I finished the 5th book in my Blood Justice Series a while ago. It’s now in the tender (I hope) hands of the publisher. I’m sure I haven’t heard anything for a while because she was so struck by the manuscript’s utter genius, she swooned and is in such a delirious state of happy Delirium she hasn’t been able to get back to me. Ah, the perils of genius writing.
BTW - Though I have sent the manuscript in, if you are a serious, non-paid Beta Reader looking for a contemporary Vampire Thriller to read, let me know. I’d be delirious to work with you.
Ah, Delirious Delirium, one of the Sandman's sisters in the Sandman series of graphic novels.
DELIRIUM 1. A state of temporary mental confusion and clouded consciousness resulting from high fever, intoxication, and shock characterized by anxiety, tremors, hallucinations, delusions, and incoherence. 2. A state of uncontrolled excitement or emotion.
So says my ancient (1982) copy of The American Heritage Dictionary. For an updated definition on my birthday in 4 months you could send me a new dictionary. Just throwing that out there.
Who among us has not experienced delirium, especially that intoxication one. Who? Me? And people wonder why I don't drink anymore.
There's high and low delirium. High is when (way back when) my novella, Sneaker, before it became the novel Sneaker: Relentless, had 146 downloads in 3 days when it was free for the Kindle from Amazon. Now, 146 downloads are barely a drop in the proverbial 5-gallon bucket of the e-book world. But 146 of something is better than a zillion of nothing.
I was positively giddy as I stared at the report, counting along with the numbers. Two, even three, an hour! Ah the delicious intoxicating delirium of low expectations met. Too bad they were free. Sigh.
Low is now, as I try to write a companion piece, The First vampires (?) to my novella, Down Home, which is a companion piece to the new novel in limbo, Blood on the World. Like the vampire it's about, it's kicking ass (mine) and searching for names (All those aliens weren't named Smith? Who knew?) I have a good start and I know the ending, it's all that stuff in the middle that's giving me an anxious, finger-twisting, incoherent typing , delirium of failure. I mean, how hard can it be for the good aliens to catch the bad aliens with a little vampire help?
Love is high Delirium. Or low, depending on which end of the relationship you're on. Are you at that point where you bump into things, ignore your friends, and generally walk about in a daze of happy delirium with pictures of your sweet Honey Bun dancing in your head and you can't wait to feel them in that intimate way unique to you two of all people on Earth?
Or, are you in that low delirium state of having been dumped where you bump into things, ignore your friends and generally walk about in a daze of sad, painful, disillusioned, angry delirium, and ripped up pictures of that lousy, lying, bitch/bastard beating against the inside of your skull, and the only thing you want to feel is either your hands around sweet Honey Bun's neck or that whiskey burn in your throat, or the blissful nothing of head to pillow and the blankets pulled over your head?
Whatever level you're at, wait, don't do anything stupid, especially those of you in the high delirium state, and it will all be better in the (some future) morning. Unless your (temporary?) bout of delirium causes some nasty form of Destruction in which case you're screwed and you might as well settle into Despair. Unless, Destiny, should you choose to accept it, has something else in store for you.
IDEAS
What if somebody did you wrong (broke your heart, broke your bank, broke your psyche) and rendered you suicidal? You were about to martyr yourself to your sad delirium when you realized that the only action that would make life worth living would be to destroy (murder the bitch/bastard!) the person who wronged you. And you do, and you get caught. Can you claim self-defense? Compare and contrast the two obvious sides of the question in a gripping, can’t-put-it-down, fictional form.
Extra credit if it gets made into a movie. Don’t forget my cut.
What if you were in a blue funk delirium brought on by disappointment, failure, loss, humiliation or any of the thousand other things that might bring on such a state of “Why me?” or “What now?” And then, you see the future. Not some daydream or hypnosis-induced fantasy - The Real Thing. You were happy and successful and... and.. HAPPY. You had everything you wanted - except it came at the expense of someone you knew. A friend, a family member, maybe that nice man down the block who always said "Hi" and had returned your new puppy when it got lost. All you had to do was carry on as usual and you were gold, and the other was fool’s gold. They wouldn't die or anything so severe, but as you went up, they went down. You could change it, but that big Happy wouldn't happen. What would you do? Something? Nothing? Or try to finagle a compromise? What would send you into a happy delirium at someone else’s expense?
What if nobody died - Oh rapturous delirium! - but, as humans are wont to do, they continued to reproduce? Where would all those people go? Up or down? The possibilities are, if not endless, multiple. Sub-plots abound!
Going down. To make room for all those new little people, we might dig caves and mines into the ground, deeper and deeper. Who knows what we might find? Or. Already underway - go underwater, deeper and farther from shore with all its dangers and dramas - human, creature, or natural. Who gets to live where? Where would the preferred neighborhood be?
“Oh, Honey, we got the bubble next to the Wertzes. Isn’t that wonderful?”
”I don’t like the way that really good-looking guy in Tunnel 22 looks at me. I’m not going there again… unless… I have to.”
Both said with varying degrees of delirium.
What conflicts might come to the deep dark? What destruction might they inflict on those weird bastards in Bubble 34 or Tunnel 28? You know that would happen, humans being humans.
What if everyone lived underwater or underground and after a century or two, nobody lived on the surface to see aliens land, thinking it's a pretty nice planet, so they move in. What happens when they discover each other? Who destroys who? You know they would try. Unless some other, not so nice, aliens came along and the two Earth residents had to band together to prevent their mutual destruction from those nasty Alien aliens.
Going up. Population pressure forces migration. Space is the place. What if our big plans to migrate off-world were destroyed by Aliens who did not want such a violent species banging about the galaxy? They didn't interfere with us in any way, except we were under house arrest. How would that work out? Who would step up and make an attempt to bust the blockade? Governments, corporations, individuals? And what about those slimy, traitorous sons of a bitches who would work with the Aliens in return for special favors, that may or may not be what they promise? I’m sure there’s a special kind of space-time Hell delirium for those rats.
What if the above blockade could not be broken and the population swelled and swelled till finally it reached critical mass and all humans became part of the One Earth Mind, the Mind of Gaia, so powerful they could destruct the Alien ships. So powerful we didn't need ships, we could move the Earth itself. And go find their planet.
What if, humans being humans, some wanted control and then some others wanted control and the One Earth Mind factions started to duke it out and suddenly they were not working together and Earth became stranded in the literal Middle of Nowhere (That’s a specific place in the galaxy, by the way) and they'd better start working together because they were drifting into a star where they would of course be very deconstructed. A bad thing for Earth, a good thing for the Aliens who were surreptitiously helping things along.
Everyone has their own delirium, wanted or not. If you don’t want the one you have, change it. It might not be easy, might seem impossible, but the thing about humans is they do the hard/ impossible everyday. Why not you?
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On Haven, an unfinished space station, Simon has no time for delirium, she has a murder to solve before anybody can go, Down Home.
A delirium of Cheers to you.
dcburtonjr@gmail.com