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Blurb:
Ken's
dog, Jake, is frightened of Halloween yard decorations, but when Ken tries to
show him that the enormous face, partially emerged from a front lawn, is nothing
to be scared of, he gets the fright of his life when the eyes open and gaze
interestedly at him.
Ken, while walking his dog on
Halloween night, discovers a half-buried face and unearths a fifteen foot troll
in a neighbor's front yard. This is Grendel, who has come up from the
underworld, he says, to look around. Entranced by the troll's magnificent
physique and surprisingly gentle nature, Ken befriends him and takes him home.
But the pair soon discovers they are at odds with the forces of law and order,
and must fight not only for their relationship, but eventually for their very
lives. During this struggle Ken discovers more about his own dark passions than
he ever guessed existed.
About the story and its origins: The story is a MM
romance in the horror/supernatural/humor genres.
I am a recent arrival in the field of MM romance
writing, my principal literary field of interest being sci-fi and supernatural.
Grendel is to date the
longest work I have had published. I am working my way up to submitting a
full-length novel, Grendel
being just short of the 60,000 word novel category threshold (it's 43,000 words
long).
I completed Grendel
this past summer in what is for me record fashion—two months—principally while
sitting on the backyard patio with our two dogs, under the sun umbrella,
enjoying the mildly warm summer we had with a cold drink or hot coffee by my
side, my laptop on my lap. That was pretty nice, but even nicer was how, for
the first time, a story just seemed to write itself.
It was summoned into existence by a call for
submissions by MLRPress, wanting
stories on a Halloween theme. Thinking about story ideas, I remembered the
experience I'd had several years ago while walking my dogs one evening around
Halloween.
They were young dogs at the time, and tended to
react when frightened by something. It was dark and quiet on the street, when
suddenly they went nuts in response to something in someone's front yard.
Peering into the shadows I received a shock of my own as I saw what looked like
an enormous head partially emerged from the lawn. I remember it was quite
effective, and I found the entire experience really entertaining.
So now I asked myself, what about if the head had
been real? The story just kind of went from there: the main character and his
dog trying to figure out what the thing was (it's just fake—no, wait, it
isn't); being motivated to action; digging it up, and releasing the full person
(a fifteen foot troll of tremendous, uh, proportions); befriending him,
cleaning him off, taking him home, and finally dealing with the situation of
having a fifteen foot troll living in the back yard of a quiet suburban
bungalow (he's too big get in through the door).
The possibilities for sex (challenging), romance
(again challenging), confrontation with social norms and the drama that would
arise from that, just poured from my imagination. And when I'd finished it and
my principal beta reader said he liked the story's humor and plot twists, I
realized I had a story that could please readers other than myself (at least
one, anyway), so I submitted it to MLR
(my first submission to them) and was delighted when the offer to publish came
back.
To me the story is a kind of homage to my first
boyfriend, who was big and burly and really besotted with me. It's also an
exploration of a fairy-tale horror figure (the bogey-man), transfigured into an
erotic romance in which everything is turned upon its head. If the story is
well-received I have an idea for a sequel all ready.
-G.P.Keith
-G.P.Keith
Grendel
by G.P. Keith… Published by MLR Press 2014 on 21 Nov 2014
Excerpt
from chapter 1
It
was dark and quiet when they left the house, the only sound being the rapid
click-click of Jake’s nails on the sidewalk. Ken inhaled deeply and smiled. He
loved the fall, with its fresh smells and the magical beauty of the shadowy
houses with their leaf-covered lawns.
Several
minutes into the walk a series of firecrackers went off in somebody’s backyard
and Jake started and froze. But in the silence that followed this he soon
resumed his interested trotting along the sidewalk. Seeing this, Ken began to
hope that his little dog was starting to toughen up with regard to the horrors
of Halloween.
After
that, the walk was so peaceful and pleasant that they ended up going further
than usual. Ken was still careful to cross the street whenever they approached
a house that looked like it had yard decorations, though. By doing this, he
ensured there were no incidents, and as they were approaching home Ken began to
feel that walk had been a complete success. And they had gotten through another
Halloween.
He
was just congratulating himself on this, when Jake exploded in a fury of barks
that caused Ken to jump several inches into the air. Groaning, Ken
automatically pulled back on the leash as he peered forward into the darkness.
He could just make out some kind of lawn decoration between two cedar bushes.
Walking forward to get a better view, he recognized with a sudden frisson of
horror, what appeared to be a large head partially emerged from the lawn.
When
this reaction had passed, Ken sighed. It wasn’t the first “buried head” he’d
seen. Two years ago had been his first—and it had given both him and Jake quite
a fright. Last year there had been two of these things, and he avoided those
houses ever since. And nowhere was another one! While he appreciated their
effectiveness, he also knew that Jake nursed an abiding horror of them.
So,
keeping a firm hold on the leash, Ken came up to where Jake was standing, legs
spread sturdily, barking defiantly at the thing. The “head” was composed of
four separate elements: a nose, two closed eyes, and a broad forehead between
straw eyebrows and straw hair, all protruding from the grass.
Ken
was struck by the realism of this “face.” Though it was smaller than the others
he had seen, being only about three times the size of a human face, it was more
convincing. Squatting down, he petted Jake reassuringly, and was pleased when
this appeared to have an effect. Jake’s barks became intermittent. Maybe the
little dog was getting inured to
Halloween!
Thinking
this, Ken decided to remain where he was a couple of minutes, so that Jake
might finally come to dismiss the thing. It seemed a better plan than pulling
him away and so leaving another traumatic Halloween memory in his canine mind.
As
he continued to pet Jake, Ken looked the face over. It struck him as curious
that the face wasn’t larger. While it was definitely creepy, it lacked the
sense of something truly monstrous, which he thought was the point of this type
of decoration.
And
as he continued to ponder this, Jake’s barking became less and less. He seemed
more curious than afraid now. Thinking that this might be the opportunity for
him to learn about these things, Ken let the leash out.
“Go
check it out, boy!”
Jake,
however, wouldn’t move forward. And he continued to bark every few seconds.
Ken
shook his head. He would have to demonstrate. He stood up and took a step
toward the feature of the face that was closest—the nose—and looked back at his
dog. Jake, after hesitating a second, crept up behind him.
“Brave
dog!”
Ken
took another step forward, and Jake, again, crept forward after him. Ken looked
at the face again. From this close, he was even more impressed with the realism
of the features. The eyebrows and hair, which had looked like straw from further
away, now looked more like—well, coarse straw-colored hair. And the facial
features, while caricatures of a human face, the closed eyes being too big for
the nose, and the nose itself too pudgy, were very complete in their details,
such as the eyelashes and the texture of the flesh, quite realistic in fact.
One
more step and Ken was right next to the nose, which stuck up about eight inches
from the grass. It was, he decided, probably made of Styrofoam, painted to look
like flesh. He almost nudged it with his sneaker, but then decided it would
impress Jake more if he touched it with his fingers. So he squatted down and,
after making sure Jake was watching him, reached out to the tip of the nose.
That
was when the eyes opened.