Building the Perfect Beast

Find out more about THE EQUINOX here!

My first novel, THE EQUINOX, garnered a lot of love. People love monsters, and I believed, when I wrote it, that they were worn out on vampires and zombies. So, I wanted to write something beyond the usual trends. In retrospect, I might have to rethink that, considering that the vampires and zombies are still around. Walking Dead, What We Do in the Shadows, and so on…

In the case of THE EQUINOX, our protagonist Daniel Blackbird has been banished from the Chocktee Village known as Spirit Woods. Why has he been expelled? Well, first he got the Chief Elder (his grandfather) killed, but worse he has let loose upon the world his peoples curse. The curse comes in the form of a shape changer, known as a skinwalker, that kills people daily and then dines on their internal organs. Blackbird heads out into the world following a debris trail of murder and mayhem., chasing an impossible task that will last 14 years. His quest takes him from that northern village to the red-light district in Chicago, and eventually to a small prairie town called Thomasville, where police are investigating the serial murder of 17 young boys.

MJ Preston building The Equinox's Skinwalker aka Skin

When I set out to write this book, I drew my inspiration from author John Farris’ THE FURY, and also from a newscast I heard as a child, and an article I read in a men’s magazine in my early teens.

Let’s talk about Farris first.

In THE FURY, a father who works for an intelligence agency gets double-crossed when they abduct his son to exploit the child’s telekinesis. There’s plenty of double-dealing, gore, and intrigue, but it was the quest of a father to find his son and reap vengeance upon the abductors that fascinated me. I truly loved this book, and by the time I finished it, the paperback was dog-eared and beaten. That quest idea stuck with me, and I thought that one day, far in the future of the 12-year-old kid who had read it, I would pen a story with a quest to right a wrong.

Inspiration came on two other occasions where art would imitate life. One morning in 1978, the news reported on a killer, named John Wayne Gacy, arrested after 26 bodies were found buried in the crawl space of his Des Plaines home in Illinois. All the victims were teenage boys, first molested and then killed by Gacy. The victim count would rise to 33, and Gacy would be sentenced to death. Strangely, not long after I read another account of multiple child murders in Houston, Texas, at the hands of Dean Corll, who abducted, tortured, raped and murdered 28 plus boys with the help of two teen accomplices, named David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley. While both crimes were horrific in nature, the Corll murders stuck out because Brooks and Henley were both around the same age as their victims. Why would they become a party to such evil? In reading about the excavation of these bodies, in horrendous forensic detail, I understood that monsters walked among us in the guise of everyday citizens.

MJ Preston and Skin make the local news

Dean Corll would never see the inside of a courtroom after being shot dead by accomplice Elmer Wayne Henley. Henley had angered Corll, who was a homosexual sadist killer, after bringing a female to a party which involved drugs and alcohol at the Corll residence. When Henley awoke, he found himself and his friends bound, and only after pleading with Corll to release him and agreeing to kill his friends, Corll made the fatal mistake of untying Henley who then shot and killed his partner in crime.

When the police arrived, Henley was first thought to be a hero, but then the story between Brooks and Henley began to unravel. Both David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley confessed to their involvement in the abduction and brutal sex slayings. They led authorities to four separate dump sites. The bulk of the victims were found wrapped in plastic buried in the floor of a boathouse. In a filmed phone call to his mother, Henley confessed, “Momma, I killed Dean.” What would follow would be a view into a world of absolute revulsion. Investigators exhumed body after body, most so deep into decomposition that authorities measured out equal amounts of bones into bags, only to be later sorted and identified by forensic experts.

Gacy would find his end in a death chamber when an intravenous needle was inserted into his arm, and a cocktail of deadly drugs was be administered by the state of Illinois. But justice, if the death penalty could be considered so, only came 16 years after he was arrested. I watched an interview with Gacy, in which he claimed not to be the killer, but an accomplice guilty only of running an illegal graveyard. Both men were master manipulators, but Gacy maintained his innocence until he was executed.

I had no illusions of Gacy’s guilt. One does not live above the decomposing bodies of murdered children without involvement in the crime. He tortured and killed his victims, but his outlandish claim stuck with me and played into writing my first book, THE EQUINOX.

