Information Sickness – constant stream of irrelevant data punctuated with the occasional speck of truth, a faint glimmer lost in a sea of publicity, PR campaigns, talking points and fast opinions.

By the age of 18, the average Western-world individual will have been subjected to over 200,000 ads. You will spend 12-20 years in school and just barely understand how and why the world works the way it does. You can name hundreds of brands but you can’t name more than a handful of bird or tree species. And an army of bosses, landlords, parents, teachers, preachers, bankers and politicians will push you around and instill the notion that authority is good, for no other reason than it is.

Modern society can be broken down in fairly loose terms. The top 2-3% is made of psychopaths who feel the same way about you as their coffee table, and wield immense power precisely because the consequences don’t affect them emotionally. Another 10%, more or less, is made up of socialists – empathetic people actively involved in trying, and failing, to make the world better, greener, more equal. A place you actually want to live in. Some of these are peaceful bureaucrats, others outright revolutionaries. They fight amongst themselves and find meaning in doing so, because the horror of the everyday is better faced by keeping eyes open.

The rest is the dormant, silent majority, a swarm of countless people who, slumberous, are tired, grumpy, quick to anger, but quicker to reconciliation, and only want one thing: to go back to sleep. You can lull them, or poke them, but while they’ve still got something to lose, they’ll keep to the routine without a fucking clue. When they see rich people, they envy them. And when they see revolutionaries, it doesn’t inspire them to fight, no, it comforts their inactivity, because if someone else is willing to take the risk, then why should they?

And this mass, this swarm of such incredible potential, is the object of every single media strategy, every piece of information launched through every medium conceivable – mobilization from the upstarts, or PR campaigns from the upper class. And the roaring mass speaks to itself, trying to conjure some appealing reflection to quell the perennial doubt that they are actually wasting their lives in servitude.

The ensuing noise is the Information Age.

And I was contemplating these concepts these past weeks as I was interviewed twice. My performances were rather poor, really, not because I didn’t want to express myself, or didn’t have anything relevant to say, it’s probably exactly because I was so eager I talked so fast, didn’t pause, rambled on nervously, spewing words and ideas so fast, terrified at the thought I couldn’t get it all out in the couple seconds allotted.

In the Information Age, what doesn’t make enough noise doesn’t really exist. This notion alone haunts me, because it is the apparatus’ own exigencies, not mine, not objective truth, merely circumstantial, and temporary. So why play to what you know to be false?

Because countless variables are explicitly poised on such contrivances, and they don’t care that it’s false.

So yes, composition is hard to attain when everything seems to be at stake. Somehow I’m stuck between the pressure to express the meaning I wish to convey and the simple need to be who I am – which is just me, and hardly fitting for a public figure. The contradiction is manifest.

Consider the Void, consider peace, silence, the beautiful moment of absolute nothing. We must be who we are.

Currently sucked in the vacuum of Valacchia. Until the fateful launch party on March 9th, it’s going to be shameless promotion, interviews and worldwide conspiracy.

Meanwhile, Anarchistes anonymes met up last night to grind over the new play, Anar Écoute, and this time it looks like its going to be five of us, with a guest director. I produced the first draft of the sketch play but everyone will pitch in, rewrite and add new material, and I’m happy it can be such a collective effort. If we’re gonna bomb on stage, at least we’ll bomb together!

And lastly, the Anarchist Writers Bloc is hard at work for the next anthology, which will be bigger, better, and, well, just plain fucken anarchotastic.

So, there’s that, and of course my day job.

I’m fucken swamped. But I still daydream about the Malice project and squibble some lines here and there. Not much progression for the time being, but I swear, we’ll fucken get there, puppies.

In the meantime, here’s an à propos clip of Grinders, my latest discovery here in the heart of Necropolis, the Grinders comedy club, Theatre Sainte-Catherine.

Production of the 2nd book has slowed to a halt. Yet evenso, the literal hamster keeps spinning, and sentences unfurl without my consent, all the way up there in that caffeine-soaked melon of mine.

“And why is that?” Well Timmy, I’m currently ploughing through a combination of exhaustion and excitement, which the French call fébrilité. On the one hand, I’m in total shock before human ignorance and arrogance, fighting bureaucrats and conservatives on a daily basis and completely unable to get over how fucking cannibalistic the dominant class is. Meanwhile, “Mr and Ms Everybody” love and envy the rich, instead of experiencing deep and utter contempt for them. All the torches and the pitchforks are neatly locked away in the basement but the iPhones are out in seasonal colors and Twitface nears the billion users.

The late Fredy Perlman wrote, back in the 80s I believe, that “now is a perfectly good time to go insane”, when he was referring to the dying beast of capitalism taking everything in its fall – us, life on the planet, and your mom. And I have to agree with him. The fact that a handful of sociopaths managed to climb the ladder and enslave everyone below in one thing, but how the silent majority stays silent, with everything that’s going on, is completely beyond me, and I honestly think anyone willing to look long enough on the state of the world will go completely bonkers. Fighting for sanity in the modern is a daily struggle.

But hey, it’s just reality!

Cut to commercial!

On the upside, did I mention Valacchia was already on pre-order? That’s the second half of fébrilité: excitement. My very first mainstream book, sent out into the world and miles away from any notion of control on my part. Of course, it may very well be lost into obscurity by the second week. Or the third. But some may find some thrill into my lines and warm themselves through the last months of this harsh Quebecan winter, and if that’s wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

And if you don’t think that’s funny, wait until I hit my first interview and watch me blush until my head explodes.

So, I’ve submitted Necropolis to 5 publishers: ESP Books, Arsenal Pulp Press, AK Press, PM Press and Tom Doherty LLC (Tor, Orbit). A sixth submission was made to the Cooke literary Agency, who could, if willing, make more submissions to publishers who only talk to agents (Random House, Big Cahoonas Ltd, etc.).

I’ve already been turned down by PM Press because they’re overloaded, but they complimented me on the quality of the submission, so I guess I got that right.

Now, I’ve got five fishing lines in the water and six-eight months to keep fingers crossed and take compromising pictures of the chief editors (one of these plans is a joke of course, but guess which!).

In the meantime, if the concept of publishing full-length novels in the age of Twitter is not ludicrous enough, I invite you to ponder the empirical data pertaining to the relationship via publishers and the general market.

I’ve already mentioned that people like Twain, Proulx and Tolstoi started out as self-published authors, so that’s no secret. A fun fact to consider however is that many best-selling authors were previously turned down by buckets of publishers before selling millions. Like Herbert’s Dune, which was rejected approximately 23 times over ten years before becoming the greatest best-seller of sci-fi.

JK Rowling, though I despise her work (and her fans) with a rare passion, was turned down ten times for her first Harry Potter book.

Stephen King was also turned out about twenty times for Carrie.

Wait!

Think about it for a second. That means, twenty times, some guy in an office looked over Stephen King’s manuscript, scratched his balls and said with the utmost certainty “nah, that’s crap, NEXT!”. That’s twenty corporate entities who made a decision so profoundly and thoroughly incorrect as to completely contradict the one and only skill they’re are supposed to have: the ability to predict if a piece of written work will sell or not.

It’s happened time and time again. The logical conclusion is that publishers are just fallible people and not shamans – they don’t have a crystal ball and when they pass on a submission they’re also taking a risk. What that means for me is that I do have some chance of getting picked up, but if I don’t it doesn’t necessarily mean Necropolis is a poor novel or even doomed for commercial failure.

So, can I actually predict the chances I have, come up with some formula based on my current (lack of) fame, my sale record, my Google rank, the scope, type and size of the publishers, the weather outside when the publisher gets my submission, whether or not they had time for that quick rub-out before coming in to work, and the number of typos still in the book divided by total word count?

No. It’s not a perfect science. This whole fucking thing is a few notches south of complete lottery, and I got a couple tickets. It’s fucken pathetic, and I don’t know what else to do. So, let’s pretend to hold our breath, because, who knows? I got published in French, why couldn’t I get published in English? Just cause I can’t write, does that mean I shouldn’t get those millions of dollars either? Fuck, this is America, when did talent ever enter in the equation?

Here’s a list of 15 best-selling authors who got the run-around before dipping their balls, or ovaries, in literal gold.

http://io9.com/5668053/15-classic-science-fiction-and-fantasy-novels-that-publishers-rejected

Meanwhile, a minute’s piece…

Forward

I’ve climbed mountains far and wide
Wandered grassy plains and forests wild
And though the load was often heavy
I carried mine and walked forward

I’ve survived cities big and small
Worked hard and harder and then more
And when the fascists screamed at me
I held my head up and bit my tongue
The bosses and the lovers and the psychos
When they knocked me down
And kicked me
My head still high and both fists low
Biding my time

Proud in dismay, but always forward
Often heartsick, often plain sick
Forward and forward
In circles
While my flowers died
Winters fell in succession
I lost the laughter of children
And the company of friends

I swore there would come a day, oh did I ever
A moment when the rules would change
The ground would stop shifting beneath my feet
I could finally breathe
And build a life
Just a little further down
If only
I was wiser, if only I got stronger
A little luck to meet the right people
The very impossible people
Thinking there had to be a way
Somehow

Meanwhile life is passing by
Years and tears spell out different lessons
You get wrinkles and enemies
You run from more than to
The odds get so clear: they’re set against you
The principles are wrong: you’re a joke
The pieces don’t fit
And you try to figure out
How to be happy
How to just walk on
And go
Forward

Back from a lightning rump in Maine with a pack of fudge and some 14 hours’ bus ride etched into my butt, tired but somewhat serene, ready to pound my frontal lobe against the intricacies of literary delusion.

I’ve got about 10 days’ vacation to fast-track three more submissions for Necropolis, and to that end I’ve decided to add a few overdue trinkets to the novel, namely:

In alphabetic order, some 100 quick description for all unique names, terms and characters. It’s a classic tool for fantasy books to help readers when they feel lost through the narrative, and it’s important so as not to stick to the little details and lose sight of the story.

I wasn’t going to, but after long exchanges with my editor for Valacchia (similar questions) I decided to put translations of every single word that’s not English and bundle them all up by chapter in a list at the end of the book. Thing is, I put in little bits of French (and maybe one or two Latin expressions) in the whole novel, as Dystopians are distant descendants of a French-speaking culture, which they refer to as the Old Tongue. About 90% of these are simply cosmetic and do not provide any significant information to the story, but a few do contain certain insights into the thoughts of a few characters (namely, Léandres) and there’s a few poems in French. Thing is, I know that most of these bits would be useless to the reader, but the reader doesn’t know that, and I didn’t want it to get frustrating.

