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Name
of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like
to share with us? Rabid Dogs. Whatever the working title was at the start, the current
title not only replaced but eclipsed all the other options.
Fiction genre? Ex science
fiction, short story, fantasy novella, romance, drama, crime, plays, flash
fiction, historical, comedy, movie script, screenplay, etc. And how many pages
long?Speculative fiction, twelve pages worth.
Has this been published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes, what publisher and what publication date? It is published in Heavy Feather Review, Christmas 2018.
What
is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely
finished the piece of fiction? Late 2016 I wrote the initial draft, and worked on
it in earnest for a few months. Initially I wondered if it was going to turn
into some sort of larger work, but it never really went anywhere after this
piece. But the premise started to rely on the VA as the antagonist and survival
as the Mc Guffin. I quickly lost interest.
Where
did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in
detail. And can you please include a photo? I
can't included a photo. I don't think I have any photos of my old place's work
station. I use a small drafting table as a desk. I like that I can adjust the
height of the drafting table. It has an industrial, robust minimalist
aesthetic. I always face it into a corner without a window. I hang art all over
my place, but right in front of my desk I like to see the paint on the walls.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink
something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on
laptop; specific time of day? I wrote this in the late evenings. I not really much of a
drinker, but I do drink on occasion. Whatever my diet was, it would have been
in more or less moderation. At the time I doing rough drafts with pen and
paper, which I do now.
What is the summary of
this specific fiction work? PTSD
is a psychic wound, and although the symptoms can be treated with medication,
what makes up our consciousness is more than just the stuff contained by our
skulls. In many ways we all share a consciousness and identity. And in other
ways, it's how we lie to ourselves that teases out subtle nuances of our
ideology.
Can
you give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is
going on in the excerpt? The narrator has survived a
good deal of violence and injury, and has recently been released from the
hospital.
Please include the excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
Pages
6-8
The nightmares should have been about the shooting. That would have made sense. At least then Clark wouldn't have felt like such a freak. But the nightmares weren't about the Manny losing it in Starbucks. Instead the dreams were of desert arroyos Clark had never seen before, the moon casting a pallor so pure through desert crags that it made the moon he woke to look stained with coffee. Then the dreams morphed to include the Tigris and Euphrates and run-down boroughs in Middle Eastern cities. This happened over the course of the first weeks back home from the hospital.
The nightmares should have been about the shooting. That would have made sense. At least then Clark wouldn't have felt like such a freak. But the nightmares weren't about the Manny losing it in Starbucks. Instead the dreams were of desert arroyos Clark had never seen before, the moon casting a pallor so pure through desert crags that it made the moon he woke to look stained with coffee. Then the dreams morphed to include the Tigris and Euphrates and run-down boroughs in Middle Eastern cities. This happened over the course of the first weeks back home from the hospital.
“Something isn't right,” Clark said on
the phone with his father.
“What do you mean? Are you having trouble
. . . you know. Trouble with the trauma from the shooting?”
Always the mental health professional,
his father used words like “adjusting” and “trauma” instead of “being normal”
and “watching people die.”
“It's not what you think,” Clark said.
“I'm having dreams about places I've never been, Dad.”
“The minds psyche heals in strange ways
sometimes,” his father said. “Just try to keep an open mind about what is
happening to you instead of pushing away. This is important if you--”
Clark cut him off.
“I'm having dreams about Iraq. They
haven't been violent yet, but they don't seem headed down a good path.”
Clark had dreamed of standing post on top
of a dorm-like building seven stories high surrounded by fences crowned with
rolls of razor wire. He'd watched through ballistic glass as red tracers arced
through the night, leaving trails of closely wound blue coils stretched taut
across his vision.
“It can't be what you're thinking,” his
father said. “Manic Polarity, or MP, directly resulted from mass inoculation of
the veteran population with a wonder drug specially tailored for their
Hippocampus that was supposed to cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Desperate
to curb veteran suicide the government went overboard with the dose and some
veterans were essentially lobotomized. The vast majority seemed to survive
unscathed as ticking time bombs, just waiting for alarms to signal their end.”
“Did you just read that out of
something?” Clark asked.
It was so like his father to parrot the
words of another instead of forging his own.
“Yeah, out of the last issue of Modern
Psychology I had laying on my desk. They did a whole spread on veteran suicide
and violence. Pretty scary stuff. I—”
Muffled voices filled a lull in his
father's verbose explanation.
