All posts by David B. Coe

David B. Coe/D.B. Jackson is the award winning author of sixteen novels and many short stories. As David B. Coe (http://www.DavidBCoe.com) he has written the Crawford award-winning LonTobyn Chronicle, the Winds of the Forelands quintet, the Blood of the Southlands trilogy, and will soon release, SPELL BLIND, the first volume of the Case Files of Justis Fearsson. The second book, HIS FATHER’S EYES, will be out in the summer of 2015. Writing as D.B. Jackson (http://www.dbjackson-author.com), he is the author of the Thieftaker Chronicles -- THIEFTAKER, THIEVES’ QUARRY, A PLUNDER OF SOULS, and DEAD MAN’S REACH, which is also due out in summer 2015. David is part of the Magical Words group blog (http://magicalwords.net), and co-author of How To Write Magical Words: A Writer’s Companion. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Angry Robot Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Falstaff Books, Islevale Cycle, Time's Assassin, Time's Children, Time's Demon, Writing

Monday Musings: On New Releases and All That Comes With Them

Time's Assassin, book III of The Islevale Cycle, by D.B. Jackson (jacket art by Robyne Pomroy)It is release week for Time’s Assassin, the third book in my epic fantasy/time travel series, The Islevale Cycle, and so that will be the focus of my posts this week. And I’d like to kick off the week with some musings about new releases and the excitement and anxiety that comes with them.

Release days are odd. Even today, with the marketplace changed and production times for books shortened by digital advances and the movement toward smaller presses and self-publishing, the actual day a book drops seems to be removed from time — an irony given that, in this instance, the release is a time travel story. Producing a book takes months, and while the rest of the world sees Time’s Assassin as my newest work, I know it’s not. Since completing the submitted draft of this book, I have written short stories, a non-fiction piece, several novellas, and a full-length novel. I’m currently reading and worldbuilding in preparation for another multi-volume project. In other words, my mind has moved on from Islevale. Talking and writing about this book feels like a journey to a different time.

To be clear, it’s not a journey I mind making. I love the Islevale books; I believe they’re the best novels I’ve published. They’re just not the focus of my professional life the way they were when I was neck-deep in writing them. And that’s a bit of a problem. The fact is, the success of Time’s Assassin and the two volumes that came before it will have a huge impact on everything I do after. Sadly, that’s how publishing works. We are only as successful commercially — and, to a lesser degree, critically — as our most recent work. This is why even perennial bestsellers still worry about each new release. They sweat the reviews and pore over their sales numbers.

We want to take satisfaction in the publication itself (more on this in Wednesday’s post) and to some degree we do. Certainly we should. Writing a book is no small feat. Completing a series is an accomplishment that deserves a moment’s reflection. I still get a thrill out of seeing the jacket art for a new book, or holding the printed novel in my hands for the first time. I have a bookcase next to my desk that holds a copy of every novel I’ve published, every anthology in which I’ve placed a short story or which I’ve edited. Two shelves are full; I’m about to start filling a third. I’m proud of that.

That said, I’m already invested in other projects. I want this release to go well, but my creative energy is focused elsewhere. I don’t mean for that to sound jaded. This is, I believe, as it should be. It’s not just the allure of the New Shiny — though that is real, and worth exploring in a future Writing-Tip Wednesday post. Looking beyond the current release is, to my mind, a natural expression of all that we love about our profession. Yes, completing a book feels great. And yes, starting a new novel can be daunting.

For authors, though, as for all artists working in all forms, creation is a constant. We work on the next project because we have ideas that demand attention, and because we believe with all our hearts that as much as we might love the thing we’ve just finished and are currently promoting, we know that we can do even better.

So, we worry about the sales and the critics. We do what we can to promote the new release.

Time’s Children, by D.B. Jackson © Angry Robot. Art by Jan Weßbecher.TIME'S DEMON, by D.B. Jackson (Art by Jan Weßbecher)…And allow me take a moment to urge you get a copy of Time’s Assassin. (You can order it here.) It is, I believe, a wonderful conclusion to a series I adore. If you haven’t yet read Time’s Children and Time’s Demon, now is the time. The three books are out. There will be no more in this world. And they are as good as any work I’ve ever done. And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog post…

But I’ll be perfectly honest with you: Even if the reviews for Time’s Assassin suck, and even if we don’t sell a single copy (neither of which I anticipate), I’m still going to work on the new projects. I am a writer. This is what I do.

