Thou Shalt Not

While I was blogless I had a story in Thou Shalt Not, an anthology of stories about the Ten Commandments. My story, 'Confessions', is about the fourth commandment: 'Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.'

The book was due out in 2015 but for various reasons it didn't actually come out until April 2016. No doubt the publisher was so amazed by the wonderfulness of my story that it took him six months to stop weeping tears of joy and actually publish the thing. And then the pages of my story had to be laminated so as to prevent water damage from the tears of joy when everyone else read it. (Incidentally, for anyone who might be wondering, no, this isn't the story I alluded to in my previous post.)

My fellow contributors in the anthology are:

Jeff Gardiner
Amanda Bigler
Clare Littleford
Laura Mauro
Danuta Reah
Pat Kelleher
Mark West
Jasper Kent
Jacey Bedford

The book is available in both hardback and ebook editions.

And now, for your delight and delectation, here is a small sample of my story, which is so stupendous it will absolutely, definitely, positively, make you weep tears of joy. (Disclaimer: story may not actually make you weep tears of joy.)

For the first time since the man entered the confessional Father Dooley turned to get a clear look at him. Tall, slim, with neatly trimmed greying hair and beard. Eyes shining brightly from a lean face. A black shirt beneath a grey jacket. The lattice cast light and shadow upon him, crosshatching his sharp features with black and white squares, making it look as though he had a crossword puzzle tattooed on his face.

In the beginning was the Word.

Except the Word was not yet present, there was only an empty grid, the clues unsolved.

Father Dooley’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you?’

The man ignored the question. ‘Don’t look so surprised at the idea of God sinning. You’ve read the Bible, you know what He’s capable of: death, famine, plagues, floods. His sins are so vast and so many that they eclipse infinity. But His greatest sin was His betrayal of the Sabbath.’

Father Dooley’s brow creased in confusion. He could not follow the leap in logic that led from an understandable, if woefully misguided, anger with God at all the misery in the world to the idea that God had failed to keep the Sabbath holy. Clearly the clues to this particular crossword were of the cryptic variety.

The man continued, his deep voice imbued with a gravitas which Father Dooley could only dream of possessing. ‘You sit and listen to your flock pour out all their sins and indiscretions then you give them prayers to say in penance. Most if not all of these sinners offer up these prayers on the same day you issue them, the Sabbath. God listens to their prayers so God is working on the Sabbath.’

‘That’s not quite how it works. You see – ’

‘Are you saying that God doesn’t listen to their prayers?’

‘No, I – ’

‘So He is working. And He is breaking the Sabbath.’

The man finally paused long enough to allow Father Dooley to complete a sentence. Father Dooley said nothing. He sensed that the man was daring him to respond purely so he could steamroller Father Dooley’s words with his flawed logic. The bewildered priest decided to hold his tongue for a moment longer in order to marshal his thoughts.

The man obviously took Father Dooley’s silence as an admission of defeat. Smiling, he delivered the coup de grace. ‘When your flock sins you hear their confession. When you sin the bishop hears your confession. When God sins who hears His confession?’

Warning! Contains irony!

I always have trouble promoting my work. I tend towards self-deprecation, which can often be viewed as a lack of confidence in my fiction -- "Well, if even the writer isn't bigging up this story then it can't be any good."

The whole saying-I'm-the-best-there-is thing doesn't come easily to me. (Even if a part of me genuinely does believe I am a literary genius.) So, to cover my discomfort, I add irony to the self-deprecation, spoofing the bombastic arrogance of so much marketing material -- "This story isn't as good as it could be. It's only the second greatest story of all time." This tends to be misinterpreted as genuine arrogance. I'm thinking I'm being all clever and multi-layered and sophisticated and all I'm doing is sending out mixed messages.

I know I'm not the only writer who feels uncomfortable about pimping their work. (Calling it pimping
probably doesn't help. I feel like I'm supposed to get people to fuck my stories. Actually, some editors I've worked with pretty much did that.) Some people just don't like being in the spotlight; it's the reason they became writers instead of actors or pop stars or some other creative endeavour where everyone looks right at you. And some people feel that self-promotion cheapens their literary creations. This despite the fact that writers such as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain quite happily gave public performances in order to promote their work.

In theory self-promotion is easier in the era of social media. I've got to admit that I went through a phase where I was actually half-decent at promoting my work. But that was on message boards, where there was some kind of etiquette. When Facebook came along and everything turned to endless hype, everyone shouting to make themselves heard over the egotistical outpourings of every wannabe hack with an internet connection, I found myself losing my taste for self-promotion.

So, in the interests of making my life easier could everyone just take it as read that everything I write is a work of staggering genius? No? Okay then, but next time you read a piece of my awkward promotional copy filled with feeble jokes to disguise my self-loathing just remember that you could have stopped it.

Seriously, I find this side of writing incredibly difficult. For example, I did a story this year that I'm really proud of and I wanted to plug it as effectively as possible. In a way that showed just how good I thought the story was, but in a warm funny manner that didn't sound like I was apologising for promoting my work.  The line I came up with was, "The best story you'll read this year. Unless you don't read it until next year."

I was pretty pleased with the line until I went to post it and realised that I couldn't bring myself to put it online. It still felt too cocky, too arrogant. The only way I felt comfortable about using it was by tricking myself into including it in a blog about the problems of self-promotion. A bit of a cack-handed way of going about it I admit, but it's a step in the right direction.

Maybe next time I'll actually work up the nerve to tell you which story I'm talking about.