Category Archives: The Never Prayer

Today, I Do The Impossible. I Launch My Book. I Interview Myself. We are Mighty.

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Guess what? My book is out today. I have an ISBN that I am going to tattoo onto my flesh.

First off, if you are in Colorado, and if you aren’t incarcerated, come and join me for my book launch tonight at Hanson’s Bar and Grill in Denver.  The Facebook event is here!

But yes, my dreams of youth have come true in a very real, very worldly, very dirty way.

That’s the world, real, dirty—imperfect. Since March 29, 2012 rates up there with all the important dates in my life, I decided to do the impossible. Any book that gets published is an impossibility, even those self-published. It’s all impossible. So, I am going to interview myself. Yeah, you got it. It’s very Billy Idolish. Let me sink another drink…

 

Ah, this Aaron Ritchey, this guy. You want his bio? Click ‘round on this here website. You want a synopsis of The Never Prayer? Same thing. Click around. My short pitch is that my novel is about love, angels, demons, drug addicts, and atheists. And it really is.

So, let’s get to the weirdness? Your Honor, permission to treat the witness as hostile.

Permission granted.

 

AMR1: So, Aaron, your first book published? Is this the first book you ever wrote?

 

 

 

 

AMR2: That’s a bad question. I’ll answer it, but I ain’t happy. Nope. My first book, way back when, I began when I was listening to the song, Mailman by Soundgarden in 1994. I had always wanted to be a writer, from day one. It was my secret dream. And I had stories and characters floating around in me my whole life. That first novel, The Dream of the Archer, it was big, beefy, postmodern, Shakespearean, David Lynchian! It was epic! And wordy. And I tried to pack too much into the book and it bloated up like a novel dunked in the bathtub. It took me years of critique groups, study, book-readin’, for me to write a novel tight enough and good enough to make it through the gauntlet of getting published. Like that old Clint Eastwood movie. Sondra Locke. Ugh.

AMR1: Let’s keep on track. No wandering off. Okay? So what kept you from sending out query letters for the books you wrote?

AMR2: Terror, mostly. And I was locked in my basement, in chains, by a madman, for years on end. The madman, being, of course, me. I didn’t know where to start with the pitching and query letters and synopsiseseses. I was lost and forsaken. It was only until I became desperate that I asked for help. And I’ll wander. Damn you.

AMR1: What made The Never Prayer different? Why query this novel and not just shove it away into a drawer like all the others–12, is that right?

AMR2: Well, I wrote a 500,000-word trilogy that I count as one book. But yeah, 12 books, in various stages of revision. One I almost got an agent with, but it was too dark and ironically suicidal. People have a hard time with suicide, and with ironic suicide, my main character came off whiny to a lot of people. I queried 10 agents with The Suicide King, but it never made it. The Never Prayer was a perfect storm. I had gotten a handle on story, and so the narrative is so tight it squeaks. It’s a nice length, about 67,000 words. And it is very me. Angst-ridden, desperate for meaning, searching for the Divine, and the characters are the same way, and it just all worked well. I continued to believe in it even after other people critiqued it. And it’s nice to have a story that people are familiar with, angels and demons, yes, everyone knows about angels and demons, and love, and Twilight, and sparkly vampires. But what I did with the whole angels and demon thing, it’s unique to me. I hope it works.

AMR1: How is your book different from your standard good versus evil book? I mean, it’s all been done. There is nothing new. We are writing in post-postmodernism. The literature of exhaustion, gone to bed, 3 a.m., nothing stirring, no creature awake.

AMR2: Everyone wants to make the Divine clean and perfect and something we can understand. God, Satan, angels and demons, it’s not a crystal castle in the clouds shining down in wonder and perfection. It’s a mud puddle. My angels and demons are mruky creatures, hard to understand, driven, but flawed. If we could logically understand the Divine, it would be a horror. My book is not good against evil. It’s hope against despair. It’s wisdom versus hunger. It’s selflessness versus canoli. It is not a clean fight. It’s mud-puddle dirty.

AMR1: Who would you want to have coffee with? Your hero, your heroine, or your villain?

AMR2: You ask other authors better questions. How come I don’t get the bar question? Or the wedding planner question? Okay, okay, coffee. I can’t go into a lot of detail because I don’t want to give anything away. At the beginning of the book, it’s not exactly clear who is the villain and who is the hero.

My villain is bad news. When I was writing the book, I would get so upset with him because he is righteously horrible. He’s this wounded soul who hungers and will never be filled, who wants everyone to feel the chaos he has inside of him. Would I want to have coffee with a guy like that? He’d be messing with everyone in the Starbucks and we’d eventually get thrown out. My hero, on the other hand, is just as wounded, but angry, serious, driven by a relentless need to fix the world. In the Starbucks, he’d be counseling the barista on whether she should leave her boyfriend or not. Again, not good company.

