Free to Listen

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It was a delightful conversation, as always.  Robin and Debra from The Incarcerated Christian podcast always amaze me with both their program and their enthusiasm.  I’m still bit nonplussed that they find my work interesting.  They invited me back for an October discussion around Nightmares with the Bible, located here.  Although the book has not yet sold enough copies to have earned any royalties (i.e., it hasn’t covered the cost of its own publication yet), it has nevertheless led to four interviews and even had a Choice review.  Granted, a good part of the lack of enthusiasm is its Elon Musk price point, at least that’s what I tell myself.  I’m still hopeful that a paperback will be out next year.

I suspect people are interested in demons.  Considering that movies keep on being made about them and doing well, I hope it’s only a matter of time.  While I’m waiting, however, I’ve got some good listening over at The Incarcerated Christian.  The podcast addresses a couple of issues: one is spirituality and the other is the effects of being raised in a religion that boxes or cages a person in.  The proprietors are among the few who realize that there’s a spirituality to horror.  I’m reading a book just now that considers thzt question.  And I know of others, active ministers among them, who find spirituality in horror.  I don’t know their backgrounds well enough to know their carceral status, but to me the connection makes sense.

Photo by Marco Chilese on Unsplash

I’ve written before that I’ve come to rely on experience as a source of knowing.  Not entirely, of course, but it’s clear that those who don’t trust their experience end up incarcerated.  My experience of organized religion suggests that it has many issues that require professional help.  That’s one aspect of having been a seminary teacher, and administrator, that has fed into my experience.  Having seen how that happens, and knowing the kinds of people who rise to the top—just look at politicians, particularly on the right-hand side—my experience suggests that ecclesiastical corruption is far more common than most people suspect.  In order to accomplish big things humans have to organize.  And in any organizational structure there will be climbers.  In general you don’t get to be clergy (apart from those non-denominations that’ll hire anyone making certain claims) without seminary.  And seminary isn’t what it seems.  To me, watching horror makes far more sense than befriending the jailer.  Take a moment to listen; it’s free.

Learning to Like

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The shout-out is an always appreciated gesture.  Among the guests on The Incarcerated Christian podcast, I’m pretty clearly the one with the smallest following.  That makes me doubly grateful to Robin and Debra for the work they’re doing.  If you want to get a sense of what their initial year involved, please take an unrushed moment or two and listen to their year-end reflection.  Better yet, follow them wherever you follow podcasts.  I’ve been watching some YouTube lately (I know, I know, the world has gone after TikTok instead) and I’ve come to realize that even those channels with millions of views have to remind people every single episode to click like, share, and/or notification.  Nobody knows it’s worth their time if readers/watchers don’t share!

One of the things about writing is that is craves readers.  There’s an almost Hebraic sense in which my writing is intended as a statement, whether or not it’s even read.  Ideas build up until they must be expressed.  You start to get to know other people by their words, written or spoken.  I sincerely wish I had more time to listen to podcasts.  I’m one of those people who can’t write with music or talking going on.  Nor can I work that way.  Those two activities make up the majority of my waking hours (perhaps I’m trying too hard, if there is such a thing).  Even the smallest Who, however, has his “Yop” to express.  In that case, however, he ended up saving the world.  I suspect many people have no idea what this blog’s about.  If you know, please tell me.  (There’s a comment section below.  Don’t forget to click like and share when you’re down there!)

The Incarcerated Christian has had everyone from evangelical pastors to obscure religionists such as yours truly on their podcasts.  People who aren’t afraid of the dark.  There’s an episode about the divine feminine.  There’s another by a blogger who used to follow my blog and comment on it in the early days until his own efforts took off.  And there are the hosts, Debra and Robin, whose stories are intriguing in their own right.  They approached me not knowing my own history with abusive religions—perhaps it comes through in my writing, or at least my choice of subjects?  There’s a strange comfort in knowing that others have had similar experiences.  Religion can be a monster, devouring people and spitting them out, all in the name of sanctity.  Listen to the Incarcerated Christian podcast, and don’t forget to like and share alike.

