The Septic Pool

A poet in desperate search for inspiration decides to spend the weekend in an abandoned cottage so that he can complete his work in solitude.  Little does he know that his every move is being watched by a crazy serial killer.

Without Death Movie...

This is an amateur film that I made in my spare time - I really enjoy acting and love making videos and well the result was this - Without Death the movie.

Apart from the names of the characters it doesn't follow the story at all - as the movie progressed it became its own story.

It started like this -

I wanted to write a short story called Man with a Pale face - a murder mystery thriller about a masked killer - and you know...  I just couldn't write it.  I couldn't find the words.  My frustration boiled over and I just forgot about it.  The one night it struck me - it wouldn't work as a book - the idea won't stand up in literary form - BUT - maybe visually, as a video - yes that's it!  I will make a video of it and tell the story that way.

And so that's what I did. 

It started as a series of short scenes - nothing great.  The scenes I filmed didn't make sense, not by themselves.  I came close to ditching the idea when I thought this: "How about tying a narrative to it?"  Maybe then the picture would make sense?

So that's what I did.

How about we make a feature film?  Ambitious, I know, but something new and I took the task on with alacrity. 

It was a giant experiment.

I was going to call the feature, Without Death, taking the name from the book, of course.  I dug up the old characters, dusted them off, and reinvented them for the film.  Ivan, in the book, was a pensive, manipulative character - in the movie he is a psychotic dictator lunatic.  His assistant, Clyde, the young and ambitious scientist of the book was now an old, washed out Doctor praying for retirement. 

The theme of the book is there, "meddle with science and it might backfire!"  But I needed to make a new story to slice in "Man with Pale face." 

Without Death the movie was not so much a story of dark science going wrong - like the book it used for inspiration - but a story of isolation, leading to depression, leading to madness.  Each character in the movie represents a state of the human psyche. 

Pale face - who comes and goes throughout the picture - represents total madness.  The other characters represent the journey to that particular state.

Ivan is totally mad - he's "lost the plot" as it were.

But Clyde?  he's normal for now, but he might lose his way if he's not careful - he needs to get out, to escape, find a new life.  Nobody wants to end up like Pale face. 

And why the Pale face?

It's a metaphor. 

When you reach that horrid state you lose all humanity - you become an entity, a thing - you have no face...


So here's the film:

Remember it's amateur - not a lot of money, no, but a heck of a lot of passion!

Thanks

Sww

Without Death - now with a new cover...

Same story but with a new better cover

 Without Death

This is the dark story of Clyde Raytheon, an ambitious scientist unwittingly drawn into the depths of a forbidden science.

An amazing discovery has just been made! A serum concocted from the remains of a mysterious and still unrecorded animal which, when applied to the tissue of a random subject, has the ability to halt the ageing process in all living things and put an end to death altogether!

Armed with only a slight understanding of the fantastic properties of this mysterious serum, Clyde joins forces with his colleague - the mad scientist Ivan Gustav, and together they take refuge in the shadows of an abandoned hospital to try and complete the work. But their quest to accomplish this amazing goal ends disastrously…

Murdles Leer was a very quiet village before Ivan came. Now dull lights flicker from the laboratory windows of the abandoned hospital. People go missing for no reason. Graves are found dug up and empty. Now everyone knows to bolt their doors at sundown, and blank out the windows. The air is full of ghostly whispers, and ominous shadows stalk the hills at night. The dead are stirred and they want their revenge in blood…

Peter the Doll

The doll is back…

It has been thirty years since the children locked it away in the box and cast it out into the lake. The box sank down to the bottom taking with it its despicable cargo -

and there is should have ended.

But it has not...

The haunted doll called Peter has returned from the depths, and has scores to settle...

Skotza

Need I say anything else...

Video and music by me as part of the new Strange Tales collection.

Time to bring this blog back to life

So it's 2016 and I haven't written anything on here since 2012...   But I think its time to update this place, show some of the things I have been doing, and start writing up a few new tales.

I have been writing like crazy the last few years - quite a few of my books have appeared on amazon and when I get time I will create links to them.

I am also thinking about moving Strange Tales in a new direction - not just writing - but videos as well.  Still weird tales - but visual instead. 

More updates will follow. 

This is SWW logging out.