"Finders Keepers" by Stephen King - Book Review - Mr. Mercedes Trilogy

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Before noting a couple of negatives about this book, I will declare first that overall I enjoyed it—quite a lot, actually, and perhaps even more than Mr. Mercedes. However, it was not without its issues.

I do not know whether I am becoming more attentive to (and critical of) plot patterns as I get older and mature as a reader, or whether Stephen King is merely simplifying his narratives as he gets older, but this book had some happenstances that were just a little too convenient to be believable (yes, even barring the suspension of disbelief that ought to be employed when reading King). What bothers me is when a character and their story are established as a stand-alone entity (I'm talking about Morris Bellamy in this case), but then are plugged into a preexisting plot in such a way that everything falls into place a little too perfectly. Somehow it feels like lazy writing, or like combining two things that don't necessarily belong, but shaping the narrative in such a way that forces them to belong. Perhaps that is always the nature of sequels to some degree, but it was prominent enough in Finders Keepers to be a tad irksome. I do not expect that all readers will notice (or be bothered by) this angle.

Stephen King does seem to be parring down the length of his books in the past few years (I'm thinking of Revival, Mr. Mercedes, and Doctor Sleep, primarily), allowing stories to glide forward at a steady pace rather than let them breathe and grow incrementally. IT, Insomnia, 11/22/63, Pet Sematary, and Under the Dome, to name a few, took their time allowing the reader to “hang out” with the characters for a while in situations that were at times inconsequential but almost always enriching to the story overall because they brought those people to life. This is not necessarily a criticism, King is still churning out exciting and original work in his mid-sixties, after all, but I have taken note over the past few releases that this quicker pace has become somewhat of a pattern.

That said, the first two-thirds of Finders Keepers were riveting (as was the third, in a different way). I consumed this book in just a few lengthy reading sessions and couldn't help but think the whole time that it could have easily been its own stand-alone book, disconnected from the Detective Bill Hodges trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes. However, there was a sensation of inner glee once Hodges does make his first appearance in the book, a bangin' scene that reintroduces the man at the top of his P.I. game, reminding me of who this character is and why I loved him in the first book. Holly and Jerome return as well, of course, completing the trio of investigating misfits who happen to have an off-kilter talent for sleuthing.

What is rather odd about Finders Keepers is that Hodges, Jerome, and Holly are almost the most insignificant element of the story, even though their characters are what spawned this sequel in the first place. They do have some key involvement towards the end of the book, and the quirkiness of the three of them interacting together makes their presence enjoyable no matter what, but the main bulk of the novel focuses on the madman Morris Bellamy, a boy named Pete Saubers, and the fictional author John Rothstein, whose work ties their fates together in a complicated fashion. As I mentioned, the entire book could have been about Bellamy and Saubers, and would have been no less engaging for it.

Book lovers in particular will find a little something extra to enjoy about this plot, as it deals heavily with literature, its value, and the profound affect a book or series can have on a passionate reader.

In all, this is essentially what one might expect from a sequel to Mr. Mercedes, but that is not to say it wasn't a fun read with enjoyable faces both new and familiar. I will say that the ending particularly delighted me, and for obvious reasons I won't mention why here. Let's just say that book three of the Hodges trilogy ought to get pretty damn exciting.

-D.G.

"The Martian" Andy Weir - Book Review

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Plenty well enough has been said about this story (and its pending film) already. By the time I received the book for Christmas in 2014 (at which time I had never heard of it), it was already quite a phenomenon. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts anyway.

First of all, the publishing history of how this book came to be in its current form is an interesting story itself. This can be heard firsthand by Andy Weir over at the Inquiring Minds podcast—great interview, too. I must confess, I love to hear these “success stories” from indie authors who simply write something because it brings them joy, then they gain an online following that they weren't even trying for, then end up releasing something to universal acclaim. Hugh Howey comes to mind.

As to the quality of the writing in The Martian, it leaves a bit to be desired. Without meaning to sound condescending, it reads exactly like it what it is: a fictional narrative written by an engineer who could out-quiz the lot of us under the table. It is clunky in places, corny in even more places, and much of the character dialogue consists of typical, familiar tropes. Despite these things, Weir manages to pull off what is ultimately a well-paced and -developed plot, even if his phrasing is nothing original and his characters are fairly cookie-cutter apart from Mark Watney himself.

