reading

Weekly Read: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

Billy Lynn is a soldier, 19 years old, and, thanks to an embedded Fox News camera crew, a big damn hero (to borrow a phrase). His long halftime walk isn’t his participation in a Thanksgiving Day football halftime show (starring Destiny’s Child), but rather the respite from the Iraq War that he and his squad, the Bravos, enjoy as a result of their celebrity. But
like all halftimes, it has to come to an end.

Although the action of Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk takes place entirely on the day of said game (at old Texas Stadium – it’s a period piece, after all), its scope is a whole lot more ambitious. By dropping Billy and his mates in the middle of a charged up exhibition of pure Americana, Ben Fountain uses it to comment not just on the United States as a whole, but particularly on how the nation has interacted with the wars of the Bush administration. Or, more precisely, how we didn’t (and continue not to, really).

Everywhere he goes, Billy is confronted by people from all walks of life who want him to know how much they think of him and the work he’s doing. The platitudes have become so routine and meaningless they’re rendered in a kind of shower of buzz words devoid of any real meaning or context. It’s a brilliant device. More simply, the disconnect between the kind words and the lack of understanding is best symbolized by Billy’s simple quest for an aspirin – when confronted with the easy task of treating a headache, the home front fails miserably.

In fact, one of the failings of the book is that the people Billy interacts with are so monolithic in how they treat him that they lose any kind of individual identity. Aside from his sister, who begs him to go AWOL rather than return to Iraq, nobody at home has any real interest in what’s going on in Billy’s head. There is no conversation, for instance, with a veteran from Vietnam or what not who might better understand what Billy has gone through.

Which is disappointing, because not a whole lot happens during the day the book chronicles. Since the people Billy meets are all pretty much the same, the interactions become increasingly dull as Fountain’s main point gets beaten in again and again. Throughout there’s a tease of a film deal for the Bravos’ story, which is amusing enough (the best chance to have it made is to have Hillary Swank portray Billy), but is ultimately unresolved.

One of the interesting aspects of the book is how many real world people and places are referenced. That makes it all the more jarring when Billy and crew meet the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, who although he is clearly meant to be Jerry Jones cannot actually be Jerry Jones (for obvious reasons). It throws you off, as a reader, but you do get over it.

In the end, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk scores some points about modern American and our disconnect from the wars fought in our name (I came across it thanks to this article in The Atlantic, for example) and its dark undercurrent of humor makes it a quick read. But lacks the weight it might otherwise have carried.

BillyLynn-pb-cover

Weekly Read: Fields of Blood

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

I spent most of my time reading Fields of Blood, Karen Armstrong’s epic history of violence and religion, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Just what was Armstrong’s end game? She leads off repeating the straw man argument that religion is responsible for all wars on the planet (an argument she places on the lips of anonymous folks rather than actually quoting one). But surely, if that’s all she was up to, it wouldn’t take more than 500 pages and 5000 years of human history to debunk. That would be rhetorical overkill.

A secondary argument to counter – one I’ve actually seen in the wild, at least – appears in the afterword, identified by Armstrong as the idea that religion is responsible for more death than any other cause. It’s another pretty easily rebutted argument, but one that, curiously, Armstrong can’t defeat, due to the way she frames the entire book.

The frame, essentially, involves two foundations. First, civilization – not just modern civilization, but all civilization – is inherently violent. Coercive violence is inherent in civilization and its development because without the ability to take other people’s stuff no upper classes will ever develop that will then have time to do things like invent stuff, ponder the great questions, and write large tomes about the history of religion. Second, until a few hundred years ago (in Europe – other places caught up later) religion was intrinsically linked with the rest of life, including politics. The idea of “religion” as a separate thing just didn’t exist.

As a result of all this (and we’ll assume, for our purposes, that her foundations are accurate), we can’t single out “religion” as the cause of any nasty things because it’s just part of a society as a whole that’s doing them. Religion, Armstrong argues, is an attempt by humans to give meaning to their lives, including the horrible violent things they do. Sometimes, it might even reign in our worst impulses. Having said that, she admits near the end that those attempts usually fail.

The upshot of all this is that not just religion in general, but specific religions, are made up of various strains that are at odds with one another, even if they arise from the same holy text. Armstrong does a good job at showing how particular religions throughout history morph from one form to another in order to keep up with prevailing times.

