Robert Creekmore & Prophet’s Lamentation (Part 1)

Rasta
Hello cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be welcome to The Writers Triangle, Cinnabar Moth’s podcast about all things publishing and books. Today we are here with Robert Creekmore authors of the Prophet’s Death trilogy. Book 2, Prophet’s Lamentation, is our July release. Robert, how are you doing today?

Rasta
Yeah, I made a bit of a mistake there as well, because death and debt are so close. And, you know, we we have talked about Prophet’s debt as well. So it’s just kind of on the mind a little bit.

Robert
Most Excellent, sir. Most Excellent. It’s a prop. That’s the thing, Prophet’s Debt trilogy. And having having books with similar names, it’s really easy to get them mixed up. I do it myself all the time. I start talking about one book and I’m like, oh, no, it’s it’s that’s Sorry. It’s named this. And so, you know, got this trilogy of books, its Prophet’s debt, Prophet’s lamentation, Prophet’s death. And it’s all a big mouthful. So I just call it a Prophet’s death series.

Robert
Oh, no, totally, like, Don’t Don’t, don’t feel bad. That’s like, I do it. I do it all the time. Talking about it and writing about it, I have written emails about a book, and the entire emails we talking about this book, but using the wrong name. And I think that kind of plays into when you have a trilogy, and you’ve lived in this world for so long. You, it all starts kind of running together. Because while I trilogy is three books, it’s really, to me one big story, you know, because it all lives in my head because it all comes out of my head. And there’s no delineation between last page of the book before and the first page of the next book, it’s to me all one big book.

Rasta
Yeah, I think when you write a world, right, and he write these stories in that world, and your mind is just, this is the story of these characters from this point to this point. And then, you know, just because of how books work, you have to kind of cut it up a little bit. But that’s just to give it to other people to experience by in your head. It’s, it goes from A all the way to the end it as z and there’s no stops between them.

Robert
It is and to me, though, you know, I was thinking about this the other day, in my opinion, stories never really in. There’s, there’s no real happy ending, and everybody rides off into the sunset. It’s, it’s never really, really like that in real life. You still have to wake up the next day, and go to work or whatever it is, you do just exist. And, you know, in love stories, it to me, it’s always kind of silly when it’s like and they lived happily ever after. You know, I’m like, well, now they probably gotten an argument a week later, you know, then then had marriage counseling. And, yeah, like, the vicissitudes of life they happen. And so you know, you have when you write a book, you have to put those in there and make it realistic. And I never really think about my story in characters might N characters might die, but the story continues on just like when I die, the world won’t. Hello will keep going on it. So I feel like my universe goes on until I end. And then in my head, I think about what would those characters do? What will they do? Will I ever write that? I don’t know. Yeah. We’ll see. I never know until the voice is telling me to write something.

Rasta
I think that’s a very good point is that these stories are, you know, living in our minds, right. And so with the upcoming book, the second book in the series, Prophet’s segmentation, you’re continuing on taking the readers on this journey that you’ve already experienced in your own mind. And are you feeling excited about the release of the second book in the series and the journey that you’re taking people on with Naomi and her chosen family?

Robert
Of course, of course, I’m always happy to offer up a sacrifice to them to the readers and go okay. Be gentle. Take my characters to take my my, my creation and enjoy it. And so I always feel that way, even if I’m writing a short story and handing it to My friend, and it never goes anywhere else. You know, I’m excited to bring that that character to life, you know, and when you write, and you get really, really into it, you know, and you write every day, and I tend to write almost every single day I sit down and schedule, you start at the beginning thinking, what would my character do? Okay, I take this character I make, these are their personality traits. And I put them in a situation where they, after you’ve characters long enough, the same character, you start having this weird kind of premonitions where they start becoming kind of Realty. And you start thinking, I wonder what my character is doing right now. And you have to stop yourself and know, you know, they’re not real. I mean, but you made, maybe they are, they’re part of who you are. They’re part of who you are. So you know, what would you think they would be doing right now? But that’s kind of that’s kind of the creative process to make something real. It has to become real to you.

Rasta
Then do you think that there is a certain level of realness that has to be involved in it because you’re trying to write off, in essence, authentic stories, right? Even if it’s fiction, there still has to be that kind of that layer of reality to ground people in the story and to make it something that they can connect to and bond to? And one of the best ways to do doing that? If not, the best way is to have your characters feel genuinely human. If they’re if they’re human, you know,

Robert
Even then, sentience is sentience.

