I had the pleasure of interviewing author D.A Hernandez about his new web serial, Dividing Canaan: The Journals of Canaan Quintanilla.
 

Tell our readers about Dividing Canaan.

Dividing Canaan is the story of a teenager growing up in rural Texas in the summer of 1997 and after.  It is told from a first person perspective in the form of the main character, Canaan Quintanilla’s journal.  What begins as the daily accounts of a young man’s trials and tribulations regarding his tumultuous family and scholastic life becomes something else entirely once he begins dreaming of another world and another boy named Baphomet Fimbulwinter.  A boy like him and yet not.  In conjunction with Canaan’s experiences, we are privy to the experiences of Baphomet Fimbulwinter as he sojourns to fulfill his destiny to restore a shattered world laid to ruin by a fearsome scourge referred to as The Trespasser.  The tale is ultimately one of the process of self discovery when all you’ve ever known has been steeped in obscurity.  Canaan and Baphomet are caught between the two worlds, constantly struggling to uncover where each truly belongs.  

How did you first come up with the inspiration for this story?

In all honesty, the heart of the character for the most part is my own.  Many of the experiences he encounters – in the real world – are recollections and even musings from my own journals.  Of course, I did not set out to make it solely autobiographical.  I wanted to create a dark fantasy/horror story that incorporated the real world, especially that of a teenager, as honestly and vividly as the world in which Canaan soon finds himself wandering.  The story has grown considerably since I first embarked upon it back in 2006.

     
How do you think Canaan’s experiences are relatable to others?

Canaan touches on many of the things people (especially teenagers) see in themselves, primarily their imperfections.  He begins the story as overweight, a social oddity and fighting to come to grips with his own sexuality.  He’s ridiculed at school and terribly mistreated by his stepfather, and while he has friends who care about him, he often wonders what they would ever do if they knew who he was, the beast he feels he is deep inside.  Beyond that, there’s the awkwardness of being a teenager growing up - that no matter what your circumstances you can’t help but feel like every day is the end of the world and you might very well be the only one who feels the way you do.  

What has surprised you most about the story as it has taken shape?

The unforeseen therapy surrounding the story.  Writing has always been my escape, delving into the lives of my characters or retreating into a good book to get lost and isolate myself from my own weaknesses.  With Canaan – as Canaan I should say – I find myself, I confront myself as I force him to confront the darkness he experiences.  In producing this work, my aim has been to open up the head of the character and give the audience a tour.  It is not always pretty and there are monsters and unspeakable moments set to the page, but it is honest and unflinching. 

Is the story still in progress? If so, how much longer do you think you’ll work on it?

The story is very much in progress.  Volume One is up now at www.truthiscreation.blogspot.com and I am working on the revisions to the second Volume and hope to start posting soon, no later than the end of August.  I foresee it as a trilogy, with Volume One and Two as the first book with a second book which is already in a first draft form, and a third brainstormed, but not as of yet fleshed out.  Volume Two continues through Canaan’s sophomore year of High School and further explores the destinies of Canaan and Baphomet.    

   
Are you working on other projects that you’d like to tell us about?

I’m working on several short stories, continuing to build my portfolio as well as two novellas: one about a young man recalling a long lost summer and the mysterious woman who opened his eyes to magicians and demons, while the second is a dark children’s tale involving an imaginative boy’s curiosity of that malevolent time of night known as Midnight.  I am hoping to finish wrapping up both by the end of the year.  I work erratically at times.  An idea comes to me in the middle of the night and I have to get out of bed and click on the computer to put my mind at ease.  My muse is a demanding temptress indulging the stomach of my brain like a glutton.

What inspired you to start writing in general?

My 5th grade English teacher actually.  Mr. Kelley.  We didn’t actually take to one another very easily.  It was his first year teaching and I was going through a lot of things with my parents.  I remember we had to write a narrative and mine revolved around a boy who found a time machine and ended up trapped at the center of the Minotaur’s Maze.  Far from riveting I’m sure, but he saw something in me and raved to all the teachers that he had a writer in his class.  Needless to say, it stoked a fire and soon I had notebooks teeming with poetry and short stories.  Of course I was very shy – still am for the most part – and rarely allowed anyone to view my work.  It might seem selfish, but those stories, those poems they were my world, a secret and safe place where I didn’t have to be afraid.  They were a sprawling wood and even when I got lost, somehow I knew the way.

What kind of feedback have you received from friends and family?

My friends and family are my phantom limbs.  In a good way.  They are always with me, supporting me distant or near and when I am hard on myself they help soften the blow.  My mom and siblings haven’t actually read my work on Canaan.  With several scenes drawn from true events and personal journal entries it is a difficult thing to share with people who were there.  A few of the characters in Dividing Canaan such as Teresa and the siblings Logan and Lara are based on real people and have encouraged me to complete the story.  Teresa for one has been there since we were in junior high together, and my best friend Jay (both of whom have read each and every incarnation the story has gone through over the past four years) is nothing short of phenomenal when it comes to his compassion and support.

