An Afterword for THE BOOK OF DAVID Part Two: "Pictures and Craft"

A quick reminder just in case you missed Part One of this Afterword, ideally to be read after you've read The Book of David: This book is not appropriate for younger readers. I wouldn't let my kid read it and I would never give a copy to your child. Should they obtain a copy elsewhere, this is me giving parents a heads up to use extreme discretion.

Don't write me an angry email or yell at me at a signing. Pay attention to your kids and what they're reading, dude.

All right, Esteemed Reader, hopefully it's just you, an adult old enough to have read the full novel and interested in some behind the scenes material, and me. But this is a public blog, so welcome whomever:)

I had a friend passively-aggressively leave behind a few church pamphlets during one of his ultra religious phases, which was irritating ("I'm judging you and worried you're going to Hell for not being as good as me"), but totally forgivable as one of those pamphlets featured a ridiculously sexualized depiction of Jesus on the cross. It's still hanging on my wall and never fails to make me smile. I've seen sex used to sell everything else, but religion? Really?

I'm not going to share that picture here because it doesn't match up exactly to the Sexy Jesus I described in the story. I think whatever erotic depiction of our Lord and Savior you conjured in your head as you read the story is perfect and I don't want to mess with it. The wonderful thing about a book is that it doesn't work without reader participation, which is why the scares are so much more personal than they could ever be in another medium. The reader has to help the writer terrify them by imagining the story in their head.

I once read a quote from a little boy in tears after he'd just seen the first Harry Potter film that made me cry. He told a reporter, "I got it wrong. I imagined Hogwarts all wrong."

I'm never sure just how much to share about these books of mine and how much to leave a mystery. On the one hand, we created the story in your head together and it's yours now. On the other hand, what's the point in writing these afterwords if I don't share some insight and some behind the scenes stuff?

So I'll make you a deal: I won't share the pamphlet that inspired Sexy Jesus (I also saw Ted Neely perform Jesus Christ Superstar in person), but I will share some ACTUAL PHOTOS from the four-wall mural painted on my son's room when we bought our house, starting with this guy:

Hopefully, the version you imagined in your head is scarier. I did my best to make him scarier. But I found the original painting creepy enough to start with before I started playing it up.

Actually, there are a lot of creepy animals painted on my son's walls that didn't make it into the book. Like what the heck was the painter thinking here? Tell me he didn't want to frighten children:

I think the animal paintings were a big part of what made me want to buy this house. I knew at once they were going in a story. I knew they'd work in The Book of David because I needed an equivalent for the hedge animals at the Overlook Hotel. As I revealed in part one of this post that my initial idea for this story came by simply tweaking The Shining, I decided early in the writing process to lean in toward that and make my first truly long horror story serve as my love letter to Stephen King--although I also wrote an actual love letter just to be safe:)

There are multiple references to King's work throughout the five chapters. My favorite is a tie between the Takuro Spirit and the fact that all the souls in Heaven "float up here," though I do love the sentence: "Sexy Jesus strode across the desert, and David followed." The plot of BOD is an intentional remix of The Shining, both the novel and the film version.

I took a class on the films of Stanley Kubrick in college because it was available for a summer session and sounded like an easy way to fufill a credit requirement (it was). I came away with a deep appreciation for Kubrick, a lesser respect for the professor, and a whole lot more respect for Stephen King.

The professor annoyed me from the start because the only correct answer to any question was "Kubrick was a genius. Praise his holy name." A Clockwork Orange rules as does Full Metal Jacket and Dr. Strangelove, but I thought 2001 was "just okay," Barry Lyndon was a yawn fest no matter how excellent the lighting, and Eyes Wide Shut was so tedious it made nudity boring. I wrote the paper that would determine half my grade (the other half was determined by attendance, and yes, there were a lot of athletes in my class, why do you ask?) on a comparison between the novel and film version of The Shining. 

The conclusions I came to are that both are excellent tellings of the same story by two masters, showcasing their different strengths and weaknesses. King probably should've drank less, Kubrick was a huge a-hole, and neither of them handled the magical negro, Dick Halloran, in a way I'm completely comfortable with (more on that in a minute), but those heterosexual white guys sure could tell a story:) Ultimately, I got a 'B' on the paper because I suggested Kubrick's film wasn't 100% perfect and he was too busy trying to be smart to always be scary. Also, he made a lot of dickish criticisms of King's book while claiming he'd made a superior version by repackaging ideas already contained within the novel.

The Book of David is intentionally a remix of The Shining. I like to think that Stephen King, who wrote a remix of Dracula early in his career, wouldn't mind.

We've got a haunted house instead of a hotel and it's the wacky pop who's got the supernatural psychic abilities instead of the son (though I think on a long enough timeline, Peter would come into his own), wacky pop is the opposite of an alcoholic for much of the story, and it's mom who's the writer and eventually, the addict, and who chops through doors with an axe (point to Kubrick on that one as King's croquet mallet isn't as exciting).

There are multiple touch-points throughout The Book of David referencing The Shining so long as I didn't find them too intrusive. I never could find a spot for a fire-hose that becomes a snake or creepy twin girls and didn't go out of my way to create one. But you better believe it's not a coincidence that David has an interview with a man named Ullman, makes a bargain with a nonliving Entity in a meticulously described orange bathroom, has to contend with regenerating wasps nests, and B2-17 is totally a reference to Room 217 because of course it is. If you suspect something in my book is a reference to King's better book or Kubrick's film, I assure you it probably is ("Give me the knife, Andy").

