Author: Richard Alan Scott
Rhode Island, USA
10/14/21
The next project I called up in my writer's journey was an unpublished Novella that I am punching up for publication, and it is a doozy. Woo-hoo!
My favorite historical figure of all time is none other than the libertine holy-man, the miracle worker, the horny charlatan, advisor to the last Czar and Czarina of Russia, and competitor to basketball great Wilt Chamberlain as the most prolific stud of all time: Grigori Yefimovich RASPUTIN!!! Yes how could I not have a major project about the guy who I've spent countless hours thinking and reading about, my old pal the Mad Monk himself?
St. Petersburg, Russia via 1917, the fall of the mighty Romanovs, the splendor of the palace and the debauchery of my beloved sinner/saint, ah, what a blessedly fascinating time in history and my most cherished in fact. To have supped with high-bred ladies of nobility then find nourishment at one of Rasputin's great orgies, well, "say no more" about holiday festivities! It makes John F. Kennedy's Camelot look like a kid's birthday party.
To the uninitiated, Father Grigori was a man of the cloth who dabbled with non-stop adultery between the linens. For a Catholic boy praying in church on Sunday that the beautiful middle-school classmate Linda would go out with me, and perhaps in a moment of solitude let me steal a kiss, ah, what better role model and all around renaissance man than the Imperial spiritual advisor and symbol of a doomed society? As I grew, I came to realize that RAS (my initials), was the closest thing the world may have ever seen to a holy devil made flesh, at least until Aleister Crowley came along.
I kid about the hero-worship, but this dark figure in actual life could not help but become an enormously villainous figure of fascination to this young writer. A guy who went from poverty in Siberia on a farm to the grand halls of Royalty, all on his wits, his dick, his faith, and his unexplained ability to harness the power of the Virgin Mary to perform clairvoyant prophecies, and, most importantly, healing upon the Romanovs Anemic son, Crown Prince Alexei. When some royal family members got the idea to silence this meddlesome advisor to Czarina Alexandria for good, it turned out to be a very long night trying to kill a seemingly indestructible force.
One legend has the group of unnerved, misfit assassins castrating the Siberian Svengali and passing down his manhood through generations, eventually to a Soviet Sex Museum and lord knows where else. And thereby hangs the tale, my novella The Grischa Trilogy (for which I need a new title due to the success of the Shadow and Bone series of books by Leigh Bardugo, [who'd have ever imagined that would have gotten taken?]). My story centers around a group of S.Kingian modern day folks who are affected by the supernatural elements trapped in a group of objects that Romanov collectors obtain through an early Twentieth Century black market auction. I stumbled upon the idea of objects with disastrous historical events trapped in them that possess their owners through an old classic British television film of the Sixties called The Stone Tape. I had only a description of the film available to me all these years, until the entire thing showed up in YouTube recently; where it is worth a watch if you've never done so (the script was written by famed Weird writer Nigel Kneale whom also penned Quatermass). The Stone Tape Theory is that “Inanimate objects from the past may store a haunted ‘recording’ of abnormal or violent events.”
When we get together around All Hallow's Eve, I'll guide you through the perilous and profane nature of my novella and the spooky reactions from an enraptured writing group.
Until then, pray for some great debauchery, mmmhhhuuuahahahahahahaha!