Finally, and this is only if I find enough time, I’ll make a map of Dystopia and one of Necropolis. I’m a fucking geographer, so yes, I can make maps, and I’ve always found visual material to be very helpful when reading a story that rests strongly on spatial positions, land descriptions, etc. Hey, if they’re any good, I’ll post them here as a little treat for you guys.

Yams, yams, Santa Claus, bla bla bla.

I’m off to Maine to sample what it’s like to get fat and stupid in the US of A, overdose on fudge and come back crawling. It’s a bit of a getaway between me and my sweet queen of the underworld, before the madness starts again in 2012.

Publishing update: PM Press, AK Press and the Cooke Agency have been bombarded with a submission for Necropolis. I have three more targets in my sights, and then I’ll take a break. Fuck it’s long – you have to tailor every fucken submission in little anal details – page lengths and bio size and cover letters that apparently must contain all the content of the submission and isn’t quite a fucking cover letter anymore – because we’re very anal in the book biz, yes, yes, and I won’t say I ain’t, bubba!

So have fun, abuse every possible substance you can find until January 2nd and straighten the fuck up for another fucking year of fuckity, fuck fuck fucks.

See you in two weeks!

PAPERWORK!

I’m at around the 7th chapter of Book 2, and am now pausing two weeks to do…. fucking paperwork.

You will remember the Embassy project (here and there), which I’ve decided to conclude, after some 8 months of e-mails, hundreds of dollars in post and print, lots of misunderstandings and lost time and resources, mingled with brilliant encounters with incredible humans. In total, 4 reviews have come in, with somewhere between 1-2 uncertain ones yet to come, maybe, perhaps, if at all. But after extending this thing month after month I’ve decided to move the fuck on.

So there we go, the Embassy is closed. My thanks to Jason McQuinn, Norman Nawrocki, Joseph Vargo and John Zerzan for trusting me even through my many flaws as a writer, and lending some time my way.

The ever fine folk at Subversify Magazine suggested we do an interview instead, which is set somewhere after Xmas.

What next?

Well, publishing, puppies, publi-fucka-shing.

Now, trying to get publish. Trying. Submitting. Submission. I’ll do it, I fucken will. More money down the drain, more rejection, yes, bring it on! I’ll bow low to every little anal-fixated demand from these pimps of a feather, tailor submissions, sacrificing the long hours of what little free time I have, send my precious pages to every side of the globe and I’ll eat those fucken rejection letters, yes, ah, ah, it’ll be great!!

Yes, ten years of writing down the road and now I’m quite familiar with the process of strutting my literal stuff down FameWhore boulevard, showing a bit of leg to attract the attention of vapid business men driving past, hoping to get a few bucks for a quick and dirty one. Sure, I’ll put on that make-up, I’ll do freaky stuff, I’ll put on a pig nose and squeal, motherfucker!

Wonder why I’ve been doing DIY so long? Cause I hate that fucken process. It’s the fucken lottery, and I don’t play, and I don’t write to please the fucken masses, I write to disturb them, and they won’t like it, and neither will the publishers…

Sure, I’m already signed with one publisher, that’s true. But it’s in French, it’s in Quebec, and it’s erotica. The Malice project is outside those three categories, so it’s back to square one.

Yes, I might be cynical, but I’m not blind. There’s a reason I have to try. Distribution, marketing – it’s the two systems I can’t handle on my own, it’s a scale larger than any one person, however gifted or capable, could ever achieve. So yes. I’ll even try the agents, yes I will. Why? Cause the big publishers, those who could carry this whole stuff worldwide, they don’t talk to authors, they speak to agents.

It’s an ugly fuck business, and it hurts me to even think about it. But if I’m gonna write, if I’m gonna fucken try, I’m gonna go all the way.

All the way. If only to prove how flawed the system is.

Latest review for Necropolis, by anarchist essayist and editor Jason McQuinn, of the Alternative Press Review and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed.

***

Necropolis is a mordantly gothic tale of a goth enclave believing itself the last Dystopian city of Man, lost in the midst of a vast unknown void. It’s a tale told in melodic, though often melodramatic, prose with clever bits of archaic English interspersed with highlights in la Francaise. (Keep your dictionaries close.) In it the mutant heroine, Malice, is sickened by the suffocating expectations of an increasingly superficial, hedonistic population in a decaying, semi-anarchic city governed by the Tenets of Dystopia. The story recounts her turn from passive victim to author of her own bloody destiny. If you enjoy futuristic, gothic fantasy with plenty of blood and gore, conspiracy and betrayal, this story delivers it with an anti-civilizational edge.

Happy birthday, Dev Diary, you’re two years old! The Malice Project is slightly older, but who’s counting?

Two flippin’ years, man. The blog’s received around 4,000 hits, which, for a project that hasn’t been published from an author with no mainstream publications, is pretty fucken awesome.

So far the damage has been substantial. You’ve seen me beat my head against proverbial walls, rant against humanity, babble on about pointless drivel and otherwise detail every single advance of my project with numbing precision. But we’ve survived.

Sure, I’d be lying if I said the production schedule’s in tip top shape. Truly, it’s now a battered whore of a timeframe, bruised and bloodied and carelessly flung into the recycling bin. BUT I’m not that far behind.

Let’s see….

Book 1 is nailed and done, and we’re still waiting on a few more reviews. The handful of people to have read the first draft were very much entranced by the story, if for the fact it breathes synthax errors and typos. Four other potential reviewers double-backed once they got the book, which is not a good sign. Besides, it hasn’t been submitted to any publisher yet, as the reviews are still coming in. Personnaly speaking, I am satisfied with it, and if I died of a massive aneurysm after this double espresso, I’d die happy leaving this masterpiece behind.

Book 2 is under production, with about 25 pages in, which is just a humble beginning. All the structure is done in detail. I expect it to be done sometime in the summer of 2012, but who fucking knows.

Book 3 is just a vision at this point, with the major plot lines in order, but no clear structure yet. The end is very clear however, it’s what I began with.

Sometimes I see the entire Malice Cycle in a single black-matte hardcover, a thousand pages thick, and the word Malice etched in silver engravings. It would be a thing of decrepit beauty, and scar the minds of its readers forever.

A man can dream. Maybe in another two years the project will finally be over.

A toast!

November drapes slowly parting – Nature yawning greatly before moons of slumber.

Economies crumbling, cities burning, innocent people shot down like dogs by police and military forces. In all directions, rich hateful men scheme at hardwood desks, and their peons drudge on the everyday teeth clenched to keep the rage down. Rivers of blood here, piles of money there – screams and laughter and comments from reality show stars. Hundreds of wildlife species die out every single day. Up North, the ice is melting faster than ever. And those in power won’t do a single significant thing.

This is our world. And here’s this week’s Stimulator.

So, I’ve been sick for two weeks – what started out as some strange virus doubled into acute tonsilitis, with the fever, the pain, the nausea, etc. Nothing new, but quite crippling. If there was a God, that would be His almighty finger down my throat.

With the industrial-grade antibiotics and aspirin I’m forking down at the moment, I must once again salute modern science, which often has a short-term solution for the long-term problems it creates. And I fantasize about rusty mellon-ballers doing away with those useless fleshy appendages.

In the meantime – and an infinitely more pleasant note – I’m happy to reveal the photo that is most likely to be selected for the cover of Valacchia, due to come out in Feb ‘12. (Photo and modeling by Candace Barbieri of Candylust.org)

I presented this shot to the publishers last summer because I felt that her attitude and the quality of her work were the best way to represent this novel, and the publishers, with the distributor, all agreed. I hope this is only the start!!

Nothing much to say this week, so here’s a much better thing instead – this German short film about the rise, and fall, of Civilisation, seen from two grumpy rocks.

SPOILER ALERT!

This week, a brief glimpse into the new characters of the 2nd Book of the Malice Cycle: work title The Enklave. I’ll try to give out too much info to spoil the plot, so here’s a bit of (after)taste.

Aurélie: Acolyte in the service of the Archon, a beacon of moral and physical superiority, bred and trained to enforce the theocratic order of the Enklave. Implacable and cold, an incisive mind ensnared in the worship of Luminon, who only speaks in the verses of the Book of Insufferable Light. But inside, there sleeps a yearning for more, to escape the numbness of her aesthetically perfect world. In the meantime, she drowns her ennui in the flesh – and blood – of Handmaidens.

5yph35: By day, just another slave to the production line, toiling hard to meet his quotas and escape the scrutiny of the higher ranks. But by night, he injects himself with XI – a rare and costly compound which enables him the edge: the chance to work without sleep, thereby gaining the hours of night to work on his creation. 5yph35’s vision is code and algorithm, self-morphing equations culminating in Aeon: an AI construct, his only friend, which he means annihilate the entire Enklave. But can he make it in time before he is discovered, or worse, his own flesh fails him?

Q’inp: Strong, simple, gentle Q’inp is a pariah in the underworld of the Symbii-kin – beings of extreme joy who smile constantly and do not tolerate those who can’t, or won’t. Theirs is the cave society sheltered from the surface, who must work constantly to feed and power the Enklave above. They live in symbiosis with a species of fungi creatures, of whom only the most wretched are denied. When a misunderstanding leads the Symbii to lock Q’inp away, he will have to choose between his natural empathy to forgive, his self-loathing of being different, and the urge to escape and take back his freedom.

Down to the 3rd chapter of Malice’s 2nd Book. It’s moving slowly. I’m having trouble making progress because the world I am so desperately trying to depict reminds me too much of my own – I have very little distance towards the themes I wish to express and my work, like my political life, are all focused on these.

Sometimes, it’s hard to deal with reality, not because it’s so bad, but because it’s getting worse, and I can see, hear, feel it. Every second I spend escaping reality makes me slightly weaker, but it also gives me some kind of break I find hard to resist. And so we go, stuck between fighting and retreating, acting and recoiling. And it’s always been like that. I don’t know any other kind of life.

Camus’ assertion that what we do, in life, might very well be in vain, follows me whatever I do. It’s helped become a humbler person, more apt to help and listen and give, than the arrogant wretch I used to be. But it’s also undermined my confidence in several endeavors that might, after all, be utterly pointless. The world, as it happens, can validate my actions or not, it’s beyond my power. But then I must ask myself: why am-I here, and why am-I even trying?

Everyday I learn the same lesson all over again, that about 99% of all humans do not value truth, not when it conflicts with their habits and values and faith and privileges. So they keep going without a hitch, and the world keeps turning into a lifeless prison.

