Why a reader calls my work “Dark Fiction”

Each week, I have attempted to hone my efforts to reach readers in a way that will matter to you and will also give you a glimpse inside my life and heart. As I have evolved this blog and my messages here, I keep coming back to “What would I want to read?” and “What would I want to know if I were you?” Finally, the answer has occurred to me. A reviewer of my afterlife novel Under-Heaven referred to my work as “dark fiction.” Up until I read that review, I had always thought of myself as a positive writer with love and hope at the center of my fiction…but I now believe that reviewer was absolutely correct. By now, you all know that I had a pretty horrible childhood.  For me, there aren’t a lot of cheerful memories, and dredging up what few I have is like revisiting a graveyard. I was a somber kid and my childhood was something I survived not something I enjoyed. I don’t blame my parents. They loved all six of us, their children, but they themselves came from dysfunctional homes. They were no more qualified to raise six children than I am to perform brain surgery. My parents did their best but their best was a disaster. So that’s where the darkness in my fiction comes from. For the first fifteen years of my life, I wanted nothing so much as to curl up into a tiny ball and disappear. Of course I have no choice but to mine those dark emotions. How could I not? BUT I refuse to write a novel with an unhappy ending. Fiction has to be better than life…or why bother! I will, however, drag your emotions through the mud. I will make you cry and scream and plead for the characters that I will make you love?  I know sadness and I lived hopelessness every day. I doubt any child has ever prayed harder or longer for the world to somehow get better. Tears streak my cheeks as I write these words, a statement which I know many people find hard to believe. I’m an ex-bodybuilder and a guys’ guy. You’d more expect me to punch something than cry. But when you come limping from the shadows of a difficult past, the scars never really go away. That hurt and pain stays with you…always.John Locke told me to write a blog that will give you the essence of my writing. This is it. If you read my work, you will care about my characters. You will cry a lot. But by the end of each and every story, I will have you smiling and happy that you are alive. My characters win…but they earn it. I hope I’ve earned your readership.Buy my books. It will be the best 99 cents you’ve ever spent.

The Santa Shop is Christmas seen through the lens of suicide, a quick, simple and emotional story that will have you questioning everything from homelessness to charity: http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Shop-Conspiracy-ebook/dp/B003LBRITQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1313769685&sr=8-2

Under-Heaven is the best “dark fiction” book I’ve written so far. If you want a complex and powerful book, try this one.  And if you see this ending coming, I’ll owe you dinner and a new Cadillac: http://www.amazon.com/Under-Heaven-ebook/dp/B005D7JNDA/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1313769685&sr=8-8