The Official Soundrack to The Wash!

If you've read the title of this post and are a bit confused, I completely understand.  Normally, a soundtrack accompanies a film.  Allow me to explain.

Eric San Juan is a musician, author and all around great guy who I've known for a while. As an author, he's written books about Hitchcock and Kurosawa, broken down television series like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead and has even published graphic novel collections.  

As a musician, he records under a number of names pending the project type.  Whether it's the chaotic guitar noisescapes of his M2 moniker, the more conventional XSweet or the laid back sounds of Tape Theory, Eric's music is never predictable and never boring.  His albums have accompanied me on dive boats, airplanes and even to other countries.

So imagine my surprise when he contacted me out of the blue to tell me that he'd recorded a soundtrack to my novel The Wash!  

I was floored!  Having an artist who you admire contact you and tell you that they were inspired by something you wrote is an amazing feeling.  Add to that, when he shared the early mixes of the tracks with me I found that I really liked them. They were mysterious and unsettling in the best of ways and I agreed that they would be perfect accompaniment to a film version of The Wash (at least as I see it in my head).

The album is now up for download and it's completely FREE!  Eric explains the process behind the album in his post here.  You can also find the link there to download it.  

For those of you who want more, I have a special deal for you.  Eric was kind enough to give me access to a bunch of outtakes and extra tracks from this session.  If you'd like them, then all you have to do is review The Wash on Amazon.  

LINK TO THE WASH ON AMAZON

Simply go to the link above and leave a review.  Send me an e-mail at w.cary.christopher@gmail.com along with a link to your review.  I'll reply to you with a link to the outtakes.

I really hope you enjoy Soundtracks for Horror Moves: Music Inspired by The Wash.  It's been playing on my iPod pretty regularly since he posted it.  I hope it gets its fingers way up under your skin and makes you anxious and so creeped out you can't sleep.  

As always, I have your best interests at heart.

The Mythology Behind The Wash

Recently, I've been asked a lot about where the idea for The Wash came from. While I wrote about some of that in an earlier blog post you can find here (How The Pieces Came Together), I really didn't address where the mythology behind the story comes from and that's what I've been asked more often than not lately.  People seem to want to know whether any of this stuff is real.

While I love digging around for the history behind a story, film or song, I'm actually not a big fan of spoiling the mystery.  Some of my favorite books and films have fantastic histories behind them that I find fascinating to explore, but at the same time I don't necessarily want to peel back the onion so much that I lose the magic I feel while enjoying them.  So it's with a bit of trepidation that I'm writing this post, but at the same time if some of you really do want to dig down deeper (at your own risk) then who am I to hide my source material?

That said, there were a TON of different things that influenced the story of The Wash, but when it came to the stories and clues the characters begin to piece together, I relied on four books.  Here they are and just remember, The Wash is a work of fiction.  Therefore, I borrowed bits from here and there.  Anyone looking for clues to where the real stones are buried will have to look elsewhere.

The Myths of Mexico and Peru by Lewis Spence

My copy of this book is so dog-eared, highlighted and notated that you'd think I was taking a college class on the subject.  It was originally published in 1913, but Barnes and Noble reprinted it in 2005.  It's very dry reading, but is packed with information.  Spence doesn't waste time with flowery writing, so read it at your own risk.

Myths and Legends of the North American Indians by Lewis Spence

Do you see a trend here?  Spence published this one in 1914.  I ran across my copy at a used bookstore.  It was republished in 2004.  Again, nothing particularly flowery here but if you like reading myths and legends, it's a pretty good resource.

Mexican Folk Tales by Anthony John Campos

This is a very short book published in 1977 by the University of Arizona Press.  It's split into three sections (Legends of the Devil, The Strange Doings of the Saints and The Foibles of Man and Beast).  Robert's story of the poor man and the bandit's gold comes from this book.

Parallel Myths by J.F. Bierlein

This is hands down my favorite of the books I read while researching The Wash.  While I really only pulled from it for one conversation between J.B. and Robert, it basically informed my whole outlook on how to bring this story together.  Bierlein splits his book up in sections based on types of myths (Flood myths, Creation myths, etc.) and then points out all of the similarities between cultures that are separated by thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of miles.  It's a fascinating read.

Other than those four, the only other book I can point you to would be Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.  It's an exploration of the Mormon religion that is one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read.  In fact, I highly recommend every book I've read by Krakauer (Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, Under the Banner of Heaven and Classic Krakauer).  

And that, folks, is all you're going to get out of me.  I'm not about to tell you what's real versus what's made up.  There's just no fun in that.

If you haven't read The Wash yet, you can find it right here at my Amazon authors page in both ebook and soft cover.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Wash Book Release Pt. 2 - A Free Bonus Chapter

First of all, I want to thank all of you who have purchased a copy of The Wash as an eBook.  It's been great hearing from people who are reading it or have read it.  That's the best part of sharing it with others is seeing what pieces resonate and which don't.

