J.E. Anckorn's Blog
October 25, 2014
Curiosity Quills Press Halloween
This Halloween, Curiosity Quills Press authors are spreading the spookiness by sharing our own personal paranormal experiences. Get haunted with these bone-chilling blogs, or post your own! #myghoststory
My bedroom. The early ‘90s. I’m fourteen. Normally I’d paint you the scene using subtler brushstrokes – Hey! I’m wearing a bucket hat and a baby doll dress, listening to some rad Nirvana, seated in the inflatable chair that signifies both the rise of British rave culture, and the impracticality in choosing soft furnishings that only a teenager possesses.
In actual fact I’m wearing some sort of regrettable velvet waistcoat, listening to Edith Piaf, and trying to replicate an oil painting from my “History of art” book of the “Pre-Raphaelite woman floating in pond is unhappy about it” variety. Yes, I was that girl.
This is the first time I hear the knocking. Not on my chamber door, but on the floor beneath me. The carpet is the sort of apologetic not-quite-blue even the Canterville ghost would disdain to stain, so the last thing on my mind is the supernatural. Oh hell, this is Halloween; let’s give it some Stephen Kingian caps: The Supernatural. That’s better.
There are three loud bangs, hard enough to shake the floorboards beneath me. I pause for a second, then shrug (I probably didn’t shrug. Who shrugs in real life? “I perform a visual shorthand for being unperturbed by current circumstances” takes too long to write though) and go back to my painting.
The next day the same thing happens; three hard raps on the floor where I’m sitting. Yesterday my family was home, and I assumed one of them was banging on the ceiling of the room below to communicate a cup of tea or a bollocking is in the offing- such is the way of my people. Today I am in the house alone.
I frown, sloshing my brush clean in the jar of white spirits. I don’t recall what color I was using, but let’s say the jam jar acquired a sinister sanguine air, as red paint spiraled up through the liquid, like fresh blood. This is called foreshadowing. Or it would be if I ended up pureed and decanted into a jam jar, which – SPOILER ALERT – I don’t. There is a jar later on though. Beat that, Ramsey Campbell.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Well, it isn’t coming from outside the house. I can feel the floorboards shiver beneath me with each blow.
I run downstairs, expecting to see my dad come home early, but the room below- my parent’s bedroom- is empty.
Upstairs I crank the Piaf louder, and load my brush with titanium white. The jam jar of swirls Barbara Cartland pink in defiance of the situation.
That’s when the something – sorry, Stephen King – The Something knocks again.
I don’t believe in ghosts, not really. I go through the options. Water pipes, settling wood, a mouse under the floorboards.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It could be… something to do with magnets. Deathwatch beetles. A very localized earthquake.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
So of course I do what any teenage girl of chainsawable age would do in that situation. I knock back.
Shave and a haircut.
There’s a pause, then “knock knock.”
Unless the mouse is named Jerry, things have taken a turn for the weird. If not The Weird.
I try again, four short fast raps this time, followed by two long ones.
A pause, then the same pattern is repeated back to me. The carpet ripples with the force of the blows. Whatever is bashing on the underside of my floor is strong.
A shiver prickles up my body. I stub out the paintbrush on a wad of paper towels and scamper downstairs, to stand in the room below mine. The dog pads through from the kitchen, and I can’t help but notice the way her eyes are fixed on the stairs and the fur on her back is beginning to bristle.
“Hello?” I call.
Nothing, and then a stealthy noise above me that sounds like someone shifting from foot to foot, right in the spot where I had been painting minutes before.
The dog whines nervously, tail wagging down low.
Above me, there’s a thud, like a footstep, and then another. My brain runs a nervy obstacle course: Could my parents have gotten home and gone upstairs without me noticing somehow?
“Hello?” I call again.
The footsteps – definitely footsteps – are louder now. Whatever is up there is BIG. And they’re speeding up too. I hear them stride over my bedroom floor, and a second later a door slams overhead.
The dog starts to growl.
The footsteps kick up from a walk to a jog. They’re turning the corner of the corridor above me, and I know than in a second whatever is up there is going to appear at the top of the stairs.
The dog is the first one to act. Maybe this is why the dog is always the first one the author offs in horror novels? They are plot killers; they don’t stand about waiting to be turned inside out by poltergeists, they get while the getting is good.
She sprints towards the backdoor, me close on her... whatever the dog equivalent of heels are.
I get the door open just as the footsteps start thundering down the stairs, the whole house seems to shiver with the noise of it.
The dog and I fall out into the yard in a tangle of paws and regrettable velvet waistcoats.
The two of us stand in the porch for the next hour until my family comes home.
Several other weird things happened in that house. Black shapes of animals and small figures dashing around at night. One time three eggs sitting on the countertop exploded one after the other, and a jar lid shot across the room, smashing against the wall. Either the spirit hated cholesterol or was a big fan of Ghostbusters.
I still don’t really believe in ghosts, but I still can’t explain what happened that day.
How does a water pipe knock back in perfect sequence, and more chilling still, what kind of fourteen-year-old wears a velvet waistcoat?
Other stories
Michael Cristiano
Samantha Dunaway Bryant
Katie Teller
My bedroom. The early ‘90s. I’m fourteen. Normally I’d paint you the scene using subtler brushstrokes – Hey! I’m wearing a bucket hat and a baby doll dress, listening to some rad Nirvana, seated in the inflatable chair that signifies both the rise of British rave culture, and the impracticality in choosing soft furnishings that only a teenager possesses.
