Tag Archives: family

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

Monday Musings: The Wisdom and Love of Friends and Family

Many years ago — decades, in fact — in a rare moment of precocious insight, I wrote the following in my journal:

“There is nothing like the wisdom and love of friends to remind us of who we are.”

Even at the time, I understood that I had, without any intention of doing so, stumbled upon some deep wisdom of my own. Because add to “the wisdom and love of friends” the words “and family,” and you have precisely the experience I have just enjoyed.

I have recently returned from an extended journey east and north, and I am feeling stronger than I have in some time, in large part because of the friends and family I encountered along the way. The trip began with Nancy and me attending a university event in Richmond, where she was the guest of honor and featured speaker. Seeing her excel at her job, watching her move among strangers with ease and poise, listening to her deliver remarks with the aplomb of a seasoned pro, brings me such joy and makes me so proud I can hardly find words to express the emotion. And so the trip began, as do all things in my life, with her, with us.

From there, as many of you already know, I went on to the Hampton Roads Writers Conference, which was well-run and professionally fulfilling. The highlights of the weekend, though, were the two evenings I spent hanging out with Edmund Schubert and John Hartness. Both nights, we talked business, we talked craft and market, we spoke of family, of life and friendships, we just shot the shit for hours. It was amazing.

I have spent too, too long, in my own head, dealing with uncertainties, with anxieties, with fear and grief, with my own emotional health issues as well as with the challenges life throws at so many of us. It wasn’t that these evenings with my friends made me forget all that other stuff. Rather, it was that these two amazing friends and I made room in our interactions for all that each of us is going through right now. We commiserated and supported, even as we also laughed and spoke of other things.

And that was a harbinger of the entire trip.

David and daughter AlexFrom Virginia Beach, I went to Brooklyn, where I spent two evenings with my older daughter. She looks beautiful, seems great, has a ton of energy, and was her normal, playful, thoughtful, intelligent, insightful, slightly acerbic self. Seeing her, having such amazing time with her, was reassuring to say the least.

I also spent an afternoon with two old friends from my high school and college years. We are, all of us, changed. How could we not be? But our affection for one another remains, as does our ability to joke and laugh one minute, and then shift gears into matters weighty and significant the next. Seeing them was a rare treat, one I have missed these many years.

I drove from Brooklyn to central New York State, where I stayed with my brother Jim, and his wife, Karen. They are two of Nancy and my favorite people in the world. Jim is my birdwatching partner and guru, not to mention my oldest and dearest friend in the world outside of Nancy and my girls. Karen, his wife of 35 years, is brilliant, witty, articulate, passionate about her work, and so much fun. She and I share affinities for good Scotch and teasing Jim. While I was there, we were joined for dinner one night by Jim and Karen’s daughter, Rachel, who is as terrific as her parents.

And while in the Albany area, I also saw my wonderful friends Alan and Karen. Alan was (along with our friend, Amy — more on her in a moment) my closest friend in college, my musical partner (also along with Amy), and my housemate. In the nearly forty years since college, he (and Karen, and Amy and her husband, Paul) has remained as caring and constant a friend as anyone could want.

I started home on Friday, driving into the wind and rain of Ian, and I stayed that night in the Charlottesville area with Amy and Paul. We drank Manhattans and ate pasta, they showed me photos from their son’s recent wedding, and we talked deep into the night. Or as deep as we of advanced middle age are capable of these days. Which is to say, not really that late at all. But it was a great evening.

The next day, I arrived home.

My trip lasted twelve days, and pretty much every one of them brought me to someone I care about, someone who knows and understands me, someone whose wisdom and love made for a special day or evening.

I am back home now, and I feel restored in some way. Yes, the anxieties and difficulties persist. Life continues to throw stuff in our paths, and much of what Nancy and I have struggled with for the past year and a half will continue to challenge us for a long time to come. But I feel more connected to where I come from, to the person I have long known myself to be. I am reminded that there is more to me than fear and sadness and struggle. There is strength as well, and worth and humor and, most important, the love of people I respect and admire.

“There is nothing like the wisdom and love of friends and family to remind us of who we are.”

Yes, maybe there is something trite to the thought. But at 22, when I wrote it, it felt like a valuable insight. And three and a half decades later, it still carries the weight of truth.

Have a great week.

