Andre Jarema, a Belgian émigré chasing success in London, is an imposing figure in his way— not in appearance, exactly, though he does have a stage presence something like a prematurely awakened wintering bear. His aura of largeness is more the way he looms over the music, insinuating himself on top of it in a way that is not quite smothering, but damn close. It is obvious that he is a slave to his passion. Jarema seeems to dwarf the rest of his band in both spirit and artistic hunger. Indeed, his singing is not unlike a starving man devouring a thing, and not caring about the untidy consequences.

That is not to say the music is somehow lacking, or that the playing is inadequate– on the contrary, it’s often beautiful and surprising. But the music is so crisp that Jarema’s turned-up vocals with that hard-to-identify accent just under the surface that it’s a bit distracting. That being said, the majority of the songs recorded for the DVD Everyone At Home ride comfortably in a well-traveled groove between the subversive, creepy charm of The Smiths and the uneasy pop of early-period Radiohead (specifically the arresting “I Wanted to Be Alone”); there’s even a bit of Catherine Wheel’s Rob Dickinson in Jarema’s amorous, breathy delivery. This puts the band in good company, and overall, the songs are clean, nimble numbers over which Jarema lays out playful non sequiturs and stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Some of the songs possess a certain charm that is almost schizophrenic in nature. It’s hard not to don a wary smile at “Your Mum”, for example— a mischievous, strange pop ballad that floats around precariously like a parade balloon to which the trusses are snapping one at a time: How strange it feels / being sought out like the earth / is no reason to skive I say / you are the one who drew my smile / the earth spins / like the ring your finger has not…your mum is fat / your dad is crap / and you ain’t got no sister / uh huh-uh-huh-uh-huh-uh uh uh.

Divided into several sections, Everyone At Home is easily digestible in one sitting, but it warrants return trips. Jarema’s music is not an easy nut to crack. There is a band session recorded without an audience; a segment filmed during a house party; a freewheeling standalone piano number called “Your Time Has Come” which oozes the kind of ascetic self-assurance that made Jack White a superstar, and an interview. Except for the interview, the production is shot in heavily shadowed black-and-white, which gives all the performances a wintry charm.

It’s an interesting push/pull— the music and songwriting is lush and inviting, yet Jarema’s voice seems at times to lope from flower to flower like a languid bee. The two entities reconcile in the satisfying “Birth Sex Death,” a groove-sick, snarling rocker that evokes, if not “How Soon is Now?”, then “How Soon is Now?” as covered by Everclear. The sound is a little throwback, but the energy is irresistible.

Richard Thomas’s eSingle “Victimized” reads like a vignette from Sin City— concise, dark, and comfy as a broken rib. Set in dystopian future where the legal system has turned into a kind of auxiliary blood sport, “Victimized” is a breathless revenge fantasy beyond the reach of morality.

In this future, defendants in violent crime cases are given a choice: take your chances before a jury, or step into the ring. If you choose the ring, your opponent– if anyone even shows at all– will be someone hurt by the crime in question. Someone with good reason to take you apart. Grieving fathers, angry husbands. A scenario like this lends itself well to gambling, and there’s plenty of it. The smart money’s usually on Michael— a legend. Michael steps into the ring when nobody else does, ensuring the scumbags don’t get a free pass back into the real world.

Belle isn’t exactly the smart money. She’s a woman, first of all— you don’t see many women in these proceedings. She’s also a victim. Or, she was, anyway—now she’s more like a vampire; vaguely remembering what it was to be human while feeding off of the very pain she struggled with for so long. She’s been planning a long time to face off against the man who has wronged her: Jon, her uncle. It’s smartly kept in the shadows of the story what Jon did to Belle that got him thrown into prison, but it’s nonetheless presented in clear enough focus to make your skin crawl.

This is the trend throughout “Victimized”: to attack the reader with unblinking frankness wrapped in bleak noir homilies. The descriptions are as harrowing outside the ring as they are in it. Indeed, this reads like a graphic novel—vividly wrought details and characters who parade their psyches around like war-torn flags. Belle is sketched in equal parts depth and deed, but it shouldn’t be a spoiler to fans of the genre that the resolution in “Victimized”— if there even is one—is as ambivalent as it is gruesome. Thomas is a smart writer— he knows his story doesn’t need an ending. Neither does a punch, in reality. All that matters is that you had the stones to throw it.

“Victimized” is available for your eReader or PC here.

The internet suddenly seems different. A little sublime. Everything and nothing. I don’t know if this is an epiphany– if it is it’s certainly half baked. Nor do I know if it was necessarily incited by my exposure to Catherine Daly’s work, or if it’s merely a thought that arose simultaneously during the course of the conversation we had. Her work is not expressly technological in nature, but I think there is something in the way she seems to find dual uses for everything that makes it feel that way. In To Delite and Instruct, for example, she creates poetry from source materials such as Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments and other writing workbooks from 1950s and 60s, and suggests a more engaged approach to crafting poetry than expecting it to be “gifted” from an exercise (look for this piece to soon appear in the new Bernadette Mayer Folio section at Drunken Boat). It’s didactic (in a sly way), but it’s also a critique at the same time as art. Her collection Paper Craft is also at least two things: it’s poetry; it’s also an object. Which leads me to my original tangent on the internet: there was a time— maybe fifteen years ago?— when the internet was more of a mysterious thing, a cloud, and less of a marketplace. It was a kind of arcane poetry unto itself. Today, it would be easy to dismiss as a shiny advertising colossus or a passive repository for information. But Catherine makes it seem like a tool in the rawest sense. Her work weaves and is woven. It evokes that old, missed adventure in me of exploring new places. The familiar is new.

Catherine’s poetry is online and in print. An Illinois Scholar at Trinity University and Merit Fellow at Columbia, she has been a Wall Street bank officer; she has been a software developer; she has been an engineer; she has been a teacher. She is the author of numerous poetry collections— Locket, Secret Kitty, To Delite and Instruct, and DaDaDa to name a few, the latter described by one reviewer as “Cavernous and electric…DaDaDa unfolds as a hypnotically twisted love tome investigating the r/elation between language systems and the erotics of communication.”Comprised of games of language, tradition and tradition breaking, coding and decoding, often done simultaneously, her work is finely layered. Secret Kitty— available as eBook— is a self-described “flarfy critique of flarf.” In it, poetry is sent into the internet, changed, and reclaimed.

She is at work on a long project entitled CONFITEOR, a 1,000 page poem. In addition to writing, Catherine’s i.e. Press focuses on writing and art that engages the eye and ear.

Her blog, and several of her eBooks, can be found here: DREAMER IN THE WAKE

The phrase “strategies beyond….postmodern ventriloquism” is used in the description of “DaDaDa.” Does this refer to what you view as a kind of rampant recycling of postmodern approach in writing?

Because one of the strategies in DaDaDa is to turn the writings of others into my writings, there is this sense that historical writings are puppets — excavated, hollowed out and then filled with me.  So in that sense, “strategies beyond… postmodern ventriloquism” is a sneaky gesture towards critics: look, this isn’t the only thing happening here, just because this is happening. For example, doing this always results in a critique of the poem.  In another respect, though, yes, there’s way too much postmodern writing — variations of project and found poetry (which I do a lot of, but a little peculiarly) — which rests at the source without doing anything beyond re-performing the source text.  I find Cole Swensen’s work to be particularly thin.  Then there’s the case of flarf, although it is more constructed.

Concerning flarf poetry, it seems a bit like postmodernism having reached a critical mass. Some don’t take it seriously– it’s sincere, maybe, but it can also seem sort of headless. What distinguishes a valuable construction from one that is simply off the rails? In other words, how much micromanagement can a flarf poem withstand before the spirit of the endeavor is lost?

Flarfeurs want to have it both ways:  they are seriously critically constructed, and most have earned their theory chops (hence their being taken seriously by the langpos), but they want to dance away from every sort of criticism at the same time they engage it.  This is why they flog the apparent meaninglessness of the poems.  It is apparently a sexy dance for some.  Hence my first Hello Kitty book, where the indeces of various search engines acted more like languages (as far as yielding significantly different search results, depending on index focus), as well as that searches in [one] language and then translation [into another language] had a quite different result from babelfishing.  The book is one poem through three different search engines, and then translated to Japanese and back three different ways.

The brilliant thing about flarf is it forms a text field where all is criticism, and anything can be said.

The other thing I wanted in Hello Kitty was an open form — at least at the time — and I have stopped reading a lot of flarf, because it seemed to me some of the best flarf had a formal intent, and all of it was looking and feeling like closed form, left justified, stanzas, lines.

You’ve said that creative writing exercises or prompts are rarely of true value “unless assignments come from the writer, or are accepted by the writer in order to pull or push one’s practice a certain way.” (an interview w/ Thomas Fink). Your poem “Andragogy” seems especially leveled at eschewing traditional instructor/student prompts. How does one train for the intimate engagement of a poem?

The fast answer is by reading, reading your own work, reading other work.  But it is a good question:  I think the exercise — and because the “experiments” of experimental poets converge on the prosodic practice of the formalists, and somewhere in between are the “poetry exercises” — leads to a too-formulaic idea of what poetry is about.  Broadening this, I think there’s a sense that conceptual poetry, or what Kenneth Goldsmith calls “uncreative writing,” is performance of the idea, i.e., the formula.  His background is in performance art.  Much found poetry as well as super-cohesive book length poetry projects also seem to be performance — but there, I think, performance of the idea of what a poet is.  Take this text and ring my poet-changes on it.  Not that I haven’t done all of this myself.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve done it, not for the heck of it, or just to churn out stuff, but to learn by doing.  And when I teach, I do try to work with the students who want prompts — many adult students go from teacher to teacher, gathering different prompts — and say, read this sort of poem. What is making it tick?  Can you try that?

