The writer’s most dreaded question is “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer, of course, is everywhere, but people hate this answer. They want to believe there’s a very specific mechanism to idea generating, one that they can learn. But the truth of the matter is, if you have to ask where ideas come from, you'll never understand any answer, not fully.
Popular media often portrays horror writers drawing on
one traumatic experience in their past for their fiction. When Stephen King was
a child, one of his friends was killed by a train. Supposedly he witnessed the
event, but he has no memory of it. Over the years, a lot of armchair
psychologists have suggested this one event led Stephen King to write horror,
but even if it did affect his creative life, it’s far too reductive to ascribe
his prodigious output to one event in his life, no matter how tragic.
Still, there are times when writers can point to
certain events as being pivotal in their development as both a person and an
artist, and two such events happened to me in 1973, when I was nine years old. My
Great Uncle Red (whose real name was Lawrence, but he hated being called that)
died unexpectedly of a heart attack in February of that year. Uncle Red was
like a second father to me, and I often spent weekends at his house, along with
Aunt Becky and Great-Grandma Mast (Becky’s mother). He was the first close
family member of mine who died, and the event was a highly traumatic one for
me. Then in the summer of that year, my family went on a week-long vacation at
Rocky Fork Lake in Ohio. We had a small camper we stayed in, and during the
week, I met a kid who was collecting cans to recycle for 5 cents apiece. I’d never
heard of recycling before (this was 1973), so I decided to help him. My
parents had told me that I could wander around the area anywhere I wanted
(like, I said – 1973) but I was forbidden to go near the lake since I couldn’t
swim. Of course, Recycling Boy wanted to look for cans by the lake, and since I
didn’t want him to know I couldn’t swim, I said nothing and went with him. We
walked out onto the boat dock, and as I was looking down into the water, he
pushed me in as a joke. I, of course, was terrified and I panicked, thrashing
in the water, going down, coming back up, convinced I was going to drown. Back
then, it was common folk knowledge that if you went down for the third time,
you would never come back up. It’s not true, but I believed it then, and I was
going down for the third time when the kid grabbed my hand and pulled me onto
the dock. As we were leaving the lake – me sopping wet and reeking of lake
water – he said, “I’ve never been a hero before,” and all I wanted to do was
smack the little bastard in the face since he was the one who’d pushed me into
the water. But I said nothing because I knew what happened was my own damn
fault for not listening to what my parents told me.
These two events – Uncle Red’s death and my near-death
– sent me into a two-year existential depression, and when I came out of it (as
much as I ever did) I was a different person. I’d been a monster kid all my
life, loved every horror movie and comic I could get my hands on, but I
understood then that pain and sorrow were part of horror too, and it changed my
relationship to the genre forever.
I’ve drawn on my near-drowning in my fiction, whether
directly or indirectly, many times over the years. Here’s a list:
Short Stories
·
“Blackwater
Dreams.” Bruce Coville’s Book of Nightmares 2. Scholastic Books, 1997.
·
“Till
Voices Drown Us.” Apprentice Fantastic, DAW Books, 2002.
·
“Waters
Dark and Deep.” Masques V. Gauntlet Press, 2006.
·
“Swimming
Lessons.” Delirium Books website, 2006.
·
“Surface
Tension.” Queen Anne’s Resurrection. Dec. 2011.
·
“Lover,
Come Back to Me.” Tales from the Lake. Crystal Lake Publishing, 2014.
·
“The
Nature of Water.” Children of Gla’aki. Dark Regions, 2016.
·
“Fathomless
Tides.” The Beauty of Death. Independent Legions Publishing, 2016.
·
“Every
Beast of the Earth.” The Beauty of Death 2 – Death by Water. Independent
· Legions Publishing, 2017.
Novellas
“Deep Like the River.” Dark Regions, 2014.
Novels
The opening chapter of We Will Rise. Flame Tree
Press, 2022.
A drowning incident is a major plot element in my
currently unpublished psychological thriller novel Pretty Like Butterflies.
In 2018, I collected a number of my water stories for
the collection A Little Aqua Book of Marine Stories, which came out from
Borderlands Press. Here’s the introduction:
Introduction: Water, Water, Everywhere
I don’t believe in astrology, but my sign is Pisces –
the fish – and I’ve felt a psychological connection to water all my life. I
love water.
And it terrifies me.
When I was nine, I almost drowned. This happened not
long after my first experience with death, when my Uncle Red died unexpectedly
of a heart attack. These two events were a double punch to my psyche, a pair a
blows that in some ways I’ve never quite recovered from.
When I was eleven, Jaws came out. I was a
monster kid who read horror comics and watched scary movies on Shock Theater
every weekend. The previews for Jaws made it seem like it would be a
fantastic monster movie, so I begged my dad to take me. I had never seen a
movie like that before – so suspenseful and intense – and while I loved it, I
was also traumatized on some level. The idea that a monstrous, ravenous thing
could be concealed beneath the placid surface of the ocean and burst forth to
attack at any moment was terrifying. Just like how Death lurks behind the
surface of everyday life, ready to claim us when we least expect it. Just as it
had claimed my uncle two years earlier.
