John J. Walsh IV

It’s been a year of foundation building and steady steps forward, and the new year promises to hold great opportunities. A huge thank you to all of you who have been following me on this creative journey; your support helps keep me pushing onward!

I have been asked to write an article for the debut issue of the new quarterly arts journal Line Zero. If all goes according to plan, Martin Abel will be contributing artwork alongside my words. More information will be posted later!

As I wrote before, yesterday I finished the revised draft of my book Of Sirens and Sand and sent it off to author Marcus Alexander Hart. While a small handful of individuals have read early versions of the stories in various orders, he was the first to receive a polished manuscript with no real prior knowledge of the details contained within.

Tonight he responded with an email that pointed out a few typos; informed me of the historical battle between that and who; gave a good, solid suggestion for one story; and put tears of joy in my eyes. (More on that later.) What follows is an excerpt, and what I can honestly say is my very first review.

I read your book today. I have to admit, for the first few pages I was a little worried. I thought your prose was overwrought and your dialogue unnatural and arch. After all of the work you put into it, I was afraid to have to tell you what I thought of it.

Then I realized, it’s not you. It’s me.

You don’t write like I do. You don’t hammer words together to satisfy the textbook mechanics of storytelling while sometimes managing to be clever. You use a lyrical kind of prose so baroque that it becomes poetry. This is not a collection of stories. This is a painting of the sea rendered in words. You don’t write like an author. You write like an artist.

Once I stopped trying to shoehorn your artwork into my template the whole thing became strikingly beautiful in its execution. The characters and the stories don’t stack up like bricks into a wall of story. They flow together like trickles of rainwater pouring through tendrils of fog, emerging and mixing and falling away into a sort of lucid dream that lets you know secrets as you need to know them. You’ve managed to deftly paint beauty through the Captain’s longing and horror through the old man’s fear—opposite ends of the spectrum rendered with equal skill and passion.

You have done a wonderful thing here, John Walsh. This is going to be a fantastic book. I’ve already read it twice.

You should be proud of yourself. I’m proud of you.

Without my having breathed a word about the intentions behind the book, he understood them, perfectly. Each and every endeavor I set out to accomplish met with unqualified success. That alone was reason to rejoice, but I had another.

First, a little back story.

Early in his published career, Ray Bradbury met with Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) at the latter’s behest. After they sat down, Huxley leaned forward and asked, “Mr. Bradbury, do you know what you are?” Bradbury replied that he did not. “You’re a poet.”

Up to that point, Bradbury had attempted writing poetry since high school, but had (by his own admission) failed miserably. So he wrote short stories instead. And yet, here was a famous, well-renowned author telling him that he had succeeded at publishing poetry, when he didn’t even think that he had ever tried.

Thus went the day that Ray Bradbury discovered he was unknowingly a poet. Because of that meeting, he came to recognize his preferred style as prose poetry, and has since shared that realization with a great many people, myself included.

This is relevant to the subject at hand because the impetus for Of Sirens and Sand was the maddening frustration of my own artistic shortcomings. I grew up with the sea somehow in my blood, but believed myself, merely a writer, incapable of capturing it the way an artist could with a brush.

Yet, now, here is one of my favorite writers, telling me that I am an artist. To borrow Bradbury’s response to Huxley, “I didn’t know that.”

So I, armed with this freshly-acquired revelation, began to weep tears of joy. Ray Bradbury has been guiding me for seventeen years, be it through his work, words, or personal advice. The man has shown me the path, promised that great things lie ahead.

He was right.

Thank you, Marcus, for your exceedingly kind words. I shall cherish them always.

Since September of 2008, I have lived with a swirling maelstrom of ideas occupying the better part of my brain. It has led me to incredible places, introduced me to amazing friends. My life has changed drastically in that span of time. I cannot comprehend how to explain everything to that younger version of myself who is blissfully unaware, writing in his notebook, enjoying his grandparents’ company nineteen months ago, standing at the precipice of it all, not knowing that he is about to take a diving leap off a cliff and build his wings on the way down.

I have been laid off, moved, dislocated a kneecap, been in a wheelchair, and narrowly avoided surgery in this span of time. I’ve been broke at certain points, barely able to make ends meet. And yet, here I stand. The constant through it all has been this book, this small collection of short writings, which has guided me through life to someplace grand and wondrous. Perhaps I didn’t bring forth the next great American novel, or even a novel at all, but I still did something I’ve always dreamt of doing: writing.

I built an entire universe within the confines of my head, and then proceeded to pour its contents onto the page. I don’t need a publisher’s permission to do that. Hell, I don’t need anyone’s permission. I refuse to judge the success of my life on the grounds of what other people did, or might expect me to do. I wrote for myself; the rest of the world is inconsequential.

But, as fate would have it, someone else saw and believed in the same world I did. He now forges in lead that which I founded in laid ink, the Mugnaini to my Bradbury. This book gave me Martin Abel, and there is no truer a friend for which I could have asked. And, having done such, there is no possibility of failure, for success is already mine. The criteria by which I scrutinize myself having thus been met, I can look forward to and enjoy whatever the future holds for that which I’ve decided to create.

Currently, the revised (second) draft of Of Sirens and Sand rests in the hands (read: email inbox) of one of my favorite authors, Marcus Alexander Hart. I’ve the good fortune of calling the man a friend, but that does not mitigate the fact that I hold him and his writing in extremely high regard. Though he asked kindly to read the first (rough) draft of the book, I had to refuse. I wanted so desperately to call the project good and done, but part of me could not deny that there was still some growing to do. So, I spent several more months working, writing, and delving deeper into the world through whose window I had but glanced.

What developed was a stronger, more mature story, one of which I could be insanely proud. Though there would undoubtedly be many edits in its future, the body was strong, and it begged of me to let it cross over into this universe. And so the draft was saved, compiled, and sent out into the world. I’m simultaneously nervous and excited. I’ve wondered what this day would feel like for a very long time, and I still don’t entirely comprehend it.

I suppose that someday I’ll have to look back at my past self, sitting here in front of the computer writing this blog entry, and explain it as best I can. Perhaps I’ll hand myself a beautiful, illustrated book with my name printed across the front and a hand-written message inside: This is all because of you. Thank you for dreaming it possible.

After a solid day’s worth of work, this new site is officially online! I’ve ported the few short pieces I had on my LiveJournal over to this new site and tagged them with the same name: The Captain’s Journal. Those particular writings come sporadically, but there will be more in the future.

Now that I have this site created, I can cross a major to-do off my list and focus more clearly on finishing up Of Sirens and Sand. I’m very much looking forward to completing this labor of love.

More news and writing soon!

I’m bringing this main site online, and while there is still much work to be done, you can at least get a feel for the basic structure and design. At first you will see the content that is currently spread across the digital landscape brought into one location, but soon after there will be many new and exciting additions. That’s the plan, anyway.  Stay tuned for more!