William Burcher — "This is serious business"

The GAIAD—A Review (By the Author)

"Despite his unconventional writing style, including, perhaps, an unhealthy disdain for the traditional use of the English comma, the author makes his debut by telling an original story. The author is clearly no Clarke or Tolkien, but with some hard work, time, and practice he might one day be regarded as Shchegolyayev or even Mbadinuju. Certain readers of more conventional, modern, and less questionable tastes may be turned off by the inclusion of strange, macabre imagery—including, most notably and ridiculously, an old book bound in the skin of a long-dead woman's breasts. Globally, however, Mr. Burcher gives us a tale that we want to read, with a refreshing infusion of larger, more necessary and ultimately positive themes."

Yes. Seriously. It's hard to review your own stuff. Instead, I'll mention how this book came about.

In 2014 I was working as a cop just outside of Denver. I had a beautiful house in the suburbs, two great dogs, a brand new, fast little German car and a host of valuable, meaningful relationships. In my heart, though, I knew that the path I was walking wasn't really my own. In the back of my mind I knew that it was time to write—it was time to take all the ridiculous things that I've seen and experienced and thought over the course of my adult life and distill them, boil them down into a work of literature that someone else could read and experience and maybe even enjoy.

I remember the moment explicitly, when I decided to do it—to re-structure everything, to give it all up, to write full-time. It was a beautiful day in July. I'd taken the dogs hiking at a park outside of Conifer, Colorado. The sky was an amazing, mountain blue marred only sporadically by the turbulent grey-white of a building summer storm. I was sitting in a field, grass high and green-golden as the dogs ran around chasing locusts or sniffing piles of elk shit. I was looking up at the sky, at the movement of the clouds, at the strange gradients of atmospheric color and it just came, bubbling up like liquid from below. Within a week I'd put my house on the market, and began to divest myself of a job that although stressful and frustrating and hard and dangerous and under-appreciated, paid pretty well and offered unquestionably good benefits.

Three months later I was free. Free to create. Free to write. I was also traveling the country in a solar-equipped RV, but that's totally another blog entry. The point of this story is that this book of mine comes from a place inside me that I'd like to share. It was born of good intentions, and although we all know that the road to hell is paved with those, they're still a better thing than so much of what we're fed from day to day in this crazy world of ours. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy The GAIAD.

WB