Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Worldbuilding

When the idea behind The Darkening formed and I visualised the story’s details, I thought it would be best to spend as much time on world building as possible. The basic rules of my post-apocalyptic world took shape at that stage, as well as the time frame for the main event. But a lot of the world and the problems it would create took shape as I started writing the story.

My main character lives away from the city, in an abandoned farm house, in its basement. If one could walk in broad daylight (not that it can happen, given the peculiarity of the world) and stood at the top of the house, a nearby city’s skyscrapers are the first thing that would catch the eye. I knew that from the start. I had a clear picture in my head about its appearance. All that remained in my head and none of it appears in the story. I had stories for a few of the residents as well. All these remain in my head and notes. Background story about the world.

Another thing I knew from the very start was that John would have only one prolonged memory, a tormenting one, and it would be of his family in another place. There was no reason to have him in a different place than the one he lives during the events of the novel, other than it just made sense, so I went along with my gut feeling, and I haven’t regretted it since.

However, John’s (my main character’s name) proximity to the city was a last minute addition as I wrote the first draft. I hadn’t thought about it at first, but then a question popped into my mind: what drove him there? If he survived, why leave his house, which had a basement, therefore shelter, to risk going somewhere else? Keep in mind that John has no memory of his past, aside from that one memory. He doesn’t know how he ended up there.

But I somehow had to come up with an answer, so I wouldn’t have readers going: “Hang on! If he had a basement in his home in the city, why is he now in another place?!” I’m doing my best to avoid questions like these, and that’s one of the things my brave beta readers will assist me with. Anyway, this led me to come up with a problem, in order the current state of my main character to appear as the solution to it. Kind of like reverse engineering. And the problem was, lack of food. Deprive a living being of either one of sustenance, water or safety and the environment becomes hostile for that organism. At least that’s what he has surmised so far. Ask yourselves this: should a catastrophic event was to take place, and pockets of survivors endured in the big cities, where would they get food from? Raiding half-demolished supermarkets is one thing, but how long would that last them? What would they do afterwards?

Based on that, I now have an even clearer picture of what the world looks after The Darkening. It no longer revolved around my main character and what happened to him, but at the back of my mind I have the idea of what is happening at the same time in that nearby city, and the rest of the world.

What do you think? What is the mental picture you get when someone tells you “post-apocalyptic world?” Do you think of a nuclear wasteland stretching for miles in every direction? Do you see a lash jungle with no humans because of a lethal toxin or a virus? Or perhaps a pockmarked planet from a meteor shower? What do you think the problems each event would create to the survivors, if any? WIll it be sustenance related or not? Let your imagination run wild and comment below of how you imagine something like that. Don’t be afraid to try a different approach. You might be surprised by the outcome and end up with killer shadows 😉

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Post-apocalyptic novels

My mind is full of edits and post-apocalyptic mental images. A few days ago, I finished Walter Michael Miller’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Before that, it was Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” Now I’m reading P.D. James’ “The Children of Men.” Granted the last one isn’t a post-apocalyptic, but a dystopian. Still, the world as James describes it appears to be heading to the inevitable apocalypse, so… Did I mention that in my spare time (as much as that can be) I play “Wasteland 2?” See what I mean?

The reason why I got so caught up with these novels, is because I wanted to be more immersed in the bleakness these worlds create, and thus maintain said mood throughout my novel. The last thing I want for The Darkening is to have a couple of chapters where the characters speak in a light cheerful way as if nothing’s wrong, when in fact the sun is about to rise and kill them. Not unless the story demanded something like that at least.

So I turn to you, fellow readers and writers. I seem to have run out of good post-apocalyptic novels. Have you read any that you’d like to suggest? I’m not interested in dystopian (I will, once I finish with The Darkening, but not at the moment), but if you have a story like The Children of Men, where the future of mankind is about to become its past, then please let me know. Thank you!

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Excerpt from The Darkening

The following is a deleted scene from my novel, The Darkening. I figured it would be nice to share something related to the novel in order to let you know of the mood I’m trying to create in the story. This post will be longer than most of my earlier ones.

There are a number of reasons this scene got deleted. First, it didn’t move the story forward, nor did it show anything new about the main character (his name is John Piscus). Second, it turned out gorier than I want the story to be. Though the Darkening is a post-apocalyptic horror story, I didn’t want the horror element to be gore-related. There are bits in the story where some splatter is essential (after all, I am dealing with a world where the shadows each person casts comes to life and kills its owner), BUT it’s minimal, and usually described indirectly (or at least, that’s what I think, lol).