Interview Two

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October turns the northern hemisphere mind toward Halloween.  It must be strange to receive northern media while living in the global south—Halloween occurs just as spring is getting underway.  I guess that’s what May Day’s for.  In any case, in the United States Halloween thinking is in nearly full swing.  My last two books, while not Halloween themed, look at horror films which, in keeping with October, are on everyone’s mind this season.  And it’s been quite a week for interviews.  The second half of my podcast interview on The Incarcerated Christian was posted yesterday.  If you want to hear more fun Q & A with Robin and Debra, click here.  I’ll post more about this Friday, but tomorrow my interview with Eric Ziolkowski of Lafayette College will air as part of the Easton Book Festival.  The festival’s going on right now, so be sure to check out the offerings online.

One bit of advice that I give as an editor: if you want to make it as an author you need to promote your own work.  Some of us were reared to believe that it’s in poor taste to do this, but in the internetted world it’s pretty much a requirement.  Something I learned from political activism is that every election is local.  Getting noticed also has to start in your own backyard.  I love doing interviews.  It’s always flattering to know that someone’s read your book and wants to know more about it.  I’ve started to explore the newish area of religion and horror.  From what we see in the news, it seems like it’s an area that’s likely to take off.  But only if those who work in it get their stuff out there where it can be seen.  (Or heard.)

Neither Holy Horror nor Nightmares with the Bible have sold very well.  They’re expensive, and academics, who will spend money on books, are still trying to decide if this area’s worth exploring.  I admit that there’s a puerile kind of naughtiness to taking monsters and “low brow” entertainment as a subject of study.  Horror, however, has lots of fans.  Perhaps not in the academy, but in the real world.  I like to think such marginal areas bring people together.  Horror, like demons, isn’t going away any time soon.  Instead of running away from what you fear, why not try embracing it?  If not even that, please consider the free content available on The Incarcerated Christian and the Easton Book Festival.  After all, Halloween’s just about here…

Face Away

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I’m avoiding Facebook for a while.  Here’s why.  I started a Facebook account when I first got involved in social media.  (Publishers say you have to build a platform.)  The instructions were very basic and I checked my feed once a day for a total of about 5 minutes.  I still do that.  Some people contact me on Facebook, and often I don’t see it.  In fact, I seldom open it after 6:30 a.m.  I’m pretty easy to reach on the internet.  I have a blog and a Twitter account, Linked-In, Goodreads, and Academia.edu.  They all send me email notices when someone messages me.  Facebook doesn’t.  Also Facebook keeps telling me people have sent friend requests.  It was manageable up until recently.

I thought it was because of the Incarcerated Christian podcast.  (There’s another one coming up on Tuesday!)  The next day I started to get 20+ friend requests a day.  You’ve got to build a platform, right?  I tend to accept friend requests because I spend very, very little time on Facebook.  Then more requests came.  And more.  And more.  Just yesterday I had 846 pending friend requests.  That’s a lot of clicking!  I was going to have to hire an assistant just to say “you’re all welcome.”  Or maybe, “why not follow me on Twitter?”  I would devote my 5 minutes on Facebook to clicking friend requests.  I quickly grew bored with it.  Then the friend requests started coming from other academics.  “Cool!” I said, “people I actually know!”  But when I clicked on the “Accept” button it said, “Friend request sent.”  No, no, no!  That’s not what I wanted to do!  I was responding to a request sent to me, not the other way around.

Lead us not into Facebook…

I quickly clicked out of Facebook in embarrassment.  I don’t want a bunch of academics to know how needy I am—that’s just for you blog readers to know.  I know Facebook sends updated instructions from time to time.  I don’t have time to keep up with them.  If they just sent me a tweet I might read it.  My main social media channel is this blog.  You can read it on Facebook, or Twitter, or even Goodreads.  I think it also shows up on my Amazon author profile page.  I may be needy but I’m not hard to find.  So I’ve decided to retreat from Facebook for a while.  The price of building a platform, it seems, has gone up with just about everything else.

