Category Archives: fiction

We are Destroying our Grandchildren

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One of the main reasons I stepped so far outside my comfort zone to write “The Soul Hides in Shadows” was in the hope that I could wake a few more people up to the terrors they need to stand up against. People might have to be shown how terribly ugly things could get if we don’t wake up NOW and start taking some kind of action IMMEDIATELY. And if they still sit at home, don’t vote, don’t push back, then they are helping to kill off everything decent and healthy in the world and it would be their own children and grandchildren who would pay! Everything horrific and ugly their children fall victims to would be their own damned faults!

Characters Don’t Like Being Outlined

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I no more try to outline the world and lives of the characters in my books than I would think I could sit down in childhood to outline my own life. These guys live and breathe. They have subtle changes of mood and might act differently in front of different people, which might then take the story somewhere else. I have had readers tell me they dream about some of the people in my novels.
So, I just start a few “fictional” characters going, and then watch how they develop and reveal their own lives. Fully prepared to lose a few of them along the way, move scenes and chapters around, and head off to explore something they themselves find suddenly interesting.
Others can write however they will, but I personally don’t keep catalogs of notes detailing where so-and-so stood on some issue yesterday, because he might change his mind on that issue today. And because telling myself I already know what this guy is about might tend toward confining him in cubbyholes he might not want to stay in. There are many layers and twists through each of our lives and personalities, and if this cannot be said of those who live in books, then these book people have not come fully alive.
If I am not startled and thrilled every few chapters by a sudden blast of “Wow! I did NOT see THAT coming!”, then I don’t see how readers could continue to find these stories anywhere near as exciting and full of surprises as they have.
I thrill to going back from the beginning to rewrite everything because someone has just popped in who shakes everything loose. And when I reach the end of first draft, I’d only fool myself to pretend I know what the story is really about, or where it will most definitely be taking us.
Because the characters are just getting warmed up.
– Edward Fahey.

Skull-gritting Monotony

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“There were times when his heart almost felt something.
“Something tiny and unassuming. Barely stirring. Times when his heart seemed almost to be knocking, if only very meekly, on those walls of numbness he had built up over the years.
“But mostly his life was this cubicle. His world and all hope had long ago gotten lost inside countless such cubicles. Eaten away by all this electrical buzzing and flickering, dissolved into the chemically sweetened air and this dull, aching drudgery. Drained by the stagnant, plodding lifelessness of life. By the tedious, skull-gritting monotony of days without purpose and nights with no dreams.
“Outside distant windows, far away at the other end of this vast cattle barn of an office, he heard that electronic bell again. Tolling on and on from a neighboring church. Calling sinners ever deeper into fear. Taunting them and driving their days forward through self-loathing. Through the crippling ugliness of their lives into the terror of what lies beyond.”
– Introduction of one of the characters in “The Soul Hides in Shadows.”

Shrieking, Undeniable Power

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“[Hurricane] Andrew tore trees apart; drove their shrieking limbs past our walls. All around us, it shoved huge deciduous behemoths flat to the earth, or tore them out by the roots.
“I have never been able to say “No” to wonder. Wherever God stood naked, I wanted to crawl into the middle and gawk. Plus, I’d already lost everything I had built or wanted to live for when we’d left San Diego, and my marriage had become a long, aching death. I had nothing left. I had to touch God again at all costs….
“… I ripped open the door, then had to shove my full weight into closing it behind me. Slamming and bucking against harsh unseen walls, waging war for every step, I crushed both hands into the railing, fought my way downstairs, past a pool already choked with roofing and with life torn apart. I bucked and strained my way out onto the street, deeper into the dark, vile heart of a hurricane. Gnashing hard into the storm, I leaned into winds that pummeled and slammed me about like a machete.
“Inching and lunging across the intersection, where all but one streetlight had crashed to the pavement, I crushed my way through as that last light sparked and whipped overhead. Winds like that can drive a grain of rice through a concrete wall, so I wrenched a stop sign out of a tree and held it before me as a shield, slamming my way backward through an intersection of shattered glass and metal, out onto a golf course, where I screeched Hallelujahs no one could hear.
“In that open field, that raging, shrieking fury slammed and wrenched the sign into my chest. For the first time in a long time, “I thanked God and prayed for survival.
“I fought my way back home. The sign heaved at my face, sliced my hands open, and blasted away into the night.
“There was no one left there but me, God, and His mighty, undeniable power.”