One thing that is obviously missing in The Book of David is that there is no magical negro. In fact, there's no diversity among the cast whatsoever, which is something I went out of my way to establish. By all rights, Katrina Paskus should be the black friend as she's the closest proxy to a Dick Halloran character, but I made her white because my best friends from a small Indiana town are all white. Also, I promised my wife I would never write a magic negro character as she's black and they piss her off (we've been married more than a decade now, and she's lovely, but not magic). Once in a while I do my best Bagger Vance impression and assure her that "the rhythm of the game just like the rhythm of life," to keep things interesting:)

In fact, BOD has an (almost) all white cast because it's appropriate to the setting. It grew out of me telling my black father-in-law a story of my youth in a small Indiana town he deemed "a crazy white people story" (he meant it with love), and I thought, I'll tell you a crazy white people story.

I'm sure you regular Esteemed Readers remember that the main reason I gave up on traditional publishing was because mainstream publishers were uncomfortable with a white guy writing about a biracial character. I won't ever let a publisher tell me I have to write about exclusively white characters, but I'll totally do that sh*t if I feel like it:)

I'm writing Banneker Bones 2 now as penance. And besides, the racism in BOD is part of a larger theme as well as another touch point with The Shining. Both the film and the book drop N-bombs and if there's one decision I'm still not 100% confident in, it's my decision not to drop an N-bomb in BOD. The first draft contained a few and I don't believe in sacred words (or softening history), so I would definitely use the N-word in a story about slavery or the Klan (another bucket list item).

In the case of BOD, I found that the use of the N-word led to beta readers debating whether or not it was appropriate (it was). For this reason, I found that using the correct word I believe the characters might actually have said became too much of a distraction. And I wanted Esteemed Reader thinking "I wonder why racism is being brought up?" rather than "is Robert Kent himself a racist?"

I'm not against using the N-word in fiction when it correctly characterizes and is accurate in its deployment, but I never use it in conversation. When I sing along with Kanye, I sing "ninja." I don't mind looking black family members in the eye and saying, "yes, I used that word in a novel, never in your house," if the book truly called for it. But BOD doesn't absolutely call for it.

One of, if not the central theme of BOD is the momentum of the past and its impact on our protagonists. Thematically, one of the most important lines in the text is "Like so much of the United States, B2-17 felt to her like a collection of bad decisions made by some long dead white men no longer in this reality to suffer the consequences of those decisions." Stephen King wrote long pages about racist characters staying at the Overlook, Stanley Kubrick positioned a Calumet Can in different shots of his film, and I've got my sign for Brownsborough/Whitesville. The past is very much with all of us.

Originally, my plan was not to have any black characters in this story at all, because there are entire towns in Indiana that are still segregated. I grew up in one and I know some of what white people get up to when they're isn't any diversity to keep us honest. But by Chapter Four, I found that I wasn't completely against David even though I guessed Esteemed Reader might be, and his treatment of Susannah got me mostly onboard team f**k that guy.

I mean, sure, he was crazy, but it wasn't entirely his fault, and he was only killing hedge fund managers and politicians:). Any politician who supports the total repeal of their constituents' health care and the death of innocent people so another tax break can be given to the upper class might not actually be in league with Satan, but I ask you, if the result is the same, what difference does it make?

I think it's of great significance that I wrote the majority of this serial novel containing some definite political ranting in 2016. I cannot recall another election quite like the farce we held that year. I don't want to rehash that unpleasant contest as I didn't vote for either major political party's candidate and I don't really care who you voted for, Esteemed Reader. 

But there was more anger in the populace than I can recall seeing during any other election in my lifetime. I found myself hating both Republicans and Democrats and fantasizing about a way in which I might be able to stop them and all their banker friends, who never went to jail despite my vote for hope and change eight years previous.

In the aftermath of current political events, I'm not sure how we go on from here. A revolution--hopefully a non-violent one--is inevitable. Our elected officials cannot be this openly evil and this openly corrupt and the rest of us still pretend we're living in a free country. 

How can we ever again take the office of the US President serious now that it's been held by Donald Trump? How can we can take the Democratic Party serious after they openly stabbed Bernie Sanders in the back and made it clear they don't care what the people want?

Of all the outdated momentum from the past the characters encounter in BOD, perhaps the greatest is the American political system. We're still operating on a patched-together shamble of laws originally conceived when people wrote with feathers and quills by candlelight. It's a system designed to benefit a certain class of heterosexual white males and its not coincidence that it continues to do so. That's what it's meant to do. If you want a system that supports all Americans, we're going to need a new system. Period.

(stopabductions.com)

That being said, I am not in favor of violent revolutionary tactics. Yes, we can all see that the United States has the largest prison population by far because we're the sort of as$h*les who make that and healthcare profitable for a select class, but that doesn't mean it's okay to kill innocent citizens to change society.

I'm also not playing fair in BOD. If you and I went out for a beer to discuss political policy, I would never be as extreme as the tone of BOD. My opinions are far more nuanced. It truly bothers me that we haven't punished any bankers and that those who are hoarding the nation's wealth aren't afraid of the rest of us. Otherwise, I'm generally pretty reasonable on most issues and I usually land somewhere in the middle between the extreme left or right.

