Coach Culbertson

Relief Journal hit the ground running. And maybe running is the appropriate term because, on the sidelines, is Coach Culbertson. Editor, insomniac, and connoisseur of the finest French Roasts, he has inspired the editorial team with his Knute Rockne-esque passion, and along with his wife Kimberly they have forged a fantastic new literary journal. His most recent brainstorm, Coach’s Midnight Diner, goes where no mag has gone before, exploring Christian themes through the lens of horror and the paranormal. The relentlessly nosy Decompose staff has been pining to see what makes this guy tick. In between back-to-back double espresso shots, Coach found some time to chat with our adoring crew. But, of course, he had us on the stopwatch.

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MIKE: Are you really a Coach?

COACH: Coach is a moniker I picked up during my tour of duty as an inner city high school teacher in Chicago. Having the kids call me “Mister” seemed kind of odd. Mr. Culbertson was what everybody called Grandpa Culbertson when he was still running the roller skating rink in my hometown, and I thought that honor should remain with him, even though he’s gone on Home. A coach is someone who’s invested in his team, and in each team member’s success, and my approachability factor rose dramatically with the high school kids when I positioned my self as such. I kept the name when I moved back to the corporate world after I adopted two orphaned high school kids, and I think it’s apropos to keep it as an editor and publisher, because writers need to have somebody in their corner.

MIKE: Relief Journal and the Midnight Diner are, for the most part, published on your dime — a labor of love indeed! I’m guessing this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. So what’s your motivation? And why are you investing so much of yourself into furthering the cause of Christian literature?

COACH: (laughing) You’re right about it not being a get-rich-quick scheme. Publishing seems to be more of a get-poor-quick scheme if a guy isn’t careful. And while the initial dime that Relief was published on is mine, we’ve had some help along with the finances from our supporters, and we’re approaching a self-sustaining operation that requires me to dig into my own pockets a little less. We’re very grateful to the folks that subscribe to Relief and have donated their hard-earned dollars to the project. A lot of the initial subscriptions are ending with Issue 4 that just shipped, so we’re praying that folks will re-up their subscriptions and encourage their friends to do so as well.

It seems to me that dedication to things of God is a dedication to reality, regardless of what that reality is. So, our publishing efforts reflect that value. My wife Kimberly and I have walked some tough roads, and we’ve found out that life isn’t always what we thought it was, or should be. So our goal is to allow authors to write with an abandon to reality, either directly in creative nonfiction or symbolically in fiction and poetry. When the authors of the Bible wrote their stuff, they weren’t abashed to talk about anything. Sex, violence, unresolved conflict and issues, tough calls, they’re all in there. We like to skip a lot of that because it’s not pretty, isn’t safe for our 6-year-old, or doesn’t jive with the picket fence world that we’d all prefer. But if it’s good enough for God to let into His book, we figure it’s good enough to let into ours.

Part of the reason why my wife and I are invested so much in this is we both have a deep love of books, even though our tastes in books are sometimes on opposite ends of the spectrum. I like Raymond Chandler, Neil Gaiman, and F. Paul Wilson, she grooves on Toni Morrison, Banana Yoshimoto, and Jodi Picoult. At any rate, we both see a massive rift in the publishing world. The ABA publishing world often is set against God, and the CBA world has pretty significant restrictions on what it can sell, largely based on the audience that buys their books. We want books that aren’t afraid to talk about God, and also aren’t afraid to get real. The CBA gang are doing good things, but they can’t do everything, so we’re trying to fill a gap. I’d like to think of our team kind of like the Robert Rodriguez (back when he started out) of the Christian publishing segment. We’re small, we do almost everything ourselves, but we end up with some pretty good results. I’m sure some folks just think we’re like the bad kids who sit in the back of the church and misbehave, and maybe we are, but we’re not afraid to step up to real life, in print or in action.

MIKE: Bad kids? Why, I’d never think that. According to your website, “Relief is not opposed to stories about Christ or faith, and it is also not opposed to stories about raw, gritty, beautiful life. [You} are looking for pieces that push the envelope.” Many Christian publishers seem to avoid “pushing the envelope” and aim for a more conservative mainstream. Are things changing, or does the Relief squad just enjoy self-flagellation?

