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The fiction writer’s task is to choose the most telling moments of a lifetime, and so probe and distill and dramatize those moments that each becomes palpable to the reader, by which experience we, the reader, will not only feel but ultimately know another life. We will know, through a collusion of the writer’s words and our own imagination, what we can never know in the flesh. We will know what it is like to live inside the skin and inside the heart of another human being.
If in real life we must each be separate and alone, we can, through good writing, while immersed in the solitary act of reading, merge our consciousness with another’s.
All artistic disciplines allow their audiences to eavesdrop on the experiences of others, but only fiction writing closes the distance between observer and participant, brings them not only together, puts them not merely face to face, but takes them deep inside each other.
~ Randall Silvis
The fiction writer’s task is to choose the most telling moments of a lifetime, and so probe and distill and dramatize those moments that each becomes palpable to the reader, by which experience we, the reader, will not only feel but ultimately know another life. We will know, through a collusion of the writer’s words and our own imagination, what we can never know in the flesh. We will know what it is like to live inside the skin and inside the heart of another human being.
If in real life we must each be separate and alone, we can, through good writing, while immersed in the solitary act of reading, merge our consciousness with another’s.
All artistic disciplines allow their audiences to eavesdrop on the experiences of others, but only fiction writing closes the distance between observer and participant, brings them not only together, puts them not merely face to face, but takes them deep inside each other.
~ Randall Silvis
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“This is not your usual page-turner: you definitely want to turn the pages, but with dread, because you feel something coming. But at the same time, you want to take time to taste every word; to bask in the ambiance of every scene”
— Criminal Element
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"Well-crafted prose, smart dialogue, and complex characters create a chilling thriller." ~ Mary Burton, New York Times and USA Today best selling author
In the highly-anticipated fourth installment in his critically-acclaimed series, Randall Silvis returns with a case that might break Ryan DeMarco for good.
LAUNCHES TODAY!
"Well-crafted prose, smart dialogue, and complex characters create a chilling thriller." ~ Mary Burton, New York Times and
USA Today best selling author
THE RYAN DEMARCO MYSTERY SERIES
“Poetically written, finely-wrought, richly imagined...a literary thriller of the first order. Randall Silvis gets to the hearts and souls of his characters like few other, if any, novelists.” ~ New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart
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“Poetically written, finely-wrought, richly imagined...a literary thriller of the first order. Randall Silvis gets to the hearts and souls of his characters like few other, if any, novelists.” ~ New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart
“A masterpiece...a work of genius, a novel so filled with such immense imagery and strength as to make you catch your breath.” ~ Over My Dead Body Magazine
“Randall Silvis raises the bar so high that after him it’s difficult to read anything else.” ~ BG Storyteller
THE HIGHLY-ACCLAIMED
RYAN DEMARCO
MYSTERY
SERIES
Get Started Today!
Get all four books in the series for under $10.00, now until Aug 3rd, when the final book in the series WHEN ALL LIGHT FAILS releases. Don't miss this chance!
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There are good reasons to fear the dark.
The Ryan DeMarco Mystery Series
Finding the story has always been the hardest part of writing for me. Once there is a story to tell, a discernible trajectory of movement from beginning to end, the words come easily, characters materialize full-blown and go about their business, the scenes paint themselves. But until there is a story complete with its set-up, conflicts and resolution, I feel a bit like an archaeologist — a profession I sometimes wish I had pursued — working long hours in the hardscrabble and sun, sifting through ton after ton of lifeless dirt, chipping away at silent rock. It is tedious and worrisome work, this methodical excavation of the possible, this carting away of the probably not. It keeps me awake at night and frazzles every day.
But when the first splinter of bone finally appears, that first fragment of story, all the tedium evaporates in a whoosh of exhilaration. And if you are lucky and digging in the right place, the fragments of story will slowly accumulate, and all through your waking and some of your sleeping hours you will piece them together. Until miraculously, one morning or afternoon when you do not expect it, the bones will start singing to you, telling their tale. For a writer there is no greater joy than the joy of hearing this song.
~Randall Silvis
Autobiography
Residency Dates: February 21, 2021 - March 13, 2021
Application Deadline: September 20, 2020
We are very hopeful that we will be able to hold this Residency and have waived the application fee. Also, due to COVID-19 and the immense stress it has put on artists, ACA will be offering full scholarships to accepted artists who qualify. The Board of Trustees and staff feel protecting our core mission is paramount, and are grateful to the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation for allowing us to make this commitment to funding exceptional artists during these times.
Randall Silvis is a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers
The fiction writer’s task is to choose the most telling moments of a lifetime, and so probe and distill and dramatize those moments that each becomes palpable to the reader, by which experience we, the reader, will not only feel but ultimately know another life. We will know, through a collusion of the writer’s words and our own imagination, what we can never know in the flesh. We will know what it is like to live inside the skin and inside the heart of another human being.
If in real life we must each be separate and alone, we can, through good writing, while immersed in the solitary act of reading, merge our consciousness with another’s.
All artistic disciplines allow their audiences to eavesdrop on the experiences of others, but only fiction writing closes the distance between observer and participant, brings them not only together, puts them not merely face to face, but takes them deep inside each other.