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

Monday Musings: Celebrating Nancy

David and Nancy
Us in Dublin, Ireland for WorldCon 2019. (Photo by Cat Sparks)

I mention Nancy on this blog quite often, yet, I rarely write about her. Well, she has a big birthday coming up this week (tomorrow) — a BIG birthday — and so this seems as good a time as any to sing her praises.

For those who have somehow missed the references, Nancy is my wife of thirty-plus years. She and I met at Stanford, when we were both getting our Ph.D.s. She was a first-year grad student in biology; I was in my second year in the history program. We met because one of her suite-mates in grad school housing, another history candidate, brought her to the department’s weekly grad student card game at the on-campus pub.

Yes, we met over a game of hearts, and we were both smitten that very day. Nancy later confessed that she saw me and thought, “Oh, this is the guy I’m going to marry.” Poor thing . . . . For my part, being a guy, I saw her and thought, “Wow!”

Wedding Day Photo 1
Our wedding day, 1991.

We were married in the Rodin Sculpture Garden beside Stanford’s art museum, and a year later moved to Tennessee so that Nancy could take an assistant professorship at Sewanee: The University of the South. Our plan was to stay for a couple of years, and if nothing worked out for me in the history department, we’d leave for wherever and start again with me taking the offered job and her trying to work something out. Rinse, repeat until both of us were employed. That was the idea. But at her urging I started to pursue my lifelong dream of writing fantasy professionally, and before we had to leave, I got my first publishing contract. Thirty years later, we’re still here.

Nancy provost installation
Our family, the day Nancy was officially made provost of the university. Erin is on the left, Alex is on the right.

In that time, Nancy has been assistant professor, associate professor, full professor, and chairperson of her department. She has been appointed to a named chair in the biology department (for those unfamiliar with academia, this is big deal). She has received research grants to support her scholarship from a host of organizations and agencies, including the National Science Foundation. She has been an associate dean, associate provost, university provost, and, for the past nine months, acting president of the university. She is the first woman ever to serve as Sewanee’s president.

I am a pretty confident person. I believe in my creative abilities, and I believe in my own intelligence. I like to think that I’m usually one of the smartest people in whatever room I’m in. And yet, when both of us are home, I’m not even the smartest person in my own kitchen.

Erin, Nancy, Alex
Erin, Nancy, and Alex.

Nancy is a creative thinker, too, though in an entirely different way. Her creativity, her brilliance, is rooted in her ability to approach any problem, any issue, at any given time, from multiple perspectives. This is what has made her such a successful scientist, and it is what informs her strategic thinking as an institutional leader. She is also a person of remarkable yet quiet strength. She is serving as president, coping with issues large and small, interacting with people in various university constituencies who, let us say, sometimes forget how to be their best selves. She is also, like me, dealing with the illness of her child. She recently lost her mother and, with her brothers, had to help get her father situated in an assisted living community. She is spouse, mother, daughter, sister, friend, colleague, community leader. She does all of this with composure, with grace, with her sparkling and mischievous wit, with an equanimity that humbles and dazzles me on a daily basis.

Nancy and Samantha
Back when we first started dating. Nancy is the one on the left . . .

Yes, I adore her. I would never claim to be a neutral observer where Nancy is concerned. But you don’t have to trust me on any of what I’ve written here. Others will say it as well, including many who don’t always see eye-to-eye with her. That is part of her charm. She can disarm with a smile. She can discuss without bringing ego to the conversation, and — something truly rare in today’s world — she can agree cordially to disagree.

And still I haven’t begun to scratch the surface when it comes to telling you about her. She is far more than her professional activities. She knits and gardens, she brews beer and makes AMAZING Indian, Thai, Moroccan, and Southwestern cuisine, not to mention gorgeous fresh bread and the best chocolate chip cookies anywhere. She has run triathlons and used to be an active rock climber. She loves to travel and to hike (and she tolerates my birdwatching interruptions when we’re hiking together). She plays cards and board games and is somehow really good at all of them.

I’ll stop now. Except to say she’s the love of my life, my partner in silliness, my best friend. And yeah, tomorrow’s her birthday.

Happy birthday, Sweetie. Love you.

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

Monday Musings: Some Hard Truths About Me

I don’t do well with change. You know how little kids have trouble with transitions, how you need to warn them about impending shifts in circumstance? “Sweetie, I know it’s been fun visiting Grandma and Grandpa, but in a few minutes we’re going to have to say goodbye, okay?” Sometimes even fair warning can’t stave off a complete meltdown, but it’s the only tool we have, right?