But moderation in politics doesn't make for an exciting story. I want Esteemed Reader half on David's side by the end of Chapter Five, so I did my best to amp them up over the previous four chapters. I'm not going to slow the momentum of the novel by presenting every counterpoint to every political assertion made because this isn't a civics class, it's a horror story.

The day is coming when Americans are going to have to stand up and take their country back from the oppressive elite. Or the oppressive elite will likely stop messing around and crack down on the citizenry hard until we're all Ferguson, MO. The only thing that scares me more is how many nuclear weapons are out there just waiting to be picked up by the disenfranchised Americans politicians have been perfectly clear they don't care about. 

No doubt, much of my research for BOD has landed me on a watch list or two. I'll end this afterword by showing you the 60-minutes piece that scared the crap out of me and inspired much of the end of this story. I figure if this is the base approved for media coverage, how much worse off are the top secret bases whose top secret funding has likely been skimmed?

An Afterword for THE BOOK OF DAVID Part One: "Inception and Autobiography"

Esteemed Reader, if ever there was a strange book to promote from a site traditionally devoted to middle grade fiction, it's The Book of David. But this is my site (I can barely be bothered to manage one website, let alone a second), so we're doing this thing:) 

As much as I love writing stories targeted to a younger audience, I also love extremely gory fiction with gratuitous profanity, and life's too short to worry what other people might think about the disparity between my loves. I am who I am, I love what I love, and as seemingly anti-middle-grade as it is to have published this bonkers book that's likely to offend a whole lot of people, I'm as proud of The Book of David as I am of Banneker Bones and the Giant Robot Bees.

All that being said, although we're not going to discuss sex or violence in this post (just lost half its readership, I'm sure), and I'm not going to swear, I am going to discuss a story that contains all of those things and more. It also contains my only character (to date) who happens to be a middle grade writer. For that reason, I think some Esteemed Readers who enjoy this blog might also enjoy The Book of David, if you can get past all the swearing... and the sex... and the violence.. and the blasphemy.

The Book of David, which I will from this paragraph forward mostly refer to as BOD to save space, has a warning on its first page and in its book description for a reason. This book is not appropriate for younger readers. I wouldn't let my kid read it and I would never give a copy to your child. Should they obtain a copy elsewhere, this is me giving parents a heads up to use extreme discretion.

Don't write me an angry email or yell at me at a signing. Pay attention to your kids and what they're reading, dude.

Also, this is an afterword, to be read after you've read the book. Why you'd want to read this before and spoil the surprises of the story I've worked so hard to craft for you, I don't know. You can do whatever you like, but if I get a vote, I vote you read the book first. 

There are other non-spoiler aspects of BOD I've discussed elsewhere that I won't be discussing in depth here. So if you want to know my thoughts on UFOs, or why there are so many gosh darn cuss words in the book, or you just want me to admit I want to be Stephen King when I grow up, here are some posts related to BOD in which I discuss those things:

          An Open Letter to Stephen King

          Author, Year Two

          Author, Year Three

          On Using Naughty Words in Fiction

          On Conspiracy Theories and Flying Saucers

          Funeral for a Friend (in which I discuss my failed novel)

          On the Destructive Desire for Fame (And Ben Affleck)


For this afterword, I'm specifically going to discuss some of my experiences writing BOD and some of the personal autobiographical elements that inevitably make their way into every work of fiction (or at least, they do in mine). I'm also going to share with you some insights, including some photos from my son's nursery readers might enjoy seeing (those are in Part Two). I wonder about the wisdom of sharing too much as I think some things are better left to the reader's imagination. 

So let me preface everything by saying: regardless of the author's thoughts on his story, the reader's experience is her own.

If you thought the best theme song for BOD should've been "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden, I disagree, but that's a great song and it's your call. Over the year and a half it took me to write all five chapters of BOD, 200+ songs found their way into my writing playlist, many of them mentioned in the book. Favorites were "Power" by Kanye West, "Handlebars" by Flobots, "Reckoner" by Radiohead, "You Die or I do" by Hans Zimmer, "Imagine" as sung by Scott Bakula (naturally), "My Body is a Cage" as sung by Peter Gabriel, "When You See Those Flying Saucers" as sung by The Charles River Valley Boys, and "Soul on Fire" by Third Day. And just what sort of Hoosier would I be if I wrote an Indiana story without listening to John Cougar Melencamp's little ditty about "Jack and Diane?"

But in my mind the song that will forever be mentally linked to BOD is "A Blessing" by Max Richter. I've read that writing is a form of self hypnosis and I don't doubt it. I find it useful to have a theme song of sorts to begin each writing session to put me in "the mood" of the story. The somber, beautiful, hopeful, yet heartbreaking sounds of Richter's strings brought to my mind the sort of slow motion tragedy I intended to write. I didn't want to write just satire or horror, though I'll count myself lucky to have accomplished either; I wanted to move the reader the way Max Richter moved me. I can't imagine Miriam Walters wailing in the street outside her haunted house or David Walters finally telling his father, "I only ever wanted you to love me," without thinking of "A Blessing."

