Day: June 19, 2020

Up at 5 AM, it is a reminder of the life I used to live and the life that used to be. I got up this early in order to shuffle my kid off to In other odd news, since I made that post about all the possible teams in the AYF/NYS collab in AZ, the post where I got that listing has been removed. I wonder what it going on?

I am Moving. I keep on saying it, because the feeling of it is really settling in. I’ve been in this small town in AZ for nearly all of my time in AZ and I’ve watched it grow into a really warm and inviting place to live. Now I gratefully say goodbye and thank you to all that exists out here. It isn’t the kind of town you really come to visit–not unless you’re headed out to San Diego. So, this move is a farewell to a lifestyle of sorts. It is one which has run its course.

Back to writing Novellas. Should be signing paperwork for two in the coming weeks. I am excited about developing these characters. The best part about writing for me are the moments where I connect to the character and I can see them in their element and doing what defines who they are as a person. I love the ability to watch that unfold as a close quarters passenger. I am ready to make that happen again.

Back to wondering about my one true story. I am starting to wonder if I have more than one of those in me. I question if a writer’s one true story is actually a subconscious reflection of the culmination of their life experience. My life has been many things, and as I crest into this “second half” I feel like the first story is less relevant and the second story is starting to take shape.

These are not just some thoughts. In fact there is a connective tissue through all of it that I am starting to recognize in myself. I am a creature who does and thinks a number of different things at once. My thoughts are like a net cast far and reeled back in to capture what I can of the reality around me. All the parts are linked together to form the thing, but much slips through the netting.

I have quietly been working on a fantasy world. I haven’t looked at the greater world–not in the way the George RR Martin dreamed up the world beyond Westeros. I do know the central city state and region of the story and have been hard at work dreaming up the physics of the thing. What I find more interesting than those physics (needed in order to make the world make sense) are the history and politics. I am informed by our own oft deleted history. For example, I was never taught about the Red Summer of 1919 when White Supremacists murdered nearly 1000 black people across the country in what was as close as possible to an uprising responding to the growing pressure for black rights. I learned about that last month. I did hear often about Nat Turner and often as a tale of what not to do–to not rebel and kill the white folks. This is the history I was taught.

In places all over the south a different history is taught to this day. In these alternative histories the slaves were just employees or plantations were great places to work where everyone was treated well. It is all very Gone with the Wind, but those of us who have common sense know Gone is fiction. The history books thrust in front of children are not considered fiction and kids in some places are growing up not understanding what slavery was and thus not understanding why Black Lives Matter exists.

This story is going to tackle some of those issues with a relative distance that allows me to examine them and dissect them and tell stories about how we choose to remember and what we choose to accept, and of course, who has the power to determine these things. It is not all about money either.

Some Thoughts:

1. Here’s a simple way to respond to all lives matter: All lives cannot matter until black lives matter.
2. I say this because a writer friend posted a photo of the back of someone’s car where they had scribbled , “All lives matter xcept (sic) black ones.” Yeah, folks be like that.