Rasta
Right.

Robert
So, you know, the possibility of life that isn’t human. Is sentience. I think counts up there as well. You’re aliens or you’re very intelligent animals, like your cetaceans or something like that. They, they I think they qualified to some degree in that, that area. AI and not in the chat GPT type aI mean, like literal, self aware, holy crap, I hope they don’t kill us type AI. Is there’s personhood to that too. I mean, once we actually get there, I don’t know if I want to, but I don’t have any say so. So I just had to deal with what what gets dealt to the world just like everybody else. But there’s, the thing is like, okay, so you can have all these characters, like, my character has supernatural abilities. And that’s obviously not real. But it’s not about that it’s a vehicle to understand the human experience, condition and relationship between human beings. It’s in a lot of times, the books are, are really just that they are about the people and their conversations, and their conversations about the things that happen, not necessarily about what happens at all, because their entire books were that are just completely conversational. Freeny is what comes to mind. The entire books, conversation. You know, nothing really happens. But it’s one of the one of the most beloved books of the 20th century.

Rasta
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I do feel that your writing as well has that sense of, you know, the conversations and the experiences of these people in these situations. And, you know, those, those the the magical powers and things that are supernatural in their way that wouldn’t be real, and in our world, but those are less the focus then the journey that Naomi is taking, right? And so for, for those of us who haven’t read Prophet’s Debt, Book One, could you give us a bit of a summary of that so people can understand kind of the first leg of Naomi’s journey?

Robert
Well, first things first things first, how detailed because if you’re not familiar with my work, I have had someone more than one person who are a fan of the first book, they’ve told me that they vomited. When they read the book. One person was like I reached out was vomited. So the details of the book are fairly graphic how, you know, how detailed Do you want me to get?

Rasta
I think for this, maybe we could just give them a general summary and we can let them experience the details. It when if slash when, they choose to read it and really experience for themselves. I think that those types of those things, when they’re brought together in your writing have a really profound effect that I think might get lost if we just give them a summary version of it. Right?

Robert
That and I have actually leaned away from reading things like that aloud to people because I feel like on the page is one thing, out of my mouth is almost aggressive and terrified of so I’ll bring you up to speed with Naomi. Prophet’s Debt, which is book 119 94, Naomi is, excuse me, 1993. Naomi is 14 years old, because I’m mixing up the numbers three and four. In 1993. Naomi is 14 years old. In first grade, she met Tiffany, her and Tiffany have gone to school together, they’re best friends, both kind of outcasts, more Tiffany than Naomi, because they only it’s always been very tall and strong, and you don’t really want to fuck with her. Even in you know, fifth grade, she probably kick your ass. So she’s kind of what I would describe as the bullies bully, you know, who kind of kind of person who sticks up for the kid who gets picked on. And so let they’re both very intelligent. And I would call them gifted, both of them are fairly intellectually gifted and have no interest in in the kind of sports and mainstream things which is fine. If you’re into sports, football, whatever, that’s there’s nothing wrong with that it comes into play being a problem is when other people expect you to get into it and then find it a novelist that you’re not into it and get the art done. So they spent a lot of time together, reading, going fishing and doing all the country girl things that we do around here in North Carolina. And eventually they figured out they’re not just friends, they are in fact in love. And they have physical feelings for one another. And in August of 1993, I believe it’s the 12 the Perseid meteor shower peaks. And they’re both very interested in science specifically, they only Tiffany is more of a literature person. They go to a park to watch the meteor shower. They kiss for the first time. And first time any of them have really felt anything beyond just yeah, there’s a physical manifestation of love, anything beyond just just camaraderie and affection, but physical love. And the sister of Tiffany catches them and completely goes berserk and starts hurting. Tiffany because she’s trying to drag her away. And Naomi has always been very protective of Stephanie has been short stature her entire life. And she grabs the the costing sisters arm and tells her to stop and start twisting her arm. And she’s surprised because she’s forgotten just because they always younger, that hurts not bigger and stronger. And she does. But because she is who she is. And because the costing sister has been horrible to Tiffany her entire life. Naomi breaks her arm anyway. And after that they go on the run, but it’s not long before they’re caught by Tiffany’s parents. And they always parents, Tiffany’s dad beats her until she’s unconscious. And she never sees Tiffany. Well, I won’t say again. But she doesn’t see Tiffany again for a very, very, very long time. Years and years. She is taken home, chained to a bed and her parents go off somewhere. She doesn’t know where that is. That she’s left there with the pastor and the pastor’s wife. And she is completely a prisoner made to the point of having to use a hospital toilet beside the bed with one arm chained to it because they are afraid she’s gonna escape and they’re all kind of in this very dogmatic, almost cults type religion that I’ve kind of molded on Christian evangelicalism especially the evangelicalism that I knew back in the day if say, like Jesse Helms, which would have been this time if you don’t know who he is, he’s a terrible person, you should look him up. Anyhow. She is set away with this Man and burnin Prophet’s to a camp. It’s a it’s a school in the remote Appalachian mountains called solid rock. And she’s supposed to be there to be converted to straight. Of course, we all know about the prey to Gateway bullshit camps that, you know, there are still in existence in this country. So, really, really bad things happen to her sexual assault, right? Those kinds of things.

