Geography and the Plot

In 1988, Hildebrand, the most successful rock star of that era and an actor who had brought to life one of the most famous horror characters ever created, disappears from his beach house, never to be heard of again. In 2009, while on a Carribean cruise, Savannah librarian Melissa Powers discovers herself being stalked by a mysterious cowboy. Agreeing to a midnight rendevouz with the man calling himself Travis Brandt, she discovers his real identity—Hildrebrand, coming out of his self-imposed exile after twenty years of hiding in the sand hills of Nebraska. Before the cruise is over, Melissa and Travis are involved in a frantic love affair ending in a hasty marriage, and the Nebraska cowboy takes the Southern spinster back to his ranch as his wife. In the midst of her happiness, however, Melissa feels as if Travis isn’t telling her the whole truth about why he left Hollywood. What is he hiding and why is he lying?

When I decided to have Hildebrand simply drive away from his Malibu beach house and disappear, I asked myself: To where?

Most people agree that if you want to lose yourself, go to a big city, but Travis is a Midwesterner. So I decided that, in spite of having lived in Hollywood for nearly ten years, and also touring the United States, when he decides to chuck it all, he goes home. Not back to Lincoln, necessarily, but to Nebraska, the Sand Hills, specifically…that fairly isolated north-central section covering a quarter of the state.

Typifying the classic prairie of the Great Plains, the sand hills are located above the Ogallala Aquifer, supplying shallow lakes to the area. Dunes may reach as high as 330 feet, and contain a variety of animal and plant life, ranging from several types of prairie grass to 314 species of fish, deer, wild canine, and birds. Although there are no native trees on the Great Plains, there are 720 mostly native plants.

The sand hills were long considered a desert and most of the land has never been cultivated, until around 1870, when ranchers began to utilize the area for grazing longhorn cattle.

Ambiguously for such a flat countryside, in this area are many buttes eroded by cutting winds, biting snowfalls, and torrential rains into fanciful shapes with even more exotic names: Chimney Rock, Courthouse Rock. Stretching across and rising above the bleak flatness, Chimney Rock rises 300 feet above the surrounding North Platte River Valley, its peak is 4,226 feet above sea level. When pioneers traveled the Oregon Trail, it served to landmark their journey halfway there.

It is this area of geographical isolation to which singer Hildebrand—horror star actor, rock idol, drug addict, and demon worshipper--escapes, to begin his transformation to Travis Brandt, rancher and lover of Melissa Powers, the one women he feels can restore him to complete humanity. And it’s in the stark and primitive beauty of the sandstone buttes, raising their jagged spires to the sky, that he begins his fight to save that humanity when the horror of his younger days resurrects itself to threaten his newly-found happiness.

Podcast for "Pillow Talk"

Here's a link for a podcast interview I did with Nia Promotions for "Pillow Talk". Dana, the interviewer, was wonderful. Even though I was extremely nervous, she made it easy and relaxed.

http://www.niapromotionspodcast.com/1/post/2010/09/pillow-talk-by-ruth-hartman.html

"IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A LOVE STORY...AND THEN THE HORROR BEGAN...

Serpent’s Tooth developed from a dream, and it’s the only novel I’ve written which originated that way. Probably not many people today remember Arthur Franz, but he was a very active science fiction star in the 1950, both in the movies and on TV. Well, one night, ‘way back in the ‘80s, I had a dream about Mr. Franz and I have no recollection of it now, except his being in it and the name “Hildebrandt.”

So, a couple of days later, what do I see on TV but the movie Atomic Submarine, staring guess who? And one of the characters was named “Hildebrandt.” I have this rule…if something sticks with me for three days, I know I have to write about it, so I took these two incidents—which occurred within three days of each other—and decided there was a novel in there somewhere with “Hidebrandt” playing an important role, then the story of Faust--the scholar who sells his soul to the devil--intruded, and… Serpent’s Tooth was born.

My hero, Travis Brand, is a Mid-Westerner, a part Pawnee orphan studying at the University of Nebraska. He’s ambitious (he’s putting himself through school on student loans), talented (a drama major getting raves in every role he portrays), a loving husband, a gifted student, but bitter because he has no prospects, and angry since his lack of money is keeping him from realizing his potential and providing his wife with the family she wants. When a famous actress comes to Lincoln to act in a play and he wins the male lead, it’s his ticket to instant stardom. Suddenly this impoverished youngster is the one calling the shots and it goes to his head. He’s got it all but he wants more and he doesn’t care how he gets it. Soon he’s involved with some very deadly people and when he wants out, the only way is to fake his death. He gives up everything, hiding out on a ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills, fearing discovery by the people he left behind, but that doesn’t happen until the day he lets back into his life the one thing he’s missed most of all: Love.

I’m not even certain Travis should be called a “hero.” He might be better termed the “protagonist” of Serpent’s Tooth, although he has many of a hero’s features, he doesn’t’ meet all the criteria. That’s a question worthy of a lengthy debate: What makes a hero? It would’ve been easy to portray him as a thoroughly despicable character, considering the things he does of his own free will, so I chose to detail the reasons why he did them, and the main one is his love for his wife. Can a man who loves be all bad, no matter what he’s done? He wants to give her all the things he couldn’t when they were students, everything she ever wished for and he couldn’t afford. His story is also an object lesson in what happens to someone who’s been without all his life and suddenly finds himself with more money than he’ll ever want. He deliberately loses everything--including that beloved wife--and when he meets Melissa--just as in the story of Faust--it looks for a moment as if the love of a good woman will redeem him. It was easy to like Travis, even easier to sympathize with him but I viewed him with a somewhat jaundiced eye because I--as the Omniscient Author--know what is coming. Love him? No. Like, empathize, agonize over, hope against hope everything will come out all right? Yes.

As Clayton Bye (www.thedeepening.com) says, "...it will show horror fans that slice and dice just doesn’t stand up to understated and/or realistic horror."