Dear —
I was going through a horrible time when I published Obama's Dream. February 2016, the depths of a deep dark Beijing winter, and the view from the 38th floor of China Central Television's tower so thick with pollution that it looked like immersion in milk!
But how much worse was the pollution inside the tower, where management resisted my every effort to improve quality, arbitrarily increased my hours, so that I could no longer participate in the performing arts I loved, and fined me a day's salary for every missed hour of the extra imposed. Meanwhile, they refused to honor doctor's advice that I get more rest, nor to allow me any sickdays off when I became ill from working in an unheated office!
I write about all this in my Dueling the Dragon memoirs.
I was thoroughly, thoroughly miserable. But it was also when I made my first foray into independent publishing with the book Obama's Dream, lighting a candle at the end of that very long, very dark, and very cold tunnel.
In this epic poem, two great angels come to the sleeping president and take him on a transformational journey, even to the throne of God! My story has some kinship with Charles' Dickens A Christmas Carol, but it is also deeply infused with Biblical and mythological themes.
Later, I sent copies to the White House, gently trying to lead Obama away from his varnished imperialism, though in the end, as The Intercept pointed out in an article of Dec. 6, 2016, he would hand over to Trump "bombing campaigns in seven countries, a legally unaccountable drone program, and an open prison at Guantanamo Bay." More about all this in my three-volume Verses Versus Empire Collection.
These also amount to epic poems, and I do love epic poetry. I have read, and written summaries of, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and many more.
But it is Paradise Lost that has inspired me most, described by Gore Vidal as "the masterpiece of the English language", an assessment I agree with, even as a man who lives, loves, and breathes Shakespeare! It is in Paradise Lost that I first encountered Abdiel, the great seraph angel who alone defies Satan's summons to rebel against the Holy One.
Speaking truth to power. Rebuking power. A prophet's calling. That is why Abdiel is the ideal angel to support the prophet Elijah in my own epic poem devoted to him. And why I appoint Abdiel to disrupt Obama's respectable genocide in Obama's Dream. I also officially changed my first name to Abdiel because I so admire his example!
For many reasons, then, Obama's Dream has a central place in my heart. It was my first step as an independent author, my first attempt to invent an entire fiction book written in verse, and it gave me the confidence also to complete Elijah's story in verse, a project that had been in the works for several years.
More recently, I also recorded an audiobook version.
This is all to let you know Obama's Dream is one of 30 free books in this promotion and to ask, if you find blessing in it, to post a review of my book on Amazon or your favorite retailer.
Enjoy!
Love,
Abdiel
P.S. -- My mailing lists are in transition at the moment as I try to tailor them to the genres you are most interested in. So you may have experienced some glitches, including duplicate emails. The glitches are being addressed, but please excuse in the meantime.
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