Creativity is its own reward. At least it should be. Sometimes things get a bit more complicated than that, a phenomenon I’ll address on Wednesday.

Today, though, I intend to enjoy having my mind in two projects at once, two worlds at once. I am deeply proud of my new release. I hope you’ll buy it and I hope you enjoy it. AND I am incredibly excited about my new projects. I can’t wait for you to see them.

Enjoy your week.

Blogging, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Photo Friday: A Friend On My Walk

Found this guy about a week ago on my walk and then saw him again this morning. He is an Eastern Box Turtle, and, yes, I really do know that he’s a male, based on eye color and the bright coloring on his head and legs.

The funny thing is — and I swear this is true — the place where I see him is also the place where I always see a hare. (The rabbit is too quick for me; I can never get a good photo.) So, I assume that either they race everyday, or they’ve set their rivalry aside and have just become good friends.

Wishing you a wonderful, safe holiday.

Box Turtle II, by David B. Coe Box Turtle I, by David B. Coe

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Writing-Tip Wednesday: Taking Stock Halfway Through 2020

As of today, July 1, we are halfway done with 2020.

Yeah, I know. It seems like this year has lasted a decade. And it seems like this year has flown. Time is unnervingly elastic right now, at least from my perspective. I have been distracted all year long — that’s how it feels. I can hardly believe that six months ago I hadn’t heard of Covid-19. I haven’t been at my best for so long now, I’m not entirely sure anymore what “my best” really means.

That said, I look back on the first six months of the year, and I see that I did, in fact, accomplish something. Quite a lot, actually.

•I’ve edited an anthology, reading through literally dozens of stories, choosing (in consultation with Joshua Palmatier, my co-editor) the ones we would be including in the final collection, and then editing and copyediting those.

•I’ve written and revised a short story for said anthology.

•I’ve written, revised, and then revised again a lengthy non-fiction piece.

•I’ve revised and copyedited TIME’S ASSASSIN, the third Islevale novel, which will be out from Falstaff Books on or about July 7.

•I’ve written the first drafts of three Thieftaker novellas, totaling just over 100,000 words.

•I’ve put out five issues of my newsletter, and will be coming out with number six very soon (I tend to take January off).

•I’ve posted Monday Musings, Wednesday Writing Tips, and Friday Photos, every week for the first twenty six weeks of the year.

All in all, not bad.

I know that I’ve done all of these things, because I keep a day journal in which I jot down, among other things, all of my professional activities. And I keep that journal for just this reason. Even in the best of times, it is so, so easy to convince ourselves that we’re not doing anything, that we’re just spinning our wheels and wasting our time. This is especially true now, in a period of sustained social crisis unlike anything most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Our tension and apprehension and sense of being overwhelmed consumes all else, making it too easy to gloss over our accomplishments, whatever they may be.

Keeping a day journal is easy. You can do it electronically, or physically. I do everything electronically these days, except this. Each year, I buy a Sierra Club Engagement Calendar, and I use it to keep tabs on myself, writing down each day’s highlights before going to bed. I recommend it. It may be just the thing to help you keep track of all you’re getting done, despite your conviction that you’re not getting anything done at all. More than that, it can be a source of motivation. On some days, I wind up working harder than I would otherwise, because I don’t want to face that blank space in the evening with nothing productive to jot down.

I also want to say, at this, the turn of the year, that 2020 is far from over. Whatever you have gotten done so far, you have six more months in which to accomplish old goals or set and get started on new ones. It’s tempting to give in to the negative impulse: “The year’s already half gone. What’s the use?” I choose instead to look at it from the other side. “I still have half the year left to do X, Y, and Z.”

So I plan to keep the newsletters coming, to write my three blog posts each and every week. I have a release next week that I intend to promote. I hope to be editing a new anthology by the end of the year. I intend to revise and put out those three Thieftaker novellas before the year is finished. I have more edits to get done on the nonfiction piece. I have a new idea for a major project — I’m researching it now. I would love to have the first novel in that project finished before the end of the year. I have gotten the rights back to the third and fourth Thieftaker novels; I want to edit those and get them reissued this year. And more…

So, yeah, it’s July 1. Wow.

Now, back to work.

Keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Speaking Out

In the spring of my senior year in college, an event took place on campus that changed me forever. It was called a Speak-Out, and it was organized by the school’s Women’s Center. Those running the Speak-Out set up an open microphone and loudspeakers at the upper end of the residential quadrangle that was home to the school’s few fraternities and social dorms. And on a cool, rainy morning, at a rally that followed a silent march through campus, one woman after another stepped forward to tell their stories of humiliation, harassment, misogyny, homophobia, abuse, assault, and rape.

Many of the stories they told focused on their treatment at the hands of men who lived in the buildings surrounding the crowd that gathered there that morning. Other incidents they described took place elsewhere. Almost all of them involved members of our university community. The impromptu remarks these women offered were raw, shocking, eye-opening, deeply personal, heartrending. Nearly everyone who spoke cried. Nearly everyone listening cried. I know I did. I believe — I hope — that for many in attendance the event proved cathartic.

I remember that day vividly and, thirty-five years later, I still think of it often. I knew some of the women who spoke, either in passing or fairly well. But that was less important than this: I knew intimately the behaviors, attitudes, and actions they described.

I had always thought of myself as a sensitive, enlightened guy. I suppose, by comparison to some, I was. I learned that day, though, that men don’t have to be rude to be guilty of harassment, that we don’t have to be abusers to be abusive, that we don’t have to be rapists to be complicit in emotional assault. I recognized in myself, and in too many of the guys I hung out with, just the sorts things the courageous women at the Speak-Out described.

The Speak-Out was intended to give voice to women who, for too long, had been ignored on our campus. It was also an emotional cudgel aimed at the privilege of well-to-do Ivy League men. But to my mind, it was an incredible gift. I said at the outset that the day changed me, changed my life, and it’s true. What I learned about myself that day forced me to rethink every relationship, current (at the time) and past. And the lessons of that day have echoed through every day and every relationship since. They made me a better person, a better friend, a better romantic partner; ultimately they made me a better husband and a better father to my daughters.

Jump ahead thirty-five years, and in recent days, with several men in the science fiction/fantasy field being outed as serial harassers and abusers, the Speak-Out has been on my mind even more than usual. Three and a half decades later, we are still fighting the same battles. Women are still struggling to be heard and believed. Men are still hiding behind our privilege in order to perpetuate a gender hierarchy that ignores and even rewards unacceptable behavior.

And as with issues of race, which I have written about frequently in the past month (here, here, and here), it falls to those of us in the privileged group to change and speak up and act. For too, too long, women have been calling out the harassers and abusers and assaulters, and still those men continue to harass and abuse and assault. Many of my friends in the industry have offered themselves as protectors at conventions and other public events, and I admire them for that. I offer the same to my friends regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. If you need me, I am here for you.

But we men have to do more than that. We have to call out the guys who do this shit, not just in response to public incidents, but also in the privacy of male-to-male conversations where, too often, we offer shelter and complicity by not speaking up, by not drawing attention to sexism, objectification, homophobia, trans-directed prejudice, misogyny, and worse. We have to be more than heroes. We have to be advocates, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Those who suffer the most from the harassment and abuse found their voices long ago, and they continue to speak now — with courage, with conviction, with candor. Yes, we hear them. Yes, we believe them. But no, that isn’t enough.

Now, we have to speak out ourselves.

Wishing you all a good week.

Blogging, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Photo Friday: My Morning Walk

Photo Friday has rolled around again. Seriously, where do the weeks go? I don’t understand.

Just about every morning I walk for 3+ miles along the rails-to-trails path here in our town. I have written about it before, and posted this black and white image during the winter. But I thought I would give you a photo of what it looks like this time of year, with the trees in full foliage, and the understory lush and verdant. It’s really quite beautiful.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. Be safe, be good to one another.

Mountain Goat Trail, Summer, by David B. Coe

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Writing-Tip Wednesday: My Favorite Reference Books

Last week’s Writing-Tip Wednesday post was about the computer apps I use most when researching, outlining, and writing books and stories. As promised, this week I want to look at what are probably  the most important writing tools I have: my reference books.

I use the internet a great deal when I’m writing. I look up a ton of stuff every day. But to my mind, there is no replacement for having the physical books, for being able to thumb through an index, or flip through pages on our way to the topic we’re after only to discover some tidbit of information we hadn’t known we wanted until the instant we found it.

So with that in mind, here are the books I use most often and recommend most enthusiastically.

