(An article from the recent Night Clinic blog tour)
God carried out the act
of creation by his spoken word. The heavens and Earth and everything else came
into being by the power of his voice. Humans are far more limited in their acts
of creation. From the depths of the brain ideas emerge, grow into a concept and
then pass to our hands to be shaped into the objects we take for granted every day.
Each new thing is an act of creation. The pinnacle of human creation is art. G.
K. Chesterton said it was art which separates humanity from all the other
beasts of the world.
The act of writing is
one of the artistic forms of creation. A germ of an idea in the depths of the
mind sprouts and, magically, grows to be nurtured and polished into a story.
Thus, this magic of
creation which began within the depths of my imagination became “Night
Clinic,” a collection of short stories unlike any others. There is a genre
called medical fiction, usually a story set in a hospital with doctors and
nurses as the protagonists or apocalyptic stories where humanity is nearly
destroyed by some sort of dread disease, but there has never been a collection
of stories like “Night Clinic,” a totally original set of stories where the
medical intersects with the magical, mystical and supernatural.
A morbidly obese man is
imbued with all the resilience of the common cockroach and becomes Roachman.
The venerable space epics Star Trek and Star Wars clash pitting Captain Kirk
and Mr. Spock against Darth Vader. A child is granted her wish to be with her
mother who has succumbed to the ravages of cancer, but in a way that leaves the
reader both happy and sad. It is at the “Night Clinic” where such a diverse
cast of characters converge.
Stories filled with
mystical and magical creations abound with only one commonality. All of these
unusual characters need medical care and, for better or worse, they are drawn
to this clinic.
Where is the magic?
Every story has its own touch of magic, a creative force which sets it apart.
The writer looks at the words on the page until that moment when “Aha, that
would be funny, or clever, or inspirational, or sad or so many other things” pops
into his head and the words find their way to the printed page.
Is it magic, this act
of creation? That is a decision I leave to the reader.
No comments:
Post a Comment