Right off the bat, it's a bit of a spoiler for me to tell you that of the many writers and works I drew upon to influence the creation of BOD, the foremost works my book is consciously modeled after are The Shining and, perhaps less immediately apparent, Stranger in a Strange Land. A great debt is also owed to the comedy of Bill Hicks, who I think would've got on well with Sexy Jesus, multiple articles published at Cracked.com, Hugh Howey's Wayfinding series, Vince Gilligan, as I've jokingly, but half-seriously thought of this story as "Breaking God," and the research and lectures of Richard Dolan, my favorite UFO historian, who was kind enough to email some words of support during the writing of BOD that meant quite a lot to me.

There are two quotes from Robert Heinlein about Stranger in a Strange Land that I kept in mind while crafting my own novel. When facing pressures to tone down the more controversial aspects of his masterpiece, he said, “If I cut out religion and sex, I am very much afraid that I will end with a nonalcoholic martini." As to the reaction of certain readers to his work, he said,  “I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers. It is an invitation to think, not to believe.” 

That pretty well covers it and I cannot improve upon Heinlein, so when it comes to my own novel, I'll just say, "what he said."

I can't always tell you where the ideas for my stories come from, but with BOD, I can: I was actively looking for an idea. I wanted to write a serial novel (it's a bucket list item I can now check off), I wanted it to be a horror story for adults, and I wanted it to be something I thought older fans of All Together Now would enjoy. Having recently become parents, Mrs. Ninja and I were house shopping to leave apartment life and the last of our extended adolescence behind. So a haunted house story seemed a natural choice and another bucket list item to be checked off.

I was debating whether or not there was anything new to be done with a haunted house I hadn't read multiple versions of already. I'd just about decided there was not when an only just barely original idea occurred to me: what if at the end of The Shining, Jack Torrance carried a Bible instead of a croquet mallet and instead of talking to ghosts to help him find Danny and Wendy, he had a whole church congregation saying, "right this way, brother, they're over here."

That idea made me laugh hysterically as the best ideas so often do (you can't fake love), and then immediately terrified me. "Don't you dare write that, Kent," I told myself. "You already ticked off enough religious folks with the zombie stories. Why would a nice Middle Grade Ninja like yourself want to upset your mother with such an offensive and outrageous tale destined to result in angry one-star reviews and emails and a general wishing of ill will upon you? Don't you dare write that story! Write something nice."

This was sensible advice, so I got back to work on Banneker Bones 2 and Zombies 3. But the thing about a great idea is that it won't leave you alone. Stephen King has said he never writes down his ideas as the good ones fight for a writer's attention, and I've found that to be very true. I was busy buying a house and living my life and the voice in my head that speaks up when my subconscious has worked out a story problem would every so often whisper tantalizing details to me: "the man's name is David and he has special powers because he's maybe/maybe not been appointed to be God's prophet. He believes he's an atheist and he's got a real sensible job, like a banker or something, but you can't fight destiny." And I would say, "No, the man's name is nothing, because I'm not writing that."

"It could end with a shocker like Stranger in a Strange Land--I mean,not exactly like that, but not not like that."
"Lalalala, I'm not listening."
"There's a painting on David's wall that talks to him. Guess Who the painting's of? Just guess. Sexy Jesus."
"That's even more offensive than the original idea! I'm not doing this. I mean that's pretty good, but... what would David even preach about?"
"The End Times, of course. And bankers, because seriously, f**k bankers. And David is himself a banker, so how deliciously ironic, right? Oh, and UFOs since you have to use all that 'research' you've done late at night on YouTube for something."
"Oooh, that's... that's... No, I'm not writing that. But if I did write it, could I call it The Book of David?"
"Absolutely."
"Crap. I can't not write it now. I'll spend the rest of my life wishing I had."

To understand why this idea so captured my imagination, I should share some personal information, beginning with where the title comes from. I was once a smart alec kid trapped in Sunday School who knew enough about the Bible to make my teacher hopeful, but was enough of a thinker to ask all the vexing questions that follow anyone compelling one to take something on faith. 

And sometimes I'd quote Bible verses that didn't, strictly speaking, exist, but which should've. On one such occasion when my teacher called my bluff and asked me to find the verse, I told her it was in "The Book of David." All the other kids laughed and it became a running joke when I spoke up and I laughed as well, but in the back of my mind I thought, "one day you'll see." So the title of my novel itself is its own bucket list item.

I don't write autobiographies. A novel about me playing video games while I listen to audiobooks after a day of spending time with my family would interest no one, not even me. Doubtless, some readers will ascribe qualities of my characters and their situation to me. No offense taken as this is a common experience for most authors and kinda goes with the territory. 

But for the record, I have (to date) never seen a flying saucer or a demonic alien (that I'm aware of), nor lived in a haunted house, nor been addicted to pills or booze or any of the other drugs in this book I had to research to write about, nor French kissed a baby (I once heard about a creep who did and have wondered about him ever since), nor had a conversation with any come-to-life paintings. My marriage is much, much better than the Walters' as is my relationship with my parents, which is much less compelling for a book. I have bumped into a couple situations of high strangeness, but I'm saving some of those for future novels:)

I have struggled with a cigarette addiction (I'm not smoking now unless you've got an extra cigarette) and I did grow up in a small Indiana town. I did buy a house not long ago and switch to part-time work so that my son wouldn't have to go to daycare (I would've never just quit my job without Mrs. Ninja's consent; WTF, Miriam!?!). None of those things is interesting enough on its own to sustain a novel, so I added a whole lotta lies to reveal some metaphorical Truths.