– From “Entertaining Naked People”

 

We are but Feed for the Ravenous Billionaires

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“We are the disposables. No more than krill for the ravenous rich. We are the breathing, two-legged waste products of a dysfunctional system that we let get out of hand. It does us no good to think any better of ourselves. Think ourselves anything higher, or more purposeful. We are the castoffs of a once-great humanity; silenced witnesses to the tearing apart of the ethics and compassion of society.”

Dad Tries to Care

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– From “The Mourning After”, a novel by Edward Fahey:
I played like this many a long gray afternoon, thirsting for the world beyond windows. Neighbors shuffled by but didn’t wave back. Some guarded their children when they saw me, as though congenital defects and loneliness were contagious, even at a distance and through glass. Those were gentler years when folks went out of their ways to not notice, but I spent a lot of time yearning through the shades; I watched them pointing without pointing, shaking their heads, cupping their secrets into each other’s ears.
Hours stretched longer when I was a kid. I knew I might not make it through to adulthood, but hadn’t grasped the full implications of that. Something had gone horribly wrong at my birth, so my father would never have his little soldier, Mom would never have her home filled with tiny scampering joy, and we each clutched our guilt very privately.
I’d been walled in since birth. Over-protected to the point of emotional crippling. I’m just now discovering that along with home schooling me in math, history, and language skills, my mom slipped in lessons on the torturous enrichment of loving too much; lessons I’m sure she hadn’t intended….

… “Honey, your father could be home any minute,” Mom told me; startling me out of my distraction. “You can leave your animals where they are for now. Just clear off the ones near the table where your father will see them.”
After another pause, “Denis. – Honey. – Please?”
I got ready, but “Sergeant Carl” didn’t come home for a while. I washed up and changed to “fresh clothes for your father.” They were warm and smelled of ironing. I caressed them softly to my cheek as I turned back toward my mother, who was scurrying around at the other end of the hallway. Folding the ironing board up with a hoarse, friendly skraaack! Hiding baskets of folded clothes quickly in the closet. Smoothing the wrinkles out of her apron but then taking it off anyway, folding it neatly, and placing it in its drawer….

