Picture of me doing the thing I said I was doing in the title of this entry.
Right in the middle of a big misprint fiasco, I attended the 2016 Gathering of Writers in downtown Indianapolis. My nerves were shattered from finding a giant mistake in the printing of the version of Necessaries I was finally able to get onto Amazon, so I wasn't sure I could get in the "HELL YEAH WRITING" mood.
Despite being a pouty poop, I volunteered to read first at the open mic, and I'm so, so glad I did. It's been a long time since I've been on a stage, and when I got off, Kelsey used her fancy sci-fi phone to check my pulse. 130. Appropriate for running from bears and/or reading a small passage from a self-published novel.
Anyway, I didn't get a recording of my reading, but wanted to share the excerpt here! Enjoy!
“The ceiling of the old stone church was so high and black that it should have contained stars. Preston’s eyes were magnetically drawn to the vast space above, hoping for an indication that there was in fact a roof and uncharacteristically anxious about the fact that he couldn’t tell. For the first time in a long while, he felt the urge to run from the magnificent unknown. He gripped the edge of his pew to prevent being sucked into the nothingness above, knowing full well he was acting like a child hiding under his sheets from make-believe monsters.
”I can’t believe how many people are here, can you?” Bernadette whispered to him before noticing his hold on his seat. “Hey, are you okay?”
”Only a little impatient,” Preston replied. “We’ve been here for twenty minutes now, and I haven’t seen anyone else arrive or depart. When’s your ‘Danielle’ going to show up?”
Bernadette frowned. “She didn’t give me an exact time. If I didn’t know better, I’d think we’d been tricked into attending a vigil.”
The atmosphere of the abandoned church did resemble a vigil or prayer meeting. The heterogeneous congregation that filled the crooked, rotting pews mostly sat with their heads bent and hands folded. Aside from the occasional cough, the sanctuary was silent. The stone walls kept the place cool and dark, and the only light came from the candles arranged around the pulpit. Their glow illuminated the busted, half-canvassed stained glass behind the altar. What was left of the enormous window depicted an awkwardly cubist-inspired crucifix. In it, Christ was a gangly, angular, gray-bodied humanoid on his bloodied cross. The red of his many wounds blazed in the candlelight against the gray and blue-scale background. Someone had thrown a rock through Jesus’ face. ”