Despite what you may think about dreams in fiction (a lot, if not everyone, claim that dream sequences for backstory are a no-no), the dream the main character sees is only one, broken up in bits and it’s the only memory he (John Piscus) has of his life. Everything else is wiped clean. It’s also the main reason why he blaims himself for what has happened to his family, and probably the reason he considers himself mad. It’s up to the reader to decide if he’s mad. Which brings me to the third reason this scene got the chop, since it wasn’t related to the single dream/memory John Piscus has.

A bit about the story. John is one of the few survivors from The Darkening, an event that brought each person’s shadow into life and eradicated the majority of the human race.  He has lost all memories save his family’s death, for which he considers himself responsible.  In near isolation, in fear of any light source, he hears a pair of voices; one that accuses him for everyone’s death and one that tells him to be the man who used to be. Robert is a neighbour, who lives a couple of hours away from his refuge with his family.

BE WARNED! What follows could be seen by some as graphic and disturbing. I mentioned earlier that it veered away from my intended implied horror element. If you don’t like horror or you can’t stand the post-apocalyptic element or anything related to it, please don’t continue. Some of you will read it, arch your brow at me and this statement, and think I’m exaggerating. I know. Still, I have to respect those who don’t like such things. And lets face it; this is not your usual Sunday morning read. You have been warned. ALSO, please note that it has only undergone through the first editing process, and although adverbs, adjectives, dependent clauses with hidden important action in them, and filter words have been dealt with as much as I could, it hasn’t been read by beta readers. Which means wordiness and other mistakes (partly due to language barrier) are probably still there. Feel free to comment about them. Your comments may prove invaluable to me for the rest of the story.

