Anyways, you should go read the piece. Consider this excerpt.

But in most other respects Mr. Hitchens is undiminished, preferring to see himself as living with cancer, not dying from it. He still holds forth in dazzlingly clever and erudite paragraphs, pausing only to catch a breath or let a punch line resonate, and though he says his legendary productivity has fallen off a little since his illness, he still writes faster than most people talk. Last week he stayed up until 1 in the morning to finish an article for Vanity Fair, working on a laptop on his bedside table.

To mark the day, the organization had a video short produced. As detailed in this press release: “The two-minute short, specially commissioned for International Women’s Day, sees 007 star Daniel Craig undergo a dramatic makeover as he puts himself, quite literally, in a woman’s shoes.

Directed by acclaimed ‘Nowhere Boy’ director/conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, scripted by Jane Goldman (‘Kick Ass’) and featuring the voice of Dame Judi Dench reprising her role as ‘M’, the film will be screened in cinemas and streamed online in a bid to highlight the levels of inequality that persist between men and women in the UK and worldwide. It is the first film featuring Bond to be directed by a woman.”

Thanks to Dustin Harbin for making me aware of the video.

Taiga

A couple of accepted facts about Richard Coker‘s music. It’s intended to intellectually challenge you. It’s never gonna be included in anyone’s happy meal or designated to be a best-selling ringtone. Nor would Coker want either of those last two possibilities, but he would be happy to know his music can challenge the listener.

When he and I last discussed his music back in 2009, at one point Coker said: “Modern America suffers from the post-modern malaise of pop culture.” That comment was not directed at me or my interests, but I do think it could apply to me.

Coker is a musician always looking to challenge himself as well as his music. It’s interesting to see that some of the cuts in his new 2011 CD, Taiga, are updated versions of songs he cut for 2009′s Loa [Updated: Coker made me aware that Loa was never actually released; Taiga is the only released version of these songs]. I’ve not had a chance to side-by-side comparisons.

But I know of myself, in recent days I got Bob Mould’s old band, Sugar, in my head. This may surprise Coker, but honestly some of the more intense acoustic guitar-based songs remind me of Sugar–and that’s a compliment in my book. In listening to Coker’s lyrics, at least for me, I have to consider the music and lyrics separately. The lyrics are so complex, you can find yourself almost missing out on the music.  After about three or four listens, cuts 4 (X) and 5 (Ymir) are two of my favorite cuts so far. But I bet if you ask me in another week, my answer will be likely different.

If you want to hear samples of each song, be sure to visit this Digstation site for Taiga.

Additional update: After further consideration, I realize that in addition to a Mould vibe, there’s also an element of Dead Can Dance introptopesimism (a mixture of introspective contemplation, optimism and pessimism) and just a smidge of Velvet Underground. His music and lyrics cannot be confined by a certain genre or other classification.

The video above is an extended web version of an interview conducted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper that partially aired on August 5 (a transcript of the edited version can be found here). I’ve never thought of Cooper as much as an interviewer. This video proves me wrong. It’s insightful and fortunately does not focus solely upon Hitchens’ mortality and cancer (but understandably it’s the main focus).

It’s painful to see how physically diminished Hitchens is. But, despite his disbelief in my faith, I am praying for him to beat this thing. He states that he appreciates the sentiments behind the prayers, but he clearly believes it will do no good. I love how he wards off the possibility of a deathbed faith conversion in this interview, conceding he might convert if addled by the cancer or drugs. Hitchens clearly has examined about every damn angle. Good luck to him. I hope he’s around ticking me off for a very long time.

Hal Duncan

I always appreciate when a friend of the blog broadens my area of knowledge by suggesting an interview subject. This week, thanks to a suggestion from Allison Baker (of MonkeyBrain Books), I present my interview with self-described strange fiction writer Hal Duncan. Here’s a snippet of Duncan‘s bio: “A member of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, his first novel, VELLUM, won the Spectrum Award and was nominated for the Crawford, the BFS Award and the World Fantasy Award. As well as the sequel, INK, he has published a poetry collection, SONNETS FOR ORPHEUS, a stand-alone novella, ESCAPE FROM HELL!, and various short stories in magazines such as Fantasy, Strange Horizons and Interzone, and anthologies such as NOVA SCOTIA, LOGORRHEA, and PAPER CITIES.” In addition to discussing his theories on fiction as well as his work in general, he and I also discussed a musical recently produced that was written by him–and the experience of writing a screenplay. I always thank folks when they give me the honor of their valuable time, but I have to give Duncan an extra big thanks for the level of detail and consideration he gave to his answers.

Tim O’Shea: Your first novel, Vellum, was translated into several different languages. How much were you involved in that process? Can you think of any country where you were pleasantly surprised to find readers took strongly to the book?

Hal Duncan: With some of the translations I’ve had no involvement at all; with others there’s been a lot of back-and-forth. They’re not the easiest books in the world to translate by a long shot, I know; there’s all manner of poetic techniques, dialect, wordplay, even a mixture of mythical, historical, and alternate-history settings that means passing references could be authentic history or utterly spurious. I regard my translators with a mixture of shame at what I put them through and wonder at the fact they’re tackling it. So if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. It’s fascinating to see the process anyway.

The response in Finland has probably been the most pleasant surprise. Not so much the feedback about the translation itself, because Nina Saikkonen is one of the translators I’ve worked closely with, and knowing how much she’s put into it, I knew it was going to be excellent; and there was already a lot of support in Finnish fandom from the response to the UK edition. I got a guest of honour invite came from a convention organised by Finns even before the book was out there. And the novel is fairly outré in some respects — I’ve referred to it as cubist fantasy, and I’m only half-joking — so it was awesome to find sf fans passionate about work that plays fast and loose with genre conventions, focused on that more than the bestseller material, inviting someone like myself rather than an obvious popular choice.

And while that gave me a lot of confidence in how the translation would go down with Finnish fandom, the response beyond that has been way more than I expected. When it was launched at the Helsinki Book Fair, it sold like crazy, sold out twice so new stock had to be brought from the warehouse; before I left the country it had gone to another print run. The coverage was superb too — front page of the culture section of the Helsingin Sanomat, which is basically Finland’s London Times. This may just be a marker of the culture in general. I was over again in June just past, because the translation had won the Tahtivaeltaja prize, and again there was good media coverage — newspapers, a radio interview, a tv interview that hit the nine o’clock news a few weeks back. Maybe it’s not the response to the book per se, but that degree of receptiveness was totally unexpected and wonderful.

O’Shea: There’s been two novels in the The Book of All Hours series, do you have any interest in doing more–or are you content to stick with the two?

Duncan: I’ve returned to some of the characters, and I probably will again, but The Book of All Hours is complete with those two works. Structurally, I couldn’t really expand the series, even if I wanted to. Each book is in two volumes and each of those four volumes is thematically based on a season and a time of day — Summer/Day, Fall/Dusk, Winter/Night, Spring/Dawn — so tacking on a sequel or prequel would just screw up that structure. No, the only way I could expand it would be to break it apart and expand each volume into its own book — which *would* be theoretically possible, right enough, since the narrative is a sort of mosaic structure anyway. And, of course, I could then expand those four books into a trilogy each, so you had one for every month to keep with the seasonal cycle structure. And then…

But that would, of course, be nuts. No, I think I’ll stick with the two as is.

O’Shea: In 2008, you released Escape From Hell!, which was published by Monkeybrain Books. How did this project come about with Monkeybrain?

