So, it comes down to this ... two years ago, at the end of January, at the behest of others, I set out to get a very small project done -- a collection of three stories that I was going to put out into the marketplace to see what happened ... how people would react to this dark, abusive prose style that I have developed. This was going to be a measure as to my value within the genre -- did I, in fact, have something to say, or was I merely masturbating with knives and copious volumes of blood and disturbing imagery? You see, it is not within me to determine whether or not I am affecting you, nor on what level. Is it just a vicarious thrill, or have I done something that has gotten under your skin? Have I done something that is going to linger?
If it is no more than a titillation, then my purpose has failed -- I do not go at my fiction with anything less than the will to get under my own skin, and had I been left to my own devices, I'd have been more than glad to keep cutting and peeling in obscurity and revealing the work when I was ready.
I was pushed into exposing myself, and I do not regret that. I want to know if this work affects you the way I hope it will, if it will give you something to chew on, if it will challenge your perception, or if I'm just to be dismissed as another hack with a heavy, gory hand, and no sense of humor. Two men promised me that we were going to find out, and now, more than two years later -- after a public announcement, even -- that work, that tiny, little chap book, has still not been produced. My time has been wasted, squandered, abused, and I be no Spring Chicken.
So, on this day, I have taken my fate into my own hands, and decided to go the route that will tarnish my reputation as an author, and I have submitted the chap book to be published through the POD service, LuLu.com.
I am not proud, but I believe in these stories, and I believe they should have a chance to compete in the marketplace, to be reviewed, to be criticized, to be ingested or rejected, to be something more than the phantom of a possibility that has been stringing me along while I grow older and older, waiting for others to fulfil their promise.
I am done waiting, and it is time for my work to reckon with the world.
Is this how I wanted it? Not by a long shot. Not by a long, goddamn shot.
So ... have at it.
Love me.
Hate me.
At least there's now something tangible upon which for you to form an opinion.
And now I get to stop wondering or, worst of all, hoping.
Yours truly,
-m.j.euringer
THE JAWS OF ADANA
