Macromere Press

Macromere: Why Andrew Kehoe, the seventh ghost encountered in He Who Shall Remain Shameless? 

David: This particular story went through a lot of changes. A whole slew of rewrites. Two things remained constant, though: the opening sentence—“I was on campus to stop a massacre”—and the fact that the story takes place at the end of September, “goodbye-to-Maggie-May time”. Other than that, the first draft of “Andrew” wasn’t called “Andrew” at all. It was entitled “Tuma”, a word or name I’d picked up while living overseas, and the first draft didn’t have a ghost but rather a real-life, flesh-and-blood active shooter on a college campus. This active shooter was unnamed and unidentifiable, a kind of EveryKiller. The title was a throwaway, indicative more of the idea propelling the piece than anything. But early on that was David’s mission—to stop this active shooter from shooting up the campus. In this early, very rough version I was going for satire bar-none, to the point where the narrator brings a cache of loaded guns onto campus and tries to distribute them to terrified students, urging them to take up arms and shoot the active shooter before they are shot. Did this version work? Absolutely not. It was all about the idea, and the idea was arch, overly political and, frankly, not very interesting. What I needed was a person, a ghost, an historical figure that would fit with the rest of HWSRS. I wanted to keep the campus setting and the premise, but I didn’t feel comfortable writing about Seung-Hui Cho [the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007], and no way was I going to touch Columbine. I decided to look back….

M: And you came up with Kehoe, who remains the worst campus mass murderer in American history.

D: I know what you’re getting at: The other spirits in He Who Shall Remain Shameless are more benign…or at the very least David is trying to save them, help them, whereas he’s not so much helping Andrew Kehoe as he is helping the people of Bath, Michigan. So “Andrew” remains a bit of an anomaly compared to the other stories in the novel…it was always going to stand apart somewhat. But it works—

M: It does work.

D: It really is a major turning point in the novel. In “Andrew” the reader meets David’s crucial companion, the All-In-One Ishmael, for the first time, and the forward momentum of the final showdown with the Meritocrat is fully realized.

M: How much research did you do, when you’d finally decided on Andrew Kehoe for your subject?

D: A substantial amount of research. I wanted to get it right, and above all I wanted to make the story about the victims, the citizens of Bath as well as Kehoe. A primary source was “The Bath School Disaster”, a book written shortly after the tragedy by MJ Ellsworth. One website in particular, run by a descendant of one of the victims of the May 18, 1927 school bombing, was a great help. Reading the names and bios of all the children and adults who had perished that day really took “Andrew” to the level it needed to reach….the story found an emotional core.

Macromere: Thoughts on “Aegeus”, the sixth episode in He Who Shall Remain Shameless?

David: “It was sunny mid-September….” is how David Michael Ewald puts it, but this is really just speculation. The narrator of HWSRS successfully calculates that King Aegeus died in September, but to be honest there’s actually no proof that it was September. It could have been May. It could have been January. September works well in the novel, though. And there’s also no way of knowing exactly when Aegeus was born and when he died. He definitely died an old man, but how old, and when, we’re not sure. One voice on the Internet puts his birth—and probably his death—in the 1200s BCE, but, again, nothing is certain.

M: Why Aegeus?

D: His story’s always fascinated me. As a kid I loved Greek mythology. I figure a lot of people can say that but I’m unaware of many people—if any—who have dealt with Aegeus’s death in fiction. Pretty much everything I’ve encountered focuses on Theseus’s adventures, and Aegeus’s unfortunate suicide is simply a coda to those adventures. A lot of what I’ve read goes something like, “…Theseus left the island of Naxos and continued toward home. His father, Aegeus, was perched up at the top of a high cliff overlooking the ocean. When the ship appeared on the horizon Aegeus saw that the sail was black, and, in despair at his son’s death, he threw himself into the sea that now bears his name, the Aegean.” It seemed so terrible to me, such a tragedy, that a father would kill himself because of a mistake like that.

M: Theseus forgot to switch sails….

D: If he had remembered to put up the white sail, claiming victory, his father would have lived. But instead the son forgot, and the father mistook that black sail as a sign of his son’s death, and that was that. It was such a simple mistake on Theseus’s part, and yet it led to his father’s death.