I have exciting news.  The Wash is now available as a physical book!  You can order your copy through Amazon right now and very soon it will be available at other online retailers including Barnes & Noble.  If you've been waiting until you could actually hold it in your hands, now's your chance to get it. 

Now, whether you've read the book or not, I have a present for you.  Consider it a "Bonus Scene" of The Wash, if you will.  

Fenton is a name you'll come across occasionally as you read the book.  He's a character who apparently has some minor influence over proceedings in The Wash, however his tie to Jim's Bar and the events in Ogden Wash are so slight that he was actually cut from the main manuscript.  

However, the one chapter where he appeared was a chapter that I particularly loved.  There's a phrase author's toss around: "Killing your darlings".  Fenton's chapter was one of my darlings and I axed it.  

The reason was simple.  It didn't add significantly to the narrative and I needed to cut the length of the book down.  That said, it told a complete story about who "Big Al" Fenton was and what exactly happened to him and rest assured what happened wasn't pretty.

So to celebrate the physical release of The Wash, I've rewritten Fenton's chapter as a short story.  It's called Fenton Takes a Swim and you can pick it up as a free ebook here:

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

Amazon won't let me give it away for free so I made it as cheap as they would let me ($0.99).  

If you're considering picking up The Wash, think of this as a "teaser" chapter.  Yes, I'm completely acting like a drug pusher now.  I'm giving you a taste for free.  If you've already finished The Wash and you're jonesin' for more, this will scratch your itch.

Finally, I want to thank those of you who have left reviews on Amazon, Smashwords, etc. for both The Wash and A Debt to the Dead.  Reviews are one of the most important things an author can receive in today's publishing world.  It helps me be eligible for marketing campaigns and other incentives that will get The Wash in front of even more readers, so again I thank you!

 See you again in a few days.

 Visit my author page for Fenton Takes a Swim

The Wash Book Release! - How the Pieces Came Together

Well, here it is, at least in ebook form.  My new novel, The Wash, is now available exclusively through Amazon and I couldn't be more excited to share it.  If you're not an ebook person, no worries.  The physical copy will be available by the end of the month and I'll definitely announce that here as well.

You know, one of the things I'm most fascinated by is "the story behind the story".  I love reading about what inspired an artist to create a song, a director/writer to produce a movie or an author to create a novel.  That's probably why I read so many musician biographies.  For me, that moment of inspiration is my favorite part of the creative process.  When it hits I get obsessive about capturing whatever it is that's lit a fire under me.

My novel, The Wash, is a horror novel about a small town in Utah, where a few ne'er do wells have woken up something very old and evil. The pieces that led up to it rolled around in my head for over a year before I had the urge to put fingers to keyboard and when I did, I thought I was writing just another short story. Boy, was I wrong!  Here's how the pieces came together.

About ten years ago or so, my wife, daughter and I met up with my parents in Utah.  They'd rented a timeshare up on Brian Head, a popular ski resort.  Now, I should tell you up front, my wife and I have skied fewer times than you can count on one hand and my parents rented this place in early April.  Our thinking was it would be spring and we'd visit some national parks and see more of the country.  However, when we got there we found the resort was still open and there was a ton of snow on the ground at that elevation.  Even at the base of the mountain there were patches here and there and a very large lake near Panguitch was still iced over. 

My wife and I did end up skiing one day but mostly our entire group did exactly what we planned.  We all got in a car and explored the area as thoroughly as possible.  Every day we headed off in a new direction.  I was absolutely captivated by the beauty and also by how remote some of the places we visited were.  Heading down the side of the mountain towards Panguitch, we found that if we turned left when we got to the highway, we could drive for miles and miles and only see a random store or farm here and there.  Otherwise, it was just empty land for as far as the eye could see.  

At one point, we stopped at a small store that was literally the only structure within view.  I went inside to get coffee and the cashier talked to me for probably ten minutes.  It was obvious she was grateful that someone had stopped.  I remember thinking to myself, "What would happen if someone walked in and robbed this place? Who would come out to help?  Where is the local police station?"

Those are all thoughts that go through the mind of someone who lives in a big city and is suddenly in a rural area.  When I lived in small towns in Florida, I never thought about that.  That store and the memory of that small conversation over a cup of burned coffee became the seed for the town of Ogden Wash in my novel.  I didn't know it at the time though. I didn't even really have a plot in mind, just a location.

