Update on Blog 2: Clive Barker

 I've decided to write a second piece today since I'm of the mood. I've been think about how to bring more people into my world and get feedback on my writing style and blog. One of the ways suggested was to make short videos on TikTok or Youtube, a fate that is as fearful as death to me. I don't want to be on camera, I have stage fright. But maybe this will help cure it. You have to face your fears and blah, blah, blah, you know the phrase. I would like to do a short video on each god and character in the Lovecraft universe, similar to what Mr. H, a youtuber, did with Clive Barker's Hellraiser series. At one time Clive Barker's work was good enough to warrent action figures of his Cenobite characters. Characters that idolize pain and suffering as a way to achieve ecstacy. I was never a huge fan of Barker's...interest in such things, but the lore such as the books and comics were always facinating. When I read Barker's earlier work I have to play "one, two, skip a few," pages to get past the more sexual and nasty parts of his work. Of course, Barker is a genius writer who writes with a knife, not a pen, because his words cut into you in such a beautiful way that you don't know that he's getting under your barriers. It's a talent most writers wish they had. I've found several great writers who have done similar work and I guess it comes down to taste for style on my part or any other reader's part. I know some people who abhor Barker's work but...the disdain for his work is one of the reasons I like him. He seems to be a rebel with his writing, shunning normalcy in favor for oddities and grotesque ideas not in his prose but in his characters. Such as in Cabal where a man who is being treated by a therapist seems to think he's a serial killer. Ironically, the killer is the man's therapist. Then we go down the rabbit hole where the protagonist meets monsters similar to him that are protected by a demon. "Rejected from God," that seems to be a theme in Barker's work. He likely sees himself as a freak and unloved by God. I got off track but if I were to make a video series, it would be on the Lovecraftian monsters and how they tie into my own stories. It's something I have to think about.

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