Well, I’m not much different from a toddler in this respect. I don’t like transitions. The way I see it, I’m close to sixty years old and at this point I have set up my life pretty much the way I want it to be. So, change equals bad.

In the last two months, my dentist and my general practitioner have both announced that they are leaving their practices, and my therapist has told me that due to the fact she’s about to have her first child (truthfully, I am very, very happy for her and her partner), she will be stepping back from her practice for the next half year or so.

It’s me, isn’t it? This is not mere coincidence. I don’t know what I did, but clearly I did something. I shower. I brush my teeth. And even if I didn’t do these things, my therapist and I do tele-therapy sessions, so she wouldn’t know.

All kidding aside, I have been with my GP for close to twenty years, my dentist for more than ten. Relationships like those are not easily replaced. And I really don’t do well with change . . . .

This is one of those Monday posts that’s going to bounce around a lot. It’s not that I have nothing on my mind, nothing to write about. It’s that I have too many things, and some of them are best left unsaid, at least in a public forum. I’m not very good at keeping my mouth shut, figuratively or literally. When I’m pissed off, I tend to say so, and I don’t hesitate to call people out for bad behavior. This sounds admirable in some ways. Really it’s not. It gets me in trouble far more often than not. It rarely makes any situation better.

And so this week, I am looking for things to write and I have lots of ideas. But each one bumps up against my (admittedly underdeveloped) sense of discretion.

In order to avoid creating problems closer to home, I have considered writing about the Yankees and the Mets, my two beloved baseball teams, who are both in the process of blowing massive leads they enjoyed in their respective divisions not so very long ago. But I complain about such things just about every year. If I’m not complaining about them blowing a lead, I’m complaining about them not having a lead. If I’m not complaining about the Yankees, I’m complaining about the Mets. It’s actually a rare season in which I can complain legitimately about both, so I suppose I should be grateful. But let’s be honest: no one wants to read my complaints about two privileged but poorly run New York teams who can’t get their shit together. So, moving on . . . .

I have also considered writing about the upcoming midterm elections, which are looking far better for the progressive-minded today than they were a few months ago. But let’s be honest, midterms usually hurt the party in power, and with inflation high, gas prices still above normal, and the country polarized, things don’t look great. I won’t get into who is to blame for what, except to say that inflation and gas prices are high everywhere, all over the world. The U.S. is hardly an outlier in this regard. In fact, things are better here than in most places.

The problem is, though, politics these days is one of the things that sets off my anxiety in a big way. And since my therapist will soon be unavailable (please refer back to paragraph 3), well, focusing on the midterms is probably not the best idea from a mental health perspective. I used to be able to manage my political anxiety. But the perils faced by our system of government have grown so frightening, so violent, so persistent, that whenever I dive into the topic and confront the existential threat to what I once believed was a stable republic, I kind of freak out. So, I think I’ll move on again.

I am not alone in any of this, I know. Anticipating the many kind comments this post is likely to prompt, I will say that I really am okay. The doctors thing? I’ll find new practitioners, and they will be fine. Better than fine, most likely. The Yankees and Mets? Many of us grow a bit irrational about our sports loyalties. For some it’s soccer, for some it’s basketball, for some it’s American football at either the pro or college level. For me it’s baseball. I’ll get over it. I do every season. And the politics? We are all under threat. We are all invested in the stability of our republic, regardless of ideology or party affiliation. And at some point, I believe, both sides will recognize the threat and turn down the temperature a bit. We will get through this.

But now you know a bit more about me. Not the prettiest of pictures. At least I’m honest, though, right?

Have a great week.

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

Professional Wednesday: What To Tell Aspiring Writers About The Current Literary Market

If we have to write — and I’ve always felt that writing is an imperative, something I do to tame the voices in my head, the stories burning in my heart — then we should do it to satisfy that passion.

This past weekend, while at DragonCon, I spent a lot of time on writing panels, talking with other literary professionals in front of audiences made up largely of aspiring writers. We mostly discussed ways to improve various elements of our storytelling, but we spoke as well about the state of the current writing market, and the challenges of embarking on a literary career.

