Yesterday was an incredibly productive day! (Today will be, too. I’m very motivated.)
When asked how I became a novelist, my usual joke is, “Spite.” But is it entirely a joke? Before I got on this high roll of productivity, I think a few things came together.
1. I have improved my health and work on that daily with diet and exercise. Feeling good means a clearer mind and more energy to spend. 2. I am enjoying The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey. Reading about becoming more productive won’t make me more productive on its own, but I do find the mindset motivating. Best takeaways so far: “Productivity isn’t about doing more things. It’s about doing the right things.” It’s less about a to-do list and more about accomplishments. What’s actually getting done? 3. Back to spite. I was disappointed that Vengeance Is Hers didn’t win a competition I’d won before with a different book. Submitting the novel to new competitions right away got me past that disappointment quickly.
Today’s agenda:
1. Polish the third draft of my next thriller, Where The Night Takes Us. 2. Exercise and meal prep. 3. Research audio tech requirements for recording audiobooks. 4. I’m not doing taxes yet, but I will consolidate to make sure I have all my receipts put together. 5. Read. 6. Post two videos to socials. 7. French study. 8. Watch The Pitt tonight!
Okay, that was overcompensating. It’s not all that cheery, what with the Doomsday Clock moving forward to just 85 seconds to midnight. Then there are the protests where people are getting killed. You’re thinking Minnesota, but the terrors are visiting Iran, too.
In an excellent podcast interview everyone should hear, a friend of mine talks about what’s going on in Iran. You need to hear this.Find Sher Kruse, author of Stoic Empathy,on the Chicago Unscripted Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. It’s the January 28th episode: “Revolution and Death on the Streets of Iran.”
Sher believes a war with Iran is inevitable, but it’s not all doom and gloom. I especially liked her bus analogy. The bus won’t necessarily take you all the way to a solution, but it will bring you closer to better days. Too often, people say, “If we can’t fix everything immediately, we may as well not try to do anything at all.”
Striving for progress, not perfection, is how change happens.
In this morning’s episode of The Writing Life (and other things):
1. Don Lemon arrested. 2. A spam folder come-on. My work is headed for Hollywood! (Really? No.) 3. The final season of Queer Eye is done. The show’s uplifting message was somewhat undermined by friction within the cast. Karamo says he was bullied. If Antoni was in on that, I really don’t want to know and I’m not looking it up. He seems such a nice young man from Canada. It’s unthinkable. But Tan? Yeah, I can see that. And Jonathan must be exhausting. I always liked Bobby and Jeremiah.
The home reno was always the real workhorse of the show.For instance:
Tan: Let me show you the French tuck again to hide the belly. Antoni: Sweet guy, heart on his sleeve. “Here’s how to cook with your family and elevate a burger.” Jonathan: Says honey a lot. Dances. Clown manqué. Good at coloring hair, doesn’t do fades, needs to get more aggressive about trimming beards tighter. Karamo: Asks the heroes good, thought-provoking questions. “Let’s go make you some business cards.” Bobby and Jeremiah: “Let’s do the impossible in a week and transform your messy hovel into a lovely home.”
US News:
The Feds arrested Don Lemon for being a journalist!
The First Amendment (and Second, and Fourth) are just so old hat, I guess. Don Lemon spent a night in jail, but this prosecution/persecution is going nowhere (99.1% sure, anyway).
Maybe the Feds are using the Don Lemon arrest to distract from taking the ballots in Georgia. That will drum up a lot of propaganda about an election that has already been litigated and re-litigated. Trump has even accused Obama of election conspiracies when Obama was out of power. The poorest little billionaire whines that an election that he won was fixed. What?
Also, Pam Bondi? Speaking of distractions, any ETA on those Epstein files, or is the erasing of Trump’s presence there still not done? And by “presence,” I mean damning evidence.
Meanwhile, in Canada
Treasonous Albertans are trying to secede. I lived in Alberta for four years. Nice folks, generally. The few who fantasize about leaving Canada underestimate the cost to themselves of untangling from one of the greatest countries in the world. Going to US administration officials for big cash to facilitate this nonsense is treason, by the way. But bang on, ya knobs! Every insult is fuel for the wider, unapologetic patriotism among Canucks.
We didn’t always have a 24-hour news cycle.
Remember that? And yet, we can’t seem to squeeze it all in. So much news comes so fast, we’ve forgotten that policy-based politics is supposed to be boring. Distractions abound. Our attention is fragmented, and our bandwidth is too narrow. Some block out all the noise so they get no signal. Others are just busy trying to get through the day and make it pay. I can’t blame them, but those who can do something to save the future must do so. This morning’s spam folder had this silly anonymous offer:
Hello, I specialize in promoting high-quality book stories to film producers who routinely review written material for potential adaptation. When a producer shows interest in a story, authors are typically compensated in the range of $2,000–$3,000, depending on the strength and market appeal of the work. Your book aligns with the type of material currently being reviewed. Would you like a brief overview of how the promotion process works?