Let’s start with the basics. Every writer should have a good dictionary and thesaurus at hand all the time. My dictionary of choice is Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. My main reason for using it, beyond the fact that it is comprehensive and widely accepted, is that for every entry it gives the date when the word first entered the popular lexicon. That is invaluable for authors who write in historical periods or fantasy analogues to historical eras, and who wish to eliminate anachronistic words and phrases from their books.

My thesaurus of choice is Roget’s International Thesaurus (6th ed.). This is the really big one – over 1200 pages. It is organized conceptually, by category of word, with an alphabetical index. The advantage of this is that if we look up a word like “total” we get a lengthy listing of possible meanings. Do we want a synonym for “total” that means “amount” (noun) or “compute” (verb) or “whole” (adjective)?

The other general writing reference I use is The Chicago Manual of Style, which is the industry standard for all matters relating to grammar, punctuation, and usage. I have a slightly older edition. I believe the most current is the 18th.

Another word oriented reference I have and love is English Through the Ages, which further refines the historical dating of words. It has an extensive index in the back that distinguishes among different meanings of words. Take the word “spleen”: The body part was named before the 1300s, but “spleen” was not used as a synonym for “temper” until the 1600s. I love tidbits like that.

I write fantasy, and so I am a big fan of the Scott Cunningham books on magic. Titles on my shelves include: The Complete Books of Incense, Oils and Brews; Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs; Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem, and Metal Magic; Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner; Earth Power: Techniques of Natural Magic; and Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: More Techniques of Natural Magic. I will admit that Cunningham offers his books as guides for people who actually believe in the various sorts of supernatural techniques and objects he describes. I don’t. But I find the books indispensable as reference guides.

I also write mysteries into my stories and books, and have therefore relied heavily on the Writer’s Digest “Howdunit” series of books on crime and policing. These books are designed specifically for writers, and so they offer incredibly valuable information in a format that is easily digestible. They are made to be reference books. Titles in my collection include the following: Police Procedural (investigative procedures); Scene of the Crime (crime scene techniques); Cause of Death (forensics); Body Trauma (wounds and injuries); Deadly Doses (on poisons); Just the Facts, Ma’am (general investigative techniques); and Howdunit: How Crimes Are Committed and Solved. These are great books. Highly recommended.

I have several books on magical creatures and demons, all of them in encyclopedia format. Two of them are put out by W.W. Norton and written/edited by Carol Rose: Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins and Giants, Monsters, and Dragons. I also have Demons and Demonology, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley (Checkmark Books); and The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures, by John and Caitlin Matthews (Sterling Publishing).

I write about castles with some frequency and do my best to get all my architectural terminology right. I actually use two kids books on castles as my primary references: Castle, by David Macauley, and Castle: Cross Sections, by Stephen Biesty. I have supplemented these two books with small books that I have picked up at just about every castle I have ever visited while in Wales, Ireland, England, etc. These are basically self-guided tour brochures that give terminology and history and offer illustrations. Almost any castle gift shop will have one.

Another book I love is called What’s What: A Visual Glossary of Everyday Objects – From Paper Clips to Passenger Ships (edited by Reginald Bragonier, Jr. and David Fisher, Ballantine Books). This book gives you the name of every part of hundreds upon hundreds of objects, vehicles, architectural features, and more. It is out of print (as are many of the titles I have listed in this post) but can be found on used book sites, Ebay, etc.

I could go on, of course. I have dozens of books about the Revolutionary Era, all sorts of field guides, a book about animal tracking, books about baseball and history and weapons, about ancient Scotland and Ireland and Peru and Greece, about Civil War and World War II battles. I could go on and on. There is no rule for collecting reference books except to keep your eyes open. The bargain rack at your local Barnes and Noble can be a great place to collect helpful titles. So can flea markets and library sales. As I say, most of the titles I’ve shared with you here are out of print. But with a bit of legwork and digging you can find them and begin your own collection.

Best of luck, and keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Thinking of My Dad on Father’s Day

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about my Dad for today’s post, and I find myself struggling.

I’m surprised, because it’s not for a lack of affection or great stories. I loved my father and I miss him all the time. I hear his voice and laughter in my head every day – bits of advice that remain relevant, remembered jokes that still make me smile, a strange surety – utterly at odds with my well-practiced agnosticism – that he sees my daughters growing up and is as proud of them as I am.

