Near-death as a gift.

Staff

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Local author T.C. Moseby knows he is going to die. And he says that’s not a bad thing.

“There’s something amazing about death,” the 24-year-old Monterey resident says. “Like there’s something amazing about birth.”

Moseby knows death better than most. When 13, he was diagnosed with cancer and endured nearly three years of chemotherapy. At one point, he sensed the finish.

“Mentally it hit me,” he recalls. “I was in chemo and had been in the hospital for 17 days with a fever that wouldn’t break. I thought, ‘This may be the end.’”

Ultimately, however, the Georgia native survived acute lymphocytic leukemia. And the lessons his from near-death survived with him.

“Life and death are intertwined,” he says. “Death is going to happen regardless. So you gotta live.”

Death is a driving force in Moseby’s fast-paced first novella, Meander, from which he’ll read this Friday, March 24 at Bay Books, a block from where he works at Plumes coffeeshop. To help market his compelling (if unpolished) book, Moseby’s released a number of his quick-hitting chapters online. These fleeting 500-word flashbacks weave characters and events that affect James, the protagonist, in the months before his accidental death.

For Moseby, Meander represents more than a chance to his express himself: It’s a vehicle to help people confront their mortality and for him to embrace his opportunity for life.

“When we accept death as inevitable, it becomes a less fearful thing. A lot of characters had to end up deceased in my book, but there’s kind of a tragic beauty in that,” he says. “There’s a reason the martyrs and the suicides and the death of soldiers touch us deeply…

“But people delude themselves, thinking they’re not gonna die—and it takes the joy out of living. They don’t make the most out of their day. I don’t want to waste my chance.”