Reflecting on those conversations, it occurs to me that much of what we discussed warrants repetition and amplification in this venue.

This has been a summer of bad news for those of us who (try to) make our livings writing books. Book sales are down across the board this year. Barnes and Noble is rumored to be cutting back drastically on what books it will carry and market. The trial to determine the future of the proposed merger between Penguin-Random House and Simon & Schuster has revealed that book sales for the vast majority of volumes published each year are shockingly, depressingly low. Those numbers may or may not be accurate, but if they’re not, that would only mean that publishers routinely mislead authors about their sales numbers, which would also be shocking and depressing. Lose lose.

I have neither the data nor the experience to state categorically that it has never been harder to be a professional writer, but I can say that right now the business outlook for our industry pretty much sucks.

Which has left me wondering — as I attend conventions and get ready to teach at the Hampton Roads Writers Conference — how can I mentor young writers when the market is so dauntingly hostile? I struggle with this nearly daily.

I have been in the business for a long time. I have literally dozens of publishing credits — as a novelist, as a short story writer, as an editor. I have awards to my name, a history of strong reviews, a reputation as a professional who hits his deadlines, turns in clean manuscripts, and is reasonably easy to work with. (Mostly.) And yet, I still get lots of rejections when I shop new projects. My advances are lower now than they were early in my career. My sales numbers have declined with those across the industry. Maintaining my career has never been harder — it feels like all my accomplishments and credits mean nothing at all.

Again, I question how I can, in good conscience, tell people, “Yes! Go forth! Write your books! Try to make a career for yourselves in this crazy, cruel, struggling business!”

If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, and advise young me on the career choice I made back in the mid-1990s, would I tell him/me to embark on this career? Probably. But I have been extraordinarily fortunate in certain ways (and chronically unlucky in others), especially in that I have enjoyed the support of an incredible, generous, accomplished life partner. If I was doing this alone, without Nancy? No way in hell.

If that hypothetical time travel worked differently, and young me was starting now? I would probably advise him/me to find another career, or at the very least to approach this one very, very differently, to look upon writing as a paying hobby, not as a profession, and to keep his/my expectations quite low.

Throughout my career I have spoken often of the importance of loving what we do. And I mean it in several ways. On one level, love what we do means write for the love of it, because the payoffs of this profession, financial and emotional, can be slim and fleeting. On another level, love what we do means we must love the stories we write, and write the stories about which we’re passionate. The market is a moving target. Writing to the market is just about impossible. So we should write the stories that sing in our hearts, because that love will shine through in the final product, and we will enjoy the process more. Finally, love what we do means we must take satisfaction in the stories we produce, because often the artistic creation itself is the lone reward for a job well done.

Strangely, even in this current market — indeed, especially in this current market — “Love what we do” remains good advice. If we have to write — and I’ve always felt that writing is an imperative, something I do to tame the voices in my head, the stories burning in my heart — then we should do it to satisfy that passion. Writing because we think it’s just a good gig, a great way to make a few bucks? If that’s what you’re thinking, I suggest you go back and reread the opening graphs of this post.

As queasy as I might feel about encouraging young writers to go out and try to make a go of literary careers, I feel even worse saying, “No! Don’t do it! That way lies madness, not to mention bruised egos and poverty!” In a sense, there is no good option here.

And so I will continue on this middle course. I will continue to say the following: “Writing is hard. It’s always been hard. It’s even harder now. But it’s also a glorious journey through imagination and emotion and creation, a wondrous alchemy by which we take words and turn them into living, breathing characters and their fully realized lives. And here are some tips for doing that as effectively as possible . . . .”

Enjoy the rest of your week, and keep writing.

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

Monday Musings: Taming My Inner Eeyore

The hard part of getting back into posting isn’t the first post. It’s the second, and the ones after that. In part, I retreated from social media six or seven weeks back because I couldn’t imagine carrying the emotional load I had shouldered while simultaneously producing essays about things that mattered less to me, which was pretty much everything else. At the same time, I also knew that I didn’t want to post every Monday about our family problems or my mental health issues. Nobody wants to read that guy week after week after week.

I touched on this a bit back in May, at a time when I was also struggling to come up with essay ideas for these Monday Musing entries.

So, what to do this time around . . . .