… Suddenly I felt as much as saw Mom snap to attention, slap on her best smile, and launch into a flurry of activity. Out in the driveway, Dad was belting out a robustly cadenced song about caissons rolling and field artillery. No longing for loved ones left behind; no reverence for the nation or its deity; just stampeding over the enemy with arrogant pride.
We heard the war song and knew where he’d been. We knew he’d come in smelling of cigarettes and beer. He marched to the vestibule, into the house, and slammed up against our alternate reality. I didn’t need to look up to watch his face and spirit sag, forced to once again acknowledge the son who would never be a hero. I knew he’d be staring at me as he greeted my Mom. Checking his disappointment at the door, stuffing his sense of loss into private pockets he thought we couldn’t poke into.
After a long moment of readjustment, of just standing there, putting World War II buddies back onto his own inner shelves, he stepped the rest of the way into our home and, as much as he could, into our lives. He turned away, eased his sample case down onto the floor of the closet so slowly that it didn’t make a sound. I heard the metallic scrape and clinkling as he dropped his coat onto a hanger. With his back to us both, he asked Mom, “How’s the boy?”
“Denis is fine,” Mom reminded him of my name. I knew she’d then offer me a wink and a smile. I tried to smile back, but my chin was too deeply buried in my neck. “We went to Africa today. We helped fight a war to free the slaves. Then our little man helped me make dinner.”
I really hadn’t. I’d only wanted to.
“That’s good, good,” Dad said. “I need to wash up.”
He stood there a moment after turning back around; a moment that felt long and heavy, like a gray rainy day. He was wearing his special salesman shoes. Orangeish brown wingtips. “Twenty-five-dollar Florsheims but worth every penny. A man’s gotta show he’s a man, that he’s got control of his world.” Looking down at them as we all stood unmoving, I could have spat out that long practiced defense, but it would only have left me feeling guilty and broken. I was holding him back.
There were dustings of peanut shell powder below his knees and two or three small spills or splashes, some crushed shell webbing in the cuffs Mom had ironed to perfect steak knife creases, but nothing really out of the ordinary.
Mom’s feet had changed from the stained tennis shoes that always reminded her she was “home with her favorite little fella,” to conservative, respectable pumps. Barely moving now, they shifted and rocked through their choppy, but timeworn, minimalist pas de none; like they wanted to run forward and pull back in the same instant.
Dad was home.
Caught up in moments like this, which lingered awkwardly, but passed all too quickly, I liked to imagine my father’s hand wavering, just above my head, almost ready to pat me.
But not quite.
After a time, I watched Mom’s knees buckle, felt her arm slipping around behind me, her hand hooking my far shoulder with a gentle Mom’s nudge, drawing me closer in to her. “Come on, Sweetie, get out of your father’s way. I’m sure he wants to go in and freshen up. He’s had a hard day.”
My father’s legs stood there, straight, strong and unyielding. He let out a sigh before he moved past us. I’m sure he never meant to make me feel small. He was a great man in his own way, a “pillar in our community,” The Levittown Times had called him. President of the local Kiwanis club, he led charity drives for other kids at Christmas. He was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, of The American Cancer Society, founder of this and that. He was away most nights doing good work. He spent so much time helping others that he was rarely home, so you had to give him points for altruism anyway. Everybody loved Sergeant Carl. I’m sure at moments like this he must have felt if I didn’t actually look up and see him sigh, I probably wouldn’t hear it either. He really didn’t want to hurt me.
At least I hope he gave things like that a little thought.
For the next twenty minutes or so I stood on the edge, between dining area and living room, watching Mom scurry back and forth between kitchen and table. My father lingered on his “throne.” Then I listened to him gargling away hours of waving mugs with his war buddies down at Clancy’s; counting on a stinging penitential rinse to make things right. Now was the time to put all that away, anchor into that courage, and do the right thing as head of the family.
Mom busied herself nestling steaming bowls and dishes into position as I stood around the corner of the fireplace, watching. After Dad had changed his shirt, he walked as proudly as he could back down the hall, to take his time-honored position at the head of the table. I climbed up onto my chair next, and then it was Mom’s turn in our little dinner ritual. Her job was to check my fingernails; a warm, friendly, but unnecessary rite since we both knew all the dirt was outside where I couldn’t get near it.
She placed my hands back beside my plate and nodded a smile toward my father, who’d been watching. Only then did he tell us, “Let’s say grace.” We folded our hands, closed our eyes, bowed our heads, and eavesdropped, as he spat the words out as though they left a sour taste in his mouth and he couldn’t wait to unload them. “Bless us Oh Lord in these thy gifts which of thy bounty we are about to receive through Christ our Lord Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Amen.”
I waved my hands through the obligatory gestures, feeling there had to be more to God and spirit than that.