Here is something that is true: my grandmother lived in a house across from the park in the small Indiana town where I grew up and it really did have a white sign with multi-colored lettering on its front that read "Jesus Wants To Give YOU Eternal Life" (I added the exclamation point in the book) and it really was a local landmark. I love my grandmother and I miss her terribly (if there is an afterlife, she's the one I'm presently most looking forward to seeing), but I hated that stupid sign. When the school bus passed her house, not every day, but enough days, someone would mock me for it. That sign is present in many family photos and forever printed across my memory. To the best of my knowledge, the house that the sign was attached to is haunted only by memories, most of them good.

But over the years, the message of that sign, "Jesus Wants To Give YOU Eternal Life," began to seem to me less like an enticing offer and more like a threat.

This same beloved grandmother was once chased by a flying saucer. I believed her when she told me about it and I've never doubted her since. I also had a cousin who saw multiple flying saucers, which really ticked her off as she was a strict science teacher and extremely uncomfortable with the experience she probably would've never admitted to having if she'd been alone. The memory of her annoyance as she tried to tell me facts about the world and I insisted on asking her again about the flying saucers still makes me smile. Over the years, I've collected enough credible UFO stories from various sources that I find staunch non-believers tiresome and silly.

Here is something else that is true, though more difficult to discuss and less likely to be believed: I have, at different times in my life, experienced moments of extreme intuition and Déjà vu. I believe this is a common experience that folks mostly keep to themselves. To be crystal clear, I am not saying I have super powers or even a particularly practical skill. But at different times in my life, I've had flashes of insight that shouldn't have been possible for me to have in reality as I've come to expect it to behave; experiences that have led me to question the nature of existence and refuse outright atheism. Here is an account I wrote about one such experience. Good fiction reveals a truth inside the lie, and you can choose not to believe me on this point, but believe that I believe it, and it is a Truth I wanted to express.

I believe psychic communication is possible as are a whole lot of other wacky scenarios in part because of my own experiences, even though they've been mostly mundane stuff. Sometimes I'll recognize someone's future importance to me the moment I first meet them. When I met Mrs. Ninja, I knew pretty quickly she was the one. I've known when something tragic was coming and something good, but I can't decide what to know or when and I've had plenty of false alarms. I wouldn't pick a stock or place a bet based on my intuition, but when my sixth sense kicks in, I've learned to pay attention, and I've talked to plenty of folks who've had similar experiences. The world is an interesting place and there are odd things in it to be found by those who go looking.

When our realtor showed us the house we would buy, I knew it was the one as soon as we pulled up. I experienced flashes of our living here as though they were already memories (This is the place, welcome home). You can think I'm a crackpot (did I mention I believe in flying saucers?), but I've had similar experiences throughout my entire life and I'm just being honest because I have no doubt there are Esteemed Readers who know exactly what I'm talking about. I have often wondered if this sense of mine wouldn't one day come in handy when at last divine prophecies were revealed to me, because...

Here is one other thing that's true: I occasionally preached as an adolescent, though never at the level of David Walters. After one occasion of my speaking in front of our church, a respected missionary who was a man of great faith and integrity really and truly did pull me aside and told me that God had revealed to him that I, Robert Kent, future author of Pizza Delivery, would one day be a prophet of the Lord.

Honest. That happened.

It wasn't the exact scenario I wrote in my story, because, again, where's the fun in that? If Esteemed Reader wanted real life, they wouldn't be reading fiction. I didn't smack my head on a podium or see any bright lights or aliens. That's all bullcrap I added to show Esteemed Reader a good time. People like stories that are fun and full of conflict.

I remember the moment of this man telling me of my coming prophecy very clearly. He held my shoulders as he spoke the declaration with all the seriousness of Garrick Ollivander giving Harry Potter his wand. He went back to the mission field quickly after that, so I never got to ask many follow-up questions. But I've never forgotten our conversation and it has weighed on me heavily during different periods of my life. I've both longed for it to be true and been terrified at the possibility that it might be.

One last thing that actually happened: When I was first learning to drive, I was behind the wheel on a trip from Chicago back to small town Indiana and I really did have occasion to slam the brakes while traveling at 65 miles-per-hour. My father was in the passenger side seat, my brother was sleeping in the back, and we all screamed as the family roadster spun around in the center of the highway, cars passing on either side. Did God save us? It certainly felt like it at the time and I haven't come up with a better explanation in all the intervening years. Nor was that the only time I've been bailed out by Something greater than myself.

So am I God's prophet? Dude, I don't know. I hate to say "no" as it's a fun fantasy to indulge in. I will say that my prophetic status strikes me as an extremely dubious proposition. I can think of far more popular blogs than this one and more successful authors far better positioned than me for God to use as His mouthpiece for mankind (one would think He'd pick a filmmaker, or at least a writer with less of a potty mouth).

I can't promise that an angel won't yet come to me to reveal The Truth and command me to share it with the world. But I'm older than Jesus ever was at this point without having had even a single prophetic vision and should I start having them now, I imagine my credibility will be greatly undercut by my having published this fictional account of a man who does have such visions. This was one of the reasons I wrote the book; as an insurance policy:)

Tell you what: though I took most of the predictions David makes from actual doctrines, if some of it starts to come true, we'll know I called it because I was a prophet:)

What's important for our purposes is that I did believe this missionary when I heard him and for a long time after. While growing up, I used to fantasize about one day writing books or making movies (or both), then I'd remind myself that I really needed to be preparing for my coming prophecy.