Can you give me some insight into your interest in Hello Kitty as a vessel for your work? At times it seems like the pop identity of the character appeals to you, but also the mélange of cultures with which Hello Kitty is associated (this fits with the idea of garbling of your own words, translated into foreign tongues and then back again). Why have you filled this particular entity with “you”?

I try to make the character’s mouthlessness important in the books, because there’s a lack of opening, a complete closure, and no speech, no tongue — [no] language?  The books are based on Hello Kitty coloring books, so they are these insipid fields of mostly non-verbal information — a lot different for me (when I started) than what I had been doing.

CALICO CAT has been in progress for about three years because it involves music and color, and I just haven’t taken the opportunity to deal with it.  I started some color, note mapping with the text, and realized that what’s really required is a sort of Glenn Gouldish color – note mapping of the spoken/imagined text.

in KITTENHOOD, it is more the success or failure of language to be located — the poems are mostly titled from Olson’s Dogtown — the carvings on rocks there.  Which in turn, relates to [Bernadette] Mayer bringing bricks w/ words on them into workshops (I have heard, I never went to the poetry project until I read there — from Secret Kitty).  I think in general, the MS Word Art in the text was probably less pushed than the writing in the first book.

I’m not sure what the last book will be about yet.  But I think you can see:  Hello Kitty is the opposite of a mouthpiece.

Hello Kitty’s mouthlessness; locationless language; the idea of sound speaking for itself (“Phonograph“); the use of modern technology to alter and disguise your work; it all seems to lean in the direction of taking human beings (or at least their interpretations) out of the equation, or at least banishing them for a moment in time. There’s a haunting purity to those Dogtown rocks. Do you feel that your work in this vein seizes on an innate rift between artist and audience, or are you instead inviting your audience to experience something beneath the surface of immediate understanding?

Fast answer: as opposed to post-humanism, I’m looking at what people have made and do (products, techne) FOR the human. In the work of mine that look most closely at the problems of authorship, the speaker, voice, the “I” –does our culture merely make these things?  I don’t think so. People make them, and they become “touchstones.” But those people are readers, spectators, observed, participants. There is of course a barrier thrown up here, in the process of trying to read/write more of the world and approach it in a perhaps less tiresome (more irksome, though?) manner. I was reading an interview with Jean Renoir last night, and he mentioned that in his opinion, including the audience, giving them room for interpretation, was merely that:  considering them.

Can you talk a bit about your long project, Confiteor? It sounds like your work on Confiteor often spawns other projects; I’ve read that it is to be a survey of 20th century poetics, but can you elaborate on what you envision the scope of Confiteor ultimately to be?

The long project is named after the confessional in the Roman Catholic church — I confess… that I have sinned in my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do, and I ask all the angels and saints and you my brothers and sisters to pray for me, etc. Except in the Latin, the relationship between pray and sing/speak is a little clearer.

In any case, for me it is a good rubric for wiggling out from under something like the Divine Comedy; the project is where women’s writing of all times and places (and sorts) crosses with the ideas of 20th century poetry (DaDa, Objectivism, etc.), and philosophy, particularly philosophy of identity, confession, language, theory itself, and math — the boolean algebra of the computer chip, the modern algebra (in vol 2) developed at the same time as revolution-era ideas of freedom and cosmology.

it is 1000 pages, four volumes, the first three each a trilogy and the last one an “addendum.”  There are not 10 or twelve poems in each book of each trilogy:  they are essentially independent books with some similarities to the others. Volume one’s device was an etymological “cloud” or “cross” of older to younger synonyms of mystical keywords surrounding a keyword of mysticism (like “light” or “mirror”).  They are a sort of neo-baroque embedded game — there are others, truth tables, etc.  Volume two’s device is reducing to binaries:  0 or 1, x or y, x or o. These binaries relate text which sometimes only has a narrative relationship through breakdown to binary, and sometimes reads in a normal-ish syntactical way through [those binaries].  These are some of the ways there are “objects” underlying the poems.

All my work spawns other works, but what’s happened is that , by the time DaDaDa was published, I had about 10 full length manuscripts, as I’d been writing for nearly 15 years.  So, I put one preliminary[manuscript] together with one primary one, and added in an ongoing series which had some thematic similarities.  Object-Oriented Design was accepted for publication two years ago, but like everyone, I think we’re just getting back to a normal publication schedule… I hope… anyway, that had started with Enheduanna, moved through some Sappho — the history of women’s poetry — moved through the development of the device, and ended with the modern algebra poems — the words “she’s a series” — then I realized maybe the order should be reversed, and begin with “she’s a series” and move back to identity/Enheduanna ([this was] itself already a dusie chapbook).

But then, some other poems which were closely related got written after publication, like a poem which rolled up the Da3 device into a rotating four point star, and so that became PAPER CRAFT.  Then, Paper Craft has its own on-hold sequel, called Craft + Work.  More is projected in the paper vein; as pointed out by blurbing Kenny Goldsmith, “in the domain of the digital, here is paper…”

The work isn’t coming out in any sort of order.  But some of the work in To Delite and Instruct was originally intended for the big project, too.

Locket was definitely intended to be the precursor to Vauxhall, but Vauxhall has as much visual poetry and embedded gaming as Da3.

This is just a jumble of facts, though — I think the more serious thought is, why?  And the idea is to have a long poem which is not “the world” and not a “life work” and not a single story but does cohere.  And so that work must query history and speech and reading; technology and how technology vs. art and gender aren’t truly binaries, but can use them…and the idea of writing and forgetfulness and versioning.

You mention that Confiteor serves as a rubric for getting out from under something like “The Divine Comedy”; in what way does it free you? Have you specifically felt the weight of Dante in some way– a structured voyage through religion, literature, science, etc.– when approaching the material for this project, or did you mean in a broader (or perhaps more personal) sense?

The project is a melding; The Divine Comedy is a special document, in my opinion, in the history of the Roman Catholic Church and in the history of poetry. The Divine Comedy is at the root of Pound to Andrews, but there’s very little that is relatable or philosophically relevant in it any longer. But also, since Catholic High School omitted Milton and all the protestants, Dante…loomed a bit larger.

What (and who) do you read for fun– poetry, prose fiction, flash fiction…?

I read a lot of nonfiction.  I also read a lot of flash fiction and new fiction that my husband hunts down and I steal from him.  I’ve been following flash fiction over the past 20 years or so.  I read “junk books” and “falling asleep books” as well.  Mussolini’s definitive biography, that sort of thing, is a falling asleep book; the first one was Don Quixote.  Couldn’t read more than a page a night.  The “junk books” are usually art/design from the library, and there’s usually one decent idea to glean from each one.

How to be a writer, how and what to write, how to someday be a great writer…. when one makes things, one spends a great deal of time — more time than building it, surely — doing it all “on paper” or as a draft or prototype or even in stages before actually making the thing.  One of the newer things is “wireframing.”

Out of Touch by Brandon Tietz is a new entry into the arms race of transgressive literature, informally reignited by Chuck Palahniuk a decade or so ago. It’s an increasingly dysphoric genre; moral bankruptcy is the new black. One wonders how deep into pure unfeeling we can descend before there’s no earth left to move. Yet here is a book with a rather elegant twist: Tietz binds his narrator, Aidin, so literally to the typical themes of the genre– abandonment; addiction; intense family dysfunction– that he is inextricable from them.

You see, Aidin can’t feel a thing.  Literally. He suffers a condition that’s allegorical in the way it’s heralded by the shoddy quality of his character. In other words, he asked for it, and the punishment seems to fit the crime: up until the point of the big numb, as he calls it, Aidin has lived his life as a womanizer and an addict. To his credit he’s never really pretended to be anything else. It wasn’t always this way, of course. At the outset we don’t exactly know the sudden cause of his condition; it could be a result of Aidin’s pharmacological excesses, or as laid upon him from without like some righteous, punitive blight.  Any way you look at it, in a case like this, rebuilding yourself anew isn’t really a choice; it isn’t some desperate vogue— it’s a medical necessity.

When we first meet Aidin, he appears to be a person without boundaries. He has money; he has resources. He lives without answering to anyone– his parents are barely-there entities– and is unapologetic about getting exactly what he wants out of life, though there is always a subtle undercurrent of revulsion in his monologues that he’s never quite able to dismiss. He lives to consume; to be a fixture of the nightlife. Night after night, Aidin frequents exclusive clubs and gets a private table and lets the world come to him. He has a drug habit free of both passion and fear. He gets any girl he comes across without even trying– they know him. If they don’t know him, they know the idea of him. He is Versace and Cristal and cocaine. He is too single-minded to schmooze; he doesn’t care for conversation and doesn’t crave acceptance. Words like need and desire are a bit old-fashioned to Aidin; he has, in fact, modernized Maslow’s hierarchy of needs into something like a short, flat line.

 He’s been this way for a very long time. Emotionally abandoned by his parents, educated in sex and drugs by private school peers that make the young droogs of A Clockwork Orange, by comparison, seem sort of friendly, Aidin has learned to ignore in himself those signifying characteristics—compassion, for example— that distinguish a human being from, say, an ashtray. He’s not an evil person. He’s simply waiting to be filled.