Watney is, for the most part, an enjoyable character (if corny at times), and I think he probably had to be a fun character for all the lengthy passages of oration detailing mathematical and scientific processes. Were he flat, many readers would probably give up by Page 20. Reviewers have praised the humor in this book, although to my ear it came off as eye-rollingly bad in places, chock-full of the worst pun-fodder your dad could ever come up with. But at least the author was breaking up the monotony that could have come from so many explanatory sections describing Watney's many survival tasks. Also, it will be interesting to see how much of the humor makes it into Ridley Scott's film, as Matt Damon may be just the actor who can pull off the sort of deadpan delivery to make such cheesy lines believable.

I found the most intriguing part of the book to be the lengthy descriptions of Mark's farming, repairing the HAB, regenerating water for himself, and all the hundreds of other things he must do to survive on Mars. From reading other reviews, I believe I am in the majority with this opinion. To the layman (referring to myself here), there is something so utterly foreign and fascinating about these space and physics concepts that Watney encounters, and it is even more mind-blowing to recognize that there are thousands of people working on these very things every day. The mark of Weir's writing talent comes through in that he was able to explain extremely complicated processes in such a straightforward, easy-to-follow way. And, goodness sakes, do some of them sound exhausting. There is a reason only a select few out of billions were ever destined to become astronauts.

In all, The Martian was an enjoyable read, even if it is not necessarily great literature (and granted, it has never claimed to be). What you'll get is a fast-moving space thriller surrounding a nugget of scientific research that is entertaining and—so the experts say—pretty close to accurate (or as close to it as Weir could get).

-D.G.

Flight of the Blue Falcon - Jonathan Raab

Flight of the Blue Falcon will be released July 1, 2015 through The War Writer's Campaign. Pre-order it now from Amazon.com at this link.

I am not the sort of person who would normally read a novel about war, the army, American politics, etc. Those things do not interest me, nor have I ever cared to know much about them. However, this book is, at its heart, about none of those things—not really—but rather about people (three men, to be precise) in the midst of absurd, yet nonetheless true circumstances going on in our modern day military.

The author is a friend, and there is inevitably a loaded quality that goes along with reading a friend's work. There is a desire to view the book objectively and be fair, but be honest at the same time. This book has its issues and probably could have been shortened a good deal, but still I found myself getting lost in the experiences of the characters and the intimate individual moments of certain chapters. At times, the quality of Raab's writing took over and suddenly it was as if I was right there in the dust next to Private Rench, Staff Sergeant Halderman, and Second Lieutenant Gracie. He has a talent both for environmental detail and the occasional straight to the heart sort of honesty about the human experience that often took me by surprise.

Flight of the Blue Falcon has an overarching thread, but is structured in an episodic manner, jumping between the three main characters' perspectives, and each chapter serving almost as its own stand-alone slice of life. This works both to the book's favor and sometimes to its detriment. While some chapters are fascinating for the unbelievable events they describe or interesting because of the depth of their human emotional charge, others tend to drag. That said, there were more than a few that left me dumbfounded and authentically moved. This book has both comedy and tragedy, and often those polar qualities are interwoven with each other.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this novel is the account of the war experience itself. As the rear cover of the book boldly states, “WAR IS STUPID,” and as this story shows us, it most certainly is. What is most impressive about this theme is the way Raab is able to present it with a completely apolitical stance. Flight of the Blue Falcon is neither preachy nor shoving the values of one political party in our faces under the false guise of “Literature,” it is merely presenting to the reader what really goes on (from the author's firsthand experience, by the way).

There were things in this book that shocked me and made me shake my head, both in disgust and in despair. And it is these mindless, insane, don't-ask-just-do-it circumstances through which the three protagonists of the novel must trudge. They are angry, confused, floating along through the hot, dusty days, often with uncertain purpose for why they are there at all. They are soldiers, and yet even more-so, they are just regular guys, doing what any of us would do in their boots: try to keep it together for another day.

I imagine that those who have served our military may find this book especially enjoyable; cathartic, in a way, and oddly comforting. Raab calls out the B.S. of the current military system, a broken machine that countless Americans have no doubt endured. The reader comes out the other end feeling chewed-up, spit out, and disoriented right along with the main characters, unsure of what they just did or whether it had any real purpose, yet also somehow glad for having made the journey.

Flight of the Blue Falcon is set to release July 1, 2015 through The War Writer's Campaign. Pre-order it now from Amazon at this link.

-D.G.

"The Sound and the Fury" William Faulkner - Book Review

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I had been meaning to read this book for ten years, and it took me three tries to finally do so.

My first attempt was in early high school around age sixteen—by choice, not as an AP English class requirement as some probably had it forced upon them—and while at the time I found the first section (Benjy's narrative) to be riveting and beautiful, I was probably too young and immature to appreciate the notoriously challenging second section which involves Quentin's stream-of-consciousness college experience. I got burnt out on this section and moved on.