Duncan: Two drunken evenings over cocktails. The first was at a World Fantasy Convention — in Austin, I think — where I was hanging with Chris Roberson and Allison Baker of Monkeybrain, drinking white russians and smoking on the hotel bar verandah. Which is pretty much how I’ve spent most WFCs since my first, where I met them and we immediately hit it off in our mutual love of fine cocktails, cancer sticks and good craic. Anyway, there was a conversation going on, if I remember right, about how we were all fed up with books being monstrously huge, and wouldn’t it be great to have one of those nice 150 page paperbacks like you used to get back in the day, something you can just pull off a shelf and read in an evening. There was a bit of amusement at me being enthusiastic, given the doorstop size of Vellum and Ink, but somewhere along the way, or sometime after that — conventions can get a bit blurry — Chris ended up inviting me to do a stand-alone novella for them. Something short and sweet, to be marketed like a paperback, aimed at the bookchains. I was well up for it, so I went away and started work on a novella. Unfortunately, I ground into the dirt on it, and was still nowhere when the deadline arrived. Which is where the second drunken evening came in.

That was a night with my mate Mags in the pub, Mags being a graduate of film studies, working for a small tv production company at the time, and basically a huge cinema enthusiast who’d be well happy to direct a movie. So over dry gin martinis we were kicking around ideas for The Most Awesome Movie EVAR! — big, bold, pulpy fun. It might well have started with me pitching the title and characters — a hitman, a hooker, a hobo and a homo — with a manic glint in the eyen. I can remember Mags being insistent on various things that you had to do in a movie, and me being equally insistent that no, you couldn’t kill off character X, or play out this or that relationship a certain way, because that would be just *too* damn formulaic. Somewhere along the way, we ended up with enough of a framework that I went away and blasted down a quick overview. I fleshed out a bit, added some more twists and scenes, but I didn’t think much about it after that, until I realised I’d got myself into a dead end with the novella for Monkeybrain. There’s kind of a received wisdom that novellas are easier to translate to movies than novels, because they have about the same level of narrative, so I figured the same should be true in reverse. Rather than leave Chris and Allison in the lurch any more than I was doing already, I bit the bullet, fessed up that the novella I’d been working on was dead in the water, and pitched Escape from Hell! as a replacement.

I still ended up taking an inordinate amount of time getting that novella written, I have to admit. I’m immensely grateful to Chris and Allison for their forbearance.

O’Shea: You recently blogged about Wizard’s Tower Press–do you intend to release some of your books through them at some point?

Duncan: I’m not really the one to say. It’s Cheryl Morgan’s press, so it’s a matter of her intent rather than mine, but I know and respect Cheryl as a friend from the convention scene, so I’d be very happy to work with her if I pitched an idea that she liked. And it’s certainly got a focus that appeals to me, when it comes to the e-book market and anthologies highlighting new and minority writers. The latter in particular; I don’t really have anything that jumps out and says, “hey, this should be an e-book,” but editing anthologies is something that appeals generally, and the extra dimension only makes it more so. Again, though, it’s not like I have a killer idea for a theme.

Still, I *can* say that the magazine side of it, Salon Futura, is something I’ll certainly be sending some non-fiction into down the line.

O’Shea: In general, how important are Kindles and the like to authors like yourself, who embrace technology?

Duncan: Actually, despite my background in programming and sf, if you saw the phone I had up until a few months ago, I’m not sure you’d describe me as embracing technology. I blog and tweet, write in Scrivener on my laptop, and spend way too much time on Wikipedia when I’m not obsessively checking my email, but most gadgets don’t really excite me a lot. With the technology I do immerse myself in, it’s mostly about the software and systems, the ergonomics and aesthetics of the interface; hardware is just a means to an end. I want Expose on my Mac, but I don’t care that much about having a camera on my phone.

So while it’s clear that e-books are the shape of things to come, I’ve been dubious of the actual e-book readers available, which seem stupidly expensive and below par. As a medium, absolutely, I think any author who doesn’t engage with e-books is making a mistake, and I’ve happily dabbled — making short stories available in digital formats online, with some non-traditional approaches to getting paid for them — but up until recently the hardware has all seemed very… zeroth generation, prototypes of what I’d really want.

Publishers abrogating control to automated conversion software doesn’t help. Nor does seeing one of the founders of the epub format publicly dismiss typography. I’ll happily read a basic MS for work reasons, but if I’m reading for enjoyment I want a quality of experience that’s dependent on decent typography. The reports of atrociously substandard products being punted out, e-books that look like they’ve been typeset by a retarded monkey — exactly the sort of thing Cheryl’s talking about aiming to address actually — have left me thinking of most e-readers as… well, meh. They’re like the printer I had for my ZX Spectrum as a kid, where the roll of paper was about the width of a till receipt; strictly speaking the functionality of printing was there, but it wasn’t exactly going to print you a resume you’d want to use in a job application.

But the iPad is a game-changer for me here. It’s something that grabs me as a reader because it has exactly what those other e-readers lack in terms of a professional finish. As a writer too, I care that *my* work is presentable to readers; I can actually produce a resume I’m comfortable using in a job application, so to speak. And looking at it from a business perspective, I think it opens up the market. I know I want one, and I can name friends that would never buy a Kindle but might well own an iPad before me, the same as they own iPods and/or iPhones — and these aren’t Apple acolytes or gadget fiends, by any means. So I see this as the real start of something. And after seeing some demos of how children’s picture books and non-fiction can utilise the interactivity of touchscreen technology… well, I’m not sure yet how you might apply that to narrative in a way that’s more than just a novelty, but it is a radical transformation of the medium.

O’Shea: You’ve written extensively on literature–in general as well as in analysis of genres and subgenres. Most importantly you analyzed the category “strange fiction”–and in fact you call yourself a strange fiction writer. What is your hope/interest in defining yourself in such a manner (and exploring the concept as a definition)?

Duncan: Partly I’m just walking away from the overload of definitions. Within the community of readers and writers, labels like science fiction and fantasy have become enmeshed in a turf war of tribes, bitter boundary disputes. It’s like rock and pop were at war with one another, with some insisting that the mere presence of harmonic backing vocals made a rock song actually pop, or somehow polluted its purity. Those terms have become such nominal labels that you can’t talk about works of strange fiction without someone vehemently disagreeing that the work you’re talking about is validly described by whatever label you apply. So I’ve abandoned those rotted names to the tribes, to squabble over among themselves.

I don’t see much value in them in terms of marketing either. Terms like sci-fi, science fiction or fantasy all function as brand images which are loaded with preconception to outsiders. For many, I’d say, those terms will be used the way an aged aunt might describe Mogwai as “that heavy metal you listen to.” They conjure up tightly delimited genre conventions and an adolescent audience. They conjure up the equivalent of spandex and mullets. The actual range of approaches is really more comparable to indie — could be anything from Mogwai to Belle and Sebastian, in a melting pot of genres like garage, punk, glam, folk, pop, disco, and so on — so this brand image is immensely inappropriate. It’s not a good way to sell the fiction.

If I had my druthers in terms of branding, I’d apply the label indie fiction — on a parallel with indie movies and music, where this now refers to an independent style as much as independence from the corporate structures. The point is, this fiction’s key feature is actually independence from the constraints of realism, the presence of quirks that flavour it with a distinct strangeness. Within that you’ll get very commercial fare — just as some indie bands are pretty formulaic — but the selling-point for sf has always been “something different” rather than “more of the same.” The films of the Coen Brothers are actually a good comparison point: this is fiction for people with eclectic tastes but a general desire for something not locked into grim realism. Reorganise the shelfs in the bookstores, and you could connect the works with their core audience far more effectively, I’d say. At the moment it’s like trying to sell Belle & Sebastian in a Heavy Metal section that many of the people who’d appreciate that band’s music will simply avoid like the plague. Sadly, I’m not the Emperor of the Publishing Industry or the King of All Bookstores, so I don’t see that happening.