Ergh. Anyway. A question of balance. I’ve decided to reduce the time I spend with computers and take up healthier activities, like relaxing, cooking, sowing. I’ve taken up the Piano again, with parts by Nox Arcana. Maybe I can be a stronger, better person. Maybe there’s a point to all this.

There has to be a way.

October is a busy little beast. For the next three week-ends, I’m knee-deep in various mind-lifting activities, mainly, a weekend of frolic with my beloved in the autumn spells of the old North, then a weekend retreat for work, and then, well, it’s fucken Halloween.

I’m writing book 2 of the Malice Cycle like a maniac, every free minute I get. It’s going well.

In the meantime, here’s a new release: The Police Pimp, which will be in the next Subversion anthology. Read it on Subversify.

Side note: this story came to me in a dream, about a month ago, pretty much as is. My dreams are rarely so coherent, funny, and frightening. Enjoy!

I’ve officially started writing for the second book of the Malice Cycle.

After some six months of running around and banging my proverbial skull against every flat surface, I’ve done it, words are forming complete sentences, images are being drawn and I’m no longer just thinking about the project, but making it, which, dear puppies, is a great big fucking relief.

I’ve often associated the process of novel-writing with the act of birth, in a plethora of more or less disgusting analogies. Well, I’d been a-hurtin’ mah noggin’, and the pushin’s plum hard for a simple country goth.

So, the overture’s done. Now, 50 chapters all lined up.

First impressions: the cyber-punk-ish feel of the 2nd book feels refreshing, after the more medieval-antiquity feel off the first. More possibilities to explore, and I can’t wait to continue.

That’s all I got, for now. I can tell you that I’m thoroughly depressed about the Plan Nord. It’s a sick plan from sick minds, and every single sane person left in this fucken iceland is currently wailing in agony, while blind, rabid swine are sharpening their sickles and getting ready for the reaping. Civilisation is marching on, and Nature is on the receiving end as always. I don’t know if cynicism can save me now. This is really bad.

Third Review for Book 1 of the Malice Cycle.

This one comes from Norman Nawrocki – internationally acclaimed musician, author, speaker, and all-round rabble-rouser!

“A must read. Bruno Massé uses his black as coal but highly developed visionary imagination to weave an alternatively delightful, magical, disturbing and profoundly damning social critique of contemporary society and the future that conceivably awaits us. The book explodes with passion and longing, love and rage and limitless fantasy. Challenging and provocative, heartbreaking and endearing, it is also captivating and full of action. This is a remarkable accomplishment from a masterful story teller. It reveals yet again the talents of one of Canada’s brightest from the new generation of the global anarchist literary scene. ”
- Norman Nawrocki

William Gibson, father the the cyberpunk genre, once wrote that science-fiction had become moot. Why? Because, he said, we’re already there.

Mind you, this is a poor rendering of that masterful statement, (blame my microwave-blasted memory!). Still, the point is very much there. Projection into forward existence is relevant insofar as there is any distance to cover.

The possibilities of prolonging this unsustainable society are receding fast. And anyone can aknowledge this, wealthy or poor. If you are a rationnal, cartesian person, you will read the UN’s reports and on overpopulation and the general ressource-crisis we are in. The numbers speak very loudly. If however, you have a more sensitive, intuitive mindset, you will simply take a look around in the world you live in and realize just how much we’ve wronged the natural world which gave us birth.

When early first science-fiction was but an appraisal of technology, the evolution of the genre into cyberpunk noted an incisive critique of the role of technology in society, to be used, as argued Orwell, solely for repressive ends.

And now, the genre of cyberpunk has paved way into post-apocalyptic, fulfilling the fear that science, in the hands of our psychopathic leaders and somnolent slave-masses, would indeed bring us head-on into the collapse of Civilisation.

This is where I come in.

The Malice Cycle stems from post-apocalyptic and into post-post-apocalyptic, where we see a new society being born from the fertile ashes of a scorched Earth. No utopia: rather, a flawed society, explicitely bent on embracing it’s own inadequacies in order to expiate the last remnants of man’s culture. Then, finding a sense of truth in lack of purpose, in chaos, in the sensual becoming of an endless chain of qualitatively different presents.

Only in embracing their flaws do the inhabitants of Necropolis find reconciliation with the human condition. Because we are what we are, no more, no less. And it is pointless to wish for a clean break from what the world once was, unless there were total obliteration of human life – in which case, there is no story to tell, and this is what Malice will ultimately seek.

My tale, as the vivid description of a nightmarish reality, is not particularly new. My wager – which is really what my entire life’s work comes down to – is that weaving moving fiction from life into threads of social critique and the lessons learned from millenia of human revolt can help people understand the origins of domestication. If enough of us understand this, and we can find each other, and we can hold our ground, then perhaps we can cast off this plague once and for all and effectively put and end to History.

So this week, I joined FriendFace. Erh, I mean Facebook.

This makes me, as Bill Hicks would put it, another whore at the capitalist gangbang.

It should be noted for posterity, if not as requiem for my sanity, that I did resist the social network plague for a solid five years. Five fucken years. And then, I bent in the wind like a good reed and decided to go with the flow. And drown in it.

And why, you could say, would I stoop to the level of the plebes, by which I mean substantial number of fairly intelligent and progressive beings? For the same reason I learned to speak French as a toddler: it’s how you people communicate, so it’s what I have to do. I’d rather use smoke signals, interpretive dance or even the French language I so learned to speak.

But NO. You humans, you fucken billions of masses of privileged “I have access to the Internet” types had to go to that fucken frizzy little fuck ugly-ass, poorly-coded vanilla fucken network, and now, I can’t reach you as fast anywhere else cause YOU’RE ALL ON FACEBOOK.

So there we go, you made me do it. As the last human to fall into the trend, I am not responsible for my own actions.

Now, bring on the new stalkers and bring back the old psychos I’ve so desperately tried to avoid.

Fuck I hate Facebook. So see you there, and you better come to my events, or I’ll fucken poke you to death.

http://www.facebook.com/Necrosolis

So, Malice should be jealous. I keep neglecting her, and her rapacious friends, for my other trilogy – the infamous French horror-comedy smut series.

Ok, so who in their right mind would juggle two trilogies at the same? No one, that’s who.

And this bat-monkey shit makes regular incursions into my otherwise perfect storm.

Post-production is not unlike masturbation. For real satisfaction, you gotta take your time. And if you accept that pure, ecstatic fulfillment is your goal, you also accept a worthwhile emotional and logistical investment. But if for some reason – and there are always plenty of god-fucked reasons – the process is halted, hindered and otherwise delayed, the journey can easily turn into a fairly frustrating ordeal. You gotta get there. But what’s it gonna take?

“Gee, Bruno, what do you mean exactly?”

I mean, I’m in post-prod for Valacchia, and my editor, who is, to be fair, excessively talented, insightful and incisive, has given me about a thousand suggestions and corrections for me to plough through. That in itself is fucken awesome. And relevant. And absolutely necessary. But it means Malice must take a backseat for a moment.

And I’m losing sanity points faster than Herbert West.

C’est la vie!

This week, I’ve laid down the entire structure of the 2nd Malice book.

That is, chapter by chapter, what happens, to whom, how, why – which mood, what important elements to carry. Every plot element is defined and sorted. It is, basically, the bare-bones of my little creature. Fifty chapters.

It’s a crucial point, one you can never, ever overlook, and every single detail you overlook is another pair of teeth waiting to bite you in the arse whilst writing the next page.

Now, the average time I spend on structure between even starting to write goes from six months to a year. It’s a painful process, because even though you’re making the hardest decisions you are at the same time farthest from their description. And with this particular book, we’re talking about… nine months so far.

The reason is that I’ve neglected this portion for Book 1 and that gave me great pains to tie loose ends mid-way through. Now, that might be tough titties for me, but that doesn’t matter, what’s terrible is that lack of preparation usually shows, and that’s fucken murder.

So, fifty chapters, all lined up. Soon I can begin. First, I want to settle the other fifty chapters of Book 3.

Then, puppies, we’ll have the perfect weapon.

Back in full force after a particularly intense summer. I’ve had a month off from work, which enabled me to tie a lot of loose ends.

Necropolis is now more polished, with the post-prod almost finished (all typos cleaned at last!). The only significant re-writing done concerns the end, with a minor change. Still waiting for blurbs from various sources. By the end of September the great charm operation will start and I will strut over the globe’s publishers to be signed. Oh, what fun that will be.

Besides all this, book 1 of the erotica series, work title “Valacchia”, is currently in post-production and still scheduled for early 2012.

The Website has been updated with a French page, updated bio and a new academic article on erotica, which will come in handy if I get critics my way after the release of Valacchia.

Otherwise, the AWB’s back too and we are working a bigger anthology for May 2012. Callout for submissions will come soon.

And the AA theatre troupe will start producing a new show for next theatre festival. We are cracking out heads at the moment, all sorts of goodies should come out.

NOW WITH ALL THIS ASIDE….. I’ve managed to start work on book 2 of the Malice Cycle. This is huge. I’m just at structure right now, but proper writing is very close. Another 50 chapter to go. Oy oy.

Finally, you may have noticed, the summer was fairly intense politically, with the creation of a new anti-anarchist (or anti-anti-capitalist) task force in Montreal’s police, called GAMMA. With all the police repression we’ve seen in London, there seems to a quantifiable world-wide trend to beef up the prison-state and further choke everyone’s right’s, or as I like to call it, fucking up Orwell’s dusty corpse in the pooper.

I’m taking a break from the DevDiary folks, back in September 2011.

Here’s a picture Kayleigh took of our cat Ziltoid. This adorable blood-thirsty critter from the underworld is sleeping on top of a review copy of Necropolis, book 1 of the Malice Cycle. And it serves to illustrate exactly where the project is at the moment: snoring.

Over the summer, I need to fix all typos, do some substantial re-writing and get all 8 blurbs back. In the end, we’ll have the full shiny version, and we’ll be ready to strut our nihilistic stuff in front of all kinds of publishers. And if they don’t want it, then fuck ‘em, I’ll publish it myself.

Then in August, I’ll get a month off from work and begin the 2nd Malice book. If all goes well, we should have a solid ground from where to stretch the creation process over the coming year.

But you know, I’m tired. So I’ll take my leave of this virtual landscape and bid you farewell until the Fall.

Cheers, truffles and Molotovs.