Come clean at the end

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“Spending time here is like movin’ in with Pandora. Maybe some stuff should just stay hidden, y’know?”
“Yup,” Charlie answered. “But comes a time when you just don’t want to screw around anymore. You can get real tired of playin’ hide-and-seek with yourself.
Getting toward the end, you wanna stop playing games. There’s no time left. You see how things have gone wrong and just want to make ’em right. At least one moment of honestly trying, before your soul rots away on ya….
… “I buried my whole life, every bit of it, in my own stinkin’ manure, and it’s high time I planted some seeds there.”
He told Harve, “But I don’t like being asked to swallow OTHER people’s shit.”
“Got you on that one, man.”
“Do you?” Charlie said. “Do you really?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You. Pretending you’re no hero. – Bull. – You don’t know what I wouldn’t have given for even a little bit of something I could feel good about.”
“You did okay for yourself, Charlie. You made the papers.”
“I made headlines; I wasn’t a star. I had a few fans, sure, but not the kind I’d ever want to meet in a dark alley.
“But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about finding out who we are, what we’re here for, and truly steppin’ into it. I wasn’t put here to smash noses. You think you were put here to shoot ’em off?
“You save lives but then you get all ‘Gosh Golly Shucks’ about it. You step into who you are, but then you step back out of it again. That just doesn’t ring true to me is all. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
Then he had second thoughts. “Look,” he told Harvey, “I know you didn’t do it for the fame and being a star and shit, but still … I would like to have experienced what it was for people to know me and like me anyway. I’d love to have done at least a little something worth doing. It’s too late for some of that now, I know, but I just want the chance to do a little bit of good if I can. Somewhere. For somebody.
“And to do it just because it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.”

  • From “The Gardens of Ailana”

Choosing Names for Fictional Characters

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Belonging to discussion groups for fiction writers, one often comes across beginners asking each other how to come up with names for their characters. Should they just page through phonebooks? Should they ….?
– Seems to me it hardly matters what you call them early on. They often haven’t found and developed their depths and complexities throughout much of the first draft anyway. But once they have begun to discover and express themselves, some names will seem to express their specificities and complexities more than others would. Call them any name that comes to you as you are first developing the story. But after that it becomes a process of helping them to reveal their own names through whom and what they have become.

In “The Mourning After” I called the little boy Denis to show that the father may have been a war hero soldier, and demanded a man’s name for his child, but he also loved his wife, and yielded enough to let her spell it with one N (Thus letting it sound more sensitive, poetic, and maybe even a little Frenchified). – None of this was actually mentioned in the story, but a character’s name definitely has its effects on the moods of the tale, and on that character’s believability.

In “The Gardens of Ailana”, Marsha is first introduced as a bit of an insensitive lout and a truck driver. So I gave her a name that allowed other characters to nickname her Marsh, often a man’s name, thus referring to her manly qualities. But then, further into the story, people actually started to know her and like her, and at that point, Marsh became their nickname for someone they actually liked as a woman.

Artists must decide for themselves when their painting, or poem, or whatever is ready. My personal standards are that I will not release a novel until no word could be changed without losing some of its power and meaning within the story. Until each metaphor has layers; may refer backwards and forwards through several threads of the story; and is in no way cliched, boilerplate, or traditional (No blood red skies, or ideas hitting me like lightning, for example). And the book is also not ready if even a passing background character is left two-dimensional and under-developed. A part of each character’s richness then, would have led to them finding names that suit them.

Writing Theosophically for Those Who Suffer

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One of my major challenges in writing theosophical novels for readers who don’t know they’re theosophists is that so many of our “spiritual” concepts fail to stand up to the rigors of most people’s lives. It is all well and good to have a select few esotericists, knowing some Sanskrit and New Agey kinds of phrases, paying a few bucks at our lecture halls so we can remind them that everything is Mayavic illusion. That in truth they themselves are God, and ultimately unassailable. I myself believe these things, and live accordingly.

Then they go home and buzz for a while on the poetic eloquence of such a philosophy until that starts to wear off and they need another hit at another uplifting metaphysical conference.

But what of the masses who aren’t in any way ready or willing to listen to, or build their lives around that? Do we just abandon them as unenlightened fools? Where is our compassion if we take that approach?

Obama makes health care affordable, sets limits in how much our insurance companies, credit cards, and health services can milk us for. Tells big industries to stop polluting our environs.

Our child has suffered horrible, debilitating illness for so very long, but now we can finally afford treatments, and medicines. We watch him getting better. Healing. Laughing. Playing.