Which leaves me with Lena. Who would be drinking venti triple-shot lattes, worried about her brother, grieving over her parents, fighting with her aunt. We could talk music, maybe, but her mind wouldn’t be in the conversation.

Great, I’ve written a novel where I wouldn’t want to have coffee with any of the major characters. The minor characters? I would love to chat with Santiago about his recovery, or Pockets about Battlestar Galactica (best show ever), or Gramma Scar about her five husbands, or Deirdre Dodson about her fashionista ways. The supporting cast is a whole lot happier and easier to get along with. I did that on purpose. I did try and lighten things up with the supporting characters because the book starts off really dark. But things get better as Lena finds her support group.

Johnny Beels would make an awesome wedding planner, however.

AMR1: Are you done? I kinda’ fell asleep. So what emotion do you want readers to leave The Never Prayer feeling?

AMR2: Jeeze, man. What the hell? You were nicer to your other guests. I feel so self-abused. Of course, I wanna leave ‘em all in tears, yo. I cried all the way through this book because Lena has it rough and she wants to get through, but it’s hard on her. But in the end, there is hope, always hope, to change ourselves and to change the world. So yeah, I’d like readers to leave heartbroken but hopeful. Lena makes it through to the other side of her grief. But she pays a price. Gosh, I love this book. I’m so glad this is my first book ever published. I feel so proud to have written it.

AMR1: How fortunate you are. Sad books sell tons. Yeah, uh huh, great. I wish you luck, bro. Okay, this is the big question, and I know you don’t want me to ask you this question, but here it is: if you could take a pill to erase all desire to write without any regrets, would you take it? It’s a one-shot deal, like the red/blue pill in The Matrix. You take it and you are no longer a writer. Would you take it?

AMR2: Thanks, the one question I didn’t want to answer, you ask me. That’s just great. The acceptable answer is no, not me. I love to write. I was born to write. “In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream…”

The truth? I’d be a better husband, a better father, a better everything if I didn’t have this need to write fiction. I could write other people’s biographies. Everyone is always wanting to me write their memoirs. If I didn’t have this fiction thing, I’d have the time. I could watch more baseball. I could work out more. If I had the pill, I would take it. I’d get countless hours back to do a million other things.

But there is no pill. If I could have quit writing, I would have. But, though it is a burden, the benefits are legion. I get to be with other writers. I get the joy of finishing a story and looking back and enjoying the moments of feeling the Divine guide my pen. Er, fingers on keyboard. My friend Chris Devlin felt sorry for me because I didn’t like the actual writing. So I decided to love it like nothing else. And magically, it has become wonderful. The actual writing. All the other stuff around it, the marketing, the selling, the publishing woes, that stuff is still hard. Query letters. Hard. But the writing? Good.

Ernest Hemingway said, “Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.” That has happened to me. I’m in this for the duration.

I will always write books. I will never stop. Ever. It’s too late for me. If you can quit writing, quit now. If you can’t, God help you. God help us all. But enjoy the ride. Henry Miller said it. The only reward for writing is writing.

So let the words flow. Peace out!

Heavenly Fridays – Ex-Drunks, Pushers, and San Luis Obispo Angels

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In The Never Prayer, I introduce the reader to the idea of pushing. Pushing is what angels do when they want to change things on this hard, old world, to make things better. But my angels can only do so much, and in the end, human beings have free will.

Have you noticed that when you are trying to do something that is wrong, things don’t work out all that smoothly? Little things break. You might snag your coat. You might trip.

I grew up Catholic. I know when I’m doing something wrong, and I’ve noticed that things don’t go smoothly when I’m not doing the right thing. Yeah, that may or may not be angels, but still, I liked that idea, and so I put it in my book.

When asked how he knows who to help, my angel says helping people is easy. All you need to do is go outside, look, listen, and you’ll find someone to help. This world is so broken, and people are so troubled, everyone needs help.

This idea came from a story I heard from an old ex-drunk who had spent years living on skid row in Los Angeles. Hardcore bum. We’re talking the bowery, man. Where hope goes to die. But he lived there for years, stayed drunk, and somehow, stayed alive.

Until he got sober in A.A. and became an exceptional man. Anyway, it was in his early years of sobriety, and his life was still rocky, and his sobriety was as shaky as my own faith in God. As shaky as a drunk ten minutes away from earthquake D.T.’s. As shaky as a castanet on a mountain bike going downhill. Shaky.

It was the middle of the night in San Jose, and he found himself in his car, driving around. He was desperate not to drink again, but oh boy, liquor stores were huddled together on every corner, coming out of the shadows to show off their neon. And like I said, he was shaky.

