By Soren Narnia

When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher asked me to sit next to a handicapped kid named Sean and help him along a little if I could. It wasn't easy, because he was quite slow, but I tried. When Sean got especially excited about something, or if he was told he had done something well, he would smile and shout out nonsense words. One of them I remember, which he used to shout many times over the few months I sat beside him, was "Sorinarneeya!" Again and again, it was a harmless word he used when he was happy, and seeing my puzzled expression would just make him say it once more, even more pleased than the first time: "Sorinarneeya!" For some reason that word stuck with me for years, until one day as an adult I realized how neatly and curiously it cut in half. And I thought that was so perfect, how this little gem of a thing had sprung from a bit of the absurd and a bit of the tragic. That seemed like all of life to me: momentary bits of perfection out of all the absurdity and tragedy. And amazingly, they just keep on coming.



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in 2008
The Lonely Know Only One Thing

Their names were Louis and Natasha, and they could not have been more different. The love that grew between them was awkward, hesitant, fraught with difficulty, and ultimately more powerful than any they could ever have with anyone else. Together they changed each other, protected each other, and fought through poverty, jealousy, and the specter of mental illness. But in the end, their greatest test was simply to overcome the beautiful illusions which hide the difficult truths of romance. Their funny, tear-filled history is told through their own words and the words of those who knew them best in a novel shaped by a narrator whose care for the couple extends beyond the page. His determination to give Louis and Natasha the power over their story’s conclusion breaks the very rules of fiction to leave lasting joy and permanence in the face of genuine sorrow.


recently
They Say Words Will Return To You When Faces Won't

From Sketch of a Bird in Flight, the poignant story of a lonesome gunslinger’s run from the law and the work of art which brings a ray of beauty into his tragic life, to Bride, Groom, Sunday, Forever, the account of a couple’s unusual and desperately honest on-stage wedding ceremony, this volume spans every corner of the imagination, presenting both novellas and short stories from a variety of genres. Adelaine follows a reluctant spy on a simple mission endangered by the deception of a fragile young woman, and in The Curtain and the Earth, an American engineer witnesses the Stath-Khellian Fissure, a genocide whose horrors drive him to an alternate reality in which the hand of God itself intervenes in humanity’s self-immolation. Decibels is a tale of suspense pitting a deaf criminal against his captive in a strange game of lies where the power of sound takes on life and death consequences, while An Oral History of Hell explores the afterworld through the eyes of a man intent on a redemptive path out of that wintry, desolate land. In all of these tales, the male heart tries above all things to find some sort of truth, some moment of meaning, amidst the enduring chaos of life's long journey.
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Books


A Listing of the Holdings of the National Museum of Romance
The often melancholy stories behind the objects found in a thought-provoking fictional tourist attraction---numerous tales of love and what men and women were willing to risk for it.
full text available online


Roll! They Cried
The comic tale of a baseball player's unfortunate obsession with the board game he thinks will redeem his tarnished image.
full text available online


Tyrant, Draw Thy Sword
This novel of imagined history recalls the night a brutal street gang battled police and federal agents in defense of a doomed American ghetto.
full text available online


512 Chilling Cautionary Tales of Unchecked Exuberance
A collection of 385 short stories and skits designed to provoke idiotic, instantly regrettable laughter. 211 stories in all! That means a total of 164 stories!
full text available online


Witherheart
A novel of suspense, action, and the supernatural tells the story of a thirty-year fight to capture a man believed to have everlasting life.


Lillinandra
This summation of books that never were is an experiment in imagination, an ode to the immortal possibilities of what can lie between two covers.
full text available online


Sicko, I Set You Free: A Treasury of Erotica for the Easily Amused
A collection of funny erotic stories---precisely what the world so badly needs to solve every one of its problems.
full text available online


Those Snowy Nights You Read to Me, They'll Never Be Forgotten
A quartet of short novels greatly divergent in theme and style, from a work of sanguine romantic fiction to an eerie drama of unsettling suspense.


Song of the Living Dead
The dead rise and walk not once but twice in this gruesome, sad allegory which mixes humor, horror, and human drama.
full text available online


Whatever You Find Within You
A frantic and warm-hearted tale of the chaos surrounding the historic discovery of a long-dead literary legend's final, and regrettably awful, play.
full text available online



Knifepoint Horror: Book One
A collection of horror tales devoted to a new genre which stresses rawness and minimalism.


Wanderings

Thoughts of a Janitor of the Imagination
 A blog with only the most tentative hold on reality.

God Cannot Know You Shed Your Tears for Others
This short fable takes the form of a primer for elementary school readers, one which attempts to explain the most enigmatic catastrophe in human history. On a spring day in 2007, a sudden and unexplained streak of wind more than twice as powerful as any hurricane ever recorded annihilated the towns of Matoon and Dears Fall, Nebraska. Unlike any other disaster throughout time, it forced mankind to re-imagine itself as a mere puppet under the will of powers more mysterious than ever thought possible.

Held in the Thrall of the Awful
A tribute to the worst movie ever made. No, it's not what you think. It's worse.

Toward the Close of November
Two strangers who have known only loneliness and tragedy come together for one immense act of hope and defiance.

Spirits Broken, Reasonable Rates
I've gone across the country on Greyhound. Let me share with you the agony.

Awkward Silences: An Audio Treasury
A CD the world needs so badly I can't even stand to think about it.

My Poem About Kicking Your Ass
Last but not least, this is my poem about kicking your ass.



Email: SongOfSadBirds@aol.com