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A long time ago, I ran away from home. Coming back is going to be murder.
Solutions to the Mess We’re In
AKA Better Safe Than Sorry, Part III
If the mortal threat is not real until the pandemic affects you personally, that’s a failure of empathy and foresight. I don’t know if empathy can be taught. Leading by example is good (wear a mask!) but we must fine selfish assholes who refuse to comply for no other reason than performative belligerence.
Feel no urge to protect the herd? Pow! Here’s a ticket. Still no mask? Pow! Here’s another ticket. How’s your wallet feel now? Still nothing? We’re impounding your car. Ready to participate in society, be a hero and save lives yet? No? I’m taking your phone and you’re grounded. Go to your room.
What else can we do when science is not believed? I have some ideas.
Appeal 1: Patriotism
This is a war. We’ve suffered casualties. For this conflict, rifles and Blackhawk helicopters won’t help. We’re all drafted and on the line, saving lives. Your mask is your armor. Gear up, Citizen Soldier!
Appeal 2: Self-interest
The life you save might be your own. Do you care for somebody? Anybody? You could spare them pain, suffering or death, too.
Appeal 3: Vanity
New Zealanders can do something you can’t? Wimp.
Appeal 4: Religion
You may not want to wear a mask because if you die, you’ll just get to heaven sooner. Cool, but wouldn’t Jesus want us to look out for each other? Do unto others, etc.? If someone dies before they know Jesus because you found a mask too inconvenient… Well, do selfish assholes go directly to heaven? Or do they have to wait in shame for a while at the back of the line?
Appeal 5: Shunning
You broke the social contract. We are enforcing our mask policy. No, you cannot enter the store. No goods or services for you.
Make the crisis personal. Shun them until they feel enough social pressure to save lives.
Appeal 6: Conspiracy theory
“Don’t wear masks to defeat Bill Gates’ contagion and tracking vaccine. Wear the mask to defeat facial recognition technology.” And/or: “The globalists don’t really want you to wear a face covering. It’s a fake out. They created and released the virus to kill you so they can steal your vote. Besides, masks destroy the effects of 5G. It’s been documented.”
Note: A conspiracy theory doesn’t have to make sense. You don’t have to science it up. Just tap into the sap’s need to feel targeted and victimized. “They’re out to get you so you have to do X, Y, Z,” is a reliable formula.”
Appeal 7: Economics
I get that you want to get back to normal and get the economy going again. Me, too!
Mass death and the looming threat thereof seems bad for the economy, though, right? It’s not enough to declare it’s safe for everybody to go back to work. It has to actually be and feel safe. Put a ref on the field and get the rabid tigers back in their cages or we aren’t playing.
Appeal 8: Civility
We wear masks here because we care for each other. Pretty please?
Appeal 9: Sexiness
Damn! You’re lookin’ like a snack in that mask! Those eyes! And looking so mysterious and alluring! When the pandemic is over and the borders open, I want to make sweet love to you in Paris.
Or:
I pledge to never bless anyone with my fine naked self if they refused to be a decent person during a global pandemic. I’ve got too much self-respect to even deal with anyone so careless.
No glove, no love. No mask? Don’t even ask.
Appeal 10: Fear
As the Facebook meme goes, if you don’t like wearing a mask, you’re really going to hate the ventilator. Drowning on land is a horrible way to die. And even if you survive, COVID-19 is a nasty, cold-hearted bitch. The painful effects can last a long time, maybe for the rest of your miserable life.
And if I survive, I’ll be your Meals on Wheels angel every day. I’ll bring you soup at noon and with every goddamn sip and dribbling slurp I spoon feed you, I’ll utter those same dreadful words, “I told you so.” Scared yet?
Last-ditch attempt:
It’s okay to be ignorant. Just don’t stay wrong.
If you refuse to believe in science and continue to look for ways to deny the obvious, that’s a human failing. You don’t want to be told what to do. You don’t want to be wrong. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong about anything.
Me included!
In 2010, when I wrote This Plague of Days, I believed that the protective barrier masks provide would be made useless after 20 minutes of respiration. That was generally believed right up to early this year! The science changed because more research was done. Findings change as the science improves.
Wearing masks dramatically decreases transmission of coronavirus. We have to improve alongside the science. The willfully ignorant use motivated reasoning to condemn Dr. Fauci and the CDC on this point. Yes, he was wrong about something in the past. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong now.
Rather than changing and admitting a past mistake, some double down on being wrong in the present. That’s a formula for more grieving and loss.
The way things are going, particularly in the US and Brazil now, we will all know someone who has died of COVID-19. We’ve already had too much unnecessary death and pain. Let’s stop making more. Please, wear a mask.
