WHERE’S WALDO? – A Guest Post by Jack Ketchum

Today I have a special treat for me, and for readers out there — a guest blog post from friend and mentor, Jack Ketchum as stop #2 on his I’m Not Sam Blog Tour! Enjoy!

 

So what’s disturbing? What’s troubling, emotionally or mentally?

Loss is, for one thing.

The novelist Michael Chabon wrote, “if you can still see how you could once have loved a person, you are still in love; an extinct love is always wholly incredible.”

I agree.

I’ve been going through some old files lately, actual paper files, excavated from the deep recesses of the bottom drawer of my four-door filing cabinet in my dark walk-in closet, trying to impose some order on what’s inside, separating unfinished fragments of manuscript from notes to myself, story ideas, letters, lists and throwing out the by-now undecipherable stoned maunderings of my youth — there’s a flake of something in my soup, I wish I had a dock to sit on.

It’s an interesting thing to do, this kind of housekeeping. Like looking at snapshots of your brain.

This is your brain at twenty-five. This is your brain at forty.

I’ve been separating the letters into two piles. Letters to and from other writers and more personal letters, from people you‘ve never heard of, although if you’ve read me and then went through the latter pile, you might just recognize a few of them as thinly-disguised characters in my stories.

But in this latter pile are love letters.

Letters that still have the power to make me smile, or bring tears to my eyes. Or both.

Because while I think that Chabon’s statement is true, that love never goes extinct, it’s also true that in most cases and to many varying degrees, the object of that love has gone out of reach. Has married or moved away or even died. Cannot be touched.

And to be unable to touch a loved one and yet still remain in love — that’s a very great loss indeed.

In I’M NOT SAM, Lucky and I wrote the following…

“I think of Sam and me at the amusement park in Kansas City years ago, before we were married, the way she kissed me from a bobbing horse when I managed to grab that brass ring.”

Sometimes, in a letter, in a memory, you can almost feel that ring, and taste that long-lost kiss.

…TO BE CONTINUED…

 

I’M NOT SAM by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee can be purchased from CemeteryDance.com and SinisterGrinPress.com. For more info about the author, please visit http://www.JackKetchum.net. or follow him on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/JackKetchum
Check out our contest giveaway at http://www.jackketchum.net/im-not-sam-contest/

And here’s our I’M NOT SAM 2012 Blog Tour Schedule. Have fun!
Tour Stop 1: 9/10 at http://www.Litreactor.com
Tour Stop 2: 9/11 at http://www.marysangiovanni.com/
Tour Stop 3: 9/12 at http://www.BrianKeene.com
Tour Stop 4: 9/13 at http://www.Bookgasm.com
Tour Stop 5: 9/14 at http://www.tompiccirilli.com/