One particular example comes from Judaism, in which the Talmudic stories of King David and the conquest of Palestine – written at a time when such conquering was going on and needed justification – were retconned by future rabbis after the Romans brutally put down a Jewish revolt and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. In other words, presented with evidence that a more martial glaze on the old stories wasn’t working, they changed their meaning into one of metaphorical struggle of an oppressed people.

Now, here’s the thing – that’s actually good. People who change their minds when new evidence comes to light are rational, thoughtful, and should be applauded. But they weren’t just revising a political philosophy, they were recasting stories of an allegedly divine origin. This is something Armstrong never deals with that distinguishes religion from other schools of thought. Religious texts are (mostly) based on the idea that they are pipelines to a higher truth. If that’s true, they shouldn’t be so malleable in human hands. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Having said that, it’s hard to disagree with Armstrong, so far as her basic thesis goes. As an atheist, I certainly agree that religion is a human construct, not the product of revelation or supernatural spiritual insight. It’s a messy contradictory thing precisely because it’s rooted in humanity. But I’m not sure what that gets her, since she appears to be trying defend religion from unfair criticism.

Armstrong can’t win the second argument noted above with this conception of religion. If it has been, for millennia, an integral part of society, so much so that people didn’t have a separate concept of it, then it’s as responsible for past violence as society as a whole. So what is Armstrong’s goal in doing all this?

It winds up being a gargantuan No True Scotsman fallacy, in which Armstrong suggests that people who claim religious motivations for violent acts are, in essence, bad a religion. This is most clearly evident in her discussion of Al Qaeda and the September 11 attacks.

After a lengthy examination of how a lot of modern Islamic fundamentalism is a response to ham-handed colonial policies (on that theme I think she’s right), Armstrong notes how many of the 9/11 hijackers were fairly Westernized. Nor, she argues, were they particularly devout Muslims before becoming involved with Al Qaeda. This is not unusual, as she cites a study of more than 500 people involved in carrying out the attacks that shows only 25% fit the mold of holy warriors when they joined Al Qaeda.

However, she then struggles with the fact that, once a part of Al Qaeda, they did become holy warriors engaged in jihad, filled with tales of martyrdom. To her, the problem wasn’t religion itself, but not enough of it – had the hijackers really known what the Koran said, they would never have carried out the attacks. She specifically concedes that the hijackers themselves surely saw themselves as religiously motivated, but that’s only because they were bad at Islam. In Armstrong’s telling, religion never fails, it is only failed by the humans acting in its name.

Armstrong returns to this defense – “but the book says . . .” – over and over again, but it doesn’t do her any good. First, it presumes there is one correct way to read any holy text. As her own history extensively shows, different people read the same texts very differently. Second, it ignores the fact that actions matter more than words. In another example, she notes that a particular group of terrorists in the Middle East thought themselves bound by Islamic law to avoid violence against civilians. Nonetheless, she explains how they took civilians hostage, which is a violent act in anybody’s book. Actions, not words, are what counts.

Third, and most troubling for the entire book, is Armstrong wants to view religion’s role in violence as simply as the critics to which she is responding. If it’s not THE cause, she seems to argue, it is exonerated. She ignores (or breezes right past) the role religion can play in making killing of the other guy all right, even if the underlying cause isn’t religious. The American Civil War is an example of a war that was purely political, but both sides thought they were doing God’s work. Ever listened to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”? It’s all about how righteous the Union cause was.

Another issue that pervades the book is Armstrong’s problems with actually deciding what “violence” is, as seen in her discussion of American fundamentalists. They, compared to their overseas counterparts, are not violent, Armstrong says, ignoring the various instances (Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, abortion-related murders and bombings, gay bashing, etc.) where they have been. But then she turns around and charts their rise partly to a reaction against “psychological violence,” which she defines as, essentially, modern secularists saying mean things about them. By stretching the term to meet an immediate rhetorical goal, it loses all relevance.

I think the biggest disappointment with Fields of Blood is that I actually agree with a lot of points Armstrong makes. She’s absolutely correct that the causes of conflict are numerous, complex, intersecting, and can’t be reduced to sound bite descriptions. Similarly, the irrationality that can be the hallmark of religion can be replaced with secular variants of irrationality, too, such as cults of personality or the aftermath of the French Revolution (not to mention the otters). Nor is she wrong that secular states – like the United States – have a record of violence that is nothing to be proud of.