The second time around was roughly a year ago, only a few days after my daughter was born—NEWSFLASH: wrong time to read a novel that requires significant focus. Again, loved the first part, became overwhelmed by section two.

A few weeks back—older, (maybe) wiser, and equipped with some meager level of higher reading comprehension—I picked it up again and found myself captivated, flying through it. There are not many books to which I would give three chances. One shot, maybe two, is normally sufficient for me to know if I'm going to like something or not. Granted, in this case the issue was not a question of the book being good or bad, but me not being in the right time of life and mindset to handle it well. And that first section kept me coming back. If you've not read the book, it's really something special.

At its heart, The Sound and the Fury is the story of people; some of them despicable, some of them tragic and painfully sad, but all of them vividly real. The only other author I have read whose characters seem to have actual heartbeats is John Steinbeck, and of course he and Faulkner both made the process of writing authentic humans seem effortless. The dialogue comes easy and often seems irrelevant (though rarely is when it comes to Faulkner), but the beauty is in the way it rolls along in the natural and imperfect way that we actually speak.

Faulkner was writing in an era when use of the N-word was rampant (used mostly by the more wretched White characters in this case and framed in a clearly negative, derogatory context) and he frequently uses phonetics in his characters' dialogue, but from this perspective, roughly 85 years since it was published, these elements give a richer and perhaps more accurate presentation of the time, terrible and racist though it was. He writes the 1910's and 20's of the South with all its yellow dusty grit and shabbiness while keeping the sad and depraved attitudes of men of the era on display.

The story of the decline of the once-prosperous Compson family is told through four main voices (and perhaps a few others that sneak in from time to time); Benjamin, or Benjy, the mentally disabled man who is the youngest of the four Compson siblings; Quentin, the tortured and melancholy second-oldest attending Harvard; Jason Compson III—an absolute bastard—the oldest male and inheritor or his dead father's household; and Dilsey, the aging black female servant to the Compsons who also raised the children.

The narrative jumps between a number of different unspecified timelines, often with no warning except that some of these switches are in italic font. Each of the four main narrators can be unreliable, as they are presenting certain events from their own perspective and (possibly skewed) memory. Bits and pieces of others' dialogue cut in, sometimes dropping the reader in the middle of a sentence, and it is not always immediately clear who is speaking, or to whom. I personally found that the best method for reading this novel was to not get too caught up in trying to figure out what was what or keep it all in my head from these convoluted passages, but simply to keep moving forward and eventually context or further revealed information brings clarity to what is happening on the whole. This process is fascinating and infuriating at once, but I must say it makes for a unique reading experience.

This book is brimming with wordplay, double meanings, and irony, and I guarantee I only picked up on a small fraction of all that is probably there to be found. Faulkner's mastery as an author is on full display, and it is a wonder how a person could write a novel of this scope and complication without getting twisted up in their mind and going crazy. But again, it isn't worth reading just because it is a unique literary challenge, the strength of the novel is clearest in the realness of the characters.

This is already a modern classic, so you should hardly need my recommendation. There is incredible value and insight to be taken from some of these "older" books. So take the time, make the effort, read some Faulkner. I think you'll come out the other end enlightened.

-D.G.

"Gateways to Abomination" Matthew M. Bartlett - Book Review

"If it bleeds, it's Leeds."

These days, it's tough to be scary.

We as a culture have become largely desensitized to horror in every form. We've seen the human body creatively mutilated in every possible which-way, witnessed the exorcisms of so many fictional females we can't even keep their names straight anymore, and watched enough knife or chainsaw wielding psychopaths plunge their instruments into flesh to last us a lifetime. Each of these elements of horror (and many others) can certainly be executed well (heh heh), but how many of these movies or books are just a cheap scare, and how many of them are sticking with us for good? How many of them are keeping us up at night, worried about what might make its way through the darkened door of our bedroom? When was the last time you watched or read something that really shook you up?

For me, the answers to these questions would be Matthew M. Bartlett's bizarre collection of loosely-connected flash fiction and short stories, Gateways to Abomination. Never have I encountered so many completely insane ideas in one volume. Bartlett is a madman, and to the benefit of his readers.

It is difficult to articulate exactly what is so captivating about this collection. The stories are brief and written in a minimalist style. They serve more like snapshots of crazy happenings in individuals' lives than drawn out stories with developed characters, though that is not to say any of them feel lazily-crafted or incomplete. Quite the opposite. Every sentence feels intentional and tight.