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The wet kiss on his cheek and the playful shriek next to his ear bid him open his eyes in a blinding haze. His heart came to a stop. Before him, a merry-go-round spun a younger Pauline.
“Look Daddy. I go lound and lound,” the ‘r’ giving trouble to his baby girl.
John gawked at everything around him; this was not a memory but a real dream. When was the last time he saw a real dream?
Something white crept to the edges of his dream and distracted him. It vanished the moment he focused at it. His stomach twisted. I’ve never seen this thing before.
He directed his attention to his daughter, his beautiful girl, who waved a pudgy hand at him and turned her head left and right to keep him in her field of view, while she went round and round.
“Look Daddy,” she said between joyful shrieks. Deep down, John envied her; not out of spite but because he yearned to be as carefree as she was.
“Children are happy all the time, because they are free of sin and malevolence,” Robert once told him. “The torment we experience is what we’ve made for ourselves.”
“And yet they died all the same,” John had snapped at him. There was no hope for the world, for humans. Robert was a fool to think otherwise.
The white entity crept at the edge of his dream again, but when he turned to look at it, it was gone.
The world whispered, “Righteous retribution.” Someone had said the words in the past – not Robert – but John had no recollection who.
A pained shriek startled him and shattered the merriment around him, like a ball through a window. He whipped his head to the merry-go-round. Pauline lay on the ground, her hair a tangled mask on her face from sweat and tears. Not again. Please, not again.
He ran to her, his movements unsynchronised like moving through a viscous fluid. She clutched her right knee, now marred with grit and dirt, where a drop of crimson made its way to the surface.
Ear-splitting cries burrowed in his head, and he had to shield them with his hands. He took his eyes off her to the hazy world beyond, and there he saw them. Two white-clad figures stood rigid in the distance. This is new. What’s happening?
The white duo gradually took human shape, and the figures of a man and a woman formed. Flame-red hair adorned the woman’s head, tied in a ponytail. He couldn’t see any other feature. The man remained obscured, mist-made, like a dream within his dream.
Pauline howled once more. He lowered his eyes to her, but she was no longer there. In his hands he held her shoe, not empty but not attached to her either. The howl continued, distorted and distant, seemingly from the end of a tunnel. “Help me Daddy. Help me.”
His stomach churned and his heart screamed with the pain his baby girl felt. He clutched her shoe and searched left and right for her.
The light changed to purple then blue. The merry-go-round dripped blood and from underneath it, hidden in its shadow, a voice spoke. “Righteous retribution.”
He took a step back. The dreamworld changed, invaded by maroon hues as if two fluids mixed. The red haze spread like a virus, covered everything, distorted life itself. Screams and pleas rose and died, only to have new voices take their place. All save Pauline’s pleas for help. “Save me Daddy, help…” And the white-dressed duo; they still regarded him with eyeless expressions, and waited for his next move. Who are they? What do they want in my dream?
He turned to leave, Pauline’s name on his lips, when he realised he sloshed in a pool of blood coming out of her shoe.
Righteous retribution. The world whispered the words on and on, until the words synchronised with his heart’s rhythm.
The pool of crimson ended in a small trail, leading in the distance. “Daddy, please help me.” John followed the crimson trail, his movement sluggish, slower than his mind wanted it to be. The world whirled. Smells of blood and decaying flesh emanated from the ground around him.
The red mist changed to black, his sight rendered useless the darker it got. Every voice died out except Pauline’s. More than once he lost the trail in the darkness, but her voice led him closer to her, and the closer he got, the steeper the ground turned, until his thighs and sheens burned and the air grew staler.
The two figures dressed in white entered the edges of his view, but he refused to waste time on them. You don’t belong here.
“Please help. It hurts Daddy.”
John clutched her shoe.
“Righteous retribution,” the world whispered.
By the time he climbed what he thought was a mountain, blackness had swallowed him. The smell of rotten flesh permeated the air. How long had he run for? Moments? Minutes? Hours? His heart hammered his chest. He went down to his knees, panting.
“Daddy.” A few more strides and he would reach her, help her.
“I’m here, baby,” he gasped and dragged his body in a coppery-smelling mud, until he touched concrete.
He fumbled in the darkness, and found a door. “Please. Daddy. Don’t leave me.” Pauline’s voice came from behind it, but no more than a whisper now.
He pushed himself up, and when he found the handle, a howl shook the ground he stood on, and Pauline’s voice stopped.
“No,” he cried and clawed at the door. He banged, kicked and slammed it as hard as possible. Will it never end? He battered the door, put all his weight into it, but it didn’t budge. “Let her go, you monsters.”
“Righteous retribution,” resonated, until the howling stopped. Tears welled up and in the blurriness they created, the white shapes appeared again, at the edges of his perception. “Get away from her,” he bellowed and flailed his arms at them, his voice thick with tears and anger.
A hubbub of whispers swept over the darkened dream, louder than anything John had ever heard. The door opened and the whispers ceased. He crawled through it, and his hands plunged into warm liquid. The smell of clotted blood lingered in the air.
“Baby?” he said through sobs and tears. “Daddy’s here, baby. Talk to me.”
Oh God, please. Must I always live this?
No answer.
The white-clad pair stepped on the edges of his vision, each on either side. John’s hands curled into fists. What did they want with Pauline? The pair shrunk to the size of a bead, and slid on the surface of the pool until they came close to each other.
John blinked.
When he opened his eyes, a pair of milky eyes stared back at him.
“Righteous retribution.”
He screamed and jumped back. Behind him, more sets of eyes opened and what he thought was an ordinary mountain turned into a mountain of bodies, all staring at him with white eyes.
Bangs full of anger and impatience came from somewhere far; one, then another. The make-believe world around him collapsed, the ground shook, and something dragged him out of the dream. “No, let me be with her,” he cried. “Leave her and take me.”
Righteous retribution.
The words survived the onslaught, repeated themselves in his head, and rose in strength and volume, until they were louder than the clamour around him.

———-

There you have it. Obviously nowhere near perfection (if such a thing exists), and with probable flow issues (if you spot them, let me know), but better than the draft.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

2014 – A recounting of events

First of all I hope you all had wonderful Christmas and a nice New Year. Christmas was brilliant for me and I got to spend it with the people who have stood by me the most, my family. Christmas is also my nameday (in Greece we celebrate namedays as well as birthdays, though I only follow namedays), so a lot of friends called to give me their wishes. It all added to a very nice day with a lot of great memories. I’m not a big fan of New Year as a holiday nor do I participate in any kind of celebration, as I don’t see the reason for it, but I understand others see it differently than me, so to all of you out there who do, I wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2014 was for me a very successful and productive year and I hope 2015 will be, if not more productive then at least, as productive as 2014.

For starters I got to finish the outline of my pet project. I posted a small excerpt earlier this year from my fantasy serialised novel and wrote almost half of the first draft. Currently, it’s sitting and waiting for me to get back to it, but that won’t happen for a long while, not until I evolve as storyteller and improve my writing skills.