In fact, I think Armstrong and I would agree a lot on what’s wrong in the world and how to fix it. On this issue, however, she’s just not able to get around the fact that some people do horrible things to other human beings (to quote Frank Zappa) “’cause they don’t go for what’s in the book / ‘n that makes ’em bad.” Until she confronts that, Armstrong has a massive blind spot that even a tome like Fields of Blood can’t fill.

Fields of Blood

If You’re Worried About Rosebud, You’re Missing the Point

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

It’s his sled. It was his sled from when he was a kid. There, I just saved you two long boobless hours.

– Peter Griffin, spoiling Citizen Kane

Saw Gone Girl last weekend.  It’s really good, particularly if you like the kind of movie that takes place in an air of dread that’s perfectly summoned by David Fincher (with able assists from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).  I say that even knowing the big twist of the film going into it.  Not because I had read the book on which it’s based, but because my wife blurted it out during a TV commercial. She didn’t know I wanted to see it.

Point is, she didn’t really “spoil” the movie for me, in the true sense of the word.  That’s because the flick is good enough that it doesn’t rise or fall on the big “twist” (which, for what it’s worth, happens about halfway through – this isn’t The Sixth Sense we’re talking about).  In my opinion, any movie/book/TV show that rises and falls on that twist isn’t really worth watching.

What’s more, people seem to enjoy things more once they know how it turns out.  At least that’s what some research says.

Back in 2011, as The Atlantic reports, a study was published that sounds pretty neat:

Scientists asked 900 college students from the University of California, San Diego, to read mysteries and other short stories by writers like John Updike, Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Carver. Each student got three stories, some with “spoiler paragraphs” revealing the twist, and some without any spoilers. Finally, the students rated their stories on a 10-point scale.

The results?  Readers preferred the spoiled stories.  But why would we want to know how it ends ahead of time?

One theory is that our anticipation of surprises actually takes away from our appreciation for the 99 percent of the movie that isn’t a monster twist. ‘The second viewing is always more satisfying than the first,’ Sternbergh said, ‘because you notice all the things you missed while you were busy waiting for the twist.’ Psychologists have observed that when we consume movies and songs for a second (or third, or hundredth time), the stories become easier to process, and we associate this ease of processing with aesthetic pleasure.

Think about this for a second.  Most of us have some piece of culture that we go back to again and again.  I know that the big escape at the end of Brazil takes place all inside Sam’s head, but I still watch it.  I know that Arthur and Ford wind up on a primitive Earth populated by a bunch of idiots expelled from a better planet, but I’ll still consume Hitchhiker’s Guide . . . again (in its many forms).  And I know Tommy goes back to being blind, deaf, and dumb at the end, but that doesn’t make “Pinball Wizard” kick any less ass.

Of course, there might be other reasons why spoilers really aren’t, including the uncomfortable recognition that we really like predictability more than we let on.  But, in this area at least, I’d like to not be completely cynical and think that, deep down, we realize that works built on the big twist only are, as someone else put it in the Atlantic piece:

like artistic flash paper: It excites for a moment but offers little lasting wonder.

After all, we want to be better than Peter Griffin.  Right?

Note: This piece was originally posted on my old blog on October 20, 2014.

In Defense of “The Cold Equations”

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

My first exposure to “The Cold Equations,” a short story by Tom Godwin first published in Astounding magazine in 1954, was in a college sci-fi and fantasy class.  I didn’t take the class – my roommate did.  But he shared the story with me and we talked about it quite a bit.

The story, very briefly, is this: a pilot is guiding a small spacecraft to a distant colony carrying medicine to help stop a fatal disease outbreak.  The ship is lean and purposeful, with just enough fuel to do the job with the expected payload.  Problem is, there’s a stowaway – a teenage girl who wants to see her brother, one of the colonists.  After some agonizing, the pilot does what the rules – and the laws of physics, the nominal cold equations – require him to do: push her out an airlock.  For, you see, with the extra weight of the stowaway there isn’t sufficient fuel for a safe landing.  Save the girl, the ship crashes, and all the colonists die.

The ending of the story has caused arguments since it was first published, I imagine.  My roommate and I had a good one, with me taking the side of, “this is stupid, there should have been something done to prevent this from happening.”  It was one of those things that college arguments are built on.