So, I got down to writing. My protagonist, Daniel Blackbird, sets out on a quest to stop a monster that kills daily and feeds on the internal organs of its victims. Blackbird’s hunt leads him on a decade-long chase that will take him from Chicago, Illinois, where prostitutes are being killed. After a near-death confrontation, he is drawn to a small prairie town called Thomasville.

In Thomasville, police are investigating a farmer/serial killer, named Stephen Hopper, whose backfield holds the bodies of 17 missing children. Blackbird is drawn to the town, just as he was drawn to the creature’s other killing fields. The Chief of Police, David Logan, is informed by the killer that he is merely a caretaker and that the real killer is a demonic monster demanding to be fed.

I’m not going to tell you any more than that about the plot. You can read the book. But I will tell you that this story is full of native mysticism, otherworldly creatures and plenty of action. The Equinox is, at its core, a monster story. It is an exploration of native mythos coupled a with a serial killer, known as Stephen Hopper. 

Along with writing, I dabble in art and photography. So, when I wrote Equinox, I also began to render pieces of digital art and decided one Halloween to create a life-sized skinwalker. Although I don’t consider myself a commercial artist, I created the creature which you see in the pictures. The sculpting of the skinwalker took a long time, first starting with the head and then moving on to the body. By Halloween night, the skinwalker, named “Skin,” was staged on my front lawn amid cornstalks and other creepy crawlies including giant spiders, vampires, gravestones and the odd demon. It also caught the attention of local media. Two reporters came out for a look. THE GRIMSBY NEWS and the SAINT CATHARINES STANDARD conducted separate interviews with me, and “SKIN” made the front page of THE GRIMSBY NEWS. I thought that was cool, and I have to say that the kids who came, loved the layout and were fascinated by the creature. The only downside was that after being overrun by hundreds of children, we ran out of treats to give the kids darn quick.

When it was over, I packed up my monsters, gravestones, and Skin for future Halloweens. When I moved from Ontario to Alberta in 2015, Skin was picked up in a yard sale, and is presumably entertaining children at someone else’s Halloween Haunt.

Check out MJ’s latest book HIGHWAYMAN here!

That is how I work as a writer. I employ everything I have in my artistic toolbox. Writing, rendering and even sculpting. I am happy that THE EQUINOX has found a second run with my new publisher, WildBlue Press. It gives new readers a chance to read this exciting book about monsters. In revisiting the manuscript, I was, again, reacquainted with a story I started thinking about when I was a kid.

In future blogs, I will talk about my other books and the journey of creation. With each new project, comes an odyssey, and in the case of my second book, a real adventure.

Thank you for tagging along, and I hope you’ll join me as I revisit these stories and recount their genesis.

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Filed Under: Blog, HIGHWAYMAN Book 1, Horror, MJ Preston, THE EQUINOX Tagged With: beast, HIGHWAYMAN, Horror, horror book, Horror Fiction, horror novel, MJ Preston, scary, supernatural, supernatural thriller, THE EQUINOX

Meet MJ Preston, Author, And Artist At Large

Author MJ Preston

I thought I’d tell you a bit about myself. I am what could be categorized as a horror/science fiction/thriller author. I have always had a fascination with the darker side of humanity, and I suppose that is what led me to write in these genres. My love affair with storytelling reaches all the way back to my childhood. Early influences were authors, like Stephen King, Robert R. McCammon, and Richard Matheson.

I started writing at the age of eight, penning short stories and submitting them to magazines. I eventually landed a gig writing movie reviews for my hometown paper in Chilliwack, British Columbia. For me, this was a bonus, because I loved movies. I got to review films like Goodfella’s, Mean Streets, Friday the 13^th and others until I signed up for the army in 1986.

Once there, I volunteered, or as they say in the army, “was voluntold,” to write military reportage for the artillery unit I was serving in. All kidding aside, I was happy to report on my military adventure in the first person, while I continued my quest to publish short fiction.