But my friend had heard in AA meetings that if you didn’t want to drink, you should help other people. But who could he help at midnight? Most everyone on Earth was asleep.

He started driving south, not really knowing why, but just driving. And he drove all the way down to San Luis Obispo which is at least 2 or 3 hours from the Bay Area. But it felt right, and it was better than relapsing. So in the wee early morning hours, in San Luis Obispo, he was driving around, looking for someone to help. Following this still, sure voice inside his head.

Yeah, voices in his head. Crazy. And he was about to turn around and drive away from all that crazy when he saw them—a man, stranded by his car, with his family, as desperate as my friend felt. And he helped them and they kept thanking him, saying that he was a gift from God. That he was an angel.

Now, if God, or the Universe, or the Great Holy Muffin of All Creation can use an old ex-drunk to help someone, imagine what this force can do with us, who aren’t drunk, who are in our right minds (at times), who are healthy?

We can be angels. If we slow down and listen.

Miracles happen if we look for them. And if we don’t look, they don’t happen. It really is up to us. How grand is that?

God is where you look. Angels will talk to you. If you listen.

Bree Ervin’s Angels Everywhere

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When I met Bree Ervin, well, everyone has a “how I met Bree Ervin” story, but here is mine.  I was walking through a crowded hotel lobby at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference, and I bumped into this red-headed demon, who said, and I quote, “I’m Bree, and I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to meet you.”  And meet me she did.  We talked about God, atheism, faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these…is love.  I love Bree Ervin.  She is a dynamo: writer, publicist, wife, mother, poet, warrior, queen.  And so, I enlisted her to write a blog on angels, thinking she would say no.

She said yes.  This is the result.  Take it away, Bree!

* * *

The truth is, I don’t believe in angels. I don’t believe in God. Or Hell. Or Demons. Or the Devil either. I am an Atheist.

I tell you this to establish a baseline for what comes next.

Angels are everywhere.

That might seem like a contradiction.  After all didn’t I open with the promise of not believing in angels, with the statement that I am a militant Atheist?

Sure. But in this, like in most things in life, you have to look a little closer.

I don’t believe in semi-divine beings with wings and a penchant for fighting over God’s favor. I find there is quite enough of that down here in the human realm, why sully up the heavens with it?

And yet, it turns out that angels, real honest to goodness angels are, in fact, everywhere. And no, I’m not talking about the Victoria’s Secret babes either, they’re even more improbable than the little godlets we all get so worked up about.

I mean angels. Real angels.

Let me explain.

Angel means messenger.

It comes from the Greek – ἄγγελος and before that, the Hebrew – מלאך. Both of these words mean messenger. In fact, if you read the Bible in its original form you will discover that most of the angels described in its pages are not supernatural, paranormal beings with wings – but people. That’s all, just people. People with a message.

Some of these angels became prophets or priests. Some were just one time runners. Many became scapegoats.

I tell you this, not to take away whatever magic or power you wish to imbue the world with, because while I may not believe in God or angels, I do believe in Magic. No, I tell you this to open your eyes and mind and heart to the magic and power that really is here.
Because when we break through the semantics of what we’d like an angel to be, to discover what an angel actually is, a shift happens. A very important shift.

Suddenly angels are everywhere.

When we begin to look at the world, and the people around us, as if they might hold a piece of the divinity we seek, we open ourselves to a new realm of possibility. It is one that we do not have to tithe for, or pray for, or be judged by. It is not one we have to fear. It is, instead, a reality of exaltation.

When you see the person making your morning latte not as a loser who couldn’t do any better, but as a piece of the divine, who just might be carrying a message for you, your perception shifts. You listen closer, you open yourself more, you see deeper.

Then, one day, the full shift comes and you realize that if all of these people that you interact with on a daily basis are part of the divine, then you must be too. If they are your angels, your messengers, then you are theirs. All at once it matters what you say and how you act.

When we see each other not as competition, but as compatriots all trapped in the same endless maze, it becomes that little bit easier to offer a helping hand. When we start to really account for all the help we receive every day from friends, family and anonymous strangers, it goes beyond that and becomes a genuine obligation.

Aaron Ritchey’s book, The Never Prayer, asks the question, “When do we struggle to change the world and when do we let go and embrace life’s broken beauty?”

When we open our eyes to the miracles of life all around us, when we open our hearts to the messages laid out before us, when we begin to see the angels everywhere – the answer becomes simple. We struggle to change the world, always. For we are the angels we’ve been waiting for.

Bree Ervin can be found ranting at her blog, working at her website, and wasting time at facebook/bannedthoughts and on twitter @thinkbanned where she believes she is an angel of common sense.

Thanks, Bree, I owe you my life.  And dude, you used Greek and Hebrew on my website.  I’m so in love with you again.