Water stirs imagination. It can take any shape, and
anything can be concealed in its depths. Horrors, treasures, or things which
are a bit of both. I return to the water time and again in my fiction. I find
it an unlimited well of inspiration for tales of horror and dark fantasy. The
surface of the water is like a border between our world – the world of sunlight
and air – and a hidden world of shadow and unseen creatures, a hostile
environment in which we cannot survive, and which we can only experience in
short glimpses for as long as we can hold our breath. To me, this is the
essence of existential horror. People swimming, boating, fishing, enjoying
their lives on the surface of a great mystery, trying their best not to think
about what might wait for them below.
I never learned to swim, not very well anyway, and I
hate putting my head under water. I can’t stand the feel of water on my face,
the sound it makes in my ears . . . Because of this, I made sure my two
daughters had swimming lessons from the time they were toddlers, and now they
both swim like fishes.
In the stories that follow, you’ll see echoes – or
perhaps a better word would be ripples – of my experiences with water. You know
what they say: writing is the cheapest form of therapy.
So turn the page and dive in. The you-know-what is
fine.
Opening Scene of “Waters Dark and Deep”
For this scene, I drew heavily on my own experience of
nearly drowning.
Water roaring in her ears, pushing heavy
against her ear drums. Hands clawing for purchase, feet kicking, trying to find
something, anything solid to stand on, but there’s nothing – nothing but water.
She opens her mouth to scream, takes a deep breath first, but instead of
filling her lungs with air, liquid rushes down her throat and a shower of
bubbles bursts from her mouth. Her lungs feel full and heavy, as if they’re
filled with concrete and it’s weighing her down, down, down . . .
My camera! she thinks. I can’t lose my
camera! Mom and Dad will kill me!
She looks up, sees a scattered diffusion
of light somewhere above her – five feet?
Five hundred? There’s no real
difference at this point. There’s a whole world of air up there, if only she
could reach it. If only she was wearing a life jacket, if only she had learned
how to swim . . .
A small shape slides toward her through
the gray murk: sleek, scaled and
streamlined. It’s a fish of some sort. Daddy would know what kind, but she
doesn’t. It turns as it nears her face, displaying its flank, a cold black eye
looking at her with supreme indifference as it passes, and then it’s gone,
returned once more to the darkness it came from, and she’s still going down,
down, down . . .
I don’t recall seeing a fish when I almost drowned,
but I had just gotten glasses, and I was worried that I would lose them in the
lake and my parents would be angry with me. I changed that to a camera for this
story.
I try to be careful about revisiting my near-drowning
in my fiction, but sometimes I can’t help it. When that happens, I go with the
flow (get it?) and let the story come out however it wants to.
Last year, I realized that 2023 would be the 50th
anniversary of my near-drowning. In all that time, I had never returned to
Rocky Fork, didn’t even have a clear idea where it was located. I thought it
might be a cool idea to go back there, to reconnect to a pivotal time in my
life – at an age when I’m much more aware my own mortality – and as a giant
fuck you to the lake that tried to take my life but failed. (Or did it? Maybe
I’m a water-logged corpse typing this right now.)
Yesterday, my wife Christine Avery, and my little
dachshund Bailey, accompanied me on my pilgrimage to Rocky Fork. I don’t
remember the exact date I almost drowned, but it was in summer, and I figured
the end of June was close enough.
So what was it like?
Weird, of course, but strangely peaceful in a way,
too. When I got home, my daughter Leigh asked if I’d been scared. I told her, “Not
really.” And it was true, I wasn’t. What I felt was something deeper than fear,
something beyond fear, something I don’t have a name for.
More of this later.
Rocky Fork is located about an hour east from where I
live in Ohio, in the midst of farmland, woods, and old, decaying small towns.
Christine didn’t grow up in the state, but as we drove, she said, “Now I
understand why so many horror stories are set in Ohio.” I couldn’t remember which
specific part of the lake I almost drowned at, but since it had boat docks, we
first headed for an area called Fisherman’s Wharf. The day was cool and overcast,
and felt more like September than late June. It seemed like a perfect
atmosphere for the kind of adventure we were on.
When we got to Fisherman’s Wharf, it didn’t look familiar
to me, nor did it resemble the scene I’d painted in a number of my stories over
the years. The shape of the far shore did seem kind of familiar, and
Christine and I wondered if the area had simply changed a lot in the
intervening years. Because my family had stayed at the campgrounds all those
years ago, Christine thought we should try there next. We drove to the area,
and as soon as we were there, I recognized it. The Welcome Center was in the same
spot I remembered it (although the building was light brown and I remember it as
white), and the boat docks were there, looking exactly as they had fifty years
ago. Even the few rental pontoon boats moored there looked much the same. In
one way, the area looked smaller than I remembered, but in another way it
looked much larger. For fifty years I’d imagined the scene up close, without thinking
about how far out the lake went, the trees on the far shore, the expanse of sky
above. We walked onto the dock and I led Christine to the decking (the part that
sticks out from the main dock which boats are tied to) where it seemed to me I
fell from. If it wasn’t the exact spot, it was close. I’d forgotten this was a
floating dock, and when I stepped off the ramp onto the decking, I was startled
when it moved beneath me. I’m a lot heavier now than I was at nine, so maybe
the decking didn’t move much back then. Or maybe that detail was lost to my
memory, driven out by the experience of falling into the water. The unsteadiness
of the decking made me a bit nervous, and I thought it would be ironic if I
lost my balance and fell into the water on my first visit here in fifty years.
