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Staring Long into the e-Abyss

10/25/2023

Social Media.

So, did you just throw up in your mouth a little, or are you not an Official Old Person?

I could use your help, Dear Readers. As my next novel, Beltrunner: Aftermath, nears its launch date, I just know I’m going to have to field questions from my publisher as to why I don’t have more of a profile on social media. I’m on Facebook, and I’ve been trying to be a little more visible there (for me, that means posting or replying to a post about once a week as opposed to once an epoch) but it’s the only site I’m really on. I technically have a Twitter / X account, but I don’t post to it. I think I have 18 followers or something. I don’t even have an Instagram account nor am I on TikTok or Snapchat or any other site. It’s Facebook a tiny bit and that’s it.

The other seasoned people who read this blog will no doubt say, “Good. That’s as it should be. Social media is a sewer/garbage dump/hellhole/morass of villainy. You’re better off well shut of it.”

But, see, fellow Old People, it’s where things are a-poppin’. It’s where the eyeballs are, for good or for ill. I can shout at the Kids Today and their Beanie Babies and their Tamagochis and their Miley Beiber and Justin Cyrus and Swiftie Talyor albums all day, but these sites are where. They. Are.

So. If I’m going to do this, is there a way to go on these sites but retain yourself in the process? Can I, to appropriate a Citizen Kane quote, do social media on my own terms? Must I inevitably become a creature of the social media swamp, lurching from one post to the next like some demented electronic Norma Desmond, mugging for the Instagram camera unaware that I am filming my own demise?

Good God, Sean. Calm down. It’s a social media site, not the monolith from 2001.

What do you all think? I’d love to have your opinions on this. Social media–something that can be used effectively, or a place that corrupts everyone it touches?

Be seeing you!

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Fatherly Pride

10/23/2023

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Look, I generally don’t blog about my family, but I have to say a few things here.

First, my son. Bravest man I know, and that includes my brother, the police officer. My brother Jeff demonstrates bravery every day he puts on the uniform and goes on patrol. That’s a given. I don’t diminish that in any way. What I mean about my son, though, is that he gets up every day and battles against invisible forces. Forces in his own mind, telling him he’s not good enough. Forces in his heart–his huge, soft, generous heart–that give him the impulse to help everyone he meets but also denying him the confidence to take the steps he wants to take. So he fights off feelings of inadequacy and fear of failing every damn day and lives hour to hour having to battle. He lives with three people who seem to have achieved things he wants to, and those achievements appear to come so easily to us, and to everyone else he sees. He could rage at the universe for making his inner life so difficult, but he doesn’t. He just takes a deep breath and gets on with it. I’ve never met someone who has to be brave every second of every day and who refuses to give up.

Second, my wife. I’ve written about her more times than I can count, and she forms the core of most of my strong characters in my fiction. We talk about strength and too often we equate it with unfeeling toughness, or being impervious to harm. That’s not strength–as my son demonstrates, strength is often nothing more, and nothing less, than getting up off the mat and fighting another round. My wife has had things happen to her that shouldn’t happen to anyone, and has come out on the other side a strong, generous, and loving person. Plus she’s the most genuine person I know. Heart on her sleeve, emotions raw and obvious, completely open and honest in all she does.

Last, my daughter. I don’t even know how to describe this person. She’s multifaceted to the point of defying any kind of category or definition. Hard worker, brilliant, generous, joyful, socially unafraid (for God’s sake, she will wear a full body shark costume to work for no reason) creative, imaginative, and loving.

The reason I’m thinking of her is that today, just before I went off for my daily writing, she said she wanted to do NaNoWriMo with me. I’ve done it for many years consecutively, and I know she’s been writing too, but now she wants to do it with me–working on separate projects, of course, but still.

Writing is a rather solitary thing–as close as I am to my wife, we generally don’t talk about my writing, either as I’m doing it, or once I’m done. She will read (or, more accurately, listen) to my stuff sometimes, but again, being honest, she tells me she’s really not into it. So I find myself writing and, well, talking to you, Dear Reader, instead.
Now my daughter wants to see for herself how this works. I’m very excited and honored that she wants to do this with me. About a week to go–I’ll fill you in!

