Christamar Varicella

The Gift: How I came to Edit & Publish Blood Cries

2020-05-23T14:44:00.008-04:00

The story landed on my doorstep. I heard a knock. I opened up. A young woman stood on the welcome mat. She wore a fedora pulled down over one of her eyes and a trench coat: London Fog, I think.

"Honey," I called to my wife upstairs. "Some dame from the 1940s is here."

A pair of ruby red lips curled into a frown. No one ever gets my humor.

I persisted.

"What'll it be, toots?" I said in my best Humphry Bogart. I whipped a washcloth over my shoulder. (I had been doing the dishes.)

Instead of answering, she brushed past me and headed for the kitchen. Along the way, she reached into a large red leather handbag and pulled out a manuscript, which she slapped down on the breakfast table in dramatic fashion.

"Oh no," I thought. "She's going to want me to read that."

"Read this," she said.

"Or maybe you could just tell me your name and state your business." Bogey again.

She crossed her arms. Some wavy brown hair was starting to pull loose from her ponytail. I put her age at between twenty-eight and thirty-two, but her face had a weathered look, as if she'd been beaten up by years of worry.

"I know who you are," she said. "I know you know the story of the Reverend and you know about his connection to [FAMOUS AUTHOR'S NAME REDACTED]."

Sure I did. The Reverend she referred to was the so-called voodoo preacher, alleged to have killed off at least five members of his own family. I wrote a book about it, as reported by New Yorker magazine. Another well-known magazine writer used my research as the basis for a long article published online.

"Okay," I said

"And you have experience in publishing?"

"It's not very hard these days. I'm sure you'll have no trouble self-publishing your manuscript."

"It can't be me that does it," she said, "and it's not my manuscript."

I stood there looking confused, as is my custom.

"Here's my offer. You keep half of the profits, if there are any. The other half will go to charity, as stipulated in the contract."

"What profits?" I asked. "And what contract? Lady, I don't know what you're talking about."

"I can talk a little about the contract, but I can't say who it's with." She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "You'll figure it out if you start reading."

I picked up the manuscript and started thumbing through pages. Some of it was clearly written by the woman, whose name, I would learn, was Chris Hope.

I thought to myself: Boring.

But then I noticed the other part: the book-within-a-book by someone named Louella Harper. I had never heard that name before, but I did recognize the title and the copyright date as belonging to a very famous writer. Surely not, I thought. I read the first few pages. Could it be?

Was this the lost manuscript?

I looked at the woman, this stranger who had turned up at my home unannounced. "How did you get this?"

"I own the rights fair and square," she said.

"But how?"

"Read it," she said, gesturing to the manuscript. "It's all in there."

"I don't want to read it," I said. "I want to know the truth."

"Read it," she said.

And I did. After I started, I couldn't stop myself. And the more I read, the more convinced I became that she was telling the truth.

Now, I was faced with a simple choice: to help her, or not. To do something, or nothing. I suppose you've already figured out the choice I made.

Blood Cries

Order Your Copy of Blood Cries by Chris Hope

2019-06-22T15:39:00.001-04:00

Forty-two years ago, [FAMOUS AUTHOR'S NAME REDACTED] traveled to [REDACTED], Alabama to learn the true story of the so-called voodoo preacher. Every year, it seemed, Reverend [Will Baxter] killed off another member of his immediate family, but always managed to beat the charges with the help of a charismatic country lawyer and some voodoo magic.

[FAMOUS AUTHOR'S NAME REDACTED] was obsessed with the story and worked on it for years, but her book, The Reverend, was never published. What happened to the manuscript has always been a mystery. Until now.

Thanks to the efforts of Chris Hope—Louella's number one fan—the book has been discovered and the Reverend's darkest secrets will be revealed for the first time

Fifty percent of the author's profits will be donated to Alexander City's Feast of Sharing

Who is Louella Harper?

2019-04-28T08:26:00.003-04:00

In 1977, a certain national treasure went down to Alexander City, Alabama to research a book about the Reverend Will Maxwell, the so-called voodoo preacher. She never produced the book. Or did she?