Bartlett's vocabulary is grisly and consistent in tone, as if each descriptive word was chosen for the express purpose of making the reader as uncomfortable as possible. What struck me was that as gruesome and disturbing as some of the scenes in this book are, they do not feel like cheap-shots for the biggest gross-out; this is not splatterpunk by any means. The scenarios Bartlett comes up with make one feel as if they are getting a peek behind the curtain of the universe, and what is to be found there is nearly enough to break the mind.

As I mentioned, the stories are loosely connected in a thematic sense. They all exist within the same universe (in fact, the same city), characters and locations will show up in numerous stories, and what is the deal with this Ben Stockton fellow? Read it and you'll know what I mean. Between the stories, Uncle Red read's 'To-Day's News,' describing horrific and impossible happenings around the local area. Intermixed into the stories are bizarre radio broadcasts, always from WXXT, coming to you from Leeds, Massachusetts.

While the whole collection is worth reading (though maybe only one or two in a sitting; wouldn't want to lose your mind, after all), the stories that really got my goat were Pharaoh, When I Was A Boy—A Broadcast, The House in the Woods, The Theories of Uncle Jeb, The Leech, and The Arrival Parts I & II.

If you're a fan of horror in any form, do yourself a favor and buy this already. Walk into the woods. Follow the dark figure. Turn up your radio.

-D.G.

"Revival" Stephen King - Book Review

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Revival is the life-spanning story of Jamie Morton and his “fifth business,” Pastor Charles Jacobs (who goes by a number of names throughout the book). The story opens with Jamie as a six year old boy, and closes with him in his late fifties. Pastor Jacobs is a friendly, vibrant young man with a passionate interest in all things electricity who is newly-hired as a preacher in Jamie's small town. While their first interactions are pleasant—even profound—Jamie and Charles run into each other a number of other times (and under vastly different circumstances) throughout the book.

I had some trouble getting interested in this book until roughly 100 pages in when Jamie's music career begins. The childhood portion of his story is in many ways sweet, but feels a bit rushed on the character development. In fact, I would say that this book had a rushed feel about it overall, at least rushed by King's usual standards, as he is so known for lengthy (and excellent) character development in earlier works. Scenes and people breeze past in Revival before the reader gets much of a chance to get a solid feel for them, and something about it feels underdeveloped.

(Mild plot spoilers from this point on:) The strongest section of the book by far is the middle third when Jamie Morton becomes interested in playing guitar, picking up his brother's dusty ax on a whim and finding he is more or less a natural. Once he begins playing with various bands in high school and beyond, there are some great passages lusciously describing the experience of performing live music and all that goes with it: shaky nerves, the thrill of applause, impressing cute girls in the crowd, etc. Jamie primarily plays in cover bands, and King goes to the trouble to mention quite a few specific bands and songs from the fifties and sixties (some nostalgia on his part, no doubt) that they perform, which only adds to the liveliness of these passages. To top this all off, Jamie develops a serious drug problem which makes for a more enthralling read.

The section following Jamie's music career (but before the big climax) is only mildly interesting. Jamie is growing older and acquires a job at a recording studio/ranch in Nederland, Colorado. Jacobs is now a traveling tent revival preacher with nationwide hype. He travels from city to city and apparently “heals” people with his secret and powerful electricity inventions. There are some fun moments here (like the over-the-top charismatic religious language), but the healing reverend concept feels like something we've seen before.

(SEVERE spoilers, this paragraph only:) Some King readers have taken issue with the big finish to Revival, as it was perceived by many to be a rather random left-turn. The idea of a secret, terrifying “behind-the-curtain” world of damnation and slavery for all mankind at the hands (claws?) of ant-like beasts accessed by means of Jacobs' “secret electricity” seemed to some like a bit of a stretch. I admit, there are hardly any indications earlier in the book that it is leading anywhere remotely supernatural (which, granted, preserves the element of surprise), other than the indication that the electrical force Jacobs has tapped into may have some spiritual or otherworldly origins. The ending reminded me somewhat of the ending to Under the Dome, if only for its completely unexpected turn and inexplicable, there-are-things-bigger-than-us-in-the-universe quality. There is also a definite nod to the works and universe of H.P. Lovecraft (of whom King has been a lifelong fan), specifically the mention towards the end of “The Great Ones.”

Personally, I liked the ending, zany though it was. I'm always up for a batshit crazy conclusion. However, this ending almost feels like a random weird conclusion just for the sake of weirdness. The book builds and builds, but it is almost as if King didn't know how to end it in a logical way, so he threw in some Crazy. That's an unfair criticism, I confess. Maybe King had this particular ending in mind the whole time, and the book is simply imbalanced. But again, that is not to say it is, on the whole, bad.

