Letting go of Michael

2017 Salt Lake Comic Con

Here I am again on the eve of another book release. This Friday September 22 is the official launch for WHAT IMMORTAL HAND. Amazon will be live and I’ll celebrate at Salt Lake Comic Con with an event at 2:00 p.m. in room 255A. The whole Con is invited. Come if you can.

WHAT IMMORTAL HAND is a return to novel length horror for me. It is the spiritual successor to BEATRYSEL. The two books share a publisher and I am eternally grateful to Kate Jones at Omnium Gatherum for all her help (quick plug there).

You’d think I’d be used to these by now, having now had seven of them, but I’m not. Maybe when I get to seventy books moments like this will be expected and normal. Maybe. But not now. Surely not now. Not for WHAT IMMORTAL HAND.

Each book that I send into the world is a living breathing creation of mine, a child I’m sending off into the world. Hopeful and anxious that they will be accepted, have a long life, succeed. It’s always emotional. Part vindication, part terror. Part helplessness.

I’m nervous about this one like I haven’t been before because it is the most terrifying book I’ve ever written.

WHAT IMMORTAL HAND is the story of Michael Oswald, a burned-out insurance investigator struggling to find meaning in mundane daily life. It is a holy journey to the past, to faith and to madness. Its permeating horror lies in its challenge to Western philosophy. In writing it, I absorbed this other thinking and studied Hinduism and meditated long about the nature of good and evil against the realities I saw all around me. I summoned Kali, the Dark Mother, and communed with her until she became the muse for the book. I went to dark places and came back with ashes and tigers.

To discover Michael’s madness, I went a little mad myself when I wrote it. Because of this, I am sure,
the book rings true and honest, a story about crime and horror, true because it hasn’t a false note in its perverted reality. At least not to my ears.

Like every book I write, it’ll have to find its own audience—sing me the multiple-genre-author blues—but I think it will. The book is good. really good, in my humble opinion. It is unique and effective. At it’s core is a good yarn. A little experimental (enough to make editors cringe) but it delivers. It is exciting with twists and dark corners. Hallucinations and yearnings for greatness and purpose. It’s complete with complex characters you can love and hate, and profound concepts you can mull over or run past to get to the juicy parts.

Did I just review my own book? I think I did. What can I say? I really like it.

And now it’s out of my hands. Literally. I won’t be there when the reader accompanies Michael down his surreal desert roads. I won’t be there to explain my inspiration and intent, my dislike of commas, the symbolism and literary references.

It is and always will be a part of me. A moment, an idea. I gave it birth and now let it go. Now Michael must assemble his own streak, or he may hunt alone. Such is the nature of the tyger, my dark and brooding son.