Samhain Publishing

I suppose I should be attempting to make with the thunder and trumpets for the release date of Blood of Eden, my very first California novel of 2, both of which have been picked up by Samhain.

But the truth is, I’m still waiting for it all to hit me. I’m still holding my breath. There are final tweakings and blurbings and twitchings and grumblings before we roll this beast out onto the showroom floor. I am working as a bank guard and writing at night. Theodore Sturgeon’s ghost keeps blowing bong hits in my ear from the Bijou. My other half is out of school and adrift on the seas of Bush II’s economy once again. As Burroughs once wrote, “[It is] a time when the ship is sinking, a country falling apart, a time of incredible danger and opportunity…”

Indeed. And nowhere is that more apparent than the two books of mine that hit here, Blood of Eden first and foremost of all.

It’s very difficult to write anything autobiographical without bitching and moaning. The trick is to put on Joseph Campbell goggles before examining what it is that you want to tell. How does one act as Dostoyevski endeavored to act and make the characters universal and ennobling?

Simple. You start with yourself, and force yourself to not pull the mirror away or edit any footage. I think of Eminem’s sanitized-self character in “8Mile” ranking himself to the dogs and back before the other guy could.

Of course, at that point the crowd roars with laughter and goes apeshit. The Fool has inspired Pity and Fear, as all tragedies are designed to. As Jacobean dramatist Roger Zelazny points out about a similar character to Robyn Goodfellow (Spender in A Rose For Ecclesiastes),

“I hated him because he was me. Once in my life, I let a good thing die and now it can never be… But sometimes, things happen this way, and all you can do is say, ‘Look, this is the way things are, that’s all…’ “*

Roger Zelazny figures very prominently in Blood of Eden, for many reasons. At times in the various drafts of the work since Oakland, early 2000, I almost felt like I could hear the old man’s snarky Movietone Newscaster voice over my shoulder, admonishing me to straighten my back and swordfight like I’d ever had a day of training.

In the telling of these two-soon-to-be-three works, Harlan Ellison, another dispossessed elf, forged many of my memories of Arkadia as well. So did Misty Lackey and Ellen Datlow and Pat Cadigan, and the Blessed Ursula. And I’ve been dying to go back.

Parts of this book did really happen. Parts of it didn’t. You may draw your own conclusions. But first, I want you to close your eyes, and clap three times, and say that you are afraid of the dark. Because it’s when you stop being afraid of the dark…that perhaps the dark stops being afraid of you. But in that knowledge, you begin to remember who you really were all along, and how to light a candle instead.

Here’s your popcorn. Please enjoy the show.

Edward Morris

Portland, Oregon
August 20, 2007

hiding in the dark while it rains

• From an obscure letter to a fan, ca. 1968.

I did the only thing I could under all that darkness without a candle to my name, and tried to lay my blood curse on the tracks of the rat race. The train was coming in, and fast. Without a second thought, without a hesitation or last sick excuse, I walked out onto the yellow safety line and stepped off the platform.

Heedless Deliverance

But I couldn’t even do that right. The moment I kissed steel, burly arms and callused hands had me in a hammerlock, jerking me three feet straight up and back.

The ground shuddered beneath the station, rumbling into a deep, thick silence as all the lights went out.

People stampeded for the exits. The frizzy-haired BART operator shouted into her mic, her attention diverted away from me for the time being, clearly unaware that the mic wasn’t even on.

I twisted out of the lock, flailing away and screeching, “Get your hands off me! For God’s sake, can’t you just let me die? It’s bad enough you threw me out of the fucking meeting, now you gotta be following me and—”

“How’d you like a nice tall glass of Shut the Fuck Up?” The man’s voice was rich, rolling and commanding. Around us, the madding herd parted like the Red Sea. He closed his eyes and intoned:

“And for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthly and abhorr’d commands,

Refusing her grand hests

She did confine thee

By help of her most potent ministers

And in her most unmitigable rage…”

“…to a special room in the basement, where the bondage gimps did duct-tape me to the ceiling,” I croaked. My eyes widened, and I looked at my hand, then back at the black man from the A.A. meeting at the Inner Circle. He’d changed clothes, but the sunglasses were a dead giveaway and there were other things, things I was too freaked-out to explain…

“You called me last night, didn’t you?”

“That I did. You got drunker than me. We agreed to meet here. Remember?” He snickered. “Didn’t think so.”

I looked at my hand again. The world was spinning very fast, and the stranger was the only solid thing in the station.

The guy from the meeting was garbed differently now, resplendent in a white, snap-brim hat with a black band, and a white sharkskin suit with wide lapels. His shirt collar was open to the second button, exposing a gold crescent moon on a nice chain. I remembered that, too. On his feet was a pair of low, shiny, pointy-toed boots. The toes seemed to have worn into a pronounced curl.

His mirror shades had slipped down his nose a bit. His eyes looked like furnace isinglass. In either of his pushed-back, deformed ears gleamed a single gold hoop with a fat silver bead.

“Ain’t no bitch worth that,” he said reflectively, as if talking to himself. “Not even her.” A tremor went through the ground. Something happened to the way he stood, as if he were mounted on a gyroscope. “Damn.” He could have been talking about the next train. “Ain’t all these stations supposed to be retro-fit?”

I couldn’t answer. He put one padded-vise hand on my shoulder and we walked back to the bench. He grinned that cannibal grin as we sat down, and I saw that his canines were gold. He bowed low, right hand over his heart. “My name’s Simon.

“So…you called. You must be from Fruitvale Staffing. Where’s…where’s the assignment? As long as it’s casual, I’m ready to go. Can’t believe I ran into you where I did last night, but…” I swallowed hard. “You won’t tell Jorge or any of the bosses, will ya? I mean—”

Simon scowled. “Boy, how much you drink last night? I ain’t got time for this. I have come a very long way.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel like I’d had anything to drink at all the night before. Something opened my mouth and made the question roll forth like bitter smoke I could almost chew.

“Who sent you?”

That got to him. “It was kinda…like a message in a bottle I got. From one world over. From…from your sister.”

“Non sequitur,” I tried to say. “I’m an only child.” But by the end of the sentence, all that came out was a sob. Something broke in me, and I had no idea what it was. The word that wanted to escape somewhere in there was…twin.

Simon just watched and waited. After a moment, he spoke again. “She sent out a wild bird, with a song for anyone who’d listen. We don’t fuck around with your kind, usually, but…she special.”

“She—” But he gave me that look again.

“You’ll find out in time. Right now, time is in very short supply. Especially question-time. So everything I say, you gonna say ‘Okay.’ You can ask me anything you want…but you gonna keep it together. Do you think you can handle that?”

I nodded. “Trust me, after the night I had, nothing could surprise me.”

“…for this Emergency Announcement from the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority…” The annoying, pre-recorded ringing voice came from everywhere. Simon sighed.

“Man, that’s about enough of that.” He snapped his fingers. The overhead speakers shut off with a strangled zap. Had I been seated, the cushion would have stood up with me.

“Well, maybe not nothing, but…what…the fuck…are you?”

“In a minute. I mean…I heard what was goin’ on, on your end. We got ears everywhere. But I never would have believed it.” He surveyed me. “You in the most pain you ever been in your life. And that’s when you got the most power. Shit, you a writer. You probably figured that out a long time ago.”

At that, I seesawed my hand. He smiled.

“This is your big chance to step off the page…if you’re strong enough. Now you know what to say right here,” he said. My fists clenched.

“Okay.”