In actual fact I’m wearing some sort of regrettable velvet waistcoat, listening to Edith Piaf, and trying to replicate an oil painting from my “History of art” book of the “Pre-Raphaelite woman floating in pond is unhappy about it” variety. Yes, I was that girl.
This is the first time I hear the knocking. Not on my chamber door, but on the floor beneath me. The carpet is the sort of apologetic not-quite-blue even the Canterville ghost would disdain to stain, so the last thing on my mind is the supernatural. Oh hell, this is Halloween; let’s give it some Stephen Kingian caps: The Supernatural. That’s better.
There are three loud bangs, hard enough to shake the floorboards beneath me. I pause for a second, then shrug (I probably didn’t shrug. Who shrugs in real life? “I perform a visual shorthand for being unperturbed by current circumstances” takes too long to write though) and go back to my painting.
The next day the same thing happens; three hard raps on the floor where I’m sitting. Yesterday my family was home, and I assumed one of them was banging on the ceiling of the room below to communicate a cup of tea or a bollocking is in the offing- such is the way of my people. Today I am in the house alone.
I frown, sloshing my brush clean in the jar of white spirits. I don’t recall what color I was using, but let’s say the jam jar acquired a sinister sanguine air, as red paint spiraled up through the liquid, like fresh blood. This is called foreshadowing. Or it would be if I ended up pureed and decanted into a jam jar, which – SPOILER ALERT – I don’t. There is a jar later on though. Beat that, Ramsey Campbell.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Well, it isn’t coming from outside the house. I can feel the floorboards shiver beneath me with each blow.
I run downstairs, expecting to see my dad come home early, but the room below- my parent’s bedroom- is empty.
Upstairs I crank the Piaf louder, and load my brush with titanium white. The jam jar of swirls Barbara Cartland pink in defiance of the situation.
That’s when the something – sorry, Stephen King – The Something knocks again.
I don’t believe in ghosts, not really. I go through the options. Water pipes, settling wood, a mouse under the floorboards.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It could be… something to do with magnets. Deathwatch beetles. A very localized earthquake.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
So of course I do what any teenage girl of chainsawable age would do in that situation. I knock back.
Shave and a haircut.
There’s a pause, then “knock knock.”
Unless the mouse is named Jerry, things have taken a turn for the weird. If not The Weird.
I try again, four short fast raps this time, followed by two long ones.
A pause, then the same pattern is repeated back to me. The carpet ripples with the force of the blows. Whatever is bashing on the underside of my floor is strong.
A shiver prickles up my body. I stub out the paintbrush on a wad of paper towels and scamper downstairs, to stand in the room below mine. The dog pads through from the kitchen, and I can’t help but notice the way her eyes are fixed on the stairs and the fur on her back is beginning to bristle.
“Hello?” I call.
Nothing, and then a stealthy noise above me that sounds like someone shifting from foot to foot, right in the spot where I had been painting minutes before.
The dog whines nervously, tail wagging down low.
Above me, there’s a thud, like a footstep, and then another. My brain runs a nervy obstacle course: Could my parents have gotten home and gone upstairs without me noticing somehow?
“Hello?” I call again.
The footsteps – definitely footsteps – are louder now. Whatever is up there is BIG. And they’re speeding up too. I hear them stride over my bedroom floor, and a second later a door slams overhead.
The dog starts to growl.
The footsteps kick up from a walk to a jog. They’re turning the corner of the corridor above me, and I know than in a second whatever is up there is going to appear at the top of the stairs.
The dog is the first one to act. Maybe this is why the dog is always the first one the author offs in horror novels? They are plot killers; they don’t stand about waiting to be turned inside out by poltergeists, they get while the getting is good.
She sprints towards the backdoor, me close on her... whatever the dog equivalent of heels are.
I get the door open just as the footsteps start thundering down the stairs, the whole house seems to shiver with the noise of it.
The dog and I fall out into the yard in a tangle of paws and regrettable velvet waistcoats.
The two of us stand in the porch for the next hour until my family comes home.
Several other weird things happened in that house. Black shapes of animals and small figures dashing around at night. One time three eggs sitting on the countertop exploded one after the other, and a jar lid shot across the room, smashing against the wall. Either the spirit hated cholesterol or was a big fan of Ghostbusters.
I still don’t really believe in ghosts, but I still can’t explain what happened that day.
How does a water pipe knock back in perfect sequence, and more chilling still, what kind of fourteen-year-old wears a velvet waistcoat?
Other stories
Michael Cristiano
Samantha Dunaway Bryant
Katie Teller
September 4, 2014
How likely are YOU to survive the alien apocalypse?
FORM 21B: SO YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU’LL SURVIVE THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE.
The first thing is not to panic. Inside every cloud is a silver lining – it’s just that sometimes that silver lining turns out to be a fleet of shimmering intergalactic killing machines, bent on the total annihilation of the human race. On the bright side, some of you may well survive! It’s entirely possible, however unlikely. It’s like those news stories featuring a dog who’s learned to ride a bike: extraordinary, but possible. Everybody loves those stories! And although we are sad to report that “Cyclin’ Rex, the rolling retriever” was one of the first to go when the aliens landed, his disintegration was probably largely painless. One of the good things about alien death rays!
We understand though that many of you may be dismayed by recent events, which is why we’ve conceived this handy chart. It can even be cut out and folded up to put in your wallet for future reference. Let’s face it, it’s not like you need money anymore! What are you going to spend it on? Saucer-proof galoshes? Good luck with that!