It was a tough gig writing fiction, and while I aimed for higher markets to publish my work, I only sold a few shorts to little literary magazines. On the side, between training, I started penning a novel that would eventually be published, but just after sitting dormant for almost a decade. But I’ll get to that shortly.

Unfortunately, soldiering is a young man’s game, and I was told by an orthopedic surgeon that I wasn’t a young man anymore. This was something I sneered at. In 1998, I was medically released from the military after enduring three separate leg operations. By the time of my release, I had risen to the rank of Master Bombardier and was the commander of a gun detachment aboard a self-propelled M109 howitzer.

Transitioning from soldier to civilian was a real change for me. It also led me down a new writing path, in which I started a blog called the Canadian Veterans’ Alliance, CVA for short. CVA hosted a consortium of writers. I began reporting on the difficulties endured by veterans after medical release. My passion for this cause landed me on the CBC nationally televised show, TALK TV, with Anne Petrie. Our interview addressed the shortcomings of Veterans Affairs Canada in taking care of wounded veterans. After that, I carried on by using the web as my voice and along the way was able to help wounded vets on their quest for support. This included reporting on a scandal in which soldiers exposed to PCB’s in the Former Yugoslavia had their medical records shredded by military officials. I also penned a three-part story on the adverse effects of the anti-malaria drug, mefloquine.

As with most former soldiers, there comes a time to move on. So, I decided to try my hand at driving an 18-wheeler, and this is where, yet another adventure began. After successfully completing training, I started work with a long-haul trucking company.  I trekked all over Canada and the United States. It would be those travels that would lead me back into the world of writing.

One day in 2011, I fished a battered, half-finished manuscript from a box of old stuff. It was my first real attempt at writing a full-length novel. As I held it in my hands, I thought, I wonder if I can finish this?

I decided to give it a shot, and with the aid of modern technology I transcribed what I had in print and began writing the rest of the story. The story was called, THE EQUINOX and it was a tale of murder intermingled with native mysticism and monsters. I finished it in 2012 and published THE EQUINOX independently. I also submitted it to the Amazon Breakthrough Awards. This was an extraordinarily strange time because I was expecting my little horror novel to be bounced from the competition early on. Maybe beat out by a nostalgic book about flowers or maybe puppies. To my surprise, it kept moving from one level to the next. Submissions for Amazon Breakthrough Awards was somewhere around 30,000 manuscripts. I made it into the semi-finals which was just under 100, and a reviewer from publishers weekly called THE EQUINOX “A solid straight horror novel.” I also received praise from the horror community.

Horror World’s reviewer, TT ZUMA, wrote: M.J. Preston’s, The Equinox, is an old school horror novel that manages to utilize a fistful of tropes in unique ways. In fact, Preston does such a good job with the familiar that it never occurs to devoted horror readers that they’ve read bits and pieces of this story before.

That same year, I was about to embark on a new adventure that would solidify my next writing project and open me up to a world I had never seen. I speak of the Northwest Territories, where my career path as a trucker would lead me onto the worlds longest ice road. Yep, you guessed it, I was about to become an Ice Road Trucker. An amateur photographer, I carried my trusty Canon camera and began snapping photographs in the north. I shot everything I could see. Playful ravens, foxes, wolves, the arctic tundra and the majesty of the world famous aurora borealis, better known as the northern lights. I shot over 10,000 pictures that first season. I’ve included a few here for you to see. Being up there 105 miles below the Arctic Circle did something else. It awakened my muse and the set-up for my new novel.

After that first ice road season, of which I would return twice more, 2013 and 2016, I began penning a novel based on everything I saw with a twist of course. My main character, Marty Croft is forced into a world he thought he’d left behind. Blackmailed into a diamond heist, Marty finds himself running the ice roads for the son of his former gangster boss. Unbeknownst to Croft, the Acadia diamond mine has found something buried in the ice. Something not of this world and it is about to be unleashed.

In the fall of 2014, I completed the horror/science fiction novel ACADIA EVENT, which would capture the attention of a screenwriter, named Gregory L. Norris, who wrote for the television show Star Trek Voyager and the SyFy Channel.

