Immaculate Prize

By Khan Singleton

“’Jonnie, I almost forgot something.’ She opened her right hand to reveal two plump, glistening scuppernong grapes, slightly crushed, the moist flesh erupting from the thick skin at several points along the surface of each. ‘I wanted to give you one of these before you left,’ she said, plucking one from her hand and placing it at Jon’s mouth, which opened to accept it before the implications hit him.”
“‘And this,’ she said, holding up the other grape, ‘is just a taste of things to come.’”

-Veronica Whitaker to Jon Templeton, excerpt from Immaculate Deception

The excerpt comes from a Pushcart Prize-nominated short story from the novel Immaculate Deception by Scott Pruden, a ’91 School of Journalism and Mass Communications graduate and Camden, S. C. native.
Pruden started writing Immaculate Deception in 1989 and after his graduation from SJMC, he spent 13 years in the newspaper industry. He was a reporter and editor for the Morning News in Florence, the Camden Chronicle-Independent, where he won several state awards, the Philadelphia Metro and the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest and largest African-American newspaper in the United States.

Pruden says his J-school education played a major role in helping him write his novel and likened it to joining the Marines. “The J-school stripped me down to the core of what it is to gather and convey important information in a quick, concise and meaningful way, then built me back up the right way.”
“As for writing the novel, the J-school built in me an ability to closely observe and mentally file away details about locations, situations and personalities that over the years have all come together to form the settings and characters of Immaculate Deception.”

“Professors like Dr. Henry Price, who taught copy editing with an iron fist, forced me to develop this intense attention to detail and to create this internalized style book that helps me crank out copy that's grammatically clean and reads easily.”

Pruden’s novel underwent several drafts, and after the birth of his son in 2004, he left the newspaper industry to finish and publish Immaculate Deception. The Codorus Press published it and nominated Chapter 28 for a Pushcart Prize last October.

Immaculate Deception takes place in a futuristic Myrtle Beach, which has become the new Sin City after Las Vegas is swallowed up by the desert. The novel’s protagonist, Jon Templeton, is resurrected and sent on a mission by Eli, a Rastafarian deity, to find out the identity of the deputy to the Church of the New Revelation leaders, Rev. Lawrence Whitaker and his wife, Veronica.

In the nominated chapter, Jon is meeting the Whitakers at their estate to discuss a deal for a satellite to allow the church to broadcast its services across the globe. Pruden says the Whitakers and the Church of the New Revelation are based on evangelical mega-churches that seem to preach behaviors that people don’t normally practice and justify them by saying that the Bible makes it okay.

The Pushcart Press, founded in 1972 by publisher Bill Henderson and operated in an 8’x8’ backyard shack on Long Island, N.Y., focuses on writers, small presses and non-commercial publishing. The Pushcart Press has awarded its Pushcart Prize to writers of short stories, poetry, memoirs and essays for more than 30 years. Pruden will learn if his chapter won a Pushcart Prize in the early summer.

Pruden lives in West Chester, Pa., with his wife and children. He works as a freelance journalist for magazines, newspapers and clients in the Philadelphia area.