Macromere Press

Macromere: The fourth episode in He Who Shall Remain Shameless takes place on August 18th, and it centers on, of all ghosts, a four-day-old baby named David Michael Ewald. You say this baby actually existed….Who was he?

David: I really don’t know all that much about the David Michael Ewald who was probably born on August 14th and definitely died on August 18, 1954, only four days old according to the one webpage I found. That’s part of the point of the story, actually. Like me, the David Michael Ewald who narrates He Who Shall Remain Shameless—

M: You mean the adult protagonist of the novel, right?

D: That’s right. That David Michael Ewald, the hero and narrator of He Who Shall Remain Shameless, also found only one webpage listing very little detail about the death of this four-day-old David Michael Ewald in the summer of 1954, in Gladwin, Michigan. And so, driven by the guilt of knowing his namesake could be a primary cause for this baby being forgotten forever, he makes the deceased David Michael Ewald his next mission. 

M: We must say, the first three stories in the novel are fairly straightforward, but this one goes off the deep end, IOHO—in a good way, of course.

D: Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment.

M: The narrative gets quite meta at that point. After all, there’s the hero and narrator David Michael Ewald, the ghost of the deceased infant David Michael Ewald, some mention of you, the “little-known writer living in Denver” David Michael Ewald…and are there more David Michael Ewalds?

D: I don’t live in Denver now, so that “little-known writer living in Denver” could be another David Michael Ewald, and beyond that there’s the possibility of more David Michael Ewalds, waiting to intrude at any time.

M: You mentioned earlier that this story was one of the most overhauled from first draft to last.

D: Definitely. In the original version there was no Meritocrat, who makes his first full appearance in this one, and there weren’t any appearances by Christine Chubbuck or Harriet Quimby or Ai’dah either. It was pretty much just David Michael Ewald going to this house in Gladwin, Michigan to talk to the ghost of David Michael Ewald. That first draft was static, and it wasn’t until I got some feedback from my friend Blake Sanz that I was able to move the story in the direction it needed to go. Even then, this was one of the toughest to write.

M: John Kerry once said that googling yourself is a sin. Any comment?

D: I’m a sinner, but not half the sinner that the David Michael Ewald of He Who Shall Remain Shameless is. After “David”, the tragedy of his character becomes progressively more apparent.

M: As always—

D: No need to say another word. It’s my pleasure.