They could have at least gone to the trouble of signing it, making up a company, and telling me which of my books will soon go to the silver screen and win an Oscar. Bleh! Stop it!
FINAL THOUGHTS ON QUEER EYE AND MONEY
On the final episode of Queer Eye, the hero was a handsome, funny, and charming tour guide in Washington supporting a wife and five kids. Self-care is good, but watching this guy get told to be more present and take time for himself, all I could think was, “IN THIS ECONOMY?!”
NOTE: My wife worked as a tour guide and bus driver in Toronto, Quebec, and Niagara Falls for a few summers. It’s not a high-paying job. Tip: Next time you’re on a tour, tip generously if you can.
Anyway, the tour guide is dancing as fast as he can, and the Fab Five are telling him to somehow carve more time out of the clock and still make enough money to eat? His first kid was going off to college. I hope it was a great scholarship. The house renovation was nice. It was all nice. I enjoyed most of the entire run of QE. But that tour guide didn’t need a lecture on motivation and time management. He needs money.
The first episode of this final season was the best. Expect a few laughs and a lot of ugly crying. Expect to see Antoni Porowski as a judge on cooking shows from now until the end of civilization. Hopefully, that’s gives us all a lot of time.
In my upcoming novel, our protagonist is Dr. Simon Fethullah, a forensic psychiatrist who worked for the FBI. Shot on the job, he retires to the wilds of Montana with his wife Carla and his faithful dog, Stefano.
Simon helped put the Rainy Day Cannibal away, but the serial killer has disciples. Though behind prison walls, the killer’s reach can still find Simon. Add in a dead presidential press secretary and a kidnapped girl. Now you’ve got Where The Night Takes Us, a rocking psychological thriller that plays with the blurred limits of time and memory. (The query is on submission to agents.)
A Brief Excerpt from my Next Crime Thriller
To deal with what his wife calls his post-apocalyptic stress disorder, Simon takes his therapist’s advice. After a dark realization, he makes the following notes on his phone.
How to Slow Time’s March and Live Longer and Better
1. Eat healthier and in reasonable portions.
2. Move more and lift weights.
3. Prove Denise wrong by enjoying rural life.
4. Play with my dog more.
5. Watch less social media and talk to Carla more.
6. Be more social. (Be real. I won’t do that.)
7. Read more books. Maybe write another book.
8. Do not shoot self in head.
9. Shoot someone else in the head when they come for us.
I’m a novelist who writes dystopian, apocalyptic, and crime fiction. My current income from over 40 books is far less than I made from far fewer books in 2011. I have to be honest, though. I can’t be mad about it.
Most of my readers are from the United States, where health insurance premiums are shooting up. Disposable income is down. It’s spiraled into a dystopian nightmare where Nazis write their own warrants to bust into homes. Children are getting kidnapped by government agents. Innocent people are assaulted and incarcerated without due process.
You’ve seen the video of a gaggle of ICE agents murdering people in Minnesota while gaslighters from the federal government libel the victims and tell you not to trust your lying eyes.
Reading novels isn’t the priority right now. Protesting, justice, and a general strike are top of mind. This is not to devalue art. It’s a sad acknowledgment of what is. I see you. I care. Yes, fiction can act as a wonderful distraction from ugly reality. Novels transport us. I love putting movies in your heads. That’s not the mood many are in right now. I get that, and I am sincerely sorry for all you’re going through.
My hope is that sanity will return. My wish is that all of you will be safe. My worry is that, though the chaos is concentrated in Minnesota at the moment, you are all in danger. One day, this will all be over. As the famous book title goes, one day everyone will always have been against this.
In my neighborhood, there is a cursed place. Today, that location is a new sushi restaurant. Before that? A Burger Factory. Before that? A forgotten string of failures. A new renter arrives with fresh ideas and colossal hope. After a year or two, another restaurateur takes up the challenge and shoulders the curse. Why anyone invests all their life savings in a restaurant is a mystery to most. To anyone who does not share the dream of making unappreciated food for an oblivious public, it is madness.
I would never invest in a restaurant, but I understand the passion for the risk.
Some clods don’t think writing a book is “real work.” They devalue the effort and call it a hobby. Some even want it all for free. It’s just typing, after all, right? Hell, in weak and depressed moments, I’ve called it an expensive hobby! When a reviewer says, “I don’t understand why this book isn’t a bestseller,” all I can say is, “Me, neither, man.”