Norris wrote: Author MJ Preston creates an epic page-turner in his newest release, ACADIA EVENT, with Canada’s frozen north as the setting and the Earth as the ultimate prize for whichever side wins the war.

Acadia Event was met with positive reviews, and my experience as an ice road trucker strengthened my ability to paint a picture of the north in the minds-eye of the reader.

In between projects I also write freelance short fiction. My stories can be found in anthologies around the world. But let’s get to why I am here today as a WildBlue author.

Last year I set out to write a two-book project known as the Highwayman series. Highwayman is about a serial killer in the United States who endeavors to be the most prolific and notorious killer of all time.

Using my extensive travels in the United States, I began planning. Research is a huge component in writing a book. Writing one about serial killers, made me realize that if I were to write a full-length novel, or two, on this subject would mean intense research. So that is what I did. I read and watched as much about the subject as possible. Immersed in a sea of source material, my research found me in the world of serial murder and the people that hunt them. From books, by FBI profiler, John Douglas, and Robert Ressler my research offered a plethora of source material from which to build my characters and backdrop. I also gorged on many true-crime books, and this is what led me here.

Highwayman available at WildBlue Press

Highwayman is available from WildBlue Press

By chance, as I was wrapping up the second draft of the first book in the Highwayman project, I ended up contacting WildBlue author, Kevin M. Sullivan. Sullivan has penned several books on the serial killer Ted Bundy along with notorious killers like Vampire, The Richard Chase Murders. I would go so far as to say that Kevin Sullivan is one of the worlds most knowledgeable historians on Ted Bundy. After getting to know Kevin, a friendship ensued, and I decided that WildBlue press might be a good fit for my new project. So, I submitted it. After the usual submission period, the Highwayman Project, along with my two previous novels were accepted by WildBlue Press.

And here we are.

I am proud to be a part of this innovative talent pool of writers, editors, and publishers. WildBlue has so much to offer readers. Not only true-crime but thrillers, horror, romance, science fiction, and police procedural.

So, after all that, who is MJ Preston? I am a writer, but I am also a regular guy who has soldiered and worked blue-collar. But as you can see, I’m also somewhat of an adventurer.

I am proud to be a part of the WildBlue family and sharing my tales with you the reader. I look forward to you joining me in the pages ahead.

Let the adventure begin.

Filed Under: HIGHWAYMAN Book 1, Horror, MJ Preston, THE EQUINOX Tagged With: Book 1, HIGHWAYMAN, Horror, horror book, horror novel, horror series, MJ Preston, Suspense, THE EQUINOX, Thriller

And the dead are but for a moment motionless

“Shadows of Shadows passing... It is now 1831... and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.”  --Edgar Allan Poe

...and the dead are but for a moment motionless.

I love that line. I first heard it spoke aloud by  Orson Wells, in the introduction to THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER found on The Alan Parson's Project debut album, TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION.

There is much to be gleaned from the above quote. Poe has always been a source of inspiration for me as a writer in that he does what most writers do. He identifies, sometimes dissects, and then draws an idea or thought from the source. He talks of poetry of which music is an essential.

And without the idea? Music is simply music.

The art of writing is drawn from all the senses, sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. As tellers of stories, be it fiction or non-fiction, the writer must have the ability to translate those senses and present them on a page where they will hopefully be read and consumed by hungry readers.

The senses we use to write can be enhanced as well. Hunter S. Thompson used drugs to enhance his writing experience, not recommended, but many use music to set the stage. Music, whether it's Classical, Rock n Roll or even Death Metal, can bring forth creativity,  deep concentration, and illumination.

I've written four novels to date. My first, a horror novel called. THE EQUINOX, the second, a science fiction horror called ACADIA EVENT, the last two are about the evolution of a serial killer and the law enforcement tracking him, HIGHWAYMAN, and FOUR.

All of these novels are quite different, except for the evolving style of the storyteller. I liken the writing style of most writers to the Charles M. Schulz comic strip PEANUTS.

What do Snoopy and Charlie Brown have to do with writing?

Well, first of all, Mr. Schulz was a genius, he managed to draw these characters in which a sad-sack kid, Charlie Brown, bumbles through his adolescence in a perpetual state of angst, while his dog is off fighting the Red Baron, being Joe Cool, and is readily accepted by Charlie's peers.

