Charles author pens 'Singing from the Staircase'

Eric Waldow recently published his book “Singing From the Staircase” through J2B Publishing.

The 20-year-old La Plata resident, who graduated in 2022 from La Plata High School, is studying English literature at the University of Maryland Global Campus.

Waldow is a member of the Charles County Chapter of the Maryland Writer’s Association, and J2B Publishing is owned by Jim Brewster of Newburg, who produces the monthly Maryland Writers Association article.

As for new material, Waldow said he is “already making brand-new stories for other collections, developing my ideas as they are in ‘Singing from the Staircase’ and exploring whole other vistas of deep imagination.”

The 247-page book of short stories is available at www.amazon.com/dp/1954682700.

How long have you been writing, and how did you get started?

Strictly speaking, I’ve been writing ever since I entered the education system. But, on a deeper level, some of the earliest memories I have of myself are connected to my fascination with storytelling: either sitting enraptured before a good orator or simply being alone, turning inward to create thence entire dramas within my thoughts. Even so, it was only when I entered high school that my passion began to blossom and (with the support of teachers, family, professors, and friends, to whom I am forever indebted) that my own stories were put to paper.

What inspires you to write?

This is a confusing world: a maddening, unknowable place, steeped in the terrible and, in many ways, incompatible with the human mind. What reality truly is will forever remain obscure to us: Science opens a door for only another to show up behind; philosophy pushes impotent against locked passages; theology settles into itself. All is utter mystery. That, in a word, is my inspiration. Emotion, notably through art, takes us on journeys, whirling us forth into the inexplicable and allowing us, if just briefly, to see things make sense and how we are meant to exist here.

Do you consider writing to be a career?

All in all, writing can certainly be a career; but, as any good author will assert, it is also so much more than that. Writing, like all art forms, is an attempt to create: to use our divine spark that is consciousness to challenge, inspire, validate, ponder, praise to be who we uniquely are. That fulfillment, for me at least, extends beyond any such notion of money or having kids or property. Literature will always be something bigger.

What kind of writing process do you use?

I consider myself a disciplined writer: storyboarding, planning, outlining, reaching one-thousand words a day of typed material; I believe immensely in the prosperity garnered from hard work. I’m constantly on the lookout for meaningful tales, concepts and ideas that might forge a new story.

Who are some of your favorite authors and why?

The gateway drugs into the literature I make were the works of the famous H.P. Lovecraft. To someone unversed in his special brand of horror, reading his stories is a total dive into our most primal fears. He was the stepping point for me getting into writing; and, though I have since moved on to other — and, in some ways, better — writers like Clark Aston Smith, Algernon Blackwood, and the host that are the makers of the classics, I still find myself returning to Lovecraft’s recognizable style of lofty words, pages of eon-old architecture, and elaborations on the infinite smallness of mankind.

What do you want readers to know about you?

When my readers examine my work and see what is essentially an intimate look into my mind, I want them to realize that, with my words, I am looking into them — the reader — just as much as myself. I want them to see themselves in my monsters; I want them to be afraid when they sympathize with a loathsome character. I want them to be challenged and, when they are challenged, realize that it is supposed to be that way. We all have a shadow: a darker, twisted self. It is better we confront the void then let it eat us whole.

Please include a brief description of your book.

Spawned as from the gulf of dream-filled slumber, spanning a swath of literary genres, E.M. Waldow’s debut collection, Singing from the Staircase, features 15 of his best short stories, each influenced by such giants of weird fiction as Clark Aston Smith, Thomas Ligotti, and the magnificent H.P. Lovecraft. So, dear reader, peel back the curtain, smell the flowers, and climb this mighty staircase singing.

Please include an excerpt from the book

“A digging soul knows not the path its spade shall plumb. Life, that vital spirit, sinks unseeing along a nether course unknown, traversing into darkness and darkness more, blindly groping for passages ahead, and scooping away those of its own. And we, but vessels of this Lively Thing, born upon surface Earth and treaders of soil. We of the Above, how should it be possible for us to know that of the Below?”