“Barrel Warning”
Having read all kinds of stories from childhood, I write all kinds, each one a plunge into situations full of compelling lives and astonishing events. Follow me to see where the adventure of fiction leads us.
Good stories well told is what I pledge to each reader. While not everything I write might draw you in, you can be sure I take writing seriously and will not offer anything less than good weight. No thumb on the scales, no Vaseline on the lens. My writing is as good as I can make it.
Vivid stories told in clear language that doesn’t pander to trends or lowered expectations comprise my body of work. My fiction won’t patronize anyone, nor slight anyone. It is never intended to offend or dismiss any person, group, or viewpoint.
Fiction shouldn’t preach or berate, fiction should illuminate and expand inner horizons. It ought to deepen and strengthen our understanding of the world and the people in it. Most of all it should provide respite. Escapism is running from our woes, but fiction invites us into worlds where our problems fade in favor of seeing what happens next to people we care about, people like us.
Stories are first and foremost meant to engage and entertain. We’re out for expanding our inner world, to enjoy together, writer and reader, the adventure only fiction can offer.
Reading gave me the most fun in my childhood so what I write is aimed at passing along such fun to others. Anything more is gravy on the taters and icing on the cake.
Now I’m hungry.
A Few Words About Fictamystica
Uniting these stories, and almost everything I write, is a tone of yearning, a reach into the night, a survey of bigger worlds we sometimes wander into, to our elevation, expansion, or destruction. In them we meet the Other.
These narratives were written to tell unspoken tales, paint unseen faces, and map undiscovered places. They reveal glimpsed realms, and beings, that surround and permeate us. They speak ineffable truths as clearly as possible. They seek the secrets kept by secrecy itself.
Fictamystica is mystical realism.
These stories contain ideas and observations, portraits and descriptions, and truths that subvert consensual reality to reveal a bigger, harsher, better world than the boxed one we are sold by corporate, a world brighter than the unexamined one we are handed by tradition. They are revelatory if often surreal in their decoding.
They report as realistically as possible the unknowable.
Fictamystica focuses on that moment when we confront the randomness of existence and create meaning by making art, by making moves, by tracing our flailing sigils in empty air as we fall. It is mystery that draws us onward and upward, grants us insights, and lets us discover larger worlds in and around us. These words court that mystery.
To drag clarity from our depths is the struggle, with these stories the history of each attempt. That moment of epiphany is what draws my interest and catches my words and it happens most often in the dark.
Dreams and shadows stalk us all. This is why these stories have touches of surrealism and darkness. You will hear echoes of myth, you will find carven runes hinting at hidden treasures, encoded knowledge, and you will feel the touch of what is neither there nor ever far away. The caress of what stalks us may chill or thrill or simply leave us gasping in thought but feeling it is worth what ever we choose to risk.
We get as far as we can and we try to fall forward, arms open to embrace our eerie brevity.
Can a falling star catch itself?
Fictamystica lets us confront those moments when we change or are changed. Our existence requires the chiaroscuro light-and-shadow show of magick, and so these stories highlight contrasts as the Other, our Shadow, tells us what to write in shouts and whispers.
Stories tell themselves. These stories reveal what words cannot say.
We are all in a stranger place than we know, so no more hiding behind words. Read, explore, feel free to touch — or be touched — and take what you can find and hold.
As a reader, all is yours.