Then along come the Republicans. They take our insurance away from us. Raise the costs of our medicines by multiples. Lower our incomes. Take meals away from poor school children. Tell heavy-handed polluters they can dump all the poisons they want to into our food, air, and water.

So then, what do I/we tell those parents? That there are no external enemies? There are no battles to fight; no evils to stand up to? Just be at peace with watching your child returning to his long and awful pain, to that crippling he was just beginning to climb out of? And what does that parent tell his kid? That this is all an illusion? “Just suck it up kid, and keep dying. You’ll get it together one of these lifetimes, and then all this will be behind you”?

Totalitarian dictators throw us out of our homes, drive us off of lands our families had farmed for generations. They buy up all water rights in the deserts as tribal families wither up and die by the thousands, and we should just ignore this? None of this is real?

I write from the knowing that there are different levels of reality, suffering, and coping; and that most people are doing their best to hang on with what they have. I try to offer them hope that there may be some Higher meaning, and deeper access to healing and growing beyond a lot this, but I do not essentially call them numbskulls; tell them this (and their dear child’s suffering) is all their fault for believing that any of this is reality.

For most of us suffering is very, very real. And so that is where I start my stories. I welcome other readers who already know some of these things, and maybe carry them in a little deeper; but I will not slam any doors on the hearts of these others.

Writer’s Block may be a Way of Slipping into Deeper Gear

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As so often happens in my strange writing process, after weeks of distraction; of not thinking about the book at all; yesterday I started writing before the sun was up, or coffee was made. Whipped out a whole chapter of probably six or seven separate scenes in less than two hours. Now today, the whole story has slipped into a deeper level of knowing and connections than has (as far as I know, anyway) ever really been written about before. This is much as my experience was with Ailana, when I kept slipping into deeper and deeper gears. Bringing forth insights I myself had never learned or suspected.

Fighting for What’s Real

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Ericka had thought of them as her glory days when she had wanted to march on every capitol; kick down the doors of the most powerfully entrenched; when she had wanted to right every wrong, and stomp out villainy everywhere. Gene had called her the “Rebel with too many causes”.
But that had been different. It was as if all that had just been a training period, mere preparation for the way she felt now. That had been student idealism. This was the pain of a grieving mom who couldn’t watch anyone else’s kid suffer.
In her short time on the planet, their sweet daughter Madie, their little Bitsie, had taught them so much. About priorities. About courage. About how they could truly love and treasure another single human life, not just hold some general, pro-active fondness for all of humanity everywhere.
In loving that tiny child; knowing all the while that they were losing her, Ericka and Gene had suffered immensely. But they had also grown. In tending to their frail, courageous little girl, Ericka had once again unleashed her inner need to help others; an essential part of her being, but now with renewed, and focused passion.
Once, when Ericka had broken down and wept as she’d had to hand her baby off for more tests, it had been little Madie who had comforted Mommy. She’d told Ericka she was glad she could do this so they could find out what was wrong with her, and then maybe other little kids wouldn’t have to hurt this way ever again.
One way or another, her mommy now would make that little life count for something.
Ericka wanted to; she needed to cram all her pain into something she could change. Someone somewhere she could actually help, but not lose in the end. She had to find causes she could pour her almost fierce, hard-charging nature into, and actually save somebody this time.
It didn’t have to be one particular disease; it could be hunger; it could be anything, but she had to get out there and do something.
Before she had fought for causes.
But now those causes would have little faces.
– A taste of my new book, “The Soul Hides in Shadows”

Life is What We Believe

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In pain and loss, we can find either meaning, or hopelessness. The choice is ours.

How we see things, how we interpret them, how we emotionally react;

these call more of the same into our lives.

We build a world for ourselves out of what we believe.

And how we choose to respond.

Whether we let it take us under,

or rise to meet it.

  • From “The Soul Hides in Shadows”, a novel by Edward Fahey

I am a Writer; not a Short-Order Cook!

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One thing an early-on writer has to learn, is to be comfortable with and responsive to critique. When five people in a group tell you this chapter sucks; don’t snap back at them with, “Sure, but it gets better in another 6 or 7 chapters!”

