Hello. I’m Bob Pastorella, co-host of the This Is Horror podcast, website manager for This Is Horror, and writer. I’m the author of Mojo Rising, They’re Watching (with Michael David Wilson), and have numerous short-stories and non-fiction online and in print in various publications.
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Updates:
Happy New Year!
I’m writing this part on the evening of December 31, 2021. Retail Hell is officially over. The continued commercialization of the holiday season sickens me to my core, but yet I find myself in the receiving position of the spoils of that battle. Working retail has a lot of benefits, but dealing with rude, entitled customers to get that paycheck does a number on your desire to spread any holiday cheer. That said, I hope everyone is doing fine right now, and your holidays are the best they can be.
Here’s to fabulous 2022!
I’m eager to put words on the page. The grindhouse revenge story is shelved for now. I’m not worried about this at all, mainly because this is the umpteenth time I’ve set the project aside. As usual, I’ve figured out a way to make that story much more complicated than it needs to be, with tangents and side-plots and character motivations that ultimately bog the story down in details that really don’t make sense to me anymore. Setting it aside gives me a chance to forget all the bullshit I added to it so it can return to its natural, easier-to-handle, concept.
My new project is another vampire story. It’s The Hunger meets Relic (2020). My previous WIP, The Small Hours, is my gory, bloody vampires are killing machines horror novel. This new vampire project is much different. Small Hours is fun … like Fright Night fun. This new vampire WIP is serious as a heart attack. I’m going back to those early folktales, how people, sometimes entire families, were haunted by a vampire. Usually, it was someone they knew, recently deceased in a horrible manner. And haunted is the right word choice because the original stories sound more like genuine, bump-in-the-night, there’s-something-in-the-shadows ghost stories than what we normally think about when someone says ‘vampire’. My protagonist is a former guitarist for a could-have-been-famous doom-techo-metal band, now older and a recovering alcoholic. His estranged father, the catalyst of the story, is a semi-retired world-renown artist whose work in film and comics almost overshadows his larger gallery-tier works. I also want to try a vampire story without a Van Helsing. I want my main character to be in denial, and when he finally accepts what’s happening all around him, he still doesn’t have a clue what to do about it. That’s all I’m willing to talk about for now. Say too much and you lose the fire.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
I write with music.
All kinds of music. All genres, all styles. Ambient and instrumental, dark jazz and classical, metal to outlaw country. With lyrics or just the music, doesn’t make a difference to me. I used to not listen to music with lyrics when writing because I didn’t want to be distracted, or have the lyrics influence the story, but now they’re not distracting, and sometimes I want the lyrics to influence the story.
Sometimes one song can inspire a story.
Sometimes an entire album can inspire a novel.
Mojo Rising was inspired because I heard the strands of a story listening to L.A. Woman by The Doors. There were songs from other albums by The Doors in the mix, but most of them came from that one album. The initial idea was me trying to write something like the first season of True Detective, but that idea morphed into the story of a loser drug runner looking for his missing brother while trying to keep his shit together under the influence of a strange new form of meth. I listened to so much music by The Doors the lyrics became intertwined with the story. I let this happen, intentionally and deliberately. Sure I had to go back and trim those lyrics in the narrative down to legal use levels, but they’re in the story, and if you’re a fan, you’ll see them stand out.
The Small Hours was influenced by a song by the NWOBHM band Holocaust.
“Look out at the darkness
And you will see
Just call my name and I'll be there
You cannot touch me
You would not dare
I am the chill that's in the air”
The musical influence is not to be found in the narrative except for when a character mentions the band early on in the story, but that doesn’t mean those lyrics didn’t drive the narrative for me while writing the story. There were times those lyrics were the only thing driving me to write the story. The lyrics became submerged in the story, forming the force my characters had to face.
Now I’m faced with a new project, and I’m flip-flopping on writing music.
Two bands enter the arena: One seasoned band pioneers of doom, featuring vocals from one of the most prominent singers in heavy metal, the other a groundbreaking force of relentless darkness, his voice heralding our eventual end.
Yes, I’m talking about Black Sabbath vs. Nine Inch Nails.
Dio era Sabbath. Three albums and a side-project called Heaven and Hell. (Let’s be honest here, that Heaven and Hell album is basically a Black Sabbath album without the band name.) Not the catalog that Nine Inch Nails boasts, but still … every song is a banger, as they say. I’m leaning to the Sabbath, but there’s a certain abandoned project that’s calling to me, and I’m wondering if maybe it could be resurrected and repurposed for this new story. That abandoned story was heavily influenced by Nine Inch Nails, and in many ways, it could fit this new story quite well.
But so does the Sabbath.
This kind of stuff probably isn’t important to some writers. Some who listen to music while they write may not care what they listen to, and sometimes just about anything will do. But when the band’s music inspires so much of the story, it’s hard to listen to anything else when writing. I have certain bands in mind for certain stories. I have a Pink Floyd story, an Ozzy era Black Sabbath story, a Judas Priest story, a Rob Zombie story, even a Waylon Jennings/Johnny Cash outlaw country music story. Hopefully, I’ll get to those stories, but right now I have this vampire story, and it’s either going to be the Sabbath or the Nine Inch Nails.
I doubt I’m the only writer who works like this. I can’t be the only one. If I am, then all I can say is everyone is different. Decisions will be made, and I’ll have to see it through to the end. Of course, I could use both bands … that’s an option for sure, but there’s no fun in that. This is not a heartbreaking decision, because either way, I’ll get to jam out to some badass tunes while writing the story, allowing the music and lyrics to influence and inspire me the whole way through.
Music: Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, Dio, Nine Inch Nails.
Films: The Hand (dir. Oliver Stone).
Books: Still The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (again). Straub’s Ghost Story (again and again forever and ever)
Next Issue: A writing craft subject about emotions.
peace&love
Bob.