Nemonymous

Three (ad infinitum) wags of the thingie commonly known as a tail, Mr. Lewis!

Hi everybody,


Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alberto Daniel Hetman, 41 years old, born in a far, far away city, a city about 10 minutes away from Buenos Aires, Argentina, from European parents that emigrated to South America, in the early '30s.

I am not really a writer. I'm an engineer that came to Toronto, Ontario, as many others, looking for better opportunities (which of course I did not find). I wrote about 150 poems, mostly love poems, and I still keep them because my wife would kill me if I get rid of them. She even keeps my love letters. I wrote simple poems for about 8 years, and I stopped all of a sudden, I believe 10 years ago.

A friend of mine suggested me to write down those stories (one would say) that I spontaneously invented, sometimes inspired by H P Lovecraft, and Poe. I was lucky that I read J L Borges in Spanish and that some translations are as poor as most Lovecraft's stories are when translated to Spanish. I started to write, imitating what I had at hand, science fiction writers, such as P J Farmer, and C Simak. Then I realized that I cannot stop writing, if I stop I die, I can say. When I write, I breathe. I am in peace with myself. After 8 years improving my writing, I have about 200 short stories, more or less of the same quality.

After discovering writers such as Jeffrey Thomas, Thomas Ligotti, to name a few, I decide to write stories that either were not written, or I did read yet. Only a bunch of people, 5, sometimes 6, had spare time to read my stories. I kept only the ones that according to them were better. I still write, I have material for another hundred or more. I had no intention of sharing my crazy ideas with anybody until by chance, a month or so ago, I got in touch with Ligotti himself.

Ligotti read 3 of my stories, he kindly made some comments. Through him I found another exceptional amateur writer, even though he is now a published writer, Barry Wood, a writer from Nova Scotia. Finally, he told me that I could post some of my stories online, so I did it. As long as I have readers on the other side, I am happy. I do know that the are many exceptional writers here. And, yes, my intention is probably to know if a stranger that does not know me enjoys my writing. I believe that even if the answer is "I don't like what you write", I'll be doing it because (as I said) I write to breathe.

Something more to add about me, I read about 800 books in my life. I have some 500 or more, just here, against the wall, and I cannot stop enjoying what I see. I love reading books. The first book I read was "Doomsday 1999" by Berlitz, when I was 14, and I think that I went through a lot all these years. The last book I read is a chapbook by Michael Pendragon, Nightscapes.

I am a father of a boy, 4 years old, named Julian Nathaniel, in honour of two great writers, Julian and Nathaniel Hawthorne. My wife loves me after 11 years of marriage, and this is all I could ask from life.

My father was a baptist pastor, who believed in God, but I cannot. When I was 16, and probably after reading Nietzsche I became an atheist, 25 years ago. My beliefs are simple: life is meaningless, god does not exist, and I adhere to the theory of Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons) that soul is only a concept, and does not exist. I don't have any political views. And I also believe that ideas cannot be killed, only verified or refuted, but not imposed.

This is who I am.


ADH

I have just last night realized that I have read a story you wrote, without knowing that it was you who wrote it...Watch the Whiskers Sprout. Very surreal, and quite unforgettable. I liked it very much, and now am amused at the seeming coincidence that I have unwittingly spoken to the author.

René Magritte. God's Salon. 1948

Hello! I just thought I'd mess up the solemnity of your profile with a silly visitor message.

Nemonymous is surely but an unconscious collaborative of our collective dormant muses, manifesting as a singularity of perpetual phantasms wrapped in shrouds of nemonymity. There is no other plausible explanation for such a body of work to have been created by a lone mind.