What happens when an Irish Catholic priest heads west to 1864 Colorado to evangelize an American Indian tribe? In sophomore Caleb Eatough’s recently published book, “The Western Gods,” that priest falls in love with an American Indian goddess named Eithne, and other gods retaliate.
“Sometimes things don’t really have a realistic solution,” Eatough said. “The last chapter of the book, there has been a relationship between the two characters, Eithne and Alan. They have a parting of the ways as it were. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s kind of a happy ending. It’s bittersweet.”
Eatough remembers the exact date that the idea for his book came to him. It was Feb. 10, 2010: more than two years before coming to Hillsdale. Now, four years later, his book is available in print on Amazon.com. Eatough self-published his 316- page work “The Western Gods” over winter break, culminating the long process of planning, writing, refining, and editing.
“I learned that I was too wordy,” he said of one of the early drafts. “It was very, very wordy. Writing is like panning for gold. You have to sift out the sand.”
The book was first published in electronic form in August of 2013. The cover artwork for both hardback and paperback editions was created by Eatough’s sister, Brianne. Eatough said it is up to the reader to determine the owner of the eye displayed on the cover. It could belong to one of two important characters.
“I sort of told her what I wanted and she drew something that would fit it,” Eatough said. “I gave her a lot of creative license.”
Eatough’s goal is to make his writing both exciting and thought provoking. As an ebook, The Western Gods has received positive feedback from readers online.
“I found myself frequently setting aside the novel and pondering the questions raised for myself before continuing to find how the characters resolve them,” an Amazon reviewer said.
Now that his book is published, Eatough’s top priority is garnering interest in his book. Having no background in advertising, he took the process as a learning experience.
“Marketing is a foreign concept to me,” he explained. “Since I’m self-published, my problem is discoverability, not distribution. Distribution is easy with Amazon because then it’s there for anyone who finds it.”
As a child, Eatough preferred reading to writing. Works by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Brian Jacques influenced his writing style and provided core themes to draw from while writing later.
“I like to try to write it to the end,” Eatough said. “If I leave something incomplete it feels wrong. So if I start something, I will finish to the end. That was me from an early age too.”
Eatough’s parents encouraged his interests. He learned horseback riding and earned a scuba diving certification at the age of 12.
“It’s those life experiences that have a lot to do with my writing,” Eatough says.
While the places in “The Western Gods” are mostly fictional, Eatough draws on experiences from his own life travels while writing descriptions of scenery.
“I’ve been to Moab, Utah. I’ve seen the desert,” he said. “I’ve walked in the desert and felt the dry heat. I’ve also been to Costa Rica. You write what you know.”
His descriptions were also influenced by the topography and environment of his home state, Colorado. Eatough did extensive research for the book, even examining maps of Denver from the 1860s.
“I had to contact local Denver historians,” he said. “I had to burrow through and find people.”
Eatough’s plots are dictated by the characters that form while he’s planning a story.
“Wasting characters is a horrible thing – you have to give your character a good resolution,” Eatough said. “Since one of my characters in the Western Gods is an immortal goddess, I intend for that to give her some resolution as a character. It’s very important to give your characters a good grounding and a good resolution – a good story.”
Sometimes, Eatough realizes that his characters have aspects of people in real life, but this only occurs after the character is complete in their own right.
“I write characters, and then only later do I find out that they were based on someone,” he said.
One protagonist in The Western Gods is an Irish catholic priest named Alan Cormac. Etaugh says that he recognizes aspects of himself in Cormac’s character. The other main character is a American Indian goddess named Eithne.
“If I have my sister read out her dialogue, it’s exactly in the voice that I imagine Eithne speaking,” he said.
For now, Eatough continues to write. Since finishing his book, he has continued work on other ideas including a nine-book series and a thriller short story.
“I have magins full of jots of ideas – especially in my philosophy notes,” he said. “They’ll frequently spring up in class. I always keep a notebook handy with me because I never know when an idea will spring up.”
