Musings From A Demented Mind (20 page)

Little Town Flirt: Originally titled “Madness Within Our Minds” was written by JC back in the 1970s.  I came up with the new title after hearing the song by Del Shannon on the overhead radio at work.  I had to change the ending since the last page of the story was missing.  I have no idea how the original story ended.  I decided to go with a “Tales From the Crypt” style ending.

Master of Discontent:  The story was written by JC and was originally published in the Wheeler School Newspaper in 1971.  This version includes the original last paragraph that was omitted from the version published by the school newspaper.  The story is about suicide.

The Kick:  This story was inspired by an encounter JC talked about from his childhood.  I heard the story on several occasions over the years and thought a circus was the perfect setting to tell the story.

Games:  This one was written by JC.  The story is about the moral decline of society and how religion is important for our souls.  This is a toned down version of the original story.  This story dates back several decades.

Where Evil Shall Dwell:  This was written by JC back in the 1970s.  This was one of the stories that was a challenge for me to update.  JC always wrote in first person, and I find that a challenge to write since I only write in third person.  The story was his take on the mystery of the Bermuda triangle.  This isn’t the only story of JC’s that Ira was in.  The other story is an unfinished alien invasion story that one day I will go back and finish.

The Dogs:  Originally titled “Night of The Dogs” was written by James Coon and me.  I took the original story up to a certain point and I refuse to acknowledge the last few pages of that story exists.  The story went in a direction I will never go.  I have a list of a few topics I won’t deal with in my writings and two of them were main components of the rest of the story.  I reworked it with the lady actually turning into a dog.  I had to rework some parts of the beginning scene since the main character actually does things that is a contradiction to the character JC had established.  This story went through a lot of rewrites.  I had the toughest time trying to fix this one, but I believed it was one that had to be included in this anthology.

Travelers:  This was the story JC started working on a week before he passed away.  The Saturday night before, he showed me the first page which sadly was the only page he finished.  I took the first page and wrote it in the direction I thought he would have gone in.  I spent a lot of time trying to make this story right.  I hope he would have been proud of how it turned out.  The first two pages of the story is from the one page he wrote.

When JC worked for the insurance company he won a trip to Russia.  He often talked about his experiences there.  I would say that trip was one of the favorite highlights of his life.  JC liked a great bargain.  He would buy a lot of clothes, mainly sweaters and flannel, at the Goodwill.  With the amount of money he spent on comic books and paperbacks, he had to save the money somewhere.  With his fascination with aliens, I thought it would be fitting to have part of the story take place in Area 51.

Agent Rick Venable and Agent Marilyn Austin are not modeled after Mulder and Scully from “X-Files”.  They are actually modeled after Phil Coulson and Melinda May from “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”  The first time we encounter them was not in the original draft of the story.  I was actually asleep when the idea of adding them to the story popped in my head.  I snapped awake and immediately wrote the scene where they were in the park in Valparaiso. I compose my best stories while I’m sleeping.   I reworked the parts I had already written to include those characters and how they affected the outcome of the story.  In the original version of “Alien Town”, Rick and Marilyn were in the ending.  I decided weeks later that the scene didn’t work and deleted it.

Yes, I had to mention the Beatles in one of my stories.  The Beatles will stand the test of time.  The White Album, in my opinion, is their best album and had the most mature song writing. 

Reading the story with fresh eyes, I believe it turned out the way I was hoping.  Maybe one day I will bring the characters back for another story.  I promise you that we haven’t seen the last of Agent Rick Venable and Agent Marilyn Austin.

“Travelers” closes the James Coon section of the anthology.  I have plenty of his stories still to work through and someday I will publish some more of them.  I hope everybody learned a lot about the man and enjoyed the journey through his demented mind.

For the musings from my mind.

I began working on stories for a new anthology back in December of last year.  “Musings From the Demented Mind” was going to be the title for that anthology.  I wrote “Lumps of Coal” and published it on Short Fiction Break in time for Christmas.  I began working on several stories, but I went through a major non writing phase, writers’ block.  I decided I was going to begin writing my first full length novel “Beast Within”.  Short Fiction Break’s first year anniversary was coming up and Jeff wanted to publish a new anthology of previous unpublished short stories by us SFB authors dealing with the concept for the first time, becoming one or anything dealing with the number one.  I wrote my story “Rastus” to be included in the anthology.  I was about to begin writing the first chapter of “Beast Within” when James Coon passed away.  From there, my inspiration took off and I began writing religiously.

These stories prove that I have a demented mind. 

Buzz Kill:  The original idea for this story dates back to the “Zombie Command: A Horror Anthology” sessions.  I came up with the idea from reading an article about a family who had a guest room they hadn’t used in years.  They had somebody who was going to stay with them and when they went in to prepare the room for her arrival, discovered thousands of bees had made a hive out of the mattress in the room.  I came up with the idea that a girl was kidnapped and placed in a cellar.  Bees entered the cellar and made a nest out of her.  The outline was one of hundreds of outlines I came up with that I never did anything with.  When the recent incident of the truck getting in the wreck on the highway unleashing millions of bees, I thought I now had an element to make my original idea work.  I began writing it.

The main characters are based on people I know from work.  Anybody who has read “The Freegans” from “Journey Into the Unknown: Deluxe Horror Edition” will get the reference when Julianne sees the guy digging through the dumpster in the back of the store.

This story is dedicated to all those who fear and are allergic to bees.

