This piece appeared in the May 2003 issue of Über:

An Interview with the Angriest Author in the World
[546 words, est. reading time - 1:49] Interviewer: Alan C. Baird

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Alan C. Baird talks with David Bulley (DavidBulley.com), who wrote Weapon in Heaven, a novel whose protagonist is a contemporary version of the Bible's Job... but this guy wants nothing from God except to kill Him.

ACB: You once promised "never to teach creative writing, anywhere, ever." Why?

DB: A certain writing teacher, who has extremely poor taste, slammed one of my stories. I mean this guy's fiction really sucks. So I blurted out that quote... and then noticed the sigh of relief from my fellow classmates. I wanted them to giggle, but instead they just wiped the sweat off their brows and thought, "Phew! One of you is more than enough." I could see it in their beady little eyes. Their writing sucks, too.

ACB: Do your kids like to boast their dad's an author?

DB: Yeah, I guess. But at the last PTA meeting, some idiot walked up to me and said, "You must be Arthur. Nice to meet you." So I hauled off and decked him. That guy also sucks.

ACB: Why is Maine the setting for so much of your prose?

DB: In the north woods, where they lack any formal education, or even simple manners, people invent language as they go. Sometimes you don't know what they said, but they said it in a way that was not quite as boring as most chatter. Ultimately, though, they suck.

ACB: Your novel's main character wants to kill God. Have you ever reached this frame of mind?

DB: Let me lay it out for you, dickhead: Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and God got so pissed at them that he decided all the people born after that would inherit their original sin. I thought, "What a prick." Then I thought, "Somebody ought to kill that bastard. He sucks."

ACB: Weapon in Heaven pushes a lot of religious hot buttons: for example, a minister gets caught in a homosexual encounter with a young boy. Were you trying to get banned in Boston?

DB: Abso-fucking-lutely. I don't have gazillions of dollars for marketing or hiring publicists who could book me on the cool TV talk shows, so I figured the only way to get noticed was to tick someone off. It isn't working, so all I can say to those sicko pervert media types is: "You suck."

ACB: You grew up, as you say, "ugly Baptist." Did that childhood environment have anything to do with the subject matter of this book?

DB: If a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, does it affect the weather patterns over Saskatoon? Of COURSE, Shitferbrains! What the hell is wrong with you?

ACB: Okay, we should probably wrap this up before you pop me in the nose. Do you have any final words on the philosophy of writing?

DB: People think in stories; they relate to each other through stories, and they learn everything they ever learned through stories. The most important job in the universe is that of the storyteller. We expand people's awareness, let them keep stories they didn't earn through experience, and enrich their lives. Plus we allow them to dream, for just a little while, that their pathetic meaningless lives don't suck.


Alan C. Baird is our angry author liaison.

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