Calvin Setar

Category: Prose

  • First Novel, “Ohio & West,” (Self-) Published!

    Overjoyed to share that my first novel, “Ohio & West,” has been (self-) published! A labor of love and lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of lessons learned, I owe so much of where I’m at now to this work, both in terms of writing and my own personal journey. If you’ve got the time and a few dollars, I’d truly appreciate your support!

    Here’s a quick summary…

    An American coming-of-age story for a new age, Ohio & West chronicles one broke, unemployed millennial’s begrudging move back home.

    Somewhere within the endless search for a real job—whatever that might be—the narrator’s far more tangible work at a nearby restaurant quickly becomes the singular means of diverting mom and dad’s well-intended concerns, as well as the narrator’s own negativity and boredom.

    Through the juxtaposition of the quiet kitchen in their parent’s home and the one in the restaurant down the street—something like an unknown universe full of vibrant yet so often unsettling characters—not to mention a romantic life working only in fits and starts, the narrator manages to gather some understanding of certain truths regarding place, privilege, and happiness.

    And a short excerpt …

    It’s the blood that draws me back, the bright, brutal red welling up into a tiny dome, so vital and invigorating and disgusting—it’s all I can do not to lick my knuckle clean. Instead, I return my attention to the knife in my hand and the brown sack next to me, overflowing with half-frozen baguettes I’m supposed to be cutting on a bias, the itch in the skin over my heart, the product of my new—and yet not new, definitely not new, at least in that I was surely not the first employee to wear it, so maybe new-old but ultimately new only in that I had just received it this evening—black button-down shirt with the restaurant’s emblem embroidered on the breast pocket, not to mention the definitely new cut on my knuckle, so full of the beating of my heart, as all around me is shouting and movement and chaos though it’s not bleeding all that badly, at least not really, but watching the single red trickle, like a gentle weeping, I wonder if I should find gloves or a band aid or tell someone or scream for help and I cast about, searching once again for the person who was supposed to be training me or a means of escape but instead I just wind up watching through the pass as the cooks joke and shove and curse and arm sweat away and keep moving always moving never not moving, one shoving past the others to reach for a tall oven with something like French doors and yank it open, a suffocating heat filling every inch of the kitchen so swiftly that, even from here, even from five, maybe ten feet away, protected as I am by the tall metal barrier with the little cut-out rectangle of space that was the pass, the sweat that had already collected between my shoulder blades begins immediately to race down the length of my back, pooling at the top of my underwear as the cook, wearing a dirty t-shirt and checkered pants under a food-stained apron, brandishing a pair of tongs as though they were an extension of himself, pulls a tray out of the oven and drops it with a disgusted crash on the low table next to me.

  • Latest Story Published in MSU Roadrunner Review

    Very proud to say my story, “There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Sunscreen,” has been published in the latest edition of the Metropolitan State University of Denver Roadrunner Review! A piece inspired by the notion of “body scan meditation,” it focuses mostly on the concept of work in our current world and what little of our lives it leaves to us. It also involves a nursing home and a dead body!

    Many thanks to the editors at the MSU Roadrunner Review for selecting my piece. If you get a chance you should definitely check out the rest of the work in the issue!

  • Novel Excerpt

    **Early chapter of a new novel …

    The crowd, like a crackling fire blown to world-devouring proportion by the steady gusts of a desert night, roars.

    The stage lights white-hot, row after row like the deep emanations of the coals, the sea of faces beyond a moving, swirling mass of black, the nighttime sky dotted with the brightness of cellphone lights and flashes, a swirl of sparks flowing up, up, up only to disappear, to blink out and, with another great gust, be urged to towering height again, even taller than before.

    Her breathing heavy, but controlled, she traipses from one end of the stage to the other, an apex predator tracking its prey, salivating at the lingering ghost of its previous meal, pulse braying loudly over the expectation of the next. She looks down at the sequins dotting her chest, the long black flow covering the rest of her body, and exalts.

    Still early. Only a few songs in.

    It blooms.

    Good.

