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NOT INDIFFERENT TO GARY BRAUNBECK by Paula Guran
First appeared in
If you are an avid savvy horror reader,
you've probably run across Gary Braunbeck's name and short stories
in a variety of the usual places. In fact, he's something of
a "model" genre writer. His first fiction appearance
came in the early 80s in Crispin Burnham's ELDRITCH TALES. He
continued placing stories in small press publications while working
various jobs over the years -- carny "stick," dog groomer,
bartender, waiter, several stints as a janitor, habilitation supervisor
for developmentally disabled adults, as an actor and musician.
His first pro-rate sale came in 1985, to Alan Rodgers at TWILIGHT
ZONE'S NIGHT CRY. He sold NC three more stories before the magazine's
demise. J. N. Williamson secured the writer an invite to a Greenberg
anthology, PHANTOMS -- which led to more antho sales. In 1987,
Rich Chizmar asked him for a story to the "then-still-fresh-faced
magazine CEMETERY DANCE."
He's been writing full-time since about
1994, has sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 170 stories, as
well as three collections, including THINGS LEFT BEHIND (which
was nominated for both the HWA Stoker and the International Horror
Guild Award for Outstanding Collection of the Year). He's also
done two tie-in novels, TIME WAS: Isaac Asimov's I-BOTS (co-written
with Steve Perry) and IN HOLLOW HOUSES, the first novel in the
new DARK MATTER series from Wizards of the Coast Books.
"That aside, I think readers already
familiar with my work will enjoy the book because it deals in
greater depths with themes I've explored in my short fiction --
most notably loneliness, grief, the incapacity to express genuine
emotion, and child abuse. As far as this last goes, THE INDIFFERENCE
OF HEAVEN is the final piece in a quartet of works that began
with the novella 'Some Touch of Pity,' continued through the recent
CEMETERY DANCE serial 'Mr. Hands', and will conclude when I find
a home for a recently- completed short novel entitled PRODIGAL
BLUES.
"For those not familiar with my work,
I think INDIFFERENCE will be a terrific introduction to my style
and themes. I think (hope/pray) that readers will find the book
compelling, terrifying, and thought-provoking. know I'm damned
proud of it...I had the feeling that I had just written something
that I was *meant* to write, something that is uniquely my own
take on some familiar tropes in horror, fantasy, and magic realism...[I]f
you forget genre and simply tell the story in the way it needs
to be told, you'll end up with something you can be proud of and
that readers will enjoy."
Braunbeck's got two more short story collections
coming out soon: SORTIES, CATHEXES, AND PERSONAL EFFECTS, a CD-Rom
collection from Lone Wolf Publications, (late this summer) and
ESCAPING PURGATORY: FABLES IN WORDS AND PICTURES (co-written with
Alan M. Clark) is due out early next year. IN HOLLOW HOUSES was
just released from WoftC/TSR, and February of 2001 will see the
release of erotic horror novel THIS FLESH UNKNOWN, from Foggy
Windows Books. Short stories are coming up in CIVIL WAR FANTASTIC,
CAT CRIMES GOES TO COURT, MURDER MOST CONFEDERATE, HEAT, VILLAINS
VICTORIOUS, *Tenebres,* and about a dozen others. He's looking
for a publisher for PRODIGAL BLUES, and is currently working on
a new novel based on his story "Safe".
The author's Web site
includes short stories,
an excerpt from THE INDIFFERENCE OF HEAVEN, and other goodies.
THE INDIFFERENCE OF HEAVEN Once upon a time on a Halloween night a
man loses both his wife and unborn child with sudden finality.
His despair and grief are compounded when the body of his daughter
is stolen by a hideously "masked" madman who speaks
of the indifference of heaven. Maybe. Whatever you perceive as
the reality of the story -- is there reality inherent in fiction?