Following that I outlined and finished the first draft of the Darkening, my post-apocalyptic horror novel. That’s right; I finished a novel, my first ever, in 2014. It took me 5 months to write it, 3 months of which were spent writing on my 5-inch cellphone, since the heat in my study with my computer on was hellish. It was supposed to take me 3 months and be around 120k words but ended up being 149k words and 2 months overdue. Who cares? Bottom line is I finished my first novel! Yes, I’m still jubilant about this. I’m entitled to it, no? I’ll have plenty of time to feel miserable and doubt my worth once the first couple of tens of agent rejections arrive.

2014 also offered me my first publication EVER. I was honoured to have a short story published in Beyond Imagination, Issue 4, titled You Die When I Die. I still remember how high I jumped when I read their acceptance email. I also remember how many times I had to read the message over and over again, to make sure I read it right and that I was indeed going to get published (six times, if you’re wondering how many times I read it).

2 more magazines honoured me in 2014 by publishing my stories. Eternal Haunted Summer published When Hades Felt and Voluted Tales published the short story The Darkening (my novel The Darkening is based on that short story).

In 2014 I participated in my first writing competition ever for 2014 South African HorrorFest Bloody Parchment short story competition and on 31st December, a couple of hours before the New Year knocked on Greece’s door, I got an email from them saying that my story had been selected for their longlist that would go through for judging early 2015. This is also a first for me and even though I’ve no idea if being longlisted is even worth mentioning in public (if anyone has previous experience with writing competitions, please let me know), I see it as an accomplishment, since, as I said, this is a first for me. I dreaded participating in any kind of competition, thinking my writing was sub par to the standards they’d have. The email they sent me though, lifted my spirits and boosted my self confidence. I don’t have high hopes in getting published there, since there are soooooo many far better writers out there than me, with English being their native language (I hereby declare my hatred towards language barrier and all the problems it causes me), but one can hope, right?

Between the middle of November and the middle of December I manage to write 3 more short stories, a feat I had never tackled before but that month proved the most productive ever.

Finally, 2014 was the year I started this blog. Since April 2014 when I published my first post here, more than 120 of you have honoured me by following me and my rumblings, allowed me to write my thoughts and fears in my flawed English. Together we embarked on a trip – my trip – with many highs and even more lows. You were with me when I decided to write my novel, you were there when I finished it, when I published my short stories. You were there when I felt I was drowning while struggling with The Darkening and you supported me.

To everyone who followed or visited this blog, all 127 followers and 550 visitors, I have one thing to say:

THANK YOU!

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 4 Comments

Back at it again

My phone rang this morning and notified me about the upcoming mount Everest I had to start climbing first thing tomorrow morning. It’s been 37 days since the last time I laid eyes on the first draft of my novel’s manuscript and the time has come for me to start editing and revising.

I’m gonna let that sink in for a while. Editing and revising.

The manuscript is 149k words long. I have to trim it down to 110 – 120k, no matter what, and make it more presentable. I also have to rewrite the first 10 or so chapters and condense them to 2 or maybe 3. Then carry on with the actual nit-picking. To be honest, I’m not looking forward to it. Not because I don’t like the book, but because I’m scared.

I’m scared because I think I won’t like anything from it. I’m scared because I’ve never done anything in that scale. Editing short stories somehow seem different now to me (strange, I know; after all it’s the same principle). Most of all I’m scared because I don’t know if my editing skills (which in turn mean my writing skills) are up to the task. In some ways I feel I’m back to square one where I had no work published and I was  uncertain of my ability to produce publishable material. Three publications in so far (fingers crossed to place the rest ones somewhere) and I still feel like a speck of sand that somehow has to reach the top of a mountain the size of Everest.

In those 37 days I wrote 3 short stories and finished translating one of them for a family member who doesn’t speak English, making this past November my most productive month so far. My aim with these stories is to place them all either in semi-pro or professional markets. I probably shouldn’t have high hopes for pro markets as they seem to prefer writers whose writing has something that I still lack. One thing is they have more experience in the craft than me. But I’ll try. If I do manage to get published in any of them (semi-pro or pro) then it will be a TREMENDOUS confidence boost that will reflect in the way I perceive my novel’s worth and my skill as a writer and storyteller. (The stories are now up on Scribophile, so if any of you is a member there and you’re interested in their genres, have a look at them)

Is it strange that I feel so stressed right now? Those of you who made it and traditionally published your books (fiction or non-fiction) did you feel like that as well? Am I experiencing a twisted version of what I should be feeling about the whole process? Or is it that I’m pushing myself too much, in order to prove to myself that I can do it?