The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon Feature

I’m thrilled to be sharing The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon by Barry Maher — a supernatural thriller that blends occult horror with biting humor. For readers who love stories that are equal parts terrifying and laugh-out-loud dark, this one is a must.

Steve Witowski’s life is already a disaster — a failed songwriter and fugitive in 1982, he’s just trying to survive. But when he saves Victoria from a vicious assault, he’s drawn into the sinister history of her newly purchased church, a place steeped in shadows. As Steve is pulled deeper into rituals, crypts, and the terrifying grip of a desperate demon, he clings to disbelief. Yet visions plague him, secrets surface, and the face of the man he killed begins to appear on his skin. Both hilarious and horrifying, The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon is a darkly original thriller where denial offers no escape.

Barry Maher is a storyteller with a career as eclectic as his fiction. From poet and journalist to syndicated columnist and international speaker, he’s captivated audiences worldwide with his blend of wit and truth. His work has been featured in USA Today, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and he’s appeared on The Today Show, CNN, and CNBC. Learn more on his website or connect with him on Facebook.

Author Q&A

How did you research your book?

Google is my friend. Though my friend is getting weird. Usually I’m looking for a single fact. For example: “What was the name of the shade of hair dye Ronald Reagan used?” AI unfortunately has given Google an imagination. So now, rather than getting the fact I requested, I get some kind of story. For Reagan’s hair dye, I got 80 people debating whether or not he dyed his hair. Of course he didn’t. As Gerald Ford said, it was just “prematurely orange.”

What’s the hardest scene or character you wrote—and why?

In The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon, the most difficult character to write may have been Jonathan O’Ryan. In a way that was because he was the easiest. He kept taking over the scene instead of letting it go where I expected it to go. Fortunately, it turned out he was right. He stole virtually every scene he was in, and made the book funnier and better.

What sets your book apart from others in your genre?

It’s all contained in the title, The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon. In the book, a character on LSD explains that The Great Gatsby, a novel about tragic love, and Moby Dick, a novel about a gigantic whale, are basically the same story, just worked out differently to fit their different eras. He says that if someone writes that story today, they should call it, of course, The Great Dick. (Or, I suppose Moby Gatsby.)

Just so you don’t have to read the Great Gatsby—or, God forbid, Moby Dick—they and The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon are all about the struggle to overcome a failure that’s threatening to overwhelm someone’s life. Only one of the books however reeks of fish.

If you want to know about the dysfunctional demon, you’ll have to read the whole book. But you can skip The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick.

What helps you overcome writer’s block?

I sit my butt down in my chair and write. I have to turn out a syndicated column every week. I don’t have time for writer’s block. Besides, writing—even bad writing—gets the juices flowing and cures writer’s block. Maybe I’ll have to throw away a paragraph or two or even a couple of pages. But I write through the block and come out the other side into a world of creativity and sunshine and roses and—at least in my case—dysfunctional demons.

What’s your favorite compliment you’ve received as a writer?

My all-time favorite compliment—or complaint or both—was as a speaker. An attendee came up to me after a session and said, “It’s really true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. You were fantastic!”

My favorite compliment as a writer came from the great Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of Masquerade and The Assassins. It was the first author endorsement I received on The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon. Gayle wrote: “What a page turner! Witty, literate, scary, sexy, and powerfully evocative . . . Barry Maher is a brilliant new talent”

Fortunately, the book received fourteen other raves from prominent authors, most of them bestselling authors. They all meant a lot. But the first was the most exciting.

Why did you choose this setting/topic?

The decaying church with a sordid past arrived with the story. It fit the mood perfectly. And the story in that setting scared the hell out of me. Of course it may have helped that someone was applying a power saw to my skull at the time.

Which author(s) most inspired you?

Marcel Proust soundproofed his bedroom walls with cork and wrote lying in bed.  I’d love to do both. As far as writing however, I could never even dream of touching his genius. Plus where would I find an editor who’d okay a fifty page paragraph on waking up in the morning. Nowadays those fifty pages would become “I woke and . . .” They wouldn’t even get a full sentence.

If you could time-travel, where would you go?

First, I’d want to make absolutely sure I could get back. Things are strange now, but I have a feeling that, in the Western World at least, we may have just lived through the best era that humanity has ever experienced. I just hope it doesn’t remain the best era humanity has ever experienced. I’m hoping that soon we’ll all have reason to once again believe in continual progress.