COACH: Now that’s a question that comes up often, especially in my own mind when I’m pulling an all-nighter to get to print. I do think things are changing, or at least, we may be figuring out that there are folks all over who share our affinity for reality, and with the advent of the Internet, it’s easier to pull together folks who are looking for that broader palette of colors that reality offers us.

But we do have to face the fact that the CBA audience wants a certain kind of thing, and that’s all fine and good, I suppose, and they have to sell books to make a living, and I don’t slight them for it one bit. I don’t have to sell books to make a living (at least at this point), and thus as a publishing organization, we can afford to make some bolder content choices.

MIKE: The Midnight Diner is a genre anthology that includes, among other things, horror and Lovecraftian fiction. Wha’s the response been like, thus far, to the Diner?

COACH: Well, no one’s condemned us to hell or called us brides of the Anti-Christ yet, which is a little unfortunate because that’d probably be great for sales. But overall, the response has been pretty astounding. A well-known Christian suspense author called the Jesus Vs. Cthulhu concept “brilliant,” and a crazy small press horror editor, Nickolaus Pacione of Lake Fossil Press, has expressed massive delight at its intensity and authentic horror. Some folks will consider us to have taken a lot of risks with this anthology, but I set out to collect stories that were uncompromising in any fashion.

MIKE: So what’s the inspiration behind the Midnight Diner? And what do you ultimately hope to accomplish with it?

COACH: We were receiving some pretty decent genre submissions to Relief, like Nathan Knapp’s “The Water Rises,” Charles Browning’s “Door to Door,” and R.M. Oliver’s “Last Trip to Crystal Moon.” Even though they were great works, they didn’t fit the literary nature of Relief. So I said, “Hey, let’s do a genre anthology,” and everyone said “Hurray!” and thus the Diner was born.

My dad took me to diners all over the place while I was growing up. I managed a Steak ‘n Shake ten years ago, and have always had a deep love for all-night diners. Part of that is probably my tendency towards insomnia, and the other part is my addic- I mean my love for coffee. I’ve seen crazy stuff happen in diners–lives saved and destroyed, relationships created and ended, and all sorts of weird things that transcend description in between–I asked my wife to marry me in a diner at 4:30 in the morning, and she said yes, for example. It only made sense to use the Diner metaphor for this project.

The ultimate goal of the Diner is to show that God is not a pansy. The secondary goal of the Diner is to let authors just write the damn story, without fear of rejection based on content. God’s not afraid of any part or parcel of reality, so why should we be?

MIKE: Okay, but “Christian horror” seems like an oxymoron. Is it? I mean, how can Jesus and Cthulhu co-exist?

COACH: Yeah, it seems like it on the outside, but being a Christian doesn’t mean that we’re immune to the terrors that the fallen universe contains. We all face hope and despair every day. Cthulhu is representative of complete nihilism and insanity, while Jesus is the fulfillment of purpose and order. Juxtaposing meaning and emptiness is nothing new, we’re just using symbols that most would never think about, but I think there’s some new ways to think about these two characters in the Diner, especially in Chris Mikesell’s piece, “In R’lyeh, Jesus Walks.” Quite honestly, I was kind of surprised that no one had done it before.

There are horrible things in the world. Scary things. Our fictional friend Cthulhu just points toward them. And Christians can’t just close their eyes to them. Well, they can, and a lot do, but it only helps the things that are trying to shuffle us off towards darkness. I think eyes wide open, even to the scary things that we’re confronted with, is the best policy.

MIKE: Speaking of “scary things,” I hear you were invited to Gothicfest to showcase the release of the Diner. Supposedly, you did some book signings alongside Corvis Nocturnum, a Satanist, and a pagan priest. Were you wearing your black eyeliner and ear tunnel for the event? And do you think Christians should be doing more book signings alongside Satanists?

COACH: Seeing as how I’d take a hit against my tough guy image to do eyeliner and ear hoops, I took a pass on that. But I did boldly display the rather large tattoo on my left shoulder.