    A sound, a thunderclap, a sonic boom followed by a bolt of lightning so bright the first ten rows throw up their hands in terror, shielding themselves from what must be certain death, the storm come charging across the dunes to lay waste to the world. But when they drop, she sees only the glimmer of teeth, lips stretched to form smiles fit to split jaws at the hinge.

    Mesmerized. Entranced.

    A fresh roar fills the space, this world.

    My world.

    Ariel stands. She stands and though she thinks she oughtn’t, thinks how unbecoming it must be for a girl, a woman, a being of her stature to do so, she allows herself to smile with them. But while their smiles are smiles of ecstacy, of adulation, of reverence, hers is a smile of knowing, of impending satiation, of the fire as it licks its way toward another repast.

    She stretches herself, one long leg out, and waits.

    Just right.

    She waits.

    And even when the change comes, when the light disappears and the dark comes on once more, when a great cheer goes up and the tinkling bleeds into a steady buzzing, into an atmospheric pulse, she waits.

    I’m going to get it right this time. Just right. I’m going to get it perfect.

    The pulse continues, mutating slowly, grown urgent, the tone increasing in weight until the entire stage, the world, her world, shakes. She can just make out a handful of faces in the front row – euphoric, ecstatic, crazed. But even in the pitch, they struggle, struggle just to look at her, to take in her sacred form, instead peering around at the quiet bodies behind her, the monstrous sets dimly lit by the guiding lights at the edge of the stage, great, grotesque shapes growing out of the swaying ground on which she stands.

    She waits, and the pulse grows.

    She waits, and the murmur in the crowd increases, strengthens, striving to match the widening pulse.

    But then, another sound joins the growing – a familiar sound, a sound outside of the sounds of this world.

    It’s a clanging, something like bells.

    Sudden terror cuts through her soothing, electrified harmony, as everything around her ripples, a stone dropped at her feet causing the very fabric of all to shift. Even the sound of the pulse, of her own breathing seems to ripple, coming in and out of focus.

    No! No! It’s too soon! It’s too soon! I haven’t even started yet!

    But already the terror, the panic is upon her, ripples overtaking her, yanking her away from everything, away from herself even, her real self, the sounds of this world fading as the other races forward. And she’s opening her mouth to cry out, screaming incoherent syllables of the most intense fury, the scream turning to entreaties to desperate pleas of nononono.

    But then, just like that, just as quickly as they’d come, the ripples are gone, the tinkling, the abhorrent chime calling her back to the other world gone as well, and in a quiet breath it’s as though they never were.

    The crowd goes on buzzing, the pulse growing, her hand, now clammy with sweat, still gripped tight to the microphone. The harmony steals over her once more and she settles back into it happily.

    Ecstatically.

    In the crowd, the flashes come faster, the calls of love and desire, of devotion, more insistent, the fire building itself to an inferno. Ariel soaks in it, letting it pour into the open space within, leaving her full up, near to the brim.

    When the pulse has reached an unstoppable place, a place where she’s almost certain it will destroy the very souls to which it calls, she raises the microphone.

    Ariel calls out one beautiful note. And over the pulse, the fire comes crashing down.

  • Team Eazy: The Championship Group Text You Never Knew Existed (Feature)

    We all know how it goes – your phone lights up, a hazy glow spreading across the ceiling as the march of one text after another buzzes its way into your sleep-heavy brain. You click it quiet and roll back to your rapidly cooling place amongst the pillows and blankets when the light and the buzzing return, again and again. Or maybe you check your phone after a workout, backhanding away the beads of sweat on the screen as you scroll through text after text, trying in vain to remember where you dropped the thread of the conversation.

    And while most group texts are little more than a means of making plans or needling friends, maybe for keeping in touch over long distances or safely separating one friend group from another, for some, it serves another purpose entirely.

    For Team Eazy, a group of guys who grew up together – literally and figuratively – in and around Michigan, many of whom attended Detroit Country Day School, it’s about motivation. It’s about keeping one another focused and on the right track, day in and day out, buoying spirits and ensuring, as best it can be ensured, that success is never far off.

    And if recent history is any indication, the Team Eazy group text is working like a charm. They’ve now got three titles, three big rings, between them – two Super Bowls and an NBA Championship – in the last two years alone.

    And there very well may be a fourth on the way…

    Continue @HNGN