The purpose of our chart is to help you, the concerned reader determine whether you stand any chance of survival at all, or if it might just be easier for everyone if you submitted to the inevitable and took the initiative to do something useful with the scant hours remaining to you. Maybe act as a human shield for someone who actually does stand a chance of making it through the following weeks un-disintegrated?
AWARD YOURSELF 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Cowardly. It’s probably difficult for you to read this at all, in the dark womb-like embrace of whatever bed, closet, or burrow you scurried into as soon as the first saucer descended, but congratulations! If your natural response to danger, death and dismemberment is to elbow friends and loved ones aside in a craven search for a place to quiver until the explosions stop, award yourself ten points. Just try to snivel quietly.
2) Speech-maker. Remember that time someone cut in front of you in the coffee shop, even though there was clearly a line? Sure, they made out like they were “just” reading the menu and didn’t happen to notice that there was a line. Everyone else was just going to let it fly, staring at their worthless shoes, like coffee-based INJUSTICE wasn’t happening right there in front of them. But not you. You were infuriated, emboldened, and perilously under-caffeinated. You weren’t going to have it! You made A SPEECH! People love a speech maker. You don’t have a solution to the problem, but you can talk REALLY LOUDLY about it, possibly with a staunchly clenched fist, and a single crystalline tear springing from the corner of your eye. People will throw themselves bodily in front of raygun blasts, if not to save you, then so they won’t have to hear you yak on anymore.
3) Adorable. Wide-eyed? Tow-headed? Have you ever been likened to a small woodland creature such as a fawn, squirrel, or snuffle-nosed bunny, but very much NOT a wolf, earwig, or snaggle-toothed polecat? Congratulations! You may well be too adorable for even a heartless (literally! their anatomy is a nightmarish mélange of tubes and knucklebones) alien invader to destroy. Possibly you’ll be kept as some sort of pet, or an exhibit in some hellish alien zoo or sideshow. Still, could be worse, eh?
4) Perpetually furious. You scream at store clerks when they fail to anticipate your stance on paper vs. plastic. You froth at the mouth when waiters add a discretionary gratuity to your bill as though the tithe were being demanded in blood. You spring from your car with a gleam in your eye and murder in your fists if someone neglects to accelerate away from a green traffic signal within the approved one second time-frame. You are a ball of spiky, unpredictable rage! You’ll fight until your knuckles bleed then fight some more, and if the only person you’re making life more difficult for is yourself, then so be it! This doesn’t make you a bad-ass or fighting machine in our brave new post-apocalyptic world, but there is a good chance any intergalactic invaders will choose to sidle quietly away from you, rather than dealing with any more of your shit.
5) Handy. You know the difference between a slide rule and …a regular rule. You smell faintly of sawdust and industry. You can cast your beady eye on the pile of smoking debris that was once a family home, and not only see how to fashion precious memories and asbestos into a primitive water cleansing machine, but how to give it a cappuccino frothing function as well. You will own the only underground survival bunker with a perfectly level, handmade spice rack. Bravo.
DEDUCT 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Tasty. Your supple flesh is marbled with rich veins of deliciousness. You smell faintly of pico de gallo. Complete strangers have been known to wistfully sandwich your hand between two slices of artisanal bread in the bakery aisle of Whole Foods. Awkward! Sorry, but if you are naturally delicious, you’ll be the first to go. I’m not saying our alien visitors are automatically fiends with an endless gnawing hunger for flinching human flesh just because their ways are different from our own, but I haven’t seen any of them lining up at Dunkin Donuts for a dozen old-fashioneds – even with the seasonal return of ubiquitous pumpkin™ flavored coffee products.
2) Cat Owner. Sure, you’d love to scatter to the bunker, but not without kitty! Come out from under the bed kitty! No seriously, it’s okay. Good kitty. No, not in the closet! What’s that noise? Are you throwing up in my emergency preparedness kit? Good kitty, that’s it, we’ll put you in your cat carrier, and… seriously kitty!? No, that’s okay, my arm was going to wildly clawed at some point, why not now? Kitty? Where are you? Um, I think the tripods are coming? It would be great if you could get in the carrier now. Oh, you got in the carrier of your own accord while I was crawling about commando style under my own bed, tearfully pleading with what turned out to be a pair of wadded up yoga pants. THANKS, KITTY. And if you’re tasty there was always a good chance kitty would have eaten you the first time you fell asleep regardless of invaders.
3) Noble. There is no alien word for nobility. They just don’t understand the human urge to sacrifice yourself for your fellow man, preferably while magnificently silhouetted against the setting sun. The closest word they have is “Gr0ntschluk,” which our scientists tell us most closely corresponds to the English word “sucker.” Make of that what you will.
4) Nice shoes. The post-apocalyptic doomscape of smoking debris and sinister glowing craters is no respecter of fashion. Things were bad enough when you could snap off an exquisitely engineered Italian heel in a subway grate, or brush your gleaming oxblood leather instep against a wad of repulsive gum on a park bench. Now you have to navigate around pools of acidic ichor and the charred remains of the badly dressed just to fetch your mail! Your wincing, daintily tip-toeing form will provide an easy target for alien snipers, but at least you’ll die with your !fabulous boots on.
5) Signature accessory. We need to talk, because like owning a cat, having a signature accessory makes you doomed in every scenario, not just when the little green men come knocking. Are you the guy who always wears the sweet yellow headphones? The chick with the quirky red sunglasses? That one goth who writes ostentatiously in a diary all the time? You’re just begging fate to smack you down. The visual shorthand of your accessory of choice flying poignantly through the air in cinematic slow motion to imply your off-screen death is too juicy a bone for the universe to resist. Institute a uniform of sensible khakis. No one was ever moved to tears/awarding an Oscar over the image of a pair of smoking khakis fluttering back to earth, post explosion.
