On the Threshold by M. Laszlo Virtual Book Tour

 Guest Post

Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reins of the story? Explain.

The answer to the question is relative to the section or scene I’m working on. Sometimes this or that character can and will hijack the story and demand that I add something or go off in a direction that had not been previously planned. Other times, the basic idea of the story suffices—and I really do feel like I have the reins.

The important thing is to be open-minded enough to give the characters whatever unexpected content they want, and at the same time, remain confident enough not to second-guess those parts of the story that seem to fall into place as intended.

To be a good writer, one must be pragmatic. There’s never a good reason to be too dogmatic or to paint oneself into a tight corner. Decisions must be made carefully and thoughtfully. 

On the Threshold is full of examples. Here’s one: because I am quite the Germanophile, I wanted to include several German characters—but I had to be very careful not to put them in a bad light. And in early drafts, I had the tendency to denigrate them only because my protagonist, a Scotsman, didn’t have such a good impression of them. Bear in mind my protagonist lived through the Great War along with WWII. In the end, I had to let my protagonist, Fingal, have his somewhat negative image of the German people, but at the same time, I had to make doubly sure that the narration did not reduplicate his bias.

Here’s another example. From my own personal viewpoint, academia is not such a great or trustworthy institution; however, my Fingal kept asking for a relationship with local university scholars. In the end, I had to agree: my protagonist would in fact naturally reach out to academia in order to try to find someone who might help with this or that engineering problem.

Another character happened to be a cinephile who loved to write esoteric essays on the movies she had seen. In the end, I had to let her become an academic. There did not seem to be any more natural or fitting place for her to be.

Finally, when writing the last section of the work, the one that takes place in the 1960’s, I realized that it would be a good idea to bring in a great deal of American pop culture—including drive-in movies, television shows, and popular music. Though that had not necessarily been an aspect of the original vision of the story, my characters asked for it: though they were very old and though the world of the sixties seemed alien to them, they did find it all quite fascinating. And they wanted to contemplate the absurd television shows they watched when bored. For my part, there was no way to deny my characters their indulgences because by letting them have their quirks, my characters became real, believable, and most important of all, relatable.

Obsessed with learning the origins of the cosmos, the actual meaning of life, and the true purpose of civilization, a fine Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth dedicates himself to the study of Plato’s most extraordinary ideas. Convinced of Plato’s belief that humankind possesses any and all innate knowledge deep within the collective unconscious mind, Fingal soon conducts a series of bold, pioneering occult-science experiments by which to resolve the riddle of the universe once and for all. However, Fingal forgets how violent and perilous the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind. And when Fingal unleashes a mysterious avatar of his innate knowledge, the entity appears as a burning man and immediately seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people everywhere into immolating themselves. Now, with little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.

Excerpt

Autumn, 1907: late one morning, some kind of torrid, invisible beast seemed to wrap itself all around Fingal T. Smyth’s body. Each one of his toes twitching fiercely, he exited the castle and scanned the distant, Scottish Highlands. Go back where you came from. As the entity wrapped itself tighter all about his person, Fingal blinked back his tears. I’m melting, I am. Aye, it’s the heat of fusion.

Gradually, the beast’s heartbeat became audible—each pulsation. At the same time, too, the illusory heat of transformation emitted an odor as of oven-roasted peppercorns dissolving in a cup of burnt coffee.

Over by the gatehouse, Fräulein Wunderwaffe appeared—the little German girl wearing a plain-sewn robe and square-crown bowler. In that moment, she no longer seemed to be a sickly child of seven years: her inscrutable expression resembled that of a wise, indifferent cat. 

Perhaps even some kind of lioness. Fingal cringed, and he recalled a fragment of conversation from three weeks earlier.

“She suffers from a most unnatural pathology, an anguished, maniacal obsession with cats,” Doktor Hubertus Pflug had explained. “Ever since the poor girl was a baby, she has always regarded it her fate to one day metamorphose into a glorious panther, for she believes herself to be ein Gestaltwandler. Do you know this word? It means shapeshifter and refers to someone who possesses the power to take the form of anything in nature.”

The heat radiated up and down Fingal’s spine now, and his thoughts turned back to the present. Aye, it’s a change of phase. I’m melting into a chemical compound. Despite all, he greeted the girl and willed himself to flash a grin.

M. Laszlo is an aging recluse who lives in Bath, Ohio. Rumor holds that his pseudonym is a reference to Victor Laszlo, a character in the classic film Casablanca. On the Threshold is his first release with the acclaimed, Australian hybrid house AIA Publishing. Oddly, M. Laszlo insists that his latest work, On the Threshold, does in fact provide the correct answer to the riddle of the universe.  

Buy link: https://aiapublishing.com/product/on-the-threshold-m-laszlo/

Giveaway

M. Laszlo will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway