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Brian Hodge

Brian Hodge Biography

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“There's no love waiting for you. There's something massive, and powerful, you can feel it . . . but I still don't know how to accurately describe how you feel it, because it's more than just knowledge. It would be physical, too, if you had a body, except you don't. Or maybe it's a different kind of body, or maybe you just haven't yet shaken off the memory of the one you had, so it feels like you're still subject to the same expectations of gravity and pain. Even though there's no love, you are wanted there. The main thing you're aware of is this pervading sense of greed. You're like one gold coin in a vault full of them, spilling over with them. You're there to be hoarded. I don't know why, I couldn't tell you why. Maybe it only wants you because it can have you. Or maybe it'll have some other use for you eventually, and for now you're in some kind of holding pen. But . . . the sense of claustrophobia, and betrayal . . . they're just devastating. You can feel that all around you, too . . . like a scream that got so loud you can't even hear it anymore, it just rips through you like an electric current . . . And the only reason you know it's not Hell, or that maybe Heaven and Hell are the same thing, is because you can hear the singing, for lack of a better word, because it's not songs, or structured. But it's beautiful. Sure—it's Heaven, right? It seems to come from all around you, but it's far away at the same time. Maybe it won't be so bad, you're thinking, if I get to listen to this. But pretty soon, you realize it's not for you. And a little while after that, you start to notice the strain in it. Like that tone in a hostage's voice when he's reading a statement about how well his captors are treating him, except he's reading it with a gun at his head. And then you realize the worst thing of all: What you're hearing are the ones that have learned to beg . . .”

HeavenAfterlife
Book:World of Hurt
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“Let me see what I can come up with,' she said, and seemed to take a new satisfaction in it now. Something wrong to do, a law to break, and if she was lucky she might even get to steal, and it must have been then that everything changed between us and each of us didn't just have a neighbor to pass the time with but the closest thing either of us could find to a friend. ("Just Outside Our Windows, Deep Inside Our Walls")”

FriendshipRulesLaws
Book:Best New Horror 22
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“A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list.”

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Author:Brian Hodge
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“Writing for publication is an art, a craft, and a business, so you need to develop skill sets in multiple areas. You need to learn how to be a marketer just as much as you need to get past your influences and develop your unique prose voice. And you can't do it alone. You need a strong emotional support system to help cope with the frustrations and setbacks.”

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Author:Brian Hodge
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