Columbia author brings creative worlds together in debut novel 'The Cyclopes' Eye'
Sometimes inspiration travels a path you innately understand or have come to expect. And sometimes, the muses stop on a dime, bend their bodies, make you give chase in a wholly different direction.
Planning to write a new poem, Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius pressed pen to paper. But creativity began running its wild race, with characters and plot points introducing themselves. Applying himself faithfully to this surprising turn — and doing so for a matter of five years — he came away with his debut novel.
"The Cyclopes' Eye" published via NineStar Press last month, both fulfilling and expanding the writing world the Columbia author built for himself.
How the act of writing shaped the author's future
A Cincinnati native, Haskey-Valerius studied fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago before eventually migrating to Columbia with his husband about four years ago. In high school, he didn't see — or even recognize the viability of — writing as a path, until a friend introduced the notion of majoring on the page.
A seemingly natural gift, and an avenue for self-expression, writing became the center of his life.
"It was something I always came back to doing when I was feeling kind of lost," Haskey-Valerius said.
Poetry, he said, most clearly compelled him and, to date, he's published soulful and vivid verse in journals such as Rust + Moth and Eastern Iowa Review. Prose asserted itself too, manifest in short pieces published by the likes of Belmont Story Review and Iron Horse Literary Review.
The question animating the poem which wouldn't be a poem was both incredibly physical and metaphysical in nature: What if a person could reach back through their eye to retrieve a "long-buried memory?" Haskey-Valerius said.
As novelistic synapses fired, he worried over factors like capacity and commitment. With encouragement from his husband and field manuals of sorts to consult, he pressed ahead.
Haskey-Valerius revisited favorite books such as "The Giver" and "Catcher in the Rye" and well as newer texts like Adam Silvera's "They Both Die at the End" and Aiden Thomas' "Cemetery Boys" to internalize three-act structure, and to fully grapple with what it takes to create satisfying character arcs while investing in each character's individual voice, he said.
Seeing the world through Henry's eyes
Expanding on his initial vision, Haskey-Valerius conceived a world in which a giant corporation promises great incentives to people willing to give up one of their eyes for the company's own elusive ends.
Henry, the novel's protagonist, is "a boy who is really lost and anxious and he overthinks every single thing," his author said. Shackled to shame and disappointment stemming from his place within family matters, Henry needs to accept his guilt and resolve all that's plaguing him, Haskey-Valerius added.
Living within Henry's head, the reader will experience a lyric way of thinking, the author said — not poetry exactly, but a poet's way of approaching the world.
And as Henry navigates his own story in a perilous world, readers will encounter dramatic renderings of concerns from our world such as poverty, health-care inequity and homelessness. Haskey-Valerius wanted the prose to shine some beams of light onto "underserved communities" in the way only literature can, he said.
The novel cares deeply both for queer main characters and for their mental health. Writing frankly about Henry's interior world is a gesture from the author back to a younger version of himself, who would have appreciated — who needed — to read stories acknowledging the realities of mental health, he said.
A view to the future
Beyond what the eye is drawn to — that is, the missing eye of Henry's sister — the cover of Haskey-Valerius' debut contains an enticing bit of information: this surprise first novel isn't the end of this particular story.
Revising the book, more and more social and cultural elements presented themselves to the author. He followed inspiration again into a second book-in-process and an eventual trilogy.
Writing "The Cyclopes' Eye," Haskey-Valerius faced fears and dreams; he didn't want to give up on the latter by giving into the former. His dedication, and key voices of support, kept him at this creative labor.
"I didn’t want to give up, because I knew that if I gave up, if I even took a break from this for more than a few days, I would never return to it. I was really holding myself accountable, and I had my husband hold me accountable too," he said.
"The Cyclopes' Eye" is available through Columbia's Skylark Bookshop, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and other retailers. Learn more about the author at https://www.jeffreyhaskey-valerius.com/.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Columbia author Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius publishes debut novel