How did you score?
-50 to -30: Yikes. We told you to get a dog instead.
-20 to 0: Oh well, at least you probably got some running in. Running is very good for you. Sorry, was. Running was very good for you.
10 to 30: Hmmm, not bad. Most of that radiation will scrub off in the shower, I expect. And they can do miraculous things with spiked shoulder pads in our brave new world! No one will even notice the…thing.
40 to 50: Congratulations! You’re a winner winner, irradiated chickenesque flavored survival ration dinner! I mean sure, society as we knew it has been mercilessly annihilated, but you’re still here, and that’s what counts. Cockroaches can be quite personable once you get to know them. And it’s not like you have anyone else to hang with.
Like this blog? Read my upcoming book, Untaken
The first thing is not to panic. Inside every cloud is a silver lining – it’s just that sometimes that silver lining turns out to be a fleet of shimmering intergalactic killing machines, bent on the total annihilation of the human race. On the bright side, some of you may well survive! It’s entirely possible, however unlikely. It’s like those news stories featuring a dog who’s learned to ride a bike: extraordinary, but possible. Everybody loves those stories! And although we are sad to report that “Cyclin’ Rex, the rolling retriever” was one of the first to go when the aliens landed, his disintegration was probably largely painless. One of the good things about alien death rays!
We understand though that many of you may be dismayed by recent events, which is why we’ve conceived this handy chart. It can even be cut out and folded up to put in your wallet for future reference. Let’s face it, it’s not like you need money anymore! What are you going to spend it on? Saucer-proof galoshes? Good luck with that!
The purpose of our chart is to help you, the concerned reader determine whether you stand any chance of survival at all, or if it might just be easier for everyone if you submitted to the inevitable and took the initiative to do something useful with the scant hours remaining to you. Maybe act as a human shield for someone who actually does stand a chance of making it through the following weeks un-disintegrated?
AWARD YOURSELF 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Cowardly. It’s probably difficult for you to read this at all, in the dark womb-like embrace of whatever bed, closet, or burrow you scurried into as soon as the first saucer descended, but congratulations! If your natural response to danger, death and dismemberment is to elbow friends and loved ones aside in a craven search for a place to quiver until the explosions stop, award yourself ten points. Just try to snivel quietly.
2) Speech-maker. Remember that time someone cut in front of you in the coffee shop, even though there was clearly a line? Sure, they made out like they were “just” reading the menu and didn’t happen to notice that there was a line. Everyone else was just going to let it fly, staring at their worthless shoes, like coffee-based INJUSTICE wasn’t happening right there in front of them. But not you. You were infuriated, emboldened, and perilously under-caffeinated. You weren’t going to have it! You made A SPEECH! People love a speech maker. You don’t have a solution to the problem, but you can talk REALLY LOUDLY about it, possibly with a staunchly clenched fist, and a single crystalline tear springing from the corner of your eye. People will throw themselves bodily in front of raygun blasts, if not to save you, then so they won’t have to hear you yak on anymore.
3) Adorable. Wide-eyed? Tow-headed? Have you ever been likened to a small woodland creature such as a fawn, squirrel, or snuffle-nosed bunny, but very much NOT a wolf, earwig, or snaggle-toothed polecat? Congratulations! You may well be too adorable for even a heartless (literally! their anatomy is a nightmarish mélange of tubes and knucklebones) alien invader to destroy. Possibly you’ll be kept as some sort of pet, or an exhibit in some hellish alien zoo or sideshow. Still, could be worse, eh?
4) Perpetually furious. You scream at store clerks when they fail to anticipate your stance on paper vs. plastic. You froth at the mouth when waiters add a discretionary gratuity to your bill as though the tithe were being demanded in blood. You spring from your car with a gleam in your eye and murder in your fists if someone neglects to accelerate away from a green traffic signal within the approved one second time-frame. You are a ball of spiky, unpredictable rage! You’ll fight until your knuckles bleed then fight some more, and if the only person you’re making life more difficult for is yourself, then so be it! This doesn’t make you a bad-ass or fighting machine in our brave new post-apocalyptic world, but there is a good chance any intergalactic invaders will choose to sidle quietly away from you, rather than dealing with any more of your shit.
5) Handy. You know the difference between a slide rule and …a regular rule. You smell faintly of sawdust and industry. You can cast your beady eye on the pile of smoking debris that was once a family home, and not only see how to fashion precious memories and asbestos into a primitive water cleansing machine, but how to give it a cappuccino frothing function as well. You will own the only underground survival bunker with a perfectly level, handmade spice rack. Bravo.
DEDUCT 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Tasty. Your supple flesh is marbled with rich veins of deliciousness. You smell faintly of pico de gallo. Complete strangers have been known to wistfully sandwich your hand between two slices of artisanal bread in the bakery aisle of Whole Foods. Awkward! Sorry, but if you are naturally delicious, you’ll be the first to go. I’m not saying our alien visitors are automatically fiends with an endless gnawing hunger for flinching human flesh just because their ways are different from our own, but I haven’t seen any of them lining up at Dunkin Donuts for a dozen old-fashioneds – even with the seasonal return of ubiquitous pumpkin™ flavored coffee products.