Still, anyone claiming that Revival is 'KING'S TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO TRUE HORROR, WITH THE CLASSIC QUALITY OF HIS EARLIER WORKS!' is just a yes-man or -woman who is going to put five stars on anything the man puts out.

Revival isn't great, but neither is it crap. In my view, a middling King book is still at the same level of quality as a very good book from any other writer. The man is a genius, but even the masters write a dud here and there.

-D.G.

P.S. I did catch a few minor links to The Dark Tower series. There are several mentions of a red race car stenciled on the side with the number 19. Also, I believe the band name Jamie plays with for the longest amount of time, "Chrome Roses," is also a passing reference to TDK universe. 

The Dark Path - David Schickler

“Sometimes I want someone else to see what I see. Other times I want to be the only one.”

I enjoyed this book, although in setting out to write this review, I could not think of where to begin in summarizing it. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is one of the most brutally honest presentations of a “broken” male that I have ever read, an aspect I appreciated very much. David Schickler is fully aware of his own flaws, and shies away from not a single one of them in this memoir centered around his youthful intentions of becoming a priest.

In a world where we hardly need another memoir regarding the emotional issues of a middle-class white male (because what problems have we ever really had?), at least two things stand above the rest and warrant David’s story. First, his character, humor, and up-frontness from the get-go. Within five pages, I liked him and appreciated his childlike observation and imagination. His personality is the perfect blend of shyness and closeted naughty fascinations. Secondly, the quality of Schickler’s writing. This reads like a bright and well-crafted novel, with enough clever anecdotes and deeper-than-surface digressions to keep me saying, again and again, “Damn, this is good.” I flipped back through my copy of the book before writing this and found I had underlined something on nearly every other page, such as:

“I wonder why people my age have to put shit all over their walls that says This is who I am!”

or, in processing his own thoughts, “…your life is a competition between you and the strongest version of yourself, the version God wants you to become.”

In the opening chapter, David describes himself sitting in Sunday Mass as a ten year old, trying to pay attention to the service but getting distracted with daydreaming about the various pretty girls in the pews who might be his future wife. This is a fitting way to open the book, as faith and females are both recurring aspects throughout his story.

From a young age, David has a strong desire to know God, to follow God, to be alone with God and really hear Him, but there is a discord in the relationship that he can’t seem to put his finger on. While his desire for God is sincere, there is a lack of harmony in David’s heart as he wrestles to know what God really wants of him, and how to reconcile following God with his own earthly tendencies (sleeping with women, mostly, but also swearing, dark thoughts, writing fiction about questionable things, etc.).

The book primarily follows David’s journey through college and the years following. The main drama unfolds in his wrestling with whether he is really cut out to be a priest or not, as well as an extremely debilitating handicap that develops in his right leg, and his off-and-on relationship with Mara—a fictional name that represents a real woman in his life.

Underneath these physical elements is a constant “dialogue” between David and God that, at times, grows quite heated (at least on David’s end). His experience with faith and devotion ranges widely (and I can’t help but get the feeling that it probably still does to this day). David is sometimes a devout man of childlike faith who believes without question and seems quite in love with God. Other times, he is openly cursing God, demanding explanation for just what exactly God is doing to him and even goes through a period where he considers God not to be there at all.

It was these passages that made the book for me, as I can deeply resonate with a person so fervently wrestling to believe. If David didn’t care so passionately about knowing God truly, it would not be wrestling at all; it would be a simple decision disconnected from emotion to simply choose to believe or not. The Dark Path seems representative of this new era we have recently morphed into as a culture of people becoming more and more comfortable with being vulnerable, honest, and real, even if it means admitting to flaws in themselves that can be quite difficult to expose.

All of the above might make this sound like a “Christian-y” book; it is not in the least, although people of faith will probably find more to glean. In fact, I think all of the sex, swearing, and borderline-blasphemy contained within would make a majority of Christians squirm (they made me swoon with glee, but that’s another story). Still, whether you believe in God as a Being or not, David is asking good questions in this book—honest, meaningful, human questions to which he is actually trying to discern the answers.

The ending (no spoilers, but then this isn’t really that sort of book) only “kind of” resolves in the sense that David seems to have grown as a person and gotten more comfortable with his own mental and spiritual processes the older he gets. He is still essentially the same person, he’s just gotten slightly more used to himself, the good and “bad” parts alike.

