Thematically Speaking

My novels

Someone once asked me 'why don't you write trilogies?' At first I thought they meant why didn't I write fantasy (read The Ogre Prince) but as we talked it turned out they wondered why I did not write multiple novels about the same characters. I don't remember exactly how I responded, but I think it was some variation of either 'I wish I could but my brain doesn't work that way' or "I would grow bored with telling similar stories over and over." Or, if I had been feeling superior that day I might have said "I write literary fiction, not genre."

Then I was sitting here at my desk struggling to come up with a topic for this blog and I looked at my bookself (the books I wrote, not the ones I'm reading) and I stopped in my literary tracks. Look at those titles. I might write across genres, and I might let characters remain only in the universe in which they were created but thematically, I do write serials.

I write love stories. Not clean, romantic everything turns out exactly as you hoped love stories, but stories about what it means to love someone. I write about forgiveness. I think forgiveness is central to a meaningful existence, even if I am astonished by what people are able to find ways to forgive. How do they do it? I write stories of redemption and reconciliation. How do people recover from harm, or from harming someone else? And I write about retribution, the flipside of love, forgiveness and reconciliation. Which is more powerful?

I especially write at the intersection of love, forgiveness, redemption and retribution. Can love exist without foregiveness? Is retribution the turning away from redemption or opening the door to redemption? Do we harm ourselves when we harm others? If so, how do we recover?

My wife accuses me of liking dark things. I guess I agree, in the sense that I like the macabre, meaningful horror (what is meaningful, you ask? The metaphysical horror of Dracula, where is touch can destroy your soul is more powerful than a dude in mask with a butcher knife) dark fantasy and understanding violence. But I find dark things allow the light to illuminate our world. Ugliness begets beauty. And it allows us to choose which world we want to live in. I certainly don't live in a dark world, I live in one filled with love and joy and beauty. Darkness confirms that.

It is very easy to look at the world right now and see only darkness, but that is a mistake. Look instead for the light that pushes back the darkness. Remember that when we are immersed in events they seem overwhelming and never ending, but that is how our brain characterizes things, not how they actually are. It is true that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice (note: some version of this language goes back to pre-civil war days and is credited to a Unitarian minister Theodore Parker.) We have the power to make that truth.

We cannot abide cruelty. Support someone who needs help this week.

Read my blog and learn more about my novels at www.jeffersonblackburnsmith.com .

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. Go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 to sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!