This new book, Blood Cries, combines the work of the ostensive author, Chris Hope, and a book-within-a-book written by a woman called Louella Harper. Me thinks this Louella resembles a certain real-life legendary author. The book-within-a-book even bears the same title, The Reverend, as her famous lost manuscript.

Check out the description for yourself at Amazon.com

Two New Books Based on Reverend Maxwell Story

2019-01-28T05:30:00.000-05:00

Two new books come out this year dealing with the alleged Alabama serial killer known as the Reverend: Casey Cep's Furious Hours and our own Chris Hope's novel Blood Cries.

As long-time readers of the blog know, Harper Lee intended to write a book on the subject but it was never published. You can learn more about it here.

Cep's book is a nonfiction account focused on Harper Lee while Hope's book appears to be a thinly veiled treatment featuring a book-within-a-book written by one Louella Harper. The title of the bwb? The Reverend.

I visited the Penguin Random House website page for Furious Hours, and found that the cover looks remarkably similar to the cover designed for Blood Cries, which first appeared on this site last summer.

Here are the two covers side by side:

Another interesting coincidence—Blood Cries and Furious Hours are both set to be released in early May. This blogger suggests buying them both.

E Paul Jones Reveals New Details From 'To Kill A Preacher'

2018-01-18T08:01:00.000-05:00

Anyone interested in the amazing true story of Reverend Will Maxwell, the alleged voodoo preacher accused of killing at least five of his relatives for insurance money in Alexander City, Alabama during the 1970s, can look forward to a new book by one of the men who investigated him at the time.

Appearing on the January 15th broadcast of The Front Porch, retired district attorney E Paul Jones revealed that his book, To Kill a Preacher, will be released in March. Mr. Jones was an insurance investigator who interviewed Reverend Maxwell in the early 1970s. He later assisted the prosecution of Robert Burns, the man who shot and killed Reverend Maxwell at the funeral of his final victim.

Reverend Maxwell was charged with beating and strangling his first wife, but avoided a conviction by marrying the state's chief witness against him. His second wife was later found dead in her car. Maxwell had taken out insurance policies on both women. Other members of his family found dead on the side of the road included his brother, his nephew, and his stepdaughter. Legendary author Harper Lee traveled to Alex City in 1978 to investigate the story for a possible book, but none was ever published.

More details about the story can be found here.

Mr. Jones revealed new details about the case that were previously unknown to the general public and that will be expounded upon in his book, including the following:

1) Mr. Jones suspects there was a sixth victim, whose death benefited Reverend Maxwell.
2) Though his third wife, Ophelia, had taken out insurance on his stepdaughter, Shirley, Reverend Maxwell may have had an additional motive for killing her.
3) Ophelia was indicted in connection with the death of the Reverend's first wife, but the case was dismissed.

The full episode of The Front Porch is available here. Mr. Jones appears on the show around the one-hour mark.

David Brasfield is the author of Blood Cries, a novel based on the Rev. Maxwell story, to be published in 2018.

December 2017 Update

2017-12-09T11:46:00.002-05:00

Since my last post in August, I worked through through a complete draft of the novel Dashboard Hula and through a fourth draft of Blood Cries.

Dashboard Hula now consists of three separate sections. 1) The Experimentalist - follows a Lucien Steinmann, a.k.a. Steimy, a precocious, peculiar, and hopeless experimentalist, from the second grade through college, at which point he creates a psychedelic drug and inadvertently helps launch a religious movement. 2) The Blue Whale -Siam Sam is Steimy's roommate, helper, and guinea pig for Steimy's hallucinogen, who embarks on an Alice-in-Wonderland style quest for truth in his bathroom, makes friends with a colony of cockroaches, and confronts their God, the Blue Whale in the Bathtub. 3) The Bible II: Philosophical Boogaloo follows the third roommate, Paul Tarson, a reformed drug dealer intent on starting a new religion.

For the first time in twenty years, I feel like I have a draft that holds together. At present I'm thinking about publishing them separately at first and later under one cover.

