I tend to not keep my site updated. Whether it is out of boredom, laziness, or just plain forgetfulness, I can’t say.

However, your old pal Kile has some exciting news to share from the wonderful world of Kile’s Writing! The place where heroes fail and villains are more interesting and likable and nothing is what it seems.

 

First off, I am psyched to announce that my story ‘Pipe Dreams of the Soul Eater’ has been accepted for the ‘Between the Cracks’ anthology from Sirens Call Publications. 

The antho is forthcoming and I will update the site with details as I receive them. I am very proud of this particular story as it was my first foray into the world of Gothic suspense. I hesitate to use the word ‘horror’ because I don’t feel that I am a horror writer, even though many of my stories feature some of the hallmarks of the genre. I do love the genre, but I find when I attempt to write it, it comes off as forced and contrived.

Anyways, Pipe Dreams is about a sailor who encounters strangeness and the unknown in a hole-in-the-wall opium den in New Orleans with his fellow sailor. The story has a dream-like quality to it and a very poetic sense of direction in regards to the plot. There is the sense of doom lingering over the protagonist from the get-go; it is like a humid day or pre-morning dew…of DOOM!

So, if you like Poe or Lovecraft but want to read something better, you should check out my story in ‘Between the Cracks’ when it comes out.

The next update, one that I a, THRILLED about, is that my dark, weird western story ‘A Trip to Gehenna’ was accepted by New Hampshire Pulp Fiction to be included as part of their fifth anthology ‘Live Free or Ride’

For those of you not in the know, that is a play on words on NH’s state motto. That one is for all my fans in Brazil.

Why am I so excited? Well, the story features one of my devils, Drake Travis, a character that is the protagonist in my (hopefully) soon-to-be-released novel ‘Four Bullets’ (More on this later). When I say devil, that is not entirely fair to the Man-Goat. Drake is beyond the concept of evil; he is a force of nature. Think of a thunderstorm. It comes in, booms and crashes, kicks up wind and sometimes sets shit on fire with lightning. It doesn’t care if it ruins your day, or burns your house down. It is just doing what it does.

This is how I view my villain Drake Travis. Just a bad man doing bad things. This story was inspired, from all things, a Robert E Howard story called ‘A Witch Shall Be Born’, featuring Conan. It is a forgetful Conan story by Howard’s standards. But, the thing that struck me is that Conan is not the primary focus of the story. He is barely in it, even! I found that Howard used him more of a plot device then a character. Any, why not? Conan was well established at this point in time. Why not do something different? I took that logic and incorporated it for Drake. He does not even speak until halfway through the story and when he does, the impact is far more eventful.

I don’t want to spoil too much about ol’ Drake Travis, as I plan to dedicate an entire section of this site to him and his world in the future. But, back to the reason why I am excited. You see, a few years back, I was having a wonderful evening with some writer friends. We were sharing our pieces, laughing and having a wonderful time. It also happened to coincide with my 30th birthday. For my turn, I shared a section of ‘Four Bullets’. The section featured Drake in a confrontation with one of his enemies, a man who happens to be black. I wrote the black character, named Archibald, as kind of a fancy man, one not accustomed to being out in the violent world. Think Dr. Smith from ‘Lost in Space’ and you’ve got it.

As I mentioned before, this is a western and Drake is not a nice man at all. Because of this, I felt that I needed to have Drake, a white man, react in the manner that a dastardly man would react towards a man of color back in those times. So, yes, I chose to include some racism, as I felt it necessary to make the audience dislike Drake even further. That does NOT mean that I condone this or even liked writing it. In fact, I struggled GREATLY in deciding whether or not to include it.

Well, one of our fellow writers, oh, let’s call him The Ass-Sucker, took extreme umbrage with this. He proceed to go on a thirty minute attack on me personally, saying that I was offensive and a racist and an asshole and that the only place that would ever publish this would be White-Supremacist publications. I managed to keep my cool, somewhat, saying that I am not a racist and that I was sorry he was upset. The Ass-Sucker proved that he was incapable of separating the author from the work. One only has to look in recent fiction books to find this kind of technique(though I certainly do not want to insinuate racism is anything but wrong): ‘NOS4A2’
by Joe Hill has his villain make a racial slur. Does this mean Mr. Hill is a racist? Not at all. I could go on and on about this, but I will simply leave it with this quote by one the greatest writers of our time, Anton Chekhov that I think sums up the situation better than any of us ever could:

No, not the dude from Star Trek:

“In my opinion, it is not the writer’s job to solve such problems as the existence of God, pessimism, etc. The job of the artist is only to record who under which circumstances said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist must not judge his characters or their words; he must only be an impartial witness… It is high time for writers— and especially for true artists— to admit that it is impossible to explain anything… if an artist whom the crowd trusts admits that he understands nothing of what he sees, this fact alone will make a great contribution to the realm of thought and will mark a great step forward.”

Anyways, the reason I am so excited? Having a Drake Travis story picked up is a giant pat on my back because: Number 1: The story is excellent. and Number 2: It is a giant victory over The Ass-Sucker and his stupid elongated face and glasses and weird hair. Seriously, fuck that guy. Fuck him so hard that it turns him inside out and he has to live his life in a freak show as ‘The Inside-Out Man’

 

That is what is going in Kile-Land. Big doings are transpiring. I hope you stick around to see me bring it in for the big win, because, in a way, we all win when I win.

And, I always win.