The most tragic last words I’ve heard were reported this week.
A young woman about to be put on a ventilator gasped her last with, “I think I made a mistake. I thought it was a hoax.”
She had not acted on better safe than sorry. Then she was sorry too late.
~ This concludes the Better Safe Than Sorry series of three posts I had to get off my chest. If you missed the first two, here are the links:
Better Safe Than Sorry Part I
Better Safe Than Sorry Part I
You’re in the audience of a supper club waiting for the main act to take the stage. A young man approaches the microphone to warn you a fire has broken out in the building. What do you do?
If you answered that you would head for the fire exits, maybe not.
Remember “Better safe than sorry”?
It seems that aphorism has lost its power. When the scenario above played out in real life, 167 people died. Why? Because when a relatively uncomplicated life and death decision popped up, many in the audience did not trust authority. Instead, they looked to each other.
The phenomenon and the scientific basis for it is detailed in an excellent podcast I’m sure you’ll enjoy. It’s called “Cautionary Tales.” Here’s the link to the relevant episode:
CAUTIONARY TALES – FIRE AT THE BEVERLY HILLS SUPPER CLUB
Look around, look around
I had to go to the grocery store last night. The supper club disaster was much on my mind. A good number of people wore masks, but quite a few did not. We look to each other for affirmation. When people are better safe than sorry, they wear masks. The more people wear masks, even more people will wear masks.
“Nobody else is wearing a mask so I’m not going to,” really means, “If I see other people being careless about other people’s lives, I can, too.”
Nobody likes being told what to do. I knew an old guy who cut the seatbelts out of every car he owned. One of my kids went through a phase where he would run off, sometimes into the street. We put a harness and leash on him until the feeling passed. He got over the impulse before he started to shave. He didn’t like the harness at first. It soon became normal. That’s how he survived.
Suggestion: Make masks cool and free and supply them everywhere.
I want a black mask. They look badass.
COVID-19 is a zombie pandemic
Don’t believe COVID-19 is a zombie pandemic?
Please consider the tropes of the zombie genre:
- Zombies represent a force of nature, indifferent to your pain, suffering, and death.
- As the contagion spreads, many people are in denial at first. “This can’t be real. It’s a hoax!”
- Scientists who warned of the looming disaster are not believed.
- Then, “It’s a plot!”
- “It’s not my problem until the infection comes for me.”
- Normal life as we know it is over, yet some try to pretend otherwise.
- Two tribes: “Working together, we can save more people,” versus “I take care of me and mine.”
- Traveling large distances is suddenly a huge challenge.
- Healthcare systems become overwhelmed and economies collapse.
- Though the virus can infect everyone and anyone, the privileged try to cling to their privilege.
- Riots. When the rich do it, it’s called scavenging for survival. When the poor do it, it’s called looting.
- People with power and/or authority abuse others.
- People who were previously undervalued are suddenly prized for their survival skills.
- People without useful expertise experience a sudden plummet in their self-esteem and question their role and identity in these new, dire circumstances.
- Many hoard and hide, determined to wait it out “until this thing blows over.” (But it doesn’t blow over unless you’re watching Shawn of the Dead.)
- Some turn to religion, others to drugs. Coping styles vary widely. Some don’t cope at all and hurt themselves and others.
- Weapons, weapons everywhere.
- Bored and frustrated, some act out in very unhelpful ways.
- Governments respond too little, too late, or not at all while reassuring their frightened citizenry that everything’s going to be okay.
- The dead we know personally are mourned. We become numb to the huge statistics of the butcher’s bill.
- People try to hold on to normalcy, focus on minutiae, and cry in private.
- Some infected deny they’re infected, endangering the rest of their group.
- With no end in sight, depression and anxiety are heightened while we put on a brave face for the benefit of children.
- Some vocal and angry slice of the populace is pissed off at Nature but instead aim their rage at the brilliant virologist who is trying to save them.
- Conspiracy theories, conjecture, and rumors replace the news media.
- Some take change as a chance at a reset, aspiring to change the world for the better.
- Others, looking backward through a rose-colored lens, reject the fresh start, wanting nothing more than to get back to their routines as they were.
- People value their units more, whether that unit is family, friends, or loyal connections.
- Some regret what they didn’t do with their lives. Others find new meaning in rising to meet the challenges of their new circumstances.
Years ago, someone on a Facebook webinar dismissed me as “just one of those zombie writers.”
