Zachary Dillon, Championed by Amanda Coreishy
The Champion Series
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This article is part of Literary Salon issue #3.
Zachary Dillon, Championed by Amanda Coreishy
Broadcast to Alex: We’ve Been Watching You
We’ve been watching you Alex, because
had a story to tell and he figured he could tell it better if he put you at the centre of it.And he lets you tell it, placing us deep in your head space, so when the voices begin, we hear them too. We’re minding your own business with you as you jerk off to porn. One hand gets tired so you switch hands.
‘Stranger,’ says a voice.
Is someone peeping through your blinds at you as you pump your dick? You try to pass it off as a coincidence but something about the moment feels eerie and the voice is hard to shake.
How It Begins - by Zachary Dillon - I Hear You Watching
We join you on the hike to Sulphur Springs where your friends suggest you try a hookup site. And we share your intense worry after you’ve been blackmailed by the sextortionist pretending to want online sex with you after she’s covertly made a video of you masturbating.
We’re with you as you battle intrusive thoughts about hooking up with a black woman for the first time, and we sympathise because so far the weirdness is still relatable, still within the range of normal.
Meanwhile, we can’t help but enjoy the way your story is told. Speaking for myself, I loved the visceral honesty with which Zachary writes your thoughts and feelings about sex; his cleverness in conveying the banal, making it interesting and human.
Here you’re exploring a hook-up site for the first time:
100% Clean - by Zachary Dillon - I Hear You Watching
Most writers would keep it minimal, but Zachary lets us really look, through your eyes. And no matter where your horny animal brain takes you, the sex writing never feels gratuitous.
The other thing I appreciate, Alex, is that by making you ordinary and relatable – you’re a young man with average prospects, ambitions and needs – it’s so much more natural for us to see that what happened to you could easily happen to any of us.
As you know, readers hear the smug and hostile voices broadcasting a disparaging running commentary on your every move and you’ll be certain you’ve been put into a sinister reality TV show without your consent. We watch your distress, unable to let you know these voices have been generated by your own mind. It’s painful.
You concoct explanation after explanation in your tech-oriented brain for how your torturers keep being audible but invisible. We witness how increasingly crazy and even dangerous you seem to the people around you; you glare at the mother of the toddler in the store, the one you think has been planted there by the masterminds of your torture; you accuse your neighbours of stalking you; you greet the police officers with a hammer in your hand after you’ve wrecked your apartment, convinced you’ve found the bugging device.
Zachary could have written a personal essay about his experience hearing voices. It would have been easier to write and faster to read. But it wouldn’t have the same impact as your story Alex.
Because every week we get to spend time with you, we care about you a little more.
Through Zachary’s novel you’ve real and persistent to us. A twenty-minute personal essay wouldn’t have rooted itself so deep.
Right now I’m desperate for the girl you hooked up with to find you and save you from yourself. And I’m too early in the story to know if she really will.
(At the time of writing, this is where I am: You’re Safe - by Zachary Dillon - I Hear You Watching)
Anyway Alex, I grabbed the opportunity to read I Hear You Watching because a story based on a writer’s real experience of hearing voices doesn’t come along that often.
When you see Zachary, thank him for the work he’s done with you towards reducing the shame society attaches to the experience of hearing voices.
The shame keeps sufferers and the people who love them silent. I Hear You Watching steps into that silent gap and invites us all into the conversation.
For anyone thinking of serialising a novel, Zachary Dillon does a great job of showing you how. I Hear You Watching isn’t paywalled, so you can observe how Zachary makes it easy to navigate between chapters; get oriented if you haven’t started at the beginning; and join him on his Substack chat where he takes questions and answers frankly about ‘hearing voices’ and the writing of I Hear You Watching. And yes, if you’re impatient or want to support his work with a purchase, he shows you where you can buy the book too.
the chapters - by Zachary Dillon - I Hear You Watching
— Amanda Coreishy
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I showed this to Alex, and he said, “You guys SAW ALL THAT?!”
Amanda, I don’t know what to say. This moves me beyond words. Thank you.
Great write-up, I'm really happy I grabbed a copy of this book.