“Son, I uh . . .” his father's voice
trailed off. “Listen, call me tonight, all right? My three o'clock just showed
up. I'm really sorry but I've got to let you go.”
Why
is this excerpt so emotional for you? And can you describe your own emotional
experience of writing this specific excerpt? Dreams
are weirdly personal, and so is mental health problems. Trying to bring to bear
what is going on in one's head while the world says, “Look at you—you're fine,”
can be a daunting task. PTSD often manifests in strange ways, and nightmares
about other things begin and mix with dreamscapes old and new. Rarely is a
family willing to embrace that a loved one has sustained an injury to the mind,
and well meaning folks are always there to tell you why you're wrong.
Were there
any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please
include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I toned down some of the violence in the piece, but those
drafts are long erased.
Other
works you have published? As far as fiction, not a whole
lot. My realm is nonfiction, and I do my best at poetry. Witch Craft
Magazine published a piece of my fiction in their third issue. My
nonfiction is what people call “widely published,” and I think that means I've
been published in places of note, and elsewhere. My memoir just came out this
last 9/11.Anything you would like to add? My memoir about Iraq, Musalaheen, will melt your face and change the way you think.
Jason Arment served in OIF as a Machine-Gunner in the USMC. He's
earned an MFA in CNF from VCFA. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, the 2017 Best
American Essays, The New York Times, among
other publications and on ESPN. His memoir, Musalaheen, stands in
stark contrast with other narratives about Iraq, in both content and quality.
Jason lives in Denver, where he coordinates the Denver Veterans Writing
Workshop with Lighthouse. Much of his work can be found at www.jasonarment.com
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
The
Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
Seagraves’s
Science
Fiction Romance
Exodus
Arcon
004 11 29 2018
Christian Fennell’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
The Fiddler
in the Night
005 12 02 2018 Jessica
Mathews’s
Adult
Paranormal Romance
Death
Adjacent
006 12 04 2018 Robin
Jansen’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Ruby the
Indomitable
007 12 12 2018 Adair Valerez’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Scrim
008 12 17 218
Kit Frazier’s
Mystery Novel
Dead Copy
009 12 21 2019 Robert Craven’s
Noir/Spy Novel
The Road
of a Thousand Tigers
010 01 13 2019 Kristine Goodfellow’s
Contemporary
Romantic Fiction
The Other
Twin
011 01 17 2019 Nancy J Cohen’s
Cozy Mystery
Trimmed To
Death
012 01 20 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Crime Novel
Second
Story Man
013 01 23 2019 Alexis Fancher’s
Flash Fiction
His Full
Attention
014 01 27 2019 Brian L Tucker’s
Young Adult/Historical
POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
015 01 31 2019 Robin Tidwell’s
Dystopian
Reduced
016 02 07 2019 J.D. Trafford’s
Legal
Fiction/Mystery
Little Boy
Lost
017 02 08 2019 Paula Shene’s
Young Adult
ScieFi/Fantasy/Romance/Adventure
My Quest
Begins
018 02 13 2019 Talia Carner’s
Mainstream
Fiction/ Suspense/ Historical
Hotel
Moscow
019 02 15 2019 Rick Robinson’s
Multidimensional
Fiction
Alligator
Alley
020 02 21 2019 LaVerne Thompson’s
Urban Fantasy
The Soul
Collectors
021 02 27 2019 Marlon L Fick’s
Post-Colonialist
Novel
The
Nowhere Man
022 03 02 2019 Carol Johnson’s
Mainstream
Novel
Silk And
Ashes
023 03 06 2019 Samuel Snoek-Brown’s
Short Story
Collection
There Is
No Other Way to Worship Them
024 03 08 2019 Marlin Barton’s
Short Story
Collection
Pasture
Art
025 03 18 2019 Laura Hunter’s
Historical
Fiction
Beloved
Mother
026 03 21 2019 Maggie Rivers’s
Romance
Magical
Mistletoe
027 03 25 2019 Faith
Gibson’s
Paranormal
Romance
Rafael
028 03 27 2019 Valerie Nieman’s
Tall Tale
To The
Bones
029 04 04 2019 Betty Bolte’s
Paranormal
Romance
Veiled
Visions of Love
030 04 05 2019 Marianne
Maili’s
Tragicomedy
Lucy, go
see
031 04 10 2019 Gregory Erich Phillips’s
Mainstream
Fiction
The Exile
032 04 15 2019 Jason Arment’s
Speculative
Fiction
Rabid Dogs
