Blackened Westerns: The Revised World (Part One)
Blackened Westerns: The Revised World
While the original concept behind what was then called “Dark Frontier”, and later “Blackened Fantasy”, was mostly a mix between western and traditional sword and sorcery fantasy. In a way it sort of felt like Dungeons and Dragons in a wild-west campaign. Even though I wrote an entire 120k word novel (badly written I may add) and began the sequel to that novel, along with countless short stories and a novella all based on this original concept it all had a silly vibe to it. In the novella, “Where The Mourning Lotus Grows”, for instance: a cursed gunfighter seeking a cure for a were-disease basically goes on a hero’s journey, and meets a handful of characters including a wood elf, and a cleric. Perhaps even more silly was the ogre outlaws and bounty hunters in the novel, “The Ascension”, which took me over two years to complete—it was the first novel length work I ever completed.
Yet today I can’t, or rather won’t, allow these stories to be presented on any public venue because it is not the world I had wanted to show. All those stories that I spent so much time writing, and obsessing over had never felt right to me. In the end I think it’s safe to say that I was trying too hard to be “weird” and different. But those stories do not reflect the Realm or Morgue as I want it to be presented.
I dropped the term “Blackened Fantasy” as a description of the world. Instead I chose, “Blackened Westerns”, and it is currently the tentative title for my newest project: Blackened Westerns: Volume One. If this was some sort of Role-playing universe then those old stories would possibly be part of some alternative campaign or an outdated version.
Thus, all future audience should disregard anything concerning Realm of Morgue that describes it as “Blackened Fantasy”, or fantasy of any intense nature. “Blackened Westerns” is the new direction.
During some time in 2009 I took on a frightening task: I decided to strip the Realm of Morgue down to it’s basics, reevaluate the foundation, and revise most of it’s design. This endeavor began as an experiment. I had taken the bottom-up approach to build the world, starting with one small location, in a small region of the realm, then expanded outwards over time. During the revamp if was like taking a few screws out here, a few bolts out there, reassembling some pieces, and rearranging some parts, removing a few attributes, and adding in new elements.
At first I was uncertain what I was doing was going to be worth a damn. But I was basically at the end of the line with this world—it was do or die. So I did it. I went in totally new directions, but directions I felt I knew better. I began to have a lot of self-reflective topics in my Writer’s Journal, looking for what I truly cared about in my fiction, and what I really wanted to write about it.
Eventually, what I discovered was that I needed to go with things that had fascinated me for long periods of time since I was a young kid, and that still fascinated me today. I also had to look into myself to determine what values and messages I believed in that I wanted to convey in my stories. Believe it or I try my best to slip subtle, positive messages into my fiction. There are pages of journal entries about all of these things.
Surprisingly to me, or perhaps not, was discovering the things that did fascinate me beyond no end. As part of my self-reflective writing revealed, I’m not a modernist, but rather a retro-geek. I’d rather enjoy books, movies, music, or other entertainment from decades past than any current releases of anything. This led me to aggressively pursue retro-era entertainment that I had always enjoyed, but rarely took the time to engross myself into it all at once.
Suddenly I was reading old comic books from the 1970s, and Marvel superhero comics from the ’80s and ’90s—back when things were really good. I was playing beat’em arcade games like Double Dragon, Mutant Nation, X-Men, Robocop, and more. As far as movies went I have always watched older flicks from the early ’90s or before, even classic horror with Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, and Alfred Hitchcock, and ’70s and ’80s gory, near pornographic horror films.
And that’s when I began to realize that the Realm of Morgue needed to be revamped. It needed to reflect these personal pleasures of mine, and hopefully I thought, turn others on to these same pleasures. My love for classics, and retro entertainment began to fuel my disdain for contemporary entertainment industries including movies, music, and even books.
The Realm of Morgue drastically changed; but it became something that I knew was going to be even more impacting than before. The old Morgue was like an electric skinning knife, but the new Morgue was like an over-powered chainsaw at full throttle. Gaps that had been m,missing were suddenly filled, and things that I had never thought about were being fleshed out to add more substance to the world. And then the world itself grew into an entire universe!
Morgue has become such a strange chimera of a beast that I have felt overwhelmed at some stages of it’s development. For inspiration I have searched for other stories, and books that deals with a similar world, but I have yet to find one. I won’t presume that this world is so unique it has not been done before, though, in all actuality I can’t find anything that is an exact match. This can be viewed as a good thing—it’s an entirely original universe—but on the other hand it could be too original that it won’t ever make an impact. Yet this is perfectly acceptable with me because I do not intend to write for the masses, or appeal to a large audience; thus, I feel more liberties in what I can do, and what I don’t have to necessarily do. While there are many fictional universes in existence that do feature things similar to Blackened Westerns, there are still none that fit it perfectly. Take the Wild, Wild West, or Adventures of Brisco Country Jr. for instance: Both depict a typical American wild west setting with anachronistic technology, and strong elements of science-fiction similar to Morgue, but both are light-hearted, sometimes comical in story and characters while Morgue is darker, and more serious.
Joe R. Lansdale’s Dead in the West is a weird west about a small western town that is cursed by a vengeful Indian’s spirit, and plagued by the living dead. Though it does have the wild west setting with supernatural themes like Morgue, it relies more on horror than science-fiction, and technology.
DC Comic’s Jonah Hex, and Scalphunter take the western genre into near superhero territory. Jonah Hex has been known to do battle with some rather gruesome foes, leaving behind trails of blood, and gore. The Hex series relies heavily on wild west themes, and characteristics, but with some supernatural and fantastical attributes thrown in.
After all is said, and done, though, I think the post-revamped Morgue is an excellent playground for my creative tendencies. And I am hoping that it will attract a small audience when final drafts are completed.