By the end of this book, I very much wished I could just sit down and have coffee—or a few beers—with David and pick his brain, see where he’s at now. My perception is that his wrestle with God will continue and there will be high and low points, but then, that’s not so different from any of our experiences, is it?

-D.G.

The Unsettling Allure of On-Screen Horror

I wrote a new piece for Muzzleland Press regarding unsettling films, on-screen deaths, and the movies that defined for me what was true horror. Read it here!

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On Writing Dark Fiction & Believing in Christ: A Flannery O'Connor-Inspired Rant

I’ve only just started reading Flannery O’Connor’s posthumous book of collected prose, Mystery and Manners, but I have to write this post because she said something that blew me away. In one paragraph (published more than 60 years ago), O’Connor has managed to sum up one of the strongest reasons I feel compelled to write fiction, and she articulated those feelings in a way I had never considered before.

The essay from which I’m drawing is called The Fiction Writer and His Country, and was originally published in 1957 as part of a collection of articles by authors talking about their craft. The quote is this:

“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

I read that, said, “Holy shit,” aloud, then read it again, then read it a third time out loud to my wife. It was an epiphanic moment for me last night, sitting in my little mid-century green fake-leather chair and drinking a nice beer. I blocked out the entire paragraph with a bright red felt pen.

It may be mysterious to you just what I found so inspiring and helpful about this passage. In essence, it is this: the idea that one whose life has been redeemed by Christ has a more stark view of brokenness, sin, unhealth, and the state of the world as it actually is than does a non-Believer. Additionally, the idea that all of that brokenness and the hard, ugly, grotesque sides of life that a Believer sees are just ordinary things to an unsaved person. While this may not be universally accurate, I think that for the most part it is true, and is a fascinating concept to me.

O’Connor’s essay as a whole keeps coming back to the idea that fiction written by a Believer in Jesus ought to be more stark, more honest, and sometimes more shocking than it currently is (or was at her time) in order to get the author’s vision across to an audience that is jaded to the content. A Christian’s redemption unlocks a second-sight, so to speak, to recognize and understand just how fallen the world is, and that understanding can help them to reveal the true nature of things in an artistic presentation. These presentations—whether a novel, a painting, a song, a poem—are not always pretty or comfortable to look at, and just because they come from the mind of one redeemed doesn’t mean they need to force a barely-concealed Gospel message into the story. In the case of Flannery, I’d say that her examples were never pretty, not in the traditional sense. She presented her readers with extremely unpleasant people and situations, but always with purpose.

This concept could be taken to the opposite extreme (although this is not what O’Connor is saying in her essay) which is to suggest that all art created by Christians needs to be shocking enough to jolt a secular audience into attention, but I don’t hold to that, nor do I think it’s beneficial (or genuine) in most cases. Rather, how can we glorify the Creator by pointing out the very things that are most opposite of Him? How can we better understand grace by looking in the places where grace seems nowhere to be found? How can the darkest of the dark show us that His light shines more gloriously in comparison?

Art often tends to surface from out of our experiences—frequently painful ones—as well as from what we are surrounded by. Almost always, what we (humans, not only Believers) are surrounded by is brokenness of varying degrees, and stark imperfections in the world around us. We are often consumed by dissatisfaction and a nagging feeling of being incomplete, and sometimes creating something eases that discomfort ever so slightly. Being a Believer does not necessarily relieve the discord of being alive and being human; in fact, I believe that being ‘saved’ amplifies the great dissonance of life and reveals just how very much we need to be saved out of.

So let’s not take those thoughts and ideas and have a naval-gazing party where we sit and stew over what a mess the world is and do absolutely nothing about it. Let’s—and I’m preaching to myself, here—write really damn good books and good songs and good poems and paint incredible pictures and make great films. The world is damaged and dying, so let’s dig into that stuff and not shy away from it and show it for what it is, though not for the purpose of doom and gloom. Let’s make some flawed characters who go through real shit (the same as we do, by the way) and just maybe things don’t always work out so well for them, but one fact is almost universally true: they (and we) are longing for something.

I tend to think that it is in the darkest pits of despair and depravity where grace can show up unexpectedly, and violently. If the world was not incredibly wrought with disaster, then why would we ever have the need to be redeemed?

-D.G.

Spooklights: An Anthology of Literary Horror and Supernatural Fiction (featuring a new story by yours truly)

If you're an avid reader, you've probably come across some fiction anthologies before. Some of these are pretty good, though many of them are downright awful. 19 Spooky Tales OF TERROR, compiled by Bob Schwinkendorf, Editor of... THE DEAD, or Zombies! Somehow We Found EVEN MORE Stories About Them! or some such thing. The cover artwork frequently looks like a high school student's first Photoshop project, and things get even worse when you crack the book open. Copy errors left and right, poor formatting, and writing so bad it induces nausea.