A Horror Story:  This is a behind the scenes of making a low budget horror film.  This is also a tribute to the movie “Waxwork”.  This story was originally written for Short Fiction Break.  There are a lot of scenes inspired by several horror films throughout the story.  This was one of those stories that I had a lot of fun writing.

Lumps of Coal:  This one was written for Short Fiction Break for Christmas 2014.  This is all about the top 1% of our country and what they think of us.  It’s all about greed. I will leave it to everyone’s imagination who the rich snob was based on.

Elvis Has Left the Dead:  Mark Cusco Ailes and I were interviewed for the Times newspaper recently.  A photographer was sent to our book signing three days later to take a photograph of us for the article.  Sandra had her Elvis cutout promoting her Elvis book standing up by the entrance to the book signing.  The photographer was feeling creative and took a picture of it.  That was the photo they used for our article.  Nothing says the Ailes Brothers of Terror better than Elvis Presley.  What possessed the editor of the paper to choose a picture unrelated to the article as that photo?  At least, the reporter from the Post Tribune, who stopped by to do an article about the book fair, used a picture of us for the article in their newspaper.

I wrote this totally sarcastic story out of anger over the incident.  I’m a big Elvis fan.  I love his music.  I love books about him. I own his movies on DVD.  There are a lot of tidbits throughout the story that diehard Elvis fans will pick up on that non diehard fans won’t realize it’s a reference to him.  People wish he was still alive.  Hell, imagine how many more songs he would have recorded if he had lived longer. 

This story is as it was truly meant to be; me making fun of myself.  The people described outside my front door are my actual neighbors.

Twisted Twins:  I wrote this story for Jen and Sylvia Soska, The Twisted Twins, the horror masterminds behind the movies “Dead Hooker In A Trunk”, “American Mary” and “See No Evil 2”.  I wrote this story in the same style similar to all of their movies.    I had the pleasure of meeting them a year ago at a horror convention.  I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since.  There are many references to “American Mary” and it is as twisted as they are.  They believe in having strong female characters and I didn’t disappoint them.  This is the most demented story I have ever written.

Marriage Zquality:  After the backlash from the Republicans and the Christian Right after the Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage, I wrote a zombie story based on it.  People will have different opinions on what the meaning behind the story is truly about.  What happens in the story parallels aspects of the holocaust and what happened to Anne Frank and her family.  It’s my “never forget, it can happen again” story.

Russo Jones is named after John Russo, the father of zombie movies and fiction.  Thanks for making the genre popular.

In the Hollies Style:  This story was written on no sleep after 2:00 am.  On very little sleep, my stories become too bizarre.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Hollies since I heard “The Air That I Breathe” for the first time in 1994, twenty years after it had been released as a single.  Over the next twenty years, I searched far and wide for every B-side and non-album track I could get my hands on.  I have every song that has been released now on MP3 format. My love for the Hollies outweighs my love for every other band.  The story about the Hollies is totally made up obviously; it is based on the history of the band up to when Allan Clarke first left the band right after the album “Distant Light” was released.   Yes, I’ve made some changes to the time line since Bernie Calvert didn’t officially join the band until 1966.

Elton John also makes an appearance in the story since he did the piano work for two of their songs: “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” and “I Can’t Tell A Bottom From the Top”.

This story is complete fiction and there is no evidence that they were ever vampire slayers.

Claws Vs Mecha Cat:  This is a sequel to “Claws” from “Catfurnado, Zombies and One Killer Doll”.  This is another story written for fans of all the offbeat horror films from the SyFy Channel and the original “Godzilla” franchise.  Will there be another story? Is there a “Claws 3: Oh Hell No!” in the future?  Only time will tell.

Every year my friend and I go to the Chicago Auto Show.  I figured it was time to use that in one of my stories.

The shark they spotted in Lake Michigan that vanished is the shark from my story “Shark Transporter” from “Zombie Command: A Horror Anthology”. 

I hope that nobody saw the surprised warped ending coming.  I just couldn’t end the story with a happy ending.

Rastus, A Warrior’s Quest & Shelana’s Quest:  Both of these stories are teaser stories for my upcoming fantasy novel “Beast Within”.  I’m pushing for a March 2016 release date.  Keep checking
http://www.derekailes.com
for further updates.  I post to my blog almost every Sunday.

I hope this journey has been thrilling and entertaining and everybody enjoyed all the stories from both mine and James Coon’s minds. 

I want to thank all of those who have helped or inspired me with this project:

Linda Byers & Amber Harmon for finding all of JC’s stories and saving them for me.

Jeff Elkins, Bob Moulesong and everybody else at Short Fiction Break for supporting my writing career this past year.

Indiana Writers’ Consortium and all of its members who have supported Mark and my writing career.

Carolyn Ailes, my mother, who has been editing these stories and helping me improve them.

Mark Cusco Ailes for being my beta reader.

John Russo for creating the first zombie masterpiece and starting the zombie revolution.

Jen & Sylvia Soska for proving to the world that women can dominate the horror industry, and we shouldn’t view women as the victims in the horror genre.

James Coon: for sharing these stories and adventures with me.  I will always cherish our fifteen years of friendship.

Thank you for reading Musings From A Demented Mind.  Whether you liked it or not, I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a review on Amazon.  Reviews are vitally important to me as an author both to help me market my book and to improve my writing in the future.  Thank you!

Derek Ailes

Leave the review here:
http://authl.it/B013Q1BH8I?d