And how many people really have the time, energy, and attention span to read anymore? Is this really a job or a fairly pointless compulsion? What kind of fool wasted months or years to compose a novel?
Here, I raise my hand. I’m that kind of fool. I don’t know if my next book will be a smash hit, but I enter into every story with that same hope. It’s madness, really.
A peek into how my workday began
After only a few hours of sleep, I think I woke up around 3:30 a.m. I lay in bed with wild thoughts about Where The Night Takes Us. The manuscript needed an extra kick to get the grand seduction going. It’s a dance to draw readers in, and the steps were not quite right yet. I deleted a chapter yesterday to speed up the pacing. I added something crucial to the beginning yesterday, too. Satisfaction eluded me. What else would make the recipe sweeter?
Gave up on sleep at 4 a.m.
The nagging sense that I’d lose some sugar made me crawl out of bed and to my laptop. More words, particular and well-chosen, had to get written before I could lose the thread. I had to sew some seams and make the presentation more appetizing. Perfection is always out of reach, but at least I can make it more right.
Officially, Where The Night Takes Us will be my thirtieth novel. I’ve been here before. The energy behind the compulsion to get it published is always the same. Years ago, a novelist’s house caught fire. He braved the flames to reenter the burning building to save his manuscript. I get it, but it’s madness, isn’t it?
Anyway, I caught the words before they could slip away. If this is a curse, I must enjoy it. When the manuscript is fully baked and out of the oven, I hope you’ll enjoy my madness.
It is now 5:15 a.m., and my brain is buzzing. I may as well stay up and keep cooking. Somewhere out there, I have to believe hungry readers are waiting for my next concoction.
I got to the grocery store early for more yogurt because I found a fake cheesecake recipe you’ll want to eat every day, all day (below).
Crossword (Done! I abhor cross words, but I love crosswords.)
Read more of The Children of Men. Damn, this is a good book.
Study French.
Workout at home today (kettlebell, mobility, balance, bodyweight exercises, stationary bike, boxing, & lots of squats).
I am working through the third draft polish of Where The Night Takes Us. (Greatest challenge: timeline logistics.)
Now, to that fake cheesecake that’s going to blow your mind:
1 cup plain high-protein yogurt
1 egg
1 tablespoon cornstarch
splash of lemon and/or lemon zest
Optional: sweetener
Mix it up, slam it in a ramekin, bake at 350 for 12 minutes, review Vengeance Is Hers and/or join the review team for Where The Night Takes Us, and enjoy!
Optional: top with berries.
You’re going to love it.
If you like 1984, The Burning Library, It Can Happen Here, or A Different Drummer…
A woman in a car waves for cars to go around her. ICE agents issue conflicting commands, one telling her to go and another insisting she get out of the car. An ICE agent steps in front of her car, phone in one hand recording, the other hand going for his weapon. Terrified and confused, the woman backs up and turns her wheels so she won’t run over anyone. No one is in front of her car as she begins to go. The woman is shot by ICE. A physician begs to check on her. ICE officers refuse. “We have our own medics.” “Where are they?” a woman screams. She is told to relax. “How can I relax when you just killed my fucking neighbor?” Medics don’t arrive for fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, two minutes after shooting the woman, the killer walks away calmly, gets in his car, and drives away.
In a normal world:
Law enforcement would look like law enforcement, not masked goons cosplaying their power fantasies. They’d have better training. ICE would conform to codes of conduct and have stricter rules of engagement than soldiers do in a war zone. Peace officers ask themselves, “Must I shoot?”, not “Can I shoot?” Being filmed should temper ICE response. It doesn’t. The shooter shouldn’t have walked away. His superior should have taken his weapon as evidence for the investigation. Call it what it is. He fled a crime scene.
In a better world, those in power could admit mistakes. They would announce that there would be an investigation. They wouldn’t lie so badly that anyone could see the difference between what they say and what all the video shows. The President wouldn’t claim the shooter had been run over and was recovering in the hospital. The vice president wouldn’t libel the murdered woman. Yale-trained sophist JD Vance (AKA James Donald Bowman alias James David Hamel) would know the difference between “immunity” and impunity.”
And remember when Kristi Noem claimed they had arrested the girlfriend of the founder of Antifa?
Whatever happened to that case? How has the press forgotten it? The original Antifa emerged in Europe early in the last century. That girlfriend must really be a tough old lady not to have given up all her secrets by now.
At the conclusion of Citizen Second Class, I found a relatively peaceful way out from under a grasping authoritarian regime. That was fiction. Reality is not so neat.