There’s a ton I could write, but everything I think of feels trite and well-worn. I’m sure I’ve said all of it before in Facebook posts and previous blog entries. And yet…

My father was born in 1919, lived through the Great Depression, lost a brother to World War II, married my mother half a year after V-E day (almost to the day). He supported Wendell Wilkie in the Presidential election of 1940 (although he would have been too young by a month to vote) and very nearly lost my mother when he confessed this to her before their wedding. Never again did he vote for a Republican for President.

He was caring and generous, devoted to his family and friends. He loved a crass joke, but he took great pride in being gentlemanly – a product of his upbringing. My grandmother demanded no less of both her sons, just as my dad demanded no less of my brothers and me. I remember in high school he and I drove my girlfriend back to her home – I sat up front and she was in back. We pulled up to her house, and he turned around and said, “M____, you stay right there until he gets your door for you and walks you in.” Which, of course, I scrambled to do.

He loved sports, and he especially loved watching sports with his kids. I was the youngest sibling by far, and so, long after my older brothers and sister had left for college and life beyond, I still lived at home. I had six years “alone” with my parents – a mixed blessing at the time, a treasure trove of memories now. Dad and I would watch some sort of game almost every weekend: football, hockey, basketball, tennis, golf, and, our favorite, baseball. We would guess what play was coming and then, after, talk about why we were right and the managers were wrong. Sometimes we rooted together. Often, if I got to the television first, he would ask me, “Who are you rooting for?”

“Team A.”

“Okay, I’m rooting for Team B.” Just because.

Like my mom, Dad, through his example, taught me so much about what it means to be a parent. The phrase has gone out of style, but it was truly apt in this case: He was the product of a “broken marriage.” My grandfather was a philanderer. Egotistical, self-centered, more interested in his professional status than his personal integrity, he left my grandmother when Dad was eleven years old. Almost as soon as the divorce was finalized, he married his (wealthy) mistress. Soon after, Dad went to visit his father and new stepmother. He tried to greet my grandfather with a hug, but grandpa stopped him at arm’s length and said, “You’re old enough now that I think we should greet each other with a handshake.”

Years later, Dad would tell me that story, adding, “I knew that I would be a good father, because I knew from my father all the things not to do.”

Dad was affectionate – demonstrably so. He hugged and kissed all his children. He doted on my mother. He cried at movies and was perfectly willing to put his sentimentality on full display. Without possessing the modern lexicon, he understood instinctively that modeling masculinity and strength for his sons meant being gentle and loving, honorable and generous, supportive and wise. In this regard, he was an anachronism for his generation.

When my mom got sick in the early 1990s, my father threw all his passion and energy into caring for her. Her illness consumed him. We always thought that Dad would live forever – his mother, my Gram, lived to ninety-one. His father lived to be 103. But after Mom died, Dad had nothing left. Two months after her funeral, he was diagnosed with Leukemia. He died a year later.

I have no trouble celebrating Mother’s Day and basking in memories of my Mom. For reasons I can’t explain, Father’s Day is much harder. Maybe because it’s a day I should be able to share with him and can’t.

I miss you, Papa. I wish there was a game on.

Blogging, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Photo Friday: From the Archives — Beach Photos

Every now and then, a week comes along when I haven’t had a chance to take my camera out for photos. This week has been rather plain weather-wise. Some flowers are blooming in Nancy’s garden, but nothing too spectacular. And, I will admit, I have been rather glum.

My mood is almost too frivolous to discuss. My family and I are healthy, we’re generally happy, and have very little cause for complaint. But, due to Covid-19, we have had to cancel our annual family beach vacation. Problems of the privileged, I know. Hence my reluctance to bring it up. The fact is, though, I love our time at the beach. It’s always just the four of us – Nancy, our two daughters and me. We rent a house right on the shore. We have no particular schedule, few chores, little work. We swim and take walks on the beach and nap when we feel like it and eat good food and drink good wine. What’s not to love?

We had a reservation, but for reasons relating to the pandemic and its effect on Nancy’s work, not to mention concerns about traveling with the virus still raging, we have cancelled it. We should have been heading to the coast on Saturday. Obviously, we won’t be.

So today, I offer you a couple of photos from the archives – images I captured the last time we were at the beach. I hope you enjoy them.

Enjoy your weekend. Be safe; be kind to one another. And to all my fellow dads, have a great Father’s Day.

