previous drafts of Rose, and the main character is a young housewife from the American South during the 1960s. That's already pretty alien to my own experience, so it's a challenge to make her sound like a real person without resorting to a stereotypical Southern accent. I've made some progress on that in this latest attempt on the story and I think I've figured it out, but I'm sure there will be challenges in the future, I may have to work on her a bit more before I try to publish this story anywhere.
And I'm probably not the only author who struggles with this. Because of how different their lives are from ours, or just how differently their minds work, there will be characters whose heads we struggle to get into and whose voices we struggle to translate to the page. With that in mind, I have a few tips on how an author can figure this out:
Look at their background. While every individual is different and background doesn't determine everything, it can have a huge influence on how a person–and a character–turns out. How they were raised, socioeconomic status, education, religion, nationality, ethnicity, language, who they hung out with, how they were treated by teachers, how they did in sports, what they saw on the Internet. All this makes us. If we can figure all out of this, it can help us get in our characters' heads and figure out their voices.
How do you want them to come off? How do you want your audience to perceive your character? If funny, make sure their observations are full of jokes and witticisms. Narcissistic? Everything comes back to them and makes them look good. Do they feel persecuted? Everything and everyone they come into contact with should reinforce that belief, even if to us we see innocence in these interactions. If you know how your character should come off to readers, you'll have an easier time writing them.
Have an inner dialogue. This is something I did for my character in my current WIP. I go into this in more detail in my article on Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, The Inner Dialogue: A Method For Figuring Out Your Stories, so I highly recommend you check it out. If you don't have time to read it, this is just having a conversation with your inner writer. You can also do this with your character. After all, characters are independent entities after a sort, so you can learn a lot by "hearing" them "speak."
Some characters are easier than others to understand and translate to the page. But when they are, you shouldn't give up. There are plenty of ways to figure them out. And when you do, that'll make all the hard work all the more gratifying.
Have you worked with characters whose voices were hard to find? What did you do figure out their voices?
A Supernatural Visit to the Ohio State Reformatory
Posted: August 6, 2018 in Living and Life, Scary Stuff, Tales across the US
Tags: Air Force One (film), dowsing rods, entertainment, films, Frank Hanger, Ghost Adventures, ghost hunting, ghosts, haunted locations, haunted prisons, History, horror, Instagram, James Lockhart, living and life, Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, Mansfield, Ohio, Ohio State Reformatory, Paris catacombs, prison, reflections, review, scary stuff, social media, Stephen King, Tales across the US, The Shawshank Redemption, travel, travelogue, Ungar family, Ungarfest, YouTube, YouTube video, Zak Bagans
I've mentioned time and time again how I want to visit haunted locations. In the past, I managed to visit the Paris catacombs, where I saw plenty of skulls but no paranormal phenomena, and last year I visited The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, where I caught my first paranormal evidence on video. And over this weekend, I had the opportunity to visit another one, one that's in my home state of Ohio that I've been wanting to visit for a long time: The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. And wouldn't you know it? I saw plenty of stuff that can be considered out of the ordinary (besides me, I mean).
Some context first: for a while now, my dad's side of the family have been planning an "Ungarfest," where the whole family gets together and hangs out. It's a chance for all three of the families–my dad and his family, his brother and his family, and his sister and her family–to see each other now that most of the next generation are grown and there's a chance our lives will take us all over the place. Currently all three families still live in Ohio and Michigan, so the majority of us were able to come together and see each other. And guess where the family ended up spending the afternoon after spending the morning at a nature garden in the morning? You guessed it, the Ohio State Reformatory.
Now some of you may know the reformatory, or OSR for short, as the place where The Shawshank Redemption, among other famous films and a few TV shows, were filmed. However, the OSR is also famous for being something of a paranormal hotspot. Plenty of deaths have occurred there over the years, and of course stories of hauntings have popped up over the years. With that in mind, I bought my own pair of dowsing rods so I could speak to the spirits there (the ones at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast worked so well for me).
Me protesting my guilt with a cell-door on the lawn.
Me pretending to shank my stepsister for some reason.
So once we got there, we went in (two of my sisters decided not to go in because they found the whole thing too freaky), and met JD, our tour guide, who was honestly just the best tour guide we could ask for have (I'll get into why in a bit, but for now, just know that if you get to come here for a tour, you can't go wrong by asking for JD). He took us around for the first half of the tour, talking to us about the history of the prison and what it was like for a prisoner during the prison's heyday.
How can one describe the prison accurately? Well, it's big, I can say that. Metal and drywall and brick and stone are everywhere. The paint on the walls and every other surface is peeling all over the place, and you can smell the building's age and paint everywhere. In various rooms, you'll see original artifacts from when it was an active prison, such as the original electric chair that was used there, products made in the shops the prison ran, and much, much more.