I think Christians should absolutely be doing more signings alongside the punks, goths, Satanists, pagans, New Agers, Scien- tologists, you name it. The church needs to get out of the building, because let’s face it, most of the goths, Satanists, wiccans, etc. are all rebelling against the aristocracy and elitism of the church, and they’re not exactly waltzing in the doors. They deserve and need to be cared for and loved like anyone else. The story of the church isn’t cutting it for them, mostly because the people inside don’t measure up to what is put forth as desirable from the pulpit or the people. And part of me doesn’t blame them one bit. Rather than letting Christ be real in us, we get stuck in weird spiritual and moral acrobatics that nobody can keep up with. So they pick a different story, one in which they aren’t judged and are instead empowered. (Thanks Don Miller for the story metaphor.) It’s quite unfortunate that churches often have an disenfranchising effect on those that it’s supposed to include and build up. Of course, some people just want to be their own gods, and well, everybody gets a choice between reality and illusion. But in the darkness there is a kind of shallow acceptance that many get drawn into, and that’s what a lot of the folks who are drawn into these alternative illusions.

One of the major reasons I went to Gothicfest was to just be there to show a little love and care for these folks. Most of the people I met there were highly intelligent and softhearted despite their fashion and lifestyle choices; it doesn’t take a psychic to see a wounds and anger from somewhere in the past. And I’m willing to bet that a lot of the hurt was caused by Christians. So I just wanted to try to be the Christian that wasn’t an asshole, and just saw and accepted them for who they are, as individuals that are still made in the image of God, and still intrinsically valuable to Him and me. A lot of the folks who came and talked to me dropped their guard almost instantly, and that was nice, even though some of them were a little alarmed by their own vulnerability to me. But I tried to honor that and did a pretty decent job, I think, and just let Jesus do what He was going to do there.

And let’s face it, I wasn’t there to sell books, and I knew that going in. The Diner in this instance was just a ticket in the door to be able to talk some people that I normally wouldn’t have met. But I do think that Christians on the whole need to stop being a bunch of wimps and step up to care and love even those who have chosen to be on a diametrically opposed path.

MIKE: What plans do you have for Relief and the Midnight Diner? Anything we can look forward to in the future?

COACH: Oh yeah, we’ve got plenty. We’re starting to implement our Relief 2.0 vision, which involves a brand new web site, a better submissions system that will allow authors to better track their submissions all the way through, an upgrade and some changes to the Relief Writers Network to make it nicer and more usable, and Relief and the Diner should be seeing some new distribution channels (which is a big fancy way to say folks will be able to buy them in more places like Amazon). The new Relief web site will be podcast enabled, so we’re going to try to some interesting things with that towards the end of the year and into 2008. We did a real interesting thing on the RWN, Nanowrimo Spring Training, in which authors (myself included) wrote 10,000 words in a week and then we took the rough drafts and put them up as an ezine. I’m going to try to sponsor some more stuff like that, and find some volunteers to manage some of the RWN ezine publishing efforts as well. I think it’s important that we get writers writing, especially in the vein we’re looking for in Relief.

Sales for the Diner are good enough that we’ll definitely be doing another anthology next year. The Diner will also be getting its own web site as well, and we’ll be trying some new things there as well. I’m gong to add some new categories to the Diner, like the Weird Western and Weird War (in honor of U.S. soldiers and veterans from all generations), and maybe a few others. And I’m recruiting some additional help for the second edition of the Diner as well.

The Best of Relief 2006-2007 anthology will be coming out in November in place of our regularly scheduled program. We’re adjusting the production schedule to work on all this stuff as well as our internal workings. The three Diner award winners and three stories from The Ankeny Briefcase, which we published in partnership with Burnside Writers Collective, will also be in it. It’ll be a good way for folks who are new to Relief and the Diner to know what we’re looking for.

Of course, we’ll be out at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing in April 2008. It’ll be our first major conference appearance, so we’ll have all the dogs and ponies we can muster for it.

Overall, we’re gearing up for the long haul and planning for the future. We’ve done some things right, made some mistakes, broken a few things and fixed more, and I’m sure we’ll continue to do so. But Relief and the Diner have been fun and meaningful projects overall, despite the crazy amount of work they require, and it’s going to be interesting to see where the Good Lord takes us next.

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Terrific stuff, Coach! Knute Rockne’s got nothing on you (and he probably wouldn’t wear eyeliner either). Really, you guys are doing a fantastic job. To your wonderful wife and staff, Godspeed on your publishing endeavors and broadening the reach of Christian authors everywhere.