Divine In Essence is a collection of imaginative short stories that immerse readers in the supernatural world. What was the idea, or spark, that first set off the need to write this collection? 

I write to dream. Whenever I compose a story, I keep Beauty on one side, Truth on the other. As long as I’m between the two, I know I’m on the Path. I don’t create the Path—I follow it. 

Each of these stories was composed in this manner, for its own sake, not toward this collection in particular…and yet, once the pieces were gathered, Divine In Essence emerged vividly as a totality—not simply an assortment of stories—just as a human body is a totality of organs performing distinctive, necessary tasks aligned to support the function of the whole. For Divine In Essence, that function is to imagine a dream of the world that replaces the world: for the time that you read the words, you live in the dream. The words you imbibe from the page become your own words, and the dreams they describe become your own dreams. 

What dreams? Sometimes, a fanciful surrealism emerges, as in the pan-telluric ontological upheavals of “The Great Event” or the fantastic voyage through the id of “Icarus in Bardot.” At other times, a heavy-lidded hypnagogia prevails, as in “I in the Eye,” which relates the observations of a boy imprisoned in his stepmother’s glass eye, or “Your Mother Loves You,” a survivor’s memoir in four dimensions. Occasionally, we float into some pleasant reverie tinged with sorrow, as in the perambulations of the gently damned in “Nancy & Her Man,” or the sweet, meek fortitude of “Mary Alice in the Mirror.”

I should say, many of these stories were written toward the purpose of publication in journals and anthologies. My previous work had been more in the experimental vein, and I had seen it published in various lit journals, online and in print, but I developed an interest in Horror and the Weird (so hospitable as they are to the dream sensation), along with a desire to publish stories in the journals and anthologies of those genres, which tend to be very classy and well-produced. I’m happy to report I managed to appear in several of those publications over the years, including some gorgeous hardcover anthologies from the UK, which hosts a thriving book culture.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore within your stories?

I am an intuitive writer, so I don’t necessarily impose themes on my work, but isn’t it funny how they emerge anyway? Especially in this collection!

Divine In Essence is STEEPED in the dichotomy of human existence between the Real and the Symbolic. The Real is your animal body; the Symbolic is your human spirit. The body (Real) is a medium for suffering and isolation; the spirit (Symbolic) is a medium for ecstasy and connection. Your struggle as a human being is to unify these divergent aspects of your nature, to inhabit both realms at once—to be kind in spite of cruelty, to identify your own pain in the pain of others (and theirs in yours), to understand your suffering within the greater context of your relationships to your family and your species, to be more than a survivor of the world-at-hand but a striver toward another world always out-of-reach.

You don’t create the reality you inhabit—it creates you—but you do create continually the ILLUSION that you’ve created that reality…which is all that makes it bearable. When the illusion is revealed for what it is and stripped away, hope flees, despair triumphs, and the human spirit sinks into perdition. Thus, the illusion MUST be maintained, with Dream as the only viable working method.

Many of my stories concern children. A child must come to terms with the arbitrary, senseless cruelty of existence and develop a sense of ownership over it: “This suffering is MY suffering, a very special sort of suffering indeed…if only I could share it with someone else!” 

A child, being innocent, is the perfect victim. People tend to blame adults for their own misfortune: if something bad happened to you, you must have done something to deserve it! You simply can’t think that about a child, however: no child deserves punishment or abuse. That’s probably why I’m attracted to the theme of childhood suffering and how a child in the wake of trauma that is by definition unjust must reimagine the world itself in order to justify and endure it…again, with Dream as the working method.

Do you have a favorite story in your collection? One that was especially enjoyable to craft?

My favorite story is the finale, “The Life of Cherry.” This story represents the summa of all that came before. Each story in Divine In Essence exudes a spiritual dew that flows down into the next, and “The Life of Cherry,” situated at the bottom, collects all that spectral moisture into one supremely potent libation.

On the level of craft, it was incredibly rewarding to write this story. When I began it, I only eked out a few pages before abandoning it to the Purgatory of False Starts, but then I picked it up again six or seven years later, and it flowered on its own into a piece of art so precious and prescient that I can hardly believe it came from me. Whenever I read it, I learn something more about myself. Within my life, it serves as a practical demonstration of Literature’s power as a path to self-knowing. If I should ever doubt my calling to this practice of Writing, I need only to reread “The Life of Cherry” to refresh my conviction.

Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?

I’m duking it out with the Muse as we speak. No telling at this point how it will go, but I’m rooting for Her!

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