In truth, right now there is lots to write about. And the world is a far more promising place today than it was in May. Which makes this blogging thing a little easier. Consider:

Our former Felon-In-Chief is twisting slowly, slowly in the wind (that’s a Watergate reference, for those of you too young to remember), and I will admit that I’ve enjoyed watching him flop about like a hooked fish on a pier (yeah, I know, I’m mixing metaphors — deal with it), searching for any defense that might save his sorry ass. “The documents were planted! It’s a hoax.” “I declassified the documents ages ago.” (Quite a neat trick — knowing to declassify documents that would be planted on his property without his knowledge years later . . . .) “This is all legal under the Presidential Records Act.” (Spoiler alert: It’s not.)

At the same time, our current President (legally and fairly elected) is having a summer to remember. Tumbling gas prices, inflation starting to come under control, continued historic strength in the job market, Democratic voters motivated and mobilized by the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in ruby red Kansas rejecting an abortion ban, one piece of major legislation after another passed and signed into law, rising poll numbers, surprisingly strong Democratic performances in special elections. It all adds up to a changing political landscape, and the realization that November might not turn out the way most pundits were predicting only a few months ago.

On the other hand, drought and floods and fires serve as constant reminders that despite the passage of the climate change bill — a significant and laudable achievement for the Administration and Congress — our planet remains gravely at risk. With that in mind, I believe when historians look back on 2022 decades from now, they will identify as the most significant moment of the year this week’s decision by the California Air Resources Board to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered motor vehicles after 2035.

Yes, it’s only one state. Don’t let that fool you. If California were a sovereign nation, its economy would be the fifth largest in the world, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany. Alone it accounts for more than 1/7 of our country’s GDP, and its citizens own far more cars than do the residents of any other state. Where California goes, the automobile industry will have little choice but to follow.

At long last, someone in this country has stepped forward and said, “This way to climate sanity. Follow me.” I expect Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a Democratic Presidential hopeful for 2024 or 2028, sees this as good politics, which is also telling.

Look, anyone who knows me well will tell you I have a lot more in common with Eeyore than I do with Pollyanna. I am all too aware of the threat Trumpism poses to our republic, of the damage the Supreme Court has done to our society and the further damage it could very well do in its next term, of the precarious state of our planet and the limited reach of even California’s dramatic actions this week.

I am also aware of the tough road that lies ahead for my family, for my older daughter in particular.

As a part-time essayist, I can choose to dwell on the negative, or, as the song goes, I can accentuate the positive. For now, I prefer to do the latter. My hope may prove audacious, fantastical even. But I embrace it anyway. I can also promise you I won’t always be able to do this. My inner Eeyore is strong and persistent. For now, though, he is quiescent, and I’m glad.

I wish you a week of hope, good health, and good tidings.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, Invasives, Radiants, The Fugitive Stone, Writing

Professional Wednesday: Writing Through — A #HoldOnToTheLight Post

#HoldOnToTheLightAfter running away from social media for six weeks, and ignoring publicity opportunities and the like, I feel a little funny offering any professional advice to anyone on anything. Which, I realize, is entirely wrong-headed.

Sometimes the stuff we write is completely divorced from our real lives, but more often than not, we draw upon personal experience and knowledge for our character work, our world building, our plotting, and our dialogue. Here’s a passage that is a case in point. It’s from The Fugitive Stone, the first book in the Celtic urban fantasy I’m working on.

“One of the insidious things about anxiety and depression—about all mental health problems, really—is the false sense that we’re the only ones who are like this. That we’re broken, and everyone else is ‘normal’”—she put air-quotes around the word—“whatever the hell that means. After all this time, you’d think I’d know better.”

The truth is, lots of writers struggle every day with problems and emotional issues that are at least as difficult as mine. Many have it worse than I do. I know this, and yet I still have to fight the tendency to think I’m the only one, that I’m messed up and everyone else is fine. There’s a little voice in my head that whispers shit like that to me all the time. I hate that fucking voice.

As I have mentioned here before, I find work to be a balm, a welcome distraction, a place I can go where my worries and griefs recede and I am free to create and thus escape for a short while. Sure, the stuff I’m avoiding is there waiting for me when I step out of my office, but the respite is the thing. It helps. Being productive, getting work done, helps me feel . . . [here’s that word again] normal.

There is no secret sauce to this. I can’t give advice on how others might find the same thing to be true with their work. Everyone suffers from mental illness in unique ways. Everyone’s challenges manifest differently. I know how fortunate I am to be able to work and produce and find solace in doing so. I know it’s not a path open to everyone.