This time last year Boing Boing maven and sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow wrote a piece for Locus Online essentially taking the same position I did all those years ago.  Doctorow is entirely correct, as I was years ago, that things could have been set up differently to allow for a happier ending – one where the stowaway survives and the colonists don’t die of a nasty disease.  But I disagree with him when he concludes that the absence of those things makes the story a failure. Two of his arguments don’t quite sit right with me.

First, after setting forth all the ways that the story sets up the pilot’s dilemma, he writes:

It is, then, a contrivance. A circumstance engineered for a justifiable murder. An elaborate shell game that makes the poor pilot – and the company he serves – into victims every bit as much as the dead girl is a victim, forced by circumstance and girlish naïveté to stain their souls with murder.

* * *

‘The Cold Equations’ is moral hazard in action. It is a story designed to excuse the ship’s operators – from the executives to ground control to the pilot – for standardizing on a spaceship with no margin of safety. A spaceship with no autopilot, no fuel reserves, and no contingency margin in its fuel calculations.

That’s an odd accusation for a fiction writer to make.  Fiction is the ultimate contrivance.  Writers move pieces around and put them together in particular ways to tell particular stories.  That’s why in a legal drama the hero isn’t just defending an innocent man charged with murder, but his brother, or why the cute girl the guy hooked up with the night before isn’t just in the same line of work, she’s the main rival for the new account.  It can be a cheap way of ramping up the conflict, but it’s hardly unheard of.

Obviously one can critique a story for being overly contrived and unrealistic, but we are talking about a short (10,000 words, about) tale set on a spaceship.  There’s not a whole lot of room to explore the facets of this universe that don’t focus on the central conflict.  It’s a story about the rather obvious, yet compelling, theme that space is a dangerous place and it doesn’t care about the humans caught up in it.

The second argument is more implicit than explicit, but it comes up when Doctorow cites the litany of means the story could have used to avoid the tragic ending, from better engineered spaceships to better medical care at the distant colony in the first place.  All of these are true, of course – something could have been done.  But that misses a key point – is it unreasonable to think that in the universe of “The Cold Equations” such things might not happen?

Assuming the story is set in a future period of our own history it certainly isn’t.  History is riddled with tragedies that occur when some entity cuts corners on safety.  I don’t even have to look beyond West Virginia to find plenty of examples – mine explosions, the Buffalo Creek flood, the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster.  All caused because safety was sacrificed for something else, either profit or political expediency.  Or just plain dumb assery.  Is there any reason to think the powers that be in the universe of “The Cold Equations” are better human beings than we are now?

After all, there was a sign warning unauthorized personnel not to enter the ship.  Is it too harsh to say anybody who ignored that sign got what she deserved?  Yeah, but that wouldn’t stop people from saying so.  Scour any Internet comment section in the wake of some tragic accident and there are plenty of people willing to blame the injured for their predicament.  Again, there’s no reason to think citizens in the universe of “The Cold Equations” would look at the incident any differently.

In the end, Doctorow’s main criticism of “The Cold Equations” seems to be that it’s not set in the best of all possible worlds, one where everything possible to prevent such a tragic event from taking place would be done.  But that world is a fantasy, one harder to believe in that most of what’s on sale in the bookstore.  Perhaps one of the reasons it’s endured all these years is that as readers we know it’s all too plausible.

Weekly Read: Trigger Warning: Short Fictions & Disturbances

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

Neil Gaiman’s newest book, Trigger Warning, is a collection of short fiction (and a few poems) that, as with most such things (although not this one!), is made up mostly of works that have appeared elsewhere.  Moreover, many of these stories were prepared for certain people under certain circumstances and, therefore, might not be the most representative of Gaiman’s original work.  Nonetheless, it’s a pretty good collection, rising and falling (as it must) on the strength of each selection.

The works tied to others include stories from the worlds of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who, and Gene Wolfe in addition to stories springing from a photo essay about David Bowie and Gaiman’s wife’s work as a human statue.  It’s fun to see Gaiman work within these various confines, such as “A Calendar of Tales,” a series of 12 short short stories (one for each month) based on prompts drawn from readers.

