Last week I chatted with queer horror writer, Andrew Robertson about growing up in the 80s under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and how writing horror has given him a space to explore aspects of identity.
This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes writer and musician Salvantonio Clemente.
Ah…here is where I introduce myself (awwwkward).
My name is Salvantonio Clemente, but that’s too many vowels so, call me Sal. Occasionally, my partner calls me “jerk”; I suspect others might do so as well.
I’m a life-long writer, producer, and performer of music. I’m an aspiring writer and voracious consumer of stories, and I write speculative fiction that leans heavily toward the possible. I’ve spent the last year writing a baker’s dozen short stories and banging out two novels, the second of which will be completed in June.
It is my sincere wish to spend the rest of my days creating worlds and playing in them. Of course, it was once my destiny to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so…baby steps.
I am fortunate to have the unswerving support of my partner, Darcie Lynn Clemente. We live just outside Boston and have three grown daughters, Maria, Emma, and Lola, who are all far more talented than I am. Thank you, Michelle, for asking me to participate in Girl Meets Monster…I feel like I’ve arrived!
All about my band, The Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra:
www.urorocks.com
www.facebook.com/UROrocks
My author website is under construction but visit me soon at:
www.writescifi.com
Three Questions
GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Sal. And, thank you again for inviting me to be part of your writing group, The Scrawling Commandos. It has been great getting to know you and the other members of our small writing community, sharing stories, asking honest questions about writing, and supporting each other during these strange times. Can you give a little bit of background about the writing group, and why you believe writing communities are important to writers — aspiring or established? What have you discovered about yourself as a writer and what have you learned from others in the group?
SC: The first thing I discovered? I am not as good as I imagined.
This hurt my soul but was super-useful!
Our writing group is the brainchild of our mutual friend and all-around great guy, Mike Burke. After a twenty-year adventure in a rock band, I desperately needed a place to hone my somewhat atrophied fiction writing skills. So, I stuck my foot in the door at Commandos HQ and refused to remove it until Mike allowed me inside.
I recommend a writing group to rookie or veteran, but only if they’re willing to lower their defenses. There’s a place for affirmation, but we all have folks who fill that need, a writing group needs to be more useful.Still, in our group it’s imperative to deliver our criticism with respect for the effort given; it shouldn’t ever feel like blunt-force trauma when a critique comes.
As artists, it’s vital to have a place we can step outside the strictures of what’s expected, to screw up or succeed as the case may be. Within the confines of the group, I can invest myself into any character, any culture, any point of view, and I’m going to get honest, direct, useful, feedback about the work. If the story needs correction, or jettisoning, or to be curbed, then my comrades give me specific ideas on what to do, which is invaluable because my goal is to sell stories.
It’s not easy; we have our ups and downs, but over the course of 3 years I still very much want to do this thing with these people. I feel tremendous pride in their successes; our camaraderie is genuine. It’s working so far, as my friends have yet to hit the eject button on my seat.
GMM: I’m really glad you decided to share an excerpt from “Arcana Major.” I really liked this story when I read it a few months back and I’m hoping that you either expand on the story, or get it ready for submission as is. I think I mentioned how real the characters seemed to me. I felt like I knew them because they reminded me of kids I grew up with, and the band’s performance brought back memories of seeing live music in dives and weird places like the Knights of Columbus. Where did the idea for the story come from, and are your characters based on people you know? Is this a fictionalized account of something that happened to you as a teenager?
SC: I am really glad you liked “Arcana Major.” It’s a good thing since the story wouldn’t have happened without the prompt which you provided for our writing group, which included the Tarot and a gender flip for the main protagonist.
I knew almost nothing about Tarot, other than bits I’ve consumed through films and TV, but once I dug in, I became obsessed with the artwork!
These cards are amazing! If I had seen them when I was a young musician, I would have insisted the band all take on a different card/character as a persona, and this led to the idea of having the story be about a band.
Jenn (with two n’s) is based on who I was as a naïve youngster trying to get my original band off the ground. The other members of Arcana Major are each based on real people. One of the guys was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame this year! He and I were in a few bands back in Pennsylvania, before I moved to Boston and he went on to massive fame.
“Arcana Major” was a hoot to write, a fantasy, but one rooted in rust belt Pennsylvania and how things really were. A lot of the story is the truth; hopefully, enough to make it feel genuine.