If you look beyond the brilliance of delivering a pleasurable story with a minimum of words coupled to a storyboard of cartoon characters, there is something more to learn. Look at the art, you can Google it, and what you'll see the constant improvement of an artist's talent.

The same goes for writers. The more we write, the more we review our own work and learn from it, the better it gets. That is until fame and fortune taint us, we become drug or alcohol addicted, rest on our laurels and become another tragic genius.

My first novel, THE EQUINOX, which I still hold a deep affection for, was the first time I made love with words on such a grand scale. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. While I enjoyed writing the story, there would be critics, and once I released it, there would be no going back. I learned an awful lot of things writing that book. While working 70-hour work weeks in a day job that took me from home, I somehow found time to bring a story to life that was more than 100,000 words. Like most aspiring writers, I had to carve out time and in that frame, I had to find my muse and get down to it.

Part of that was getting into a frame of mind, a "writer's zone" and running headlong into the abyss. One of the essential tools for that is music, or what I now refer to as "My soundtrack for writing."

Music with the idea. That first novel had a soundtrack that ranged from Progressive Rock, Heavy Metal, Folk, Instrumental and even alternative Country. The music awakened senses, casting shadows upon blank pages,  and then... Click click click.

All of my books have a soundtrack. I can recall Ozzy Osbourne's, "No More Tears, cadence beat, in ACADIA EVENT, to the terror my protagonists abducted wife, Maggie, tied up in the back of a car being driven to the hideout of a murderous Irish Gangster named Jude Shamus. Also found on the ACADIA soundtrack are THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS, THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND, and ACDC's, "Thunderstruck."

In HIGHWAYMAN, I found myself drawn to harder rock with sometimes dark lyrics. I would actively search out music that seemed to fit the crazy stuff swirling around in my head. I could hear the band CLUTCH singing, "You should have closed your windows and got another dog. You should have chained up all the doors and switched up all the locks." in "The Regulator."

In Highwayman's sequel, FOUR, I listened to, "There's a bullet in my pocket burning a hole. You're so far from your weapon and you wanna go home." in THE DEAD WEATHER'S, "So Far from Your Weapon." For one character, this set a tone of reckless abandon while making a run for the river.

And what am I giving you? Snippets of my writing and the music that played on. The soundtrack to the ethereal musings of author M.J. Preston. As the journey continues, the music changes along with a landscape and it's demographic of characters.

But a constant remains.

Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.

See you in 2020.

 

 

The Ballad of Ken Chan

By M.J. Preston

Sometimes you meet someone and work with them, and though that working relationship doesn’t blossom into the intimacy of friendship, it becomes a relationship of mutual respect. That is what I’d say about my relationship with Ken Chan. We weren’t buddies, yacking about home life, but two guys that did the same job for different companies, which at times led to helping each other out. Ken was always helpful and knowledgeable. I never asked Ken Chan a question about fuel that he didn’t have an answer for. As loader-trainers go, Ken knew his stuff, and I would go so far to say that he was an incredible asset to the company he worked for.

I also know that Ken is a veteran. He served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years. I know he served in the Balkans; we talked a bit about that. When he left the service, he started training people on how to handle fuel. He became a loader-trainer and has taught some of the people who taught me how to handle fuel. I think some people get the wrong impression of loaders-trainers in the fuel business.  They think you’re a washed-up driver or lacking the ability to do anything else. Nothing could be further from the truth. You’re teaching people how to load and unload all sorts of fuel, from premium gasoline to jet fuel. Those that pick up and deliver these dangerous goods in a professional manner can usually attribute their success starting with a good loader-trainer.

That was Ken.

Sometimes, I would watch him with his trainees.

Since my own days in the military, it has been my habit to watch procedures of fellow instructors. It is an excellent way learn. What I learned watching Ken was that he was consistent, respectful, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and you couldn’t ask for a better company representative.

About ten days ago, from the time of this writing, I saw Ken at one of the refineries, and we talked briefly. There had been some driver scuttlebutt about his retiring, and I asked him if it was true.

