I’ve been around the internet for a few years now. One of the first sites I ever became hooked on was a place called The Wall of Evil. Basically, it was just a big “wall”, complete with yellow bricks in the background, where anyone could post any random thing they wanted to, and you could scroll down endlessly reading the thoughts of various strange folk who drifted in. The last time I looked, the old wall was as dead as can be, but for a time it was a hive of interest and activity with a number of regulars who posted on a near-enough daily basis.

So, when I wasn’t playing Diablo II online or working or walking the dog (a rough collie, now deceased), I posted there and had many interesting discussions with many interesting people. At first I posted as Ag, short for Agnostic, and I came across as a bit of an intolerant snob. Later, I chilled way out, and began posting under a new name, Surreal, and I came across as some kind of genetic experiment gone bad, like somebody with LSD for blood, although it was all for fun and games.

I met a bunch of interesting people during my time there. There was R1, the biker who believed that God was going to burn all Catholics because the papacy was Satan’s throne on earth. There was DFAZ, the Christian girl who I actually tried in vain not to like - because I was a fool. There was Anton and his satanic Barbie girlfriend, who wanted to heal the world with pure hedonism alone. And then there was a guy called S Jesus Reality (SJR for short) or plain old Stephen James when he wasn’t on a mission to shatter the intolerance of global religions. While I was an easy-going agnostic (still am, really) he was a hardcore atheist and he had a passion for trying to argue Christians out of their beliefs.

Despite our differences we got on well in some ways and shared many similar interests. Sometimes we joined up with online Fundamentalist Christian communities and then tried to open their minds to the possibility that they were deluding themselves and wasting their lives following dogmatic nonsense to the letter, serving an organized religion with its own agenda.

It was SJR who first introduced me to Darkhalf.com. He told me it was a good place to post stories that nobody else would publish (too graphic, too insane, too un-commercial, etc) and that he used the process of writing down his darkest imaginings and posting them there to exorcise his own demons.

Well, I thought, I’ve got a lot of demons to extinguish. I’ll give it a try.

After writing and posting one story there, and getting a lot of positive feedback, I was hooked. Soon nearly all my internet time was devoted to either posting stories to Darkhalf or critiquing the raw but cool stories everyone posted there. Soon, too, SJR got tired of me because I was too busy writing crazy stories to follow his quest to overthrow monotheism itself. I eventually even lost contact with him, and I’d like to bet he’s still out there trying to convert Christians to his way of thinking.

In the shadowy recesses of Darkhalf, however, I met many other interesting people and formed friendships with a lot of them.

One was Kelly Burton, the owner of the website and author in his own right. Time issues seemed to prevent him from turning the site (and related projects) into what he really wanted it to become, but DH still remains a repository for anyone wanting to write raw stories and get them read quickly.

Then there was Damien Ashton, writer of trippy horror stories and comic-book artist, who almost collaborated with me on a strange serial-killer versus serial-killer story called Savage Raze. Damien actually had a novel of his own published, Black Moon Rising, in which he gives the werewolf genre a modern reworking in his own blood-curdling style.

However, the author from DH I always most admired for his sheer creativity and originality was horror writer Perry McGee. Check out his journal at http://journalscape.com/perrymcgee and follow the links to some of his stories, or have a look at his works on DH or The House of Pain. You won’t regret the experience. Perry can get an idea that the average author would dismiss as a dead-end, and just run with it, and eventually prove everyone completely wrong. I remember, for example, one of the first stories of his I ever read was entitled What if Water Died?

Perry’s creativity does not end with writing. He’s also recorded his own songs, some of which could be found at his personal website, the Iron Sponge. He also has a talent for spoken-word horror; he once recorded a perfectly executed piece of audio fiction entitled Stew, the words of which still echo around in my head from time to time (I could quote the entire thing from memory, even though I haven’t listened to it in an age). I also once had the chance to collaborate with Perry on a story called The Eaters, and the result (though still unfinished) turned out to be one of the most surreal and unique pieces of mini-fiction you’re ever likely to read. Its very strangeness was its problem, in fact, because neither of us knew how to tame it and turn it into a piece that anyone besides ourselves could even fathom.

A few of us from Darkhalf once collaborated on a project called The Other Side of Madness. I even created an animated advertisement for the book this was going to become. It was going to feature stories by John Grover, Damien Ashton, Clinton Green, Perry McGee, Kelly Burton, and myself. It’s always been a dream of mine to get my words into actual print, into a book that the public would actually go out and spend good money to buy. Unfortunately for TOSOM, poor leadership and bad organization resulted in the project collapsing into stagnation.

However, I'd still like to follow this dream. While my craft skills still need a heck of a lot of work (my writing still contains far too many redundant adverbs, besides other problems) I feel that I do have some spark of talent for expressing feeling and experience when I get into a good enough flow.

So… to bring this trip down memory lane up to the present, for now, I want to focus once more on doing what I do best, relax and try to let the words come. I’ve still got a novel to write, and one day I’ll prove to myself and to everyone I really can follow through. Once again, I thank all those who ever encouraged me and had faith in me. In the end I believe it will all pay off…