If I can’t affect the branding though, I can at least clear away the rotted names from the critical discourse, and talk about how fiction works, about how one particular type of fiction works, regardless of what it’s labelled. Or at least I hope I can. I think you can actually disregard the boundaries as a starting point and look at what narratives do in precise linguistic terms. You can address writers like Franz Kafka and Kelly Link in the same breath without any concern for the literary territories they’re associated with, because we’re talking about technical features of the text that are as substantive as alliteration. To look at this stuff as strange fiction isn’t a genre approach; it’s simply looking at that fiction which is strange, where strangeness can be precisely defined in terms of a particular linguistic quality sentences possess — alethic modality aka subjunctivity — which is, in non-jargon, the possibility or impossibility of the events described by it. Are they logical impossibilities, contradictions-in-terms? Are they metaphysical impossibilities, breaches of the laws of nature? Are they temporal impossibilities, breaches of known history or known science? And there are other types of modality — matters of should and might rather than could — which you can bring into an analysis. If you include horror as a mode of strange fiction, you kind of have to, which brings tragedy into the scope as well.

In the full system, I think there’s a capacity to get to grips with any narrative in terms of strangeness, and to look at how that strangeness drives it. It becomes a model of narrative dynamics itself. It’s really only of interest if you’re into literary criticism, analysing how texts work, but I’m fascinated by that sort of techincal gubbins. And if I can’t brand myself as an indie fiction writer, at least when somebody asks me what kind of stuff I write, I can say, “strange fiction,” and then just throw out some benchmarks — “like, there’s Escape from Hell!, which is sort of Escape from New York meets Jacob’s Ladder. But there’s also Vellum, which is like James Joyce crossed with Michael Moorcock.” And so on.

O’Shea: In developing the column Notes from the New Sodom, does it sometime help you indirectly in how you approach your fiction writing?

Duncan: I don’t know. There’s maybe an element of clarifying my thoughts on this or that by articulating them properly, but I’m not sure what I’m focusing on makes that the kind of thought that feeds back into the craft. It might be different if I was doing more critique, but largely I’ve been dealing with those turf wars or political issues like segregation in the media, so it’s more of a cultural commentary at the moment than anything else. Where it does stake out an aesthetic stance, to be honest — where challenging the false dichotomies between positions automatically becomes a position of opposition in its own right — this is largely an attitude I’ve already thrashed out over the last few years, in more off-the-cuff posts on my blog. I think the columns are really end-products — or even by-products. Like if I’ve started a column on something, that means it’s already processed past the point where it’s going to factor into my writing. I’ll already have been thinking about how my fiction might tackle segregation, for example, by the time I tackle it in a column.

O’Shea: In addition to fiction, you also are a poet. Are there ever ideas you explore in fiction that you decide to consider in poetry as well (or vice versa)?

Duncan: Themes more than ideas. There’s definitely an overlap in a very general way, in terms of subjects I tackle. Granted, I tend towards the big topics — sex and death, humanity and religion — but even the particular takes can be very similar, down to the sort of imagery I use, the tropes I’ll play around with, like the figures of Dionysus, Orpheus, Lucifer. And where some of my fiction is fairly heavy in poetic technique, much of my poetry has a strong narrative element. I’ve got some short stories that are pretty experimental, so heavy on the poetic and rhetorical techniques — alliteration, rhythm and such — that they’re heading towards verse. Meanwhile my taste in poetry is for writers like Blake, Yeats and Stevens, where there’s a sort of oracular thing going on, a vision playing out; and my own writings reflect that.

There’s even one unpublished work that’s gone back and forth between fiction and poetry. It started out as sort of Joycean narrative, intended as part of a novel long since abandoned. I went back to the material later, and got some stories out of it, but this part of it didn’t take shape properly so I started treating it as poetry instead. I ended up taking out the line breaks after, and felt it sort of worked as a short story now… but not quite. So currently it’s a poem again. Similarly, I just finished reworking another orphaned novel-scene into a long poem. This one, at least, I’m happy with as poetry.

Usually though a story idea has a form that’s distinctly story-shaped. It’s a tale, or it’s a conceit that suggests causal ramifications, conflicts and resolutions, and that oracular poetry I like doesn’t really work that way. It’s not epic in the classical sense. It’s “The Second Coming” rather than “Paradise Lost.” So there is a point where ideas end up going one direction or the other. Like, I’m not going to write a poem about a hitman, a hooker, a hobo and a homo breaking out of Hell. And I’m not going to write a story based on the core image of a poem like “The Fiddler and the Dogs.”

O’Shea: Some of your other most recent work has taken you in new directions, as you recently had a musical of yours staged in Chicago–and you’ve recently completed a screenplay. By your own admission these are departures from your typical creative output, how did these shifts in creative gears come about?

Duncan: The musical came out of a three day fling that left me smitten, writing sonnets and everything, only for him to not return my calls afterwards, the bastard. Not being the sort to go stalker-boy, but definitely being the sort to sit up drinking in some dive bar into the wee hours, I threw myself into a week of absinthe and misery. I figure performative devastation is the best cure for heartbreak; don’t wash, don’t eat, drink and smoke constantly and rail bitterly at the gods and fates to the extent that even *you* can’t take yourself seriously any more. So somewhere in the midst of emulating a character from a Tom Waits song, I ended up actually writing, to all intents and purposes, a Tom Waits song — two indeed, “That Great Big Sanatorium in the Sky” and “Tango for the Dead.” And somewhere in the midst of imagining that character, he sort of started asking for a story.

Thing is, I had a bunch of other songs I’d written a while back, mainly daft punk numbers with titles like “Suck Me, Fuck Me, Chuck Me,” but I can’t sing or play any instruments, so these songs attach in my imagination to an imaginary band, Fagsmoke, invented as part of a character’s backstory. These were his songs. So suddenly I find that character (Jack) sitting beside my Waitsian waster (Chorus) in a bar, and telling him why *he’s* there, also wallowing in drunken misery. One of these songs, “Nowhere Town,” becomes a thematic core, while another, “Junkie for the Sound,” attaches to Jack’s lost love (Puck.) Before I know it, I’m writing medleys of the two, reprises, a big ensemble number, and an even bigger medley-*and*-reprise as the grand dramatic finale. In less than a week, I have a fully formed “gay punk Orpheus musical” — Nowhere Town.

Which is to say, I have all the dialogue and lyrics written down, and all the music in my head, with no way to communicate it. Can’t sing, can’t play. A friend with actual musical ability tries to help me out, but it’s a lost cause; I’m just making noise at him. Painful noise.

Fast-forward a year or two though, and I switch from PC to Mac, start messing around with GarageBand and discover that one of the piano loops in their library is the exact refrain I had in mind as the basic theme of “Nowhere Town.” Long story short, I find that by layering tracks upon tracks of cut and spliced loops, I can actually construct the music for all the songs. I still can’t sing to put vocals on them, but I have instrumental versions of all the numbers in the show. So I mix them down to mp3s and stick them up on the blog with the libretto as… a curio for readers. Only then, a while later, these college kids in Chicago, Beth and Ben, email. They’ve read my books, follow the blog, caught the musical and fallen in love with it. Is it OK if they stage it through their university theatre group? Hell, yeah! I say.