But I will say this: Last year, when our daughter first received her cancer diagnosis, I gave up on everything, at least at first. I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to function. I called my agent and my editor and I told them both I was stepping back from all professional activities. I wouldn’t be blogging or posting to social media, I wouldn’t be attending conventions, I couldn’t imagine trying to write anything, and so I was going to stop working on the book I was writing at the time. I usually hit my deadlines, but that was one I was certain I would miss.

It didn’t take me long, though, to understand that sitting around worrying about my [adult] child and grieving for the terrible changes imposed upon our family by her diagnosis were poor activities with which to fill each day. I needed to do something that made me feel alive, that reminded there was more to my life than her illness.

This was in the spring of 2021, and the first day I tried to write was pretty much a disaster. I barely got anything written, and I’m not sure I kept a word of it. But the mere act of sitting down at my computer to work felt familiar and, thus, reassuring. I did it again the next day, and the one after that. By the end of that week, I had managed to write more than 7000 words — not close to my usual pace, but not bad at all. The weeks that followed were even more productive.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)In the end, I hit my deadline. More, the book I wrote that spring, Invasives, the second Radiants novel, turned out better than I ever could have imagined. I love the book, not only because I think it’s good, but because it saved me. It got me through that terrible spring and early summer.

I guess what I’m saying is this: We are all coping with something. Life is hard. Life throws obstacles in our paths all the time. Life is a book and we are its protagonists, and just as we writers love to rain shit down on our characters, life rains shit down on us. My tendency, when the shitstorms grow too wild, is to run and hide. I did it in March of 2021. I did it again just a month or so ago, when our daughter suffered a setback in her fight with cancer.

But in 2021, and again this summer, I found that work helped.

Work might not be the answer for you. Maybe knitting is. Maybe photography is. Maybe music or birdwatching, cooking or cleaning, painting or gardening, reading or watching old movies. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is recognizing that something might help, that looking beyond the pain might well be just what you need.

Be well. Take care of yourself and the ones you love.

Belle Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, editing, teaching, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Monday Musings: Wading Back In (and Why I Left)

Yes, I’m back, dipping my toes cautiously into the social media waters, gauging my mental state. I have a lot going on professionally right now, and I need to write about it, to boost the signal (as the market phrase would have it), to shout it from the virtual rooftops.

And so, I’m venturing back out into the digital world. But you, who have put up with me disappearing now and again, deserve a bit of an explanation for my sudden withdrawal back in early July.

The short version is this: Our older daughter, who has been battling cancer since March 2021, had an unexpected setback. “Unexpected” as in out of the blue. All (or at least almost all) the indicators had been looking pretty good, pointing toward slow but measurable progress. And then one scan — a formality, dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s — came back with unambiguously bad results. Bad.

We were devastated, and I needed time. As it happened, at that point in the summer, Nancy and I were preparing for a long stretch of travel, and I would have needed to write several weeks worth of blog posts in advance and schedule them for our time away. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to write a bunch of happy, chatty posts when I was shattered.

Hence, my pull-back.

Our daughter is back in chemotherapy. We’ll find out before too long whether it is working as we hope or if her doctors will need to try something else. In the meantime, she is doing remarkably well. The side-effects of this particular drug are, mercifully, not too terrible. She is working as usual on non-treatment days. She is seeing friends, going to parties, having fun. She is a wonder. A force of nature. Her courage and strength and resilience and determination humble me. I am embarrassed by my own fragility. But I’m a parent and my kid is sick and I can’t do a damn thing to make it all better. Isn’t that what dads are supposed to do? Make it all better? I feel helpless.

But given all she is doing for herself, how can I do any less than step back into the world, be a professional, and live my life as best I can?

So . . . .

I am currently working on my new contemporary Celtic urban fantasy. I have recently revised the first book, The Fugitive Stone, and am now about to submit for editorial feedback the second book, The Demon Cauldron. The third book, The Lost Sword, is about two-thirds written. I’ll be resuming work on it soon.

