True Fiction

Our knowledge of the world before our time is based on hearsay and speculation. We are told what suits agendas. We learn misconceptions believing they are true.

Our knowledge of the world today is limited to our own experiences and what is claimed by other people. Our memories are faulty and biased. We hear from people trying to convince us what suits their agenda.

I am a writer of fiction mindful that perception is not reality. None of the characters truly know themselves or others. Their notions of their world are biased no matter their honesty. The same universe is very different from the perspectives of the various inhabitants.

My genre is usually action-adventure. When horror it is usually survival horror, a subgenre of action-adventure. The stories are usually struggles of good against evil.

The villains may not be as villainous as the heroes believe them to be. The heroes may not be as heroic as we would assume. This could be a matter of moral ambiguity. The point of a story may be to show that the world is not “black or white” but rather “shades of gray.”

There is no moral ambiguity. People are confused by their notions. They assume good and evil are matters of right and wrong as codified by law, scripture or unwritten rules. Their moral compass is honor or ethics rather than actual conscience.

I never vilify or glorify my characters. They speak their own minds. Their motives are personal. Readers typically confuse this with moral ambiguity. They assume I am cynical or nihilistic. On the contrary: I wholeheartedly believe in freedom and justice.

In my fiction, like in reality, people live according to their perspectives… but the truth is what it is regardless.

In the Mouth of Madness

Sutter Cane is a fictional character based on H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. He writes horror novels. His final book is about the end of the world.

In the movie In the Mouth of Madness reality is effected by the writing of Sutter Cane. His following has become a cult and is changing the world. The protagonist is an investigator who begins to wonder if the fiction is influencing reality directly.

I have read H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. I am familiar with the work of Sutter Cane accordingly. The idea that such an author is the high priest of a cult makes wonderful sense. Of course he is the writer of its unholy scripture.

The novels of Sutter Cane are weird and scary. They are about monsters and people turning into monsters. The protagonists are victims rather than heroes. The stories are about perception and reality. The supernatural is either madness or real… and is presumably real, driving people mad.

I write fiction. It is always weird and usually scary. It is about monsters who turn people into mindless thralls. The protagonists are heroes and normal people are their usual victims. The stories are about perception and reality but as the distinction between what is taught and what is actually witnessed. The supernatural is real.

I was inspired by the movie In the Mouth of Madness. I watched it just before midnight on May 15, 2025 and finished after midnight, May 16, 2025. I shall write my own fiction, turning what I liked into a survival horror adventure.

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

Underlings of the People

Are the foot soldiers of villainy the people of their boss… or not? The underlings are expendable either way but there are distinct connotations to consider.

Humans are social creatures. We are more apt to get along with the people most like us. We understand each other if we are alike. There are inevitable misunderstandings if we are unlike. Our goals are different if our values are different.

The villains are nasty if they expend people of different races and ethnicities… but they are especially villainous if they expend their own. Our feelings for strangers are impersonal, no matter our compassion. Diversity is people as strangers. If the lives of our own are cheap, the lives of others are worthless.

A boss may be viewed with suspicion if he is of a different race or ethnicity than his underlings: A Jew hiring Catholics for a heist or a German commanding Ukrainians in the SS, as examples. He may be revered instead, however: A dark elf commanding orcs or a demon commanding human cultists, as examples.

It does matter whether a villain is of the people of his underlings or not, for better or worse. It does color their relationship. It should factor in the story.

I write fiction. My thematic specialty is the foot soldiers of villainy. The characters are sometimes the people of their boss… and sometimes not. My choice is a matter of storytelling. It is a layer of depth for an aspect of fiction that is usually flat. I am glad I bother. My work is better for it.

Ten Years Ago From Now

Today is May 12, 2025. What shall my life be like ten years from now? I shall be sixty-four years old. Shall I still be working two jobs, fast food and a grocery store? What friends and family shall still be with me? I write books and illustrate the covers. What more shall I have finished by then? Shall any of it be famous by then?

Ten years from now shall occur. Ten years ago was horrible. I was unemployed and my house was no longer my home. My life today was unknown on May 12, 2015.

If I open a novel I can read later chapters first and earlier chapters later. The story is what it is regardless. I wonder if time is the same way. Alas, I am but a character in the story that is reality. My moment is the one being read and not by me.

Ten years from now is already today. It is already yesterday. The moment is what it is already.

I hear the claim that the future is not written. It is what we make of it. Oh? Who chose when or where they were born? Did you write your own genetic code? Your free will is entirely on someone else’s terms, to be clear.

Shall I remember to read this ten years from now? Shall I smile wondering why I worried? Shall I miss what are better days? Time will tell. It always does.

Really My Fiction

I write books and illustrate the covers. I have always used my real name… until I released my novels The Wayward School for Girls and Sorcerer of the Realm. I used the pseudonym “Mister Nobody” for those two and the related books that followed.

The first book is about a dreamlike world where most everyone is either a child or elderly. The same characters can be either depending on their moments in life. The villain is the principal of an elementary school and uses his own students as child soldiers.

The second novel is about a Nazi sorcerer and his apprentice, his teenage daughter. Together they commit mass murder using magic and technology. The girl’s mother is the hero of the story.

The themes of both books are controversial. No one who has read either has a problem, but many people are outraged by premise alone. Cancel Culture could cancel me regardless of what I actually wrote.

GOOD NEWS!

The thought police are losing their power. People are tired of them. We are becoming free to think for ourselves again.

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

Weirdly Normal

My Weird World universe began as a short story that became a novel. It expanded with a collection of short stories and another novel. The second collection is pending. The cover for the fifth book has already been illustrated.

The universe is entirely dreamlike. Our world does not exist in theirs. The weirdness of their reality is normal in context.

The genre is horror. Even the adventure stories are survival horror. The dreamlike is typically nightmarish. Most people are children or elderly… thus weak and witless.

The villains of Weird World are the rulers of the world. They have a right to be villainous. Whatever they take is theirs already, since they own everything… and everyone. They can rape and kill with impunity. The heroes cannot turn to the law for deliverance. It is instead used against them.

My thematic specialty as a writer of fiction is the foot soldier of villainy archetype. Weird World is no different. Children are the cannon-fodder baddies. They are the ordinary sons and daughters of normal people used as goons by the forces of evil.

My Weird World is weird… but its weirdest aspects are the most realistic… and that is why the genre is horror.