The Book of Villains

Edited by Josh Woods
ISBN: 978-1-59948-314-6
cover price $14.95 ($12 if ordered from the MSR Online Bookstore)

Release date: August 23, 2011.

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Contributors / Introduction

Introduction

 

Hither come the wicked, the plotting, the cruel. Hither come the vengeful, the jealous, the cold. Here there be villains!

Whether you're looking for brutes or beauties, guns or guile, mind-games or murder, you've found the right book. This collection offers stories that explore a full range of evil characters, from the timeless archetypes to the iconic and historical, all the way to fresh and original villains. You can, of course, enjoy these stories from the safe distance that ink and paper provide-they are only stories, after all-but if you've ever harbored a grudge or wanted to get away with a little more than your due, then you're now among your kindred more than you may like to admit.

So beyond giving you your dark-side kicks and your bad-guy fix, but what else does this book do? In brief, this collection is a working study of villains, a ground-level glimpse at what contemporary writers understand villains to be. With any luck, after you've enjoyed the read, it'll spur you to explore what a villain is to you. With a little more luck, this book will inspire you to tackle writing villains of your own. And since I feel it would be evil to ask something of the readers (and contributors) that I would not do myself, I offer my own villain story in this book as well as, here, offering my own take on what makes a villain.

Let's start with the word itself. Villain comes to us through Old French from the Latin villanus which referred to a poor rural worker, farmer, or country person, one who would live in a villa. Its meaning evolved along the lines of the insults and prejudices associated with the rural poor and the socially low to now hold the meaning it does today, that of maliciousness of character. From this beginning and evolution we can see the continuous suggestion of a villain being something lower or lesser, especially as compared to those who are sophisticated or privileged. This brings me to my first point about what makes a villain: a villain is driven by the desire to be something more. Whether that something more be a higher station, more respect, a share in the good life, or any similar motivation, a villain sees himself as positioned lower than he deserves.

Take the following as a quick survey of examples. Iago simply wants the promotion that went to Othello instead; in the The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader reveals that his motivation is to become the emperor that he currently has to serve; your classic mask-wearing bank robber hopes for enough dough to secure the mansion by the beach, the fancy car, the over-priced glass of liquor in-hand, just like the rich folks have; Dracula initiates the plot in his novel by trying to buy real estate in London so that he may progress to the center of the modern world; and I need only remind you of what got Milton's Satan thrown out of Heaven.

What else makes a villain? As weird as it sounds, I think a villain must be moral. I mean moral in the original or at least neutral sense of being concerned with actions as they relate to principles, of having a code of conduct about what to do and what not to do ("right" and "wrong") and of adhering to that code. While the most exceptional villains are acutely aware of what the rest of us consider good and evil, even common villains consider their own particular codes of conduct to be of the utmost importance. To find examples, look to mafia members, pirates, dictators, serial killers (those murderers who stick to patterns of execution and to particular victims), groups of even the worst prisoners, Nazis, thieving CEOs, street thugs, even robots. Yes, even villainous robots have the moral code I mean: Hal 9000 sticks rigidly to self-preservation protocol, and the Terminator is so dedicated to his primary mission that for its overall benefit he can take moratoriums in order to get creative with his human disguise (wearing sunglasses is surely creative for a robot). Forces and agents that don't follow principled actions or prepared codes, that cause harm wildly and randomly, such as hurricanes or rabid wolves do, aren't quite villain enough for me. I say that real villains know precisely what they will do and what they aren't willing to do, and they adhere to these principles better perhaps even than heroes do.

If you agree with me about what makes a villain, you've found the right book, but if you disagree with me, you may have the right book as well. Many of the stories included here exhibit these characteristics of villainy in varied and powerful ways, yet others included here brush these ideas aside and explore villains in ways that are unique to their characters and predicaments, heedless of theory or tradition, especially heedless of any theorizing of mine. I think such a range of perspectives and styles is important for a contemporary working study of villains.

At this point, it's surely villainous for me to continue, for this book belongs to the stories within it, and they are fully capable of speaking for themselves. So go forth, reader. May you find the evil you're looking for, and may you find the villain of your dreams.

--Josh Woods
Illinois, 2011


CONTRIBUTORS

 

Margaret Benbow, Madison, WI. Margaret Benbow's short stories have appeared in several magazines including Zoetrope: All Story, The Georgia Review, The Antioch Review, Rosebud; and in the anthologies Barnstorm and Wisconsin Fiction (both published by the University of Wisconsin Press). She has completed a short story collection, Boy Into Panther, which was a finalist in the 2008 Iowa Short Fiction contest. Benbow won the 2005 Eleanor Sternig Award for the best short story by a Wisconsin writer. She is now working on a second collection, Simeon Prophet, whose linked stories are about a brilliantly gifted, but bedeviled, outsider artist.

 

 

 

Karen de Balbian Verster, New York, NY. Karen de Balbian Verster, four-time breast and ovarian cancer survivor, is the author of the novel, Boob, A Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity. Many of her stories, essays and poems have been published in literary reviews and anthologies, most recently "Anne Frank Redux" in the 2010 anthology, Writers and Their Notebooks, University of South Carolina Press, which prompted a The Writer review to describe Karen de Balbian Verster as a writer who "recalled [her] inaugural journal with clarity…", "Her Eighth Gray Hair" in the 2010 anthology, When Last on the Mountain: Essays, Stories, and Poems from Writers over 50, Holy Cow! Press, which a Star Tribune review described as "Karen de Balbian Verster's exuberant celebration of middle age," and "The Bad Seed" which won Honorable Mention in the UNO Writing Contest. To read excerpts and more about the author visit: http://mysite.verizon.net/kdebv

 

 

Stephanie Dickinson, New York, NY. Stephanie Dickinson has lived in Iowa, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana and now New York. Her work has appeared in Water-Stone Review, Gargoyle, Rhino, Stone Canoe, Westerly, and Quiddity, among others. Half Girl, her first novel and winner of the Hackney Award (Birmingham-Southern) is published by Spuyten Duyvil. Road of Five Churches (stories) and Corn Goddess ( poems) are available from Rain Mountain Press. Her stories have been reprinted in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, New Stories from the South, The Year's Best, 2008 and 2009 She is a volunteer associate editor at Mudfish. and works a day job in the belly of the beast. She shares an East Village five flight walkup with poet Rob Cook and the wonder cats Vallejo and Sally Joy.

 

 

Lou Fisher, Hopewell Junction, NY. Lou Fisher lives with his wife in downstate New York, from where he teaches fiction and nonfiction for the Long Ridge Writers Group. His stories have appeared in every type of magazine and journal, including The Mississippi Review and Other Voices, and have been selected for numerous anthologies like The Way We Work (Vanderbilt University Press 2008), Hunger and Thirst (City Works Press 2009), and Coming Home (MSR Short Fiction 2010). He has received the New Letters Literary Award for Fiction as well as a writing fellowship from his county's arts council. His earlier genre novels were published by Dell and Warner.

 

 

John M. Flaherty, Chicago, IL. Teaches English at Robert Morris University. His work has previously appeared in McSweeney's, The 2nd Hand, and Cell Stories.

 

 

 

 

 

G. Timothy Gordon, Las Cruces, NM. Current books include Everything Speaking Chinese, recipient of Riverstone Press Poetry Competition, and Ground of this Blue Earth (Mellen), while individual works have been nominated for Pushcarts. Additional recognitions include award NEA and NEH Fellowships. Under Aries (an NEA Western States' Book Awards nominee) and From Falling will be published in 2011 and 2012. Fiction and poetry appear in Agni, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Concho River Review, Dimsum: Asia's Literary Journal (HK); and New York Quarterly, among others.

 

 


Janice Levy, Merrick, NY. Janice Levy is the author of Gonzalo Grabs The Good Life, The Runaway Radish, I Remember Abuelito, and several other children's books. Fiction publications include Glimmer Train, Alaska Quarterly, Iowa Review, StoryQuarterly, Greensboro Review, among many others. Winner of "Writer's Digest Writing Competition" for best Literary Short Story three times. She teaches Creative Writing at Hofstra University. Her website is www.janicelevy.com

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Lumans, Boulder, CO. Alexander Lumans was born in Aiken, South Carolina. His fiction has been published in or is forthcoming from Story Quarterly, Greensboro Review, Black Warrior Review, Rosebud, Gargoyle, Southern Indiana Review, Surreal South '09, and Writer's Voice 2009 (among others). He won first place in the 2009 Press53 Open Awards Genre Fiction competition and first place in the Southern Illinois Writer's Guild 2009 Fiction Contest. He recently graduated from the M.F.A. Fiction Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and now lives and teaches in Boulder.