(I wasn’t worried about drowning, though. I can swim a little now, and
Christine used to be a competitive swimmer who at one point was being scouted
for the Olympics, so I knew I was safe.)
I walked to the end of the decking and looked out over
the lake. I turned to my right because that’s the side I was standing on when Recycling
Boy pushed me in. I had been looking to see if I could spot any fish. I had
once done the exact same thing at a lake in Michigan when I was four, but I
fell in all by myself then. I was wearing a lifejacket, though, and just bobbed
in the water until my dad came to get me. I touched the lake water to reconnect
with it, and I flipped it off as a “Fuck you, I survived for fifty more years
after you tried to take me!” gesture. I had Christine take pictures so I could
post them with this essay. That was a huge difference from when I was nine. Back
then, we didn’t think about recording every moment of our lives or purposely
staging them for the Internet.
Christine and Bailey came out onto the decking with
me, and we hung out for a while. Then we left and visited the nearby campground
store. Christine got a refrigerator magnet. I got a coffee. I would’ve got
something to remind me of almost drowning there, but – unsurprisingly – they sold
nothing like that, not even a I ALMOST DIED AT ROCKY FORK T-shirt.
Earlier I said I wasn’t afraid but I felt something beyond
fear revisiting the place of my near-death experience. I don’t know how long I’ll
live, but I know I’m a hell of a lot closer to my end than I am to my
beginning. The lake was my bete noire for so many years, but it cannot begin to
compare to Time and my own aging body. That feeling was, in an odd way, peaceful
and came with a sense of rightness, as if this was how things should be. My
making peace with the natural cycle of life? Or my rationalizing my own
forthcoming end because there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it? Maybe
both.
I told Christine that the spot where I almost drowned
might be a good place to scatter my ashes once I’m gone. Kind of a way of
fulfilling what the lake tried to do five decades ago, and maybe a way of
thanking it for letting me go. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I write a
story about a middle-aged man revisiting the lake where he almost drowned as a
child. I don’t know what supernatural/surreal element I’ll add, but I’ll come
up with something. I always do.
I learned one other thing during my trip to Rocky
Fork. I have a new answer to the question “Where do you get your ideas?" I
don’t get them anywhere. I am my ideas.
If 1973 was the first time I went down in the water,
and 2023 was (at least metaphorically) the second time, what will the third time
be and when will it happen? I don’t know, but I plan to tread water as long as
I can – and to keep writing about it.
Photo Gallery
I had no idea Christine took this picture of me touching the water.
Pensively pondering
Rocky Fork magnet
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
A
Hunter Called Night
A Hunter Called Night was released
earlier this month in trade paperback and ebook formats.
If you’d like a preview of the book, you can listen to
me read the first chapter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlxK0PANa2g&t=1s
Synopsis:
A sinister
being called Night and her panther-like Harriers stalk their quarry, a man
known only as Arron. Arron seeks refuge within an office building, a place
Night cannot go, for it’s part of the civilized world, and she’s a creature of
the Wild. To flush Arron out, she creates Blight, a reality-warping field that
slowly transforms the building and its occupants in horrible and deadly ways.
But unknown to Night, while she waits for the Blight to do its work, a group of
survivors from a previous attempt to capture Arron are coming for her. The
hunter is now the hunted.
Order Links
Flame Tree: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/a-hunter-called-night-isbn-9781787586345.html
Amazon Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Hunter-Called-Night-Tim-Waggoner/dp/1787586316/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1668832377&sr=1-1
Barnes and Noble Paperback: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-hunter-called-night-tim-waggoner/1142487192?ean=9781787586314
NOOK: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-hunter-called-night-tim-waggoner/1142487192?ean=9781787586352
Lord of the Feast
My next novel for Flame Tree, Lord of the Feast,
won’t be out until April 2024, but the paperback is available for preorder.
(The ebook edition should be available to preorder soon.) No cover art to share yet.
Synopsis:
Twenty years ago, a cult attempted to create their own
god: The Lord of the Feast. The god was a horrible, misbegotten thing, however,
and the cultists killed the creature before it could come into its full power.
The cultists trapped the pieces of their god inside mystic nightstones then
went their separate ways. Now Kate, one of the cultists’ children, seeks out
her long-lost relatives, hoping to learn the truth of what really happened on
that fateful night. Unknown to Kate, her cousin Ethan is following her, hoping
she’ll lead him to the nightstones so that he might resurrect the Lord of the
Feast – and this time, Ethan plans to do the job right.
Order Links:
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lord-of-the-feast-tim-waggoner/1143636012?ean=9781787586369
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