Right now though, I'm working exclusively on Blood Cries. I am four drafts in with eight more passes to go. I've set a deadline of mid-February 2018, at which time I will begin exploring routes to publication. Look for another update at that time.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Revising My Novel

2017-08-20T21:11:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned last post, I've come to a discovery about myself and my creative process: I have to work on things in cycles. I have an idea for a book, or project, or series of poorly animated cartoons, and I work on whatever it is obsessively until I compete the project or run out of steam, whichever comes first. Last post, I mentioned that I was going to finish revising my novel Blood Cries, but something has come up that has caused me to alter that decision. I will share more on that momentarily. But first it occurred to me that different people might visit this site for different reasons, and I thought it might be helpful to clarify what it is I do around here.

If we haven't met formally, allow me to introduce myself. I consider myself first and foremost a writer. I write fiction, humor, and, of course, short, poorly animated cartoons. I sometimes publish my fiction under the name Christamar Varicella, though I might publish the novel Blood Cries under the name Chris Hope. I'll let you know.

Visitors to this blog will find three main categories of material.

1) Cartoons. Chances are, you arrived at this blog from my Youtube channel, Poorly Animated Presents: Little Donald and Friends. If you scroll back through the last 20 or 30 posts, you will find lots of cartoons making fun of Donald Trump. Thank you to those who have encouraged me to continue making these things (special shoutout to Jim Smith), and I promise I will get back to them as soon as I can.

2) Harper Lee-related material and excerpts from the novel Blood Cries. As many of you know, I have spent a good bit of time working on two books based on a series of murders that took place in Alexander City, Alabama in the seventies. In 2012, I self-published a novel called the The Reverend. Then, two years ago, I came up another way to treat the same source material, and I'm now several drafts into it. Beyond the cartoons, you will find the entire first draft (warning, it's pretty rough) along with a lot of material related to that book and about Harper Lee who, at one time, intended to write a book on the subject.

3) Humor. Going back to my earliest posts in 2009 (The blog actually went back farther, but I deleted the earliest posts for reasons that no longer make sense to me) you will find a lot of silly posts, some of which I used to publish a British humour site called thespoof.com. There is quite a bit of absurdist-style comedy and satirical material that was eventually collected and published under the title There Are Sneetches In My Breeches: And Other Parodies. The book is composed mostly of fake book reviews and silly open letters to famous authors, as well as the Sci Fi parody/Liberal revenge fantasy Dinosaur Ghost (which can be downloaded here for free) and the romance parody The Oiliest Secret.

And that's pretty much it. There are, I think, still links in the side bar to some of my early short stories that have been published in lit journals and around the web. Among them is a story first published in 2007 in the now defunct Minnetonka Review. It is called The Blue Whale. Which brings me to what I'm up to these days.

The idea for a novel called Dashboard Hula has been percolating in my brain since 1996 or so. "The Blue Whale" (published as "The Blue Whale in the Bathtub") was supposed to be an excerpt from that novel. Only I could never get a handle on it. It was just too big for me to deal with, and it always ended up as a bunch of disparate pieces that could never seem to hang together. Every year, I work on that book, and every year I put it back in the drawer after I try and fail to make it work.

Then, about two-and-a-half weeks ago, just after deciding I needed a break from making cartoons, I came on a sudden bit of inspiration. Rather than attacking the novel as a whole, I found a portal into one little part of the novel, the part called "The Blue Whale." I found the narrative thread I need to follow and hopefully complete that particular section. It looks as if it will become the first of a series of three novellas that will eventually constitute the novel Dashboard Hula, or else each section will balloon into a full-blown novel, at which point Hula will become a series. I will let you know when I know. Meanwhile, I'm planning to have Blood Cries workshopped through my writing group.

All that said, at the end of this draft, I fully expect to get back into cartoon mode. Like I said, these things run in cycles.

Deep State Vs. Dumb State 2: False Equivalence Edition

2017-06-27T20:05:00.000-04:00

Little Donald is back on the game show that pits career professionals against people who exist in a right-wing bubble. In this episode, Little Donald goes up against a climate scientist, a health care expert, and a former director of the FBI.