While Aidin’s excesses might once have been a defense mechanism to disguise his insecurities, that nuance has eroded away and life has become something of a listless experiment in gluttony. It is one morning, after one such night of double-fisted debauchery, that he is stricken: Aidin wakes and finds he has no sensation whatsoever. He can’t feel the floor. He can’t feel the cold spilling out of the refrigerator, or the touch of a can of lemonade to his lips. He writes this off as a particularly bad hangover from all the previous night’s drugs, but as he continues without success to try and generate any kind of sensation, panic takes over. He tries cocaine– nothing. What about pain, he wonders? One way to find out. He sends away the girls still sleeping in his bed from the night before and, in privacy, as safely as possible, tries a knife against his skin. Things get messy, but still, no feeling. Nothing.

Aidin comes into the care of Dr. Paradies, a progressive therapist who breaks the news that there is no cure for his condition. Largely because his condition is a metaphor; no matter how hard I attempt to accept the particulars of Aidin’s situation to the extent they are described—no pain, no sense of temperature, and seemingly no discriminative or light touch whatsoever— I can’t help thinking that without any sensation at all, without being able to feel the resistance of the floor against your feet, your muscles unable to sense the tension required to keep the body erect, one would immediately collapse into a heap and that would be it. As Aidin finds, when the body is deprived of one sense, the others attempt to compensate, and soon he is able to master locomotion through a kind of practiced repetition of movements and awareness of his environment. Physically, it’s the best he can hope for.  He’s just going to have to cope. This doesn’t really suit Aidin; here is an addictive personality whose addictions have been cruelly snatched from him. Drugs no longer have any effect on him, so what good is taking them? He doesn’t get high. He can’t feel hunger. He can’t even tell when he has to take a shit.

After some initial misguided attempts to integrate, Aidin receives some much-needed structure in the form of a list, created by Dr. Paradies— 366 items, intended to wean him from his now unquenchable appetites. The items on the list are divided into sections which almost mirror the developmental stages of a child, albeit accelerated; Aidin advances once more through the mastery of motor, cognitive, and social skills. Simple arts-and-crafts projects; appreciation of music; interpersonal encounters (without the intent of ending in meaningless sex). Some items in the list read rather transparently like an author-penned love letter to the arts— still, it’s satisfying to watch Aidin’s addictive personality reforged as he flies through the list in scenes both funny and poignant. It’s a big part of the book, and one of its constant joys.

Naturally, things complicate. One of Paradies’ list items involves meeting a girl named Dana— mysterious, jaded, and beautiful. She’s also blind. Aidin forms a relationship with her the quality of which he was probably incapable before being afflicted with his condition. It seems his life is becoming stable at last when the list items start to become surreal and strange— up until now, every item seemed to reveal some hidden talent or signs of a dormant intelligence. Since the big numb, it seems Aidin has even fewer boundaries; he is good at everything and does not tire, making him a veritable superman. But now the tasks he is being asked to complete no longer have any apparent benefit; they are abstract and sinister, seeming designed to test his pliability. But no matter how deeply Aidin looks into his own motivations for continuing in the surreal final chapters of his therapy, he finds he is unable to walk away. He has to finish the list. It has become his new drug; the only one he’s able to feel. The question is, what will happen once it’s finished? Will he be able to carry on without someone telling him exactly what to do?

Out of Touch is a book that does not shy from its influences— overtly namedropped within in some form or another are Ellis, Palahniuk, Welsh, and Selby, Jr. Palahniuk may not be the senior man from this list, but his is the most identifiable fingerprint— the mantras (“Everyone is at least two people”), the unflinching confessional bent, the themes of damaged men finding themselves in the sudden grip of strange therapy. These guys write of self-destruction and addiction and wrackful consumption; of fragile egos disguised as runaway trains; of characters who pull you in by driving you away. Tietz deals with these devices no less adeptly than those who have cut the path before him.

In terms of the prose itself, Tietz is a formidable writer. He’s got an excellent rhythm for language and his style is crystal clear. He’s most exciting, though, when he’s able to break rank with the familiar conventions of transgressive fiction and strike out on his own in unexpected directions, as in one lengthy passage early on, describing one of Aidin’s nights at the ultra-exclusive nightclub Hush: it’s a terrific slab of words. An excoriating vignette of the nightclub scene and the supplicants thereto, shown as a virtually interchangeable collection of mannequins having capitulated their collective self respect to the point they suffer a sameness so total it’s like staring into a pit of churning lead. Another highlight later on in the story involves an unblinking flashback to Aidin’s nihilistic youth at Penbrooke Academy; a series of recollections detailing his first uncertain steps into the desert of  manhood. It’s a passage both funny and devastating, as abhorrent as it is true.

This is part of the appeal to Tietz’s work as opposed to lesser writers who might overlook the heart under the transgressive appeal; it’s easy to blow something up. To destroy it. You don’t even need a writer for this— society, as a whole, has got this pretty down pat. The art is in the act of rebuilding, a task at which both author and narrator perform admirably. Aidin’s understanding of his personal failings provides much of the light and shadow in the story, of which there is no shortage. Aidin is not as one dimensional as he might first appear, and, deprived of his vices, he’s given ample room to evolve.

Until the reigns are taken from him. The novel’s climax finds Aidin discovering the true aim of Dr. Paradies’ list, and the secret of his development. It changes things dramatically. The revelations contained therein could’ve easily filled another hundred pages or even more; but it’s not to be. While Aidin’s transformation into his final incarnation is icily cool in its execution, the surrounding details raise a few more questions than they answer.  The story’s ouroboric twist— almost seeming prescribed by the genre itself as opposed to growing naturally from the situation— comes off as a bit hasty, though it’s not without its pleasures. Among them, the details surrounding the resolution of Aidin and Dana’s relationship, and the surreal lack of a ceiling to Aidin’s aptitudes. His life after is not what you would expect; despite his apparent new lease on life, many more doors have closed than have opened.

In the end, Aidin’s story is less about reclaiming moral decency, or chasing freedom– from your past, from your parents, from the things that bind you. It’s more about playing the part that’s been written for you. We are nothing but a product of our experiences, no matter how it’s dressed up. Even if everyone is, in fact, two people, we are still only the two people we are taught to be.

Some fairly prominent elements of Stephen Prosapio’s Dream War might seem familiar; for example, the concept of cutting-edge technology that allows trained operatives to invade other peoples’ dreams in order to ferret out hidden information, or even to plant new information, all to nefarious ends.

If this sounds like a rip-off of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, wait: Prosapio’s copyright on Dream War is from 2007, predating the film by three years. And furthermore, it’s only in the practical machinery of the dream-link concept that Prosapio’s novel resembles Nolan’s film. The sum products diverge wildly. From one seed, two stories.

Dream War is a genre-bending thriller; from the raw elements of speculative sci fi, Prosapio crafts a doomsday tale whose origins might be older than the earth itself– a tale that is, at last, reaching its terrible climax. Dream War is nothing if not ambitious; it spans continents. It spans centuries. It doesn’t even stay rooted in a single dimension.

A brief introduction to the story gives the reader a crash course in the ontology of dreams and dreaming throughout history and, by extension, the science behind dream invasion; we’re told that the legendary Spartacus divined from a dream the exact time to initiate his slave revolt. Is this of consequence in the 21st century? More specifically, is it possible a man’s dreams are more than just an arbitrary assemblage of images?

The CIA thinks so. Enough to fund a shell organization known as the OIA (Oneirology Institute of America), an organization whose research results in the NOCTURN device— a device via which one can remotely (via satellite) enter into another’s dreams. The CIA, naturally, can’t resist the idea of knowing the enemy’s thoughts. To that end, they recruit a CIA operative— Hector Lopez— to lead an exciting new campaign in counter-terrorism. They train Lopez in the extraction of information from unwilling subjects, and they teach him to manipulate his surroundings inside the dream. His superiors, however, are in deeper than that. Lopez learns it’s possible to drive a man to kill from inside his dream; even to commit suicide. What more effective way to deal with terrorists than to coax them to off one another?

But even this grim agenda is but the work of amateurs. After one of the counter-terrorism missions goes bad, Lopez encounters an unknown consciousness in a dream; one which appears to comprehend the nature of the OIA’s work with startling clarity, and recognizes Lopez’s talent for navigating the dream world. This is Luzveyn Dred. Another dream-spy? With that name, unlikely. Dred is something different; he inhabits a place called the Spatium Quartus— literally, the fourth dimension— which runs parallel to ours, a place that can be accessed via the act of dreaming. Dred has the power to summon people here from their dreams. In their waking lives, the dreamers remember this as a nightmare. Or at least that’s what they hope.

Flash forward. The tenuous OIA has been officially dismantled in the wake of public failure. Lopez, however, carries on his missions largely on his own, driven by guilt and personal demons, and aided by the chance acquisition of a medallion that seems to protect him from Dred’s influence. But this isn’t the only medallion, we soon learn. There are many. But who has them, and what is their significance?

From here, the story takes us to Naples where we follow Drew and Nadia, a couple on vacation. Drew discovers one of the aforementioned medallions in his suitcase. Dred has a plan to escape the Spatium Quartus— albeit a leisurely one, as it seems, judging from the exposition, to have been initiated at least a hundred years before Christ— and through Drew’s possession of this medallion, he, Nadia, and Nadia’s daughter, Alexis, have been unwittingly drawn into the line of fire. In fact, Drew’s life is about to be derailed by Dred’s minions— members of an Italian terrorist group/Luzveyn Dred cult called Sogno di Guerra. Their operatives are on Drew’s tail, and they want his medallion back.