That's not the case here.

Oh sure, I'm biased because I have the privilege of my story Hitching Post leading the collection—a curious little oddity of which I'm quite proud—but I really believe in the rest of these stories too. I had the honor of being a part of the selection and editing process for Spooklights. Jonathan Raab, Colin Scharf, and myself pored over a heaping pile of submissions, separated the wheat from the chaff, then worked with the authors to polish up the stories. What we ended up with is, I think, a very solid collection of some genuinely creepy stuff from a handful of talented writers.

It's $1.99 for the Kindle eBook on Amazon, and for that reasonable price you'll get nine tales of quality horror with a literary bent. Please consider supporting these authors and enjoying some great new fiction! Soon to be available on iBooks and the Nook store, as well as in print later this month.

To persuade thee further, here is an excerpt from my brand new story, Hitching Post, that appears in the collection:

Angus Root strolled through the ranch at an easy, lumbering pace, and Mitchell and Stacy followed a few steps behind. Though it was quite warm, Stacy hugged her arms and wore a constant smile that wanted to insist that this destination she had chosen for them was just right, even if she was no longer sure.

            “I notice your horse corral is a little on the empty side there, Angus,” Mitchell remarked as they passed it.

            Angus whirled and blinked at Mitchell, confused. Mitchell nodded to the fenced-in area overgrown with weeds.

            “Oh, that’s not a horse corral,” Angus said, “it’s something else made up to look like a bunch of weeds. I wouldn’t recommend you cross over that fence either, no-o-o sir.”

            “Oh, right right, of course. How silly of me,” Mitchell joked, and winked at Stacy.

            Angus kept walking, then suddenly threw his head back and guffawed. “Hoo, horses! What a thought. No, we couldn’t keep horses here. Cats maybe, but good heavens, not horses. At least, if we did, they sure wouldn’t stay horses for long, I can tell you that.”

            Mitchell looked over his shoulder and gave Stacy a big, crazy grin. He was enjoying the old man’s quirkiness more and more. Stacy wore a look of pity, or concern.

            “Maybe he’s just a little senile,” Stacy whispered to Mitchell.

            “Maybe he’s just a little hilarious!” Mitchell whispered back.

            “Horses… imagine that,” Angus chuckled.

To find out what happens next—things get a whole lot stranger from there, believe me—go grab Spooklights for just $1.99. Thanks guys!

-D.G.

The Trouble with Seeing Clearly: Concerning the Novel I wrote that may end up in a drawer.

Two years ago, I started writing a novel for an idea that I had come up with more than five years earlier. The original idea was simple, just an image that had popped into my head in early college (circa 2007-08): a talking-dog character who wore glasses and would ride around on trains talking with people. These conversations would be, per my younger-self's idea, about God, life, art, culture, etc., and the book would be a kind of montage piece full of curiosities and thought-provoking themes along the lines of Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (because that's the sort of thing I was into at the time).

The idea laid dormant in my brain for quite some time, because 1. I wasn't exclusively interested in writing at the time. I was in a crappy film school program and wanted to be a director or a musician someday, and 2. All I really had was an image and a loose, loose idea for something. There was no background, no real premise, and thus, no story. Still, the thought stuck with me and was something I wanted to flesh out in some form or another.

A couple of years passed (meanwhile my tastes changed and I started being inspired by things other than films that made me weep with their MIGHTY ARTISTIC DEPTH AND GREATNESS), and I recognized that the 'montage of conversations' wasn't a very good idea; it was too high-brow, too snooty, and honestly kind of a lazy way to tell a story. Yet still, I liked the idea of this dog-character and wanted to do something with him eventually.

In early 2012, the idea came back around and I felt I had figured out a good path for it to take. At the time that I decided to start writing instead of doing music or film (it took me a long time to realize that writing fiction was what I had always wanted to do) I was very determined about the manner in which I would go about it. My plan was to first write two long-ish short stories 'for practice' (which sounds so silly to me now, but it's what I really thought), then I would write the novel about this dog with the glasses. Those two shorts became Michigan, Ten Cents and Clara's Quilt which I self-published, and shy of a few issues I am still quite proud of how they came out.

In October 2012, I began writing the novel under the (horrific) working-title of Ralph, Who Rides Trains; I didn't share that title with many people, because I was constantly trying to come up with something that didn't sound like a sketch on Sesame Street.

