Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Percy Who?

Percy Who?

My Halloween story was rated as “Too Scary.” I felt bad because I didn’t really want to scare anybody. To me scary is the unseen more than the visible. I’m not much of an expert on this genre but I do know a thing or two about the “Fear” emotion.

I served two tours in Vietnam, and the first was as a Rifle Platoon Leader. There I soon realized, that the worst kind of fear is the protracted and unrelenting type. It hangs above your head like an oppressive cloud and there is no way to get out from under it. Before I was more familiar with the adrenal pumping sort of fear that comes out of nowhere, raises up scaring the heck out of you and then passes. on This is much easier to deal with than the chronic and oppressive type that just won’t go away. To escape this variation the back side is almost “Joy.” Like Love/Hate I think Fear/Joy are opposite ends of the same emotion.

Now I mention that the scariest form of fear is the type you can’t see. At least not with your eyes. You see it plain enough in your mind’s eye…the thing we call our imagination and let me submit a person’s imagination is one scary place. I remember as a kid on the playground knowing I was going to have to face some bully and how frightening that was. The fisticuffs, when it came, was always so anticlimactic, almost a relief, even though your body was getting pummeled and there was physical pain associated with the experience. It was nothing to compare with the dread and terror served up by the imagination.

Great directors realize this and use imagination to evoke the worst type of dread. The flirt around with the terror, never letting you get a look, teasing and tormenting with the threat rather than the actual object. I recall seeing horror movies and being frightened at first and by the end the movie finding them almost comical. A monster towering over Tokyo with flamethrower nostrils…. Get real, how scary is that?

Anyway I felt bad when the reviewer said my story scared her ten year old and her older daughter refused to name the creature for fear of bringing its curse down upon the family.

I noticed a story being advertised on the right hand bar. It said. Prisoner: A boy finds a friend in a castle that isn't human. Is that a classic or what?

I am writing this blog as a change of pace from the New Horizon’s Academy series. I think my readers are growing weary of my educational ramblings. Just like they tired of my automotive hobby and political views.

Still I find myself compelled to write about things I know something about and that effect my daily life. This being a writer’s community there is also a need to write about writing. If I have learned anything with this blog it is that WDC is a writing site and that writing never fails to give my “View Meter” a spike. Still I sense that writing about my One Act Play course is reaching a point of diminishing returns.

My mentor Karen, Head Mistress, at NHA, (Chief Administrator) says not to sweat it, to write about what we have a passion for… (except sensual prose and witchcraft, where she threatens to disavow any knowledge of who I am.) I try and be discreet when I dabble in the “Squeeze and Tease” and the Dark Arts. Actually I tried a series on a character who was telepathic and became a Warlock in a coven of witches. Both are entertaining genres but not ones I take too seriously. Once I wrote a computer program on reading Tarot Cards. Oh my GAWD! Percy who…? Nope, never heard of him. Is he new to WDC?…