You also got to see a lot of the locations where The Shawshank Redemption and other films used as sets. Warden Norton's office is perfectly preserved for the most part, as well as the door that the guard broke the window in that one scene of the movie. And apparently Brooks and Red's apartment was filmed in the prison too. It was cool to see that piece of film history on display there.
JD (left) and his fellow tour guide Michael (right) talking to us in the room where a scene from Air Force One was filmed.
Me at the foot of the stairs where Andy Dufresne and Warden Norton talked about budget issues in getting a library.
I'm at Warden Norton's desk. There's a bit of "blood" still on the window.
Me doing my imitation of that guard from the movie. Also, this is my new author pic.
And so was Rami
But definitely one of the best parts of the tour was JD. He was friendly, funny, and a really cool dude with a voice that reminded me of musicians I've seen in movies and TV (and that description is how you know I've been writing for a long while). I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out he was a musician, he seems like the kind of guy who would enjoy playing some guitar on the weekends. But he was also very inspiring. You see, JD was an inmate for a short time at OSR back in the 1980s. During the tour, he took us by the cell in the west block where he stayed while there, and how his experience at OSR helped him turn his life around. It was really inspiring to hear. A lot of people think of people who have gone to jail, and it isn't usually a positive image. But JD was able to give us this personal story of how his stay affected him. Combined with his friendly and very humble personality, it really made his story all the more powerful. You couldn't help but like him, not just as a tour guide but as a person. And on top of his personal knowledge of what it was like to be a prisoner at the Ohio State Reformatory, it just made for an excellent tour.
JD in front of his old cell, telling us how being at OSR changed his life.
If it's not obvious, I highly recommend JD as a tour guide. On a scale of 1 to 5, a definite 5. If you get him as your tour guide, you won't regret it.
Of course, you're curious about the paranormal stuff I witnessed. First off, the dowsing rods had an excellent first time out. I got a lot of communication from spirits, some of which made it onto video and then onto YouTube. One of the first places we visited was solitary confinement, where the spirit of Frank Hanger, a security guard who was murdered by three inmates in that area, is said to hang out. Here's the video of that particular encounter.
Something you should know: that question Jay threw out about the electric chair was a trick question to make sure we were actually talking to a spirit and it wasn't random movements on the part of the rods. Turns out it wasn't random movements: those three convicts committed suicide, so Officer Hanger's "no" was a point for the I-was-communicating-with-spirits side.
The other major spirit I spoke to was that of James Lockhart, an inmate who killed himself by immolation. His cell is notoriously haunted. I got to speak with him as well, and learned some interesting things.
Sorry about the vertical filming. You can only do so much with your cell phone.
I also had a lot more communications, some of which I got on video. But these are the best quality, so I wanted to make sure people got to see them. You can draw your own conclusions on what happened while at OSR that day (just don't leave vitriol-filled comments for me to read), but I like to think that I got some communication from the other side that day. And a lot of people who witnessed me using the rods, including this one family I kept seeing around the east cell block (they're the ones asking me to ask Lockhart if he burned himself), probably believe me now (I think they took video footage of some of my communications. There may be footage of that floating around the Internet somewhere).
Oh, one more thing I want to mention. This isn't so much explicitly paranormal as it is weird, but it's worth a mention. You remember that photo of me at Warden Norton's desk? Well, this may have just been an issue in the transition from my camera to Instagram, but it's still weird and kind of freaky.
I have no idea what happened here. The photo of me at the foot of those stairs seems to have been overlaid with me at Warden Norton's desk. Not sure how that happened, but it is pretty cool. Even if it isn't exactly supernatural.
All in all, the Ohio State Reformatory was an amazing experience. It is a beautiful building, filled to the brim with history, pieces of culture, and a few spirits. I'm so glad I got to go, as well as to test out my dowsing rods in such a great venue. And now that I have my driver's license, I may be able to go up again someday very soon and perhaps get some more proof of the paranormal. In fact, you should bet on that happening (Zak Bagans, call me). Until then, definitely consider making a trip to the Reformatory and seeing the history and hauntings yourself. Guaranteed you won't regret it.
And thanks to JD and the folks at OSR for hosting my family this weekend. We enjoyed ourselves immensely while there. I hope you'll see us (or maybe just me) again soon.
The Ungar clan, AKA 40% of the reason I'm as messed up as I am.
That's all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you enjoyed my little travelogue. I'll be seeing you all again very soon. Until then, pleasant nightmares!
The Weird Truth about King Arthur
Posted: April 19, 2018 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
Tags: authors, books, Britain, England, entertainment, Europe, folklore, Guinevere, Harry Potter, History, ideas, King Arthur, Lancelot, living and life, Merlin, Mordred, Professor Dorsey Armstrong, publishing, reflections, social media, storytelling, The Great Courses, United Kingdom, writing, YouTube, YouTube video
A portrait of King Arthur by Charles Ernest Butler. Probably not what he looked like at all.