Of course, they still had no idea how the lyrics were meant to sound, so I had to rope in mates who could sing, and put them through a hellish process where I recorded my godawful attempt at it, they sang back what they thought I was going for, and by a process of trial-and-error we eventually got to mp3s with their vocals on the numbers. Over in Chicago meanwhile, the musical director, Tristan, has to try and turn what I’ve given them into something performable. There’s no sheet music, just these mp3s and GarageBand project files — where the basic melody might be constructed from three or four piano tracks, from the way they combine. But at the end of the day it worked. They did it, and they did a fucking immense job of it. It was a Mad Folly from start to finish, but this musical written in the head of a tuneless wastrel on a week-long bender actually made it to the stage. Which is kinda awesome, I think.

With the screenplay, I’m kind of hoping that I haven’t exhausted my luck when it comes to Mad Follies, cause that’s a similarly unlikely candidate for fruition — a high school movie based on As You Like It, but with the female character gender-switched to male. Like, think of it as the gay Ten Things I Hate About You. It’s called Whatever the Fuck You Want. Cause, yeah, a Hollywood studio’s going to *love* that title.

This left-field project came about from an experience that dropped my jaw. A while back, I blogged reviews of two little indie flicks I’d seen — The Curiosity of Chance and Were the World Mine– both set in high schools, with gay kids as the main character. One I say is the best high school movie John Hughes never made; the other is a musical riffing on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They’re both a lot of fun, if you like the idioms. They’re both a cut above some of their competitors despite the microbudgets — zingier script and acting in one, edgier music in the other.

Anyway, in a discussion that emerged in comments, I ended up having to defend these from a po-faced commenter dismissing them as cinematic candyfloss. He was arguing that Were the World Mine just looked vapid in comparison to, say, The History Boys. I was arguing that these weren’t aiming to be The History Boys, that these were good examples of their genres and, crucially, used gay protagonists in utterly populist idioms — which is a big step forward. I mean, serious cinema like Brokeback Mountain is all very worthy, but what’s out there for the 14 year old who wants the gay Ferris Bueller? Movies with gay central characters aimed at a mature audience have been mainstream since My Beautiful Launderette, and that was decades ago. But where are the popcorn flicks with gay central characters? Where’s the boy-meets-boy version of Ten Things I Hate About You? Still, to make sure I wasn’t talking through my arse about the absence of such, I did a quick Google on “gay kid” and “high school movie.” And got my own post on The Curiosity of Chance as top hit.

I know my own blog stats, and they’re not that high. And that’s hardly an exotic combination of strings, so the fact that it doesn’t lead to *something* with a higher profile — an IMDB page, reviews, whatever — that’s shocking to me. And if I do the same search right now, the top five hits are all me talking about this in various places. The top hit is now actually the post where I talk about the Google results. Just awesome.

So I basically realised that the movie I was looking for simply didn’t exist. It’s not hard to imagine, I think. Just picture Glee as a movie rather than a series, focused on Kurt rather than Rachel and Finn. Not as an indie flick filmed in Belgium, like The Curiosity of Chance, but made within the Hollywood studio system, aimed at the multiplexes rather than the gay film festival circuit. A movie like that could be pretty big with the right names and budget attached. But it’s not out there.

Rather than just bitch about it though, I figured that what a writer does to try and remedy a situation like that is write; and thinking about the classic Shakespeare-update strategy, As You Like It is a perfect candidate for that treatment, and for a gay spin. Hell, the screenplay wrote itself when I got down to it; Shakespearean pastoral translates to a high school movie with just the gentlest nudge. Whether there’s even the remotest chance of it getting made though, I deeply doubt. It’s been punted off to my agent, who sent it on to his co-agent for film and television rights, so it is actually somewhere in LA right now, but that just means it’s another screenplay in LA. I dont hold out much hope, to be honest.

Mind you, I didn’t think the musical would ever get made.

O’Shea: Do you have an interest in doing more of either types of work?

Duncan: I don’t see myself doing another musical any time soon. Writing songs is a real rarity for me; once in a blue moon I’ll get a tune in my head and scribble down the lyrics, but not being able to sing or play an instrument, it’s kind of pissing in the wind.

I could definitely see myself doing more screenplays though. I’m half-tempted to adapt Escape from Hell! into a screenplay, since it was originally envisioned that way. (Hell, in writing it, I was totally picturing two of the characters as played by Samuel L. Jackson and Lawrence Fishburne. They’ve never been in the same movie together, you know, and how awesome would that be?) And generally… I can easily imagine future works aimed in that direction. You might expect screenwriting to be a bit unsatisfying for a word junky — for someone whose fiction is heavy on the prose style and poetic technique to work in a form where that craft is confined to dialogue. But I loved the structural work in writing Whatever the Fuck You Want; I liked fitting the narrative into that three-act shape, making sure the narrative beats were evenly spaced. It felt a little like working in some tightly-defined poetry structure, like crafting a sonnet. There’s something kind of formal about screenplays that appeals.

O’Shea: What’s on the horizon for you creatively?

Duncan: I’ve got two projects I’ve been working on for way too long, so I need to get my head in the game and get them done and dusted. One is the next big novel, a retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh set in three time-frames — mythic, historical and futuristic. It’s a similar approach to Vellum and Ink, actually, a sort of cubist take in which the same story is playing out in three narratives. But it’s demanding a lot more gestation time than it has a right to. The other is a sequel to Escape from Hell!, with the equally John Carpenteresque title of Assault! On Heaven! I have a third and final installment brewing as well: Battle! For the Planet! Of the Dead! Given the shameless pulp approach, I reckoned I had to increment the exclamation marks for each installment. I’m not really getting into the zone with that either at the moment, so I’ve been doing a lot of short fiction in the meantime. None of this is contracted at the moment, at least, so I’m not tied into slogging through them to make a deadline; if something else comes along that *does* just write itself, I can grab the inspiration and run with it.

Some of those short stories are looking like they might shape up to a larger project too. I came up with a conceit at the end of last year that has a lot of scope in it, I think. It’s sort of a punky city-urchin take on the Lost Boys from Peter Pan, with huge dollops of Michael de Larrabeiti’s Borribles. Stories are set throughout history around the idea of “Scruffians,” kids who’ve been stolen from minority communities, bought from workhouses, or similar, and “Fixed.” They don’t age, don’t change, always return to the state in which they were Fixed… which makes them very useful as slaves during the Industrial Revolution, say. Some escape and set up in squats, try and rescue others. There’s a Waiftaker General — like Peter Cushing as the Witchfinder General meets the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It sort of masquerades as children’s fiction at first sight but gets really twisted in all manner of ways. Anyway, I’ve got a good number of stories out of it so far, a good few more lined up to be written, and a narrative arc emerging between them. I was experimenting with releasing them online for Paypal donations, but the ball didn’t keep rolling in terms of meeting the targets, so I’m thinking about where to take it from here. For now they’re available via the blog for free download from a fileshare site.

The Galilean Secret

I am grateful to my parents for many gifts, but I rank my Catholic education/upbringing and intellectual curiosity as among some of the best. While Evan Howard, the author of The Galilean Secret (released last month), are not of the exact same religion (he is the pastor of the Community Church of Providence [Rhode Island), given that we are both Christians and that he is even more intellectually curious than myself (as well as the owner of a doctorate in theology from Boston University)–well it made for a great interview. In this email interview we discuss his novel–which is described as follows:

“When Karim Musalaha, a Palestinian on the run, seeks refuge in a forgotten cave near Qumran, he discovers a half-buried clay jar that contains a fragile scroll. His quest to discover its origins takes him on a high-speed chase through hostile Jerusalem and West Bank neighborhoods. Caught between his brother’s relentless ambition for martyrdom and the forbidden love of a Jewish woman with ties to the highest levels of the Israeli army, he must choose between honoring his father and betraying him to serve a higher purpose.

The scroll’s message also resonates with Judith of Jerusalem, a first century Jewish woman who, under the cover of darkness, gallops into the desert with the brother of the man she was betrothed to marry. When her allegiance to the burgeoning Zealot revolution pits her against the Roman occupiers and their priestly collaborators, Judith sees the cruelty of war and realizes her mistake. But is it too late for her to escape and find forgiveness? A letter written by a mysterious Galilean rabbi holds the answers, but the Romans have placed a price on his head. Should she risk her life for a rabbi she hardly knows, or risk her soul for a cause and a man whose beliefs she now rejects?

Bound by a letter that spans two millennia, both Karim and Judith will either succumb to hatred, violence and hopelessness, or reveal a wisdom that could save us all.”

I’m grateful to Howard for his valuable time and thoughts, as well as Kelly Hughes for facilitating the interview. Go here to read the first chapter.

Tim O’Shea: Tackling two plots with historical complexities in one book is fairly ambitious. How much revision/aggressive editing was involved in the pursuit of balancing the respective narratives and their unique pacing for both stories?

Evan Howard: The decision to include plots in two different time periods came about unexpectedly.  As a first-time novelist I didn’t plan to use this method because of the difficulties involved, but readers of an earlier version of the book (which I had self-published) expressed frustration that I hadn’t resolved what happened to Karim, the Palestinian student who appears in the first chapter, the action of which takes place in the present.  Since the rest of the novel happens in the time of Jesus, at first I resisted developing Karim’s story because I thought it would be a very complicated undertaking, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw that having two time periods and multiple plots could make the novel more multi-dimensional and increase its suspense.  This process required that I write fifteen new chapters and blend them with the historical material.  It took me about seven months to do this and involved a great deal of revising and editing along the way.  Once I entered into this process, I found it highly challenging but also a lot of fun—like working on a giant literary jigsaw puzzle.  Since there is a lot of action in both stories, the issue of pacing wasn’t a major problem.

O’Shea: Given the passion and strong opinions that go hand and hand with topics like Israel & Palestine, was there any hesitation on your part to delve into such complex and volatile matters in your novel?

Howard: The divisions and conflicts in the Holy Land today and throughout history were part of what drew me to this setting.  It’s a land with so much promise but also so much tragedy, and that’s part of what makes it a fascinating setting for a novel.  It feels as if there has been a narrative of anguish superimposed on this land.  The conflicts have been with us for so long that they seem impossible to solve.  Writing The Galilean Secret was a way of offering an alternative narrative—one that dramatizes the possibility of hope, healing, and reconciliation.  It’s true that there are potentially many pitfalls that await an author who chooses to write about Israel and Palestine, but the potential rewards made the risk worth it.  I kept thinking of Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country, which is set in South Africa under apartheid.  Paton took readers into the emotions of that troubled land in a way that motivated them to work for change.  Art can sometimes have a cathartic effect that helps to inspire a new narrative of transformation, but creating it requires accepting controversy as part of this important work.

O’Shea: Which of Jesus’ disciples did you most enjoy writing in the book?

Howard: Oddly enough, it was probably Judas Iscariot, although I was also drawn to the stories of Nicodemus and Mary Magdalene, but neither of them was among the Twelve.  Judas fascinates me because he’s such a complex character in the Gospels.  His light drew him to follow Jesus, but his darkness eventually extinguished the light.  Originally, like all of the disciples, he came to Jesus with great idealism, believing that the Messianic age had finally come, but then he became disillusioned, his greed took over, and his life ended tragically—an all too human story.  I was also captivated by the question of why he betrayed Jesus and wondered if it was just because of disillusionment or greed.  Could there have been an element of jealousy involved, arising out of his experience of unrequited love?  To me, seeing the story in this way made it all the more real and relevant to the thorniest dilemmas of life.

O’Shea: What about the dynamics between Jesus and Mary Magdalene do you feel you most effectively tapped into and communicated in your story?

Howard: The Galilean Secret encourages the healing of our intimate relationships through its fresh perspective on these dynamics. Neither the canonical nor the noncanonical sources provide detailed information about Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene. Most of us are familiar with the two extreme positions on this matter—the church’s traditional claim that the relationship was only platonic, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the view of revisionist scholars, novelists, and filmmakers that Jesus and Mary were husband and wife and had a child.

I see problems with both of these views.  The traditional position puts forth a celibate Christ who never wrestles with his sexuality. Since most of us do wrestle with this essential component of being human, we can’t relate well to a Christ who doesn’t fully enter the struggle with us. On the other side of the spectrum, it’s hard to believe that Jesus was married because the nearly unanimous verdict of biblical scholars is that there’s no credible evidence to support such a notion.  The Galilean Secret explores the middle ground.  It presents a Christ who, as the Epistle to the Hebrews states, “was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.”

In The Galilean Secret, Jesus and Mary Magdalene struggle mightily with their attraction to one another, and the struggle forces them to ponder what it means to be created male and female “in the image of God,” as stated in the Torah.  The way toward healing and wholeness emerges from Jesus’ spiritual wisdom and his insights into how we can find God’s love and light in all areas of our lives, even the most perplexing ones.  My novel invites readers to ponder how Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene challenges us to integrate the masculine and feminine in ourselves and in the image of God.

O’Shea: How hard is it to write about love, when one’s addressing spiritual love versus romantic love as you are in this story?

Howard: Love has many different manifestations, a fact that the Greek language highlights by using several different terms for our one English word “love.”  There are different nuances of love, two of them being spiritual versus romantic, but because these two sometimes feel the same, it can be extremely difficult to distinguish between them.  In Greek, the word for spiritual love—the love of God–is agape, and the word for romantic/sexual love is eros.  A major theme of The Galilean Secret is the trouble and tragedy that result when we get spiritual and romantic love confused.  These expressions of love both originate in God and they are present in the best dating and marriage relationships. But it is also quite possible to develop romantic feelings for the wrong person at the wrong time, and when these feelings are mistaken for spiritual love, they can cause terrible heartbreak.  It’s a very emotional experience to write about such situations; in that sense, doing so is difficult, but the insights gained from the undertaking can also be quite therapeutic and helpful.

O’Shea: When delving into religion-based fiction, in some ways do you hope it serves to bolster someone’s religion when they read your writing?

Howard: I wrote The Galilean Secret out of my personal search for spiritual truth and for healing and wholeness.  I hope that the book will challenge and inspire others in their searches. I also hope that it presents an interpretation of Jesus that makes him more relevant and accessible to searching people.  I heard the well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens interviewed on C-Span recently and he painted all religions with a broad brush, declaring them equally harmful.  I hope that The Galilean Secret will help people who hold such views to give Christianity another chance.  The Jesus presented in the novel is very human but at the same time a messenger sent from God.  The people who encounter him find their lives transformed, and through his revolutionary spiritual movement, the hope of peace comes to the world. How could anyone, even an atheist, not be drawn to such a fascinating individual?  It has been said that Jesus must have been a historical figure because no one could have invented such a unique and multi-faceted person. The Galilean Secret is particularly provocative in suggesting that part of Jesus’ spiritual genius came from his integration of the masculine and feminine in both his person and his religious teachings.

O’Shea: On the flipside, do you think an agnostic or an atheist has the opportunity to be just as engaged in the novel as a religious reader may be?

Howard: An agnostic or atheist reader could definitely become engaged with this novel, provided that they bring an open mind to the process.  An online video features the prominent atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. In viewing the video, I noticed that although these atheists don’t believe in God, they believe that spiritual experiences are real. I would think that any inquisitive person would want to ask where these experiences come from.  Do they derive entirely from a person’s particular psychological type or history?  Are some people more prone to having spiritual experiences than others?  If we are honest in our quest for truth, how can we rule out that these experiences might come from the creative spiritual being that Christians and other theists call God?  The Galilean Secret explores the nature of these spiritual experiences as they relate to the human quest for love.  The life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are critically important to this quest because he brought humanity a fresh interpretation of love and died dramatizing its meaning.  Agnostics and atheists, like everyone else, need to love and be loved in order to find meaning in life.  The Galilean Secret explores the question, Where does love come from and how we can we better understand its many dimensions?  Only by asking and attempting to answer such questions can we find the love that we all crave.

O’Shea: Were there ways that in writing the book you found aspects that allowed you insight into things you were trying to teach at the church you pastor?

Howard: The short answer is yes, but writing a novel allowed me to go into much greater depth than I could in a sermon or Bible study.  Although there are some similarities, sermons and novels are different forms of communication.  Listeners to sermons would quickly get impatient and bored if the preacher used the time to ask deep questions and not give clear answers.  A story, on the other hand, is much more open-ended.  The best novels don’t offer black-and-white solutions to human problems.  They tell stories that must be interpreted by the reader, and often multiple interpretations are possible.  Hopefully readers of The Galilean Secret will receive a much richer, more nuanced, and ultimately more challenging and inspiring interpretation of love than I could ever communicate in a sermon.

O’Shea: In a modern age, do you think folks are more or less likely to believe that religion has the power to change the world (in a positive way)?

Howard: In his book When Religion Becomes Evil, the Christian theologian and ethicist Charles Kimball makes the point that religion is arguably the most powerful force in the world.  He says this because religion brings out both the very best and the very worst in people.  Out of love for God, people feed the hungry, care for the sick, establish orphanages, work for peace and justice, and engage in all manner of humanitarian and altruistic activities.  On the other hand, people enslave other people, oppress women, start wars, and become suicide bombers in the name of their God and their religion (to name just a few abuses).  Unfortunately, in our media-saturated world, the images of evil being done in the name of religion gets seared into viewers’ minds and they forget all the good that is done in its name.  This leads to a great deal of cynicism about religion in general.  The only way to change this is for people who practice their faith in an ethical and humane way to keep doing good works until evil religion becomes a thing of the past.  It will be a long journey toward God’s new world of love, peace, freedom, justice, and provision for all, but we must keep working toward that new world, and I hope that The Galilean Secret will help in some small way.

I’m just one of many folks that respects Wallace’s intelligence and lament his passing. He gave a hell of a lot of himself on the written page.  I was recently reading his thoughts on life, which he boiled down into a commencement speech, (and which later became the 2009 book, This is Water). Consider this thought on page 48 of the book.

“Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.”

I have to mull that one over for awhile. I may need to hang it on my wall.

I really have nothing else to say, except that–hey, if you know me–and if you’re ever suicidal: Please don’t. I’ll miss you. That’s not an effort to be glib on my part. I hope that someone in my circle of friends remembers that I wrote this sentiment, when they’re feeling overwhelmed. And if you have someone in your life that battles depression, support them. It can be maddening for all parties involved at certain points, but it’s amazing what a little simple moment of caring can do. We can’t stop all suicides. That’s impossible. But maybe if we all pay attention to what’s going on in front of us, we might help someone that we might not otherwise note.

Heroes for My Son

I’m of a firm opinion that Brad Meltzer is always writing, be it in his head or actually writing–or thinking about writing. Known for his numerous bestselling works of fiction, Heroes for My Son, is Meltzer’s first non-fiction book. Here is how the book (released May 11)  is described at the project’s blog: “When Brad Meltzer’s first son Jonas was born eight years ago, the bestselling writer and new father started compiling a list of heroes whose virtues and talents he wanted to share with his son. Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Jim Henson, Amelia Earhart, Mohammed Ali…and so many more, each one an ordinary person who was able to achieve the extraordinary. The list grew to include the fifty-two amazing people now gathered together in Heroes for My Son, a book that parents and their children—sons and daughters alike—can now enjoy together as they choose heroes of their own.” It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten a chance to interview Meltzer, the first time for this blog in fact, and I’m always happy when I get to pick Meltzer’s brain.

Tim O’Shea: Sometimes when folks make “best of” or ranking books of any kind, they have to brace for the readers who ask “why didn’t you include?”. Not only are you braced for it, in fact you are inviting folks to tell you about their heroes. This did not surprise me as you always have figured out ways to get your audience involved in your work. Two questions, are you enjoying getting people’s stories about heroes even more than you expected? When did you first decide it was a priority to get the audience so engaged?

Brad Meltzer: The idea of including a spot in the back of the book for people to include their own heroes solely came from my belief that there are heroes everywhere. I love that fact. And I want to hear more. Why not use the hive mind?

O’Shea: My wife was reading the book the other night and she was wondering–where did the “be nice to the fat kid” life lesson find its origin?

Meltzer: I was friends with that fat kid. And even got in a fight for him. Scariest moment of my schoolyard life.

O’Shea: After years of swimming in the land of fiction, what’s been the most enjoyable aspect of writing inspirational nonfiction of this kind?

Meltzer: Doing something for my boys. There’s nothing NOTHING like doing something just for your kids.

O’Shea: Speaking of inspiration, are there certain inspirational writers that informed your approach to this project?

Meltzer: Not even sure I know any. I just — as always — write what I like — and then hope that people like it.

O’Shea: Charity has always been an element of your writing–and this book is no different. Had you always intended to include several charities (as represented through the heroes) in the book, or is that an element you decided to capitalize upon as the project evolved?

Meltzer: Funny, I hadn’t even thought of that. I just picked people I admired. Didn’t realize how many were “charity.”

O’Shea: Was the plan always to end the book with your relatives that were your heroes?

Meltzer: Always. That’s the point. The best heroes are often the ones already in your life.

O’Shea: How did you decide the arrangement of heroes as they appear in the book? I was particularly struck by the fact that Houdini is sandwiched between Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson.

Meltzer: Thanks. I’m particularly proud of Houdini next to the other great escape artist. The publisher kept asking, “What’s the order that you’re using?” But to me, it had no real order than “this seems right.”

O’Shea: Some of your heroes are names that are new to me and/or seemingly somewhat obscure. Were there some heroes that were more challenging to research than others?

Meltzer: Rosa Parks, Jim Henson, Einstein, Mr. Rogers…some of these people have been written about so often — but there’s always something new to find. The hardest were people like Eleanor Roosevelt or Thomas Jefferson, who litterally have a library of biographies.

O’Shea: Given the format of the book, you only have about a page to capture the heroic nature of each subject. How challenging was itto be that economic with your words on each subject, while still being able to capture the full scope and essence of the person’s heroism?

Meltzer: I wanted the book to read like poetry. There’s a real rhythm to the entries. These wereen’t just the stories of great people. These were the singular moments that made them great.