A few days later we were leaving to go back to California and we went down the other side of the mountain from Panguitch.  Passing through a small town, I caught a glimpse of a cemetery that was one of the most beautiful I'd seen.  I'm not really a cemetery guy either.  I don't do headstone rubbings or anything like that.  However, this place was small and had a stone wall that stood about four feet high and went around the entire plot of land.  There was an iron gate in the front. From the size of the markers I could tell they were old and obviously dedicated to people who had helped found the town. For whatever reason it stuck in my head, but at this point I still didn't have a story in mind. I just had a picture in my head of this quaint cemetery and wondered if anyone was still being buried there or if it was full.

When we got back from that vacation, I picked up the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.  If you haven't read anything by him before, you're truly missing out.  He's hands down one of my favorite authors and this book was fascinating.  It is a nonfiction account of the history of the Mormon faith.  In it, Krakauer discusses faith in general and explores all the different facets of Mormonism.  He explores the fringe sects who broke away from the church for one reason or another and he discusses the main body of the church and how they have evolved over the years.  His tone is always respectful, even when he's digging into unsavory topics.  I didn't know it at the time, but I'd met one of my most mysterious and conflicted characters somewhere in those pages.

Fast forward to a year or so later when I received a disc from Netflix in the mail.  The movie was a relatively obscure horror title from 1973 called The Iron Rose. It's by a French director named Jean Rollin whose work I'd never really explored but his films had been recommended to me by another writer who did movie reviews on a site I wrote for at the time.  In the movie, a young couple on a late night walk wander into a large cemetery and then realize that they can't find their way out.  No matter what they do, they can't seem to escape the place.  It's pretty low budget, but has a creepy atmosphere and a pretty dark ending.  It stuck with me and I started getting this idea for a short story.

I wanted to write about a cemetery that was alive.  It was a place that had been used a century before and it craved the attention it received with each memorial service but now it was full.  No one came around anymore and it was hungry for bodies. Immediately, I thought of that small cemetery in Utah with it's stone wall, tall headstones and iron gate.

The very next morning, I sat down at my computer and started trying to get the story out of my head.  The more I typed, the further away the ending seemed to get.  My character, Robert Jiminez, was leaving work late at night.  He was heading home and it was bitterly cold.  He was on a bike but the tires had gone flat and he was half-walking, half-running in order to make it to the cemetery wall.  There, he could duck out of the wind and try to warm up before the last mile or so to his house.  Robert passed the convenience store I'd been to.  He passed a used car lot owned by some guy named Anderson who he didn't know a lot about other than he and his family were Mormon and lived just outside of town.  I'd gotten Robert about halfway to the cemetery when something happened and my fingers typed some words I hadn't intended.  Instead of making it to the graveyard, Robert tripped over a body in the road.

I stopped writing right there.  I didn't know what to do.  I liked what I'd written but didn't know where it was going anymore.  I mulled it over for a week and the next Sunday, I picked up the narrative with Robert tangled up in his bicycle and the body laying next to him. Instead of finding a resolution, Robert kept getting more wrapped up in a mystery that I didn't even know was unfolding in this town until I wrote it.  I met his friends, Javier Quintana and J.B. Youngblood.  They seemed like cool people.  I met Bethany Ann, who owned that convenience store and I met Phillip Anderson who ran that car lot.  All of them met Ruth Biden who was more or less modeled after my own grandmother and who was just as headstrong and feisty when she had to be (or sometimes just when she felt like it).  The further I dug, the more my characters introduced me to other residents of Ogden Wash and over time, some of them started changing.  People I initially liked became despicable. Others died horrible deaths that I never set out to give them, but sometimes you have to do what's right for the story. 

That initial tale of Robert's trip home ended up being the middle of a much larger story.  It's still in the finished book, but the hungry cemetery is gone and replaced by something even older, meaner and more deadly. 

I've never gone back to actually visit that part of Utah again, but the town of Ogden Wash was very real to me when I was writing that book and in some ways it still is.  There came a point when I realized this whole other world in my head needed to be mapped out, so I did.  I drew out the entire town, placed that convenience store and the used car lot on the edge, made sure that my character's houses and places of business were noted and placed that damned "Old Ogden Wash" ghost town way out on the perimeter. There's a big piece of me that hopes one day I'll drive that highway and find there's a real Ogden Wash just like in my book. I just hope to visit before the nasty stuff starts.   

I hope you check out The Wash, but more importantly I hope you enjoy it.  Even if you don't, please take five minutes and leave a quick review on Amazon.  Your feedback allows me an opportunity to get this book out to a wider audience of people and really, that's what is important to me.  

I wrote The Wash because I had a tale to tell and to completely mangle a Kevn Kinney lyric, 'a story never shared is not a story at all'.

Thanks for reading this very long post.  I promise to get back to horror movies, music and/or stupid jokes next time around.

PICK UP YOUR COPY OF THE WASH, EXCLUSIVELY AT AMAZON.COM