Best of the Best: BE Hewson – Memoirs of an Ex-Mormon

by Craig Magnuson on January 24, 2011

Memoirs of an Ex-Mormon by B.E. Hewson

Popping fights and picking cherries—cutting ties with the Mormon church is culture shock at its finest. In this new trans-genre form that combines short stories, short prose, and poetry, B.E. Hewson anthologizes the memories, emotions, and imaginings of a faith-failed adolescent colliding with an uninviting world.

Mormonism has a long, storied past. More interesting are the lives of the people who leave the Latter Day Saints, and embrace the secular world.

Unlike the Amish, Mormons don’t really get a Rumspringa, and that is what B.E. Hewson seems to desperately wish for: The freedom to make small mistakes now, so she avoids the really big ones later on in life.

The opening tale in this mish-mash of poetry and short stories is the most vivid of the lot.  ”How to Win Him” has the unpleasant ring of reality, and is the tale of a Mormon girl who has left the church, and escaped pearly-toothed Dentist types, only to end up with a cheating bad boy.

She is a woman who wants to shake up her perfect life, and accidentally overachieves. She is insecure, with no support from her former church, and little more from her boyfriend. The insecurity is magnified by the presence of other women, and by the self-consciousness she has with regard to her virginity.

It’s a heartbreaking piece of fiction, although I suspect the author placed some of her own experiences in every sentence. One has to assume that Hewson is a woman, for the purpose of this review. If not, it makes this small volume even more incredible.

This book is filled with despair, of the grandest sort: The kind that makes you feel awkward, hurt, and cringe in pain, along with the protagonist. That is the unifying theme behind these stories: You will feel. Whether you like it or not. You will not be comfortable.

The poetry here seems distant from the author. These poems are more brutal, due to the brevity and severity of the language used, but they don’t engender the same sense of empathy that the short stories do.

This work is best summarized by a portion of Ms. Hewson’s last poem, Trek:

Bled for belief, they say, bled for me, they say, bled for mothers birthing daughters into truth today. This is why, because of ancestor sisters and their oozing feet and their starving babes and their steadfast faith, that we are not to question the cause they suffered for.

Hewson’s characters have a suffering all their own, and she has the courage to ask “Why?”.

-Craig

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5 Stars – Download “Leave Me Alone: Memoirs of an Ex-Mormon” on Smashwords for free.

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Why Am I Here?

by Craig Magnuson on January 23, 2011

So, this should probably be on the “About Me” page, but that has to be fairly concise.

I was obsessed with both books and technology from a very young age.  Before the dawn of the internet, it was not unusual for me to check out 13-22 books at the time from my local library.

I would then take two pillows, prop myself up, and begin working through the stack. My family had doubts about the value of fictional works, so the rule was that I had to check out two biographical/non-fiction works for every Nancy Drew.

This, of course, paved the way for me to become a know-it-all/Renaissance man. At the tender age of 13, I received my first PC. It was slow, had no RAM to speak of, and the most fun you could have was customizing the DOS prompt. While none of my friends could make their computer ask ” What is your bidding, my master?”, they could play games that had sound, and actual graphics.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered BBS’, AOL, and finally DSL, the Holy Grail of speed and information. My love for books gradually waned, as I increasingly chose short, online articles, instead of unwieldy paperbacks.

That all changed this year, when my wife bought a Kindle for the both of us. The world of books opened up –along with our wallets– and we rediscovered the joys of reading.

When you are purchasing/reading a book, you naturally ask yourself  two questions:

  1. Why do books cost so much?
  2. How hard can it be to write a book?

I found the answer to both questions fairly easily. Books cost tons of money, not because of the paper, but the infrastructure that it takes to put said print on paper to begin with.

For the most part, the authors are not taking home massive royalty checks. Rather, there are pockets of overly entitled people, living within the bounds of Manhattan that take home the largest share of the profits.

This entitlement breeds a form of elitism and general snobbery that would inspire revulsion in any other industry. In the publishing industry, rather than contempt, this attitude spawns emulation.

How do I know? I have visited writer’s forums. What is a writer’s forum? It’s a place where they host contests to measure a certain body part, even if God decided against giving you the anatomical equipment necessary to compete. This is all done in the most professional, technically correct manner, with only the faintest hint of passive-aggressive behavior.

While some of these forums are excellent, and can help writers with the basics,  they mainly kill creativity at its source. Instead of assisting the budding author with filling plot holes, they use their previously worthless English degrees to show said author that they know how to properly diagram a sentence.

A natural question that flows from this diatribe is “Are you an author?”. The answer is “No.” I am a reader who is tired of proscribed technical excellence which weighs down the telling of a formerly good story.

If I hear “Show, don’t tell.” one more time, I think I will scream. I am a reader, not a writer. If I like “telling”, it matters not what a reader, who happens be an author thinks of the writing.

So, how hard can it be to write a good book? That depends upon how many unsuccessful authors you allow to shape your story. You will notice I said “unsuccessful authors”, as many of the people that you will speak with on these forums have not experienced success. The likelihood of getting published decreases with every moment you spend there.

This is also the point where a great, shining light enters the arena. Sites like Smashwords, and Amazon’s Kindle store have lowered the barrier for entry for a great many unknown, but excellent storytellers.

Unfortunately, it has also lowered the barrier for equally awful, unknown storytellers. These are the publishing equivalents of the rather effeminate male contestant on American Idol, who dresses in a gold thong, and proudly belts out his rendition of Alicia Keyes’ “I Keep On Falling”, while attempting to moonwalk. They are loud, awful, and really proud of what they have accomplished.

The problem is, when you see American Idol, you don’t judge the singing prowess of the other contestants based on the freak that performed before them. Once again, the writing profession does the opposite. A vast amount of moonwalkers in thongs are considered typical of the entire independent author scene.

So, what is my role in all this? Well, I’ll be reviewing the best of the best, and the worst of the worst here. Good cover art, bad cover art, and the amazing stories that lie beneath will be a frequent guest on this website.

I won’t leave the lousy stuff out. Some of it just so horrible that it deserves instant “cult classic” status. Those authors deserve an audience, too.

With that said, let us begin…

-Craig

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