I wonder, sometimes, if my first novel is too literary to turn people on. I've had people tell me that the subject is overwhelming. Some tell me that it's gloomy. I've never read Lovely Bones, but what can be more depressing than someone being raped, killed and is watching the episode from Heaven?
I will read it, sense my writing is paranormal also. But should I be targeting a certain audience outside of the Facebook or Twitter crowd?
This Child Will
Prologue
They all wept like babies the moment they’d
swallowed the rat poison they passed around in a circle.
Now, at the end of this irreversible plunge, at the end of
this crash, the end of this self-inflicted, mind-boggling
torture, the end of life was awaiting.
The crime took place in an old tenement apartment
where their small, activist group once held weekly
meetings. It was there where they made plans for
rallies at some local chemical plant responsible for
the pollution of the inner city’s water supply. It was
there were they made plans to picket a local chain store
that refused to promote their people to management
positions.
They always told themselves that if this moment
ever arrived that they wouldn’t shed a tear, that they
would make their departure in the same manner as they
conducted their lives, brave as daredevils, fearless,
refusing to show any weakness of emotion. To The
Fishers of Men, the fear of dying was an extreme
weakness. But they were only human, more human
than they imagined themselves, more than the tools of
a cause they imagined themselves. So cry, they did;
tears that rolled like the violence of their lives.
A couple of them saw the image of the spirit
responsible for the chain of events that brought them
to this. The fi rst man to take the poison saw it as he
sat in the circle of victims. He saw it as it hovered in a
corner, its body covered in what looked like a robe of
sapphire gems, watching as he raised the glass to his
lips. The image was one of a female, young and exotic
looking much like pictures he’d seen of the beautiful
women of the Ivory Coast. And as he drank, he thought
with intense sadness, I’ve never even seen the Ivory
Coast. I’ve always lived here, with these dead, cold
concrete people.
The next man in the circle to drink the poison saw
it, too. And he wondered if a certain story he’d heard
was true, if this was the spirit, Maggie, linked to one of
the F.O.M., the spirit linked to the young clairvoyant
boy and to Thaddeus, the spirit who’d led them to
commit the abominable crime, the crime that had led
them to this place, and to this tragic end. As he raised
the glass to his own lips he saw a smile curling on its.
He was certain now that it was responsible for all that
had and would unfold. His hands began to tremble now
with the fear of his transition, wondering if it would be
waiting for him on the other side. But his soul was a
polluted one, a demon that wouldn’t let him retreat.
The room was filled with the sounds of men
moaning, crying, and belting out a confession to the
part he played in the crime as he held the glass with
both
