Dear Grom

Over the last eight years I’ve written a number of short stories, most of which I’ve managed to get published. Some of these are no longer available online. Others were never available online at all, having been released only in magazines or anthologies. I gathered together those stories and bundled them into a single collection, and included an 11th story which has never been seen by anyone¹. That 11th story is titled “Dear Grom” and in its honor I’m calling this collection of short stories “Dear Grom and other stories.”

You can buy it right now, right here. The ebook version is only $7.77², so significantly less than a dollar per story! If you’re ever in the same location as me with a physical copy, I’ll gladly sign it.

Of interest to me is that I can actually see how I’ve changed over the years reflected in this collection. My first collection (Red Legacy and Others) was much shorter and covered only two years of my writing endeavors. My fascination/horror with violence is on full display. In the blubs on the back cover of Red Legacy I include a critical review that said “lots of unnecessary violence and gore” both to warn away readers that don’t want this, and as a bit of a brag. The stories definitely have violence and gore, though “unnecessary” is entirely subjective—IMO they’re completely necessary to make the story what it is, to convey what I want to convey. In fiction nothing is “necessary.” Every choice shapes the experience in a different way.

At the start of Dear Grom and Others I still can’t look away from violence, it still consumes a large part of me. Flee, My Pretty One in particular is chock full of it. The use of violence to shape the world is a key aspect of it. I think it’s kinda in poor taste to talk about how violent people effect change while looking away from the violence itself.

Not Fade Away was written a few years before being publishing, so more rightly fits into my earlier era. Despite being about mental decline and primarily featuring struggles against fear or nature, it has a flexing of righteous violence.

But the more I kept writing the less I focused on violence. In part I think that’s because I managed to really go hard on getting my feelings about violence out on paper with my novel What Lies Dreaming. With very explicit, ever-escalating violence I really vomited out my horror at the effectiveness and exhilaration and soul-shredding brutality of violence. At last I felt like I said just about everything I had to say, and I could finally move on.

My next story after I finished the novel is Give Me My Wings, and it has no violence at all, just melancholy. I return to action scenes in later stories, but they are more about the “action” and less about the “violence” after this point (aside from One of the Good Ones, but that’s about the male capacity for violence rather than the act itself).

I notice I’m telling a story with this post. That I had inner turmoil, eventually purged it with catharsis, and was able to level up and move on as a result. I realize this is an instinct of mine, and I don’t know if this story is actually true. Other things that happened right around the time I moved to writing less violence: I suffered a major back injury that left me crippled for 2 years and permanently altered my life, I started using psychedelics a few times per year, I was betrayed by people I loved, and I discovered everything I had accepted as true about western society was greatly distorted (this was while researching for a novel spin-off of Flee My Pretty One which will now never be written. I’ll write a post about that in the future.)

So, maybe it was one of those instead? Maybe it was just aging? I’m coming to trust my own narratives less, and maybe that’ll become a new theme of my writings.

I have, however, after a period of melancholy that I find kinda insufferable in litfic, moved on to trying to find the good in life. My fiction is focusing more on striving for good things, recognizing nobility in common stuff, and just plain ol’ humor. (Note that Heaven’s Bounty was also written a few years before it was published, so fits better into the melancholy period). I’m not fully joke-pilled here. I still like action and sometimes the gore that can come with it. I still find pathos deeply affecting. But I’m looking to more frequently forge a path that includes some joy and optimism within it. It can’t all be grimdark all the time. :)

If you read down this far and you’re a paying subscriber, here is “Gin and Rummy.” It’s one of the later pieces in the collection, and the second shortest, and previously only available from Analog Magazine. If you like it, consider buying the whole collection. :)