2) Cat Owner. Sure, you’d love to scatter to the bunker, but not without kitty! Come out from under the bed kitty! No seriously, it’s okay. Good kitty. No, not in the closet! What’s that noise? Are you throwing up in my emergency preparedness kit? Good kitty, that’s it, we’ll put you in your cat carrier, and… seriously kitty!? No, that’s okay, my arm was going to wildly clawed at some point, why not now? Kitty? Where are you? Um, I think the tripods are coming? It would be great if you could get in the carrier now. Oh, you got in the carrier of your own accord while I was crawling about commando style under my own bed, tearfully pleading with what turned out to be a pair of wadded up yoga pants. THANKS, KITTY. And if you’re tasty there was always a good chance kitty would have eaten you the first time you fell asleep regardless of invaders.
3) Noble. There is no alien word for nobility. They just don’t understand the human urge to sacrifice yourself for your fellow man, preferably while magnificently silhouetted against the setting sun. The closest word they have is “Gr0ntschluk,” which our scientists tell us most closely corresponds to the English word “sucker.” Make of that what you will.
4) Nice shoes. The post-apocalyptic doomscape of smoking debris and sinister glowing craters is no respecter of fashion. Things were bad enough when you could snap off an exquisitely engineered Italian heel in a subway grate, or brush your gleaming oxblood leather instep against a wad of repulsive gum on a park bench. Now you have to navigate around pools of acidic ichor and the charred remains of the badly dressed just to fetch your mail! Your wincing, daintily tip-toeing form will provide an easy target for alien snipers, but at least you’ll die with your !fabulous boots on.
5) Signature accessory. We need to talk, because like owning a cat, having a signature accessory makes you doomed in every scenario, not just when the little green men come knocking. Are you the guy who always wears the sweet yellow headphones? The chick with the quirky red sunglasses? That one goth who writes ostentatiously in a diary all the time? You’re just begging fate to smack you down. The visual shorthand of your accessory of choice flying poignantly through the air in cinematic slow motion to imply your off-screen death is too juicy a bone for the universe to resist. Institute a uniform of sensible khakis. No one was ever moved to tears/awarding an Oscar over the image of a pair of smoking khakis fluttering back to earth, post explosion.
How did you score?
-50 to -30: Yikes. We told you to get a dog instead.
-20 to 0: Oh well, at least you probably got some running in. Running is very good for you. Sorry, was. Running was very good for you.
10 to 30: Hmmm, not bad. Most of that radiation will scrub off in the shower, I expect. And they can do miraculous things with spiked shoulder pads in our brave new world! No one will even notice the…thing.
40 to 50: Congratulations! You’re a winner winner, irradiated chickenesque flavored survival ration dinner! I mean sure, society as we knew it has been mercilessly annihilated, but you’re still here, and that’s what counts. Cockroaches can be quite personable once you get to know them. And it’s not like you have anyone else to hang with.
Like this blog? Read my upcoming book, Untaken
August 2, 2014
Influences on Untaken, week 2
It would be weirder for a kid born around the time I was not to grow up to write a science fiction book.
The first movie I saw at the cinema was E.T. I would have been almost three, and vividly remember the part where E.T. and Elliot (and the symbolic potted plant, let’s not gloss over its suffering) were captured and dying. I wanted to cry, but hid my feelings by pretending to loudly laugh, much to the probable embarrassment of my mum.
My second movie was Return of the Jedi. I don’t remember much about this one; only that my little brother fell asleep and kicked me in the leg throughout, and that afterwards we were permitted to buy the accompanying LP.
I can only assume my dad had been uncharacteristically caught up in the general Star Wars enthusiasm, or was having some sort of a brief mental breakdown, because we were not usually permitted such frivolous purchases outside of birthdays and Christmases. Maybe there was a coupon. Or a full moon. The real reason remains lost to time, like Sam Beckett, in Quantum leap, but with fewer comedy drag episodes.
I have a very strong memory of my brother and I lying in front of the record player, poring over the glossy booklet which came with the album, eating odd pink sweets that tasted of chalk and medicine. Dad must have been in the room with us, because if he hadn’t been we would have been giving our toy farm animals rides on the turntable. The cows were good because they were heavy enough to last a few turns and there was something funny about their solemn faces spinning by, but a line of chickens flying off one after the other was pretty good too. We were too young to really follow the story on the record, but the booklet at least made a big impression. In that unfortunate urge towards fascism that some small children seem to possess, we particularly admired the crisp black and white uniforms of the Speeder Scouts and Storm Troopers, and eagerly listened out for our neighbor's ancient and rusting Ford, which sounded almost exactly like a Tie Fighter closing in for the kill as it labored up the hill. The Jedi may have had righteousness on their side, but they hadn’t made the effort to co-ordinate their outfits, and were thus clearly inferior.
All of the films I remember most fondly from my formative years were glossy Sci-fi usually featuring a plucky kid (well, I say a kid, but of course it was almost always a boy) ranged against a bunch of well-meaning but ultimately self-serving and ignorant scientists or military. Read my book Untaken for a big slice of that particular trope. Or…let’s call it a tribute. That sounds nicer.
Some of the movies that left the biggest impressions included The Last Starfighter, D.A.R.Y.L. Back to the Future, Batteries Not Included, and closest to my heart- Flight of the Navigator. My absolute favorite trope in literature is the magic door- and what is a spaceship but a vehicular magic door? One which only the chosen can enter, with a secret world on the other side, and the best freedom of all- flight (The boy who could Fly, that was another great one.)