-Raven

A new blurb just in! This time from John Zerzan: one of, if not the most influencial critical thinkers of our time.

***

BM may indeed be “Canada’s darkest author” but this ravening civilization we all find ourselves is darker.

So I am happy that he pushes on with his ambitious writing. Necropolis is an ancient tale – and couldn’t be more timely.

Bravo, Bruno!

***

There are seven more to be confirmed, since Nancy Kilpatrick very politely declined upon reading the first few pages.

This is taking forever.

I’m currently stuck on the curb back to the Malice Cycle until August when I plan to devolve back into an oyster and cram the second Malice novel with a gooey vengeance. Work title: the Enklave. And the ideas have been piling up for the past six months. I’ve taken notes up the wazoo and am fairly ready to start, if only theoretically, as I’ve little brain-power to actually get down to it.

And it was a perfect plan, save that the road keeps getting longer and longer as my writing speed has been reduced to a crawl. So I complain, with the kicking and the screaming. It’s not pretty. I have to write. I have to… write.

Gah, fuck this shit. What the problem? The new laptop, maybe? Yes, the old thing died on me after seven years – three novels and as many re-editions, one trip across the big blue and enough schemes to make Netchaiev purr like a kitten. I’m writing on a new laptop. Me, the anti-civ, the primitivist, the anti-tech, am just another slave to the machine. And this one feels more alien. It’s light, it’s efficient, it’s fast. No charm at all.

The beatnics had type-writer fetishes. I’m blogging about laptops. The circle never ends, and I’m behind schedule. But I love writing, and I wish it came easier… and that, somehow, I had more time, and that it had a little less of me.

Time.

…

June is here, along with the Scorcher. So while I sit here suntruck and delirious, a couple news.

1. Subversify Magazine have agreed to review Necropolis! Karla, Grainne and Mitch are going to take a whack at this evil opus! The review will come out next Fall. This brings our total blurb count to a potential 10.

2. The Anarchist Writers’ Bloc fiction anthology is reported to have sold about 250 copies! We’ll be hosting an open meet sometime in July for anyone who wants to get involved.

3. I’m having tech problems with this fucken Wordpress architecture. Sorry for the missed schedules, I will try to keep the updates closest to mondays at 8:00 am.

And lastly, because I’m bored, a little wit from Derrick Jensen.

Question: how many environmentalists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Answer: Ten. One to write the lightbulb a letter requesting that it change. Four to circulate online petitions. One to file a lawsuit demanding it change. One to send the lightbulb love and kindness, knowing that this is the only way real change occurs. One to accept the lightbulb precisely the way it is, clear in the knowledge that to not accept another is to do great harm to oneself. One to write a book about how and why the lightbulb needs to change. And finally one to smash the fucking lightbulb, because we all know it’s never going to change.

So I’ve had my first meeting with Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur and am simply ecstatic. These are the most gentle, funny, open-minded, and thoroughly smart people you could find, and I couldn’t have hoped for a better team to work with. We have talked about a lot of different things for the future, but I can simply reiterate, as I’ve said a few weeks back, that there will be more erotica novels to come. In total, I have plans for three, and while the first will come out early 2012, and I’ve got the layout for a second and third. We are planning to release all three one year at a time, so, 2012, 2013, 2014. And then, who knows?

This means that my writing schedule for this summer is a little less loose. I’ve got to be ready for August when I have a month off and will cram for Book 2 of the Malice Cycle.

Yes, the Malice Cycle. This is the whole point, and not one I had lost sight of. I think it’s healthy to interlace projects, gives me room to breathe a bit between one opus and the next. Writing is exhausting, mentally, and also physically – when I go in a vacuum of inspiration.

But let that pass. For now, let’s celebrate. It seems I am breaking out in French at a time when I had lost hope of getting recognized in my own land. My eyes are still upon North America, but every single notch forward is all the more levers I can use.

This is the edge, friends. So here I am, dazed, surprised and euphoric. I’ll savor it, while it lasts.

Sorry for the delay!

The month of Anarchy has ended gracefully and I feel both inspired and spent beyond measure. I’ve been recoiling, I hope you understand.

While the Theatre Festival was a triumph of gut-laugh and and side-splitting fun, the Bookfair was a chance to talk with the readers. It’s hard to describe what I felt when people came to my table, grabbed a few book and started talking about Bruno Masse. It was hard to contain my surprise. Then a few times they would decide to buy a book and I’d just ask, do you want it signed?

The new book covers were all the rave, and it was brilliant to see old friends again and meet new people. The Anarchist Writers Bloc is on fire.

Last thing: next Friday is my first meet with the publishers for Valacchia. I’m giddy like a schoolgirl!

Writing this in the midst of the Festival of Anarchy. I wanted Chaos. And here it is.

The anti-civ week is over and I’ll be performing two plays at the Theatre Festival this wednesday with the Anarchist Writers Bloc and the Anarchist Anonymes troupe. Next weekend, the Bookfair.

Then, first meeting with my publishers concerning Valacchia. Will pitch the visuals of Candylust and try to get her onboard. So far, so good.

When the reviews get back in September for Necropolis, I’ll build the press kit and start hawking to publishers around the globe. This will be another six months at least, and a year IF the book is picked up. In the meantime, book 2 and 3 will be well underway.

Here we go. Kicking ass and taking names.

p.s. this is ANARCHY! Come and say hi!!!

Writing this on the morning after the Canadian Federal Election. I feel a certain pain in my mid-western region.

To say that I, that all of Quebec feels bitter-sweet would be much of an understatement. This rash of far-right, fundamentalist neoconservatives, empowered to plunder this northern land and brainfuck us until 2015 can hardly be soothed by the sweet, sweet social-democrat balm that washed over our political landscape.

Now, let me tell you something straight: I’m an anarchist, and anarchists make an effort not to vote in representative democracy elections. The vast majority of us agree that real democracy (i.e. power to the people) is contrary to parliament, government and any form of hierarchy. It’s absurd that the electorate spectacle would warrant a few to do whatever they want for (and to) the whole, and voting is but a symbolic implement in that direction. Like famed 19th century French révolté Élisée Reclus once wrote: “To vote is to abdiquate”.

Still did I vote. For the first time in my life, though I’d swore I’d never. And I wasn’t the only black-flag wielding upstart to grudgingly trot towards the urn that day. Our logic is as ugly as it is simple: anything but the conservatives. Give me slack-jawed sex-addicts, crack-smoking dog lovers and bubbling hockey fans. Anything but Conservatives. Armani suits, chronic masturbators and scat munchers. Anything but Conservatives. Yes, that’s the level these gun-loving Jesus freaks have reduced us to: begging for the lesser evil with what little we got left.

True, these elections did actually provide a formidably greater good. The social-democrat NPD was clearly the best alternative: greener than the Green Party, left-winged, humane and courageous enough. In an uproar, the entire Quebec province, nearly 30% of Canada’s voters, gave them the go, making the NPD the new official opposition with 102 out of 308 electoral districts. In a fun turn of events, the Quebecan Bloc was practically wiped from the map, signaling the death of mainstream Quebecan separatism. Second twist: the Liberals (liberal in name only) were humiliated and very nearly cut in half. Oh, the sweet sound of demagogs falling.

And althought the political landscape shifted overnight the fascists have been elected with a tight majority… Tighter than a choirboy before Easter, but enough to let them do whatever the fuck they want, for four despicable years. And why do I know they won’t hold back a second? Cause they only understand force. That’s their whole platform. Fear-mongering and antisocial measures, widening the gap between classes, tramping down human rights and selling off the environment to the highest bider. There’s no legal way to stop them. They own a Senate filled with retired sport stars, they’ve got the influence, and tar-sand cash up the wazoo. Sounds familiar? You know it. It’s our very own Republican Party. Being convicted of corruption and held in contempt of Parliament twice never stopped them. As a minority they already made us groan, cutting funding to all organizations to disagree with their policies, giving tax-cuts for the rich, helping the murder of civilians in Afghanistan. Swelled by pro-life Christians, neo-nazis and greedy folk for whom the neoliberals weren’t enough to the right. Yes, sociopaths in power, and the only thing that can stop them now is Revolution.

What else can we possibly look forward to? If the last seven years with a Conservative minority felt like slow suffocation, the next four can be nothing but a full-on nightmare.

So there we go, idiocy, bigotry and fear win again. We have another lesson in nihilism and all that’s left to do is plot and get drunk, and not in that order.

Nothing is neutral.

That’s the first thing I learned when I began my political life. There is no great spectrum, no safe zone at the middle, no objective extremes, and more importantly, nowhere to hide.

This is a lesson I am forced to learn time and again.

There have been times when I’ve sought surcease from the relentless drive of activism. Entire months I’ve vyied absently, distancing myself from the struggle against authority and civilisation, searching to regain past strength and morale I could never find. So much time lost in vapid activites and yet I can’t see how more constructive I could have been – there was nothing from which to create. I myself am oft as desolate as the ground on which I tread.

But human stupidity never stops and seeps into everything, revolting me back into sense, mingled with the occasionnal flash of wit from the more, and ever so wretched, incisive and empathetical minds. And so I always come back here, to the fight, the cause, the struggle. I remember the only way out is further in. Words, only words, and their reality portains a much heavier sense, an unbearable weight. We – underline we – are alone. I see the other anarchs and we talk, we laugh, we scheme. Such camaraderie ever warms my heart. But the chill – the sidewalks, the concrete, the idiots fucken screaming – it’s everwhere, at all times.

I’m sick of looking at computer screens.

Aye. But look yon: May in Montreal, Festival of Anarchy.

I can make it. Death, I am told, is not an option.

“The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane.” – Derrick Jensen

Movie time!

Here’s a must in honor of the Anti-Civ Week here in Montreal.

This documentary features brilliant authors John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen, and goes a long way to illustrate what I – and loads of other people – have been trying to say about the world we live in.

Enjoy!

Something about RPGs.

It was six years “dungeon-mastering” D&D games with friends before I started writing my first novel. Now, at 28, I still play RPGs every other week, more often than not as the storyteller, for which I have to script key narratives and events.

For the past 16 years, games have lasted from one quick session to sagas ranging one or two years. The practice of storytelling has had a definitive impact on my writing technique, more than I would care to admit.

For one, pen and paper RPGs are nerdy, stereotypical, somehow alienated social rituals and otherwise male-dominated, with the random female incursion, which is rarely satisfying on their part. There are a lot of critiques I could make here, yet I can honestly say such activites, if done the right way,  still appear as more humane, social, and interactive form of distraction than typical TV-watching or clubbing, and can at times be truly challenging, empowering, and fucken hilarious.

