Fugue ...

His home fluctuated in size at times.

Tonight it was so expansive that he'd gotten lost in it.  He walked long corridors that led to empty rooms, studs and beams exposed, plaster and lath of the ceilings below requiring him to walk as a tightrope walker walks, balanced on the narrow edges of the floor joists below.  He knew if he brought his weight down on the lath he would plunge through it and fall for eternity.

He picked his careful way through the windowless maze, passing through doorways that led ever deeper into this foreign house, now his prison.

Where is Lauren?

At other times, the house shrunk around him until all that remained was his kitchen and his bedroom, both rooms becoming so small that it felt like the walls were closing in, the doors and windows shrinking to a size impossible to pass through.

Both iterations held him prisoner.

Where am I?

"Nest of the Coquatrix"

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

New Covers ...

I've redesigned the covers of the Gangster series.

Author's Website

https://www.amazon.com/Aaron-D-McClelland/e/B07HLLSJXD

Transgender Realities ...

 

In my most recently completed novel, Leaving Wonderland, one of my main characters is a male-to-female transgendered Mossad Officer - (it's an espionage thriller with an unconventional love story).  I'd always wanted to include a trans character in a piece, and did so in my short story Royal & Rene, and I enjoyed the love story between the pair so much I used them for Leaving Wonderland.  I even included a couple steamy love scenes that needed to be there to drive the story forward.

There still exists so much ignorance about the T in LGBTQ, that I want to do my part to support them.  As a mental health therapist I have worked with transgendered adolescents and found them to be no different than others in their particular gender basket.  But don't take my word for it ...

Research

Since the advent of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, neuroscience has expanded its scope of understanding.  By stimulating the brain with sights, sounds, and tactical experiences during a fMRI scan, researches can watch in realtime how the brain functions.  What they discovered was there are subtle differences between male and female brains, not just in their function, but in their structure as well.  Researchers at facilities around the world got so good at this they can look at an fMRI scan and tell you if the patient is male or female.

A few years ago, some of these research facilities started to look at the brains of transgendered people and what they discovered was what trans people have been trying to tell us for years; it is the brain that determines gender, NOT the genitals.

My own observations about transgendered children and youth is that the emergence of their gender identity begins shortly after they achieve theory of mind.  Typically at five years old, trans children will begin to tell their parents and others they are a girl or a boy, NOT the gender assigned to them at birth.  At that age thoughts of sexuality can be excluded, so we are left with a child speaking of their identity.

Be Accepting and Kind

Imagine living in a world that rejects and vilifies you simply for being who you are.  Being surrounded by people who mock the core of your identity, and label your very existence as 'wrong'.

The suicide statistics amongst unsupported transgendered adolescents are shocking; 19% of trans teens had seriously considered suicide, 15% had made a plan to commit suicide, 8% had attempted suicide and 2.5% had been injured by a suicide attempt.  Amongst transgendered adolescents these rates drop by 40% if they are accepted and supported by a single adult and drop exponentially the more they are surrounded by caring adults.

We have never lived in a totally binary world and it's time to accept and embrace that.  I urge my fellow authors to include transgendered characters in their stories.  Its pretty simple; just write them the way you'd write any other male or female character.

If we make this our normal, the world will follow.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

First time for everything ...

 Nest of the Coquatrix contains many firsts for me.

• It's my first psychological horror as we follow psychologist Doctor Nigel Blason feel his mind slowly come apart
• It's the first book I've ever written a complete outline for; the setting, the build, the evolving relationships between colleagues and patients
• It's the first book that 3/4 of the way to completion I completely changed the ending and had to return to page one
• It's the first book I've written without a love story in it.  There was no room for that in this
• It's the first book which doesn't have a 'good-guy'.  There are no heroes in this story nor really are there any villains
• Lastly; it's the first story I've written that will come with a strong warning.  This isn't a novel for the faint of heart.  It deals with a dark fetish subculture that most people are not familiar with and I'm thankful for that.  Even I have cringed as I write some of the scenes and if you are easily triggered I promise it will give you nightmares

Coquatrix: (kä-kɘ-trɘs) - a mythical serpent with lethal breath and gaze, whose nest can be located by the scorched earth surrounding it; a cockatrice, it was said, could only be slain by seeing its reflection in a mirror

Think; American Psycho meets The Sixth Sense.

You get the picture.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Editing ... still

Is it ever over?  Sixth editing pass on Leaving Wonderland.  I'd copied a small snippet for a game on Twitter in the #WritingCommunity and noticed a 'form' that was supposed to be a 'from'.  Then I noticed a passive voice on the same page.  I thought I covered all of this in the first five passes.