Then there was the television series ‘V’ which I haven’t re-watched despite owning the DVD box set for years, because I would be destroyed like a canary at a reptilian alien buffet if it had aged poorly. Before the days of every show having action figures I used to reenact favorite scenes from V using My Little Ponies. The most evil (and best) character, the alien leader Diana was played by Princess Pearl, who had the requisite haughty expression, and came with a small plastic dragon, which although a bit of a giveaway, I felt to be a suitable metaphor for her secret reptile persona. One of the main reasons I knew my husband was a keeper was finding a photo of him dressed in the red V uniform he’d had his mum make for him aged 7. Surely he will thank me for sharing this anecdote.
When I try to conjure up my childhood daydreams it’s always that Spielbergian magic hour as day tips into night. There are a few too many stars in the sky, and the sense of a secret hidden not too far away. Maybe there’s a vast glowing ship, half-covered with fallen branches out in the woods. If you can find it before the men in the boiler suits or the ubiquitous unmarked helicopters, it could be yours. I hope I managed to insert a little of that wonder into Untaken, along with the horror of the real. Wonder is a tricky and ethereal creature. It can vanish for years at a time as you get older, but when you search for it, it’s all still there. Like a star chart pointing the way home.
The first movie I saw at the cinema was E.T. I would have been almost three, and vividly remember the part where E.T. and Elliot (and the symbolic potted plant, let’s not gloss over its suffering) were captured and dying. I wanted to cry, but hid my feelings by pretending to loudly laugh, much to the probable embarrassment of my mum.
My second movie was Return of the Jedi. I don’t remember much about this one; only that my little brother fell asleep and kicked me in the leg throughout, and that afterwards we were permitted to buy the accompanying LP.
I can only assume my dad had been uncharacteristically caught up in the general Star Wars enthusiasm, or was having some sort of a brief mental breakdown, because we were not usually permitted such frivolous purchases outside of birthdays and Christmases. Maybe there was a coupon. Or a full moon. The real reason remains lost to time, like Sam Beckett, in Quantum leap, but with fewer comedy drag episodes.
I have a very strong memory of my brother and I lying in front of the record player, poring over the glossy booklet which came with the album, eating odd pink sweets that tasted of chalk and medicine. Dad must have been in the room with us, because if he hadn’t been we would have been giving our toy farm animals rides on the turntable. The cows were good because they were heavy enough to last a few turns and there was something funny about their solemn faces spinning by, but a line of chickens flying off one after the other was pretty good too. We were too young to really follow the story on the record, but the booklet at least made a big impression. In that unfortunate urge towards fascism that some small children seem to possess, we particularly admired the crisp black and white uniforms of the Speeder Scouts and Storm Troopers, and eagerly listened out for our neighbor's ancient and rusting Ford, which sounded almost exactly like a Tie Fighter closing in for the kill as it labored up the hill. The Jedi may have had righteousness on their side, but they hadn’t made the effort to co-ordinate their outfits, and were thus clearly inferior.
All of the films I remember most fondly from my formative years were glossy Sci-fi usually featuring a plucky kid (well, I say a kid, but of course it was almost always a boy) ranged against a bunch of well-meaning but ultimately self-serving and ignorant scientists or military. Read my book Untaken for a big slice of that particular trope. Or…let’s call it a tribute. That sounds nicer.
Some of the movies that left the biggest impressions included The Last Starfighter, D.A.R.Y.L. Back to the Future, Batteries Not Included, and closest to my heart- Flight of the Navigator. My absolute favorite trope in literature is the magic door- and what is a spaceship but a vehicular magic door? One which only the chosen can enter, with a secret world on the other side, and the best freedom of all- flight (The boy who could Fly, that was another great one.)
Then there was the television series ‘V’ which I haven’t re-watched despite owning the DVD box set for years, because I would be destroyed like a canary at a reptilian alien buffet if it had aged poorly. Before the days of every show having action figures I used to reenact favorite scenes from V using My Little Ponies. The most evil (and best) character, the alien leader Diana was played by Princess Pearl, who had the requisite haughty expression, and came with a small plastic dragon, which although a bit of a giveaway, I felt to be a suitable metaphor for her secret reptile persona. One of the main reasons I knew my husband was a keeper was finding a photo of him dressed in the red V uniform he’d had his mum make for him aged 7. Surely he will thank me for sharing this anecdote.
When I try to conjure up my childhood daydreams it’s always that Spielbergian magic hour as day tips into night. There are a few too many stars in the sky, and the sense of a secret hidden not too far away. Maybe there’s a vast glowing ship, half-covered with fallen branches out in the woods. If you can find it before the men in the boiler suits or the ubiquitous unmarked helicopters, it could be yours. I hope I managed to insert a little of that wonder into Untaken, along with the horror of the real. Wonder is a tricky and ethereal creature. It can vanish for years at a time as you get older, but when you search for it, it’s all still there. Like a star chart pointing the way home.
July 26, 2014
Influences on Untaken, week 1
When I think of the book that most influenced ‘Untaken’ there’s one that springs instantly to mind. It’s a small, fat, red book, often found in hotels. The text is dense, but there’s wisdom on every page. And lovingly drawn pictures of octopuses doing terrible things to unsuspecting men in board shorts…wait, you thought it was the bible? No, my friends. The book I’m talking about is called ‘STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA.’
You have to type it in caps. The book wouldn’t have it otherwise. And if we do intend to STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA, we heed the damn book.
This book ended up in my family’s possession just before we emigrated from England to Australia and not a moment to soon. Our encounters with wildlife in the Cumbrian countryside rarely got more thrilling than pushing chunks of white bread into the smiling bills of plump ducks that looked like they’d waddled right off the pages of a Beatrix Potter book. It was clear we’d need all the help we could get.
