Writing Offerings to the Flower Moon

Nothing a little lotion, a hairbrush, and some pruning shears won't clear up.

I'm irritated Wix doesn't let me italicize the big header.

Haven’t blogged in weeks, primarily because I don’t have much to talk about. I don’t have super strong opinions about the craft of writing or the importance of learning to read closely. Besides, the folks who find their way here already have their minds made up about the rules around art and general creativity.

When it comes to writing, all I can really talk about is what I tried to do with my own books. And as my own harshest critic, I think I can give a pretty solid and semi-objective review.

Offerings to the Flower Moon: The Tale of the Abrams Witch is the first book I published when I worked up the nerve to accept the fact that my interests and style have little mass-market appeal. I’m not complaining about that, it just is. I like writing more than I like selling, anyway. I find pride, satisfaction, and extreme frustration in the writing process. Big frustration. Many years of frustration. Almost to the point that I gave up. Then I decided to do the next best/worst thing for myself: self-publish.

The early version of Offerings to the Flower Moon was titled “Tales of the Abrams Witch” and was very much an anthology in the vein of Josh Malerman’s Goblin, Creepshow, A Christmas Horror Story, The Mortuary Collection, and the like. Different stories of terror and the supernatural connected by an overarching thread. I wanted to write about creepy stuff and set it in a fictionalized version of my hometown. I also wanted to challenge myself with how those stories were structured. Voice recordings, a tale told in 2^nd person (which is tough for me to wrap my head around), a story told by nature and one from the POV of an entire town; weird stuff that, for me, would be ambitious.

“The Circle” is a story about a teenage ‘prank’ about a haunted crossroads in rural Minnesota, and it’s by far the scariest thing I’ve ever written. “The Howling” tells the tale of a dying teenager in the 90s who recorded her life in both her diary and cassette tape but originally required the reader to piece things together. The story that still rips my heart out is “The Devourers.” It bounces between two points of view (3^rd and 2^nd) and details how an innocent soul was torn apart by mad men at the helm of a terrible community. “The Roots” is the point in the story where you get the big reveal that the town has a curse. It also serves to tie all the individual stories into the overarching narrative.

Where I got initially got stuck was that overarching narrative. For me, it was the “why” of the story. The “so what.” I don’t like fantasy tales that are fantastical for the sake of it, or horror for the sake of horror. I wanted another layer of meaning, if not for an interested reader, then for myself. For me, that meant I’d need a strong main character to act as audience surrogate. Someone who could hear the stories and do all the digging and searching and the showing of math to the reader.

Enter Moira Clarke.

Moira is a college-aged Nancy Drew. She’s smart, resourceful, and headstrong enough to put herself into the unknown and driven enough to find her way out. Before I even wrote her, I knew Moira had to be brave, capable, and most of all, relatable.

As a literary device, Moira does important things that I needed her to do, which is writer speak for "I did this shit on purpose." She carries the reader through the narrative and gives me leverage to raise the plot’s stakes. However, the most vital and valuable role she plays is that of listener. Stories aren’t stories without someone to hear them. Pulling off the strange storytelling devices that I use is infinitely more effective when those stories are told through the voices of their tellers. Moira doesn’t just hear stories and detail them secondhand, she participates in them. This turns the reader into a sort of proxy audience until they realize Moira isn’t just a spectator, listener, or passenger in these tales, she’s the reason they’re being told at all.

What are the good things about this book?

First, the pacing is spot on—I’ll fight the world over this. The foreshadowing at the beginning is top tier. Moira is an amazing protagonist. “The Circle” is terrifying in its simplicity. “The Devourers” has the most heartbreaking line I will ever write. “You hate yourself because you learn to like it.” If you know the context behind Jenny Lake’s story, that line hits. Gloria’s tale “The Howling” creates one of the book’s more complex characters, and it’s almost exclusively done through firsthand accounts: voice recordings and diary entries. Ronnie and “The Roots” ties everything together before the final confrontation with the Abrams Witch. For me, “The Witch” is a clinic of feminine rage.

Yeah, I’m a dude and I know how that sounds.

Give me the bad.

Offerings to the Flower Moon wasn’t professionally edited. Not to the point that it’s unreadable. However, a few spelling errors exist. But what I regret the most are the repetitive details, the lack of details in certain spots, and the wonkiness in the structure of some sentences. I’m a big fan of long sentences. The editor I work with now has her work cut out for her.

Then there’s the ending. For me, horror doesn’t automatically mean a book needs an unhappy ending. Stephen King writes a LOT of positive endings, and he’s considered the Lord of Horror. However, depending on your viewpoint, the ending could push this book closer to dark supernatural fantasy than horror.

Will I ever go back and tighten everything up? No. I own my mistakes and successes. Besides, this one holds a special place in my heart. Not just because it was my first published novel, but because I really think it’s good as it is. It’s not stellar. Professors aren’t adding it to the literary canon. But for a purely independent book, I think it’s worth every last one of its four stars on Goodreads.