M: In a way then, this story is thematically similar to “Harriet”….the mistake that William Willard made by shifting his weight too far forward in the plane, which then caused Harriet and him to both fall out at such a height. When we read “Aegeus”, we think of that line in “Harriet” David says to William Willard: “And by committing suicide you murdered Harriet Quimby.”

D: There’s definitely that connection to be made. Another element among many at work in HWSRS is the idea of feckless deaths, or deaths that could have been easily averted had something slightly different happened, someone had come in at the right time, or hadn’t taken a small action that turned out to cost another person their life. But it’s not just about death; it’s also about love, and what amazed me about that part of Theseus’s adventures was the love his father obviously had for him. I mean here was a father willing to kill himself because his son had died. There must have been so much guilt weighing on Aegeus for allowing his son to leave to go fight the minotaur. He couldn’t live with the role he had taken in his son’s supposed failure and death.

M: Have you been to Greece?

D: I have. When I went I had no idea I would write about it the way I did, that some of my experiences would go into “Aegeus”, but I like that melding of the fantastical and the contemporary, the common.

M: This story appears to be somewhat of a turning point in the novel. David’s laptop, for one….

D: Yes, the laptop: a 21st century tragedy. But in “Andrew” we’ll see that it was for the best.

M: How do you say ‘thanks for your time’ in Greek?

D: I have no idea.

Macromere: Since today, September 6th, is the 17th anniversary—or deathiversary, as we should now be calling it—of Christopher Coe’s passing, would you mind telling us about “Christopher”?

David: Not at all. “Christopher” was one of the early ones in the genesis of He Who Shall Remain Shameless. It was written after “Chris” and “Harriet”, and I’m pretty sure it was actually the third story out of all of them to be written. I felt I had something with the concept and themes behind the first two stories, so I thought I’d keep going. I wasn’t sure who was next until I was alone in a classroom at San Francisco State University, where I was then taking some classes for a graduate certificate in post-secondary teaching, and I scanned the bookshelves. I always scan bookshelves when I’m in a room. Anyway, there was a lot of fiction on these shelves, books that no one had picked up or held or otherwise touched in a good long time, and one of the spines was very thin. It stood out to me because it was a Vintage Contemporaries paperback—you know, the ones from the eighties and early nineties that have a very specific design, quite sleek and respectful.

M: They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

D: I took this slim volume down and it was I Look Divine by Christopher Coe. I’d never heard of Christopher Coe. His author photo in the front of the book was haunting. He wasn’t exactly looking to the side, but his head was turned from a direct confrontation with the camera, and he looked as if he didn’t really want his picture taken. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or if he was about to cry. I felt a strong sense of tragedy in this photo, a tragedy that continued into the work itself.

M: We’re ashamed to admit none of us have read I Look Divine yet.

D: You should. It’s a good book. Highly unsettling. Very short. It’s shortness was the thing that struck me the most about it. It’s a novel, but at only 109 pages in paperback format it could really be considered a novella. It works as a novel, though, and it works well. I mean, is He Who Shall Remain Shameless a novel or is it a short story collection?

M: We say it’s a novel. A novel in stories.

D: But is that just a fancy way of saying a linked short story collection?

M: Maybe….Does it matter?

D: Probably not. Sooo…I was fascinated by Christopher Coe, and I decided to research him. I couldn’t find much. But his life, what little of it there was available for the public, what more of it could be created and thus saved by the David Michael Ewald of He Who Shall Remain Shameless, that was worth writing about. So I wrote a new encounter that became “Christopher”. 

M: It’s certainly the shortest of all the stories in HWSRS.

D: It is. Just under 2,000 words. I remember submitting it to the online magazine Morbid Outlook because they wouldn’t accept any story over 2,000 words. And Morbid Outlook accepted it. No changes were made to the submitted story, but significant changes were made between the story published in Morbid Outlook and the version included in He Who Shall Remain Shameless.

M: Such as….

D: Such as an expansion of this idea that drives the entire novel, or novel in stories: Other people on the Internet have Christopher Coe’s name, and David Michael Ewald the narrator and hero is afraid that the Christopher Coe of I Look Divine and Such Times will be replaced permanently by all those other Christopher Coes, even Christopher Coes that have yet to be born. That’s what it means to be ‘Internet dead.’

