Why Demons? #NaNoWriMo2017

“Demons are amazing beings, simple in design and intent—to foster and promote evil in such a way as to undo the goodness of mankind and to cause the ruination if not outright destruction of all that is held to be pure and good. We should all have such clarity of purpose.” — Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures, Theresa Bane

I will be starting National Novel Writing month with a bang by writing seven demons in the first seven days. I feel the need to explain a bit — Don't worry, mom! — because demons still feel elicit and dangerous. Which is rather exciting. And definitely the point.

I generally don't spend much time thinking about demons. There are people out there who do. In preparing for my novel writing monsters, I discovered the local library had a demonology, the Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures by Theresa Bane.

Even with Halloween approaching, I felt weird carrying around a book about demons. While I don't have a care about vampires, ghosts, zombies, and mummies, thinking about demons feels unnerving, forbidden, even reckless. Demons still have the capacity to scare and that’s why I am writing them.

After the shock of the U.S. Presidential election results I wondered, what monster is needed now?

In the Reagan/Bush/Clinton years, there were vampires. At first, they were scary and sexy.  In Lost Boys and Interview with the Vampire, vampires reigned in pop culture. They had wealth and power and humanity was just meat to them. They typified the excess of the 80s and humanity's uncaring coldness to people who were impoverished and view of self as a species above the Earth. They signaled a class divide. Over time, we tamed them. Vampires became more human, lovable and even allies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, and Twilight. We sunk our fangs into excess.

During the Clinton/Bush/Obama years, zombies arose and were everywhere. In 28 Days Later, World War Z and TheWalking Dead, they were fast, slow and terrifying. They personified our mindless unawareness. Our fear of each other: terrorism. Our fear of plagues and disease. In time, zombies became more human. There was the comedy Shaun of the Dead. The romantic teen zombie comedy Warm Bodies and a coming of age zombie movie, Zombieland. We learned all the rules to defeating zombies. We joined zombie walks, zombie runs, zombie kitsch, zombie burlesque and zombie fun. We kept on shambling unawares. *

Now, the rise and fall of various monsters does not correspond with election cycles, but it does correlate to our political/social environments. Monsters illustrate our greatest fears. In her books The Secret Life of Puppets and Gothicka Victoria Nelson writes about our relationship to monsters and how they enter our pop culture and literary collective psyche and reflect the issues of our times. She describes this process of humanizing our monsters. We learn to understand them, understand ourselves better, face our fears both external and internal. We become better together.

So, what monster will arise now in this age of rampant, blatant misogeny, white supremacy and the threats of fascism and tyranny? My answer: Demons.

We need demons. Terrifying, frightening, taboo and pure evil. We need to imagine them, confront them, battle them and discover how to defeat them again. We have forgotten to fear pride, lies and gluttony. We need to remember.

Now it's true that when you begin to research and think about demons you will find yourself in uncomfortable company. I descended into the depths of the internet with God, fire and condemnation screaming out at me from black pages filled with red and yellow ALL CAPS gothic font. I'm not terribly interested in the biblical demons that King James feared, although pride and lies must certainly be faced.

I'll be writing these demons as part of my Gothic Western project for National Novel Writing month.

Inspirations include:

• Richard Brautigan's The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (1974) 
• Carol Emshwiller's western Ledoyt (1995)
• Kelly Sue DeConnick's graphic novel Pretty Deadly  (2014)

I’m exploring:

• Independence versus community - going solo versus working together 
• Lawlessness versus order - pure freedom versus social constraint  
• Analytical/data-based/evidence-driven priority versus the emotional core and ecstatic joy

Theme music so far includes:

• Snog's "Corporate Slave," Tragic Impulse Remix (2017) opening scenes 
• Kanga's "Going Red," Kanga LP (2016) for my protagonist Vivian Eis' call to adventure
• Gary Numan's "My Name is Ruin," Savage (2017) for her adventure to the Grenzlands
• Florence & the Machine's "My Boy Builds Coffins," Lungs (2009) for her arrival at Hawkline Funeral Home

Scentsiprations:

• Funnel of Love, Only Lovers Left Alive, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
• Pumpkin Spice, Sage and Patchouli incense

I'll have fun with the tropes of haunted houses and gloom as well as western prairies, mines and saloons.

In my novel, there will be seven demons. A few of these have counterparts in King James' demonry, but my demons are not parallels of any of the many heaven or hells imagined on Earth. They belong to my world. My protagonist will struggle to keep these demons at bay and eventually confront them.

So here I am imagining demons incarnate: what they look like, what brings them close, what gives them power, what wards them away, how to fight them and defeat them.

As I take my protagonist through versions of both the hero's and heroine’s journey, I can't wait to get to know these demons better. Ultimately, I believe we must humanize our demons as we have other monsters. We must find ways to see their failings and weaknesses and eventually enlist them as allies. One day we will see their humorous and romantic aspects, but first we must confront the terror.

“For it is precisely the moment when we become completely conscious of the boundaries of the worldview we have comfortably inhabited for several centuries that is also, inevitably, the moment we abandon it: we see the door in the sky, and we walk through it.” — Victoria Nelson 

This is our way forward: be terrified, discover their weaknesses, confront the demons and eventually befriend them. This entire progression will likely not happen in my current novel. For the moment, I am only terrified. But my protagonist will learn and grow...

 “Demons are driven by evil instinct and only by the use of conscious reason, compassion, and love can they be defeated.” — Theresa Bane

* And in the 70s: werewolves...