The story had evolved considerably over the years. It is told in the first-person by Ralph, a White Labrador mix, who can talk but is terrified of doing so for fear of being exploited by humans. The only person who knows his secret is a three year old girl named Nancy, the youngest of three children in the family that cares for Ralph. Ralph loves reading books, watching movies, and is generally fascinated with human art and culture. However, he has bad eyes that are growing increasingly worse, yet he cannot communicate this to his family (and he isn’t sure that eye appointments for dogs are a real thing anyway). His eyes get so bad that he ventures out from home alone into the city to search for glasses (digging through dumpsters behind eyeglass stores and optometrists' offices is all he can think to do at first) and winds up meeting Clarence, a homeless ex-priest of the Catholic church with a warm heart and a rough history. They become friends and end up searching the city together and having many life-and-God-pondering conversations.

I had intended the book to be a mixture of 'coming-of-age' (though I loathe that term), literary, humorous, thoughtful, appreciative of some very specific nooks of literature and media, and ultimately redemptive and glad; a straight-forward story with ups and downs and characters who undergo change. I wanted to make something modern, artsy, and heartfelt like the books that had inspired me, such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Then We Came to the End, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Grapes of Wrath, the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc. Ralph is a very thoughtful dog, but also insecure and unsure of himself. He’s curious as to why he can talk when no other dogs can. He has questions about whether he has a soul. Also, I went into it knowing there have already been a billion books written about talking dogs, and I tried desperately to make mine unique and different and good.

I finished the first draft in October 2013; it had taken me exactly a year to get about 85,000 words. I took a break where I didn't look at it for two months and worked on other things, then started fresh into draft two in January 2014. I had settled on the title The Trouble with Seeing Clearly, which I liked for its literary-sounding quality and how it worked on several levels. I had thought re-edits would be swift, but my daughter was born in the middle of them and I didn't get through the second draft until June 2014—I wasn't just slashing sentences here, either; this was a significant re-write.

After finishing the second draft, I let it sit again for a couple of weeks, then revisited the opening chapters… and was devastated. The book seemed childish to me, and like it was trying too hard; too gushy and corny and cloying. I had felt a certain confidence with my previous two stories that was utterly vacant with this one. Ralph’s character at the beginning didn’t seem to be the same dog as the one at the end. I had grown as a writer—I hope—even over the course of a couple of months, and my earlier structural errors mocked me from the pages. The story as a whole seemed stupid and tired and overdone, and to present it to any intelligent reading adult would be an invitation to be laughed at in the face.

In essence, I realized I had just spent two years writing a shitty book.

Okay sure, but that’s only two drafts; why not just do a third? Even great authors have taken ten years or more to perfect a novel, and even then they probably feel like piddling with it. I would do a third pass, but at this point the thought of looking at the manuscript again nauseates me. What if I got through a third draft and changed my mind about the book’s direction in that span of time? The process of re-writes could become an endless loop. I am weary of this book, I don’t care about the story like I once did, it seems outdated and amateur and not worthy of the current audience of our world. And yet, for some reason I spent all this time on it! Something in there must matter to me.

This post is not a plea for a pity-party; truly, it isn’t. I don’t mean to sound whiny or be self-serving in drawing attention to myself. It’s kind of a: ‘well, damn it,’ sort of post. I feel like I have wasted my time (which is a discouraging, sick-to-my-stomach feeling), and I’m so tired of looking at this novel that I’m not sure if I have a clear, objective view of it anymore.

Here’s the way my brain works: What if I tuck this book in a drawer and clean my hands of it, and start fresh on a new idea that I’m really excited about right now. Say that new book takes two years to write, and by the time I’m done with it, I’m so embarrassed of it that I can’t bear to show it to anyone, and then it just becomes a drawer-novel too. Is this just how writing works?

I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question. I know that I will continue to write, and hopefully I will continue to get better at the craft. I know that I will write other novels and short stories and be proud of them. But as a first-time novelist, I’m just struggling with this particular one. I do believe there are reasons that this story is so important to me, they just may be the reasons of an earlier version of me that the current-me finds somewhat… juvenile.

Yesterday, I realized that I needed to get over myself and over my fear, so I sent out the second draft to a handful of family and friends to get their reactions (which felt incredibly vulnerable). Maybe they’ll come back and tell me that, yes, I’m right, this book is crap and I should probably move on to something else. Or maybe they’ll have some helpful words that will reveal the book's weaknesses and I’ll get re-inspired to mold it into better shape. Or maybe writing this book—and failing at it, or so it feels—will have been good practice for future books to come.

-D.G.