Maybe my father (who explored the Antarctic for two years, and legitimately enjoys camping) bought it in preparation. Maybe it was given to one of my parents as a jokey farewell gift by resentful office mates who envied our escape to a land where the sun existed as a tangible object instead of an abstract concept. Maybe the Australian authorities push them into the pale hands of pommies with half-healed duck bites at Sydney airport. I don’t know. All I do know, is that for the young J.E. Anckorn, STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA, was better than 'The BFG', 'Polly and the wolf' and 'Superdog the hero' combined. And that’s some genuinely stiff competition.
What was so great about the book? Well, mostly it was the aforementioned pictures. After all, I was first exposed to this book before I learned to read. But one of the many glorious things about a lovingly detailed ink drawing of what you can expect to happen to your foot if you are unlucky enough to step on a stonefish, is that you need not be literate to appreciate it. It speaks to the human condition. And the human condition in Australia seemed to involve writhing around in your swimming costume with various infuriated specimens of native wildlife attached to your person.
The stonefish section was particularly good. As well as the illustration of the amorphous lump where a human foot once was, there was a photograph of the creature itself, its beady black eyes seeming to glitter with malevolence from the page. The caption made special note of the fact that the stonefish was almost indistinguishable from the rock it lay on, and that the pain of being stung was so severe, victims often begged to have the affected limb amputated. My young mind could barely comprehend it- a creature that could powerfully fuck you up, fuck you up TO DEATH as the book would probably have put it, and yet spent its days lying about, disguised as a rock. No creature that bad-ass needed to disguise itself as a rock. The stonefish was just doing it because it was evil. An evil, evil, remorseless fish, symbolic of a cruel and uncaring world.
The stonefish was the coolest thing EVER.
Also cool was the blue ringed octopus “It will make you dread octopi, rings, and the blue things in general- no blueberry doughnut will be the same!” And the box jellyfish “Fear now comes IN A BOX.”
The cavalcade of horror wasn’t confined to the ocean. There were poisonous cane toads, numerous snakes and spiders, and my personal favorite, the cassowary. The cassowary was huge flightless bird that, the book assured me, would casually disembowel a person just because it could. It was the thinking Australasian child’s velociraptor, pre-Jurassic Park; and what’s more the book led you to believe that you were never safe from them. A Cassowary could come tumbling out of your closet. Its cruel-beaked head could rise up over your shoulder in the rear-view mirror of your car. Every single stone in your deceptively serene backyard could be a cassowary in disguise (probably).
Even the cuddly creatures were dangerous. Platypuses came equipped with venomous spurs. Kangaroos and emus were contenders for the cassowaries ‘stomping human bodies into a thin paste’ crown. Even the wombats, which are basically balls of plush fur with adorable anime faces on the front end, are described by Wikipedia as constantly engaged in “allowing an intruder to force its head over the wombat's back, and then using its powerful legs to crush the skull of the predator against the roof of the tunnel.”
The pithy descriptions of maimings and poisonings took up much of the book, but the slender section in the back was almost as good. This was the section of the book that gamely tried to convince you there were things you could do to avoid dying almost instantaneously if you were foolish enough to venture beyond the airport.
It was the survival section.
Survival was a big deal when I was a kid. When we moved to New Zealand it was actually taught as a class. We learned to make shelters, dig up grubs, and find streams, which could be followed back to civilization, or drowned in in a variety of creative and unpleasant sounding ways. There was even a survival film, which we children begged to watch every week, in preference to cartoons or Muppet movies. The teachers smiled at this, encouraged by our educational zeal. Little did they know, the only reason us gruesome tots wanted to watch “rafting holiday; the drownening" (which may not have been the actual title) was because there was a bit where the young girl falls down a waterfall, shattering her leg and YOU CAN TOTALLY SEE THE BONE POKING OUT.
Stonefish levels of cool, people.
Untaken is set in our everyday world during and after an alien invasion. My three main characters find themselves among the only people left ‘UNTAKEN’ (nice, huh?) and are forced to survive off the land. My passion for such scenarios is rooted one hundred percent in the fertile, blood-soaked soil of STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA.
The book not only detailed all the usual survival things, like how to build a small wigwam to keep your soft fleshy innards from becoming outards, and how to boil your own terrified tears to obtain drinkable water, but it also had an excellent chapter instructing the intrepid survivalist how to construct a variety of hazardous traps. I can’t remember what the title of this section was, but it may well have been “Crikey, where did I set up that spear trap aga...ARGHHH!”
The book was assiduous about letting you know you were as likely to spear your own foot as catch anything edible. This of course only made the whole operation seem more appealing. Although we spent many summers as children trying to construct a pit trap capable of dispatching Angela from over the road, it never worked, but the dream the book inspired lived on in my heart (which still beat on, in defiance of statistics)
I got the initial idea for Untaken while wandering around a big outdoors store in Maine. Seeing all those inadequate knives and flimsy tents and tiny cheerily yellow cylinders of aerosol you were expected to spray into the face of a charging bear (I suspect all you’d be doing was ensuring your flesh had a pleasing zingy taste) I thought back to the book I’d enjoyed so much as a child, and wondered how a real child would cope, left to fend off the terrors of a largely deserted country, crammed with hostile creatures.
There are no aliens in STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA, but I like to think there’s a little bit of STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA in Untaken.
You have to type it in caps. The book wouldn’t have it otherwise. And if we do intend to STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA, we heed the damn book.
