Welcome to the Inner Landscape. Please keep your hands inside the vehicle, refrain from feeding the monsters, and remember: if you start laughing at something you probably shouldn’t, congratulations—you’re in exactly the right place.
This blog exists because I write from three directions at once: the literature professor, the craft-obsessed novelist, and the survivor. When these three selves collide, the result is something like William Styron wandering into a Sloane Crosley essay with a flashlight, a sense of humor, and a mild concussion.
That’s the tone here. That’s the contract.
I’m not here to offer comfort. I’m here to offer clarity—the kind that comes from dissecting books that stare directly into the abyss. Each Friday, I’ll post a longform deep dive into a single work of fiction, examining its characters, structure, and psychological undercurrents with the precision of a scholar and the gallows humor of someone who has survived enough neurological misadventures to earn the right to make jokes about them.
A warning: I will talk about endings. I will talk about structure. I will talk about the whole book. But if I’ve done my job correctly, you’ll still want to read it afterward—maybe even more so. Spoilers are only fatal if the writing is weak. I intend to make them irrelevant.
Between these Friday excavations, I’ll occasionally drop shorter pieces called Interventions. These will appear when a topic seizes my attention and refuses to let go. They may involve horror films, cultural detritus, psychological oddities, or whatever else wanders into my field of vision.
Let me be clear: this is not a “bummer blog.” I’m not here to wallow; I’m here to illuminate.
Viktor Frankl once wrote that humor can lift a person out of suffering, even for a moment. Humor is not a betrayal of darkness; it’s a way of walking through it without losing your footing. So yes, I will make jokes. Yes, they will sometimes be dark. And yes, there may be the occasional reference to the gravitational pull of a certain wickedly funny brunette—because even in the abyss, every writer needs a muse that refuses to let go.
This space is a work in progress—architecturally, structurally, spiritually. I’ve never built a blog before, and I’m doing it in a way most people don’t: slowly, deliberately, and with the full expectation that things might break. That’s fine. We’re walking into the forest together. It will get dark. But we’re holding hands, so it’s going to be okay.
I welcome comments, suggestions, and the occasional gentle nudge. If you like what you read, tell one person. That’s the only currency I’m interested in here: paying it forward, one reader at a time.
At the end of each Friday post, I’ll announce the next book.
And every post—every single one—will end with the same word. It’s a word I rediscovered after the strokes, though it first appeared in my undergraduate thesis. Three different novellas, from three different perspectives but all ending with the same word. An attempt for each character to seek it and define it in their particular unique way.
It became a compass then, and it’s a compass now. A reminder that no matter how dark the landscape gets, the only direction worth choosing is forward.
So welcome. Let’s begin. It’s going to be sophisticated, morbid, occasionally ridiculous, and absolutely sincere.
Onward.