The Gospel of Satan Reviews Interviews Guest Articles

TV Interview

Interview with Kevin Thomlinson

“Thinking is not what a writer does. A writer listens. To what exactly? To those products that arise out of the maelstrom of consciousness.”

“Salty laughs and language, with a lot of surprising emotional beats.”

“A version that I didn’t know I wanted. A bold and creative take.” Podcast and review

“The problem, for all of us—God, the Devil and man—is this heavy hand of God deprives everyone of free will in the end.”

WRBH Writer’s Forum Interview

“We’re all unreliable narrators.”

Smuggler Reviews

“Fillmore’s journey is replete with incredible cinematic visual details…. An alluring and adventurous ride through a criminal underworld.”

“Relentless velocity … rich with cutting insight.”

“This isn’t your usual run-of-the-mill true crime story but a work with true literary style.”

“This book starts glamourous and slow and then accelerates into a dark world where actions have consequences … Excellent writing, believable characters … an interesting read narrated by a very competent writer.”

“Riveting.”

Fillmore (metaphorically) strips himself naked before us and demonstrates the vulnerability of the human soul.

“Smuggler tells the real story behind Orange Is The New Black. The story is a good one and is well written….”

“Twenty years before Piper Kerman went to prison and a cultural phenomenon was born, a crew of young Americans worked as mules….”

Smuggler Interviews:

Straight from the Library

How do I keep my books organized? By kind. I like to think of the bookshelf as a literary gathering or conversation. Certain books you just wouldn’t set next to each other because of clashing sensibilities and styles. It’s like having certain friends that should never meet.

Did I have to research anything? I had to look up “cocksucker” in German. (It’s Schwanzlutscher, btw.)

…On the other hand, there were certain authors that I consciously avoided while writing Smuggler. Faulkner, as always, is a less than salutary influence.

Our Town

…rather than building scenes, characters, themes, brick by brick, my instinct has always been to try to leap to the heart of incident.

Kimberly Love

… I understand this from my old high school hockey days when all the fathers were behind the goal screaming at us, Shoot! Quit screwing around! But, you know, this is your moment. You’re seventeen. Your girlfriend maybe is in the stands. You’re at the height of your powers. It’s all downhill from here. (So you believe.)

If I could hang out with one famous person for one day? it would have to be Jesus. Running around Palestine denouncing the scribes and Pharisees and preaching to the multitudes whilst the political powers of the ancient world hang like dark clouds in the offing—this is my idea of a good time.

… You don’t have to go to jail to learn this. (It helps.)

Who is my intended audience? People like myself who are not likely to go to jail, but wind up there anyway. People with an “imp of the perverse.” Literati. Existentialists. X-punk rockers. X-deadheads. Boomers passing themselves off as Gen-Xers. Those who have for the most part evaded the responsibilities of middle age. The unreconciled. The lucky. The feckless. The romantic. The forlorn.

You know, there are plenty of guys who get in the pill line in jail every day and kind of check out. Not Carver. There’s something appealing about that. But he died. And I think I’d like to FOIA that to find out what happened. As I mention in the book, he had a medical malpractice suit against the feds, claiming they’d fucked his brain up.

If poetry is sex, then, works of prose are wars. You sit down at your desk with an objective in mind, of taking that scene or that chapter. Afterwards you move the pins on the map and evacuate the wounded and the dead; and the next day continue the slog.

The Avid Reader

I got caught plagiarizing Simon and Garfunkel in seventh grade. Now, why’d I do that?

The more they try to impose that ethic on you the more you want to rebel. And so one remains unreconciled. And is misunderstood. Which is a precondition for being a serious person.

I’ve always kind of hated the sanctimony of cops, in the movies anyway; like, ‘what’s it to you?

Mythical Books

And so the problem for me was how to portray this character who’s not likely to win a lot of sympathy points from the reader. As I explain elsewhere, the solution was to simply tell the truth, to inhabit the logic of my own actions … which still leaves some readers who expect this big apology a little out of joint. Which is okay, I think. If everybody’s happy, it’s probably a boring party.

Reading Nook

I remember writing strange, quasi-spiritual stories in the fifth grade. I was kind of wild about David Carradine’s character in Kung Fu.