O' the Horror . . .

October, Halloween, and two novel serializations

October is coming and I feel like a little psychological horror to get in the mood. Time is not on my side and though MILES CHRISTI, with enough horror of its own, is nearly completed and will be posted in its entirety soon (with denouement you might not see coming), I didn’t want to wait to post WOLF IN HIS HEAD and miss the season and opportunity.

More Faulknerian than MILES, it can be quite frightening. But horror is a foil. A family saga - “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The pitfall of epigenetics - we don’t choose people by accident. We seek each other out.

The read will go quickly and still be a Grand Epic Story. I think it will draw a more general audience than MILES CHRISTI, which requires a very particular kind of reader. Still, I would classify it as nuanced and layered literature - not a breezy read, but not a hard one . . .

Set in Portsmouth, NH and Metro-Chicago, WOLF IN HIS HEAD unfolds in three interchanging periods in the life of Eric Koss. 

In 1984, he’s a middleclass suburbanite with a wife and three kids, a newly purchased home over his head in Arlington Heights, IL and his father recently dead and buried. A Catholic with ambitions in art, he seeks grace in its creation. And raised in ‘60s of Vatican II, he struggles with God around addiction and sex. Addiction is rife in the family. Christ is the antidote . . . Is Christ an addiction too?

A skeptical atheist in psychotherapy in 1998, he comes to grips with events that tore apart his family.

In 2012 he’s a chronic mental health patient on disability and no longer knows what’s real - past and present. A case of progressive mental illness? A crazy old man hiding in his room? He believes he’s a shapeshifter. He knows well of them, having met one while working on a locked psychiatric unit 1984. And there’s one about.

To meet within the October time period, I’ll post two to three chapters at a time. For those of you reading MILES CHRISTI, please continue. It’s my swansong.

One thing to remember, my work on Substack will always be free. If you think my writing valuable and worthy of support, please pledge. Otherwise, read, recommend, hold-spindle-and mutilate. So, all my subscribers give it a go than let it sit in your inbox unopened.

Best,

Tim

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