Now, wait: Dred’s people have seemingly sunk a lot of manpower into stealing this particular medallion. This is a little baffling considering the method by which it comes into Drew’s possession in the first place (to reveal much more would be a spoiler; one character’s task is to collect the medallions and land them into the hands of the Sogno di Guerra– Dred’s earthly foot soldiers– in Naples. The method by which this is done in the case of Drew’s medallion seems stunningly impractical, especially given that certain characters are able to send and retrieve tangible items through dream-link without the hassle of  physical proximity). This incongruity is one of a few instances where the finer points of the rules Prosapio has devised in this fictional world get in the way of the story; it’s easy in sci fi to get hung up on the cleverness of how a thing is done and, in the process, losing track of why it is done.

That said, Prosapio’s story is imaginative and intricate, with many levels of interest; the secret history of Spartacus, and how it factors into the current-day events, is fascinating; the CIA lingo feels authentic; and, from a purely descriptive point of view, the scenes set in Italy— and the shadowy developments therein— are often excellent. Here, Prosapio’s language is at its most confident and precise.

With its duality of worlds concept, Dream War bears some similarity to Stephen King and Peter Straub’s horror staple The Talisman, and, likewise, its plot is built on a hidden mythology that we discover along with the characters. While this richens the story, the sheer breadth of Dream War‘s mythology also sets the stage for moments of cumbersome (but necessary) exposition. Nonetheless,  Dream War is often gripping on a level that is visceral. There is no deeper message, and no need for one: Prosapio weaves together the disparate threads of science fiction, espionage, historical fiction and even a touch of Christian mythology into an ambitious, well-paced story. A few grating elements aside– Lopez’s predilection for ham-fisted 80s action-hero quips being chief among them– Dream War is a fun, exuberant thriller that’s not afraid to take chances.

Buy Dream War at Smashwords

www.prosapio.com

Photo by John Geiger

Richard Thomas is a busy man.  He’s a husband and father of twins.  He’s a graphic designer.  He helps moderate a writing workshop at The Cult, one of the most popular author websites in the world.  He’s helped edit zines and magazines alike.  He’s pursuing his MFA in Fiction.  He’s part of a group of up-and-coming writers who each year help each other through the hardships of writing a novel.  And yeah, he’s also a writer whose debut novel, a neo-noir thriller called Transubstantiate, was published in July 2010, the flagship novel of the upstart independent press Otherworld Publications.  High on life and hell-bent on sharing in the revelry of being part of a new movement of fresh voices in the literary world, Richard stopped by Oxyfication to share a little bit about himself, how his debut novel Transubstantiate came to be, and what it’s like when one of your literary heroes tells you that your writing reminds them of their literary heroes.

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Take us to the beginning, and through the years leading up to Transubstantiate.  When did you start writing?  When did writing become something more, that you wanted to pursue professionally?

I’ve always loved reading, since the 6th grade, when I won a contest for most books read (boys). I wrote a lot of papers in high school, but not any fiction, didn’t really have room in my schedule, college prep. It wasn’t until college, and really, my junior and senior years when I took a fantasy and science fiction class with Dr. Edgar Chapman, and we watched Blade Runner, that I started thinking about the possibilities. I took several creative writing classes, some independent studies that involved writing, and I got really excited about writing. My first story that I published was at Bradley University, in the literary journal, Broadside.

After I graduated and moved to Chicago, I worked at a country club up in Glencoe (there are some stories there for sure) and eventually moved downtown. I lived at 666 N. Dearborn, and again, there were some wild stories there. I remember typing away on my old Remington Quiet-Riter (that’s a typewriter) and sending out stories. It was so slow and painful, typing, copying, mailing. It was devastating. I got involved with other things – having fun, living the bohemian lifestyle, chasing girls, and kind of gave up on writing for a long time. I got sucked into the world of advertising, where I’ve been for 15 years. Sure, I was the fiction and poetry curator at Around the Coyote, a festival in Wicker Park, years later, and I even wrote some non-fiction for some indie magazines (Subnation and 3rdWord) but I didn’t have the focus, the desire.

It wasn’t until much later, about four years ago, that I was reborn at the Cult, studying with Craig Clevenger, Monica Drake, and Max Barry, and I felt like I had any talent, and finally started to believe in myself. Better late than never, right? This got me to the place where I felt like I should pursue an MFA (that’s real money, folks) and my wife got behind me, saw that I was serious, and I started to get work published, started to break through.

The only thing I can say is that for years I’ve been in advertising, and I’ve had success, won awards, landed multi-million dollar accounts, but it’s never felt right, and I’ve always hit a ceiling and stopped. The minute I started pushing in a different direction, towards writing, it felt right, I had some positive experiences, I started to break through, and that’s when I knew that I was doing the right thing.

Every book starts somewhere.  An idea.  A sentence.  What is the genesis of Transubstantiate?  Did you always plan on it being a book, or did it naturally evolve into one?

Well, it all started with the Max Barry intensive at The Cult.  We were given the assignment to write four introductions to four novels that we’d always wanted to write.  Anything at all.  So, I think I did a horror intro, science-fiction, neo-noir, and literary.  I wanted to title each of the sections with a word that was really unique and that I’d never heard before.  Transubstantiate was one of those words, vainglorious was another.  I poured over the internet, lists of unique words, all kinds of stuff.  That was how I came across transubstantiate.

The intensive was to write a novel, so starting with those four openings, I decided to expand the cast of Transubstantiate to seven. I’m not sure how I got to seven. I think early on (I was just looking at some old notes) I played with the idea of the seven deadly sins. So while those four openings turned into Jacob (literary), X (horror), Jimmy (SF), and Gordon (neo-noir), I added in Marcy, Roland and Assigned later. If you look at the seven characters, you can kind of see how they match up with those sins. Jacob was sloth, Marcy was lust, etc.

Though at times rooted in the fantastical and based in the future, Transubstantiate is very real in the dark side of reality sense of the word: people under surveillance, population control experiments, etc.  You’ve classified the novel as neo-noir, which is a sort of all-encompassing genre/movement, but would you say that there is also a social science fiction element to it?

For sure. I wish I could write more SF, I just feel like I’m not smart enough to write true SF, that it’d have to be soft SF. My math skills, science, well, they’re not my strengths. Although, I am toying with the idea of writing something “steampunkish”. I’m fascinated by the idea of moving so far into the future that we have all of this technology that we (in 2010) see as the “future” (such as ray guns, teleportation, time travel, etc.) and then everything fails. We shut down everything, it collapses, no more tv, internet, flying cars etc. And we regress to the survival mode of hundreds of years ago – fire, water, air, wheels, steam, gears, etc. I loved King’s Dark Tower series, and I’m reading some steampunk – China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer, Cherie Priest, etc. I’ve always been drawn to SF, grew up reading Bradbury and Heinlein, but I’m still learning about it. I love Vonnegut too. So those guys are a bit of an influence, and that comes through in Transubstantiate. I try not to be too preachy.

Having seven different narrators is a daunting task both on the writer and potentially the reader, having to keep track of what everyone’s doing/saying/etc.  How difficult was that for you, how did you keep track of everyone, and did you ever have any apprehension about going that route?

It was tough. And I don’t plot either. So it was a matter of doing a couple of things to keep me in line.

First, I wrote every day for about an hour at work. I closed the door, wolfed down a sandwich, and then wrote. Each day it was a different character. Monday was Jacob, Tuesday was Marcy, etc. I’d only write maybe 500-700 words. Over time those expanded a bit.

But I’d think about the characters. While I was working, or on my commute to work, whatever that day was, I’d be thinking “Okay, Jacob, he’s in the bookstore, he’s waiting for the new arrival, and he has a secret. What happens next?” By the time I got to work, and to my lunch hour, I was ready to go. It just spilled out.

You may notice that for a long time I keep the characters apart, maybe four chapters, I think. I didn’t have a problem writing from the different POVs, in my head I could hear their voices, but I wasn’t sure how to handle it when they got together. I didn’t want to have two perspectives on the same situation, so most of the time it was a time-baton, where the scene gets handed off from one character to another. For example, early on, Marcy is going to see X, to have sex. I have it from X’s POV first, and I leave it about where she enters the gate of his compound. I pick it up with her, on her way, and it goes from the gate to the house and the sex.

For sure it was intimidating. And from most of the reactions I’ve gotten, I did a good enough job. But I’ll always worry that I didn’t do enough. Should I have given Jimmy more of an accent? Should I have made Gordon’s voice more fragmented?

And you’ll also see that every three chapters I do something as well. So not only do I have seven POVs, but Chapter Three is a flashback. Chapter Six starts out THIRD PERSON (where the previous entries are all 1st person) everyone in one place, then does a flashforward. Chapter Nine is all correspondence – letters, postcards, e-mails. Chapter Twelve is everyone in one room.

Maybe I’m insane, I’m not sure. I took some risks for sure, but looking back I can’t say that this could have been anything else. The only other thought I ever had was to really expand this, make it almost twice as long, but in the end I didn’t want that. And, there’s always a possibility of a sequel.

It’s interesting that you said you didn’t want to have two perspectives on the same situation because the part where all of the characters come together and find out about their new opportunity that’s exactly what you’re doing.  Did you think this scene was necessary for the reader so they’d know where these people came from, how they got together, or was more the natural progression of things for these characters?

