Somewhere Over the Sun

I wrote the following open letter to David Eagleman, author of the brilliant collection of short stories, Sum; forty tales from the afterlives. You’ll notice that I wrote this a while ago, while writing Somewhere Over the Sun.

David,

Reading this book, as a writer, was quite fittingly a spiritual experience. The fact that your words were doing what they did to me was blissful, like a religious person being told that their afterlife exists.

I shook my head in amazement and emitted all kinds of audible expressions of joy and wonder. I made silly faces and laughed out loud in public and texted all my friends and told them to read your book. I was almost moved to happy tears, not necessarily by the stories themselves, but by the realization at how good the writing itself is, how brilliantly human is the mind that crafted them.

I am so incredibly happy that writing like yours exists. I hope the book I’m writing will be able to have such an effect on my readers, if only for a passage. Thank you for a wonderful 110 pages. For complimenting the art of writing and for beautifying the art of reading.

-Adi Alsaid