When I was 12 and living in Sainte-Adele alone with my mother, there was little to do besides study and wander out. TV already presented itself as a deadening contraption, romantic pursuits were manifest in short, confusing blunders and imagination – an overwhelming, overpowering thirst for grandeur and discovery – was burning us from the inside. We were always on the lookout for adventure, and literature, with its tales of courage and conquest, appealed to us on a level we could barely escape.

My first experience with pen and paper RPGs was thirlling in its new possibilities to create adventure from thin air, and all the while disappointing from the unimaginative, stunted abilities of my “dungeon-master” at the time. (Oy, that expression sounds so wrong. The DM is only the person in charge of storytelling, as opposed to the mere characters which the others invidually portrayed.)

Anyway, this dissatisfaction with the original experience is what lead me to become a storyteller myself. Through the years, the depth and attention to detail I gave every session made me the storyteller of choice in all my gaming friend circles, and it was a task I only took a break from when time came to run short.

The process, I found, of spinning a tale in which characters would be given absolute freedom, was incredibly challenging. Then, it wasn’t about taking freedom away from my players, but understanding the psychology of each character, with their own flaws and aspirations, to predict which way they would react, which path they would choose, if they’d elect to fight, or stay, retreat or plunder. Once I narrowed it down to a few options (which I rarely got wrong) it would be my mission to surprise the players and put them in such a mood, such sense of identification with their character, that when I put them in a bind, cut them short with events they couldn’t be prepared for, resolving them came to them as an actual quest. Whatever I couldn’t or wouldn’t plan, I had to improvise, as confidently as though I’d written it word for word. By the end of a climax, every character would be bruised and bloodied, and if they’d actually won their goal, it would feel like an actual victory.

And this is it. Putting sense and force and value in a trail of events as to make them short of real, that is the real fun in writing. First, you have to make the effort of accepting the characters and getting close to them, so close to feel them yourself, and then you move the world around to nudge them in a direction they both yearned and feared for. Then, you stand right behind, as they are the ones who have to fight, and if you’ve spinned a potent enough tale, they will.

And I’ve done this hundreds of times. This is how storytelling has lead me to write novels. And I still find it entertaining to play again, though childhood is so far away. Instead of looking at a colors on TV, we make a tale of our own, infinitely richer, into memories we get to keep, forever.

Oy!

The first review for Book 1 of the Malice Cycle has arrived, from Joseph Vargo of Nox Arcana. Mr. Vargo had previously agreed to let us use the song Mysteries of the Night for the Malice trailer.

Necropolis is a Neo-Gothic milestone that stretches the boundaries of dark fantasy to challenge the flawed conceptions of conventional society. Author Bruno Masse masterfully weaves a darkly imaginative and intelligent story, rendering it with lush, poetic language to create a complex and compelling Dystopian mythology filled with moody landscapes and a fascinating hierarchy of characters.

John Zerzan has also recently agreed to review the book. Bringing the total reviewers count to 8, in quantity, though in quality, this far surpasses anything I’d have hoped for or am even entitled to.

More news from nowhere

And it’s getting strange in here

Yeah it gets stranger every year

- Nick Cave

Pause, break, hiatus?

Call it what you want. Truth is, until the end of May, I’m not going to be working on Malice.I still think of it everyday, but I don’t have the time, the strength, the presence and focus to do anything constructive in that area.

There’s too much on my plate. If you take a look, just a measely little sneeze of a look, you’ll see shit’s getting worse in Quebec, in Canada – the environment’s getting it bad and all the psychos, the scumfuckers and the gready toads at the top of the ladder all agree on one thing: we gotta exploit every possible ressource now, whatever Quebecans won’t buy they’ll sell to the highest bidder. Why? Cause demand is growing and supply is thinning. Simple as that.

That means my work gets harder, and by harder I mean more stressful, more hours, more angst, more hopes crushed… and some relative victories along the way. Relative.

Alongside, I’ve involved myself in four projects and I’m spread too thin. Anarchist Writers’ Bloc anthology. Play for the anarchist theatre festival. Anti-civ week. And a sequel to Valacchia. By the end of May everything will be over. Summer will be easy. I’ll even get August off.

Now, I need to focus before the wheels come off. I’ll still update this place, cause I need to vent, and there may even be a tickle of wit to it all.

Chaos, my friends.

Chaos.

p.s. Alana, I’ll write soon. I haven’t forgotten you.

The Malice Cylce. Book 1. Necropolis.

Ouverture. Triste Amour.

What’s really true in today’s society?

A quick glance at today’s world would lead you to believe that apprearances are, by and large, all that matter. One’s power grows in so far as one’s ability to make others believe grows… which is only ever so efficient if one also believes.

If Cioran and Wilde had in common the assertion that life, essentially, is only livable insofar as we bring mystery to it, they failed to mention the amount of damage societal delusion would wreak upon the natural environment.

The greatest figures of society are the most eloquent liars.

Artists – culture technicians, solipsistic to the bitter end
Politicians – demographics whores (and whores have more dignity)
Media – caged birds, tortured to tell
Cultists – slaves without any master in sight

And us, the plebes, the lower-class – we who maintain all these skullfuckers in power, culprits in every conceivable level of this mind-raping pyramid.

… and activists? Sadly, waving flags trying to resurrect old legends. An inch closer to the truth, if only by failing at a game to which they never set the rules.

All wrapped together in culture, so certain, so sure of everything, and we talk so loud, but even drowned in noise we remain silent, absent, conditionned to pretend, like so many pornstars on screen, faking orgasms, willfully acting out the image of ourselves, performing for an audience that couldn’t possibly tell the difference and has never cared less.

Modern man is a running man.

When set to compete against each other, there is no limit to the amount of time and energy we are willing to dish out, not to win, but merely to stave off defeat another day. Keeping up is enough to draw the breath from you and poison your existence, reduce you to an automaton that performs best when it questions least. There is no question how insufferable this situation is. In the every day slavery of hyper industrial society, the alternative to work, if you can call it that, is death.

Considering we are born equals in most of what make us human, the idea of winning the race seems illogical. The distance you can put with the other competitors is the Edge: the surplus, the advantage. And how to you beat the odds? How do you get the Edge?

5yph3r is not smarter or stronger than the next guy. But he has discipline. And he is willing to sacrifice everything he has to fulfill his aim. While he works during the day, he spends his nights creating his vision, his one great scheme: the Aeon Construct. His edge is time, those few hours he steals by taking the XI compound, which enables to function without sleep. But there will be a price to pay. Nobody can bend the laws of nature indefinitely. The Collapse has taught humanity that much.

Breathless. Those who win, they were never even in the race. 5yph3r knows it. The only question left is: will there be enough time to complete his vision before he too collapses?

And what about the Malice Cycle?

Dear diary, let’s dish out some development.

So… where… were… we… ah yes, Necropolis in post-production, meaning, fixing typos, synthax and such. All the copies I’ve sent across the globe for reviews, as part of the Embassy, are inherently flawed, in that they are not the final final product, but my reviewers – brave souls that they are – have been told as much, and though no few words can prepare the unwilling mind to survey such linguistic hackery, I’m willing to bet the story will matter more than the fleeting typos.

That’s done. Now, what about book 2 ?

Here we begin again. Worktitle “Enklave”. Here we move from the post-collapse victorian/dark ages theme and full on to cyberpunk. For the most part, Malice is no longer the main character, but an element in the background, a rumor, a whisper. We delve into the post-collapse society with hooded eyes. This observation is a partial one. Biased, as humiliating as any urban experience must inherently be.

The same dark aesthetics are still here, but as continuation, and not repetition. Three major characters’ lives interweave to form the most vivid, most violent representation of a social order based on scarcity and a putrefying culture.

And how’s the thing progressing? Well, I’m still working the skeleton. I kind of have to span the 3rd book at the same time for the sake of pace and unity, so I still have a way to go. I plan to have seriously started the narration by this summer, hopefully when I get a month off from work. Until then I must get a feel of the world, the characters – they’re in my head, and in my soup, and I live with them as with ghosts, with still faded outlines, until they become real, to me, and I can write them as I would draw from a model.

When everything feels right, I will pen it down, and it’ll flow like the Ashen.

Here it is, after rounds of useless teasing, a big, a huge, a ginormous annoucement, straight here on the Dev Diary:

I have recently been contacted by Guy Saint-Jean éditeur with an offer to publish Valacchia.

…

I’ll let this settle in for a second.

Ready? Ok.

First question on your mind might be, “Valacc-what, and how to you pronounce this thing?”. Legitimate interrogations, truly. So I’ll break it down, simply.

Valacchia is the name of a secret project I worked on in the Fall of 2009. It’s an erotic novel.

What is it about? The name refers to a fictionnal manor in the province of Wallachia, Transylvania (Romania). I would describe the story as an r-rated Rocky Horror hommage… without the singing. It’s light, humorous, explicitly raunchy, ethical but not explicitely political. Between you and me, it’s an attempt at sex-positive narratives, beyond the boundaries of gender, without both the puritanism of the Right and the dumb moralism of the Left. But bluntly, it’s erotica. Not porn, but not far from.

So, a little preambule if you will. The Fall of 2009 was a strange time in my life. I was in between apartments after escaping a long, abusive relationship, and was recovering from depression. My plans for relocation had been delayed due to logistical details – hence I had a few months to wait while I could get my life back on track.

The onlooker would deem this to be a desolate time, but it wasn’t. I had friends and I felt free. Also, I had time. Lots of time. So much time indeed, that I elected to explore different narrative styles to prepare for the uncoming Malice Cycle. I wanted to delve deeper into gothic imagery to sort the purest essence of it, weight in the dark, wild fabric from cheap contraptions and illustrate, in my own subjective way, a shriven, passionnate recount of vampiric aesthetics.

That experiment turned into Valacchia. For six weeks I wrote – I had little else to do, and I enjoyed the process, the newness of it all. I used my native French, which I seldom do anymore.

In the Fall of 2010, in a flurry of publishing submissions of all former titles around the globe, I decided to go on a whim and submit Valacchia to one publisher alone, Guy Saint-Jean, because they had published Marie Gray’s Naughty Tales series, one of the few great short story collections of its genre, and the my first encounter with it, some fifteen years ago.

