Deep Dive into the Glade

Amos Glade; you know him best for his groundbreaking series that reshaped the magical realism genre as we know it, known best as the Tom Morrow books. But who is the real Amos Glade?

As the legend was derived, from his early poetry titled Self Portrait, his mother was a bunny, his father was the moon, and he spontaneously generated under the damp and dirty detritus of a small town religious family’s laundry chute. Although his writing never explicitly detailed the true name of his hometown, Glade Scholars have found ample evidence that proves the universe he wrote from is both taken from experiences in his hometown and simultaneously something altogether unique.

The truth of Glade’s past can be both simple and heartwarming and it created the universe that he was able to share with his readers going on strong for two centuries since his death.

Glade was born the fourth and youngest child, each born five years apart, to [Names Redacted by Order of the Sandwich Company] in what is estimated to be Payson, Utah. His mother led a neonatal nursing unit and his father led the local police. While they worked full time jobs to support their family, and his siblings being much older, Glade became known as a latchkey kid.

Having recovered, at the age of two, from a severe case of shingles Glade developed lifelong nerve pain and clinical anxiety. He battled sexual assault by two classmates in a school bathroom at the age of 13. He began to fear… everything… and with no one at home to teach him how to process his fears he escaped into books and imagination instead.

Glade eventually learned to battle his fears by facing them, but he continued to devour books at an intense speed before developing human friendships. He found his favorite activity was sharing stories that became increasingly elaborate. He documented his dreams and stories in a third person journal. He joined his high school’s journalism club and then theater club.

His first stage play, The Truth About Homework, won first place at the student production showcase. He went on to win two more years in a row which only sparked his interest in writing further until he won a scholarship for theatrical writing.

Glade packed his bags and moved to college ready to pursue a career in creative writing, but love found him first. While working at a coffee kiosk on campus Glade was approached by [Names Redacted by Order of the Sandwich Company] who asked him to work on a project together. The two fell quickly in love in their own way.

Glade succeeded his program, transferred schools, and graduated with a degree in creative writing from the University of Utah. This is where his poetry began to take root, inspired not only by Williams Wordsworth, Edgar Allen Poe, and Edward Gorey, but by the professors that taught them.

Then tragedy struck, after years of back and forth romance, his first love took his own life on Glade’s birthday. No note.

Writer’s block took hold of Glade’s heart. He was tortured by guilt, by remorse, by an unending stream of nightmares. The block lasted a week, then a month, and as the years went by he gave up on writing. He earned his master’s in business from Westminster College and moved into corporate America.

The fears of his childhood returned. He grew depressed, distant, he forgot who he was. He discovered the darkest realms of his imagination and he lived there. He forgot how to communicate.

He was loved immensely by the people around him, but he pushed them away. No matter how hard they tried.

He nearly took his life and, in one of his darkest moments, in Nashville, Tennessee, he was reminded of the joys an imagination can bring. His writer’s block cracked.

He started slowly by developing one of his most beloved characters, Madame Lunette Forrel, a New Jersey style housewife medium and fortune teller. (Lunette Forrel itself being a cheap anagram of Fortune Teller.) Madame Forrel is first introduced in his microfiction The Myriad Fortune Teller and has also been referred to in later works as the Witch of Keres Street (though some Scholars argue they are two different people or, perhaps, even sisters.)

Glade’s first published book was poetry based on the unique tarot created solely by Madame Forrel at the heart of the Tom Morrow novels. Glade even manufactured and gave away 100 free sets of an actual tarot deck; remastered and sold at a decent price, if you are able to get your hands on an original deck it can today be sold in the thousands.

Something many scholars won’t tell you is that when Glade felt the writer’s block creeping in he would often turn to his alter ego, Guy Valley, to spend time diving into pure fantasy homoerotica described best as Tom of Finland meets H.P. Lovecraft.

With his poetry out in the world he could then focused on writing his first novel, Tom Morrow’s Home for Aging Dogs, published in the autumn of 2031. The prequel, Dagmar and Noodles, was published two years later followed annually by five more books to complete the seven book series in 2038 with its grand masterpiece Morticians of the Yukon.

Selling 37 copies, at most, of any single title, Glade never found fame or fortune during his lifetime, but died a happy and fulfilled life anyway. He met, fell in love, and married John Cena in the spring of 2029. They remained together until his death, at the age of ninety-seven, choking on a poisoned donut.

His murder remains unsolved.

See Tom Morrow’s Home for Aging Dogs, starring the clone of DJ Qualls as Tom Morrow and the reanimated corpse of Missi Pyle as Dagmar, only on the big screen this weekend at a theater near you.