Podcast Live

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Have you ever had one of those weeks where you forgot what day it was?  (Come on, now, it’s a pandemic—you can admit it!)  I spent yesterday unaware that it was Tuesday.  Tuesday is important because I knew that The Incarcerated Christian was going to be posting my interview on Holy Horror on their podcast.  It’s live now—give a listen!  I’ve been toying with rebooting my own podcasts, but like most other things in life I just can’t find the time to do it.  I still enjoy talking about my ideas and I thank Robin Mitchell Stroud and Debra Levy Martinelli for allowing me to yak their ears off for an hour.  There are many interesting podcasts on their site, so it you decide to listen the interview be sure to hang around a while and explore.

My hosts understand that Holy Horror was written for general readers, if not priced for them.  Being asked questions keeps you sharp, and sometimes it feels like my blade has been dulled from sitting in the drawer too long.  At the risk of sounding too biblical, iron sharpen iron, right?  Conversation is increasingly important in a polarized world where minds are already made up and the preferred solution is to hate others based on differences of opinion.  Why not talk about things?  Interviews also keep me sharp in asking about things I wrote years ago.  It may not seem like it, but the main body of Holy Horror was finished nearly five years ago.  Books take a long time to write and then a long time to publish.  It’s good to be asked about what one has written.

The questions asked on this interview were well thought out and reflective.  I can only hope that my responses were the same.  If you decide to listen and like what you hear, please share it with others.  The interview actually spilled over into a part two that will be posted in a couple weeks.  There’s a lot to say about religion and horror.  I’ve continued to watch movies since the interview and I notice further affirmations.  The Wicker Tree, for example, is a very biblical movie.  Or at least it quotes from the Bible quite a bit.  Holy Horror was very much an experiment on my part to find out if there was any room for a book like this.  After I wrote it I found others shared some interest in these topics, and two people cared enough to schedule an interview about it.  Please give it a listen.

Finding Freedom

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I recently discovered The Incarcerated Christian website.  To be more factual about it, the women who run the site (Robin Mitchell Stroud and Debra Levy Martinelli) reached out to me about an interview concerning Holy Horror.  I hustled on over to the website to see what it was about and I was impressed.  In my own fumbling way, I would describe their use of “incarcerated” as people damaged by Christianity.  Imprisoned by various groups that require later healing.  Far more than a religion, Christianity has, of course,  become a cultural system removed from the teachings of its founder—the Trump administration made this abundantly clear—and bent on power over the lives of others.  In its efforts at control it leaves a lot of damaged people in its wake.  I must say that my interview with them convinced me that they really get what I was trying to do with Holy Horror.

Not that I have a great deal of confidence in my ability—life leads you to question such things—but a lot of my writing is on more than one level.  Here on this blog, several of my metaphorical pieces have raised objections from readers who took what I was saying literally.  Isn’t literalism often a problem?  In philosophy class we learned to call it “naive realism.”  Things may not be what they appear to be.  Getting underneath the surface requires some digging.  Maybe that’s why I enjoyed being on an archaeological dig so much.  To anticipate the posting of the interview a little bit, what some people automatically associate with horror is lack of depth.  In fact, much of horror runs into the profound, for those willing to watch.

Part of it, I must say, is that horror attracts outcasts.  The “Christianity” that dominates western culture actively seeks to create outcasts.  Creating, even if imaginatively, “the other” is a way of asserting one’s own superiority.  Reading the New Testament somehow I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind.  The cultural Christianity we see today has very little to do with Jesus.  “Believing in” has replaced listening to his words, or doing as he did.  Throughout the Gospels, if I recall correctly, joining the movement was voluntary.  They wanted to make the world a kinder, more compassionate place.  Look around at those who wear the badge loudly these days and tell me if that’s what you see.  What does all of this have to do with horror?  Listen to the interview when it’s posted on the podcast in October.  Don’t worry, I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, your hours spent on The Incarcerated Christian will be rewarded.