God's Gone AWOL

[Bonus Features] Post Scripts

A message on Love.

Let's write a love story by avoiding the phrase "I love you".

That's what I told myself when I began writing this version of God's Gone AWOL. It was supposed to be a challenge for myself actually, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy to do. I'm pretty satisfied with the way the love aspect of the story turned out. Hopefully readers feel the same way— the comments seemed encouraging at least.

Basically, this weary writer did its very best to tell the story of two characters who were forbidden from physically saying "I love you". Now, no creature or distant writer-god can ever forbid the expression of love. So the characters found other ways to show each other just how deep their feelings were: using behavior, thought, different words, etc. etc. etc. It seems to have worked out pretty well, there are a few "I love you"s scattered here and there, but that's okay. Sometimes you just have to say it out loud.

It's funny. In this particular writer's mind, the concept of Love sometimes mirrors our perception(?) of the Dao. It cannot be described by mortal language, we can only do our best to depict our personal interactions with it. But we know that it is, and we know that it will always be. Regardless of what form it takes, Love is always there. Perhaps that interpretation made it easier to write.

There is a lot of love in this book. There's the obvious soulmate-romance between Bentley and Atticus, the flirting romance of Lucy and Xander, the sibling love between Bentley and Xander, Frances and Chang-Ho's loves for their friends, the parental loves of Damaris and Micaiah, the seeming lack of parental love of Ophaniel and Michael, the chaotic impersonal love the characters have for the worlds around them, the list goes on and on. This book is arguably a love story at its core. But also, love is arguably the root of all emotions so any story with emotional appeal is going to be a love story by that logic. ANYWAY.

A lot of modern media, at least in the English speaking world, tends to slap kissing scenes and extended amounts of smut over everything instead of actually putting work into balancing the characters. Love is painted into this fast-paced, heart burning, spontaneous romance (and sometimes it's shamelessly lazy, for the purpose of sex-appeal and nothing else). But truthfully, that's only a fragment of the experience of love. Romantic love is often much slower and more agonizing than we pretend it is. That's mainly what we were trying to get at, especially with Atticus and Bentley.

Most of the depictions of love in this story are inspired by real life experiences on behalf of this author (whoopsies). The sibling love and the romantic love especially. The daisy field, the fruit tree, the drunken chaos— all personal memories. It's acceptable to say that having a basis in reality actually makes it less realistic for ancient and supernatural beings. But really, love is love. Who gives a damn?

It's painfully slow, we know. The first kiss doesn't even happen until chapter 72. But that was mostly the point. It's slow, sometimes even torturous. It's supposed to hurt in some places, and make you laugh in others. It isn't extraordinary, nor is it the best depiction of love by any standard, but it is the story and that's how it goes.

Okey dokey. That's just a little note on love. Please share your thoughts in the comments if you feel so inclined. Tell us about your own experience in love, or how this book made you feel about it. We wanna know!

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A word on religion.

It's pretty obvious that God's Gone AWOL is a work steeped in religious lore. But it isn't religious in itself, really. It's basically just fiction, with some religious elements. It isn't supposed to preach or teach. It's more supposed to entertain and torture readers. I take liberties with certain lore, and occasionally includes interpretations from various scholars and denominations.