.OK, so, I still suck at blogging. I'm not even sure what
I want to blog about right now. I keep telling myself if I ever want
to make it as a writer, I've got to up my output. I get lost in my
head sometimes, and I can't find my way out.
Anyway, book 2, The Lines We Cross, is with the editor/
proofers. I'm waiting on them and on cover art. That's it. Don't
worry, I'm fucking done. I promise. Sometimes I have a spark of
genius, something I need to go back over and check, some piece of
dialogue I need to add or take out, but I'm fucking done.
I can beg your forgiveness for my tardiness, or I can
just do the fucking work, and putting the fucking thing out there.
Maybe it's true of all second books. I don't know. I do
know, this one was much harder than the first. I touched on deeper
subjects, some of them political, and I tried to do so without
trivializing or completely disrespecting people whose opinions might
differ from my own.
Not that the book is really all that political. I don't
think it is really more political than it needs to be to be relevant
and reveal a snap shot of the world in which we live right now.
I believe if you're going to enter into a political
discourse, or use the issues of the day as touchstones, you have a
responsibility to show the world the way it is, not what you think it
is or want it to be. You do not have all the answers, shut the fuck
up.
To do otherwise, I think that it is the definition of
hubris. I'm a four star fuck up. What fucking answers do I have for
anyone?
I read a lot. Well, OK, I used to read a lot. Mostly
detective fiction. This may surprise you, might I never really got
into Men's Action/ Adventure. Didn't like pulp until my mid to late
twenties. The writers I liked were the ones who lifted the genre into
the literary realm. Most of these writers were liberals.
They provided much joy, entertainment, and in some
cases, heroes for me to look up to. I learned a lot of from them. I
learned the power of words, what they can mean when woven together
correctly. A well written novel will expand both your mind and
knowledge base, give you information you didn't have, and show you
different ways of looking at the world and the people in it. Food,
single malt scotch, weaponry, philosophy, survival and preparedness,
women, music, poetry. These are all passions of mine that were either
celebrated, show cased, or utilized in ways that fermented in my
young mind, and often led me down wonderful rabbits holes looking for
knowledge.
They made me think!
But sometimes I go back and read the same stories, and I
realize just how completely one sided many of them are. The
complicated, multifaceted, often conflicted characters I'd thought of
as heroes really aren't always that intelligent or insightful. Like
their creators, their complexities are very often nothing more than
shallow concessions, brightly colored vestments, draped over
extremely narrow world views, often held by people who have never
considered themselves wrong in anything. Their view of the issues
largely romantic dogmatism, their treatment of opposing viewpoints
rarely meaningful, honest, or deep.
Simply put, they love the smell of their own farts, and
look down on you for not doing so as well.
Anyone that tells you they have all the answers,
deserves to get punched in the fucking throat.
Hard.
This is probably not the proper tact one should take as
a struggling writer. If I really wanted to get out there, and make a
name for myself, and make some money, the thing to do would be to
choose a side, and defend it, right or wrong, come hell or high
water. To tow a party line. To speak solely in idiotic bumper sticker
slogans and bullshit euphemisms that do absolutely nothing but
alienate people who don't agree with you, while galvanizing
sycophantic followers into a rabid cult with literally nothing of
substance to offer the world.
I don't say this because I'm a poor, pissed off, hack
indie with a very narrow base. As much as I would really like for
book 2 to be some sort of breakout work, to have steady, real money
coming in, and the validation writers yearn for, my work on the
shelf, I'm not going to do that. Despite the usual pretensions
writers suffer, or indulge ourselves, I know my I'm not ever going to
be a literary dynamo. I'll never be the cool kid, A list, whatever. I
don't care. I don't care if New York likes me. I don't care if a
bunch of tenured liberal college professors who write the same story
over and over again, ever recognize my work. Men soft of hand, weak
of heart, limp of dick. I don't give a fuck. I just don't care. I did
for a long time. I wanted to be a part of that world. I thought, for
a short while, I was on my way. To what? To associate with people who
hate everything I believe in? Maybe be the token conservative,
despite the fact that I'm obviously not a fucking conservative?
Fuck them.
My readers are veterans. Gun nuts. Welders and diesel
mechanics. The occasional lost house wife. Alcoholics, and addicts
and broken people. I have a strong suspicion a good portion of my
reader base doesn't actually read all that much. Which kind of makes
it even more of an honor that they read my work.
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