Listen. – Thank them. – Consider.

They can look from a fresh perspective, and catch things that you might be too close to see.

But, you will also learn along the way that not everyone in a group of relative amateurs themselves, is going to catch everything, and there will be a few who seem to never understand much of anything.

Some will always want paragraphs chopped down to explosive missiles of passion, while others are more used to long composite paragraphs that I myself find impossible to wade through.

You may, once you have hit your full stride and power, feel comfortable telling a few of them, “Look. This isn’t a diner. I don’t take orders: ‘I’m gluten intolerant; he can’t do salt; she’s allergic to peanuts …’

“If what I offer is a salad bar, then No; I am not going to fry you up a cheesesteak!”

Writing is Exploration

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I keep being told that my writing is getting better and better. – Now, at first I am thrilled by that, but then I think, Isn’t everybody’s? Do some authors grow cozy with their own style, and stay there?
I think of writing fiction as an art form. As such, it’s a constant exploration of new and developing ideas. If any of my books were much like my others, I don’t think I’d even bother to write them.

Some Things You Can’t Om Away

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Joan told her, “Knock it off, Marsh; you don’t always have to be such a putz.”

Marsha, still leaning onto the sink, told them, “You guys and your always-must-make-nice crap.

“Mincing around with your damned fresh coffee, playing Little Miss Nicey-Poo alla time. The charming hostess with all her non-threatening jokes, never hurting anyone’s feelings. Sitting around trying to sort out the karmic implications of sneezing on the burglar who just shot your dog. Fuck it! Some things you just can’t Om away.”

Clarice’s smile had frozen in place, but her eyes belied her terror. She didn’t understand what was going on, but tried to calm the waters anyway. “You send out love; you get love back,” she said.

Marsha finally turned toward them all, and it wasn’t pretty. “Great. You can put that on a Hallmark card and feed it to the goats.” She turned toward Paulette.

Paulette said nothing. She didn’t dare look too deeply inside this rabid anti-Christian standing before her. She was horrified that she might find herself looking back.

  • From “The Gardens of Ailana” handbook for healers & mystics

I Don’t Much Like Being Human

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In order to research the book I’m now working on, I’ve needed to dive into the world of normal human experiencing. Immerse myself in the internet and political anxieties. I’ve had to take on ego, feel that steely fist of anger closing around one’s heart. Had to touch at least the misty outer edges of defensiveness; that thin and fragile line between speaking the truth courageously at all costs, and falling for a moment into some vague and passing delight in having bested another with some brilliant and finely-tuned sarcasm. I’ve had to explore what it’s like to get enmeshed in intractable hopelessness when each of two clashing and irreconcilable encampments thinks it knows absolutely that only they have the facts, ethics, integrity, and honesty on their side; that the opposition is undeniably foolish, and insane, and could not be more wrong.
I have had to dive back down into being human again so as to bring life and grit to a book that I now more deeply appreciate the title of: “The Soul Hides in Shadows”.
I do not like the view from down here.

Atrocities of War

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In that moment Paulette stepped outside anything that had ever hurt her before. Harve needed her more than she needed herself.

But she had nothing to say. Nothing to offer him. She came up empty.

“I may not have shot any of those babies in safety seats, but I took out my share o’ guys in a country I started thinking we had no right bein’ in. I could tell myself they’d signed up for it, knowing they might not go home, but that just didn’t cut it after a while.” …

… “Oh, they were scumbags, alright. Other guys in my unit’d be ready to just level the kids too, cause they were getting in our way, but I said, Wait. Let me try goin’ in first. Let me come at ’em from the rear.

“Other times I just lost myself in the righteous glory of cluster bombing the hell outa those bastards.

“And for that one moment, in all the cheering and explosions it’s like all was right with the world. It was John Phillip Sousa at Disneyland.

“But then you wake up a little. You just snuffed out future generations. Maybe bad guys can have good kids if you let ’em. We’ll never know now.”