GMM: Music is obviously an important part of your life, and I’ve noticed that music finds a way into several of your stories I’ve read so far. Music is really important to me, too, and I believe it has had a major impact on shaping me as a person and even as a writer. When did you really know you wanted to be a musician, and how has music influenced your writing, and/or vice versa? Is music an important part of your writing process? Have specific songs inspired stories? Have stories inspired your music?
SC: I wanted to be an artist and the definition was broad for me; I’m sure this was due to my upbringing. My mom was a singer and dad was a writer who produced and directed theatre: a true renaissance man. I wrote, drew, painted, performed, directed. I did a lot of theater, and then discovered rock bands, and found a calling I couldn’t resist.
I focused all my efforts into learning to be a musician, writer, and performer, but the itch to write fiction never went away, and the advent of the pandemic opened up the time to give it proper attention.
As to what part music plays in my writing? It’s nearly all subconscious. There’s Bowie and Queen and The Beatles, but I grew up on comics, pulp fiction, sixties and seventies paperbacks, Dark Shadows, Dali, Shakespeare, Kubrick, Rod Serling, on and on, like all of us. With all of this bouncing around in my skull, my writing veers off in a lot of trippy directions.
Three of my short stories feature musicians as characters, but only “Arcana Major” directly touches on my own experience.
As for stories inspiring music that I’ve written, I had never thought about it until reading your question, but it is undoubtedly the case that I have written songs based on stories I’ve read.
When I’m writing, I often listen to instrumental music, but I need to tailor the music to the story. For instance, I’m listening to the score to The Knick, and The Queen’s Gambit, on an endless loop while I’m writing the novel I’m working on. This particular music helps to unlock my subconscious and allows me to get in a flow with the words. As dumb as it sounds…that’s how it works for me. Thanks, again, Michelle! This was too much dang fun! Back to the grind!
Excerpt from “Arcana Major” by Salvantonio Clemente
Minor Arcana: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign
Steam blasts from a radiator nozzle and I catch a snootful of patchouli oil. At Joe’s Cabinet of Curios and Curiosities, the only thing curious is that the cops let Joe get away with open displays of paraphernalia and Dead bootlegs. The rest of us can’t cross the street without showing our papers.
I’m Jenn with two n’s, and I’m here for the spinner racks jammed with books on the occult, zen stuff, and philosophy. Don’t ask me who in my rust-belt town this fine array is aimed at, but I am desperate for a band name and last week the town library shut down for good.
I’m wedging out a dusty brick of Kahlil Gibran poetry when I spot the corner of the Tarot deck’s slipcase peeking out from a stack of ratty back issues of Cream.
I snatch the cards from the pile, and the room gets weird.
The embossed case is cold, slippery, heavy.
I tip the deck into my hand, and the cards resonate like the first time I cranked my amp and hit a perfect power chord.
I shuffle through the deck as the afternoon sun slashes through strings of colored beads hanging in the smoke-hazed window. Fireworks go off on my retinas and trigger a memory of when I was six and dad slid his leather headphones over my ears; he held them in place while mom dropped the needle on Switched On Bach and little kid me saw stars being born inside billion year old nebulas.
Like back then, I have to remember to breathe.
Yeah.
It’s that kind of life-altering resonance.
I’m a musician. I feel the same sensation—okay, maybe not this intense—when Father Herron cuts loose on the big pipe organ after Sunday mass. Hell, the National Anthem gives me goosebumps, and I don’t buy a word of anything said by priests or politicians. But I don’t believe in mystical hoodoo, either. Whatever’s happening is physics and biology; some strange combination of factors hitting my system all at once, giving the deck its charge.
Still, when the universe shows you a sign it’s probably best to read it, right? I don’t know jack squat about the Tarot, but in my hand is the key to my band’s future. I know it.
I sweet-talk Joe down to five bucks and, with the deck still vibrating in my hip pocket, kick the door open and head out into the cold.
Do you have a fiction fragment? How about your friends? Would you like to recommend someone to me aside from yourself? Drop me a line at chellane@gmail.com. See you next week!
Guidelines: Submit 500-1000 words of fiction, up to 5 poems, a short bio, and a recent author photo to the e-mail above.
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