Now, the irony, you must understand, is substantial, and one I’ve often pondered, if not too long. Consider that writing a novel, to me, always takes between one and two years, except for this one, which didn’t even take two months. Also, take into account that I’ve been effectively rejected from every single publisher, French or English, worldwide, until this hole in one. Two freak exceptions joining in the middle, an epiphany of sort. But I’ll just consider myself lucky and wait to draw conclusions.

We have yet to go over the details and set this deal in stone, now, let’s celebrate!

To Valacchia!

Sorry for the delay!!!

I’ve just got back from Toronto with my beloved Kayleigh to see Tim Burton’s exhibition. Do you know Burton? He’s a talented young chap, really underrated, indie and obscure. Well, obscure anyway. While in TO, we also got to sample the local goth finery and go to the CN tower for vertigo and research on book 2 of the Malice Cycle, that is, witness a metropolis from a bird’s eye view.

But the point of this week’s post is an update on my own little Dystopian Embassy. You may recall from a former post details on this blurb campaign where I planned, underline planned, to contact several authors and artists to see if they wanted to look over tome 1 and possibly, if they thought it was any good, give me a little review or blurb. Consent prior to shipping was imperative, as 20$ per book and shipping costs, I coudn’t afford to send out copies at random.

Last time, I drew a small list of likely candidates, some people close to me, others less, and some whom I’d never even contacted. Since then, I added a few names. Now, a few weeks have passed and I’ve received a lot of responses – all willing to look it over!!

It’s a triumphant step forward… and though the book still has typos and such, I could very well be a diamond in the rough, which I might even be able to tell if I had any perspective left on it.

Here’s the updated list and status.

John Zerzan – no answer yet
Norman Nawrocki – will look at it
Joseph Vargo – will look at it
Ursula Le Guin – no answer yet
Derrek Jensen – will look at it if the book is published
Nancy Kilpatrick – will look at it
Jeff Somers – will look at it
Alan Moore – no answer yet (unsurprising!)

New names

Stuart Christie – will look at it
Jason McQuinn – will look at it
Kevin Tucker – no answer yet
Fifth Estate – no answer yet
Ron Sakolsky – no answer yet

So five copies have left by mail, to Canada, the US and the UK, and a sixth I delivered in person to Nawrocki here in Montreal. We have until the end of August to see the results. And as I am reviewing the book myself for typos and mistakes in spelling and grammar (and cringe at every one of them) I still hope that the essence is carried true and that some critical response is echoed from across the great continents, and the Atlantic.

Will bring you more updates as the project progresses.

Be sure to tune in next week for some SERIOUSLY COOL NEWS. I’ll give you a hint: it involves blood and boobies!

The question is not, has never been whether or not Civilisation would fall, but how and when.

To some, it is the single most depressing notion ever. In a way, frivolous: no more Xbox, no more iPods. In others, outright inconvenient: no more contact lenses, contraceptive pills, antidepressents. And then, irremediably deadly: no more insulin, kidney dialysis, etc.

But to those who care about cause and consequence, the truth of our present condition is all too obvious, as domestication, crippling sedentarism, alienation and weakening bodies reveal themselves as the rotten fruits of this inhuman lifestyle, brought on, unwillingly, by technological industrialism. Quantity does not compensate for lack of quality, and as our own experiences of life are turned into nightmares from birth, so does the natural world crumble under Civilisation’s unquenchable thirst.

But as most hasty critics of my anti-civilisation thoughts would call me sadist and misanthropic for even implying that we should pull the plug on this artificial world to which some, or rather most, are addicted to an unprecedented degree, you should know, I did not come to the anti-civ critique straight away. It is not, to be honest, the thought-system I am most comfortable with. Why? Because it is the only one that adresses the problem directly, and facing reality scares me, though I try, every fucken day.

Mainstream anthropology as already widely recognized the paradigms of the green anarchist, anti-civ, primitivist critique: humans lived better and worked less before the Neolithic Revolution. For two million years our brains and physical capacities have been fairly similar, and have actually only recently started to be degraded. That was about 10,000 years ago.

I do not mean to say we have to go back to anything, because we can’t. But I don’t see any future for Civilisation. In, fact it doesn’t. The truth of Civilisation, and the reason why it’s rampaged on without any significant challenge since the Neolithic Revolution, is because it has no ends, only a means. It is, you could say, just a process of complexification – of culture, of techonology. It will only stop of its own when the ressources needed to fuel its advance run out, that is, when the natural world is affliced in such as to no longer enable human life.

I would rather we had a peaceful transition to an actually sustainable existence. Do you think it’s going to happen?

… the Collapse, as described in the Malice Cycle, is probably the least fictionnal part of the story. As Nietszche said for the rise of nihilism – that page of history can be written now, because all the conditions are already here.

Ultimately, if we imagine dismantling civilization, actively and consciously destroying it, not in order to institute a program or realize a specific vision, but in order to open and endlessly expand the possibilities for realizing ourselves and exploring our capacities and desires, then we can begin to do it as the way we live here and now against the existing order. If, instead of hoping for a paradise, we grasp life, joy and wonder now, we will be living a truly anarchic critique of civilization that has nothing to do with any image of the “primitive”, but rather with our immediate need to no longer be domesticated, with our need to be unique, not tamed, controlled, defined identities. Then, we will find ways to grasp all that we can make our own and to destroy all that seeks to conquer us. – Wolfi Landstreicher

The review copies of Necropolis have arrived!

The first step of my furious publication Plan is now complete. It is both simple and devious, and perversely deluded.

Like the Thirteen Black Knights who sent out into the Void, I will now send Seven Review Copies across the World for blurbs and praise. For a whole year I have trained my envoys, given them the utmost care and conditionned them to return. Directions I have set – yes, yes – but will they reach their objectives? Who is to say what they’ll encounter, out there, all alone?

You may notice, Lulu Press cut the books too short on the right side, some of the last letters have been amputated. The cover is only temporary and by no means used for commercial purposes. I’m waiting for replacement right now. Meanwhile, I’ll start contacting the aforementionned authors to see if they’re interested, and then off to the post office. The Embassy can begin.

Oy, if I get as much as three blurbs, I’m calling this a vibrant success, and praise Buddha’s shiny belly.

Now, now, moving onward: a little treat this week, transcript from the first page – a quote from John Zerzan’s Future Primitive. It kicks fucken ass, and it’s how the Malice Cycle begins.

The refusal of community might be termed a self defeating isolation but it appears preferable, healthier, than declaring our allegiance to the daily fabric of an increasingly self-destructive world. Magnified alienation is not a condition chosen by those who insist on the truly social over the falsely communal. It is present in any case, due to the content of community. Opposition to the estrangement of civilized, pacified existence should at least amount to naming that estrangement instead of celebrating it by calling it community.

“The Nihilists’ Dictionary: 2) Community.”
- John Zerzan, Future Primitive.

To chronicle the passage of time… discordant timelines battle away at my narrative. This Dev Diary, it’s about the making of three novels, it stretches for years, years! But every week is a particle of infinity into my own existence, pitiful like the next, bound by the exact same laws, though I try to be different.

I could tell you that I’m considering eating meat to test whether or not it’s the reason my immune system is caving in. I could tell you that a secret work of mine is a hairspread away from being published mainstream. I could talk about my next comedy play, or the upcoming Anarchist Writers’ Bloc anthology. Better yet, something close to home, another headline in the history of human mediocrity, when a giant oil conglomerate sues a critical citizen for all he’s got.

But you see, that’s exactly it. The fact that I’m ploughing through the human condition, shoveling my way, digging the hole in whichever direction I think is appropriate – and all the junk falling down from the corporate gods, the constant violence of civilisation. Interfacing with the nonsense on an hourly basis, not because I agree, but because I want to go on. Whatever works on the short term, and all ideals whither and die.

The alarm clock wakes me up every morning, then I go to work and sit in front of a computer, filter information, send out more into the verse. I come home, sit in front of another screen for entertainment. Between Friday and Sunday, I try to save up as much as I can to go to my laptop and write for Malice. There are computers all around me, at all times. I despise them, they are merely the epitome of everything that’s wrong with civilised humanity, but I go to them, constantly, because the world I see outside my window is bleak and grey, and I need to feel like I can relate to something that’s not so ugly. Rebellion through culture production might be just another form of diversion, and I feel lost. And I’m writing this on a fucken Dev Diary. The solipsistic snake is eating itself.

In real life, I smile a lot. I laugh, I tell jokes, I listen. I’m a fairly light, easy going, spirited person. When I tell people I’m a nihilist, they tend to argue I don’t look the part. But I tell them, being a nihilist doesn’t mean you think everything’s always going to go wrong, it just means accepting there’s a solid chance everything we do – everything – may all be in vain.

When all is said and done, we still have to live, don’t we?

I’ve started laying down some structure to the 2nd Book. I’ve had the same four characters following me around, begging for attention, ever since I started taking notes for the entire Malice Cycle. Now I’m considering adding new faces to the family, and I have yet to define the next fifty chapters that will constitute the book itself. Now that is gonna take a while. And this opus will be radically different from the first. For one, four different storylines will cascade and intertwine, instead of just the one maddening trail of Malice in the first tome. Which means, entirely different worlds colliding in one reality, more of an orchestral performance than the one solo I’ve wracked my head in conceiving.

In the meantime, I must admit I’m experiencing something of a postterm depression after giving man-birth to Necropolis, after more than a year of gestation (ain’t that a nice metaphor? No wonder I can’t get a publisher!). Yes, after splitting my brain-loins open to gush out the literary fluids of my fictionnal genes, my artistic flaps must be sown back together with the stiches of inspiration. Yes. You’re welcome.

Personnal note: this new job is really taking a dent in my free time and is otherwise damaging my calm. Turns out saving the planet is hard work, whoddathunkit? But that’s nothing new. The reason I’m stressing out is laregly due to adaptation. New things are hardest at the beginning – that is not a rule, an indication, it is a fucken fact of life, and fighting uphill is hard on the knees… and the medulla oblongata.

I’ll keep you posted, there’s about a million new events coming up, May is approaching! *gargle*

Now, a fair bit of scheming. As I’m polishing the last bits of Necropolis with proverbial shoeshine, I’m trying to look forward into what else needs to be done, because, I need to keep going, that is to say, if I don’t kick myself in the arse with 20-eyelet boots every five minutes I will actually disintegrate into myriad chunks of sloth and depravity.