Of those stories the one that stood out most to me was “Nothing O’clock,” the Dr. Who story (set during the Matt Smith/Karen Gillan era).  It’s got a hint of “Get ’em Out By Friday” in the setup (aliens buying up real estate) and is genuinely creepy.  Gaiman makes good use of the fact that it’s a written story rather than a TV show, a well, with some imagery (and doppelgangers of prominent British folks) that you just couldn’t pull off on screen.

The Holmes story, “The Case of Death and Honey,” doesn’t fare as well.  Full confession – I’m not a Sherlock Holmes fan, so I’m not in the target audience.  Nonetheless, the minute details of beekeeping that the story used got in the way of the larger story.  I know from reading his blog that Gaiman has recently taken up beekeeping, so I can understand the desire to share a new passion, but it just didn’t work.

Of the completely original works, several stand out.  “The Thing About Cassandra” also starts out a bit like a Genesis tune (“Me and Sarah Jane” this time) with a guy being stalked by his imaginary girlfriend, but it takes a wicked twist in the end.  “Orange” is a great story – of a girl who achieves a kind of malevolent ascendance – told in a really neat way – it’s entirely made up of answers to questions posed to a witness to the events.  Meanwhile “My Last Landlady” involves a guy who – well, let’s just say his need for a landlady doesn’t go away because he buys a nice house in the country.

But two originals are the best reason to get this collection.  The first, “The Truth Is a Cave In the Black Mountains . . .,” began life as a mixed media thing, with Gaiman reading the story on stage, complete with background illustrations and music from a string quartet.  In spite of that, the story – an atmospheric tale of revenge and, well, truth – works really well just on the printed page (or, on the Audible version, with Gaiman narrating).  It’s one of those classic Gaiman stories that sounds like it should take place in the real world but thankfully doesn’t.

The second is “Black Dog,” which is not based on the Led Zeppelin tune but rather is a further entry in Gaiman’s own American Gods cannon.  Shadow is still wandering, this time finding his way to a pub in the English countryside that, at one point, had a mummified cat built into the walls.  He falls in with a couple that has some secrets (naturally) which requires Shadow to get in touch with one of his deific pals.  It’s a cracking read, full of weird and chilling little details.

Weekly Read: The Illustrated Man

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I think my first exposure to Ray Bradbury (on the page, at least) was Fahrenheit 451, which was a mistake.  Not because that book isn’t a classic – it is – but because novels really weren’t Bradbury’s thing.  He was a short story writer and he cranked them out at a furious clip.  Although I knew that, the only collection of his stories I’d ever sat down and read was The Martian Chronicles, in which the material is related enough that it’s sometimes considered a novel.

The Illustrated Man has no such pretensions.  Sure, there’s a frame story (about a man whose tattoos come to life and predict the future), but it has nothing to do with the stories themselves, each of which rises and falls on its own.  Most of them, naturally, not only rise but soar.  Highlights are too numerous to list completely, but include “The Veldt,” which must have been one of the first stories to deal with virtual reality, massive TV screens, and artificial intelligence.  There’s “The Man,” which takes the concept of being in constant pursuit of perfection to a different level.  “The Rocket” uses a nice bit of sleight of hand to tell a story about a father who’d do anything for his children.  The version I have even includes one of my favorite of the Martian stories, “Usher II,” in which a eccentric brings to life many of the horrors of Poe and visits them on those who would censor such things.

My two favorites in this collection surprised me.

The first was “The Long Rain,” which is essentially a survival story, which is generally not my kind of thing.  But the description (of a Venus that probably doesn’t resemble the real one) is so rich and the layer of madness on top so palpable that it really works.  How nobody has made this into a move yet is beyond me (it was one of a few stories adapted for a 1969 film called The Illustrated Man, but it wasn’t received well).  I’m thinking Alien meets Aguirre, The Wrath of God – somebody get Herzog on the phone!

The other, “The Fox and the Forest,” falls into one of my least favorite of sci-fi categories – time travel stories.  Such stories generally lead to me tearing my hair out.  I can’t really say why – maybe it’s because such stories normally deal with the byzantine rules of time travel itself and tend to disappear up their own backside.  But this story, perhaps because it’s a short story and doesn’t have time for such things, sidesteps that, as it deals with a couple who flee into the past to escape a dystopian future.

To be fair, one of the other time travel stories I really like is Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” so maybe he was just on to something when it came to time travel.

