Here Be Lions
Canadian actor Jon Cor (Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments, Dark Matter, Love on Safari) is happy to debut Die Symptome von der Wahrheit, another short story from his upcoming collection, A Murder of Prose.
In keeping theme with the collection’s fun-loving, turn-it-on-its-head approach to genre pieces such as 20/20, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and Tuesday, one of several postmodern transgressives, Die Symptome von der Wahrheit comes to us as historical fiction written in a deliberately academic tone. It reimagines famously slandered and posthumously absolved Friedrich Nietzsche’s descent into madness, not from what has been popularly reported and concluded, but from a new, entertaining and thought-provoking angle.
Jon’s impassioned compulsion for writing and storytelling overall has been a lifelong journey. His ambitions include releasing A Murder of Prose in full as well as his first novel, In Heat, which was originally drafted when he was just nineteen years old.
For interview requests and inquiries regarding writing projects:
Kat Harlton
harltonempire@gmail.com
My short story collection, A Murder of Prose, was an accident.
It was initially conceived to collect and concentrate the bits and pieces of writing I had lying around after finishing In Heat, my first novel, into accessible, innovative and independent wholes. Some were found scrawled on the inside of my pockets with a Sharpie. Others on the scraps of a shoebox I’d found in a dumpster in an inebriated and inspired moment. Five-dollar bills. Forearms. Hotel notepads. As these word-collages formed it became increasingly apparent that what I’d actually set out to accomplish was the reinvention or reimagining of classical fiction one genre at a time; interspersed with and moderated by the so-called post-modern transgressive stuff that I tend to enjoy and produce. For, “The tyranny of fiction,” as Richard Coe wrote, “[is that] generic structures constrain individual creativity.”
20/20, for example, is a first-person narrative concerned with a pair of siblings marooned in a deoxygenating lifeboat at the no-mercy of a gravitationally restructuring solar system following the Earth’s annihilation. Instead of using post-apocalyptic sci-fi as a means to examine, say, first contact, wasteland survival or technological advancements, 20/20 looks at the psychological distortions of prolonged isolation and our propensity for the miscommunication or exploitation of love in its many manifestations. Go ahead. Read it. Ideally? I’m doing something at least somewhat original.
Thus, as the site gluts with content, I’m hoping to tantalize our starving minds with all kinds of tasty curveballs and crossovers: Westerns. Fantasies. Horrors. Noirs. Etc. My ulterior motive is, sure, to use these to accrue enough publishing credits to bolster In Heat’s credibility before approaching agencies and publishing houses but, more accurately and sincerely, since I don’t actually require said credits to do so I’ve learned, the plan here is to establish a demographically impartial platform to share and promote my work.
Love it.
Hate it.
What’s the difference?
If you’re talking about my material or feeling anything at all as a result of its experience, to me, your feedback is good news or no news. I refuse to cater to the audience at the expense of the show and will always endeavor to challenge my readers as much as I do and will continue to challenge myself.
After all, as I’ve always said, “The scarier the ride, the better it is.”
In medieval cartography, dragons or sea serpents and other mythological images were used in kind to indicate a map’s uncharted territories. This, of course, evolved into the uh-oh-watch-out phrase, “Here Be Dragons.” With the anxieties of the great unknown always swirling about our heads like the flakes of a snow globe, molecules begging us to divine their realities or observable states, I say, we ought to adopt the inherent grace, male-to-female equality amongst and, namely, tremendous strength – both meta- and physically – archetypically associated with lions and their prides as we attempt to understand and express ourselves. All for one, one for all. …Dig?
In summary, welcome to Here Be Lions, a blog wherein you’ll encounter everything from writing, film and TV career announcements to martial arts/acrobatics videos and tutorials. Things like musical collaborations, the launch of a webcomic, quirky real-world essays, interviews and conversations, etc. Who knows? Lucky for me, storytelling is – given today’s globally connected and memetic benchmark in human history – a relevant resource and a powerfully multifaceted sociopolitical venue.
Let’s do our best to make a difference or seven, shall we?
It starts with something as simple as voicing a potentially meaningful compliment and choking back a potentially damaging insult.
Just remember, as with most everything I find compelling, this collection that I’ll be posting offerings from, A Murder of Prose, albeit occasionally fanciful, is NOT a bedtime story.
Roar!
And stuff.
Jon Cor
Stellenbosch, South Africa