He said it was, and then he said something uncharacteristic, at least to me. He complained that his employer wouldn’t give him a clothing allowance, that he was expected to buy his own Fire-Retardant Gear, while the drivers in his company were afforded a clothing allowance. “I’m expected to stand out in the rain and the snow with just coveralls, no winter or rain gear, just coveralls,” his words have stuck with me. I’d never heard him complain. I felt he was deeply troubled with how things were going. This guy complaining, this wasn’t him at all. Ken was always pretty upbeat; he’d help anyone that needed help. It didn’t matter who? He held no contempt against competing companies. He was good that way.

A week passed, I saw Ken a few times, at one refinery or another, but we didn’t talk again until after the last weekend.

On Monday, I realized I’d mistakenly tossed away a fuel bill and had to return to the refinery to get another copy. When I got there, I saw Ken sitting in his van. I went in, got my bill, and when I came out, he rolled down his window and said, “Hello, Mark.”

I asked him if he was waiting to load someone.

He said he was turning in his badges.

I asked, “So, this is it, you’re done?”

He replied, “Yes, I’m done.”

I asked, “You’re retiring?”

He replied, “Yes, Mark, I am retiring.”

I shook his hand and said, “I wish I was retiring.”

Ken said something that now leaves me saddened and in to wonder.

He said, “You don’t want to be doing what I’m doing.”

I completely missed it. I suppose I was distracted by my task, needing to get back and fix my error.

I didn’t see anything in Ken’s eyes when I shook his hand.

I wished him well, and he did the same for me, and I was on my way.

Those would be our last words.

I can only assume that Ken handed in all his badges. He was a man who believed in keeping his ducks in a row. I would later learn that he would also send two emails, one a mass mailing to employees of the company he worked for. The other presumably CC to both the Provincial and Federal Health Ministers. That done, Ken Chan drove to the Alberta Legislature, and using a handgun, he took his own life.

I heard about it on the CBC news, but I had no idea it was Ken. I wouldn’t get confirmation until the following day from a couple of friends. Immediately those last words, “You don’t want to be doing what I’m doing,” loom, a prophecy unseen.

And what do we learn from Ken Chan’s death?

What did I learn?

To look and listen a little harder.

But it isn’t just that. We need to understand that while the human psyche can be a place of wonder, of triumph, of happiness. It can also become a dark solitary place that breeds misery and helplessness. I am guessing that Ken was suffering from a severe form of depression, and I know a thing or two about it. I don’t purport to be an expert. After all, I didn’t pick up on the message he was sending.

I can’t express how that saddens me.

I was also privy to the emails Ken sent to his company. He wanted those shared. So, that’s what I’ll tell you a bit about. But I won’t name names or the company. If you want to know about that, I’m sure you can ask around, but I am not going to. In his email, Ken complained about a boss, naming that boss directly, even addressing the individual and making some very damning accusations. Those accusations proven or not, aren’t for me to stand in judgment of, I was not there so I can’t say.

What I can say, from what I have read, is that Ken Chan was a man who felt trapped, abandoned, and betrayed after long service to a company. His complaint about the Fire-Retardant Equipment was a fair one; we work outside in winter climate, sometimes for long hours. Last February, I think it was around -40 Celsius, and that didn’t include wind chill.

He also complained that managers were padding their bonuses at the expense of employees. I can’t speak to that, either way. All I can say in comparison, I work for a much smaller family-run company, and they still provide FR Gear, including winter bib overalls and hard hat liners and parkas.

We need our gear.

And still, the question is begged.

What have we learned? What have I learned?

We need to understand that people can be under an extreme amount of pressure. They could be considering that worst-case scenario. It behooves us to listen, to respect them, to give them the equipment to do their job. Of the grievances, Ken listed in his emails to the bosses, the underlying thing that I think Ken Chan was calling for was respect. I hope that his employers will look long and hard at this, correct mistakes, and if there are policy changes, they are swift, setting a tone of respect in his memory.

Respect.

I think that should be the Ballad of Ken Chan.

Rest Easy, Brother.