The Message

I write fiction. The genre is either adventure or horror as either science fiction or fantasy. My style emphasizes dialog over exposition. 

I illustrate the covers and create the title fonts. The illustrations are minimalist. The fonts are thematic but very simple.

My fiction began as childhood daydreams. I imagined scenarios and muttered the dialog of the characters. People heard me talking to “myself” and thought I was weird. I eventually wrote what I daydreamed.

My illustrations began as childhood drawings. I wrote and rendered scenes of comic books I never finished.

I create my own fonts as an afterthought. I was fond of the ones already available… but wanted the entire cover to be of my own making.

My fiction is always weird, violent and sexual. The weirdness may be subtle, the violence may be implied and the sexuality nuanced, but they are what they are, and always all three.

The killing is the sexiest aspect of my work. It is quite often the only one. The fancy is not death itself, mind you. The sexiness is in context. The victims are ordinary and insignificant. The slaying is impersonal and effortless. The killer is usually a hero and his victim a nameless foot soldier of villainy.

My work is allegorical. Main characters, heroes or villains are INDIVIDUALITY. All the other characters, regardless of faction, are SOCIETY. To understand this is to understand the recurring theme of a hero slaughtering droves of nameless baddies with pathetic ease.

The message is loud and clear.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Shawn-OToole/author/B07C28S75Z?isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Dreamlike

I write weird fiction. I do mean as the subgenre of speculative fiction, supernatural horror specifically. Even the action-adventure stories are such, though as survival horror.

My latest work in this category is the novel The Wayward School for Girls. The premise is “Dorothy” of The Wizard of Oz and “Alice” of Alice in Wonderland as girls in the modern day. They are in the gifted program of the same school. Unbeknownst to the public, the principal is a warlock and the teachers his coven of witches. They indoctrinate their students to become selfless, loyal and obedient thralls. The gifted girls are groomed to become teachers. The “special needs” students are buried alive and used as batteries to power magical devices. The average girls are trained for use as labor or soldiers.

The school is an institution of those in power. Telling anyone its secret is pointless.

Alice and Dorothy escape the school. They are “gifted” and have special powers they were trained to use. They slaughter the brainwashed ordinary girls sent after them.

The setting is Weird World, a dreamlike version of our world. Most adults are invisible, though children can see and hear them like they do imaginary friends. What grownups are clearly visible are either elderly (“second childhood”) or agents of the secret rulers of the world.

The next book is Tales of a Weird World. It is not about Alice and Dorothy. It is a collection of short stories about other people who live in the same universe. The Wayward School for Girls is one of several antagonist factions.

I created a dreamlike universe before. It was the setting of my novel The Goddess of Self. It was very similar to Weird World… but with a stark distinction. The Goddess of Self was about a girl from the real world finding herself in a surreal world. The surreal is the reality of Weird World. Everyone in it is from it.

The weirdness of a weird setting is normalized as it becomes familiar. To offset this in The Goddess of Self I often had the protagonist return to our reality. I did no such thing with Weird World. The point is for the weirdness to be normalized.

A dream makes sense while dreamt. The weirdness is normal. I did not want to “awaken” the reader of Weird World. The point is complete immersion. I wanted the stories to be “dreams” as literally as I could make them.

Not a Drop to Drink

A multicultural society is a society without a culture. It is corrupted by its diversity, not enriched. It is not a community. It is fractured into groups that can only tolerate each other at best. They need a common enemy to come together… and that is an alliance, not friendship. Such allies turn on each other when the enemy is vanquished. 

Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Afghanistan and South Africa are multicultural societies. None of these are strengthened by their diversity. On the contrary. The Walloons and Flemish dislike each other. The English speaking and French speaking citizens of Canada dislike each other. The ethnicities of Switzerland keep to their own, though they are generally civil when they interact. The diversity is hatred and genocidal violence in Afghanistan and South Africa.

Japan and South Korea are countries that are also their cultures. Though many people in lands with few resources, they thrive. Their factions are trying to change their communities, not live apart from them.

Unity is strength. Diversity is weakness. The “sameness” of homogeneity is an actual culture.

Multicultural is to a society what the ocean is for someone in a raft dying of thirst: Everywhere but not a drop to drink.

I am Storyteller

Fiction is not about reality. It is about us. It is our thoughts and feelings as stories. The realism is to provide a common basis of comparison. A story is gibberish without it.

I write fiction. It is always weird, to varying degrees. The weirdness is to convey my intuitive sense of things. Our feelings of themselves are invisible. Articulating them in a way that can be visualized brings order to the chaos that is our emotions.

FLOW and BALANCE.

Fantasy is flow. Reality is balance. Fantastic is imaginative. Realistic is meaningful. The best fiction is both, as one and the same.

We are not amazed by the unbelievable. On the contrary: We dismiss it as ridiculous.

We are not amazed by the believable. On the contrary: We accept it as ordinary.

We are amazed when made to believe the unbelievable. Our small minds grow and our narrow thoughts broaden.

As a writer of fiction, I strive to inspire people to make believe the unbelievable.

We are indoctrinated by every faction in this world to learn rather than think. We are shamed as ignorant if we question. We are praised as educated if mindless. Our pride is used against us, to brainwash us.

My fiction is not the propaganda of any faction. It is my own thoughts and feelings. It is written to be a playground of the mind. It is an amusement park and every story is a ride. My thoughts provide the themes. My feelings provide momentum, twists and turns. It is all meant to be enjoyed.

https://www.deviantart.com/yellowplasma