Three things about that bit of dickishness:
First, neener-neener-poo-poo. I’m not “just” anything, balloon head. Read a little more and a little deeper and toss your assumptions in the trash. This Plague of Days is the slow burn that strikes at the heart of our highest hopes and our greatest failings when confronting a pandemic. AFTER Life is packed with fast-paced action and still digs deep into the choices we make and what it means to be human. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, dumbass.
Second, z-lit can serve as a rich metaphor for Nature, uncaring and brutal as it can be. Infection and contagion are unrelenting existential threats, and they are always with us. Life and its mortal limits are the constant subtexts of the human condition. World pandemics elevate those threats so they are no longer subtextual. Unless you’re reading this post from New Zealand, you’re soaking in a zombie apocalypse scenario right now. (See above.)
Third, zombie novels are not about zombies. It’s the human response to existential threats that makes the drama. How we respond to stress, whether we help or hurt, die with grace or go out in pain and regret…these are all human stories in which thoughtlessness kills, cowards are exposed, and heroes rise.
So, what’s it going to be today?
Will you bravely and carefully venture out into the Badlands to beyond your walls in search of food? Will you shelter in place and act in the spirit of kindness to comfort others to ease our collective burdens? Or are you going to be a selfish superspreader who goes out without a mask to spread disease and add to the suffering, death, and mayhem?
Hint: In fiction and in real life, things often do not end well for the cowards and malicious disease spreaders. Choose wisely and wear a damn mask. After all, if you’re an unthinking, unfeeling creature who lacks empathy and forethought, you’re already a zombie.
You are not a cog
I used to do this thing when I was a kid. Pillows go down first. Those were the hills. Then a blanket went on top. That was the battlefield. After that, I set my little green plastic soldiers, tanks, and cannons in place. WWII went on for years in my basement. The fun was in setting the pieces up for the bombing raid.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Fun!
Then I’d reset until Gilligan’s Island came on the TV (the snowy channel from Bangor. Maine).
One day, my father burst into the room looking irritated, frantic even. “You’re playin’ all the time! Every time I see you, you’re playin’!“
And I was like, “Dad, I’m nine.”
The mindset became ingrained, though. Protestant Work Ethic, we called it, as if work wasn’t hard enough we had to bring religion into it. As if people of other faiths weren’t all busting their asses, too.
The core concept was this: If you aren’t doing something to make money, you’re valueless.
Given a single quiet moment, my father would announce it was time to mow the lawn or clean out the garage. When you’re ordered to clean out the garage every five weeks, you really want to torch the place.
Mom was no different. I don’t recall her sitting down until she was confined to a wheelchair. She hated it if anyone dared to have a nap. Her favorite line was, “The day’s a-wastin’!”
We are blind to the things we take for granted. The sky is blue, grass is green, and we’re put on Earth to rise and grind, life’s a bitch and then you die.
We don’t know what we don’t know.
The Epidemic of Busyness
A friend of mine organized a TEDx Talk in Chicago. I watched it this morning. The first speaker observed that we are suffering several epidemics: COVID-19, of course, but racism and economic challenges, too. She spoke eloquently about busyness and her speech really got me thinking how much I’ve messed up the first half of the year. I’ve indulged in bad thinking that does not serve me, but I’m working on it.
When we went into quarantine, many of us didn’t know how to handle it. We were unprepared for the pattern break. Lifting our noses from the grindstone, many of us thought, what do I do with myself? If I’m not working and producing every hour, this must be sin. And was it necessary to commute to work to put my nose to that grindstone? It hurts.
Have you seen this meme?
We have to stop talking as if we’re “working from home” when we’re actually living where we work.
My wife, the thoughtful psychologist, prefers this: We’re not working from home. We’re living at home and trying to get work done.
It is quite a privilege to work from home, of course. While the rest of us complained about confinement and got deeply into making sourdough bread starters, nurses, doctors, delivery people, and grocery store workers didn’t get to have that “time off.” There’s understandable guilt in allowing essential workers to take the biggest hit, especially when they don’t receive hazard pay and adequate protection. (That issue is a whole other blog post.)
There’s also the guilt of feeling we should be doing more with our time. I’d like to absolve you of that last bit. I’m still trying to break those chains myself.
You have value even when you aren’t working
“Playing video games is not wasted time.”
The first time I heard that sentence, it was a genuine challenge for me. After all, the day’s a-wastin’! But you know what? Those video games were fun. Lots of dopamine hits. Relaxation. Relaxation is healthy. Going for a walk without a particular purpose in mind is healthy.
We often fail to value relaxation because Capitalism doesn’t value downtime. “Downtime” as in, “The production line is down! Quick, pull that injured worker off the line, toss in another sacrifice, and crank ‘er up again! We’re losing money!”