When I got older and ditched my faith for a time, I laughed bitterly at the memory and concluded that this missionary was either a loon or worse, a liar (smug, young punk atheists are quick to write off large portions of the world as crazy).

Was it the missionary's schtick, I wondered. None of the other kids at my church had been told they would be prophets (I asked), but was it possible this creepy dude went from church to church and occasionally pulled aside the kid he judged most likely to be a sucker? I have a brother and two sisters who have all been missionaries, and two of them have been ministers, so obviously there's something to Proverbs 22:6, which was the key Bible verse that propelled my desire to write BOD.

While we're on the subject of Bible verses, I should mention that none of the verses quoted in BOD are actually replicated in any existing editions of the good book. It turns out Bible translations are copyrighted, which is gross and wrong and one of many terrible things about the modern world and possibly evidence of Satan's work in publishing (joking, mostly). But I don't want to be sued, so every "Bible verse" in BOD is my own translation, worded however I felt best suited the story. I remember my own disappointment in finding Ezekial 25:17 in the King James Bible is nothing like Jules Winnfield thinks it is:)

Esteemed Reader, that brings us to a discussion of the actual writing of BOD and the techniques employed, and as I see that this Afterword is quickly catching up in length to the book,  why don't we save that for next time? We'll be discussing the crafting of the story and the characters in Part Two and I'll show you some pictures of the animals actually painted on the walls of Little Ninja's nursery, if you'd care to join me...

Book of the Week: WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams

I’m so excited, Esteemed Reader, because this week I get to share with you one of my most favorite books of all time. I’m not sure if I could ever possibly pick an absolute favorite book, but if I did, Watership Down would surely be a strong contender for the top spot. And that pretty well concludes my review: I love Watership Down. If you haven’t read it, stop what you’re doing and read it now. If you have read it, it’s probably been a while and you need to read it again. I've read this book at least ten times and I have it on audio book to entertain me while I sweat at the gym.

I know what you’re thinking, Esteemed Reader. Classic middle grade? That means we won’t have an interview with an author this week. But that’s where you’re wrong! Richard Adams will be here at this very blog this Thursday to face the 7 Questions. So for goodness sake, be back here Thursday, wear a nice shirt, comb your hair, and make sure there’s nothing in your teeth.

I've got to tell you, starting this blog and declaring myself a ninja has to be one of the smartest things I've ever done aside from marrying Mrs. Ninja. It’s opened all sorts of doors for me and put me in contact with some amazing people, including you, Esteemed Reader. I’ve been thrilled to chat with every author we've had here and I've enjoyed chatting with literary agents as well. But Richard Adams is my hero and receiving his email has been one of the most exciting experiences of my life.

You know how sometimes you read a book that’s just so amazing you want to find its author and tell them everything their book meant to you? For most readers, this is perhaps just a thought, but it’s something I get to do on a pretty regular basis. And now I've had the chance to tell Richard Adams how much his work has inspired me and how it’s the measuring stick I use against my own work. I even sent him an excerpt of my current manuscript as Watership Down is the favorite book of my protagonist and a bully threatening to rip out its pages incites him in a pivotal scene. I’m not certain if Mr. Adams enjoyed the scene, but I certainly enjoyed sharing it with him.

I’m going to get to the meat and potatoes of discussing this book in a moment, but I want to share with you the circumstances under which I first read Watership Down. I didn’t read it as a child and that’s too bad for me. Three years ago, after a particularly nasty ice storm, I slipped in a parking lot late at night  and lost consciousness. When I came to, I was in bad shape, but I drove home, took some Tylenol and went to bed (bad idea, but it’s what I did to avoid the bankrupting cost of American health care). I even got up the next day and went to work, though I couldn’t hear and I could barely walk. I figured it would pass.

It didn't pass. My boss sent me to the hospital and it was a good thing she did. A cat scan revealed I had cracked my skull and bruised my brain. For three days I was under close observation and throwing up pretty much all the time. The doctor told me and a far more distraught Mrs. Ninja (then girlfriend Ninja) that we would have to wait and see when the swelling stopped how much of my cognitive function would remain. It’s a terrible thing to sit and wait to find out if the thoughts you’re thinking are the last clear thoughts you’re ever going to have.

I assure you, if I had been up to it, I would have spent that time finishing the novel I was working on as to die, or worse, go vegetable with an unfinished manuscript is a great fear of mine. But I wasn’t up to it, so I read instead. Oh, I told my girlfriend and my family I loved them and comforted them as much as I could, but I was there for three days and that’s a long time to go without a book. Mrs. Ninja understood and she bought me a copy of Watership Down.

As I read Watership Down, I knew it was perhaps the last book I would ever be able to read, and I was okay with it. It would have been a great book to go out on. I’ll stop with the melodrama as it came out all right. My balance has never been the same and I have some slight hearing loss, but all things considered, I got off quite lucky. I even finished that silly manuscript I was working on and have since written a better one and as you know from reading this blog, I have read many fine books since.

