• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Exterminating Angel Press

Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

  • Home.
  • Our Books.
  • About Us.
    • What EAP’s About.
    • Why Exterminating Angel?
    • Becoming Part of the EAP Community.
    • EAP’s Poetry Editor Speaks!
    • Contributors.
    • EAP Press.
  • EAP: The Magazine.
    • EAP: The Magazine Archive
  • Tod Blog.
  • Jam Today.
  • Contact Us.
  • Cart.

In All Its Rich Detail.

December 31, 2015 by Exangel

by David D. Horowitz.

That pitcher came from nowhere to dominate the league—two no-hitters in one season, setting team strikeout and ERA records, and leading his team to the championship. What’s his story? Where’d he grow up, and who helped him develop his skills?

You mean she was fired? I knew something was up. I hadn’t seen her for two weeks. Now I understand. Or, sort of…. Do you know why she was let go? What did she do? What’s the story?

No one thought she’d win the election! I mean, she polled two percent at the beginning of the campaign season. What did she do to achieve such results? What’s the story? What we can learn from her success?

He shot and killed three people and then himself!? I knew him several years ago; he seemed a bit standoffish, and he’d wear a studded black leather jacket with a scowling white face emblazoned on the back, but I couldn’t imagine him shooting people! What happened to him? What’s the story? How can I recognize a violence-prone person to prevent recurrence of similar incidents?

Ask Grandpa to tell you about when he ran naked at midnight to his neighbor’s house to warn him a cougar was prowling their neighborhood! I don’t want to give it away. It’s hilarious! Let him tell you in all its rich detail!

And then, just like in some corny Hollywood flick or dime store romance novel, they got back together again. I have no idea why—but if someone tells you the story, please let me know!

Just now, son, you were rude to your Aunt Molly. Do you know she’s a cancer survivor? She suffered through chemotherapy for two years, and the cancer could return. Did you know she helped pay for your new bicycle? I want you to apologize to her—but first I want you to learn about her story, to appreciate all she’s been through.

I’ve heard over the years various literary critics declare fiction dead. I’ve heard others announce literature is merely self-reflexive language, that it cannot correlate to a physical world beyond words and that nothing can be learned from it. Well, if that is so, why do millions of people still love to hear and tell stories and to write and read novels, biographies, and creative non-fiction? Human beings might or might not be deemed “rational,” “creative,” or “romantic” animals. We do seem, though, to remain “story” animals. Stories help give voice to history, deepen shared tribal bonds, inform myths inspiring heroic emulation, salvage wisdom from tragedies, amuse us during a difficult day, sharpen our perception, and re-experience joys. Stories help us explore and learn about fascinating characters, and, like history (the ultimate story), they help us interpret experience as a series of complete or semi-complete arcs, with cautions gleaned from examining various kinds of risk. And stories can deepen empathy: these are not mere facts but details about people, living creatures, and landscapes, each with a story distinctive as a fingerprint. And, each, like a voice, can enchant and enrich when embellished by the storyteller’s art.

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2016: Story Animal.

Primary Sidebar

Cart.

Check Out Our Magazine.

In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

Copyright © 2025 · Exterminating Angel Press · Designed by Ashland Websites