With an exception to the Björk Fan Club "Army of Björk" (and that was in the 90s), this overture would be my first attempt to commingle with others with similar interests. I will be direct, if not brief. First, I'm going to be presumptive, and refer to Mr. King as "Steve". This, I hope, will not be deigned a sign of disrespect but rather an indicator that I, like everyone else here, feels a modicum of kinship to this artist, and I -- right or wrong -- have always been left the impression that he wouldn't have it any other way. Secondly, I could be ham-handed and include a gigantic treatise on how he has influence my life (and along with it a few friends). He surely receives unsolicited handjobs from his voluminous and grateful audience, and I shall, at least for the time being, spare him all that.
I am a writer. Suppress your shock. I would be prepared to testify Steve has been a plurality, if not the majority, of my Lit. inspiration. He's been more than an entertainer but a professor, and I do not simply consume his works but that of the artists for whom he writes forwards, blurbs, or otherwise plugs.
My chief interest has been in the comic book medium, however, I write plain old verse/prose also and have recently completed a pot boiler that, I'd like to believe, he (and much of his spectrum of fandom) may take some interest in. I am aware Steve was very moved by the massacre that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and, in addition to magnanimously pulling his Bachman book "Rage" from public consumption (I'm sure, much to his constant readers' understandable dismay), issued a passionate essay available on Kindle to address gun owners. Twenty slaughtered children is a real horror story, and it was reassuring that he'd parse fact from fiction here. Therein he mentions he is a gun owner himself, but clearly expressed a marked discomfort with the trend of American gun violence and, in so many words, attempts to distinguish responsible, level-headed owners (and I've met my share of this species -- I've befriended a few) and those who fetishize firearms and get off on the power it makes them feel.
A father to two younglings of my own whose ages straddled the mean age of the victims at Sandy Hook a bit over four years ago, I broke out of my own writer's block and wound up studying the issue at length, doing my due diligence in research, and developing a novel named Horror Vacui: Appraising American Guns & Bitter. It makes an analagous situation occur at the fictional Montessori-esque school "Salisbury Elementary" in the fictional suburban hamlet of Providence, RI "Quartermain" (I make every effort to not invoke, exploit, or merchandise the very name "Sandy Hook" or "Newtown" out of respect for those surviving parents), that follows the lives of the 52 parental survivors of this massacre and how they react to the filibuster of gun reform legislation in congress on April 17th 2013 that was pursuant to a public outcry for change regarding this issue. Narrated by its most affluent survivor (whom was also the only parent to lose two -- both his fraternal twins), this work is a political thriller and as unconventional an approach to an action story that I've ever endeavored. "Horror Vacui", for those who don't already know, is a dictum first articulated by pre-socratic philosopher Parmenides, confirmed by both Plato and Aristotle, and translated from Ancient Greek means: "Nature abhors a vacuum." It's also the name of a subgenre of 2D (perhaps even 3D art -- though I confess I've never investigated it) art and even music, wherein the artist has an agoraphobic reaction to unoccupied canvas space, and hence, makes every irrational effort to fill it.
I wasn't sure which tag would be more appropriate. "Politics" or "Self Promotion", but I thought it might be a mite gauche to include a sample on my first shot over your bow. Whatever the case, I was hoping for any feedback I could get. I'm not unrealistically greedy. A mere "howdy" would be more than welcome.
I am a writer. Suppress your shock. I would be prepared to testify Steve has been a plurality, if not the majority, of my Lit. inspiration. He's been more than an entertainer but a professor, and I do not simply consume his works but that of the artists for whom he writes forwards, blurbs, or otherwise plugs.
My chief interest has been in the comic book medium, however, I write plain old verse/prose also and have recently completed a pot boiler that, I'd like to believe, he (and much of his spectrum of fandom) may take some interest in. I am aware Steve was very moved by the massacre that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and, in addition to magnanimously pulling his Bachman book "Rage" from public consumption (I'm sure, much to his constant readers' understandable dismay), issued a passionate essay available on Kindle to address gun owners. Twenty slaughtered children is a real horror story, and it was reassuring that he'd parse fact from fiction here. Therein he mentions he is a gun owner himself, but clearly expressed a marked discomfort with the trend of American gun violence and, in so many words, attempts to distinguish responsible, level-headed owners (and I've met my share of this species -- I've befriended a few) and those who fetishize firearms and get off on the power it makes them feel.
A father to two younglings of my own whose ages straddled the mean age of the victims at Sandy Hook a bit over four years ago, I broke out of my own writer's block and wound up studying the issue at length, doing my due diligence in research, and developing a novel named Horror Vacui: Appraising American Guns & Bitter. It makes an analagous situation occur at the fictional Montessori-esque school "Salisbury Elementary" in the fictional suburban hamlet of Providence, RI "Quartermain" (I make every effort to not invoke, exploit, or merchandise the very name "Sandy Hook" or "Newtown" out of respect for those surviving parents), that follows the lives of the 52 parental survivors of this massacre and how they react to the filibuster of gun reform legislation in congress on April 17th 2013 that was pursuant to a public outcry for change regarding this issue. Narrated by its most affluent survivor (whom was also the only parent to lose two -- both his fraternal twins), this work is a political thriller and as unconventional an approach to an action story that I've ever endeavored. "Horror Vacui", for those who don't already know, is a dictum first articulated by pre-socratic philosopher Parmenides, confirmed by both Plato and Aristotle, and translated from Ancient Greek means: "Nature abhors a vacuum." It's also the name of a subgenre of 2D (perhaps even 3D art -- though I confess I've never investigated it) art and even music, wherein the artist has an agoraphobic reaction to unoccupied canvas space, and hence, makes every irrational effort to fill it.
I wasn't sure which tag would be more appropriate. "Politics" or "Self Promotion", but I thought it might be a mite gauche to include a sample on my first shot over your bow. Whatever the case, I was hoping for any feedback I could get. I'm not unrealistically greedy. A mere "howdy" would be more than welcome.
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