-- will not be the same reality you find at the end of this moving
and original novel. THE INDIFFERENCE OF HEAVEN more than compensates
for a few flaws with its courageous and ambitious exploration
of the meaning of love. Employing both harsh hyperrealism and
majestic mythic fantasy, the novel swoops and soars in and out
of philosophy, theology, and the very meaning of time and life.
At one point the protagonist understands "...no imagined
childhood bogeyman could have prepared him for facing something
this sacred, for sacred it must have been, as anything so mythic
and extreme and unimaginable, must be sacred. It was both terrifying
and compelling, a thing beyond All Things..." Ecstasy is
a glimpse of the infinite; horror is its full disclosure -- THE
INDIFFERENCE OF HEAVEN is an indelible experience that balances
between the two.
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So here's a guy with a damned good -- and
well-deserved -- rep as a short fiction writer who has pretty
much done everything "they" used to tell young writers
to do to "earn" himself a novel contract with a major
New York house. So why is his first novel, THE INDIFFERENCE OF
HEAVEN , (okay, TECHNICALLY it is not his first novel, but it
*is* his first solo, non-media tie-in novel, that's his all his
start to finish) coming out from Obsidian, a small press? "I
chose to publish INDIFFERENCE in the small press because I didn't
think NY publishers would go for something that doesn't fall into
any one particular genre. The small press has always been the
place where experimentation is encouraged and wild chances are
taken -- who else but the small press would dare publish something
like the recent, amazing ZOTHIQUE anthology, or THE ALCHEMY OF
LOVE, the IMAGINATION FULLY DILATED series, Caitlin Kiernan's
superb new short story collection, or hardcover reissues of classics
by Matheson, Nolan, and Johnson? Sure, NY publishers might show
interest and pony up the bucks after something like Brian McNaughton's
THE THRONE OF BONES wins a ton of awards and sells out its print
run, but if Brian had tried marketing that stunning book to NY
publishers first, I think it probably would not have seen the
light of publication....I'm in no way a small press elitist, I
would *love* for THINGS or INDIFFERENCE to be picked up for a
mass-market edition. I just firmly believe that neither [my book
nor McNaughton's THRONE] could have been originally published
anywhere *but* the small press."
Braunbeck considers himself primarily a
writer of short stories, so why should readers try his novel?
"I think that THE INDIFFERENCE OF HEAVEN is probably the
best possible example not only of *what* I write, but how. I've
always loved the structure of the fairy tale -- as well as the
almost-vindictive morality inherent in the form -- and sat out
to see if I could sustain that kind of corner-of-the-eye-something's-not-quite-right
feeling for the length of a book; at the same time, because of
the central image of the book (Russian *matryoshka*-- nesting
-- dolls), the story's structure demanded that things *not* unfold
in a traditional, chronological order. A lot of people have said
some very nice things about the structure of the story, and I
wish I could take credit for all of it, but I can't: this was
a case of the story dictating to me the manner in which it must
be told.
He's hesitant to offer advice to neophyte
writers simply because he feels --even after being at it for several
years -- he's still learning himself. "I *will* tell you,
however, the one cardinal rule that I hold *myself* to, and that
is: Forget Genre. I cannot sit down and say to myself, "I'm
going to write a 'horror' story," because if I do, I will
-- consciously or not -- feel compelled to use overly-familiar
tropes, even if they're not needed. So I decide that I want to
write a story about a ghost, period. If from there it becomes
horrific, fine; if it turns into a light fantasy, that's great,
too; hell, one ghost story I wrote ("Mail-Order Annie,"
which appeared in CAT CRIMES THROUGH TIME) turned into a Western,
and is one of the most atmospheric tales I've done in years. If
I had decided that I was going to write it as a horror story,
or an sf story, or dark fantasy, or what-have-you, when I sat
down to work, I would have wound up grafting genre-specific elements
into the story that had no business being there. I decide on the
character and the theme of a story first, then I write the story
in the manner in which it tells me it needs to be written. And
I Forget Genre. Whether or not I always succeed is up to the readers,
not me."