If you don’t think about it too hard, it’s easy to call poor people lazy. When you do think about it for more than a second, you realize that the poorest among us tend to be among the hardest workers. How many jobs, gigs, and side hustles does it take the average person to cobble together a decent living? How much downtime do they get from their non-living wages? How much of living do they get to enjoy?
Answer: You won’t find poor people on the golf course unless they’re mowing it.
Hardcore proponents of everlasting economic growth aren’t comfortable with you having any fun unless they’re selling it to you. “Don’t just stay home! Get out there and feed the economy!” Idleness, in any form, is suspect.
When we fall for this trap, we fail to value ourselves.
Dad’s become a little wiser in his later years. Now, when I feel like I’m not writing enough or selling enough books, he says, “Even birds don’t fly all the time.”
I’m not lazy, but I still berate myself for not getting more done. I’m trying to break that habit. I don’t have the toy soldiers, anymore, but sometimes, when my son is out, I get on his computer and play Sniper Elite 4.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Fun!
Every Evil Thing
Seen on the internet: Did you have a happy childhood or are you funny?
Last night I went on a long walk. Usually, I have my earbuds in. Craving stimulation, I listen to podcasts (mostly about how the world is falling down and the landing won’t be a soft one). If I want to walk faster, I’ll pump music into my head and swing my arms faster. On this stroll, I was in a mood to ruminate. I walked in silence for a change, listening for what my brain offered up. Unless I’m at my keyboard engaging in the writing life, this is generally a bad move.
Sunny people see a sunset and enjoy the beauty. I move on from those feelings quickly. The looming sunset in a silent sky served as an existential reminder of Nature’s cold indifference. I can be funny, but my nature is not sunny. Irony and dark humor? A lot of that comes from a dark place.
And so I plunged headlong into the past
Passing through a stand of trees, the green aroma pulled me back to memories of Nova Scotia, where I grew up. I ran through a lot of woods in those days. If I did that now, all I’d think about would be ticks and Lyme Disease. (I’m fun at parties, but that’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?)
We like to think we are proactive, a cause in the world. Sometimes, history condemns us to little more than an effect. My father refers to Nova Scotia as “God’s Country.” I would say it is a nice place to visit. It’s not all bad, not at all. I miss the sound of foghorns lowing to each other when a thick white blanket falls over Halifax Harbour. I miss Atomic Subs on Jubilee Road (sadly and inexplicably, long gone). In my hometown, the #4 Special at the House of Cheng was special. There are kind people there, but my mind doesn’t allow me to remember much of that.
Years ago, I met a fellow at a party who was born in the same hospital as me. Though he never actually lived there, he rhapsodized about how great our little town was. He became irritated when my lived experience didn’t match his fantasy. He seemed eager to overlook the casual racism, for instance. I could never watch an episode of Trailer Park Boys. I knew too many guys like that in real life to find it funny. I recognize that people are just as different and also the same everywhere. Human failings and mental deficits are certainly not unique to that place. However, painful memories specific to me lie there in the shadows. I am haunted.
When I wrote The Night Man, the town of Lake Orion, Michigan is just as much a character as it is a setting. I grew up in a small town. I know what it’s like when everyone remembers you from when you were in diapers. I remember how gossip is an engine that never stops revving. Growing up where I did informed Ernest “Easy” Jack’s experience of coming home to Orion. I have plenty of ghost voices in my head. They’re useful for what I do for a living.
History is generic, trauma is personal
The writing life is a sedentary one. I aim for 10,000 steps a day. Last night was a 14,000 step walk, plenty of time to dwell on regrets, unforced errors, my own shittiness, and the shots not taken.
Unfortunately, I have an eidetic memory for every negative thing I’ve witnessed. In perfect, excruciating detail, I remember the look on my mother’s face the last time I saw her. On her deathbed, she was furious, angry that she was dying, at how unfair it was. Loathing any display of weakness, she seemed most rageful that she was not immortal.
I remember every unkind word spoken to me like a fresh wound. I have always had a problem with authority and giving up control. In childhood, the locus of control is always elsewhere. Perhaps that’s why that time can feel so terrible. Everything feels important, even when it isn’t. Every failing is the end of the world. Everything is taken personally. (Still is.)
Indoctrinated into ideas I now find abhorrent, young adulthood was difficult, too. I couldn’t get hold of all the variables that might allow me enough independence to be left the hell alone. I was told I was too young to have a valid opinion, that my thoughts and feelings did not matter. I think some people might be getting better at valuing children so they learn to better value themselves and others. Sadly, there’s still a better than average chance you were told the same things I was. Maybe you got over it. I hold grudges.