Apparently not.

Back to page one, finding small bits of passive voice, weak words that needed stronger ones, hinted at meanings that were so obscure that even I puzzled over them.  Tidying, cleaning, adding, subtracting.  At what point is a novel complete?

Damned if I know.

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Nest of the Coquatrix ...

 

"I'm going to go now." Lawrence said, his voice suddenly weary and flat.

"Before you go, I'd like you to do one thing for me." Nigel said, taking a fresh pad of paper and a pen from his desk, "Are you right or left handed?"

"Right.  Why?" Lawrence said and Nigel saw the suspicion on his face.

"There's a technique called 'non-dominant handwriting'." he explained, knowing that he had to be candid to gain Lawrence's cooperation, "Your non-dominant hand is your left and I'd like you to write an answer to a question on the paper for me."

"Are you trying to make me look foolish?" Lawrence asked, staring at the pen and paper, "Getting me to scrawl a sentence like I'm a four year old so you can laugh at me?"

"Not at all." Nigel assured him, leaning back in his chair to relinquish all control or influence.  He needed Lawrence to do this willingly.

"This technique taps into our younger selves, which have direct access to our subconscious.  It can be revealing both to a therapist and a patient."

"What do you want me to write?"

"You've told me what Big Belly wanted you to do.  I want you to write down what you want to do."

Lawrence pondered.

"That's a big ask."

"I know it is.  But you have voiced a disdain for falsehood and secrets.  Doing this may open a door in our relationship that leads to understanding and validation."

Lawrence smiled.

"I'll make you a deal.  Give me an envelope and I'll write my answer and seal it in the envelope.  You can only read it after I'm gone."

"That sounds fair." Nigel said as he pulled an envelope from his desk drawer and handed it to Lawrence.

"And you won't laugh if it's messy?" Lawrence asked as he turned the pad toward himself and picked up the pen.

"I will never laugh at you, Lawrence.  I promise."

"What I want to do?"

"Yes."

"Don't watch me." Lawrence said.

Nigel swivelled his chair so he was facing the glass wall, still able to see Lawrence but not what he was writing.  He waited until Lawrence had finished, put down the pen and tore the sheet free of the pad, then folded it and placed it in the envelope.  He watched him carefully lick the flap and seal it, then place it on Nigel's desk.

"Okay." Lawrence said and Nigel turned back, seeing Lawrence's bemused smile.  He made no move to pick up the envelope.

"Next week?  Same bat channel. Same bat time?

"Thursday at seven-thirty."

"Groovy.  Later-skater." Lawrence said and left the office.

Nigel waited until he heard the elevator doors open and close then picked up the envelope and opened it, unfolding the page within.  What he saw drew the breath from his lungs.

In perfect cursive script Lawrence had written;

I want to kill her

Nest of the Coquatrix

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

GangsterStory

The T in LGBTQ+ ...

I wrote my first transgender love scene this week for 'Leaving Wonderland'.  It was steamy and sweet and saturated with emotion.  It wasn't gratuitous; it needed to be there to push the story forward, to bring two people together whose union was vital to the plot.

It was laced with hesitation and nervousness, a natural emotional blend when two people cross boundaries into unknown territory.  But once that connection was made it flowed and reached an earthy, almost spiritual climax.  It began with heat and concluded with a harmonious surrender to vulnerability and tears of the pedigree only found in love fulfilled.

It was a challenge I set for myself, to work outside what I know as a CIS man, and explore a sexuality I am only aware of as a near observer to members of a community I feel allied with.

How did I write a transgendered female character?  I thought of a woman, because that's what she is despite a twist of nature giving her a female brain inside a male body.  I thought of all the transgendered children and youth who lay awake at night wishing they were dead because their true emerging selves are too often rejected by those who are supposed to love them.  I thought of that struggle, that lonely survival, and how deeply emotional it must be to find someone who accepts them just the way they are.

Love is love.  It doesn't have a gender or orientation and is only absent in sociopaths.  We all crave acceptance for our true selves and when we find it we love deeply, freed from our defence against vulnerability, surrendering our souls to the one who accepts and loves us back.

Royal and Renée are two of my favourite characters, first appearing in a short story about an unlikely romance between a Romani gangster and a transgendered young woman.  I enjoyed them so much I transplanted them into 'Leaving Wonderland', my first spy novel.  They fit there.  They imbue the story with mystery, adding so much to the interweaving suspense of the central plot, their love story riding shotgun in the mad dash to the climax of the novel.

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

GangsterStory