I think you’re talking about chapter twelve, where they’re all in the same room together (and I don’t want to spoil anything here) about to be sent out to their new lives. Yes, in that scene, I did have all seven perspectives on the same place and time. BUT…I hand that baton off, from one person to the next, moving forward in time, no overlap, really. AND it’s much later in the book, chapter twelve, so by then, I had a little more confidence in what I was doing. Now, if you’re talking about chapter SIX, where they are all tied to the posts around the fire, well…it was the plot, I think. I felt like I had to get them together so they could understand what was going on. We kind of figured it out together, what was happening. As they are talking to each other, and not everyone is happy to be there, or to see each other, I was figuring out what was happening. And again, it’s six chapters in, so I was just starting to get a feel, some confidence, and knew that I was going to do a flash-forward there.

You spoke a lot in other interviews about the influence of the writing intensives that you took over at The Cult; the kind words you received from Craig Clevenger, the support you got from Stephen Graham Jones, and so on.  Did you ever find studying with some of your literary heroes a daunting task, or perhaps, and especially with Transubstantiate, did it maybe help give you the confidence one needs to actually write a novel?

You don’t often get a chance to connect with an artist that you love and respect. How often does a painter or musician or writer get to talk to somebody that they look up to, somebody they have studied and enjoyed? It doesn’t happen very often. Not every author that has taught at the Cult has been somebody I’ve read, but certainly Craig and Monica are two people I’ve read. Max, I was familiar with his work, but wanted to work with him because he’s successful, and it was the first novel intensive I saw at the Cult. I learned a lot from Max, more than I thought I would, since our styles are so different.

I was very nervous to work with Craig. I had a feeling that he’d be nice, that he wouldn’t be cruel in his criticism, but he is nothing if not sincere. He doesn’t blow smoke, he finds something in your work that is WORKING and he tries to focus on your strengths, while showing you where you can improve. At least that was my experience with him. The first story I sent in, I was sick to my stomach. When he compared some of it to one of HIS idols, Steve Erickson, I was blown away. He’s very smart, but he finds a way to bring it down to a level where you can digest it. He’s brilliant, really. I hope he keeps publishing, and more often, as I can’t wait to read more of his work.

Monica, she’s such a nice person. She has gone out of her way to help me, in the intensive, and in the real world, at AWP and other places. She really helped me to get over my fears, to treat myself as an actual writer. I think I’ve published every story I wrote in her intensive. She gets the best out of you.

Max got me over the paralyzing fear of trying to write a novel. He got me to write with a maximum word count per day instead of a minimum, and that reverse psychology really worked for me. He got me to see the story only as far as the headlights of the car would allow. I don’t think I could have written Transubstantiate without his advice, his support, and his confidence.

Later, I came back to the intensives for a fourth one, the SECOND Clevenger intensive. That was where I think I really started to write well. I’d learned so much in the process. I wasn’t scared of Craig any more, I considered him a peer, a friend, and when he pushed me to start sending out my story “Stillness” saying it was ready, perfect, I took a deep breath and got over my fears. That story got rejected a good dozen times, but I was aiming at the top, Clarkesworld, F&SF, only the best places. When it got accepted at Cemetery Dance for their anthology Shivers VI (out in September 2010) I was thrilled. Shocked, but thrilled. That’s a 1% acceptance market. Craig had been right. And because of people like him, and Monica, and Max, and so many others, at the Cult, the Velvet, and Write Club, I had the confidence to push myself. I’ve been lucky.

Stephen has also been so very cool. I’ve never had the opportunity to study with him, I missed that intensive, as well as Baer’s, but he’s been very supportive, gave me a blurb (as did Craig), and every time I’ve met him, at various AWPs he’s been so very generous. He’s hilarious too. Not to mention one of the most talented, and prolific, writers I know. He’s really what I’d like to become. He writes literary, as well as genre, has no problem defending people like Stephen King, he writes and publishes all the time, teaches, does panels, and never apologizes. Some day I’d like to be where he is. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but he’s really an inspiration to me.

Write Club also seems to have had a major influence in the writing and editing of Transubstantiate.  How important do you think having a collective of like-minded contemporaries was to the process, and how do you think it helped shape the final product?

Write Club has been a huge influence on me. Without this support group, I don’t think I could have written Transubstantiate. I won’t start naming names, because I’m sure I’d leave people out, but they know who they are. It’s the same core group of writers that shows up at the Cult, the Velvet, GoodReads, Facebook, etc. and they’re all so talented, so giving. I can’t stress how important it is to have a support network like this. These people, they tell me how it is. They don’t pull punches. We fight over scenes, over endings, word choices. They keep me on my toes. My work is much better because of them. These are the men and women that take the time to read my work, to put 100% of their mind, and heart, and soul, into making me better, into telling me when I’m on my game, helping me to fix what isn’t working, and when I get work out there, they are the first to say congratulations, to pimp me to their friends, to retweet, and post on FB, write up reviews, give me 4-5 stars at Amazon or GoodReads, etc. And not because they feel they have to, but because that’s honestly how they feel. Again, I’m lucky. And not to mention that these guys are very talented, and really deserve to be published and put out there more. I know that they’ll all succeed as well. I’m so happy to see them all getting book deals and putting their stories out there.

Right now I’m workshopping Disintegration, my next book. It’s a neo-noir, transgressive thriller. I think it’s my best work to date. But we’re fighting over the ending, they’re challenging me on scenes, on choices I’ve made. Not to be jerks, not to push their own agendas, but to help me to make this the best it can be. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed. It’d be easy to be defensive, to say “Screw you, I know what I’m doing,” but these guys are smart, they speak from their hearts, from experience. In the end, I have to write my story, I have to stay true to my vision, but if they can help me to make it better, more honest, more true, then I do it, I make those changes, I pump it up, I push myself. And to be honest? If I was alone, I probably wouldn’t do that.

You’ve listed some influences, from Stephen King, to Chuck Palahniuk, to LOST.  In Transubstantiate the main characters are on an island, survivors of a great plague, and Jacob, one of the characters who works in a bookstore is giving one of his customers Choke to read.  Thematically everything works, but are these sort of vehicles strictly for helping to advance the story, or were you having a little fun, paying homage with little nuggets, while at the same time maybe making a connection with the readers who have like interests/influences as you?

I was having a little fun. And paid homage to some of my influences. I do think that fans of my work will also, most likely, have read similar works, and if not, then maybe they’ll pick them up. You’ll notice I also take a cheap shot at Dean Koontz, somebody I read for a long time, an author I really enjoyed in my youth (Whispers, Phantoms) but kind of failed me in his recent books, many disappointing books over the last ten years (aside from the Odd Thomas books) so much so that I’ve stopped reading him.

There are also a lot of “Easter Eggs” buried in the book. I had a lot of throw away names, and instead of just grabbing a name out of the air, I decided to use the names of people I know, other writers, friends from the Cult, Velvet, Write Club, etc.

The Dean Koontz blast was loud and clear.  In my opinion writing should have more writer-on-writer, prose-on-bros crime, ala rap battles.  If you were going to go after someone–aside from Koontz–who would you set your sights on?

Oh boy. I hate to slam anyone, because I know how hard it is to be successful as a writer, so really, Koontz is a brilliant guy in some way, he’s a millionaire for sure. I’ve never been a fan of Pynchon. There are a lot of literary writers and critics that I wish would just get off their high horses and relax, admit they enjoy genre work, and stop criticizing people like Stephen King. I’ve seen SGJ do several panels, and he’s always defending King. He’s the man. I wish I could be meaner, but really, Koontz is probably one of the few authors that I’ve read a lot of, and over time, has gotten worse, and really let me down. I took that personally. I’ve read Dan Brown. I’ve read worse. Dan Brown has a place. If they’re really bad, I’ve probably never picked them up. If they’re really good, then they’ve never let me down.

To what you said about someone like Stephen King not getting respect among critics, he’ll never have a shortage of readers.  In a perfect world one would like to have commercial success and praise from critics, but it rarely seems to work that way.  With Transubstantiate and beyond, what’s more important to you as a writer?

Wow, tough question. If I had commercial success, I could live and work as a writer, which would be fantastic. But if I felt like I was writing to the lowest common denominator, I wouldn’t be writing with my heart, my visions. If I had some sort of critical success, but never made any money, and could never be a writer full-time, well, that would be somewhat disappointing too. I’ve thought about it. In this era of mass market work, having to write towards an audience, having to make a story marketable, it does seem that a lot of publishers want to take out everything that makes a story unique, a voice different. They don’t want it to be different, they want it the same, they want a proven story, to a proven market. Ideally, I’d like to write work that is interesting, critically successful (whatever that means, since a lot of critics are closed-minded, of a literary bent ONLY) and also something the masses can enjoy. I would like to think that I write on two levels: a story that can be read, understood, something fast and exciting AND something that has layers, imagery, depth, a second and third layer that can give you more than just the story, but things to think about, to contemplate after it’s all over. I hope that Transubstantiate stays with people. I don’t want to be the literary equivalent of fast food. While some have called King that, I don’t think he is at all.

If Transubstatiate had a corresponding “Booktrack” that readers would listen to to enhance the experience what songs/artists would be on it?

The one album that I listened to more than anything else while writing it was IN RAINBOWS by Radiohead. It’s got a lot going on – fast paced songs, slow moody tunes, a bit of the surreal there. That’s a good one to play with it. It’ll seep into the background, and then, you’ll hear a couple words, and it’ll all make sense, connect. Put it on. REBOOT.

I read  that Transubstantiate is the third book you’ve written.  What happened with the first two?  And what did writing them help with the writing of Transubstantiate?

