Why do I feel this sense of cognitive dissonance when it comes to promoting myself? It’s a bit like the bee stuck in its own honey. But the taste of honey is better than none at all, right? So here goes a bit of Narcissus, a la Waterhouse. Plus, a little bit of something goes a long way, whereas a lot of something always creates a pile-up. If self-indulgence produces intellectual onanism, the same way that the sleep of reason produces monsters, then, perhaps, a granule of self is less solipsism and more gratitude. There are enough attention seekers in this world to fill a cornucopia. But the “horn of plenty” doesn’t always, if ever, equate with nourish. Those who seek attention are simply being bounced about from one horn to another, from the horn of hubris to being impaled on the horn of excessive self-doubt. What did Lao Tzu say: “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” Or even better: “I don’t need your approval darling, that’s for insecure people.”
Is the writer always in two minds about this aspect of the work? The need to get it out into the world balanced with the desire to get it out there in the world in a way that’s not agonizingly sycophantic or, worse, full of sound & fury but signifying nothing.
Equipoise. Honesty. Integrity. Maybe this is really what it’s about. No hoodwinking, no shenanigans, no tricks or deception, no smoke and mirrors, no sleight-of-hand, no dealing from the bottom of the deck. Basically, say your piece, then let the work speak for itself.
So, I’ll briefly say my piece and then when my book comes out, it will be the oracle of truth.
Set in the twilight of the Third Reich, The Killing Moon mixes elements of dark fantasy, historical fiction, myth, and fairy tale. Max, a resourceful and determined child, and his father, Oscar Schumann, a captain in the Wehrmacht, must make an odyssey across war-torn Europe to save Oscar’s wife, Isolde, who has been kidnapped by the Erlking, Goethe’s meddling spirit. But this is no straightforward war novel because Oscar is a supernatural creature out of German folklore: he is a member of an elite unit called the Wehrwolf. As father and son embark on solitary odysseys through a world transfigured by terror and strangeness, Max is chased by a swarm of the Erlking’s predatory bees and Oscar is pursued by the mad Nazis Major Wolfram Mader as he hunts down the Erlking’s minions, killing each one to attain a key that opens the door to the Erlking’s house on the border between this life and the next. Facing both supernatural perils and the violence and brutality of war, father and son are helped along the way by corporeal and celestial allies and must find each other and stop the Erlking from releasing a sinister old-world magic far worse than the Nazis; a Dark Avenging Angel that will make the Erlking more dangerous than the fascist dictator.
The Killing Moon follows in the literary traditions of Angela Carter, Homer’s The Odyssey, Michel Tournier’s The Ogre, David Benioff’s City of Thieves, Catherynne Valente's Deathless, Sarban’s The Sound of His Horn, F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep, and Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum.