Be seeing you!

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I Remember Book Fairs

10/18/2023

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I remember being a little kid in primary school and hearing about the upcoming Book Fair. “There will be all kinds of books there,” my teacher (Mrs. Ford if it was first grade, then Mrs. McBride, Mrs. Winters, Mrs. Kraatz, and so on) said. She added, “You can buy them if you bring your money.”

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

I can still remember the feeling. Hell, I’m actually FEELING that feeling now–the squirmy, electric feeling running up and down my spine. I could actually BUY books! Yeah, sure, the library was cool, and all–I’d check out books all the time and bring ‘em back and check out new ones–but this time, the book would be MINE. I could read it whenever I wanted and put it on my shelf and read it AGAIN sometime later! I’d have it RIGHT THERE on my shelf next to my bed!

I remember getting that catalog, printed on the colorful pulp paper that really reminded you you were READING–that raspy feeling on your finger pads as you turned the pages, images and rows of books about all manner of things! Skip past the picture books, boyo–I know how to READ–and get me to the good stuff. Yeah, there’s some stuff here about girls on the prairie churning butter, which, I dunno, I suppose some people like (far be it from me to impugn anyone else’s literary tastes) but where are the knights on horseback tilting at each other for honor and chivalry and…whatever reasons they had. Where are the robots and spaceships? Where are the sports stories about the kid who saved up his lawnmowing money to buy a mitt? (Oh, God…I still remember the titles! The Secret Little Leaguer, Fullback Fury) or the ones in hardcover with the checkerboard design about car racing?

They’d be there, of course–they always were. I would count the money my parents had gifted me for just such an event (an “allowance,” they called it, whatever that was) and shrewdly calculate how much I could buy. This book was longer, so it was more valuable in terms of pages-per-pennies, but this other one looked damn interesting. Could I afford both?

I’d calculate furiously, then make my decisions and carefully tick off the boxes on the order sheet. I’d hand the resulting page to Mrs. Kraatz (or whichever wonderful woman I had that year–they were all wonderful) and try to convey with my eyes and overall demeanor that she held my life in her hands.

She never lost the order form, never failed to come through. None of ‘em did. I wonder if they knew how much it would shape me, being encouraged passively like that?

The books would arrive, and I had a passing pang of regret for those poor souls who hadn’t purchased any. In my naive mind, I figured they must not have had an “allowance” so didn’t have money for books. This feeling only lasted a moment, though, and I never considered chipping in to help them. That would have cut into my budget, which was unthinkable.

Oh! Oh! Mrs. Kraatz! Right here! You said my name! I’d hurry forward and reverently take the stack of books I’d ordered from her. Oh, my…even better than I’d hoped. They had that smell–you know, that smell of packing dust and wood pulp and ink and most of all PROMISE. They promised adventure and action and ideas that’d make you go “oooh” when you read it and comforted you by letting you know the bad guys would always get theirs and challenged you by letting you know they don’t always and made you uneasy because sometimes dogs died and there was nothing you could do about it and puzzled you because how come boys and girls acted that way towards each other if they weren’t Mom and Dad but most of all they were your friends.

Books…especially the ones I’d bought myself…were my best friends. Oh, don’t go thinking I was one of those loners who didn’t have real actual friends. I did–kids on my baseball team or neighborhood kids who rode bikes with me or later kids who played Dungeons and Dragons or who made funny jokes no one else seemed to laugh at but me, guys (and sometimes girls) like that.

But books–we had a bond. We stayed up late together (and thank you, Mother and Father, for pretending not to notice I was still awake and would start reading again as soon as you left my bedroom to check I was asleep) we cried and laughed and thought together.

Now, I can afford any book I want, and I can order one instantly for the Kindle and get it in a matter of seconds. I have an extensive library, both of physical books and electronic ones, and I want for nothing.

Still, I miss that feeling of the Book Fair when, for a dollar eighty-five, anything was possible.

Be seeing you!

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Staring Long into the e-Abyss

Fatherly Pride

I Remember Book Fairs

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