My wife isn’t a fan of short stories.  She prefers novels because she likes the longer work that allows her to get deeply involved with it.  I see her point, but short stories – good ones – dip you into another world so efficiently and effectively that they seem longer than they really are.  Certainly when you’re in the hands of a master that’s true.  Bradbury doesn’t disappoint.

Weekly Read: The Leftovers

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I came to The Leftovers via the HBO series that launched last year.  It took a lot of shit – most, I think, because it involves a central mystery that none of the characters are trying to solve – but I really liked it.  It was dark, kind of funny in a creepy way, and seemed like a more interesting take on the “Left Behind” phenomenon.  I decided the book would be a good way to pass the time on my recent long journey to Cambodia.  Naturally, the book is not the TV show and vice versa, but it’s interesting to contrast the two.

The most glaring difference is that the main character, Kevin Garvey, is the mayor of the small town in the book, whereas he’s been made the police chief in the TV show.  While that does let him be a bit more proactive with the town’s simmering conflicts, it robs the show of a character who is really doing his best to move the town past the trauma of the departure (a prime example of what a military history prof once referred to as the “Chamber of Commerce mentality).

Which is important, because it allows the Guilty Remnant cult to make a whole lot more sense.  On the show they’re always talking about not forgetting, but it doesn’t look like anybody is.  The book has a little more forward momentum, which makes the GR’s focus more logical.  They manage to come off as less aggravating but more purely evil on the page, however.

Another idea that gets much more developed is the charismatic Holy Wayne, including his rise and fall.  To be honest, that whole part of the TV show never really jelled, but it makes much more sense here.  Wayne comes off less as a truly supernatural healer and more of a New Agey con man who leaves a trail of hurt in his wake.

But overall, what struck me about the book is that it’s funnier than the show.  Not in a knee slapping “this is really hilarious!” kind of way, but just in the tone Tom Perrotta uses.  It comes off more as wry observation, as opposed to dark foreboding.  It’s enjoyable, which isn’t something I’d say about the show, no matter how much I like it.

The real question is where does the show go next?  The first season basically tracks the book, so the show runners are on their own as they go into the future.  Maybe with a little more freedom to explore their own creation they’ll find some of the lighter tone from the book.

On Influences

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

In the introduction of his new short story collection, Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman writes that “We authors, who trade in fictions for a living, are a continuum of all that we have seen and heard, and most importantly, that we have read.”  This is undoubtedly true of everyone, not just authors, but is has a particular resonance for creative types.  For one thing, talking about influences is a good way to suggest to readers or listeners what your own stuff might be like.  Except it doesn’t always work that way.

Years ago, when I first started putting music online, I was filling out a profile on the website that included a place for “favorites” that had influenced me.  I dutifully laid out an array of my favorite musicians – Genesis, King Crimson, Mike Keneally, Frank Zappa – and then realized that the music I was making didn’t sound a damned thing like any of that.  Regardless, somewhere deep in my brain, the synapses triggered by “Firth of Fifth” or “Watermelon In Easter Hay” were leading to the electronic bloops and blips I was pooting forth.

And so it is with writing.  On the front page here I’ve got a list of links to favorite writers.  It includes old favorites, like Asimov and Adams, and more recent discoveries, like Atwood, Martin, and Banks.  I like to think that some of those folks, at least, have had a profound influence on me.  But does that mean what I write sounds like them?  I hope not.

Part of that is because I’m not sitting down trying to write like anybody else.  I suppose if I just wanted to make some quick cash I could try to whip out an imitation Scalzi or Le Guin. But, aside from whether or not I could actually do such a thing, I write because I want to tell my own stories with my own voice.  I don’t want to sound like anyone else. Yet, I freely admit that what I do is backed by the work of so many others.

More so, by this point in my 41-year old life, I realize that my brain is such a mush of influences that it would be hard to pinpoint any one of them when it came to a particular story. Everything I’ve read, heard, or seen goes into my stories. Don’t believe me? Check some of the titles in The Last Ereph and Other Stories. If you’re a progressive rock fan, a couple might ring a bell. It’s fruitless to try and figure out what the accurate mix of things is.

Which is only to say that if you look down the links of favorite writers and think, “I like those writers, too” and “I hope he sounds like them,” you’re probably setting yourself up for disappointment. Without those expectations, however, I hope you’ll find an enjoyable reading experience, anyway.