Charles Matthew Sauer is the author of One Hunter and One Cougar, Facts and Fictions and Ciphers, Fragments and Other Random Stuff. He also wrote Mondo Jazz and Z-Axis, and Deus ex Machina; Logos. First published in the early 1990s in various magazines, such as Wooden Teeth, Sneak Previews and Eldritch Tales, he worked as an editor for Neo Magazaine in Utah, and for the G.W. Review while studying literature at The George Washington University.
Works[]
Sauer's early poetry, such as A Conversation with Herself, We are Porous Selves, Rosalind Sanchez, and Azure Elephants show strong affinities with Transcendental Poets such as Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, as well as Modernist influences such as T.S. Eliot, Borges, and Wallace Stevens. Sauer started an independent publishing company named Wordsmith Chapbooks in Kaysville, Utah, where he bound by hand fewer than thirty copies of a work of poetry named Mondo Jazz and Z-Axis. From that book, the poems Grandma Goss and Coyote Nights demonstrate a shift in the tone and style toward Realism, further reinforced with non-fiction letters and a metafictional short story with the title, Your Talking Story.
Though he republished poems on the Internet, he did not publish any new work for fourteen years. His debut novel Deus ex Machina: Logos, published in 2008, is a mystery and a ghost story about a software engineer who, studying the local lore in Colorado, discovers a secret book. The style and tone of Sauer's book are highly experimental for which he has earned both praise, "poetically symphonic imagery" [ Kirkus Discoveries], and criticism "… My mother … read the book, and she didn't get it …" [ Monster Librarian]. The experimental portions of the novel have a cyberpunk feel to them, including a poem written in the software programming language, C++.
Background[]
While studying literature at The George Washington University ( Washington, D.C.), Sauer held a variety of unusual jobs ranging from editing and layouts at Neo Magazine, to research for Congressman Wayne Owens, to hauling garbage for the Clearfield City Parks Division in Utah. He went on to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science from Weber State University ( Ogden, Utah). Not long after that, Sauer moved to Colorado and IBM - Printing Systems Division employed him as a software engineer. When IBM sold the Division to Ricoh, Sauer returned to a writing fiction and poetry, full-time.
Related[]
- Metafiction (a standard literary device)
- Deus ex Machina (a standard literary device)
- Deus ex Machina; Logos (the novel)
External links[]
- The author's website: www.spectralogos.com
- Also see: deusexmachinalogos.wikidot.com