Sit back and enjoy the parade as words speak their own minds, express their souls, finally articulate the life blood flowing through their hearts. What? You didn’t know they had it in them? Listen in your own head. Aren’t fusty old words lurking there ready to step out of the wings and up to the microphone? Listen while these ancient words break their long-held silence. The story they tell is an old one, but no matter. Who can narrate the tale of heartbroken youth searching for his lost lover better than these old words? They were present, after all, millennia ago when the story was first told. They know the truth of it. They know the truth of everything.
Surprisingly, truth is best told through fiction. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Of course, lies are best told through nonfiction, but I don’t do that. With fiction, the story can be about almost anything so long as it has the stuff of life in it. The stuff of life -- aye, there’s the rub.
Like bears and Sasquatch, Dennis Vickers lives in the north woods. Sometimes he teaches philosophy and creative writing at a tribal college; other times he holds up in a river cottage and writes this stuff. As the previous sentence proves, he knows how to work semicolons and isn’t afraid to use them.
Book-length fiction: 1. Witless: Rural communities clash in 18th Century Wisconsin. 2. Bluehart: Life story of fictional blues accordion player. 3. Second Virtue: Courage -- where it comes from and where it goes. 4. Adam’s Apple: Life story of congressman who fucks his mother. You thought they all did? 5. Passing through Paradise: Narrative collage mixing quest story with love story with satyr play. No salt. 6. Between the Shadow and the Soul: Love and lust, or maybe the other way. 7. Mikawadizi Storms: Open pit mine vs. pristine forest. You decide. 8. Double Exposures: Collection of short stories, some realism, all magical. 9. Only Breath: Ghost story wrapped in a mystery wrapped in waxed paper. 10. Only Words: Lost-love quest story set in neolithic Europe told by the words themselves.