How to Get Ideas: Talk to Cows by John Brown

     
I wrote my debut novel Servant of a Dark God in a souped-up two-cow milking barn. Yes, the one shown below. If you look closely, you can see the working outhouse just to the left.

The barn is 14′x18 feet. It was built with logs in the early 1900’s. It was upgraded to human habitat status with a concrete floor, numerous old-timey decorations, and a couch in the late 1900’s. When I came along in the early 2000’s, it had an infestation of flies not unlike that of the house featured in The Amityville Horror.

I vacuumed up the flies, live and wriggling, by the dozens. More came in their place. When I’d open the door, a number would always make for the daylight. And so eager were they that a few would always careen off my face in their attempts to get out.

I wasn’t keeping them prisoner. I tried everything known to man to remove attractants and let them go free. I caulked like a madman to keep them out. But more always came. My very practical brother-in-law ended the plague with a 24-hour bug bomb. However, even that was only temporary. The flies came back. I now suspect the barn was the target of some low-grade hick curse.

Mice were also chewing through the walls, literally. One brave soul came in while my wife and I were sitting at the computer desk. We heard a munching in the wall. A few minutes later a mouse popped in through a crack around the door trim. He did some acrobatics, climbing two-handed up the teeth of a rusted saw (country decor), scurried along a ledge to an antique cupboard, fetched a bit of cracker and then ran back. It was obvious that under previous management he’d been a regular.

On his way back, I said, “Hey. Get out of here!” and pointed at the door. I was the new sheriff in town, giving fair warning.

The mouse looked up at my wife and me, took a bite of his cracker, mulled over my proposition, and then exited the way he’d come in. He came back a few minutes later. He’d obviously seen too many cowboy shows where the plucky underdog wins.

I’m not a mouse fan. As a child, Walt Disney had me hoodwinked into thinking mice were cute creatures that liked to help hot women sew clothing and do the dishes. But it was all a lie, which I found out the hard way. Mice crap and urinate with wild abandon. I think that’s all they do. It’s their one joy. Alas, it’s not mine.

I found our visitor’s tidy entrance and, with a can of foaming caulk, sealed the bugger in. I’m not heartless. I actually gave him a chance to escape and thought he’d fled. But he was only lying low like hard core criminals are wont to do.

I can tell you other stories about the place like when the rogue Mustang stallion came out of the hills and decided he wanted to get it on with the mare my father-in-law brought for the girls to ride, or when I got sprayed by the skunk that our traitor cats were hanging out with, or the time the coyotes began screaming, and so uncanny were their cries that I thought they were my daughters suffering extreme pain in the neighbor’s yard across the road. I could tell you about a salt-of-the-earth rancher whose dog loves to stand up on the roof of his car as he drives by, alpha jaw jutting, legs in a sturdy stance, body leaning into the wind as if to show us all that Super Canine is now on the job.

They’re all good stories. But none of them made it into my book. Another one did. In fact, it became one of the core ideas of the novel. Let me tell you about it.

As a city boy I was raised to think cows say “moo.” Once in a while they might say something like that. But I learned the hard way they say a lot of other things. And I’m not talking about when you’re asleep and they’re out in the barn plotting a hostile takeover of the farm and figuring out how to ride the four-wheelers. I’m talking about things like this

That’s a bull. Do you know what he’s saying?

Didn’t think so. Neither did I.

So there I was up in the ranch lands of Rich County, Utah. It was my first year in the country. In fact, it was my first few months. Late summer. I had just written a novel and realized that while it had a lot of cool things in it and a number of fine scenes, the story, as a whole, was broken beyond repair. I needed a new story. I could write it in the same world, but the engine needed to be replaced. So, as I often do, I went walking with a pencil and two sheets of paper stapled together.

My route led me up a small canyon that lay about a half mile from our place. I walked up that canyon a number of days in a row. I think I must have walked a total of 15-20 miles trying to figure out what my new story would be.

The ranchers here push their cattle out of the fields and up into the hills to graze during the summer. This lets them use their fields to grow the hay they’ll need for winter. So it’s not uncommon to encounter cattle in the uplands. On one of those walks I came across a small herd eating and lazing about the aspen, sagebrush, and willow growing along the brook running down the center of that canyon. One of the cattle was making that sound you heard above. It was a bull, hidden in the river willows.

Now, I’m a bit impulsive. I’m curious about a lot of things. And ever since I was a wee lad I’ve wanted to talk to animals. So, without thinking, I yelled out my best approximation of that sound.

The bull in the willows responded in kind.

I didn’t know what we were talking about, but I figured it wasn’t every day you got to talk to a sizeable beef. So I brayed out a response. He made another grunt. I called out again, delighted with our chat. It was at about that point when the bull kicked up some dust. And then he changed his tone and began to charge through the willows.

A mature bull averages around 2,000 pounds. A solid ton. They don’t slip through the brush all silent like. They crash. This one was crashing in my direction. As he progressed, the tops of the willows along his path shook and shuddered.

I began to be alarmed. Then I suddenly realized what we’d been chatting about. I’d been saying something like, “Hey, geek! I’m taking one of your women. What are you going to do about it?”

And he was saying something like, “I’m gonna kill you.”

And I was saying, “Bring it, I’m taking a woman.”

I’m a big guy. But even at 250 pounds I think he was a little above my weight class. Furthermore, despite his size, I knew that there was no way I was going to outrun him when he broke from the brush line. I looked around for a tree. Saw none. And decided it was expedient that I should flee.

I can do a good flee when pressed and high-tailed it down and around the bend. Luckily, he did not follow. However, thoughts of cattle did. And during one of my walks that week (yes, I went back up that canyon. No, I did not have any more bovine chats. Well, not long ones. Just a few short practical joker ones. I figured that guy with his two dozen women needed to loosen up a bit) I suddenly looked around and thought: ranchers, cattle, beef—what if humans were being ranched? But not for their flesh. No, for something far more important. What if there were creatures that were plugged into a whole different food web, one that relied on the physical soul?

Boom. Lightning struck.

I wrote it all up on my little sheets of paper out there in the Western summer sun amidst the sagebrush and fields of hay. The idea grew, and after a lot of work I finished Servant of a Dark God, the novel that got me a three-book contract with Tor Books.

So, a lot of people ask how a novelist comes up with ideas. I’ll tell you.

You want an idea? Try talking to cows.

     
John Brown currently lives with his wife and four daughters in the hinterlands of Utah, where one encounters much fresh air, many goodhearted ranchers, and an occasional wolf.

     
Book Synopsis:

The launch of a towering new fantasy series introduces an elaborate new world, a strange and dark system of magic, and a cast of compelling characters and monsters. Young Talen lives in a world where the days of a person’s life can be harvested, bought, and stolen. Only the great Divines, who rule every land, and the human soul-eaters, dark ones who steal from man and beast and become twisted by their polluted draws, know the secrets of this power. This land’s Divine has gone missing and soul-eaters are found among Talen’s people.

     
The Clans muster a massive hunt, and Talen finds himself a target. Thinking his struggle is against both soul-eaters and their hunters, Talen actually has far larger problems. A being of awesome power has arisen, one whose diet consists of the days of man. Her Mothers once ranched human subjects like cattle. She has emerged to take back what is rightfully hers. Trapped in a web of lies and ancient secrets, Talen must struggle to identify his true enemy before the Mother finds the one whom she will transform into the lord of the human harvest.

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