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THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HERTZAN CHIMERA - INTRODUCTION
It took me fourteen years to give birth to, nurture, allow to grow and then kill off the writing persona Hertzan Chimera. I had learned to live with his craziness as his writing skills and online confidence grew. I had accepted his whacked-out control over my fingertips at the expense of some literary understanding on the part of the reader. That didn't bother me back then. I was purposefully trying to make the reader's life more difficult. Trying to get the reader to think a little more about the shit he was reading, the sheer crap publishers throw onto the shelves these days. Trying to challenge 'accepted' standards of what was sellable fiction, format, narrative.
Then he got too big for his boots. You can see it here, I'm talking about 'him', Hertzan Chimera in the third person. I guess I should be happy that it's at least a 'male' alter ego. This book itself talks about the life and death of what was merely a writing persona I allowed through whenever I sat at the keyboard to write all those 'Hertzan Chimera style' short stories, collections, collaborations, interviews or novels. I wasn't convinced that I was channelling - I didn't think some old writing spirit was passing his vision through my hands, I'm not a great believer in 'the everlasting spirit of man' - for me, when you die, you die. I saw that by encouraging this Hertzan Chimera personality to take the piss out of the reader (and that was his major function) I had coaxed a monster from the shadows. He almost got out of hand and totally took over my public function. But worse than that, my aggrandisement of the Hertzan Chimera persona had made him into a bit of a joke. Thank fuck it's a stupid name I never felt comfortable with in public or I might never have noticed the total absorption of myself into it.
This book started life as the auto-biography A NORMAL LIFE? then, as the last few paragraphs came to a close, I realised it coincided with my publicly-announced death of the writing name (and personality) I had invented some fourteen years back and had been nurturing on the internet and with small press publishers like Eraserhead Press, Double Dragon Books, Massacre Publishing and Cyber Pulp Books.
This realisation gives the book a greater focus beyond a simple cathartic exercise in lost memories. After all, the reason for the mentality and psychology of the stories written in the 'Hertzan Chimera style' lies in the subject matter of these auto-biographical entries. It allows me to return to the original first-pass document and add more human significance to the truth of a normal life expressed in works of fiction that have their basis in depictions of mental torture, bodily transformation, graphical sex and violence
...
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Hellbound Books, Spring 2006
Plus six other short novels (approx 40,000 words each) that I'm looking to publish in a special 6-pack.