If you had a chance to make over a popular book or movie and put your own creative stamp to it—what would it be, and why?

I am fascinated by duality, and in the case of popular book or movie, I’d have to say Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.  I have loved this book since I was in 8th grade and like “Dividing Canaan” I have had an idea for the longest time of updating Dorian Gray to a modern age.  This has been done, but my idea has always been a musical.  Silly, right?  But hey I am a lover of the stage and I’ve envisioned a rock opera venture with a character by the name of Ryan Bleak.  I’ve written many a script and pieced together lyrics, but I am no musician.  Still, I always say I’ll get around to it, that one day I’ll put together such a show.  Such musical films like “Repo: The Genetic Opera” have helped to increase this longing to compose a dark ambient, pseudo-industrial rock opera.  One of these days, I swear. 

What do you like to read?

I love urban fantasy and horror, so Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker; those guys are like gods to me.  I’m actually rereading all of Barker’s “Books of Blood”.  Horror and other genre heavyweights like Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale, Anne Rice, Annie Proulx, Poppy Z. Brite, H.P. Lovecraft and Chuck Palchiuak carry me through many a late night.  I peruse all genres, but horror and fantasy are my main veins.   

Tell us who your favorite “bad guy” is in your story, and why.

That’s a tough one, as there are many throughout the course of the story who could take on the mantle as villain.  The Bastard, Canaan’s stepfather is an obvious baddy, but he is not my favorite; he is actually the most difficult to write.  Even Canaan to some degree could be seen as a villain, but I suppose the one who begins to take shape in Volume One and most prominently in Volume Two of Dividing Canaan would have to be that of the Lamia Thanatas, a serpentine temptress with plans of her own for both Canaan and Baphomet.  Where The Bastard is a brutal wrecking ball, Lamia is sultry and nurturing in her evil, but there is a tragedy in her violence. 

Do you like to set a particular mood for your writing? Do you work at a particular time of day?

I find that I work better at night, especially after 9 o’clock, which suffice it to say means I don’t always get my good eight hours, but I am at the mercy of my muse.  I like it when the house is quiet, and though I like back ground music, I’ll often shut it off and just indulge the story.  I do try to set myself word limits, anywhere from 2000-4000 words a day, but sometimes it is less.  I don’t force it.  If I am on a roll one moment and it drags the next, I will stop and go outside or lose myself in a book or a video game, but when it comes calling again I’ll succumb and head back.  I do work and go to school so it can be challenging to find the time when my schedule is bustling, but even if it’s just a few notes, characterizations, or plot ideas I try my damndest to get it down somewhere, because you just never know what one of those crumpled napkins can turn into.

What do you find is the most challenging part about writing?

Stepping back once a project is finished and resisting the urge to scrap it all and start over.  I am truthfully my own worst critic. 

What’s the most rewarding?

Well an acceptance letter is always nice, I won’t lie.  I will never forget how amazing it felt when I got my first acceptance letter.  I didn’t get paid for it, but I was published.  I was on the web.  I could type in my name and I felt for the first time like I existed.  I was no longer a ghost.  I was tangible.  It was a new beginning for me, the new start I had been waiting for. 

The important thing I have to remember is that even when I feel insecure about my writing or worry if I’m not good enough, I am able rise above it and push through the obstruction I’ve placed for myself and remember that this is something I love.  Not for the acknowledgement alone, but the love and the vitality it gives me when I sit at my computer or write in a notebook and create.  And when that creation is read, I’m ecstatic because it was all worth it.  I need that outlet, there is a thrill in it, untamed and fierce and I honestly believe that if I stopped writing altogether I’d be missing an important piece of myself.  True horrors, real monsters for me are self doubt and insecurity.  They are some of the toughest beasts to overcome in anything a person chooses to do.     

What advice would you offer to aspiring writers?

I’m still an aspirant myself, but what I have learned is to never give up even when you think that you can’t ever put another word onto the page, even when you receive the dreaded rejection letter or feel you’re going unnoticed, don’t stop writing if it’s what you feel – what you know you are meant to do.  Publications on the web have been a great way to showcase my work and I encourage others to do so, if for nothing else than the sense of community it can offer.  Even digitally you are not alone.  It’s also about discovering what you value about the act of writing itself.  For me it’s the creation, for others it might be the pursuit of acclaim or money, but really the first thing you should always ask yourself is: who am I writing for?

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©2010 Lori Titus

“Are you gonna throw it in or not, Clarissa?”  Danny groaned, staring at his watch.