I’m still resentful of the interview for the publishing job where I was told that, if hired, I couldn’t possibly have a valid opinion for the next seven years. Shit, why not just go train to be a brain surgeon? I’d get to a position where I counted as a human being a lot faster that way. Or how about those job interviews for newspapers where the interviewers tried to bully me? That didn’t go well for them and I learned that I was truculent. (That’s also how I learned the word truculent.)
I know grudges are not healthy, but I don’t know how to unring that bell.
In silence, my busy brain breaks open the floodgates: the crazy Spanish lady I should have fired, the landlord who cheated me, the boss who scooped up my commission bonus, the thousand little affronts, the threats of assault, the bickering, the anger that’s always simmering…the constant grating sense that for every little win I might eke out, I’m still behind and losing ground. The near-certainty that I WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH.
Thinking about it last night, I will never return to Nova Scotia. Though I enjoy being in faraway places, I hate the process of traveling. The last time I flew, my left eardrum burst. With a pandemic burning across the world, staying in my blanket fort is best. I still have family Down East, but it’s a long way to go to be told I’ve gained weight and my hair has turned white (as if I didn’t know).
I don’t feel a desperate need to be underestimated and condescended to in person. I outsource my self-esteem and moods to strangers on the internet (AKA book reviewers). Besides, there are lovely tourist destinations calling. Why go for awkward personal interactions where criticism is mistaken for love? Some families write off cruelty as “teasing” or “banter” where they are rude to relatives in ways that would rightly earn them a bloody nose from a stranger. Exposure to conflict does not breed warm feelings. It often breeds anxiety and hypervigilance.
Conflict used to be a steady diet for me. My interactions with the public are rare now. Through careful choices, astonishing luck, hard work, and seclusion, I’ve edited out most potential for conflict. It’s a peaceful, contained, and controlled life wherein I often manage substitute humor for anger. I write in a literal blanket fort, for God’s sake! However, since I worked in retail from the age of 13, I’ve got plenty of drama to draw on to spin my stories of murder and mayhem.
I remember very well the urge to commit homicide, for instance. That coworker deserved it. That feeling is still handy, anytime I reach out to fire up those neurons. Humiliation, rage, and fear are all on call, ready to flow into the keyboard. All our experiences can be rewoven to create new patterns, new characters. To weave plots, to tell engaging and relatable stories, pain is useful.
Despite time and growth, I remain hypervigilant and anxious. I still feel that I will never be enough and that I am losing ground. If you are, like me, a writer who can’t let go of every evil thing, use that shit.
If you’re a reader, enjoy it.
Happy Endings and Cover Reveals
I write a lot about the end of the world.
I remember reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and thinking, wow, this is relentlessly grim. However, there is a tiny crack of light at the end of the tale. The only apocalyptic tale that really bothered me was the end of The Mist, the movie that was based on a Stephen King story. The film concludes on a very sad note that is not in King’s original story. In print, the ending was more ambiguous but left the reader thinking there might yet be a future for the survivors..
After writing the final book of the This Plague of Days trilogy, I was contacted by a reader asking if I would write a happier ending in the future. No spoilers for the uninitiated, but I will say this: There is a high note of hope at the end of the journey of This Plague of Days. However, I would never make it my policy to finish any story with a mandatory Happily Ever After. You’re not supposed to pound jigsaw pieces into the puzzle to make them fit.
I strive to write satisfying and surprising endings. Sometimes there’s hope, like with Citizen Second Class. Sometimes the ending is a bit more ambiguous and left to the reader to draw their own conclusions, as with Amid Mortal Words. The conclusions you draw there will depend on your view of humanity’s potential. Whatever happens, the conclusion must not betray the logical advancement of the narrative.
I always want an ending that sticks with the reader long after they finish the book. I hope you’ll find that in all my novels and short stories. The ending probably won’t be expected, but you will think, BOOM! Oh, yeah!
I’m very proud of Citizen Second Class and Amid Mortal Words. The reviews are few, but the readers who find these novels enjoy them.
In Citizen Second Class, a young woman finds herself in the middle of a rebellion against the last of the ruling class, holed up in a fortress of the Select Few in New Atlanta.
In Amid Mortal Words, an Air Force officer meets a stranger on a train who leaves him with a book that could end the world or save it. All he has to do is read passages from the book and bad people die. But that’s not all the book can do.
To help browsers become readers, in the last couple of days I changed the covers hoping to better meet reader expectations (translation: seduce you and make you tremble in shivering anticipation as you hit the buy button.)
If you haven’t read these books yet, I’d start with Citizen Second Class. It’s a novel that is ripe for this moment in American history. As the new cover quote suggests: