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True Change
Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment is a collection of short stories that peels back the layers of ordinary life to reveal the people who are breaking down under the weight of their own choices & circumstances. What was the inspiration for this collection of stories?
Coming off writing my book before this one, BE NOT AFRAID, I’d had the desire to work in a shorter form. BE NOT AFRAID was an incredibly taxing, and thorough, and ambitious project. So, I knew fairly soon after that I wanted to produce a collection. Originally, I’d only wanted to do four stories, but my mother convinced me to do a fifth (lol).
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Well, right off the bat, disillusionment was the overall compass for each story. When I began writing the collection, I was experiencing a good deal of it in my personal life and wanted to explore characters entering into their own bouts of disillusionment, where they always believed life would go one way but, instead, was going another, and not for the better, and, try as they may, they only seem to make it worse. I’m one of those readers who does not read to escape but reads to see the world reflected, the more brutally honest, the more I’ll enjoy it. So, naturally, that’s what I write 🙂
Was it important for you to deliver a moral to readers, or was it circumstantial to deliver an effective book?
Everything I write begins as a premise argument, usually around a unique belief I have of the world. For instance, one might look like this: People are incapable of true change vs People are capable of true change. And I will design characters to embody behaviors and decisions for both sides of that argument, so the story is a compelling one. In the first short story of the collection, “DRIVE YOU TO VIOLENCE,” the premise argument was–Family will drive you to violence vs Family will drive you to compassion. Characters dance on both sides of that premise 🙂
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
At the moment, I’m nearing completion of a Fargo-esque crime novel, which I plan to serialize on my substack in the coming months. The working title, which is totally subject to change, currently is THE FIRE YOU’RE DRAWN TO.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
A mother’s patience turns to quiet rage as family secrets unravel.
A filmmaker loses his grip on reality while chasing his masterpiece.
In a near future where machines mimic emotion, humanity itself begins to fracture.
And in the haunting remains of a lost documentary, a vanished man’s voice echoes long after he’s gone.
Each story in AJ Saxsma’s acclaimed collection is a slow descent into disillusionment—where hope flickers, truth corrodes, and the familiar becomes unrecognizable. With a masterful blend of literary fiction, dark realism, and quiet horror, Saxsma confronts what it means to live honestly in a world built on denial.
Fans of Shirley Jackson, Raymond Carver, and Flannery O’Connor will find themselves captivated by Saxsma’s unnerving portraits of love, loss, and human fragility. If you crave stories that unsettle as much as they illuminate, Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment will stay with you long after the final page.
Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment
Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment is a haunting collection of short stories that peels back the soft skin of ordinary life to reveal the raw nerves beneath. Each story takes place in familiar settings like a home, an office, and a neighborhood, but nothing stays familiar for long. Saxsma writes about people who are breaking down, sometimes quietly, sometimes violently, under the weight of their own choices and circumstances. The opening story, “Drive You to Violence,” sets the tone: a domestic world suffocating in silence and habit, where love and resentment sit side by side at the dinner table. The prose is stripped down, careful, yet full of emotional danger. By the end, the book has become a mirror that reflects not what we wish we were, but what we fear we might be.
What struck me first was the rhythm of Saxsma’s writing. It moves in circles, looping back on itself, pressing the reader to sit in the discomfort of repetition, the same routines, the same conversations, the same small cruelties. I found myself frustrated at times, but in a good way. That frustration was part of the experience. The language is plain and unadorned, but it works like sandpaper, roughing up the smoothness of everyday life until you can feel the grain. There’s an honesty to it that’s hard to shake. I didn’t feel like I was reading stories so much as eavesdropping on private lives that were coming undone in slow motion. Saxsma’s characters don’t confess their feelings. They leak them.
As I read deeper, I started feeling uneasy, almost complicit. The book makes you question what “normal” even means, and whether common sense is really sense at all or just a way to survive disappointment. Some scenes left me angry, others hollow. There were moments I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Saxsma has a way of making the ordinary grotesque without ever being sensational. The writing reminded me how fragile the line is between patience and despair, between love and control. It made me think of people I know, people who keep smiling while their lives quietly cave in around them.
This isn’t a feel-good read. It’s a feel-something read. I’d recommend Common Sense & Other Tales of Disillusionment to anyone who likes fiction that cuts deep, that doesn’t flinch, and that finds truth in the cracks of small, painful moments. It’s for readers who don’t mind sitting in the dark for a while, trusting that somewhere in all that disillusionment, there’s something honest, maybe even redemptive, waiting to be found.
Pages: 258 | ASIN : B0D5BBB2FS
LITERARY TITAN 