Here is the list of authors I’m going to ask for blurbs. What is a blurb? A short comment or review of one work, then used for promotionnal purposes, and in this case, somewhere on the backcover. It’s a fairly standard procedure in the INDUSTRY, and there is a modicum of sense to it, if the commentators are somewhat remotely valid critics, and if the comments themselves make any sense. Also, and this is the hidden, top-secret plan behind my lip service campaign – publishers, who may sow the seeds of my subversive idioms much farther than I ever could, are complete and utter blurb-whores. Arr arr arr.

Here’s my work-list, for the moment, of authors and artists to contact for blurbs.

My friends John Zerzan and Norman Nawrocki, musician and goth author Joseph Vargo, then famed anarchist Ursula Le Guin, Derrek Jensen, then goth legend Nancy Kilpatrick, cyber-punk master Jeff Somers, and then, why not go all out and bonkers and try for Alan Moore, that is, if he even has email.

Is it realistic? No. Is it even conceivable? Hardly. But I’ve got a weapon, a device so devious and powerful, entire nations of talented Thespians will cleave to my will and shower my every linguistic burp with praise: the pouty face.

Watch out world, I’m coming.

The first draft of Necropolis, book 1 of the Malice Cycle, is now complete!

303 pages total, 5.5” x 8.5” – 40 chapters.

Hew. 57 devdiary entries later, and here we have the first piece of the three-piece puzzle. I am very happy with the results – the end process was somewhat marred by recurrent health problems, though I pounced on regardless. And now it’s over… more doors open.

What lies ahead? On the forefront, a few weeks or re-writing, hunting typos and the like, then I will print about ten super-secret review copies to a list of fellow authors for blurbs. Give about three months for that, then I will send the manuscript, video and reviews to a dozen publishers. Give another three-six months, after which if I failed I will simply publish the whole fucking thing myself. Then, and only then, will you be able to sink your teeth in. Mind you, the wait will be significantly shorter for the subsequent tomes…

In the meantime, I will work on the following:
- Anarchist Writers’ Bloc “Subversions” collection
- New play for the Anarchist Theatre Festival of May 2011
- And of course, book 2 of the Malice Cycle, for which I’m already buzzing.

But for now, a little bit of rest!

Sorry friends, little news this week, as I’m huddled up like a hermit trying to finish this first draft.

As we speak, three chapters to go – around 10 pages, and it’s over.

I’ll tell you more once I emerge !!

Happy 2011!

Page 262, chapter XXXIV.

So I’ve landed in my new place, settled in my new position at the RQGE. New breathing room. Kayleigh and I have worked our asses off to put this old apartment back into shape, how we managed to do it still puzzles me, but here we are, and it’s fucken glorious. I’ve also learned there are reasons why people don’t move in the middle of December. The operation itself was a cold bitch, with lots of snow, and ice, and it turns out my truck-driving abilities are but a few notches north of homicidal. A few mishaps, for instance, near the end of the day I happened to lock myself out of the truck, keys in, while the engine was running. Another thing I’ve learned: with good friends and a sense of humor, you can handle anything life throws at you. And I’m actually being kind of serious. Even when you run out of hot water in the shower, and it’s -20 outside.

Now, back to business. Necropolis is coming along nicely. Up about fifteen pages. Some forty left to go – seven chapters and the epilogue. Looking back on the past year, I can’t help but feel like I’ve made giant steps in what used to be freaking miniature. I’ve lost a lot in early 2010, but managed to gain back the loss and push it so much more, and working with Joseph Vargo, Candylust, Julie Brouillard, Kayleigh and the Anarchist Writers’ Bloc crew – a promo video, new covers, an entire new series in the works – everything we’ve accomplished, I feel humbled and touched, and it strengthens my volition to keep head-on, whatever may come.

Now, the first book of the Malice Cycle is nearing the end. Feels like that first drop in a roller-coaster – forever climbing up, notch by notch, until you simply drop forward, full speed, and all you can do is scream, because it moves too fast, and you can never prepare yourself for it.

All I gotta do is hang on.

I hope you’ll be with me in the coming year. There is a lot to be done, and if this goes through, I feel the repercutions will be biblical.

p.s. merry Winter Solstice, Xmas and I hope where ever you are, you get to escape the nonsense!!

Popping moles.

Struggling. Stumping out worries, again and again. Strike. Blinding lights. A chorus of noises. Senseless instructions from the speakers. Humans like drones. Problem -­> solution. Pause. More. More. Whacking moles. Urgency. Now and a moment from now, and ever and always – you have to, you just have to, because, because – but nobody knows why, nobody knows why the fuck we’re here and why the fuck we even bother.

But they can tell you how.

The neurosis of everyday life. An alarm clock is only the first humiliation. Snooze. Snooze. Snooze. Get up, you’re late. Go. There’s this and that and flip the page on the agenda. See? See?

Why don’t you go faster? Why don’t you do this instead of that? Don’t you get that such is such and bla bla fucken bla?

Welcome to the Information Age. Lost in a sea of data, the Malice Cycle signifies peace, which can only take place in absence – in silence. Black, formless, void: the End of Everything.

Lone
Unfriended
Bondless
Lone –
Drink of loss ’tis it is done
‘Till solitude has come and gone
And silence is communion
And yet
Unfriended
Bondless
Lone.

-The Illearth War, Stephen R. Donaldson

Part of the human condition is being born and dying alone, whether we are accompanied does not change the irremediable fact that we, as an entity, are created or destroyed entirely along with our capacities to perceive. We are encaged within ourselves, sovereign but to a degree, and we can share, communicate, laugh – but ever, as ourselves, and this confinement knows no end, though some like to think, by kneeling to crosses, mecca, or putting little pieces of wood on their foreheads, that they are as one with the universe. Religion has tried to fill the gap for ages, selling the promise of something that just isn’t there.

And what if we realise how alone we truly are? Could we not find solace in the presence of others and the pure, animalistic sentiment of being?

Here lies the essential problem of society, culture, history: all the institutions who refuse to accept us as we are and would have us otherwise are imposing divisions upon ourselves such as to ensure that we can not be whole. And once we are broken by the exigencies of the apparatus, in order to perform, and crawl to psychology for help, it turns us back upon ourselves, points the finger and says adapt.

In Necropolis, there are no higher causes to achieve, no other practice than that of being, as flawed and miserable as we are, but accepted as such, and free to rot and tumble with the beauty and ugliness of unmediated existence.

Malice left Triste because, as she puts, she was “more alone” with him. In such, her decision could not be contested. Companionship can be, but only insofar as it profits both parties. Who would ever leech on anyone and enjoy it?

Quote from Max Stirner’s the Ego and its Own:
All Things Are Nothing To Me. [...] Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the “good cause” must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. The divine is God’s concern; the human, man’s. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine [das Meinige] , and it is not a general one, but is – unique [einzig], as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!

Emil Cioran once wrote that politics is always the desire to some kind of extermination (History and Utopia).

Back in 2002 when I first got involved in grassroot activism, anarchism and radical environmentalism, I remember feeling outraged at how fast and fiercely some of my comrades discarded ideas and the people expressing them. Wrong turns of phrases, key concepts and expressions would quickly get you into a flash argument, at best, and at worse, outcast from the group and blackballed from the movement. If you didn’t know how to hold your ground, or you couldn’t show a critical sense of your own beliefs and a modicum of detachment, you wouldn’t last very long in the controversy-riddled anarchist scene.

Around the events of the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec, a new wave of activism washed over the province, and the heady mix of empowerment, new ideas and violent clashes resulted in arrogance, schisms and drama on a scale you simply could not believe – all in the name of liberation. Liberation, no less.

To be honest, I wasn’t part of the solution. I was as arrogant as they came. Struck some good blows, but hurt people who didn’t deserve it. I like to think I’ve matured since then, yet it’s common to mistake your own pathway with that of the others, the old guard and the new.

Which is why, every single time I put a new piece out, short story or novel, I always expect a mob with torches and pitchforks at my front door. And every time, I stand there alone on the balcony, with the crickets, and the mob never comes. Why? First, my works are so underground they’re halfway to China, and second, I’m paranoid, and I underestimate the whole as reaction to a few.

Yes, I’m very sensitive to how people view my work – and why would I write if I wasn’t? But there’s nothing, nothing that scares me more than reaction towards the way I depict sex and women.

Long intro to finally get into it eh?

In an earlier post on erotica, I went on about the morally contorted stance from being born white, hetero and male, whilst engaging in the struggle against domination. No matter what angle you choose, sex and women can’t be avoided, even in omission the outlines formed by their absence would speak very strongly. I know people would raise eye brows at certain passages, even judge my intentions on the first degree.

Seldom do I read male authors who don’t picture women as the object of their fantasies. Unidimensionnal, oversexed drones dressed like dolls. The girls they’d want to be with in real life, and they write about them precisely because they can’t be real. No one is fearless and always ready and completely willing to do whatever you want before you even say it.

Now, my novels are a real fruit punch of alt, strange stuff, goths and hemophiliacs, with references to bondage and implicit fetish themes are recurrant – and you can never assume anyone is really straight. My most important characters are women, and sex, desire, lust and its underlying implications are paramount to the intrigues and mood settings displayed in my work.

I know how suspicious that sounds. There is a real challenge in portraying sexuality differently – one that empowers women and treats them like subjects and not merely objects. It is the goal of sex-positive feminism, and I intent to take up the challenge with a vengeance, even if I should fail.

Eventually, maybe we’ll overcome the categories raised up in history from a decrepit culture that complexifies and distanciates, substituting a dead conceptual order to the subjective realm from which experience originates – wordless, sensual and raw.

Lastly, I leave you with this thought-provoking article on Alternet News.

Post 49 of the Malice Dev Diary.

I’m happy to announce that the lemmings, barracudas and flying squirrels have been successfully kicked out of the way into the rusty ditch and show no sign of consciousness. In other words, everything’s clear for once and the way is paved for the end-process to the creation of Necropolis – Book 1 of the Malice Cycle.

Here’s a draft for the production schedule:

December-January – first draft
January – manuscript sent to publishers around the world (+- 10)
January and +: begin work on book 2 and 3
Feb-May – submissions pending
July: if the manuscript hasn’t been picked up, turn on the DIY machine, and then:
September 2011 – Official DIY Release

Also, in a shocking turn of events, I’ve been appointed head of the Quebec network of ecologist groups, effective as of today. True, I rarely speak about my professionnal work here, but I thought I’d fill you in, since my various “lives” are bound to collide sooner or later, and I wouldn’t want people to think I try to hide what I do – and what I write. What this mind-shattering twist indicates, however, is that I’ll be able to toss my hat in the environmental ring and use my expertise in environmental movement studies, politics, social intervention, communications and philosophy to some kind of collective benefit. I’ll get hands-on in all the major environmental conflicts in Quebec – from nuclear to fracking n’clear cutting n’oil-drilling and starving polar bears, I’ll be a shit-kicking and looking all smart-like, waving diplomas like so many circle-A-embroidered handkerchiefs.