Little Donald in "Evidence of Collusion"

2017-06-20T06:54:00.000-04:00

I've noticed that a republican talking point—that there's no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 election—has been going unchallenged. Of course, there's tons of circumstantial evidence of collusion. That's why there's an investigation. We just don't know what else Mueller and company may find. There must be something pretty damning, else Trump and company wouldn't be screaming so loudly and trying to undermine the case against them. Anyway, that's what led me to make this week's Poorly Animated cartoon, starring Little Donald and his master, Vladimir Putin.

Deep State Vs. Dumb State

2017-06-17T11:30:00.001-04:00

Yes, the president of the United States is spreading crazy across the land, this time with a handy boogey man call Deep State. What is Deep State? Why, it's whoever is opposing him! It's amazing that we've come to this, but here we are, so I made a Poorly Animated cartoon lampooning the whole notion.

Jefferson Takes the Stand

2017-06-14T06:23:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I experimented with how fast I could keep up with the news cycle and made the following cartoon. Jeff Sessions appeared before the Senate yesterday and did his best to weasel out of answering any questions.

Donald Trump's Truth Translator

2017-06-10T16:25:00.000-04:00

Remember when Key and Peele did those skits about Obama's anger translator? Well, Little Donald Trump has his very own truth translator: Vladimir Putin! In this episode, Little Donald will tell you what he thinks about former FBI Director James Comey's testimony before Congress, and then Vladimir will tell you what he really means. Enjoy!

Comey Testimony

2017-06-08T06:41:00.001-04:00

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about whether Little Donald obstructed justice by pressuring former FBI Director James Comey to back off of his investigation into whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to interfere with the election process, but shouldn't we keep the focus on what's really important? You know, the Kathy Griffin thing?

Little Donald in "A Curtsy for the King"

2017-06-04T14:09:00.000-04:00

Remember when Little Donald went to Saudi Arabia and curtsied King Salman? That guy sure loves autocrats.

Little Donald stars in "Putin's Puppet"

2017-05-31T13:31:00.001-04:00

New "Little Donald" Cartoons

2017-05-20T15:19:00.000-04:00

Here are some new cartoons.

Little Donald in "Dinner With Comey"

2017-05-13T14:20:00.000-04:00

There was a time when I thought I was above vulgar humor. Turns out I'm not. In my defense, we have a president who makes fun of the disabled and says he "moves on" married women "like a bitch." So, what's a little blow job joke at Mitch McConnell's expense?

In this cartoon, we explore what might be on those "secret tapes" the president tweeted about while publicly blackmailing the former director of the FBI.

Super Fetus

2017-05-10T05:32:00.000-04:00

It's cartoon day. Her'e one I made last week involving a couple of recurring characters in my animated shorts.

Here's the Trailer for my YouTube channel

2017-05-06T13:00:00.000-04:00

Hernia Man 4

2017-05-03T16:36:00.001-04:00

Today's cartoon is the last in the original Hernia Man series. I expect there will be more episodes in the future.

Little Donald Goes to a Gun Rally

2017-04-29T21:31:00.001-04:00

A new cartoon is up. Dinosaur Ghosts are still hot on the trail of the Idiot In Chief, and this time they catch up to him at a "Gun Rights" rally.

Hernia Man Episode 3

2017-04-26T16:39:00.000-04:00

This is part 3 of a series of four. For earlier episodes, check out my YouTube channel. Enjoy!

Donald Trump's Russian Dossier Exposed!

2017-04-23T19:52:00.001-04:00

Just kidding. It's another Little Donald cartoon. This one probably isn't fit for the kiddies. It starts with Little Donald receiving a golden shower from a Russian prostitute. It gets weird after that. Enjoy!

Little Donald Theme

2017-04-19T05:49:00.000-04:00

A new cartoon is up! Well, it's technically just a theme for an extended bit I'm doing making fun of Donald Trump, but I think this one is worth a watch just to see how badly I sing and because of the visual gag at the end. Enjoy!

New Cartoon: Global Warming For Idjits Featuring Little Donald

2017-04-15T19:19:00.000-04:00

The new Little Donald cartoon (short) is up from the PoorlyAnimated1 YouTube Channel. Be sure to subscribe and share.