Of Witches, Werewolves, Vampires, Angels and Demons

You have to love the wisdom that emanates from the mouths of your children. Their ability to state what's on their minds without the hesitency that we all gain as adults is sometimes brutal but overwhelmingly honest. It's a trait we all seem to lose as we become part of the adult working force and enter society with all its restrictions and political correctness. And what have we actually created with our acts of hypocrisy and social obligations; A mess to put it quite frankly. A world that is spinning out of control because somewhere along the way it lost what we once called morality. The overriding sense of wrong and right that was engraved in stone. You knew there would be a punishment for every improper deed you did and that was often enough to keep you walking the straight and narrow. Now there is no discipline, no sense of fairplay, and definitely no morality.
So when my daughter asks me why I choose to write of historical events because in her mind real author's know that success lies in writing books devoted to the celebration of the antihero, dipped heavily into the ether of demons and the supernatural, then I better have a good answer since so much of their lives are wrapped up in the hoodoo voodoo of this new age. Whether your child considers themselves Emo or Goth determines whether they just hate society or wish to watch it burn in Hell. We can shake our heads all we want but the truth of the matter is that it's our fault that they're immsersed in those attitudes. Why? Because we took their heroes away. We had to obliterate the masked man in the white suit that always defeated his nemesis in the black hat and Snidely Whiplash styled moustache. Someone said that it gave children the wrong impression that colour determined good or bad and that could result in racism. And just like that they were gone! Then we had to remove God from religion so as not to suggest that the God of one religion was superior to that of another. Perhaps if we had thought about it more thoroughly we would have recognised that the solution was not to toss out God from religion but to remove religion from God. Whether one believes in the physical forces of the universe, the God of the Bible, the Force from Star Wars, it's all God. God didn't have to be removed from schools and public services. What had to be removed was the false sense of superiority that one believer held over another. But that's all a discussion for another day. The fact is the youth of today want to believe in a world created by the likes of a Stephanie Meyer. They want to emulate the world that author's of this alternative reality have fashioned, where the supernatural meshes intricately with that of humanity. Where darkness is inseparable from the light because in their own minds there is no longer a distinction. Death and life have become confused and meaningless with the preservation of life no longer paramount nor sacred.
So to be asked why I don't expend my efforts to write about the witches, werewolves, vampires, angels and demons that now haunt their everyday existence, I took great pleasure in replying that I do. The only difference is that I relate these attributes of horror to real people, that did cause terrible suffering and by which the people had to bear the repurcussions of the evil manifest in these human forms. There were witches in my newly finished novel Zutra. They were women of power that exerted magical forces over the men in their lives, twisting them until they performed like marionettes on chainlink strings. Oh, and there were werewolves too. Men that could change their form on any given day, masking the deceit and visciousness of their own personna until they tore the hearts from the innocent. Zutra's father died on the cross because he failed to see the werewolves that existed amongst those he thought were his friends. And of course their were Vampires, none so much as the Lady Avital that sucked the life blood from both of her husbands, father and son, until they were too weak to resist her alluring charms. But in spite of the evil that flourished, there were still angels that would not succumb to the evil that pervaded their world. Men and women who could rise above the wickednss that men do and would willingly risk their own lives in order to stem the evil tide. Zutra was such a man. Patricius longed to be such a man. And the Princess Ti-Ping was definitely such a woman. As for demons, they are always in disguise. They're the ones not happy until they destroyed everything about them even if they have to sacrifice the world and all they hold dear to do so. You will find many demons existed in the world in which Zutra lived. He had no choice but to become a demon slayer.
So you see, much to my daughter's surprise, I do write about this dark Gothic world they wish to envelop themselves within. But in my stories there still remains that fine line between Good and Evil. I still have my heroes in white hats or shining armour. Because it is not about the colour. It was never about the colour. It was always about doing what was right. And if my words can re-establish the belief that this world did have, does have, and will have heroes, then perhaps we can save it from ourselves!