One of the most common questions authors face is a deceptively difficult one to answer: “Where do you get your ideas?” Yet, the answers to that common question can be almost as interesting as the resulting story. Welcome to You’re My Inspiration, a new column dedicated to discovering what inspires a particular author and their work. Whether it be a lifelong love of mythical creatures, a fascinating bit of history, or a trip to a new and exciting place, You’re My Inspiration is all about those special and sometimes dark things that spark ideas and result in great stories.
This week, we bring you guest author Stephen Michell, whose debut novel, Only the Devil is Here, is available now!
Gemma Files, author of Shirley Jackson Award-Winning Experimental Film, had this to say of Only the Devil is Here, “Stephen Michell announces himself as a new and powerful presence on the literary horror scene. This is curt, violent, poetic storytelling, a Cormac McCarthyesque journey from darkness into even deeper darkness, suffused from moment one on with gothic nighttime awe and terror yet also shot through with the slimmest threads of hope — intimations of numinosity, if not of salvation. For all you probably won’t like where it takes you, it’s just so damn hard to turn away.” So what exactly inspires such a debut? Let Stephen tell you . . . .
Inspiration is a Mystery to Me . . . But That’s Why I Love It
When I was a kid, I had wings like Goliath from the show Gargoyles. I was a Knight of the Old Code like Bowen from Dragon Heart. I had a velociraptor’s six-inch retractable claw on my right foot, and The Predator’s plasma cannon on my shoulder — not to mention the fishnets. I was a totally normal Frankenstein-monster of a kid.
The things that inspire us when we’re kids are so bizarre, because we are so bizarre at the time. We were trying to figure out the things we like as mirrors of ourselves. They are special and influential to us in ways that no one else can fully comprehend, and to some measure that’s exactly what makes them ours. Although we may both love The Hobbit, my Bilbo Baggins isn’t really your Bilbo Baggins. Of course, The Hobbit is an easy example.
For this issue of You’re My Inspiration, I tried to choose three bizarre, unexpected inspirations that shaped my imagination at an early age. I’ll be honest, I truly have no idea why these things inspired me, but I suppose that’s the great wonder and mystery of inspiration itself. If we knew why, we wouldn’t care — or maybe I’m just an idiot. I’ll let you be the judge, dear reader.
Here we go.
Wooden Spoons
I don’t know how old I was when I first saw The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, probably five or six years old, but it leaps out as an early formative film and definitely marks the beginning of my fascination with the stark, particular style of westerns.
For some reason, the inspiration resonates from an early scene in the movie when Angel Eyes, who I always assumed was “the Bad,” pays a visit to some farmer and they eat lunch together. They sit across from one another and eat very slowly. They’re eating soup or stew or something out of clay bowls with wooden spoons, and it’s magnificent!
The only way I can think to explain why this scene inspired me is to argue for the power of the particular. This was not something I was aware of at all as a child watching the film; I read about this technique at university. A clear, particular image creates a stronger engagement with our imagination. The two characters are eating with wooden spoons. It is immediate and particular, and it shines in my imagination as if I myself had been sitting at that table for lunch, as if I had put that wooden spoon in my mouth and tasted that soup.
Then again, maybe it’s just my primitive inner dog-mind that wants to be chewing on a stick. To this day, I own one bowl, and it’s made out of clay. I also own a wooden spoon.
Chocolate Cigarettes
When I was really young, my mother would take my brother, sister, and I to church. We would have rather stayed home. I would cry and complain because my nice church-going clothes didn’t feel right on my body, and the whole thing was generally pretty terrible for everyone. So after church, as a reward I assume, my mother would take us to the corner store and let us get one thing we wanted. Without fail, I would buy a packet of chocolate cigarettes. The chocolate was always terrible, but the point was they looked like a real pack of smokes. And then I would go home and smoke in defiance of the Lord.
I’ve never smoked — I mean I was a bit of a stoner all through middle school, and high school, and university, and I still dance with the devil’s lettuce on occasion — but I’ve never been into cigarettes. That being said, the image of someone smoking a cigarette attracts me.
Thinking back, the movie Tremors comes to mind, and the opening scene with Val and Earl where they are both searching through their clothes for their cigarettes. Earl finds the lighter, and Val finds the pack of smokes. Then they share each other’s wares and sit back, looking strangely sublime with their cigarettes hanging from their mouths.
It’s so stupid, and yet it inspired the hell out of me as a kid. Smoking is a terrible health-risk, and I would encourage anyone who smokes to quit, obviously, but I love writing about characters who smoke.
One of the main characters in my novel, August Jones, is a big smoker. Again, there’s something about the particular motions and gestures of smoking, something about the influence of westerns.
Plus, smokers are so friendly, even the villain smokers. In a movie like Die Hard or something, the hero will be captured and one of the bad guys will have a pack of cigarettes, and the hero will be like, “Hey, can I have one of those?” and the bad guy will be like, “Yeah, sure, why not.” And then WHAM-POW the hero knocks him over the head. But really the bad guy was just being nice. He just wanted to share, wanted to be generous, wanted to have a smoke. He probably thought they were going to have a nice conversation, maybe a heart-to-heart, maybe figure out what all the fuss was about, and maybe stop more people from getting killed.
Capes and Cloaks
Batman. Dracula. Tuxedo Mask. Need I go on?
I think I would have given away certain body parts as a child if it meant I could have had a legitimate cape. I used to tie the large-size garbage bags around my neck, because they were big and black and kind of shiny like Batman’s cape in the first two Michael Keaton movies. I used to wear blankets — I don’t know why I’m saying used to, as if this is past tense — I wear blankets as if they are capes all the time.
But as you grow up you come to realize that capes are for kids, they’re juvenile, and now that you’re an adult you have to put away childish things and start wearing cloaks.
Enter: Strider from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Before he became Aragorn, that is. Just that part when he’s sitting alone in the corner of the Prancing Pony, his pipe burning under the hood of his cloak, his eyes watching the hobbits like a total creep. Now, that’s an adult! And then later when he explains he’s taking the hobbits “into the wild,” and he wraps his muddy weather-beaten cloak around himself. Now that’s cloak inspiration, right there.
I actually do own a cloak that I made as part of a Strider costume when I was fifteen, but I lack the nerve to wear it when I go out for beers with my friends. Instead, I wear a long peacoat that gets me as close to a cloak or a cape as I can be without feeling overly self-conscious. It lets me feel, if not like Strider, at least a little bit like John Constantine or something, strutting down the street (smoking a chocolate cigarette), and fighting off hordes of hell demons.
And lastly, because I’ve been jealously watching Sandra Kasturi and Gemma Files shake up exciting cocktail recipes all throughout October, I hereby submit my cocktail of choice:
The Gibson Martini
I have yet to find a bar that will actually serve the Gibson. That is, unless, I bring my own onions, but I don’t think I’d be doing myself any favors if I started carrying around a jar of onions. It seems the Gibson is a thing of the past, like wooden spoons, capes, and the charm of cigarettes.
Thanks for reading, goodnight.
Stephen Michell is a writer based in Southern Ontario. He has published short-fiction in various magazines and journals, as well as in the Exile Editions speculative fiction anthology Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories. Only the Devil is Here is his debut novel, and he is currently working on a sequel. You can find out more about him at stephenmichell.com.
Author Photo by Ivan Padilla
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Loved this! A fresh and clever twist on the entertaining “You’re My Inspiration” series. The same words apply to Stephen Michell’s fiction. He is well worth reading.