An Excerpt from "Esoteric Shapes"

Today is a special day. Over on Amazon right now, you can purchase my latest book, "Esoteric Shapes: Short Stories About Life's Meaning & Other Nonsense." As the title suggests, it's a collection of 20 tales that I have written between 2015 and 2020 exploring the search for human connectivity. It is currently available for $15.

To give a brief summary:

From the shores of Huntington Beach, CA to empty apartments and prison cells, Thomas M. Willett has taken every opportunity to spin his own story out of life's everyday struggles to better understand the good in humanity. In his first short story collection,  he explores the reason that ideas take hold and inspire us to be creative. Sometimes they're journeys deep inside ourselves. Others are just silly fantasy stories about witches playing hooky at local carnivals. However, they all matter in better understanding who we are, what we love, and why we keep going. They're the esoteric shapes of life, constantly morphing into something new and exciting, waiting to be interpreted by those willing to stop and look.

Need more reason to check it out? Here's an excerpt from the book detailing the vision of the book.

Introduction

Full disclaimer: The first story that you read is not my best, but without it the rest will not make sense. 

Like all artists, there is a starting point. For me it was on September 23, 2014 when I hit ‘Publish’ on Amazon for a story that I had called “But Dad Never Listened to Danny Brown.” At the time I was 25, realizing that my writing career had been in stasis for an embarrassingly long time. I needed to find new ways to express myself. I had been telling stories since I was a child, impressing teachers and colleagues with every crazy idea that I could come up with. I have changed since I last wrote something in high school circa 2008, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I had to say.

Like all artists, the beginning years later play like an embarrassing high school portrait. You question why you wore your hair that way, or how acne ruined your face as your buckteeth stood out. Some beginnings are less embarrassing than others, but they exist as a reminder of someone who doesn’t have their bearings yet, who is still finding themselves. I believe there is value in looking at those portraits both with a critical eye and some fondness. After all, you could be worse. You could still not have written that first word and never changed your appearance. Every sentence, every paragraph and chapter all build a greater identity – and that is why I present my first self-published story here.

The keen eye will notice that “But Dad Never Listened to Danny Brown” is not here in name. If so, where is it? Like all people, there are things we wish that we could change from our youth, and I have the fortunate chance of presenting the 2014 story in print under the cleaner name of “The Coastal View.” Like everything else, naming a story is a learning curve that came with a cringing result. I learned fast that naming a story is just as important as what’s inside. 

The reason that the rest doesn’t make sense without it is a bit more cryptic. With a limit to three stories, there are no overlapping characters. I don’t claim to be a great world builder. I build moods, where moments play out as long as they need to and require some interpretive skill at times. I think that it’s something that I wasn’t always aware of. This literal paper trail will hopefully help you find it.

This is as much about the story on the page as it is about my growth as a writer. In 2014, I was a college drop-out and full-time subscriber to the “quarter-life crisis” phenomenon. That is where “The Coastal View” came from as a personal attempt to focus my life. I was going to take writing by storm and at times I flooded the market with every idea I came up with. It was only in doing this that I not only grew as a writer, but it inspired me to return to college where I graduated with an Associate’s Degree in English (with Honors) and self-published “Apples & Chainsaws” in 2019. 

What you see in these pages is essentially an evolution of who I have been over the past five years. I have been rebellious, creative, desperate. I have played with form as I consumed media, attended lectures, and lived a life. All of these things make up the pages, as I’m sure they will future collections. You can’t appreciate the evolution of a style without seeing where things started, like a garage band’s first E.P. where the audio mix is completely off and lo-fi. The heart is there, but that guitar sounds way too crunchy.

That is why “The Coastal View” is here, even if a lot of my other early work isn’t. I do find certain passages a bit amateurish, but they explain what I learned for everything that follows. I was a simpler person then, and my goal is to entertain. There is a smaller story within the edges about my growth as a writer. I go into detail on each of these 20 stories in sections called “Further Reading.”

In a broader sense, this is a collection of stories that attempt to reflect everything that interests me as a writer. As someone who is fascinated by humanity’s personal connection to media, it is a recurring theme that informs actions of my characters and even adds a subtext rewarded by additional research (it worked for T.S. Eliot, right?). There’s even lyrical wordplay. These pages may be chocked full of references, but character comes first. It’s a journey into several lonely lives looking for meaning, captured in different styles and genres. 

This isn’t to say that I’m cloning anyone. I’m processing it through my lens, which is specific to my experiences. Yes, it’s a world where I get as much inspiration from seeing an empty grocery store, a mattress, documentaries on witchcraft or salesmen, as I do parodying William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” in a knock-off Batman ’66 riff. 

That’s the gift that all writers need if they want to get anywhere. Let every idea lead you down a crazy path. As someone who wrote “the stupidest zombie book” according to one person, I’m open to anything. It’s about trying to make it work as something greater.

I include “The Coastal View” not because it’s the best, but because I hope it shows you how my journey started. I want to believe that it will encourage you to follow your own path, write stories your way, and one day you’ll write a good one. The space on a page is limitless, and it’s time you understand what that’s like. 

If you would like to read more, including my first book "Apples & Chainsaws," you can find it all here on my personal Amazon page.