Oh, man. I was hoping it would be ten or twenty years before I got this question.

The first book is called Remembering and it’s terrible. I workshopped it in my first Write Club, and, wow, it was bad. I have to thank Bret Fowler, a guy I’ve gotten to know at WC and the Cult, and just met for the first time here in Chicago recently, we did a reading together in Wicker Park a couple weeks ago. He really helped me to understand the difference between show and tell. I also realized that this first book was really preachy, just terrible. It was about a guy who gets all of the “answers” to the questions that haunt us all, directly from GOD. Bad book, it’ll never see the light of day. BUT I did learn a lot, what NOT to do, how hard it is to write a novel. Every writer has to write a first book, and most of them are horrible, should be thrown away. You get to say all of the things you want to say, get all of your “messages” out there, and then, throw it away. Seriously.

The second book is called The Fool, and it’s a memoir. Who knows, maybe some day it’ll happen. I actually got an offer on it many years ago, but it all fell apart. Basically, I had a lot of adventures when I was young – sex and drugs and rock n’ roll, you know. And I had all of these stories about people dying at my feet, acid trips and hallucinations, leaving my body, wild underground sex clubs. There were a good twelve stories that I found myself telling people over the years. I’m sure my wife, Lisa, would be happy if this never saw the light of day. Who knows. Maybe when I’m rich and famous I’ll get the right offer.

So, technically, yes, Transubstantiate is my third book. Disintegration will be my fourth. But I really consider Transubstantiate my first.

If nothing else, I learned how hard it was to write a novel, how long it takes to write 60, 70, 80 thousand words. It’s a big commitment. You should probably write short stories for awhile first, learn to master plot, character, setting, etc. all of the basics over a shorter span first. I don’t think I could have done anything but fail with that first book. It was way too soon, I was wasn’t ready. So, now, I know what it takes. I hope to keep writing, more novels and short stories. I’ve gotten over my initial fear, and hopefully I’ll keep learning and growing and getting better at this.

What would you say has been–or was–the hardest part in the experience of writing and publishing Transubstantiate?

Oh man. The hardest thing is believing in yourself. It’s the whole journey – believing in your idea, having the faith and courage to even TRY to write it. Then writing it. Then editing it for a year. Sending it out, believing it’s a great story, that you have a place in the world and are worthy. Selling your story to the masses, once you have a press, fighting for everything – the cover, the words, the events, the things you believe in, your story. The hardest part of writing and publishing is believing that you have something to share, that it is worth their time, their money, these hours, days, weeks of their lives. It’s hard. But I do believe in my words. Now. In my short stories, in Transubstantiate, and in the next one, Disintegration. I question a lot of it, so many words, sentences, scenes, chapters. I lose faith every day, and then fight to regain it. And when somebody takes the time to pop up on Facebook or send me an e-mail or writes up a fantastic review, well, I get a little bit of energy back, a bit of faith, and I keep going. Somebody just popped up on Facebook today, IM’d me real fast, just said, LOVING YOUR BOOK, and then disappeared. A guy in the UK. That’s awesome.

Transubstantiate is the first release from the upstart press Otherworld Publications.  Do you feel a lot of pressure having the flagship book on that press, and how are you measuring success for the book?  Is it just getting published, and everything else is a bonus? Is it overall book sales? Is it something else all together?

Sure, a lot of pressure. But, I can only do so much. I put it out there, do everything I can, and hope that OWP will do everything they can. We make mistakes, and hopefully learn from them. It’s a stepping stone, we’re all learning. I know that the people that are following me will benefit from the lessons that I’ve learned. And that OWP has learned. The printing process, the PR, the timelines, all of that, I know others will learn and benefit from what we’re going through right now. And whether we sell 50 or 5,000 copies, the bottom line is that I tried to put out the best book I could, and I hope that it will be a great read for everyone who comes in contact with it, entertaining, and maybe it’ll leave a mark, a tiny echo, some sort of lingering effect.

Success? Sales is one thing, sure. I’d hoped to sell 5,000 copies, but now I’d probably be happy with 1.000. Who knows. We’ve been late on a lot of things, and that has effected everything. But, as somebody said to me, it’s not just the release date, it’s the whole year that comes after it. So, ask me in a year how I feel about it all. I know that I’m expanding my audience, and that total strangers from all over the world are reading my book, and enjoying it. And that makes me happy. And my peers, fellow authors, they’ve reacted really well, all positive so far, so that’s a great feeling too.

I see this as a stepping stone, a process, someplace to start. I hope to do more with this book, maybe sell foreign rights, film rights, that kind of stuff. I have short stories coming out soon, “Stillness” will be in the Cemetery Dance collection Shivers VI any week now, and they often win a Bram Stoker award for this anthology. I have a story, “Victimized” in Murky Depths in early 2011, a graphic format magazine, and I’m really excited about that too. These are two of my favorite stories, possibly my best. It’s all connected. My novel, getting my MFA, my short stories, editing and designing for Colored Chalk and Sideshow Fables, all of it. It’s connected. I’ve been humbled by the whole process, but am really excited about how Transubstantiate has grown and gotten out there and gotten attention. Every time I get a note from somebody on Facebook or GoodReads or the Velvet of the Cult saying they really loved the book, that makes me happy. And in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

In promoting Transubstantiate, you’ve embraced the grass roots approach necessary for upstart artists in the 21st century, using all of the popular social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, etc.) to help spread the word.  Have you found it’s helped in finding an audience, or maybe even creating one?

For sure, definitely. Facebook, my friends have grown to over 4000. The Facebook group for Transubstantiate is over 1200. And lots of people in the group have gone out and bought copies, people all over the world – Germany, Australia, the UK, all over the US. It’s very cool. Same with Goodreads.com, we got over 1000 people to enter the contest (gave away five copies), and 200 selected the book as “to-read”, and right now, eight people are reading it over there. So that’s pretty exciting. I know that all of these resources have helped, the forums I’m at, the Cult, the Velvet, my blogs, Twitter, all of that. I know that I’ve not only made new fans, but have turned friends into fans as well, have put my words in the hands of people who knew me, or knew of me, but never read my work. It’s contagious, it just keeps growing and spreading, like a virus. I mean, like a flower. I know that all of these resources have certainly helped me, a first time author, and my press, as well.

You just recently experienced your first book signing.  First, what was that like, and second, what has been the most surreal thing so far about the whole experience of having your first book published?

The book signing at GENCON in Indy was pretty cool. I’ve been to AWP three times now, and to other conventions, big trade shows, but GENCON was wild. Not as cool as COMIC-CON, I don’t think, but there were stormtroopers, ghostbusters, Final Fantasy chicks, various anime in stages of undress, fur bikinis, lots of strange things. Our table was in Author Alley, just a little area in the back. So, if people made it us, they were probably looking for books, and were pretty serious. Otherwise, it was a wrong turn, and they kept going, looking for more half-naked girls or giant 10-sided dice.

I was kind of excited to see a little sign with my picture, Richard Thomas signing from 12-4. And a stack of my books, both the signed/limited and the paperbacks. I got to talk to a lot of people. Most of the books were fantasy, so the book covers were dragons and pixies and stuff like that. We stood out, more neo-noir, crime, mystery, some SF. I got asked a lot of great questions – how long did it take, what was my book about, what was neo-noir (or speculative). I sold three signed/limited and I was pretty excited. I kept thinking “I can’t believe this guy is dropping $40 on my book.” Even with all of the extras (cd with 5 short stories, extra bonus chapter, extended interview). It was kind of touching, really, that they were willing to take a chance, willing to come back later to get the book signed because I wasn’t there yet (had some trouble getting my ID, go figure). We sold a lot of paperbacks over four days too. It was a lot of fun. Nobody can really talk about my book like I can, explain the genre, the themes, the plot, or answer questions.

The most surreal thing was probably at AWP Denver. A guy came up to me and asked me if I was Richard Thomas. If I was the guy who wrote Transubstantiate. I was shocked. He was a really smart guy, ran a panel, and was actually really well read. I don’t know if he knew what I looked like, or read my name tag, or what, but I talked to him and it was really cool. I shook his hand, and kind of gave him a hug too. Probably slipped him some tongue, I was so excited. It was surreal. My first fan. Made my day.

Talk a bit about Disintegration.  You say you’re in the process of working out the ending but take us to its beginning.  What’s it about?  Does it relate at all to Transubstantiate or are you going somewhere new? How soon before we get to read it?

Thanks for asking. Disintegration is similar to Transubstantiate in the sense that both are neo-noir (new-black) fiction. They both are thrillers, although I think Transubstantiate is faster, where Disintegration is slower, more introspective. The other difference is that I see Transubstantiate being speculative where Disintegration is transgressive. I put these labels on my books simply because it helps me to keep the voices straight, the tone. Transubstantiate has a bit of the horrific, the fantastic. Disintegration focuses on the anarchy of one man, the rebellion, man vs. society, man vs. himself.

We’ve been talking a bit about what makes a novel “noir” over at the Velvet, and some think it’s just that it’s tragic, that the protagonist is a loser, who will never win. I don’t know about that. Maybe. I’m more open about what it means – dark, tragic, with a certain mood and tone. But I’m not sure if noir, or neo-noir, has to have a bad ending, that tragedy. I’m still learning. And in the end, I don’t really care about the labels, I just want it to be a fantastic read.

Disintegration has nothing to do with Transubstantiate, I’ll just answer that straight out. BUT…there may be a sequel to Transubstantiate someday. I have some ideas.