But never before had the power of a great book been made clearer to me. Richard Adams took me out of that place and away from my worries, which were considerable. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he did. I forgot about the nurses and the doctors and all the dreadful possible outcomes I was facing and was transported to the world of Hazel and Fiver and Bigwig and the wonderful rabbits of Watership Down. I forgot my own concerns and focused on my concern for those brave rabbits and their struggle.

For those three anxious days, I was not at the hospital. I was in England in a warren. Never before had I so badly needed to be swept away and Watership Down did that for me. And in my more cynical moments when I’m convinced no one reads anymore and we writers are a relic unaware that our time has passed, I remember that experience and know that literature is as important and powerful as it ever was. I don’t care that most Americans watch reality television instead of reading (well, I do, but what can be done?). I need great books in my life and as you’re reading this blog (possibly while watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta), I can’t be the only one.

I almost don’t want to tell you about Watership Down. It’s an amazing experience that every reader should have at least once and if I tell you about it before hand, it may diminish it somewhat. How some readers feel about Lord of the Rings (I never did care much for all the eating and singing those hobbits did), how my mother felt about Gone With the Wind, how Stephen King fans feel about The Dark Tower (which contains multiple references to the work of Richard Adams)—that’s how I feel about Watership Down. I love it as much as I love Batman, and if you read the blog regularly, you know that’s a lot:) So I’ll repeat: if you haven’t read Watership Down, stop reading this review and go read it. For those of you who have read it, I have a job to do and it’s time for me to get to it:

Watership Down is the story of a group of misfit rabbits who leave their warren when they learn, courtesy of a psychic revelation, that their home will soon be destroyed. Fiver is the high-strung rabbit who has the revelation and he has many more before the novel is done, all of them useful. And why not? Humans have these intuitive revelations all the time. Don’t believe me? Then why is it that airline reservation cancelations consistently go up ahead of a crash? I myself have had a few odd moments that caused me to alter my path and as a result, I avoided catastrophe (didn’t happen when I was walking in that parking lot, though). These odd moments are the subject of another, kookier post, but I’ll bet many of you Esteemed Readers, if you’re honest, could tell me stories of having similar moments of intuition.

Fiver convinces his buddy Hazel that they need to get out of town. First, the two try to convince their chief rabbit that the sky is falling. They are not taken seriously, of course, and in the end only a few rabbits high-tail it out of there, all of them boys—which turns out to be a real problem later. The rabbits rough it for a bit, attempt to join another warren, visit another, and eventually decide to start their own. But, of course, if their warren is going to last more than the current generation, our heroes are going to need some girls. The second half of the novel is some dude rabbits on a quest to get some chicks—what tale could be more universal than that?

And that’s the plot of Watership Down. Our protagonists have a clear goal and it’s one readers will relate to: they are on a quest for a sustainable life where they can be free of death and harm. There is considerable opposition on all sides. After all, these are rabbits and there are farmers and foxes and trains and birds on all sides—everybody wants to kill these poor rabbits. At times, the oppositions seems insurmountable and that is the key to what makes Watership Down so very readable. Incredible opposition facing scrappy heroes that will do anything to achieve their universal goal. Write that formula down. If you want to have a hope of writing a novel with even a fraction of the longevity of Watership Down, and I do, I do—that’s how it’s done.

Adams never lets up on these rabbits. They are always being chased or imprisoned or otherwise threatened and I assure you the pages will turn themselves. Thug life? Try Bunny life. This is my favorite thing about Watership Down: it is first and foremost a good story well crafted. Adams gives us lovable characters we can relate to and then shoves them in harm’s way repeatedly. This probably isn’t what makes Watership Down a classic, and in a moment I’m going to talk about theme and metaphor and all that other stuff your English teacher lives for. But notice, all of that is secondary and readers only invest time considering it because their primary need for a good story has first been met.

The thing about Adams’ rabbits is that they are truly rabbits. These aren’t Disney characters who drive in cars, or watch television. They are rabbits and their world is the world of a rabbit. Their concerns are food, shelter, mating, and avoiding harm—which are the primary concerns of humans, no matter how much we like to otherwise trump up the importance of our actions. Every simile Adams employs is a simile from nature. Here’s one of my favorites:

He pretended to go back, but suddenly turned, rushed upon the shadows and plunged into the nearest hole faster than a raindrop into the ground.

Adams would never write “he leaped into the hole like a car whipping into a garage,” partly because that’s a terrible simile, but mostly because rabbits have no knowledge of cars or garages. The rabbits’ thinking is entirely grounded in their world, and therefore the narration is as well. The rabbits have names like Blackberry, Dandelion, Cowslip, and even Prince Rainbow. You won’t ever encounter a rabbit in Watership Down named Milkshake, or Lucky Penny, or Toilet Paper (too bad).

The one conceit of Watership Down is that Adams’ rabbits, though rabbits in every other respect, have the ability to think, reason, and communicate like humans. To be fair, given that they have this ability, it’s a wonder they haven’t developed air conditioned warrens or rabbit cars to drive into rabbit garages—but I’m making too much of this. After all, it’s just a story, and if the rabbits were not human-like in their reasoning, we would not find them relatable characters over such a long novel. Humans are deeply narcissistic and we want to read about humans even when we’re reading about rabbits.