What we can possibly expect as an outcome to this bold endeavor, I wouldn’t speculate, but if I’m the one for the job – and especially, if I’m not – we’re soon going to find out.

Trees, I’m a-coming to hug yal!

Here girlies and boyos and everyone in between,

At long fucken last, the BETA version of the new covers. I think this is a definite improvement. The images here are the result of four months’ work – conceiving, organizing, shooting, modifying, laying out. Many bloody cheers to my creative consultant and outright bible-basher, Kayleigh Graham, who carried this whole thing from beginning to end. Thanks to Julie and David for their incredible insight and talent, and Candace from Candylust.org for going along with this insane endeavour and lending her beautiful works to my pitiful scribblings. Also, thanks to Ge and Ed for helping me out, yet again.

L’Aube Noire. Photography by: Julie Brouillard and David Sénéchal. Models: Ge, Ed, Bruno, Julie and David.

L’Écologie radicale au Québec. Photography by: Julie Brouillard and David Sénéchal. Model: Kayleigh.

The Noxious and the Daemon Flower. Photography by: Candylust (NYC)

Darkling One. Photography by: me. Model: Kayleigh.

The Malice Cycle is currently stagnating and the resulting stress is taking its toll on my avant-gardiste delicate genius of an ego. Close to the finish line, so close, and yet… can’t get there just now. There are more important things to do right now.

Beautiful schemes are indeed pulling together: the last Autumn leaves are falling exactly where I will them, somehow, amidst an ever-changing wind I welcome in good sooth. It’s exhausting work, pounding chaos into shape, but lovely, goodly good.

For starters, I’m relocating, yet again. My eighth move in eight years. And how long have I been in Montreal? Eight years. It’s a pain in the general nether regions, though it has forced me to learn to travel light, and simpler, at least in practical terms, is always better. I’m moving with the Queen of the Underworld to a form the HQ of our coming Dark Empire. We have chosen the Mountain of Roses as home base, and from there we will spawn as many creepy crawlers as we inhumanly can, to make an army and take over the multiverse. It will be sweet, it will be gloomy. Gloomy gloom goom.

The covers. I’m making new editions of all four books (Aube, Noxious, Eco-rad and Darkling). The visuals are done and the results are exquisite. I’ve been gabbin’ about those for a while, so no need to add, but I’ll give you a taste pretty soon while I’m going over the entrails of my creations. New forewords are in the making, and just the layouts and procedures themselves are a humongous mongoloid beast I must pummel with my crackled 20-eyelet steel-caped boots. It’s long. It’s so fucken long. But it’s coming.

So, let’s stop with the horrible gurgling sounds.

You know the saying: a cynical overworked nihilist’s gotta do what a cynical overworked nihilist’s gotta do.

Hurry up, puppies. We’re almost there.

As I currently wrack my brains over the Malice Cycle in the attempt to create a dystopian immersion, I can’t help but contemplate the course of History, and the social movements who would put an end to it. The landfill that is reified linear time is essentially the refusal to evolve beyond competition to mutual aid. We humans are making a hell for ourselves, and the fine line between those with power and those without is shifting into a trench adorned with blood-slick barbed wire.

Since the events at Tarnac anarchism has been ever more associated with terrorism by the offical authorities. In the meantime, bombing children in the Middle-East, stuffing palestinians in concentration camps, wire-taping citizens of every kind and arresting protestors en masse – the same ‘official’ authorities sponsor violence without shame, punity or compassion.

The anarchist political philosophy and movement, as old as communism yet drawing from the roots of Paleolithic era, is the new patsy for the sensationalist media and paramilitary police as another poorly disguised excuse to justify their ridiculously bloated budgets.

Now, anarchist groups in Italy and Greece, long reputed for standing strong in the face of capitalism and prison-state idioms, are now identified by the UN and Interpol as terrorist organizations with “unclear aims and tenuous links”. The ramifications are dense. By attacking libertarian socialists, the police are attacking the ideals of freedom and equality, all to the benefit of the power-mad Bersculonies and Sarkozies of this world.

The poster of the 19th century bomb-wielding anarchist is being ressucitated. But the times of Filippi, Ravachol and the rest, the Haymarket Massacre and the Commune de Paris are long gone. There are now anarchists all over the globe. A war against them is a war against the world itself.

Read on for more.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/100629/greece-anarchists-bomb

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-11/03/c_13588035.htm

I won’t try and tell you what’s wrong with this world. It’d take days, weeks, months entirely just to scratch the surface. Some spend their entire lives trying to sum it up – what’s wrong – and they fail, all of them. Get near at first, but distanciate themselves from the truth as they delve deeper, lose perspective… and then they die, leaving a trail of sorrow one thousand pages long.

Nietszche lost his mind halfway. Maupassant too. Zerzan made, – is still making the best case. Adorno got close, but Cioran much closer – he admitted “everything is both natural and inconceivable.”

I won’t try and tell you, not today. You either know what I’d say, and then there’s no point in me saying it, or you couldn’t relate, in which case, I can’t hope to change your mind. I can’t hope.

Everyday I see suffering and compassion written on the face of the knowing. Bliss and murder on the face of the ignorant. I see a society so made to eat itself perpetualy, for no reason other than its set course, fathomed by men dead ages ago. I feel and love and admire the handful of like-minded rebels, anarchs and otherwise critical individuals of this world, but they are so few, and the vast, silent majority so despicably heavy and there. You’re so used to being humiliated and deprived of what little you have, it has come to affect your being entirely. You’re afraid. But you could be free, all of you, if you only pushed in the right way, long enough. You could be free, but you don’t want to – not all of you, but the problem of freedom is this entirely, if we’re not all free, none of us can really be.

So I’m left to behold this crumbling world and rejoice everytime a stone of Man’s empire falls into the sea. “All things move toward their end”, sang Nick Cave, and I sing along. There’s nothing left to do.

The profound lesson of the Malice Cycle is thus a lesson in Chaos.

chaos

The behavior of systems that follow deterministic laws but appear random and unpredictable. Any confused or disorderly collection or state of things; a conglomeration of parts or elements without order or connexion.

La volupté de détruire est en même temps une volupté créatrice ! – Mikhail Bakunin

‘The urge to destroy is a creative urge’… and we have known it forsooth.

As I am currently crushing the very last remnants of that scum-maggot’s artwork with new, bolder creations, I feel a new sense of ease flooding my veins, as though the world was suddenly right again. Can you feel the hate, motherfucker? Now can you feel it?

Ah, hem. Deep breaths. Oh boy.

There’s new editions coming for all my previous works.

And I wish to thank Julie, David and Kayleigh for their brilliant insight, their overwhelming talent and the vehemence with which they have chosen to participate in these projects. Also, thanks to Ed and Ge for the demented modelling work.

Guy St-Jean and Roseway are currently reviewing some of my works, it’s really cool folks, soon we’ll know whether or not the obscure author gets rejected for the gazillionth time. Irony is, if one should ever even pick one up, I’ll have to go into that whole Born Again Christian thing, I will. I’ll praise the Lord, I will. Then I’ll lose all my talent – whatever little I still have – and start writing political thrillers set in Afghanistan about this one rogue journalist who strove against all odds to expose the administration and ensuing love affair with a skimpy CIA operative. That, or trans leather emu porn.

One thing is for sure, any greater exposure for my works will make it easier to publish Malice on a larger scale, which was my initial intent. That’s the reason I still cling on to those last 4 books (notice I cut one down, can you guess which?), they are still grossely unknown, and I want all kinds of people to come weep and shag and spit and dance upon my grave when I die, so I gotta get cracking, and by cracking, I mean infecting the subconscious minds of the Western World with subversive idioms.

Cheerio. The urge to destroy is a creative urge.

fic·tion (fkshn)
n.
1. a. An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented. b. The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
2. A lie.
3. a. A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact. b. The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including novels and short stories.

au·tism (ôtzm)
n.
A pervasive developmental disorder characterized by severe deficits in social interaction and communication, by an extremely limited range of activities and interests, and often by the presence of repetitive, stereotyped behaviors.

schiz·o·phre·ni·a
   /ˌskɪtsəˈfriniə, -ˈfrinyə/ Show Spelled[skit-suh-free-nee-uh, -freen-yuh]
–noun
1. Psychiatry . Also called dementia praecox. a severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.
2. a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.

***

And the one, thin line that separates the fiction author from the raving lunatic is a continuous, mayhap frail grasp on reality. It could be argued, however, that negation of the existing categories of existence are the true hallmark of genius writers. Fans of Burroughs (read: Naked Lunch) will undoubtedly agree. But despite the surrealist’s affection for disorganized representations I would suggest that chaos – and herein portrayed in written, linguistic form – is most pleasing when cast with a steady hand and a sane mind.

Reading med reports on Charles Manson’s tortured psyche is not uninteresting, even the swarm of hack’n’slash police fiction works centered on raping children and self-mutilation have found a broad audience. Capitalist concerns aside, I think conjuring nameless horrors out of thin air is only potent as form of expression if there’s an actual point somewhere along the way, by which I mean purpose out of the standard set of judeo-christian values. Lovecraft’s lifework, it should be mentionned, hints at the frailty of the human species (both mental and physical) – though all the creepy crawlers and demonic priests, there’s an actual substance to the stories. The high point is not when somebody get chopped up – it’s when you reach the glum conclusion, death and madness and no triumph. There is a price for everything, and Lovecraft knew that very well. Robert Howard’s suicide only served to prove his point.

Is it such a surprise, then, that authors get swallowed up by their own stories?

A fictionnal world is immersive insofar as the observing mind is willing to accept the suggested conditions of fictionnal reality as true. We all know fiction is fiction – fake, but subconsciously, we empathize and identify with surreal visions as they appeal to our needs as irrationnal, imaginative creatures.

The only trap for the author is getting lost in his or her own tale. It grows and becomes ever more complex, but the author stays the same, and in fact, becomes more and more spent as the works trail into weeks and months and years. What is the guiding star then, the life-line to retain coherence in the midst of all this chaos?

Who will win? The man at the helm, or the growing storm?

You’d think I don’t know where all this is headed, but I do. I can’t get lost. I knew the end first and foremost. When you read Necropolis, you’ll take the journey back to the start.