O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss about this Heroes project that I neglected to ask you about?

Meltzer: Please please please — if you’re reading this, go to www.HeroesForMySon.com and send us a hero that you know and love. I’m writing Heroes For My Daughter right now and need the material.

Angry Conversations chronicles Susan’s spiritual history, from childhood faith to a midlife crisis, and all the bizarre church experiences in between.”

And now for some info on the author:
“Susan is an actor, writer and comedienne with credits in TV, film, stage and radio, including Planes Trains & Automobiles, Scrooged, Seinfeld, and My Name Is Earl. She is an alumnus of the Groundlings Sunday Company and has an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California.”

My thanks to Isaacs for the interview. Keep an eye out for her this fall, as she goes on a multi-city tour, promoting the book.

Tim O’Shea: Most religious memoirs do not have a tinge of irreverence to them, did you fear alienating your potential audience by going this route?

Susan E. Isaacs: People who don’t handle irreverence or extreme language shouldn’t read Jeremiah, Elijah, or St. Paul. Like in Philippians 3, Paul considers his previous accomplishments “loss” compared to knowing Christ? The original Hebrew for “loss” is a vulgar term for excrement. But we can’t print St Paul’s original intent because we’re Christians. I think there’s a difference between gratuitous irreverence, and irreverence that’s necessary to the character and the story. I took out all but two or three instances of profanity where I felt they were necessary to show the character’s desperation. Like, in one instance I spelled it out phonetically to show how violent my father’s cursing sounded to me as a child.

Now I realize people have different thresholds. Those with delicate temperaments won’t like my book, and that’s OK with me. I wouldn’t want them to read it if it hurt their feelings. But they’ve already got a wealth of reverential books at the Christian bookstore to inspire those readers. There aren’t many books out there for the Christian who grew up with Saturday Night Live and Monty Python, who respond to a different tone and story. Anne Lamott and Donald Miller proved that there’s a huge hunger for a more frank, even cheeky take on the spiritual life.

The book was originally a solo show that I performed in front of a very secular, skeptical, spiritually searching Hollywood crowd. I needed to be irreverent; that’s how I broke down their suspicions about religion, got them to trust me, and allow me to take them on my spiritual journey.

Lastly, while I may have been irreverent depicting the ‘twisted god in my head;’ when the true God emerges in my book, there was no disrespecting or dismissing him.

O’Shea: You covered a lot of ground and a great many people who crossed your paths over the years–since the book’s release have you heard from folks who found out they got mentioned in the book?

Isaacs: Actually I’ve been back in touch with quite a few people, including my high school drama teacher, friends from childhood, college, and all the churches I attended over the years. They’re scattered all over the world, from Florida to Switzerland and Cyprus. Writing a memoir is one way to find lost friends. I haven’t heard from any of the ex-boyfriends, but one friend emailed thinking she was “Martha,” the churchy character in the book, and apologized for judging me. She wasn’t the real Martha. The real Martha loves the book and is a good sport.

O’Shea: Did Rudy read the book before it was published. If not, has he seen it? What does he think of the book?

Isaacs: Rudy read the book and loves it. His real name, which I can disclose, is Dr.Ron Boyer. Ron is still a therapist, but he also went back to pastoring a church. In Topanga of course.

O’Shea: You discuss a great many painful issues in the course of this book, werethere points in compiling the memoir that it almost got too painful to recount? Or was writing the book a form of therapy in its own way?

Isaacs: Ever had one of those dreams where you’re back at high school walking around naked thinking, “Why OH WHY did I come to school with no clothes on?” Once and a while someone asks a question like yours, I think “why, oh WHY was I so vulnerable in the book?!” But then I remember Ezekiel stood in the city gate naked for nine months. (He also cooked his food over a poop fire, but that’s where I draw the line).

Actually, I started writing this story when I was in the deepest part of my crisis. I had to write, just to try to grasp what was happening to me. Writing kept me sane. Of course some of my fellow classmates thought I was nuts. But when you have stared into the abyss, nothing scares you any more, even other people’s opinions. Later when I shaped it into the book, it was hard to relive some moments (I’m so easily plagued by regret) but it was therapeutic; like a confessional. It was transformative as well. I got to see the story and character arcs of my life – how God was shaping and directing me all along. There’s a book called Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography, or something like that. A friend at church told me about it. I think it’s a very therapeutic thing to do, and even more so if you can share it with the right kind of people, like a writers’ group or a pastor.

O’Shea: I was a kid who went to 12 years of Catholic school and am still a practicing Catholic–but with a very acerbic sense of humor–I wonder do you ever find yourself having to fight your sense of humor while attending your church’s services? For me, there are times where I’m thinking of a joke in my head and forgetting the reason I’m at church.

Isaacs: ALL THE TIME! Jokes are like apples on a tree. They drop suddenly from the boughs and you want to pick them while they’re ripe. A few weeks ago my husband and I were at a church where the pastor rambled incoherently for 45 minutes; then ended with, “But you don’t need another boring sermon.” I wanted to shout, “No. We didn’t.” The other night I was with a group of people and one woman averred, “Jesus traveled to England and Europe, you know; they have proof. It was on the History Channel!” I blurted out, “Maybe that was Para-History channel.” Everyone busted up, but I think it embarrassed her. I have to watch myself.

O’Shea: After writing this book, is there any chance you might try your hand at another book that combines your sense of humor with your perspective on religion?

Isaacs: Yes. I’m thinking of writing Racy Conversations With God (About Sex, Love And Dating). I experienced so much weirdness being a single Christian in my 20s and 30s. Our entire culture is experiencing a massive relationship famine. We may be fat and relatively rich, but we are starving relationally. The church is trying to deal with this epidemic, but it’s made some errors, espoused some strange ideas along the way. I and many friends have been the victims and perpetrators of those ideas. That’s what my next book is about. I talked about it some in Angry Conversations, so I’ll go into that in more depth. And I’ll be asking readers for their wacky stories!

O’Shea: This book grew out of a show you wrote ultimately into a book–were there aspects that you realized work better as being told orally in the show, versus being told in the book?

Isaacs: Most definitely. The audio version of my book runs 8 hours. Yikes. A live show has to be succinct. 90 minutes tops. And you can’t just transpose narrative: words that read well on a page can sound wooden or dorky out loud. The story was first a solo show, five years ago. Now I’m going back to the show but the story has changed. Five years ago I was stuck in the crisis of the second act; God wasn’t speaking and I didn’t know how the story was going to end. The counseling dialogues with God in the book didn’t exist in the solo show before, because God was silent. I’m working with a producer on the new solo show; he’s convinced the best part of the solo show will be those dialogues with God. So I guess I’ll be editing the dialogues, and finding succinct ways to plow through the narrative stories in between.

O’Shea: Do you think your sense of humor was enriched by your spiritual pursuits or vice versa or neither?

Isaacs: Well, yes and no. Yes: because good art deals with deep issues: who are we, why are we here, do we matter? Good comedy can show us who we are and maybe get us to see ourselves (and God) in a new way. My spiritual pursuits gave me a wisdom about life and forced me to see a deeper reality. If I can use them wisely my humor can be based not merely on jokes but on those deeper, universal truths about God and about humans: our frailty, our stupidity, our
weakness vulnerability, hope, etc. And I think my sense of humor has helped others see God in a different way.

No: in that comedy and the church are often at odds: similar to your question about reverence. Comedy is messy! Comedy is based on vulnerability, surprise, exposing weakness and frailty. The church is often uncomfortable with that kind of messiness. Most of my life I felt that my spiritual and artistic lives competed with each other. “Too wild for the church, too tame for the world.” I definitely see this changing, however, and that’s really encouraging.

