I was born in Sacramento and grew up in the unincorporated suburb of Carmichael. In many ways that time seems to belong to a different person: my childhood was spent creating worlds for myself to play in along with the freedom of the American River, which ran close enough I could head down there with friends on our bikes.
After getting my Bachelor’s degree at the University of California at Davis, I was ready to leave the Central Valley, its heat, its fog (the only two seasons there) and the arid sense of a place that had once been a destination yet had become a somewhere that was not San Francisco or Southern California. I moved where it was considerably cooler, but seasonally, it’s just as challenged up here in the Pacific Northwest: drizzle, mist, and then two months of beautiful summer. But just as the Delta Breezes blowing in from the Sacramento Delta taught me contrast, the skies of the Northwest taught me the importance of gradients and the nuances of life in a diffuse world bereft of comforting shadows. Maybe that’s why they show up constantly in my artwork and my writing.
My short fiction has appeared in Silver Blade Magazine, Adelaide Literary Review, The Dark Fiction Spotlight among anthologies, such as Blue Forge Press’s Trinity series. His longer work includes The Nightingale’s Stone, a fictional memoir, along with Graphic Illustrated Essay collections such as Hyperborea and Deukollectrum.
How do I classify my writing?
Magical realism is a broad term, and varies considerably depending on who is using it. Matthew Strecher, in describing Haruki Murakami’s work, says Magical Realism is: “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.” This is also a good description of what happens when you pay attention to your subconscious, because while the subconscious seems uncertain, we seldom doubt it has something to say and even if it appears to be utter nonsense, or simply data from the waking world as processed through dream, the unconscious is doing something, and therefore worthy of examination and celebration.
Magical realism, surrealism, or fantasy are paradoxical terms because they represent virtual pigeonholes for booksellers, so we’re kind of stuck with them for now. Much of my work fits into several or all of these “genres” within one book.
Let’s just call it Fiction, and through Fiction, I explore the contradictions one finds in both thought and emotions; the two are not nearly as separate as we like to think. Alexandre Dumas once said “all generalizations are dangerous, including this one” and that wry skepticism informs much of the attitudes of my protagonists as they explore a world that is too complex for simple terms like beautiful, or horrific, and too changeable to assault with the impertinence of certainty.
Who Am I Reading right Now?
Am actually re-reading some 20th Century Masters of Genre Fiction, such as Franz Kafka and Dashiell Hammett.
To learn more about his artwork and writing, visit www.davidmecklenburg.com