This book ended up in my family’s possession just before we emigrated from England to Australia and not a moment to soon. Our encounters with wildlife in the Cumbrian countryside rarely got more thrilling than pushing chunks of white bread into the smiling bills of plump ducks that looked like they’d waddled right off the pages of a Beatrix Potter book. It was clear we’d need all the help we could get.
Maybe my father (who explored the Antarctic for two years, and legitimately enjoys camping) bought it in preparation. Maybe it was given to one of my parents as a jokey farewell gift by resentful office mates who envied our escape to a land where the sun existed as a tangible object instead of an abstract concept. Maybe the Australian authorities push them into the pale hands of pommies with half-healed duck bites at Sydney airport. I don’t know. All I do know, is that for the young J.E. Anckorn, STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA, was better than 'The BFG', 'Polly and the wolf' and 'Superdog the hero' combined. And that’s some genuinely stiff competition.
What was so great about the book? Well, mostly it was the aforementioned pictures. After all, I was first exposed to this book before I learned to read. But one of the many glorious things about a lovingly detailed ink drawing of what you can expect to happen to your foot if you are unlucky enough to step on a stonefish, is that you need not be literate to appreciate it. It speaks to the human condition. And the human condition in Australia seemed to involve writhing around in your swimming costume with various infuriated specimens of native wildlife attached to your person.
The stonefish section was particularly good. As well as the illustration of the amorphous lump where a human foot once was, there was a photograph of the creature itself, its beady black eyes seeming to glitter with malevolence from the page. The caption made special note of the fact that the stonefish was almost indistinguishable from the rock it lay on, and that the pain of being stung was so severe, victims often begged to have the affected limb amputated. My young mind could barely comprehend it- a creature that could powerfully fuck you up, fuck you up TO DEATH as the book would probably have put it, and yet spent its days lying about, disguised as a rock. No creature that bad-ass needed to disguise itself as a rock. The stonefish was just doing it because it was evil. An evil, evil, remorseless fish, symbolic of a cruel and uncaring world.
The stonefish was the coolest thing EVER.
Also cool was the blue ringed octopus “It will make you dread octopi, rings, and the blue things in general- no blueberry doughnut will be the same!” And the box jellyfish “Fear now comes IN A BOX.”
The cavalcade of horror wasn’t confined to the ocean. There were poisonous cane toads, numerous snakes and spiders, and my personal favorite, the cassowary. The cassowary was huge flightless bird that, the book assured me, would casually disembowel a person just because it could. It was the thinking Australasian child’s velociraptor, pre-Jurassic Park; and what’s more the book led you to believe that you were never safe from them. A Cassowary could come tumbling out of your closet. Its cruel-beaked head could rise up over your shoulder in the rear-view mirror of your car. Every single stone in your deceptively serene backyard could be a cassowary in disguise (probably).
Even the cuddly creatures were dangerous. Platypuses came equipped with venomous spurs. Kangaroos and emus were contenders for the cassowaries ‘stomping human bodies into a thin paste’ crown. Even the wombats, which are basically balls of plush fur with adorable anime faces on the front end, are described by Wikipedia as constantly engaged in “allowing an intruder to force its head over the wombat's back, and then using its powerful legs to crush the skull of the predator against the roof of the tunnel.”
The pithy descriptions of maimings and poisonings took up much of the book, but the slender section in the back was almost as good. This was the section of the book that gamely tried to convince you there were things you could do to avoid dying almost instantaneously if you were foolish enough to venture beyond the airport.
It was the survival section.
Survival was a big deal when I was a kid. When we moved to New Zealand it was actually taught as a class. We learned to make shelters, dig up grubs, and find streams, which could be followed back to civilization, or drowned in in a variety of creative and unpleasant sounding ways. There was even a survival film, which we children begged to watch every week, in preference to cartoons or Muppet movies. The teachers smiled at this, encouraged by our educational zeal. Little did they know, the only reason us gruesome tots wanted to watch “rafting holiday; the drownening" (which may not have been the actual title) was because there was a bit where the young girl falls down a waterfall, shattering her leg and YOU CAN TOTALLY SEE THE BONE POKING OUT.
Stonefish levels of cool, people.
Untaken is set in our everyday world during and after an alien invasion. My three main characters find themselves among the only people left ‘UNTAKEN’ (nice, huh?) and are forced to survive off the land. My passion for such scenarios is rooted one hundred percent in the fertile, blood-soaked soil of STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA.
The book not only detailed all the usual survival things, like how to build a small wigwam to keep your soft fleshy innards from becoming outards, and how to boil your own terrified tears to obtain drinkable water, but it also had an excellent chapter instructing the intrepid survivalist how to construct a variety of hazardous traps. I can’t remember what the title of this section was, but it may well have been “Crikey, where did I set up that spear trap aga...ARGHHH!”
The book was assiduous about letting you know you were as likely to spear your own foot as catch anything edible. This of course only made the whole operation seem more appealing. Although we spent many summers as children trying to construct a pit trap capable of dispatching Angela from over the road, it never worked, but the dream the book inspired lived on in my heart (which still beat on, in defiance of statistics)
I got the initial idea for Untaken while wandering around a big outdoors store in Maine. Seeing all those inadequate knives and flimsy tents and tiny cheerily yellow cylinders of aerosol you were expected to spray into the face of a charging bear (I suspect all you’d be doing was ensuring your flesh had a pleasing zingy taste) I thought back to the book I’d enjoyed so much as a child, and wondered how a real child would cope, left to fend off the terrors of a largely deserted country, crammed with hostile creatures.
There are no aliens in STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA, but I like to think there’s a little bit of STAY ALIVE IN AUSTRALIA in Untaken.
