Confounded by Clarity

I write and illustrate fiction. Many bad things are assumed by those who have not read it. The few who do are surprised.

A girl refused to read my novel Agents of the Eye and Ear because she glimpsed a line that read an elf was naked. Over Eighty-one thousand words dismissed because of one word!

My Black Death series of novellas is about two black women who serial kill young white women. Readers were confused since the victims were not racist. They assumed the protagonists were heroes, so would not kill unless their victims deserved it.

A genocidal Nazi is the title character of my Sorcerer books. He is the protagonist so is assumed to be the hero… yet since he is a Nazi, he is assumed to be the villain. People are confused, especially when they read the stories and the character is sympathetic… but so is the woman fighting against him.

The weirdest of the weirdness of my Weird World series is that the nameless baddies are children… and are slaughtered in droves by the heroes. People are confused by the very idea and especially when they read the stories.

Not to brag, but in all sincerity, the genius of my work is the very problem people have with it. I articulate ideas that are beyond their narrow-minded understanding of morality. The stories demonstrate good and evil as qualities or failings within. They are personal, not cultural and individual, not social.

People are confused because they confuse morality with rules. They do so deliberately, mind you. Words can be argued. They can be interpreted to advantage. This provides both loopholes to do evil and a means of controlling other people.

My words are sincere… because I am sincere. People pretend to rephrase what I said and wrote, to hold me to account for THEIR words in my name. I wrote my books. They did not. Yes, my words can be interpreted… but sincerity is the only way to understand them.