M: Replaced on the Internet, erased from the Internet—and thus from all public memory. Forgotten in the worst way possible.

D: You got it.

M: A big part of “Christopher” seems to be the discussion of one’s art, and how one’s art may not be enough to sustain the memory of the artist.

D: Exactly. Certainly Mr. Coe’s two novels are out there, but he died tragically before he could write and publish more, and in this meritocracy we now live in, I—like the David Michael Ewald of HWSRS—felt it’s a tragedy to have to be ranked, and therefore judged, in this way.

M: So it comes down to sales rankings.

D: It shouldn’t have to, but that’s one of David Michael Ewald’s biggest sticking points with the Christopher Coe of “Christopher”. The sales rankings of those two novels have to increase, or else.

M: What about your own sales rankings, the ones for He Who Shall Remain Shameless?

D: Believe me: I’m prepared to join Christopher Coe.

M: As are we. Thanks for taking the time etcetera etcetera.

D: Etcetera.

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.

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….

—

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.

Macromere: Today is July 1st, the 99th anniversary of Harriet Quimby’s death and, not coincidentally, the day He Who Shall Remain Shameless really begins. Any thoughts on Harriet—and “Harriet”?

David: “Harriet” was the second story I wrote for what would eventually become He Who Shall Remain Shameless. At that time I didn’t know I was putting together a novel in stories…I just knew that the first story, “Chris”, had been successful, and I thought I’d run with this idea of a guy going around the United States—and soon the rest of the world—seeking out deceased people who could be found on the Internet but who may not have the staying power they could have. The concept was still in its early stages, but at the time I was reading up a lot on early aviation, and I was fascinated by Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to get her pilot’s license, and I thought, Why not have the same narrator from “Chris” encounter the ghost of Ms. Quimby in Boston? Her face haunted me…especially the one of her in her monoplane, smiling, with the amulets around her neck. She had such dark eyes, I felt I was there with her, in that plane, when I looked at that picture.

M: She was a beautiful woman.

D: Definitely. But what struck me was that she was 37 when she died, and she died, according to everything I read, childless, unmarried, which was surprising to me. A woman at that time, I had thought, would be married and have children by the time she was 37. A stereotype, I know, but I did see a connection between Harriet Quimby and Christine Chubbuck, who had also died childless and unmarried—but at 29.

M: Harriet Quimby was different than the majority of women at the time….

D: She was independent, strong-willed, ambitious. She wrote for Hollywood, she wrote articles for magazines, and she wanted a career in aviation. She was on her way to solidifying that career when she died tragically, under mysterious circumstances.

M: How much research did you do to write “Harriet” in particular?

D: A significant amount. I went to the library and checked out books on early aviation…the one that ended up being the most helpful was a Time Life book…It was helpful mostly because of the pictures, which gave me a better sense of what it was like then, how people dressed, how they might have interacted. Taking in those pictures I got a better sense of being there, and this strong sense of time and place helped me to write “Harriet”.

M: You mentioned you received an e-mail from a stranger shortly after “Harriet” was published in The Harrow….

D: Yes. He wasn’t a descendant of Harriet Quimby but rather of William Willard, Harriet’s passenger on that tragic day of July 1, 1912 and a key figure in the story. I was surprised and touched when this descendant, William Willard’s great-great grandson, wrote me to say how much he liked the story and to ask if I had found any further information on his great-great grandfather through my research. We exchanged e-mails, and I found out more about William Willard. He too has a fascinating—and sad—history.

M: Well, David, we appreciate you taking the time to give us some insight on your process for “Harriet”. Until next time…

D: That would be July 15th.

M: July 15th it will be.

Here at Macromere Press we’ve done a bit of poking around the internet and found, much to our surprise, three sites that have posted the book trailer for David Ewald’s He Who Shall Remain Shameless. The sites are

NME

Movieteaser

LearnaboutKindle

We are flummoxed. We don’t understand the internet, even though our first book is very much about the internet. What are these sites? Who are the people behind them? Do the two questions we just asked matter at all?

Regardless, we’d like to thank those (because there has to be someone, right?) in charge of content at these sites. He Who Shall Remain Shameless is not a movie, but we’re fine with it being promoted on a site called Movie Teaser. We’re not that rigid. Any interest is good interest (at this point). Thanks for helping to get the word out.