Revelation by John Coats

In the afternoon she threw herself across my lap and said, “I’m yours if you want me,” and in the evening, as she directed her team, she played music and danced on the table in that gray and maroon dress that revealed her marvelous legs. And I knew I would say yes. One morning, eight months later, I rose early from our bed, and as I watched her sleep, a strange, wholly foreign sensation began to fill me.  Heady, a bit dizzy. Was I ill? “No, dumbass,” I heard the voice say. “You’re not sick. For the first time in your life, you’re happy,” and I thought, “How about that?”

Artist’s Statement

 I want my writing to be participative, self-revealing, sacrificial — an offering, a calling out to the reader to do the same.

John Coats has a Bachelor's degree, an M.Div from Virginia Theological Seminary (Episcopal), and an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. Having served eight years as a parish priest in Texas and California, he joined a startup training organization, The Life Training, now called More To Life. After fifteen years as a principal speaker and trainer in the United States, Britain, and South Africa, John left the program and worked the next eight years as a management consultant. Then the writing bug bit and wouldn't let go. He is the author of Original Sinners, Why Genesis Still Matters (Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2009), a non-religious exploration of the characters in the Book of Genesis. From 2014-2021, he was a fiction editor and book reviewer for Consequence Magazine.