Macromere Press

may we point you to the Kobo page for He Who Shall Remain Shameless:

He Who Shall Remain Shameless available on Kobo eReader

Just one more format for David Ewald’s paranormal adventure novel in stories!

Macromere: Unlike Harriet Quimby and Christine Chubbuck, the title character of “Ai’dah,” the third story in He Who Shall Remain Shameless, did not actually exist, is that correct?

David: That’s correct. No dates of birth and death can be found on the Internet whatsoever.

M: In the story then, can Ai’dah be considered a ghost, or something else?

D: The narrator David Michael Ewald starts off the story by alluding to as much. “…I sensed it was time to take a break from American soil,” he writes, “and turn elsewhere—time to slow down and pursue the not-necessarily supernatural.”

M: So Ai’dah could still be a ghost….

D. She could. But that something else you mentioned is what this story is focused on. “Ai’dah” is less a ghost story than it is a parable of American intervention.

M: American intervention?

D: American intervention in international affairs, particularly military-related, particularly in the Middle East.

M: A parable, huh. Does that fit in with the rest of the book?

D: It does because it’s satire, and He Who Shall Remain Shameless is satire above all else. More than horror, this novel is satirical, and I think that satire reaches new heights in “Ai’dah.”

M: There are certainly absurdist elements. The ‘gun,’ for one.

D: Ah yes, David’s ‘gun.’

M: And his and Ai’dah’s escape from the captors, followed by what happens in Tarifa…

D: The images in this story, Ai’dah on her bed amongst the shopping bags, for example, they can’t be taken literally.

M: Figuratively….

D: Yes. Like I said, Ai’dah could be a ghost, she could have died before David reaches her, which is entirely possible, and she certainly shows up again with the for-certain ghosts later on in the novel, but I see her more as a symbol, as representative of certain ideas, of resistance. She’s an idea more than she is an actual ghost. But this story works with the the others in the novel because it’s still about David’s fear of Ai’dah being forgotten, and his desire to “save” her, just like he fears Harriet Quimby and Christine Chubbuck and the others will be forgotten. By taking Ai’dah to America and having her assimilate, she will be remembered. She will never die, in his mind. 

M: As always, thanks for taking the time to help illuminate some of your novel, David.

D: My pleasure.

Macromere: Today, July 15th, is the 37th anniversary of the death of Christine Chubbuck, whose ghost happens to be the second the hero and narrator of He Who Shall Remain Shameless encounters. To give us some insight into this story, we talked to the author himself….

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Macromere: This is the one that started it all.

David: That’s right. I wrote “Chris”, the second story in He Who Shall Remain Shameless, back in 2007 before any of the others. For years I had been taken, like many people, with the story of Christine Chubbuck’s on-air suicide, but I hadn’t been able to find much of anything at first. A rendering of her face, a few tidbits here and there, but it wasn’t until late ‘06-early ‘07 that I began to find more information about her. I knew that the footage of the incident had either been lost or destroyed or was well-hidden, never to be revealed, and this footage seemed to be what the majority of people on the Internet were talking about. They all wanted to see it.

M: And that led you to the story….

D: What actually led me to the story was the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I remember it was February 8, 2007, and I was working for a public relations firm in Palo Alto. There was a bar in the offices, a “keginator” as they called it, and also a television above the bar playing CNN that late afternoon. I remember standing at the bar watching the TV when no one else would. They had already seen it, I suppose. But I watched, and I wondered about how much attention Anna Nicole Smith was getting. And I thought also then of Christine Chubbuck, and how she’d died in Florida too, and then I went back to my cubicle, opened my notebook and started writing. I didn’t want to write about Anna Nicole Smith; I wanted to write about Christine Chubbuck. Not just Christine Chubbuck—I wanted to write about the people who wanted to see the footage, I wanted to write about us. And so I went at it…I got some stares from coworkers who walked by, but I had a draft by the time I left work that day. 

M: “Chris” was originally published in The Bend in 2007….

D: It was. The story went through some changes after that, but a lot of it’s stayed the same. David Michael Ewald’s mission in Sarasota, Florida, hasn’t changed from that first draft I wrote in February of ‘07 to what readers will see in He Who Shall Remain Shameless.

M: “I was in Sarasota to find the footage….”

D: I wanted to convey the sadness of what happened that day in July of 1974, but I also wanted to explore the aftermath, the obsession.

M: We believe you have, and we think readers will agree. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, David.

D: Thank you.