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Welcome to It's Raining Books. What would we find under your bed?
Nothing. I don’t have a bed, only the box springs and the mattress. Many of the writers of the nineteenth century didn't even have the box springs. As a matter of fact, the German poet, Heinrich Heine, had only a mattress. In the final years of his life, when he was growing steadily sicker with lead poisoning, he would refer to his mattress as his “mattress grave.” This is significant to me because I read that poet’s work in my youth—and he inspired one of the characters in The Phantom Glare of Day.
What was the scariest moment of your life?
Hiking on one of the Greek islands. People should know that when you go hiking on the Greek islands, the earth can be very unstable. Even if something looks stable, it could just be volcanic ash.
Do you listen to music while writing? If so, what?
Often, Satie is just the thing—especially his early, experimental works for piano. Traditional Chinese music is also conducive to writing. For that matter, you can never go wrong with traditional Japanese music. The sound of a koto is evocative in a way that no other musical instrument could ever be.
What is something you'd like to accomplish in your writing career next year?
If things go well and my writing marches along, there will be a sense of redemption—a sense of having successfully communicated the kinds of ideas that just had to come out. Whether the person is a writer, artist, or musician, the most important accomplishment has to be the furtherance of that sense of redemption that comes with the completion of each new work or opus. Maybe there are other ways of achieving redemption, but the completion of hard work is the only one that really resonates with me.
How long did it take you to write this book?
Back in school, it took two years to write my idea book/journal containing all the ideas that went into this novel. Then that notebook sat in storage up until just a few years ago. As such, it took only a few years to write the book that follows from that aforementioned journal. It’s a funny thing to have a lifetime of diaries and idea books that date back to previous decades. It feels like a blessing and a curse.
Obsessed with learning the origins of the cosmos, the actual meaning of life, and the true purpose of civilization, a fine Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth dedicates himself to the study of Plato’s most extraordinary ideas. Convinced of Plato’s belief that humankind possesses any and all innate knowledge deep within the collective unconscious mind, Fingal soon conducts a series of bold, pioneering occult-science experiments by which to resolve the riddle of the universe once and for all. However, Fingal forgets how violent and perilous the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind. And when Fingal unleashes a mysterious avatar of his innate knowledge, the entity appears as a burning man and immediately seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people everywhere into immolating themselves. Now, with little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.
Read an Excerpt
Fräulein Wunderwaffe did not return the smile. Hand on heart, the little girl drew a bit closer. Then, as the hot, animalistic presence undulated all across Fingal’s body, the little girl’s eyes grew wide. Until the little girl’s expression turned to that of a vacant stare. A moment later, her feet pointed inwards, she removed her hat and undid her long, flaxen hair. Again, he cringed. “If you’ve noticed something, ignore all. This hasn’t got anything to do with you.” A third time, he cringed. A most ethereal, lyrical, incomprehensible hiss commenced then: from the other end of the winding, decorative-brick driveway, each clay block shining the color of blue Welsh stone, a sleek Siamese cat with a coat of chocolate-spotted ivory had just appeared. And now the creature raced toward his shadow. As he looked into the animal’s big, searching, blue eyes, the chocolate Siamese studied the off-center tip of his nose. Then the animal turned away, as if to compare the peculiarity with that of some disembodied visage hovering in the distance. Out upon the loch, meanwhile, a miraculous rogue wave suddenly arose—and now the swell crashed against the pebbly strand. Not a moment later, a cool flame crawled across Fingal’s throat. The strange fire rattled, too—not unlike the sound of fallen juniper leaves caught up in the current and dancing against the surface of a stone walkway. Crivens. By now, the alien, pulsating presence held him so tight that he could barely breathe. Before long, he fell to the earth, and as the dreamlike flame continued to move across his throat, he rolled all about—until the illusory sensation of cool warmth wriggled and twisted and dropped into his neck dimple. About the Author:
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