It’s scary the number of young writers who, though they may never publish, write extraordinarily gruesome stories and novels. Pain, torture, and cruelty seem to be, not just acceptable, but celebrated. Purposefully sadistic and, in some cases, masochistic, as well, the writing demonstrates, not just a disregard for decency, but a willful, even joyous delight, in the suffering of self and others.

Am I alone in considering this an extremely disturbing phenomena? To me it seems, if they can write this sadism/masochism, not with condemnation, but with such a sense of acceptance, delivering this as if it were a just and normal, approved and even satisfying, state of being and living, that we have a very large proportion of very disturbed psychopathic and sociopathic individuals populating our nation.

Now, I’m sure that conservatives and fundamentalists, especially the sort who embrace Limbaugh and Palin, might point and cry out that this is the fault of the decline of family values, the decline of religious influence, and the influence of liberal perspectives. However, many who are creating these startlingly gruesome treatises embrace both the neo-conservative perspective and Christian fundamentalism. Not all, but certainly a provable great many.

Fiction carries its author’s overt or sublimated perspectives, views, philosophies, and ideologies. If gruesome treatment of others and self is considered acceptable behavior, not condemned, but expected and delivered as normal, what does this say of our culture? I shudder to think what it means to our future.

CHAPTER TWO
Mog stopped at the second floor landing, squatting on the railing.  Rowan stopped, too, just out of sight as she waited for the boom of the door knocker.  Within moments of hearing it, she saw Miss Emily cross the entry hall and disappear inside the foyer.  She heard the grate rattle, then the gears [...]

To the book store that wanted to order copies via the form on this website, the form is fixed, now. It seems that new security patches disabled the captcha, but that’s fixed now with a more user-friendly, supposedly unbreakable version in place.

With all that’s going on in our family with Mom suffering continuing medical crises, one would think that my brain would be too preoccupied to conceive and organize a new novel. It seems, however, that novel writing is my brain’s way of coping. So, even with Deborah’s continuing nightmare with William cooking away in the sequels to To Inherit a Murderer, here’s the beginning of yet another novel about an orphan boy with special “gifts,” a single-parent teen with special “needs,” and the “family” who takes them in, and, yes, it’s another “wierd” one.

Chapter One

Nobody in town much liked West Gate or the Groves who owned it. Encompassing all of Gate Creek from its source to something the locals called The Plunge… .