It is natural to think of sequence, what follows what. Or, being called, when standing in a queue, "Next!" So, we might ask, what follows Fex & Coo. What is next in line? Simple notions to be sure. But thinking this way would not be accurate. Yes, we have posted the ten original installments of Fex & Coo, and there will follow, in the traditional sense of next—what is made available to the blog members.
But things are more complicated than this.
Fex & Coo began in Tully's Coffee shop on October 10, 2010. Just over seven months later, on April 12, 2011, I had a dream. The dream was very explicit and clear: there was a title, a subtitle, and the first paragraphs of what was the beginning of an unusual narrative. The title was The Deathling Crown Lottery. The sub-title was, “A Cautionary Dream Tale.” I wrote out the text as best I could remember it from the dream. Here is what I sent to Paco a couple of days later:
The Deathling Crown Lottery
A Cautionary Dream Tale
Arthur Compton, 63, died peacefully in his sleep. This was usually the end of it, but not this time. His death was one of the jackpot prizes in the Deathling Crown Lottery.
The winning ticket in the narrative section was purchased by CedrosCM, a frequent player, and one who dreamed often of winning the chance to narrate a life back into existence. Most of his ongoing narratives remained just that: dreams that floated perpetually in his head, never finding their way to the written page, often involving females he imagined narrating to his pleasure.
That would change now, of course.
He knew the rules held no restrictions whatever on the narrative text. Whatever he wrote would come about in the new life of Mr. Arthur Compton, soon to be among the living. Whether he remained as CEO of Reticular Medicinals, Inc., was now completely up to CedrosCM. There in fact was only one rule: the winner must write a minimum 100-word narrative addition each day, weekends and holidays included. No exceptions were permitted. The penalty for failure was spelled out as well. The winner would himself become a prize in the Deathling Crown Lottery.
As with Fex & Coo, Paco sent back a continuation, and once again we became fully engaged in writing in a back-and-forth manner. We were writing both narratives at the same time. So, The Deathling Crown Lottery was not next in the sense that it followed the completion of Fex & Coo. A more accurate image would be something like parallel lines, that sense of "next to each other" from Old High German nahisto, meaning “neighbor,” or the Anglian (nesta) meaning “closest in kinship.” “Next door neighbor” is an English expression that captures this sense.
We were writing these two narratives as two different projects but being fictions and both intimately emerging from the imagination of the authors, they became in various overt, subtle as well as hidden ways, intertwined. This became more obvious and direct as the writing went on. You can see that the final episode of Fex & Coo describes Owl Man as having the above dream and that he is on his way to London, the setting for The Deathling Crown Lottery.
Perhaps a more accurate image of the relation of these two narratives would be the double-helix, stranded form of DNA, with all sorts of connections between the strands eventually giving rise to manifested life forms. One can certainly conjecture that there is something similar going on in the psyche’s DNA.
I will begin shortly to post installments of The Deathling Crown Lottery. This will be followed by various pieces and ending with Caleigh of Dreams. “Caleigh” is a Gaelic word referring to a Scottish party full of spontaneous poetry, music, dancing, and, in this case, attacks on the Queen.
Where we go from there is unknown at the present time.
Russ