About the Author: Geoffrey Girard is an award-winning dark fiction author. Born in Germany and shaped in New Jersey, Geoffrey graduated from Washington College with a literature degree and worked as an advertising copywriter and marketing manager before shifting to high school English teacher. Since then, he’s earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Miami University and is the Department Chair of English at a famed private boys’ school in Cincinnati. None of his students, he believes, are clones. He also has two teenage sons, and suspects one of them could be. For more information, please visit www.GeoffreyGirard.com.
About Project Cain: This is a story about blood. The blood of family. And of science. And murder.
Fifteen-year-old Jeff Jacobson had never heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, the infamous serial killer who brutally murdered seventeen people more than twenty years ago. But Jeff’s life changes forever when the man he’d thought was his father hands him a government file telling him he was constructed in a laboratory only seven years ago, part of a top-secret government cloning experiment called ‘Project CAIN.’ There, he was created entirely from Jeffrey Dahmer’s DNA. There are others like Jeff — those genetically engineered directly from the most notorious murderers of all time: The Son of Sam, The Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy… even other Jeffrey Dahmer clones. Some raised, like Jeff, in caring family environments; others within homes that mimicked the horrific early lives of the men they were created from. When the most dangerous boys are set free by the geneticist who created them, the summer of killing begins. Worse, these same teens now hold a secret weapon even more dangerous than the terrible evil they carry within. Only Jeff can help track the clones down before it’s too late. But will he catch the ‘monsters’ before becoming one himself?
Geoffrey decided to offer up a guest post answering one of my questions. That question is . . .
If you could be the writer behind any novel, what would it be and why?
The poetry of 1984. The royalties and merited popularity behind Harry Potter. The legacy of Lord of the Rings. The courage and scope of The Fountainhead or Moby-Dick. The brilliant so-simple-why-hadn’t-someone-thought of-it-before concepts behind Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And then books like A Prayer for Owen Meany or Shadowland or The Chocolate War which I read over and over and over because everything’s exactly where it should be…
But the game/challenge here was choose the ONE novel I wish I’d written. And for decades, it’s been one book: A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens. Not even in my top hundred favorite books, yet every time I read it or even think about it, I frequently proclaim out loud: I wish I wrote this damn book.
1] The concept is clever. So clever. And simple. So so simple. Three ghosts (past, present, future) will visit you tonight and teach you about yourself (a self that needs some teaching). Such a powerful tale wrapped in a plot less complicated than most fairy tales or shaggy-dog jokes. The anticipation of what the next ghost will reveal the uncluttered linear storyline… Some of our very best stories, the ones that last/resonate, can afford to be the most straightforward.
2] Christmas. I mean, wow. Smart. THE Holiday. And sure, you can dress up any plot by attaching it to a specific holiday, especially this one. But that’s not what Dickens is doing here. He’s doing specific things with the roles of tradition (on the holiday with the most traditions in a time (1840s) when tradition was flying out the door faster than you can say “Tiny Tim”) and promoting specifically Christian values on a major Christian holiday (in a time when Christian values were flying out… you get the point). This story HAS to happen on Christmas. Just like Michael Myers has to happen on Halloween.
3] Ghosts. (see #1 above). To my dismay, I remain unable to write a story without including something somewhere that’s a little peculiar, supernatural, fantastic, unexplainable… I try to write about “normal” people doing “normal” things and get bored with them all-too quickly. I spend the bulk of each day surrounded by normal people doing normal things; They’re also boring. As a reader and writer, I like a little seasoning in my fiction and incorporating ghosts as main characters and plot drivers adds just the right touch of fantastic to a story entirely about, ultimately, a normal man.
4] A CHRISTMAS CAROL has a point. It’s not written to be just entertainment. It was also written, during the greatest societal change in human history, to question/explore the rise of industry and its toll on social justice and the individual human spirit. I wouldn’t know what to write about if I didn’t have some underlying “point” to my tale. Not that you have to (or should) get up on a soapbox with theme, but to borrow a quote attributed to half a dozen brilliant authors: “ALL Art is propaganda.”
5] Scrooge is all of us. Ok, so maybe you’re no wrinkly pinchpenny but you’re here and human. So, it’s safe to say you also have a Past that includes some regrets and missed opportunities; a Future that you worry about; and a Present where you ignore/mistreat/misunderstand a lot of the people in your life. Good fiction is universal; it can speak to each of us. Make us look within ourselves. Regardless of any themes exploring the price/cures of the Industrial Revolution, this tale remains at its core a very human and familiar story. The ghosts, you see, haven’t just come for Scrooge…
6] Dickens’ writing. While this one’s a touch dialogue heavy, when Chuck takes a moment to work his magic, you see an absolute master at work. First line of the book: Marley was dead, to begin with. Readers are said to sometimes throw a book against the wall when it’s terrible. Writers, however, more often do it when the writing is so darn good, you wonder if you should ever bother writing again. One sentence can do that. Dickens has several in this little tale that endanger the walls.
7] 150 years after it was written, people still like this story. Proof of how well #5 and #6 were done. We still know these characters, their words, their struggles and joys. Yes, the story got plenty of help from countless plays and films over the years, but the actual book is still read, given as gifts, and enjoyed to this day. It will be on our shelves another 150 years from now. Hint: Not even people named Meyers will know who Bella and Edward are 150 years from now. For an Artist to create something that lasts and delights/touches generations is certainly a worthy goal.
A brilliant concept, skillfully written, a splash of magic, with social relevance and universal personal meaning, whose characters and story will keep readers entertained and thinking for, likely, a thousand years. Yes, that I would like to write.
Now… which book would YOU choose?
Find out more about Geoffrey Girard’s Project Cain on Goodreads.
