DAVID LEE HOLCOMB

Category: Journal

  • Proof of life…

    Proof of life…

    Sales on my first fantasy novel, Strange News, are going reasonably well — knock wood! In terms of costs, I may be on track to break even on this one by this time next year, at which point I hope to have a new book ready to hit the streets.

    As for that work-in-progress, I’m halfway through the first draft, coming up on what the writing expert YouTubers call the “midpoint reversal.” The middle of every book is a bloody mess to write, and this one is no exception, but I think (I hope!) I’ve learned a few things by now. I’m moving a little more smoothly than usual through this difficult stretch. Thoughts and prayers, everybody.

    The upcoming book will be titled Apocryphon, and it dips into the fantasy genre a little more deeply than Strange News. Still no dragons or swords or incestuous royal families slaughtering each other at weddings, but most of the story takes place on an alternate Earth where something that might be called magic is common. Get ready to pay a visit to Palliset, the City at the Center of Time:

    As long as you have the necessary time banked up, any westbound train will take you from Boston or Bengaluru or Beijing to the Grand Plaza Station, but no earthly airship has ever looked down on Palliset’s dusty sprawl, and no Pallisene explorer has ever found the slightest trace of a superhighway or a McDonald’s, no matter how far from the plateau they’ve traveled. Palliset is an island of civilization in an otherwise empty world of endless scrub desert and shortgrass prairie at the other end of a train ride from anywhere on Earth.

    A paradox. A whole city of paradoxes. The center of all things, the Book of Secrets called it. Is this magic? It’s certainly not logical, not reasonable. It’s a place Mac might have invented just to fluster me, to make me laugh. Maybe that’s all magic ever is.

    In Palliset, nobody cares about the contradictions. They’ve always been here. They’ve always been who they are. They expect to be here until the end of time.

    But then, don’t we all?

    — From Apocryphon: Bishop Berkeley’s Book of Secrets, by David Lee Holcomb. Coming in 2026.

    A man stands in the midst of a library. Books and papers fly around him.

  • Midnight Snack

    Every so often I have a dream that was obviously intended for someone else. Last night’s tour of the unconscious mind was a case in point.

    My dream self popped up in a hole-in-the-wall greasy-spoon diner somewhere in New York City.

    The place was little more than a narrow closet: four or five two-tops running along one wall, a battered white enamel display case stocked with an assortment of plastic-wrapped mystery-meals, and a narrow aisle in between. At the back was the cash register and a doorway leading to the kitchen.

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  • Words that Kill

    In the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting last weekend we’ve seen an outpouring of support and solidarity for the victims. Strangely, I find this almost as depressing as the event itself.

    Where was all this sympathy, this solidarity, when our poltitics, our media, and our social discourse were being hijacked by the Pat Robertsons, the Donald Trumps, the Tom Cottons, the Bill O’Reillys? We have created a society where attacks like this are not just tolerated but encouraged, every single day, and millions of people sit in front of blaring televisions and nod and thump the arm of the La-Z-Boy and mutter “Damn straight! You tell it!”.

    Or worse, they sit in mute disgust and do absolutely nothing.

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  • Sighting the target

    Like millions of other people sitting in front of their computers yesterday, my reaction to the sad story of Cecil the lion was both visceral and vehement. The impulse to react accordingly was irresistible: it was also wrong.

    The fifty-something American from Minnesota whose adventures launched such a firestorm was perfectly cast for the role of villain. He was a dentist, a job that arouses pretty negative feelings in many of us; better yet, he was obviously a wealthy dentist: How many of us can afford to walk away from our jobs for weeks at a stretch to go jaunting off around the globe (especially when we have dental bills to pay)? Most importantly, he was an avid sports hunter, not just of the local turkey and deer but of animals that most of us only dream of ever seeing in the flesh.

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  • Links

    It always amazes and amuses me to see how a whole nest of unconnected obsessions can manage to circle around and overlap when you least expect it.

    • “Orithyia”, 2015, by yours truly.

    I finished a painting a couple of days ago to which I gave the title “Orithyia”. The name refers to an incident in classical Greek myth in which Boreas, the god of the north wind, takes a shine to a woman (or possibly a nymph, depending on your source) named Orithyia. When his courtship — admittedly clumsy, as Boreas is the rough north wind, not the suave west wind — does not win her over, he simply carries her off in a whirlwind and has his way with her anyway.

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  • The Loudest Voice

    • Rafael Edward Cruz

    The ruler of the Aztec empire was called the “tlatoani”, which roughly translates to “the one who talks the loudest”. From the founding of Gran Tenochtitlan in 1325 to the final collapse in 1521, the Aztec civilization survived for a grand total of 196 years, during which time they had become so hated by all of their neighbors that even the rapacious Spanish invaders were embraced as the lesser of two evils.

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  • Beginning a Painting

    • Richard Diebenkorn: “Girl and Three Coffee Cups” 1957

    “Notes to myself on beginning a painting”
    by Richard Diebenkorn

    1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
    2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued – except as a stimulus for further moves.
    3. DO search.
    4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
    5. Don’t “discover” a subject – of any kind.
    6. Somehow don’t be bored but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
    7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
    8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.
    9. Tolerate chaos.
    10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

    * * *

  • Arrival from always, departure to forever

    In 1966, just as the war in Vietnam was hitting its stride, my father retired from the US Air Force.

    Packing up the wife and three small children (the oldest — me — having just completed the second grade) he returned to the town of his own childhood, a place in the Appalachian foothills of northern Alabama with the peculiar name of Boaz.

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  • Persistence

    • “Niobe” – mixed media, 7 x 9 inches (17.5 x 22.5 cm)

    Some time back I wrote a  journal post here in which I bemoaned the fact that a couple of pieces of artwork that I had just completed seemed to be falling flat with my usual public. In retrospect, I realize that I may have sounded petulant, and perhaps even just a tiny bit snobbish.

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  • Trial and Error

    • “The Triumph of the Nightingale” – mixed media, 7 x 14 in (17.5 x 35 cm).

    In spite of my head cold, trips to the vet, money woes, and general malaise over the last couple of weeks, I did manage to get two new pieces of artwork done.

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