Laughing Gull, Topsail Island, North Carolina, by David B. Coe Coast Storm I, North Carolina, by David B. Coe

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Writing-Tip Wednesday: My Favorite Computer Applications

A few weeks ago, in response to another plea on my part for suggestions of things you all would like to see covered in these Writing-Tip Wednesday posts, someone mentioned that they would appreciate my take on various writer tools and resources. This reader had in mind computer applications and the like, and I will cover a few of those today. But I also thought of book resources that I draw upon regularly, and that will be the topic next week’s post.

For this week, let’s begin with a couple of basics. The app on my computer that I use the most – and I mean by a long shot; it’s not even close – is my word processing software. I have always hated Microsoft Word. Always, always, always. And my antipathy for the program goes far beyond my visceral disdain for Clippy. I simply don’t like the way Word looks, the way it works, the way it “feels” when I’m writing. Early on, back when computers still had a sheen of novelty, I used WordPerfect and loved it. Today, I use a word processing software that is, to my mind, the closest thing to WordPerfect that one can find. It’s called Nisus Writer Pro. It has all the things you’d want a word processing app to have – including a dictionary and thesaurus and all the formatting bells and whistles. It saves files in Rich Text Format, but can also save them as .docs to be Microsoft compatible, and exports them as .pdfs to facilitate document sharing. It has Track Changes and Comments and both features are fully compatible with Word, so you can edit with others across platforms.

“How much does it cost?” you ask. This is the amazing part. It’s $65.00 new. The one catch is, it’s only available for Mac users. Sorry. But if you are a Mac user interested in an affordable, professional-level word processing app, this is the one for you.

My other favorite writing app is Scrivener. Scrivener is made by Literature and Latte and it sells for $49. It started as a Mac-only program, but it now comes in a Windows version as well. Same price.

Scrivener is like that amazing Swiss Army Knife you have that has twenty-seven gadgets on it. Chances are, you might only use seven or eight of them, but it’s nice to know that they’re all there if you need them. I use Scrivener for a few things, but I am fully aware that I have barely scratched the surface as to its capabilities. I tend to use it as an organizational tool, a place in which to create and store character sketches, setting descriptions, and general documents that serve as my conceptual framework for each book. I store all of my research in Scrivener – the app allows me to import web pages so that I don’t have to go hunting for them once I’ve found them.

I don’t use the Scrivener word processing feature because I’m picky and I like the look and feel of Nisus Writer Pro. But with Scrivener you can outline your book, write it, and then export it into various formats, including .doc, .rtf, .pdf, OpenOffice, epub, and Kindle format. Better still, you can write the book as a single document, OR you can write each chapter, or even each scene as a separate file. The advantage of that approach is that Scrivener then allows you to shuffle files around until you have found the perfect structure for your project. Pretty cool.

I also use Pages, the word processing app that comes with Mac computers. I don’t think much of it as a straight word processor, but I use it for my newsletter because its graphic features are incredibly easy to use. That would probably be the one place where Nisus falls flat. I know there are fairly strong graphic features in Nisus Writer Pro, but I have never found them intuitive or easy to use. Pages is weak in other ways, but it does make a nice newsletter (or party invitation, or flyer, or… etc.). And it interfaces seamlessly with iPhoto, allowing me to import images of my photographs and book jackets with ease.

As a bonus addition to this post, I would like to recommend an app to the photographers out there. I shoot in RAW format and I used to process my photographs with Adobe Lightroom. Then Adobe went to its monthly subscription payment structure, which totally pissed me off. So I did some research and settled on a new RAW image processor: DxO PhotoLab. I could devote an entire post to describing all that this app does, and perhaps at some point I will. For now, suffice it to say that there is literally nothing I want to do with my photos that I can’t do with PhotoLab. DxO has a comprehensive library of profiles that enable the app to automatically make camera and lens specific adjustments to each image. It literally has a profile for every combination of camera and lens made currently or in the past by most major manufacturers. It is as powerful as Lightroom, and in many ways far better. (For instance, I found that Lightroom washed the color out of my RAW images, forcing me to push the vibrancy and saturation in processing more than I would have liked. PhotoLab does a much better job of preserving the true color of the captured image.) It is not expensive as these things go – $129 for the basic program. $189 for a suite that includes two other useful apps.

So there you go. These are the creative programs I use most. I hope you find them helpful, too. Next week, my favorite book resources for writers!

Keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: Challenging Ourselves

I will admit that my first impulse for this Monday Musings post was to write about something other than race and politics. Not because those things aren’t still on my mind. They consume me. But rather because I was thinking, “I’ve written about White privilege two weeks in a row. I don’t want to seem like I’m harping on it.” [Here are links to my post from two weeks ago and last week.]

My next thought, right after that one, was, “Why the hell not?”

College Town Protest March, David B. CoeThis past Friday our little college town had a peaceful protest march followed by a rally on the college quad. It was a terrific event: somber, but also uplifting. Several people spoke, including my wife, who is provost of the university. Most of the speakers were Black; Nancy is not. And her message was directed at the many White allies who were in attendance. Showing up is great, she said. But it’s not enough. We who consider ourselves allies of those fighting for racial justice, but who also carry enormous privilege, have to challenge ourselves to act, to fight every day for a better world. And she, in turn, challenged us. Think of things you can do. Commit yourselves.

She and I have been making donations to organizations that fight for racial justice. We are committed to voting, to supporting candidates who will help put an end to systemic racism. We have reached out to our Black friends to make sure they’re doing all right. We are more than willing to have difficult conversations with family and friends. We would be willing to have those conversations with our daughters as well, but, frankly, we have more to learn from them than they have to learn from us.

But after those things, I found myself wondering in response to Nancy’s challenge, what else I could do? The answer came to me pretty quickly; it should be obvious to anyone who knows me.

I write.

That’s what I do.

I’m not saying that race and racial politics will be the subject of every Monday post for the rest of time. But one of the great problems with American politics is that we as a nation have no attention span at all. We become obsessed with the issue of the day, the tragedy of the week – a mass shooting prompts calls for serious conversations about gun control. Until the next police shooting exposes for the thousandth time the need for a meaningful conversation about race. Until the next ridiculous or outrageous Tweet from the Infant-In-Chief prompts renewed obsession with the campaign and the latest polling numbers. Until a new spike in Covid-19 cases reminds us of the devastating toll the virus is exacting. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.

My thoughts about this post are symptomatic of that short attention span. Two weeks in a row writing about race? Yikes! Time for another post about my five favorite rock ‘n roll albums.

And more to the point, that short attention span is an expression of privilege. I have the luxury of being able to turn away from the conversation about systemic racism if I want to, because I’m White. Because I don’t have to worry that my next traffic stop could prove fatal. Because while the unemployment rate among my people is high, it’s not at 16.8%, as it is for Blacks. Because my health care is affordable and readily available.

I can eventually look away after the next shooting sparks a new debate on guns, because while gun violence should concern all of us, Blacks are (according to the Giffords Law Center) ten times – TEN TIMES – more likely than Whites to be murdered with a firearm.

I can be distracted from the pandemic, because while Whites get the disease and die from it, preliminary data indicates that we are proportionally less likely to get sick than are Blacks, and we are far less likely to die from the illness than are Blacks and Latinos.

We in the White community can afford to lose interest, to get distracted, to move on to other issues. But we, as White allies in the struggle for racial justice, can’t. Just this weekend in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by Atlanta police in an incident that began with him sleeping in his car. I guarantee you, that is a sentence that has never been written about a white man.

And so, yes, I am writing about race again. Because once we open our eyes to the prevalence of bias and bigotry and harmful stereotypes (and it is another expression of lifelong privilege that we have the choice of whether or not to do this) we can find them everywhere. The only way to avoid them is to ignore them, or to be utterly oblivious. Race creeps into everything. The next time you’re watching TV, pay close attention to the commercials. Look at how race is treated. Watch for the racial sub-narratives. Be attuned to the archetypes. Once you start to see them, you can’t stop. Listen to sports commentary (if and when we ever get to watch sports again). Pay attention to the adjectives used to describe White and Black players. How many times are Whites referred to as “hard workers”? How many times is Black success credited to “natural athletic ability”?

“Why,” we hear people ask, “do they have to make everything about race?”

And the answer is, because people of color in this country – and throughout much of the world – inhabit a different reality from the one we Whites live in. In their world, racism is omnipresent. It is unavoidable. It is the knee on the neck. Being an ally means looking and seeing, listening and hearing, discussing and speaking out. It means answering my wife’s challenge by pushing ourselves outside of comfort and complacency, and committing ourselves.

And for me, it means writing.

Wishing you a wonderful week.