Robert
She meets a young man there named Charles Charles is autistic. He’s there because of something someone else did to him. His youth pastor Ray Tim. Charles is asexual. He’s autistic and asexual. And he’s just different. And that’s his crime. That is it. They they just as long as you don’t conform, as long as your gender identity, or, you know, is kind of ambiguous to them. Because for him, he’s really he just doesn’t care. Then automatically he’s, you know, bad. He’s aberrant. He’s an abomination. Right? Well, they exactly. They become friends. something even worse happens to Naomi, she becomes catatonic. She’s severely injured. And he takes care of her for a long time. Eventually, one day, the pastor who likes raping little boys, specifically, Charles, because he’s going to cure him of it and get the sin out that he wants. Like he’s, they call it get the sin out. Because they feel like oh, well, you know, he just has to ask for forgiveness from God. And it’ll teach this, this boy not to be homosexual. Because obviously, it’s bad. And see, I read to you how bad it is to be gay. Like as if that is the same thing is loving, sexual relationship. There’s just caught up in the physical, you know, act and they can’t understand love. And all that way how when he’s trying to do that Naomi comes to this has been to a certain degree, and completely beats the shit out of this guy. Well, they had known beforehand that they had to get away. But there’s no way they could get out of the house and get away from the county because county is completely isolated and controlled by solid rock. I mean, they’re essentially the police force. They are the government. And Vernon prophet is the de facto leader and demigod of Yancey County, North Carolina, which is a real place and a lovely place. This is all fixed. Anyhow. The what they need is they want guns because I have no other way of fighting against these much larger people. Even though Naomi’s large. She’s still a teenager. And so she’s not as strong and they have guns, you know, because they’re muddy and they they’re they’re preparing for a holy war.

Robert
So they’re all walking around strapped, and there’s a safe in the room of the pastor who’s keeping them or the the demagogue, demigod Vernon Prophet’s, there’s a safe in his bedroom, a break into his bedroom. Because they have actually been living in his house because he wants them. He wants to be directly over them because they’re not really there to be converted. They’re there to die and to be tortured before they die because that’s what he’s all about. It’s he’s a child predator, and he’s come up with a way to legitimize and to be fed children to play it on until he throws them away. There’s a safe in there. Charles has overheard the pastor, the cult leader, telling the man who is his rapist, the combination and how to do it and he has an eidetic memories. You know, which is something a lot of autistic people. I’m autistic. I wish I had an eidetic memory, but a lot of us do have and he recalls it to her and the safe doesn’t have guns in it. What it has, there’s a manhole cover in the bottom and then they they use a tool they lift that manhole cover up. There’s an entire tunnel down there as staircase and when they get down there There’s a room full of weapons of war M16, grenades, MRE’s which are you know heat andfood for military use water survival stuff, insane level of illegal firearm. They get back upstairs the man that had tried to hurt Charles has reaches out as he walked by cuts the inside of his leg severing his femoral artery as they go down to try to get out. They he’s bleeding, he doesn’t realize how bad he is. Well, they find another door because this room is lit room filled into a cavern with concrete and has fluorescent lights the whole deal. There’s an armored door on the other side of this being held shut with a four by four piece of wood. And so they take the four by four piece of wood they open it up, Shine a flashlight down this gorgeous cavern and a is with stalactites coming down from the ceiling water dripping down from the ceiling, just like marvelous li like translucent water and sparkling granite pieces in the Select sites.

Robert
I’ve been in caves like that that’s that’s based on real experience. We lived in those in this area for years and Kevin neillsville made the hundreds where a lot of this these ideas came from. So it’s it’s a real experience for me. And as they’re walking out, Charles falls dead. And there’s nothing she could do about it. So now she’s in this Katherine, on the upside where she just came from she starts hearing people coming after. So she’s got a run and there’s only one way she can run. That’s into the cafe. And they catch up with her. And a scuffle ensues, see, she ends up shooting the pasture, but not completely, incapacitating him like he doesn’t kill him. She blinds him because she hits pieces flashlight ends up lodged in his eye and she shoots him through the femur and completely disabling him. But he has a whole party of fanatics chasing after through your through to the cabin. She goes and runs and she gets to a dead end. And up until this point in the book, there have been no supernatural themes. Suddenly, there’s this there’s just published and she thinks she’s at a dead end. And what she doesn’t realize is that puddle is an underground aquifer. And it leads to this deep underground cave of ice cold mountain water. And she’s afraid to go in because she’ll drown. I mean, it’s like, there’s no air and air come up and he’s just hitting rock. Suddenly, she turns around and there’s this giant creature is hairy, tall creatures that doesn’t talk pushes her into the water. And she struggles and almost drowns and drops the gun to us completely blind now because it had a flashlight on the end of it ends up coming up through this small hole into another cabin. In this cabin. It’s like a sarcophagus there are bare bones buried girls in these little hole, like cubbies, right? And they’re in different states of decay.

Robert
They’re his former victims, which makes her realize that there’s another way out of this case she’s in not just the way she came in through the water. But there’s another hole in there she goes and searches in the dark, finds this other entrance goes under comes out into the night in the mountains, overlooking a field that she soon realizes is a golf course. She’s exhausted, she’s freezing, she makes a run for it starts climbing up the back trails of the mountains and like the back back trails of mountain Mitchell, which is the black mountains, huge mountain range. And she gets really tired. The creature helps her she survived the night. And she ends up at the back door of this couple trying to eat the cabbage out of their their garden. And she’s she’s afraid of everybody up here because everybody’s involved with it. And when they confront her, she tries to run, trust it she can’t she falls over the fence trying to jump the fence and they take her in and they’re kind of couple and I wanted to make them a Christian couple because I think a lot of people think well my books are just as anti Christian, that’s not the case. The fact that people in the book are the kindest people are there a couple who’s been ostracized by this church, because the church wants the leader to be Vernon Prophet. They want their prophecy to be the ultimate word of Christianity in the region. And these folks are very much kind of like Quakers. I don’t specifically say they’re Quakers, but they are based on a Quaker couple. They raised her for a couple of years, teaching her, you know, academics, but them have brilliant people, she learns to hunt and to find food and all this stuff living this remote Kevin, they can’t leave because their daughter was killed by the same man, Vernon Prophet’s, and he has basically blackmailed them by creating false evidence of them doing them having child porn, because he has some and he basically made them touch it, and now their fingerprints are on it. There’s a long story, I can’t go into that, because I’ve already gone too long.

Robert
Anyway, they show up, they, they kill them. And she escapes into the woods ends up hitchhiking with a couple of guys who are hot salesmen, they sell weed, and they end up getting run down by some, like, local want to be hillbilly gangsters, and she saves them from them. And then she ends up back out in the wide world. But back in the white world, she can’t be her own identity because she’s supposedly dead. Because the church said lon, she died when she escaped. What she has is the daughter’s identity from the Quaker couple that was given to them by by them. And so she creates a false identity, masquerading as the daughter goes to school quiet life for quite some time. Eventually, you know, she starts to feel guilty, because she knows that he’s out there still doing what he’s doing. And she starts to wonder really is the Mara, who’s the large hairy creature? Is it? Is it real? Is it not real, she’s not sure, because she was a starving child, she has no idea. And she begins making plans on taking down solid rock. And one by one, she starts picking these people off and killing them in extremely creative and painful ways. until she finally gets diverted Prophet’s and finally puts him not in the ground. Specifically, you have to find out where she puts them. But right before that happens, you find out that she has reconnected with Tiffany because she took her private, she had to get together a private investigator to to search her out because Tiffany, her entire story.

Robert
Of course, I’ll tell later why she ended up homeless and working as a sex worker in drug addiction. Because that was the life that she was basically forced into this. She’s trying to kill the pain with heroin. She’s trying to make money doing sex work, and she’s living where she can. And horrible things are happening to her man we find times or breaks into this, this like flophouse is what I call it, where she’s strung out with all these other people, picks her up and takes her home, helps her get off. And they dump his body. And there’s a supernatural event that allows her to basically take control of the power that the character that I call Mario’s large, hairy creature has and carried that forward. And that’s the end of the book. And I know that was probably a lot. And I you know, it’s hard to kind of summarize your own work because I want to talk about it for 10 hours because I can give you a little detail. So hopefully that wasn’t too much.

Rasta
Oh, no, it was It wasa nice length. And I think that you cover a lot of the it gives a good catching up for people who don’t have an exposure to the book who haven’t read it yet. to kind of get a sense of the flow of the story and it puts in perspective, Naomi’s experience as someone who is Put into very hard and painful and violent experiences and persevere through them survives through all of these dangers and has revenge on the mind right and accept revenge but also has someone that she cares for that she she loves and seeks out to take care of and to protect

Robert
I think that the story is way better told in the book than me telling you it that way also she gives Nazis The only thing Nazis deserve and that’s death. I forgot to mention the Nazis sorry, I love a dead Nazi in a book. I mean, fuck them. I don’t care. So you know, that kind of recurring? Yeah, let’s say a recurring theme. But it definitely has been a theme in this book and has been famous on my other work that’s not published so. So I forgot that did not support.

Rasta
Can’t forget about the dead Nazi Part.

Robert
Of course, now, I, I don’t really want to ruin it. But the book is so worth read. Because it does give you the preload of why Naomi is the way she is at the beginning of Prophet’s Lamentation. So Prophet’s, lamentation, I wrote as a standalone sequel, which I assume that’s a thing if it’s not been, I’m taking credit for it. But because Prophet’s debt, the first book is so graphic. And I mean, it has depictions of rape, in molestation and genital mutilation. Right. So it’s not something that everybody can read. I think it’s important because these things really happen. And you should, you know, you should be, it should be talked about. Now, they started out enough. I kind of give you the back that there’s the way the book starts. You don’t have to have her full background, she, she goes over the you know, and it gives it to you, as you need it. With without it being so jarring and disturbing. Because the situation she finds herself in is not separate from that last situation. But separate enough that it is its own store.

Rasta
Yeah, I definitely do think that Naomi is in a very different place in Prophet’s Lamentation, than she was in Prophet’s Debt. And, you know, that’s part of the nature of, you know, the journey that she took to get to where she was at the end of Prophet’s that as well. But I do think that the starter Prophet’s segmentation has now made being a little bit more of kind of what I think of as a sort of reluctant reluctant here where she has a struggle with taking up that mantle. That’s kind of how I view it. Would you agree that’s that characterization of Naomi has been in Prophet’s Lamentation?

Robert
Yes. Yes. And no, because at this point, she doesn’t. She’s not sure that there’s anything left to do what she is, is like someone who’s just who came off the battlefield. And the only life she’s known from the time she’s 14 is fighting and, and trying to survive. You know, in the first few lines of the book, say carer and theory molded me for 11 years. And she doesn’t know how to create a normal life for herself. And she feels agitated and unsure and has all this nervous energy leftover, even though her task has been complete. And she’s starts drinking pretty regularly and heavily and while she’s not an abusive spouse, by any stretch, she’s abusive to her own self, and she hates her own self, and she doesn’t feel guilty about killing those people. But she doesn’t know who else to be. Because that is who she was for. So long as she’s very much struggling with her own identity. So when things do happen, she is reluctant for a little bit. But when she has a purpose, again, that involves what she does best, which is killing these motherfuckers. Then she comes back online, and really starts to become herself again.

Robert
So I think she’s more of a war torn hero with no direction. And, but you’re right, momentarily reluctant. Until you know it, what has to be done has to be done. And I’ve done that reading. So I’ll tell you the part. And then other a lot of reason man was different, too, is the story starts in 1993. And I picked up it ends in the first book in 2004. So 11 years pass. And there’s two years where Naomi and Tiffany are married. Are they in Massachusetts, and they’re in North Carolina says, At that time, not a valid marriage, but we all know that changes later on. And their, their living and they’ve done financially well, they stole a whole lot of money from this fucking Nazis. It is they were anyway, you’ll find out later fucking but anyhow. They, they go to a nightclub called spectrum. And Downtown Wilmington, which is the only gay friendly nightclub. And when we think it’s not real, I base it off of another nightclub. I’m not gonna give you the name, but I used to go there a bunch. And there’s a bar next door that’s populated by a lot of Marines called the helm. And at this time in my life going down there, there was a lot of problems with these Marines coming from Jacksonville. Of course, most of them are not a problem. I don’t want everyone to think I’m saying all Marines. So why is my dad’s a Marine. But these guys are young, stupid, because they’re 20 years old. I was 20 years old one time and I had literally no sense. Strong fit young men who go out and shoot Chase women, sometimes literally.

Robert
And when that kind of didn’t work out, I have been witness to and tried to stop gay bashing. And those things happen on a regular basis. In fact, I base the claw character off of a young man no who beat the fucking brakes off of this marine and up in the parking lot of this nightclub. And he’s this little guys like five foot six Marines, like six feet tall. And he just pummeled him in this parking lot for trying to hurt him for being a gay man. Call him all sorts of names that I won’t repeat. And I was very impressed as you might imagine. So he wound up in the book that’s actually his neck. Claude is his actual name. I just don’t use his last name. So Naomi stops the gay bashing. And because I was trying to hurt Claude behind behind spectrum and when this occurs, she’s trying not to use her abilities.

Robert
And one of the men is really large. And inevitably, she has to and what she does opens up a she opens up a portal to this place this horrifying place that she’s not suit she’s she’s seen in her dreams but didn’t know is real or not. Kicks this man through. And he lands there and is giant creature. Or it’s like a translucent skin with indigo color blood running through his veins. And like, oblong, plump body with long limbs with like spear tip limbs and claws and they’re like three feet long and black and he has human like teeth in the top of his mouth, but nothing below no lower jaw justice. Flappy dark bullet and no eyes is black holes.

Rasta
Right.

Robert
Screams comes by picks him up, runs off with him into the woods, as the other Marines watching the portal closes, and that guy’s fucking gone. So there’s this whole, like, What the hell is this? Where is this place? Holy shit, this is actually real moment for her. And that’s when it snapped. And she’s like, You know what, motherfuckers I’m back. And I’m gonna be Naomi. And she is for 300 pages. You know it to me, like when I describe this book, as is like 95% less suffering 200% more ass kicking. Because a lot of the first book 100 And some pages, it’s really rough, horrible things happened her She’s a little girl, she’s helped us. Now she is in, you know, in peak form, and ready to take care of people who are out to hurt the weak, because she used to be the weak. And now she is preys upon those who prey upon the weak.

Rasta
I’d like to thank you for talking with me today and for being on the Writers Triangle. And I’m really excited for the release of Prophet’s Lamentation. I know your fans are too. And so thank you for coming on.

Robert
Thank you for having me, Rasta.

Rasta
And to everybody listening, you know, thanks. Thank you to all of our beautiful moths for checking in tuning into the Writers Triangle. Be sure to buy Prophet’s Lamentation available everywhere books are sold coming out this upcoming Tuesday. Real quick. Rob, can you share with everybody where they can find you as far as social media?

Robert
I lost my first Twitter account. Because I told Elon Musk, that The Matrix was a trans allegory and didn’t belong to him. And so now I have a new one is author Creekmore. So like, like a novelist, author Creekmore. On, on, on Twitter. All one word AuthorCreekmore.

Rasta
Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much for coming on. And thank you, everybody, for listening. Be sure to visit cinnabar moth.com to check out the transcripts or also the links to Rob’s Twitter and for the links to Prophet’s Lamentation and Prophet’s Debt. Once again, Rob, thank you for coming on today. It’s been wonderful having you.

Robert
Thank you for having me.

Rasta
Bye-bye