He was coming close to crying.

“And then you see all those pieces; kid parts lying everywhere.

“And their little faces.

“If they even still had faces.

“Once you finish throwing up, and then toss back a few at camp pub, your next job is to find something inside you that you can bury that under.

“And then … what? Just go on living?”

– From “The Gardens of Ailana”

Still Carrying Pain from Childhood

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Paulette awoke with an ache in her heart, a grinding in her gut. If there really was a God, why would He have let anyone put a child through that? …
She had survived, but at what cost? She was an itinerant professor, living in her head, not her heart. She had broken away, but abandoned her sister; hadn’t contacted her family in years.
Paulette wondered what she was looking for in these weekend workshops. Absolution wasn’t on the curriculum. What could she possibly hope to accomplish? To be a healer you need to connect with people. You need to touch, and let yourself be touched. And not just with your hands.
Watching these nurses, she envied them their friendships. Here were real buddies truly caring about each other, taking jabs, sharing private jokes and fears. She’d never had that. Even witnessing it from across a room, or a yard, only made her feel that much more lonely.
She got along with people well enough. Agreed with whatever they said, watched their pets, helped them move from one apartment to another. But no one really knew her.
Paulette had never been flush with self-confidence. People took that as humility, but humility isn’t painful and crippling. She hadn’t yet learned that humble and self-destructive aren’t the same thing at all. They’re not even on the same team.
And now here she was at a workshop for healers. Had she come here to heal; or to be healed?
It was one of those warm, charming days that write poems about themselves, and then settle these very softly into your mind. Paulette sensed what felt like a rain-laced breeze stirring her soul; sodden, and yet beautiful; laden with both the dismal, and the promising.
– From “The Gardens of Ailana”, a fiction largely based around adults still traumatized by having been abused as children, in the name of their parents’ religion.

Dark Night of the Soul

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Harvey wanted to dive into his ugliness; he intentionally reached for those long hours of soul desolation. He waited. He paced, ready to face down whatever was to come.

Paulette’s, though, busted loose uninvited, catching her completely off guard when she was already hurting, feeling crumbled, and vulnerable. When all she really wanted was some quiet gentle feelings for a change. A few flowers. Some sunshine. A way out of all that inner torment for even just a moment.

Had she had brought only nastiness out of her childhood? Hadn’t there been anything sweet she could remember instead?

As she wandered back to her cabin, searching for even a single fond memory, light faded everywhere around her.

Aw, c’mon, she thought. Everyone had some happy childhood memories. She had to have at least a couple.

How about the coloring? Children enjoy coloring; how about that? She’d spent hours and days on her art. It was as close as she could remember to having her Mamma stand over her with anything even remotely resembling approval. Her books and comics could be tales of Jesus, but coloring books had to be Old Testament because “No child’s impure hand could touch a crayon to the sweet beautiful face of our beloved Lord and savior Christ Jesus.”

So the little girl had scrunched down over Daniel in the lion’s den. Samson screaming in rage, pain, and terror as they blinded him with daggers and torches. The redder she made the flowing wounds of a man of God shot full of arrows, the richer the flames around those three men being burned in an iron box, the longer Mamma let her stay out of that closet.

– From “The Gardens of Ailana”

Trending toward Enlightenment

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This existential battle I write of in my new novel, “The Soul Hides in Shadows” may go on for centuries. Easily decades anyway. Some people moving toward the Light; some taking stands against it; some vacillating, moving back and forth between the two pulls or not moving at all.
This is how man grows, evolves, learns, and changes.
There will be no sudden explosion of angels from on High and suddenly all bad guys turn to good and all good guys are made pure.
Mankind doesn’t work that way.
We may have a sudden burst of brilliance as in Ancient Greece or in the Italian High Renaissance, but still … The Darkness will fight for control. The dull or stubborn will sit still. There will be those feeding every choice and extreme, but overall the world of men is trending inevitably toward enlightenment just as the planet they live on is trending toward warming.