STRAW SONG and the darker side of Oz

 

My new dark romantic fantasy/urban fantasy Straw Song is finally available! At last, the brainy but insecure Scarecrow and brash but empathetic witch Theo can invade others’ headspace the way they have mine for a year. On this Monday the 13^th , I’m contemplating my enjoyment of the darker side of Oz.

 The original book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum was intended as light entertainment for children, according to Baum’s forward to the book, yet it contains some gruesome scenes. Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman, relates to Dorothy (who is supposed to be a young child in the story) how his cursed axe lopped off his arms and legs and head, so he had tin replacements made by a skilled smith. Even in an enchanted land like Oz, that had to hurt and be bloody as hell. Later in the book, horrible tiger-bear monsters called kalidahs attack the party and are stopped only by chopping down a log bridge which sends them tumbling into a crevasse to their implied deaths. 

Scarecrow's first murder.

And when our heroes raid the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, she sends wolves, crows, stinging insects, and her guards to kill them. The Tin Woodman chops off the heads of all the wolves. The Scarecrow twists the necks of the crows. Even though these are just straightforward sentences in the book, with no blood or gore mentioned, any kid who understands that living things bleed may be a bit taken aback by such violence. The witch’s servant monkeys rip the Scarecrow apart and dop his head and clothing into a tall tree, and it’s not clear he’s not dead until some time later when Dorothy rescues him and has him restuffed. The Cowardly Lion proves his mettle by beheading a giant spider (he bites its head off!). So just in this first classic children’s book we have death, dismemberment, body horror, and monsters aplenty. 

illustration by Skottie Young, The Wizard of Oz
(Eric Shanower's adaptation from L. Frank Baum, Marvel Comics)

Me? I’m all for it. I love monsters, I enjoy a bit of body horror, as any reader of mine will know. Hell, even in my lighter romantic fantasy Straw Man, protagonist Jack experiences quite a bit of body horror as Cassie’s spell takes unexpected effect on him. I love transformation, as evidenced in horror comedy Wendigogo . In Straw Song I have body horror with Scarecrow, although its impact is diminished some by the fact that in his original state he can’t feel pain even when ripped apart, as well as Ozian monsters and some truly evil characters causing all manner of casual horror. Why? Well, for one, because I enjoy it, and also because Oz DOES have a darker side which some fans love even more than the sweetness and light of the MGM musical.

 Case in point: the 1985 film Return to Oz. It hasn’t become a cult classic despite the creepier elements but because of them. Dorothy is threatened with electroshock therapy to cure her of her delusions about Oz (a truly scary part of the film, moreso if, like me, you ever dreaded being sent to a mental hospital or, gods forbid, did end up in one). When she finally lands in Oz, she encounters the Wheelers, amazingly and frighteningly portrayed by actors on actual wheels in grotesque masks. Every fan I’ve encountered who saw this film as a kid was legit scared of the Wheelers.

Gimme some sugar!

The Nome King, unlike his more comical depiction in the books, is sadistic and genuinely threatening in the film. The witch Mombi (in the film, an amalgamation of the book characters Mombi and Langwidere, who enjoys collecting people’s heads) is also a problem for Dorothy, and her cabinet of still-living bodiless heads definitely creepy at the very least. (Yay! More body horror!) The scene where Dorothy sneaks into the head collection is one of the scarier moments. I’ve seen some Oz fans complain about how “dark” this film us while seemingly ignoring the fact that the books have plenty of low-key horror as well. Langwidere does threaten to cut off Dorothy’s head and add it to her collection, and the Nome King does trick most of the adventuring party into being turned into tchotchkes for his collection, in the book Ozma of Oz. I submit that pondering the implications of your head becoming just another pretty thing in a witch’s collection, to be put on and off like a hair bow as her whim dictates, or spending your existence transformed into a motionless, helpless objet d’art to be occasionally dusted, is guaranteed to strike horror into the heart of anyone.

 So, given all this existing (and fully canon!) horror in Oz, I have zero problems writing it. Though Straw Song is definitely a weird love story at its heart, the characters have plenty of awful things to deal with. Though Scarecrow and his friend Nick Chopper can’t be killed by normal means, creative evil witches can certainly come up with ways to torture them to elicit their compliance. Having a friend who can survive being beheaded doesn’t make seeing it any easier for a mortal. And monsters well known in Oz are guaranteed to be scarier once they invade our world.

 Of course, even stronger than monsters or malicious magic is the horror of seeing a character you’ve come to love in serious danger, and I hope I’ve accomplished that in this book. You don’t need to be an Oz fan to enjoy it, either. If you like urban fantasy with romance, or romantic fantasy with a dark ambiance, dive in! Scarecrow promises you won’t regret it.

Straw Song by K.A. Silva available for purchase in ebook or print from amazon.

Signed copies available exclusively through Graythorn Publishing!