So this is a bit outside my normal wheelhouse, but I decided to write a post about it because I'm all fired up about the subject (and really, isn't that the reason we write anything anywhere?).
Recently, I've become very interested in King Arthur. Specifically, I wanted to know whether or not he was real, and how this whole story of him, Merlin, Lancelot and Guinevere, his sister/lover Morgan le Fay and his nephew/bastard son Mordred came to be. I mean, do we really believe a guy who didn't know he was the bastard son of the previous king was taught by a magician, pulled a sword from a stone, had an idyllic kingdom stretching across Europe for a few years, only for it to be undone by his affair with his sister and his wife's affair with one of his knights, to be gospel historical fact? I wanted to know the truth, and I wanted to know it as in-depth as possible.
This new obsession of mine started after one of the YouTube channels I follow, Overly Sarcastic Productions, produced a video about Arthur lore, and how that got built up over the past fifteen-hundred years (click here to watch the video, as well as here for their follow-up on some of Arthur's lesser-known knights). These laid the groundwork for me to get interested in the subject, and to want to find out a bit more. From there, I downloaded a lecture series from The Great Courses company (college level lecture series you can listen to while you work or drive. Definitely check them out, they're very informative) on Arthur, narrated by Professor Dorsey Armstrong of Purdue University, and an expert on the subject of Arthuriana.
If you don't have time to watch either video or to listen to Professor Armstrong's lecture series (though you should at least spend a half hour on that first video), let me do my best to put it really simply: probably ninety-five percent of what you think you know about King Arthur is complete and utter fiction. There's some evidence to suggest that during the late 5th and early 6th century, the invasion of the Saxons in England was stopped and in some places reversed, keeping the peace for a few generations, and that someone probably lead a war effort that caused that peace.
This figure was probably the basis of Arthur. The name Arthur, by the way, doesn't appear until after this time period, but then becomes quite widespread among Bretons. This possibly means that the name "Arthur" wasn't this figure's real name, but maybe an acronym, abbreviation, or nickname based on a Celtic or Latin name. A number of figures listed in history annals from around or after that time have been pointed to as possibly the inspiration for Arthur, but documentation from that time is scarce, so no one really knows if any of these figures were Arthur or given that name as a title or nickname.
So, Arthur was possibly real. We're not sure, because there's only so much evidence. He could be as made up as Harry Potter, and was a folklore character adapted by the Bretons for their current predicament.
Pages from the Historia regum Britanniae, the first King Arthur bestseller ever written.
At the very least, the legend of Arthur cemented itself and grew over time. From a local warlord to king of all the Bretons, and then other elements started getting added on, such as Merlin, who was probably based on a mad bard who lived a couple of centuries after the Arthur figure. Eventually, a man by the name of Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote this huge book called Historia regum Brittaniae, a pseudo-history of Britain that dealt quite a bit with Arthur. It was spread across the European continent, where other writers from as far as Italy, Scandinavia, and Russia started adding their own spins on Arthur's story and adding their own elements. These elements include Lancelot, who was the invention of a French writer, Excalibur and the Holy Grail, and Mordred being Arthur's incestuous offspring. And as years passed, storytellers just kept adding elements and remixing the already-available tales until we have all the Arthur stories available today.
It's like what might happen if, a thousand years from now, George Washington was known as Walsh; his historicity was debated; he was credited not only with defeating the British but conquering the entire continental United States; had Superman's powers; and was taught by Mark Twain, who's been combined with Nikola Tesla and has lightning powers.
Yeah, kind of crazy. Also a huge simplification, but it's a blog post. What do you expect of me?
Like I said, anyone can add to the Arthur canon. Doesn't mean it'll be good.
Anyway, it's just mind-blowing how great an influence one man who may or may not have existed and probably only ruled a small area of land if he did exist has had on Western society. Most likely, if you've lived anywhere English culture has reached, you've heard something about Arthur. You just probably never realized that there was so much debate around him or there's no real canon about him, because so much about him is in flux from storyteller to storyteller.
It's also very inspiring, in a way. You can write almost any sort of story about Arthur, and it can be considered part of the canon (whether or not it's any good though, is left up to the storytellers and their audiences). The possibilities are kind of endless, as long as you keep an open mind. I've already had an idea for a short story involving the historical Arthur figure and the subsequent works written about him. I plan to write it at some point this year and then submit it to my publisher, Castrum Press, for one of their anthologies (they're doing some anthologies, BTW. Check them out here if you're interested. All are welcome to submit). Hopefully it gets accepted, and maybe some people will like it. We'll see.
Whatever you know or believe about Arthur, it's undeniable that he's had an influence on the world. His legend is constantly growing, morphing, and mutating. And all from one man, a man we don't even know if he was real or not. It's definitely a mind-boggling, cool, and inspiring subject, and I'm so glad I decided to dive into it.
I hope, if anything, this post makes you curious enough to dive in too.