David Wilson is on the lam. If he can stay ahead of the law long enough to finish his great novel, he just might be able to convince his ex-wife he’s worth a damn. When a man who appears to be some sort of religious figure picks him up in a Ferrari 308, David begins to think he might have found a story worth telling. The man relates his life in a whirlwind of vivid experiences—from his childhood as a boxer turned peacenik, to time-traveling out of Woodstock, to the insane asylum where he cured himself by watching the television series, Kung Fu.
Wilson’s journey soon intersects with bizarre roadside attractions, the strange world of go-go dancers, pinball machines, illuminati conspiracies, and a cast of eccentric characters who are all equally seeking personal vindication and suffering from the effects of lost love. David just needs to hold himself together long enough to write it all down.
Absurd, darkly humorous and at times romantic, In the Next Moment Everything Will Change weaves a tale that is both surreal and deeply human, inviting readers to grapple with their own perceptions of reality and embrace the future that already exists, fully formed inside of them.
Unapologetically Out There.
Critical praise for In the Next Moment...
A fugitive writer takes up with a hippie time traveler looking for his lost love in Caulfield’s comic novel.
David Wilson’s writing career started as potential personified, his celebrated short story “The First Chapter” creating immense buzz for the brilliant novel sure to follow. When he meets Abbott, a Tom Selleck look-alike with a quasi-religious aura driving a kit-car Ferrari 308, it’s 20 years later and David is hitchhiking, alone. His advance money is gone, his wife has left him, he’s on the run from the law after embezzling university funds, and he has yet to make it past the first sentence of the second chapter of his long-awaited follow-up (“I set up my word processor in a corner to write, and nothing came. Years passed”). In Abbott, David sees an opportunity to salvage his novel; the man tells fantastical stories about looking for his missing wife, Lucille, whom he both met and lost while traveling through time at the Woodstock music festival while traversing a universal fungal web after getting caught in the rain with five sheets of brown acid in his pocket. Abbott’s stories begin to shift to the exploits of his best friend, Denton White, who spends his time in a psych ward studying the teachings of David Carradine’s character in Kung Fu. Caulfield wears his influences on his sleeve—the novel opens like a restrained Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas before segueing into a less repressive One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest–like setting while dropping references to television, including Magnum, P.I., The Incredible Hulk, and, of course, Kwai Chang Caine, throughout. These nods, along with mentions of conspiracies involving the MKUltra program and the death of Bruce Lee, lend the story a larger-than-life atmosphere. The author shows a great deal of humor in his outlandish characters but never undercuts them with his jokes. The book is upfront from the outset about its unreliable narrators, even when it plays fast and loose with who is telling the story; as strange as its premise is, the novel offers surprising insights into loss and unfulfilled expectations.
Unapologetically out there.
About the Author
Dan Caulfield is a martial arts champion and former Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor. He currently lives in Nicaragua where he spends his days writing, surfing and sitting quietly in ice water. In the Next Moment is his debut novel.