~ Randall Silvis
Life is a dance of only three basic moves: Let yesterday go, embrace today, and reach for tomorrow. If you cling too long to yesterday, both today and tomorrow will pass you by.
~ Randall Silvis
"No Woods So Dark as These has all the signs and qualities of another masterpiece by Randall Silvis. And yet no two of his books are alike... I honestly needed two days to recover."
~ Criminal Element
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2017
2018
2019
2020
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2021
A JDCMustReadBook
5 years in a row!
A Clean Sweep
for
The Ryan DeMarco Mystery Series!
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Randall Silvis
Embrace and nurture what you love.
Remove yourself from what
you despise.
Pursue,
for the joy of pursuit alone,
that which tantalizes you.
~ Randall Silvis
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Available now for pre-order!
“From a horrifying, explosive beginning
to a heart-wrenching conclusion,
No Woods So Dark As These is an
engrossing and twisted mystery…"
~ Reading Reindeer
To live by the conventions established by others is to live a conventional
life, and that kind of life
has never seemed
worth living
to me.
~ Randall Silvis
As a writer we use what we love to contain and convey what bewilders us. The love is not quite an antidote, not a foolproof anti-venom, but it helps to make the poison tolerable. ~ Randall Silvis
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Come fall in-love with Ryan & Jayme
the Ryan DeMarco Mystery Series
By Randall Silvis
Arriving Soon
Reserve Your Copy Today!
"A breathtaking story..."
"...written in a masterful fashion."
Serving up "Much more than a story of suspense or intrigue, it's a vivid study in changing human relationships that will keep readers thoroughly engaged." -D. Donovan, Senior Editor, Midwest Book Review
Love, betrayal, death, and the threat of losing it all...
The perfect recipe for a riveting tale of suspense and redemption.
In time the act of writing becomes a routine
kind of lovemaking, and you will often long for
the earlier affliction to strike again, the fever, the mindless rush, the effortless levitation. But even ordinary lovemaking is better than none at all, far superior to any other activity you can imagine, and if you ever doubt this you need only lean back in your chair and close your eyes and remember for a while that heady spring, those torrents of sensation that gave you your wings, and those first giddy loops
when you soared above the world.
~ Randall Silvis
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If you haven't already, you can sign up now for his free monthly newsletter at
Randall's April Newsletter is out!
The sweetest words ever put to paper are these: The End. The implications of those two small words, as they apply to a work of solitary and arduous creation — a novel, for example, or a play or screenplay or essay or story — are enormous. Those words imply that many lovely discoveries have been planted along the path to The End. A few surprises, revelations; moments of fright, fear, trepidation; instances of grief, anguish, despair; gifts of joyful music, bird song, monk chant, an aria of angels. The implication is that as the reader sets first step along the path to The End, she will be seduced by those words in her ear, will be moved by the evocative images that flash through her mind. She will be taken by the hand and led, dragged, carried into the heart of dark woods, and there embraced, transported, levitated to the sunshine of the other side. To write The End implies that you have planned and offered up to all who accept the invitation the sweetest of journeys — your heart in collusion with theirs; the mist of your spirit, your loves and your fears, swirled together with theirs for a ride across the firmament.
~Randall Silvis
Sometimes it works like this: You are crawling through your story on hands and knees, moving an inch at a time because the brush is so thick that it lets in very little sunlight. You cannot see the next tree in your path until you run up against it. And every time you manage to get past another obstacle you feel that you have gotten turned around somehow, off your course. You do not know how to get back on track or where you will end up. The only option is to keep crawling forward, to trust in movement, arduous as it might be. But you grow weary. The air is stale. Faith falters. Hope subsides.
This route was a mistake, a waste of precious time. A fool’s delusion.
This thicket is endless. It will be the death of you.
You pause to catch your breath, clear your head. If you pause too long, then sometimes, yes, you die in there. The story will die, be abandoned in the dark, and whatever piece of your soul was attached to it will die with it.
But sometimes, suddenly, for no reason other than because you have been too stubborn to stop pushing forward, the tree blocking your path tumbles over, just like that, felled by a sigh. And there before you the path lies exposed, wide and clear of all obstacles, waiting to take you again from scene to scene, chapter to chapter,
all the way home to a place you have never been.
~ Randall Silvis
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The first installment of what is to be a four-part autobiography of the critically acclaimed author Randall Silvis. Consisting of more than three hundred brief reflections and observations, none longer than a single typed page, this intimate and revealing collection is at turns humorous, informative, poetic, philosophical, and even angry as the author considers not just the art of creative writing but also the writing life, fatherhood, academia, politicians, introversion, the afterlife, solitude, romantic love, and nearly every other subject that has fallen under his scrutiny over the past fifty years. Silvis spares no victims, including himself, in this brutally honest consideration of his life and career, and of the failings and potential of the human species in general. A must-read for lovers of life, literature, and the pursuit of happiness.
August
14-16
August
17-19
August
20-22
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August 14-16
Dick Narvett asks: Are you still writing plays and will you be writing the scripts for the Ryan DeMarco Mystery cable series?