How soon? Well, I hope to finish writing it this year, and maybe have it land at a press next year, so that means as early as 2011, but most likely 2012 or later. I’ll be shopping it around, and have a short list of presses and agents that want to see it.

What’s it about? It’s about a man who loses everything, his family, his life, his identity. He slips into this darkness, he separates himself from society, goes off the grid, and starts to do work for a shady man. The work gets more violent, until he starts killing people, on assignment, and descends into a life that is far removed from what he once was. But somewhere down there, he still has hope, still seeks out a connection, still clings to some sort of hope. It’s dark, much darker than Transubstantiate, and I’m thinking this one may be more of a tragedy, more fitting to the noir label (or neo-noir). It’s a mix of Falling Down and Dexter and is a lot more influenced by the style and writing of Will Christopher Baer. I think it’s my best work yet.

What’s the immediate future hold for you and Transubstantiate?

Well, I hope that we’ll sell some books, get some attention, and help build my audience. Everyone has been great, very supportive, people all over the world. I’m really excited about Shivers VI (Cemetery Dance) coming out in September, so many great authors in that anthology, Bram Stoker winners, great company, that should get me some more attention. I’m reading at Quimby’s in Chicago on October 16th, that’ll be fun. My first book club in Kirkwood, MO (St. Louis) in late October. I can’t wait for Murky Depths to come out, early 2011, and would love to get into more comics/graphic novels, pair up with an illustrator, that would be fun. And of course, finishing up Disintegration. And my MFA down at Murray State University in Kentucky. So, lots going on. I just want to keep writing, keep getting better, start sending out short stories again (I’ve been really dead as far as that goes, just haven’t had any time, and I published everything I had built up in the intensives, over the last three years).

And I’m excited to keep supporting all of my friends that are publishing: Nik Korpon has Stay God coming out at OWP this December, and Brandon Tietz is re-releasing Out of Touch with us too, and Michael Sonbert too, also joining the family; Caleb Ross has I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin with Black Coffee Press; Simon West-Bulford has a book at Medallion, The Soul Consortium. I LOVE all of these books, I’ve read them all. Great books, really talented authors. All guys from Write Club, the Cult, the Velvet. I’m so excited for all of them, we’re all breaking out at the same time, couldn’t be more fun, more thrilling.

***

The Oxyfication review of Transubstantiate can be read HERE (Mild Spoilers).

The website of Transubstantiate can be found HERE.

Transubstantiate can be ordered from all major online booksellers (Amazon, B&N) or directly from the publisher HERE.

Casual brutality, sex, and disorder: the heroes of noir have never been terribly endearing to the heart, but the seven nihilistic souls of Richard Thomas’s Transubstantiate seem like they were born ruined, and are likely to die that way. The story draws heavily on all the beloved accouterments of the neo-noir tradition— fractured narratives; cynicism; disorientation; ruthless beatings— but the story branches out into other areas, exploring themes of mysticism and the unknowable, even broaching the peripheral terrors of Lovecraftian horror.

We follow our seven characters over the course of events in both real time and in flashbacks as they struggle for survival in the throes of exponentially-worsening disasters. If it’s bad, it likely gets worse. Most of these people started off as convicted murderers; those were the good old days. There’s the man who poisoned his cheating wife (Jacob); the woman whose sexuality seems to lead to someone’s death just as often as gratification (Marcy); the ex-cop who carries out murders he considers “just” (Gordon). It all catches up to them, and soon our incarcerated antiheroes are thrown together and given what appears to be a second chance when they are chosen for a rehabilitation program on a remote island—except, it’s not a rehabilitation program. It’s a shadowy experiment. And how often do those turn out well?

Soon, a virus has swept over the planet, killing off most of humanity. That’s not quite the bad news. With the world now in ruins, no one is at the wheel and society has run amok: bloodthirsty tribes and mad dogs roam the cities, and those not wishing to be killed (or worse) are forced to seek out safety underground. Meanwhile, back on the island, the situation is no less hopeless. Our characters, who have been forced at gunpoint by their captors to run a mock society and play pretend for the benefit of island newcomers, have but two options. Neither is terribly appealing: A) Escape to the mainland, the barbaric state of which they do not fully comprehend, or B) Remain on the island– a paradise, except that it is essentially an elaborate prison camp (hey, at least you can steal a view of the beach— though do so at your own risk), and that the experiment in which they are trapped seems to have become a headless nightmare.

What is happening? The virus, the experiment, the charade on the island; is someone watching it all transpire, pulling the strings? That may be the character known as Assigned. The chief antagonist, Assigned’s narrative thread is largely represented by nothing but a chilling readout of computer language and script logs; an abandoned program grown sentient, or something worse. Assigned is watching every move that’s made on island, but who (or what) is it? A program gone haywire, or the tangible shard of some alien consciousness? Was mankind in collusion with dark forces? The character known as X seems to have an idea. In fact, he may even have been one such force; a manipulative mystic, spiritually (but not morally) enlightened, possibly inhuman, and acting as something of a psychic warden at the behest of those running the experiment. Willingly, of course. X is furthering his own agenda; this makes him somewhat detached from the plight of mankind, despite that he’s probably the best shot it now has for survival. His powers are shamanistic in nature— mental projection, healing, divination. His true motives are unclear. Is X an agent for humanity’s evolution, or the harbinger of its collapse?

Though the plot is a veritable straitjacket of mysteries, the telling is lean, even spare: this book is brisk, wicked, and blood-soaked. In fact, the story reads much like a 200-page climax– Thomas’s writing is always on the move, always frantic, surging forward essentially without pause, all while maintaining an intricate weave of narrative threads with deceptive ease. Our heroes may play to a familiar type–  they are selfish avengers, benumbed by blood and tragedy into a final, jagged archetype of skewed morality that goes unchallenged by even the most earthshaking developments– but the backdrop of sci-fi pulp keeps everything fresh and unpredictable: otherworldly shock troops materialize out of thin air. Teleportation devices lie hidden in caves. Microchip implants. Ancient relics. Anthropomorphic animals. There is, in fact, a sense that the plot machinery of Transubstantiate runs deep, and has likely ground up many lost souls before these. In a way, this validates its corrosive noir cynicism. The story’s true depth and scope are likely known only to X, and he’s not exactly the sharing type. And so the cause of it all lies largely outside the reach of the unenlightened.

Still, the theme of biological evolution appears more than once during the course of the story. It’s suggested that human potential has not been reached, and it’s implied that the powerful X may be using the island and its inhabitants to engineer his own Eden– a vision of the future of humanity, of what it could become. If that’s the case– if these survivors are destined to evolve– let’s hope they learn to control their ids a bit. As it stands, it seems like one X per planet may be enough.

Follow Richard Thomas @ whatdoesnotkillme.com

Buy Transubstantiate from Otherworld Publications

Bret Easton Ellis burst onto the literary scene in 1985 with his debut novel, Less Than Zero. Less Than Zero was born smack-dab in the middle of the Reagan 80’s, a time of debauchery and decadence shrouded in a Cold War haze; the dawning of the era where the self-indulgent I would obliterate the once-united We into exile. MTV was in its infancy and Betamax was promising technology.  Clay, Less Than Zero’s protagonist, had a problem merging on freeways, and couldn’t seem to shake the implications of an overbearing billboard in Los Angeles which read, DISAPPEAR HERE.  Clay’s fellow cast of characters: Blair, Julian, Rip, Trent, and others were just as rich, high, and sex-starved as Clay was, and for them, enough was never enough; they saw, they snorted, and they weren’t apologetic for it.  They were the sons and daughters of Hollywood’s movers and shakers, movie producers, real estate agents, and they had the trust funds to prove it.  This group never really had to concern themselves with anything because everything was always given to them.  Less Than Zero was a perfect novel for imperfect times.  They even made a movie based on the book.

Fitting then that twenty-five years later, Imperial Bedroom, Bret Easton Ellis’s sequel to Less Than Zero opens with the line, “They had made a movie about us.”  It’s an intriguing angle to the daunting task of reacquainting an audience after so much time has passed with characters that helped define a generation, all without the author coming off as hedonistic blowhard bent on trying to recapture the past glory of his famed debut.  And for the most part, Imperial Bedrooms and Bret Easton Ellis avoid that pitfall. One of Ellis’s chief strengths has always been his ability to blur the razor-thin line between fantasy and reality to the point where it’s hard to distinguish between the two; Imperial Bedrooms is no exception.  As the book opens Clay has once again just returned to Los Angeles.  Now a successful screenwriter, he’s back in town to help cast the movie adaptation of his novel, “The Listeners” (a wink to the real-life Ellis collection The Informers anyone?).  He’s convinced his condo is haunted by the ghost of the 8-year old boy who lived there prior, he’s being tailed by a blue Jeep, and he’s getting mysterious text messages saying, amongst other things, “I’m watching you.”  He’s running into the Botoxed ghosts of his past at industry parties around town and they haven’t much changed since the mid-80’s.  Blair is married to Trent, but had an affair with Julian, and Rip is still living off his trust fund.  At one of the parties Clay meets a girl named Rain Turner, “The look is blond and wholesome, mid-western, distinctly American, not what I’m usually into. She’s obviously an actress because girls who look like this aren’t out here for any other reason…” and he’s instantly stricken.  “Do you want to be in a movie?” he asks her, and she responds, “Why? Do you have a movie you want to put me in?”  The seemingly simple encounter starts a chain reaction of events which become the crux of Imperial Bedrooms.  Along the way there is kinky sex, bloated corpses, salacious videos, and coke-induced nosebleeds; this is Hollywood after all.  There’s a bit of the despicable, and just when you think Ellis has reached as far as he can go, he goes farther.  If you’re looking for decency, a sense of morality, and overall likable characters, you’re in the wrong place.  In this world everyone is a narcissistic.  As the last line of the book reads, “I never liked anyone and I’m afraid of people.”  Sound familiar?

