Another Snippet From My New Novel, 7 Stones

A little sample from my forthcoming novel, 7 Stones. I'll try my hardest have it out in fall:

Ashavan was attempting to use his senses to bridge the gap, now, speaking softly in his deep resonant voice in order to tease out some kind of response from the seemingly comatose man lying on the bed in front of him.

“You have stared into the darkness, Douglas Slattery, and it has overwhelmed you. You have, as Freidrich Nietzche said, stared into the abyss, and the abyss has stared back into you. But what would happen, Doug, if while gazing into the emptiness we did not lose faith? What if, while traveling in the darkness that it so happened that we were the light we needed? The abyss exists, there is no denying, but so do we. That also is indisputable. We may be tiny, but as Tennyson said, ‘what we are, we are.’ It is perhaps the era we are now living in that has forgotten this. We are the first generation to have left the land and gone to live in cities of man’s creation, and so we have forgotten that we are still a part of all creation. Science has caused us to look at the world as outside observers, we see everything as scientific phenomena, but we have forgotten ‘self’.

He spoke on, in some way hoping the words might bridge the gap between himself and Doug. “I met a man aboard the ship we were on, a wonderfully intelligent physicist, Max Planck. One seldom gets the opportunity to come across a mind like his, even for one as well travelled as I. He told me that science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature, and that is because we are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.”

Ashavan looked down at Doug, hoping for signs of some kind of recognition. “Don’t you see, Doug, in the final analysis, it is up to you. And I. The abyss, the nothingness, it’s an empty stage for us to perform upon, an blank page waiting for you to write your story on it, a silence awaiting a song. Nothing doesn’t matter. You do, we all do. And it’s up to you, there is nothing that nothing can do to you. It is your choice to come back. You can be part of the nothing if you wish. But it is a choice. It is your story, Doug, you who write it.”