O’Shea: As you tackle your spiritual journey in this book, do you fear that it may pigeonhole who you are or label you unfairly (as “too” religious) in some entertainment industry circles?

Isaacs: I tried for a long time to stay out of the Christian market, because I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. But a good deal of my audience are Christians. So what was I gonna do, shoot myself in the foot? Ironically, my book was a hard sell with the Christian Booksellers Association. (Maybe because it says “Lutheran slut” on the inside book flap?) There it is again, too wild for the church, too tame for the world. Fortunately the book is starting to gain momentum, in Christian and secular bookstores, which is terrific. Like most of my life I’ve had to take a long view.

As for entertainment people unfairly pigeonholing me … as Glenn Close’s character said in the Big Chill … “f#&© ’em if they can’t take a joke.” I tried for so many years trying to crowbar my personality into whatever weekly role was being cast. Now I’m over 40; I can’t play Hanna Montana or the next a DD-cup hottie crime scene investigator. Hollywood may have been done with me anyway. So I’ve just got to do the story that’s in me, and God’s in the story. Maybe some entertainment types will come along for the ride.

O’Shea: Throughout the book, you described some pretty vivid dreams you had–do you still have such vivid dreams?

Isaacs: I got so burned during that charismatic period of my life, that I went in the other direction and stopped looking for any meaning in dreams. My husband did a lot of dream analysis in counseling, so he looks for the psychological angle. Maybe the psyche and the spirit and the Spirit are all linked. But many years ago I had a dream I was on a plane sitting next to the film director Sydney Pollack; and I felt an urgent need to share my faith. The next day, Mr. Pollack’s son died in a small-plane crash two blocks from my apartment – how do you explain that in psych terms? I’m only now allowing myself to think about dreams or the gifts of the spirit that my old charismatic churches used to emphasize.

O’Shea: Any parting thoughts?

Isaacs: Some people have read my book and said, “It was just hilarious!” I reply worriedly, “But did you see the spiritual depth in it too, right?” My secular Jewish lesbian friend said, “Wow it was way more serious than I expected.” I replied, “but you thought it was funny, right?” Still others say I was too angry and got too sinful; and I want to scream, “But didn’t you see the redemption? What kind of redemption is there when you’ve lived a sinless life?” But I’m just being an insecure weenie. People are going to get out of it what they get out of it. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to speak to people. It’s my job to get up and write the next book.

Tim O’Shea: You sing with a British accent at times, don’t deny it–and it’s never intentional, I know. Does it annoy you when people think it’s an affectation on your part?

Richard Coker: I’ve loved British music all my life, but I have never purposefully tried to sing with an English accent. No one’s accused me of affecting it, though. Maybe said accusations are lacking because so few people are familiar with my music. However, linguistically speaking, there are far more traces of British Isles speech among Southerners. Appalachians still use Elizabethan words (at least they did before satellite dishes). Perhaps, too, when I’m singing I favor softer, more Englishy, vowel sounds. I like the way they feel when I sing them.

O’Shea: How many songs have you written over the years?

Coker: I’ve been writing songs for over twenty years. I still have lyrics for over three hundred songs. My current acoustic set has about seventy songs to it. If I had to guess, my total song output is somewhere around four or five hundred.

O’Shea: You play several instruments (you play the theremin for the love of God), but am I correct in thinking you’re happiest playing acoustic guitar. If so, why?

Coker: I play, in order from best to worst: guitar, bass, keys, saxophone, melodica, drums, theremin, clarinet, mandolin, kalimba, recorder, and viola. You are correct about my pleasure for playing the acoustic. It’s the easiest way to write and perform a song without accompaniment and still have it sound complete. Everyone has gotten very used to orchestration in modern music. Playing in a band or programming some electronic backing always provides a lush aural texture. However, my own preference (in art and life) is minimalism. I like the spare sound of the instrument and the voice. In the past couple of years I’ve added a larger spectrum to my acoustic sound by writing and performing on 12-string. The 12-string has this amazing, mysterious, dark and psychedelic tone to it that I really enjoy.

O’Shea: What was the hardest or most cathartic song of this most recent release to write?

Coker: The hardest song to write on my recent CD, Loa, is called “Immortal.” Not so much with the music as with the lyrics. I was working on some new concepts about poetry. My words are often stylistically drawn from impressionism, existentialist literature, and the French Symbolists. These words were more surreal. After all, reality is weird and living forever must be weirder still. So I was trying to think of some of the odder vistas eternity might provide.

“Raining dust / Underneath an azure sun / Iron lakes / Hum // We drift alone through the ether / Fall on fallow fields / Electric clouds spitting steel at the ground / Stain the atmosphere // Cliffs of chrome / Line a labyrinth of bone / Mistral winds / Moan // And when each star has burnt away / We will sing / For a long forgotten place / Everything”

O’Shea: Looking back and listening to early demos of some of these songs, which song evolved the most for you in the revision process?

Coker: Interesting question. I don’t revise songs much once they have been written. They are more like something trapped in amber. If the song evolves, it is in the singing and performance. Since I am avowedly DIY and lo-fi, I rarely demo anything. Or maybe I demo everything. I have yet to be too satisfied with the recordings I have made over the years. Then again, production is something that is used by musicians to make their work sound “perfect.” I would rather strive to make a better song with a lesser recording than the other way around. You can hear everything clearly on a modern pop record, but it remains soulless and horrid. Some of the most intense music I have heard was poorly recorded. I would way rather listen to Bukka White or Charley Patton than Christina Aguilera or Kanye West.

O’Shea: Quick–name another lyricist who can work “voivode” into a song (as you did with the song “Feast”)? Do you get a kickback from Wikipedia when you make people do searches for obscure words?  Seriously though, where on earth did you you learn about Slavic military terms?

Coker: Another lyricist that would use “voivode?” Maybe the singer of Candian cult metal band Voivod? As far as slavic military terms. I could claim a history degree or a passing knowledge of Russian. The truth is that I picked up the term through studying vampires. The song “Feast” is about the parasitic nature of power. Myths of the vampire include nobility bathing in and drinking blood to stay young; symbolically an accurate depiction of the leaders of the world. No matter how fairly they attire themselves, they still carry the faint scent of corruption. The problems of the world are never solved, only renamed. Each generation likes to believe it is better off than the preceding one. The myth of progress. Unfortunately, we still haven’t left the iron age. War is unending. Economically, there is the same percentage of rulers vs. peasants as there was thousands of years ago.

O’Shea: Your song “Ossuary” opens with the lyrics–”Your culture’s dead/We made sure – we shot it in the head”–care to discuss the inspiration behind that one?

Coker: My inspiration for that line can be seen all around us. Modern America suffers from the post-modern malaise of pop culture. Everything is stylish, impermanent. Marketers and media aggressively cow people into conformity and mass consumption. Acquisition is the ultimate sacrement. This produces a huge amount of waste. Our descendants will no doubt curse us as they mine our filth.

“Ossuary” was written about the rebellion of art. Rather than destroying (consuming), you create. This is one of the reasons that artists are hunted down and killed by the powerful. They are screwing up the game and providing a blueprint for an alternate existence. Hence, entertainment was invented to distract people from thinking. Art tends to make people think and that pisses off everyone. People love witch hunts. It gets rid of the troublemakers. So, yeah, they HAD to shoot culture in the head. It was interfering with business.