Less Than Zero shocked people when it was published; the book helped show Conservative America what was really going on behind closed doors, whether they liked it or not.  Twenty-five years later, we’re not so easily shocked; everyone has the internet, everyone goes to psychiatrists, and everyone has access to the best prescription meds.  The class system no longer dictates who gets to be a f*!k up; it’s not a rich person’s privilege anymore.  One of the more infamous scenes in Less Than Zero involved the snuff film Clay’s friend paid $15,000 for. Back then a snuff film was a novelty, something you had to happen across or know the “right” person to see.  Not anymore; Hollywood is up to Saw 115 by now and with the film’s producers still rolling in the cash there’s no end in sight. Fiction is no longer scarier than reality.  The characters of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms might be rich, the exterior of their lives might look more like an unscripted version of The Hills than a tale of middle-America.  But is that really the case? Their desires–sex, money, power–and their insecurities are the same as anyone else. Is the social-economic gap, the difference between driving a BMW or a beaten-up Buick, or sleeping with the hot girl or just wishing that you could be sleeping with the hot girl really that big of a canyon? Keep an eye on the Facebook status updates from your friends and ask yourself that question again.

In the end Imperial Bedrooms is a tale of morality, and how one’s definition of what morality means can shape the world around them, as only Bret Easton Ellis can tell it.  Naysayers might ask if Imperial Bedrooms really adds anything new to the story of the characters of Less Than Zero twenty-five years later, and the truth is no, it probably doesn’t.  But how many high school reunions, how many mirrors tell the same picture day after day? That old cliche, “The more things change the more they stay the same,” that’s so true. And perhaps that’s the scary part.  But even so Imperial Bedrooms is one helluva read.

One showcases, among other things, the smallness of the world. The musicians within hail from all over the globe: Australia, Belarus, Ukraine, the UK, Germany, the United States. Beyond that, the album boasts an inspiring ingenuity that reminds us, without having to say it, that music is as vital a force as nature; it will find release. Project Bluebird boasts over twelve writers.The twins comprising Aloe Up— a folk outfit with elements of breakbeat electronica— collaborate across an ocean, one in Denver, one in London. Tom Peel’s backing tracks come out of a reel-to-reel tape recorder strapped to his chest like a bomb. There would be easier ways to come up with a backing track, but none of them would cry “Listen!” quite so loudly.

There is a joyful recklessness to this compilation; these do-it-yourselfers came together on last.fm, and have released this compilation as a free download, available here, under diym netlabel. An interactive net radio station, a hodgepodge of made-it-in-the-bedroom musicians, a DIY label, a free download— does it get anymore grassroots? Industrial soundscapes (“Prelude” by DateMonthYear) sit cozily next to Black Flag-meets-The Cars basement rock (“Good at Night” by Bill Strange); the chaotically cool electronica of deadcat (“C11H16BrNO2”) arrives just a few songs away from the rustic psalm of Project Bluebird’s “Once in the Forest.”

There are too many individual moments to cover comprehensively, but the gross effect of all these styles together under one roof is almost subliminal. Brokenkites’ meditative, pulsing dream track “Silent Sun I” plays like a soundtrack for a nighttime walk in a city with which you’re unfamiliar. Brunk’s track “hank and I were just bored” has a loungy, existential vibe, playing over a looped sample of a man and a woman having a conversation about sex. It’s sort of Portishead, sort of…not. Moya’s “Die Hard” is a psychedelic piano-and-guitar piece that plays out like a desert hallucination, gradually rising in intensity until a snarling guitar coda releases the tension (this track would find itself right at home in a Quentin Tarantino movie). Tom Peel’s “I’m Pretty Sure It’s Something” is a beatific and contemplative song about the ebb and flow of life on Earth, using the moon as its primary metaphor. Awaycaboose’s “Lullaby for Navidson” is appropriately haunting, a couple of ominous notes woven over top of a barely-there growl. But of all the unconventional songs in the collection, it’s Pete Davis’ slightly less adventurous “Fool” that sets itself apart— a brief, banjo-driven squall of layered vocals and taut songwriting, “Fool” absolutely soars. Davis manages to sound like ten people in one body, all of them gifted.

The unifying characteristic of all these songs– some fun, some cerebral, some just strange– is that they exist due to a labor of love; there’s little doubt that “established” acts also love their work, but there is an endearing purity to this collection that elevates it. One is no curiosity; it’s the natural collapse of barriers. These people are unafraid to experiment, and to do it on their own– following their intuition, creating music from a place of feeling and emotion. There’s little chance such a recording would fail to be compelling.

The free download is available here.

Track List:

1. My Life – Matthew That
2. Prelude – DateMonthYear
3. Good at Night – Bill Strange
4. Carry Them – Aloe Up
5. Silent Sun I – Brokenkites
6. Les Absents – Joe Jack Wagner
7. Fool – Pete Davis
8. Demo II – Solarein
9. hank and I were just bored – Brunk
10. Cosmic Interference – Joanofarke
11. shadows on the carpet – EL Heath
12. Once in the Forest – Project Bluebird
13. Die Hard – Moya
14. The Other Side – The Peach Tree
15. Kissing Your Beetle Bloodied Lips – Speculativism
16. I’m Pretty Sure It’s Something – Tom Peel
17. Sh0tSignal – SilverlagE
18. Sympathy – Terry Springford
19. Lost Subway Wind – Wolfframe
20. C11H16BrNO2 – deadcat
21. automat#1 – Elektrolandmusik
22. Bruno the Songdog – Kissing Zebra Jones
23. Lullaby for Navidson – awaycaboose
24. Hope Has Taken Me – Jason Silver
25. 06:06 a.m. – Greate world in g – psyPi!!Z
26. jukebox gemini girl – Fili O (so cool)
27. A Toast – Dan Masquelier

Caleb Ross’ stories do not behoove summaries. Let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s also just say that they contain blood drinking, deformity, death, and disfigurement, to varying degrees. These stories swirl like nightmares: a populace of anti-protagonists so wounded that there is generally no hope for their redemption. The reader acts as sponge, absorbing their pain. Making sense of it. As the reader, you are the first man on the scene; as such, you are to perform the tasks the characters themselves are no longer capable of performing: observe, record, and interpret. Seek your own closure. And be careful to distance yourself from these people, because they’re collapsing stars, and you could be swallowed right along with them. Your job is only to do the above, and to pretend you dont share something universal with each and every one of these poor souls.

Oh, it’s not as dire a task as it sounds. There is true wonder here: Charactered Pieces is a glass menagerie of deformity, a collection of short stories that is utterly fearless in its willingness to spill blood, shock, and soothe. Unlike most horror fiction, you can’t step away and dismiss these stories with simple logic– they do not contain supernatural bogeymen, mad killers or fiends. These stories contain normal people crushed under the wheels of circumstance and the weight of guilt. The characters within are far beyond damaged– they are wrecked. Busted parents and screwed up kids; scarred, ruined, and weighed down with ten tons of remorse and pain wrapped in cancerous silence. Like individual flaws in the same junk diamond, they share some unspeakable pain in one way or another. But all this hurt isn’t dreamt up for the author’s detached amusement, or for the titilliation of some nihlistic reader– this is a bid for communion where it is needed most. In each story the characters’ struggles are the result of some long-incubated despair, intimate and undeniable as a deathbed rasp. Come close. Listen: that the main character in The Camel of Morocco— an architect tortured by guilt after the collapse of a mosque on which he performed renovations— could reach the course of action that he does with the reader’s suspension of disbelief intact is a small miracle, if miracle is the word. These characters cry for empathy. You will be tested on whether you can abide.

This isn’t shock for the sake of shock. This isn’t to get a rise out of you; this isn’t a museum of cruelty. There is never the sense that Ross is toying with you, manipulating your sympathies. On the contrary, like a synthesis of Raymond Carver’s ability to paint in 100 shades of grey and Chuck Palahniuk’s reckless abandon for the limits of taste, Charactered Pieces is an honest look at the darkness that humans both create and endure; a catharsis by way of misery, sweating out the toxins. Apparently even pain can be beautiful– what else could explain feeling even remotely upbeat, as I did, at the end of the eponymously-titled first story Charactered Pieces, witnessing the main character lovingly painting the semi-formed toenails of an unborn fetus? Yeah. Out of context it sounds over-the-top, but withinin the context of the story it’s an act that is as loving as it is surreal.

Fathers fail; buildings collapse; people visit unending pain on themselves and their loved ones. Love. The word sounds unreachable, like a star whose death we haven’t yet recorded but whose light is still visible. Refracted through Ross’ prose— at turns both brutal and poetic— it can yield understanding. Maybe even hope. Like a collection of photos of our absolute worst moments, Charactered Pieces works to dull the edge of suffering through exposure; toughening the spirit, leading us into and through the places we fear. Though maybe we shouldn’t leap to conclusions on that hope business: “The wind sounds like wind,” closes The Camel of Morocco. The implication is that our guilt, however crushing, is to be dealt with. We are perhaps on our own.

Caleb’s website: www.calebjross.com