“I’m thinking, don’t rush me.”

“Make a wish, ‘Rissa.  Mom’s going to kill us if we don’t get home.”

“How can I think straight with you wagging your tongue?”

Danny didn’t care what his little sister wished for.  He’d already sent his coin down the well.  He knew it might not come true, there was always that chance, but he as others believed in Shutterglade, that the Matheson Well was sworn to grant wishes.

Clarissa clasped the coin in her hands.  She could sense her brother’s irritation at her back.  Her very presence seemed to irritate both him and their mother ever since her father had abandoned them.  The absence had left her bearing the brunt of their anger.

She did as Danny had instructed and pressed the coin to her lips and gave it a gentle kiss.  So many things she could wish for, but she knew there was only one thing that could set things right.  All she wanted beyond anything else was to be happy again.

“Oh no!” Clarissa screamed.

The coin fumbled through her fingers and into the black water of the well.

“What did you do now?”

“I made a wish, but I made it wrong.  I dropped my coin.”

“It’s gone, ‘Rissa.  I told you, one wish only.”

“But I did it wrong,” she repeated, thrusting her hands into the water fishing for the lost coin.  She perched herself on the edge of the stones like a squirrel gathering water from a puddle of rain.  “I wish for Daddy, that’s what I want most of all, Daddy to come home!”

Danny reached out to pull her back, but as his hands grabbed at her thin little arm, she slipped into the water out of reach, breaching the surface of the stagnant pool.

His legs went numb, collapsing under him, bent askew as he slumped alongside the edge of the well.

What have I done!  What have I done!  He screamed inside thinking of the coin he himself had tossed into the well and the wish he’d made; the only wish he ever made since becoming the man of the house and being forced to look after his disgruntled mother and annoying sister.

“Give her back!” Danny bellowed aloud, his voice cracking and tearing apart like a rupture in the earth.  “I didn’t mean it!  Honest.  I take it back.  I take it back!”

***

The Keeper of the Well sucked the eyes of the little girl from her sockets, the length of its tentacled tongues darting into the holes to fondle the tiny chasms clean.  It split the skin and crunched the bones, devouring meat, entrails, and extremities in gluttonous chunks.  It slurped up the stomach fluids from the bowl of the child’s abdomen like hot soup, rivulets of the filth pooling down the sides of its greedy maw.

Many had come to toss a coin in the dark water seeking the granting of a single wish.  And the Keeper was obliged to abide by the ancient law of which it was bound.  But too often it found human nature’s propensity for greed in rivalry with its own voracity for sustenance and this simply would not do.  The young girl had relinquished her wish the moment she sought to reclaim her coin, and with that offense, she belonged to the Keeper.

“Give her back,” the boy’s distant voice echoed, bouncing off the walls of the creature’s home deliciously aggrieved.

The Keeper looked up towards the vague silhouette at the surface high above.  Grinding its jaws it stared at the skull in its clawed hands.  It no longer held its symmetry, cracked at the jaw on the right side, a bizarre half-mask the creature admired with profound affection.  Each victim for all their selfishness was sacred to it.  They had come with desire, never knowing how their transgression against its ancient rules was as tantalizing as salted meat.

It traced its sharp, black lacquered nails along the interior of the eye sockets, the memory of her cornflower blue eyes now resting in the channels of its bowels.

Something in its stark demeanor changed and for an instant the primordial beast felt the slightest hint of sympathy.  Admiring the skull one final time, it bid bon voyage to the fleshless mask and watched with a surly smile on its mottled lips as the skull floated up the length of the well.

***

Danny fell by the edge of the well hugging the stone border, his fingers dangling in the dark water.

“I take it back, honest.  I take it back,” he cried, but nothing could assuage the guilt in fierce competition with the fear climbing up his spine.

The water bubbled under his fingers and he felt something drum against the tips.  He lifted his head and craned his neck over the side of the well.  Danny dipped his hand into the water and curled his fingers around the strange object floating on top of the water.  Withdrawing, he shook the object rigorously before wiping his tear stained eyes to get a good look at what he found.

***

“More and more, they’ll come to me, casting down their offering,” the Keeper of the Well considered as it suckled on the end of a leg bone, siphoning the marrow through the undulant tentacles of its tongues.  “Some will walk away satisfied by what I impart, but there will always be one to bring me what I need.”

The boy’s cries filled the deep cylindrical chamber, his pain reaching the Keeper’s ears sweet as wind chimes.  Even with the tender meat of its last meal still caught in its teeth, the hunger emerged.  The ancient creature stirred with insidious, carnal yearning for new flesh to descend, to renege on a wish granted and plunge through the dark ripples of the well and into the final judgment of the Keeper’s jaws.

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©2010 D.A Hernandez