 

 

 

Fernand Roqueplan, Olympia, WA. Fernand Roqueplan works as an interpreter for social services and, seasonally, as a steelhead fishing guide. He has published with the Indiana Review, Texas Review, Fourteen Hills, Florida Review, Caketrain, and the anthology New Standards: The First Decade of Fiction at Fourteen Hills.

 

 

 

 

Jim Sanderson, Beaumont, TX. Jim Sanderson has published a collection of short stories, Semi-Private Rooms (1992 Kenneth Patchen, Pig Iron Press, 1994); an essay collection, A West Texas Soapbox (Texas A & M University Press, 1998); four novels--El Camino del Rio (1997 Frank Waters Award, University of New Mexico Press, 1998), Safe Delivery (2000 finalist for Violet Crown Award, University of New Mexico Press 2000), La Mordida (University of New Mexico Press, 2002), and Nevin's History: A Novel of Texas (Texas Tech University Press, 2004), and Faded Love, Ink Brush Press 2010. In addition he has published over seventy short stories, essays, or scholarly articles. Sanderson currently serves as Writing Director for Lamar University.

 

Lindsey Stockton, Richmond, KY. Lindsey Stockton is the Editor-in-Chief of Jelly Bucket. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Paradigm and Aurora Literary Arts Journal.

 

 

 


Steve Taylor, La Crescenta, CA. Steve Taylor teaches at Glendale College where he has won a whole bunch of teaching awards due to a system he worked out where the students do all the work and give him all the credit. The stuff he writes has gotten him an L.A. Arts Council Literature Award, won him the 2004 Main Street Rag Short Fiction Contest, and made him a two-time finalist and this year one of three Honorable Mentions in The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction given by Nimrod International Journal. Humoring him in this way has only increased his urge to write even more stuff.

 

 

 

 

Tom Turley, Montgomery, AL. Like the hero in his story, Tom Turley is a former historian who is now doing other things. He acquired a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt in British history but has been an archivist for most of his career, primarily with the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Belatedly regretting his lost opportunity to be an English major, Tom returned several years ago to writing fiction. "The Devil's Claw" is his first published story. He and his wife Paula live in Montgomery and are the proud parents of two grown children and three dogs.

 

 

 

Terry White, Ashtabula, OH. Terry White writes crime, noir, and hardboiled fiction. He teaches composition and literature classes for a regional campus of Kent State University in Ashtabula, Ohio. He has a series hardboiled detective figure, Thomas Haftmann, who first appeared in Thrilling Detectives webzine in 1999 and most recently in Thrillers, Killers, 'n Chillers in a story called "The Dog Returneth to His Vomit." Most of his stories are set between Cleveland and Youngstown, although Haftmann's office is in fictionalized Geneva-on-the-Lake. Other stories can be found online at sites such as A Twist of Noir, Sex and Murder Magazine, Yellow Mama, and Flash Fiction Offensive.

 

 

Josh Woods, Breese, IL. In addition to The Book of Villains, Josh Woods is Editor of The Versus Anthology (Press 53, 2009) and Associate Editor of the fiction anthology Surreal South '09 (Press 53, 2009). He was also an Assistant Editor of Crab Orchard Review (vol.14 n.1, and vol.14 n.2, 2008 and 2009). His fiction has won in the Press 53 Open Awards, and his work has appeared in the fiction anthology XX Eccentric: Stories About the Eccentricities of Women (Main Street Rag, 2009) as well as The Press 53 Open Awards Anthology (Press 53, 2008) and The Susquehanna Review (vol. 1, 2001). He has contributed fiction to The Versus Anthology (Press 53, 2009) and to Surreal South '09 (Press 53, 2009). He graduated from the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Kaskaskia College in Illinois.

 

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