The difference then is that Adams’ rabbits think and reason in rabbit terms. For example:

The kind of ideas that have become natural to many male human beings in thinking of females—ideas of protection, fidelity, romantic love and so on—are, of course, unknown to rabbits, although rabbits certainly do form exclusive attachments much more frequently than most people realize. However, they are not romantic and it came naturally to Hazel and Holly to consider the two Nuthanger does simply as breeding stock for the warren. This was what they had risked their lives for.

Don’t worry. The female rabbits think of themselves this way also and they’re cool with it. Before you start shouting about sexism, Esteemed Reader, two things: 1. These are rabbits, dude, not people, so chill 2. Although the first half of the book is boy heavy, there are some very strong-willed girl rabbits in the second half every bit as capable as the boys at many things, and better than them at other things (such as cooking and cleaning—I kid, I kid, and Mrs. Ninja just smacked me in the back of the head, which forced me to remind her of my gravely serious brain injury).

All right. This is clearly the longest review ever, so I want to talk about three more things and then we’ll call it a day. First, although it is perhaps unfortunate that the rabbits have done away with romantic love, it opens up the possibility of greater love. The rabbits love and fight for each other. They do not want does for themselves alone, though they will fight over them if there are not enough to go around. They want the does for the good of the warren. Everything the rabbits do they do for each other and they are stronger for it. Their warren reminds me of a hive in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and I yearn for this sort of community in humanity.

Second, the main theme of Watership Down is a stroke of genius. The real story here is of the contrast between the different warrens the rabbits visit. In each instance, we are presented differently constructed communities, their strengths, and their weaknesses. What sets our heroes apart is the manner in which they will construct their community differently than these flawed societies. I will not speculate that these warrens are really metaphors for some known human society. Some may think that the final, mean and nasty warren the rabbits visit is a rabbit stand in for Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia, but I don’t. I think the different warrens are simply communities of rabbits with qualities similar to the worst human societies. Oddly, there is no capitalism-gone-mad society of rabbits, perhaps because rabbits are far too clever to ever take serious the silly writings of Ayn Rand.

For me, the most interesting warren is the second the rabbits visit. The rabbits of this warren are eager for more rabbits to join because they are living a lie. They live in a nice garden with plenty of fresh veggies and free from predators because they are protected by a human farmer. The catch is that the farmer buries wire snares all around because he is also farming rabbits. The rabbits of this warren accept that a few of them will die every year so that the rest can live in utopia (paging Lois Lowry), and they are eager to welcome new rabbits because the more rabbits there are, the better the odds on not getting snared. Here is what the prophet Fiver has to say about these rabbits:

Don’t you see? The farmer only sets so many snares at a time, and if one rabbit dies, the others will live that much longer. You suggested that Hazel should tell them our adventures, Blackberry, but it didn’t go down well, did it? Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he’s ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he’s deceiving? Do you want me to go on? I tell you, every single thing that’s happened fits like a bee in a foxglove. And kill them, you say, and help ourselves to the great burrow? We shall help ourselves to a roof of bones, hung with shining wires! Help ourselves to misery and death!

Third, I must comment on the ending, though I’ll try not to spoil it. In the final act, Adams hits us with a Deus Ex Machina, which we know from dutifully reading our Aristotle is a major no-no. A key rabbit character is saved at the last minute by a human stepping in to help out. She is a god descending on the battlefield at the last second to make everything all right. This is this sort of shenanigan that ruins lesser works, but Adams gets away with it because his god from the machine does not resolve all of the conflict or even the most pressing conflict. Also, the poor rabbits go through so much hell for most of the novel, that in this particular instance the reader is likely to be okay with our hero getting one free lunch.

I lied! There’s a fourth thing, and then I really am done: Watership Down is an honest book, which is probably why it’s been banned so often. I hope to one day write a book so effective it gets banned:) I said before that these rabbits are not Disney characters. Their world is real, and the real world is often a nasty, violent place, especially for rabbits. Adams is not willfully nasty, but he tells the truth and as always, the truth is somewhat unpleasant. For this reason, Watership Down is probably not appropriate for very young readers (although, neither is the world). However, Watership Down started life as a story Richard Adams told to his two young daughters on a long drive and I can’t imagine the violence, or even the implied rape in this story, is any worse than what children have been exposed to already and certainly no worse than what they will be exposed to as they grow up.

Whew. This may be my longest review ever and it is done. Make sure you come back on Thursday when Richard Adams, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, is going to be here to face the 7 Questions. And come again on Saturday for an interview with a surprise literary agent. And now, as always I leave you with a few of my most favorite passages from one of my most favorite books, Watership Down:

They climbed not over but through the sun-red grass, among the awakened insect movement and the light ablaze. The grass undulated about them. They peered over anthills and looked cautiously round clumps of teazle.


“It all comes from men,” said Holly. “All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals. But I’d better go on with this tale of mine.”


Hazel’s anxiety and the reason for it were soon known to all the rabbits and there was not one who did not realize what they were up against. There was nothing very startling in what he had said. He was simply the one—as a Chief Rabbit ought to be—through whom a strong feeling, latent throughout the warren, had come to the surface.


“Well, I can’t quite make out,” answered Bigwig. “But if I understand him properly—and I’m not at all sure that I do—he says that where he comes from there are thousands of his kind—more than we can possibly imagine. Their flocks make the whole air white and in the breeding season their nests are like leaves in a wood—so he says.”

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.