The Kickstarter for the new set of Zombies Need Brains anthologies is live and it needs your support! We have four anthologies in this year’s set, including Dragonesque, an anthology of stories from the dragon’s point of view, for which I will be writing a story, and Artifice and Craft, an anthology of stories about magical or supernatural works of art that I am editing with my wonderful friend, Edmund R. Schubert. We are halfway to our funding goal, but that leaves us with some fundraising distance to travel in the three weeks we have left. Please, please, please help us out.

I am also continuing to edit on a freelance basis, as I have been for about a year now.

And I am preparing for a couple of upcoming professional events. I will be a guest at this year’s DragonCon, my first appearance at the con since 2018. I can’t wait to get back to our genre’s version of Mardi Gras — it’s always a highlight of my professional year, and it’s been too long. DragonCon takes place in Atlanta, the first weekend of September.

And later in September, I will be an instructor at the Hampton Roads Writers Conference, leading workshops on Point of View, Character Development and Character Arc, World Building, and Pacing and Narrative Arc.

Busy times. Difficult times. But I think that’s true for all of us. We all struggle. We all find ways to cope, to overcome, or at least to distract and scrape by.

I mentioned our travel — Nancy and I went to Colorado, where we had a wonderful visit with our younger daughter and her partner. From there, we went to Boise, to see Nancy’s family. And finally, we spent nearly a week in the area around Bozeman, hiking every day, looking at birds and butterflies, the brilliant hues of wildflowers and mountain vistas that stole our breath. Maybe I’ll post a few photos in the weeks to come.

Thank you for your understanding when I needed to step away from social media. Thank you for the warm, welcoming embrace of your friendship as I return. Going forward, I will try to do better.

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

Monday: Dear Friends

Dear Friends,

I am sorry to say that I need to pull back from blogging for a time, and will also be limiting my social media presence. Announcements of this sort seldom come from a good place, and mine is no exception. I would rather not say more, except to explain that coming up with blog post topics each week, particularly for my Monday Musings posts, demands that I sound the depths of my thoughts and emotions, and for now, and for the foreseeable future, that will take me in directions I am not yet ready to share publicly.

I will not be retreating entirely. I may post now and then. I may show up on one platform or another from time to time. But mostly, I’ll be going quiet.

Be well. Be kind to one another. Keep me in your thoughts, but please respect my/our privacy.

Thank you.

David

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

Monday Musings: We Are Broken

On Friday, I grieved.

Today I’m just ticked off.

Every approach to the subject I attempt feels inadequate. Our nation is broken and I despair of seeing it repaired in my lifetime or even that of my children.

When six deeply flawed human beings, driven by their religious beliefs and their disregard for the plights of anyone other than themselves, can set back the cause of human rights with such ease, we are broken. When legislators in two dozen states, the overwhelming majority of them white men, can deny adequate health care to forty-five million women, we are broken. When a U.S. President elected by a minority of the voting public, and a U.S. Senator elected by voters of one state, can twist the Supreme Court nomination process to place three ideologues on the bench in four years, we are broken.

When voters on the left can become so obsessed with a single candidate that they reject the party’s eventual nominee out of pique, thus enabling the election of a man who should NEVER have been President, we are broken. When two naïve, foolish, or perhaps just deeply dishonest “centrist” Senators can be duped by Supreme Court nominees into believing said nominees will “respect precedent,” and that’s enough to put those nominees on the bench, we are broken. When, after a four-year reign of corruption, white-supremacy, and wanton cruelty, ending in a violent insurrection and conspiracy aimed at undermining the very foundations of our Republic, people still need to be convinced that yes, there really are substantive differences between the two parties, we are broken.

When our nation’s political system can be manipulated to enable one-party rule in states that are evenly split between the parties, we are broken. When one party can win the national popular vote for the Presidency in five of six elections, but be declared the loser in three of those elections, we are broken.

When guns kill more than 40,000 Americans a year, we are broken.

When unarmed people of color are murdered in the streets by police again and again and again and again and again and again and again, while armed white suspects are routinely subdued and taken into custody, alive and well, we are broken.

When one’s skin color is a primary determining factor in one’s chances of finding and keeping a job, being able to buy a house, having access to health care, enjoying a comfortable retirement, living to our country’s average life expectancy, we are broken. And when one’s skin color is also a primary determining factor in one’s risk of contracting a disease, of being a victim of crime, of being poor, of being unemployed, of being homeless, of being incarcerated, of being pulled over by police, of being beaten by police, of being killed by police, we are broken.

When things we thought were settled law, like marriage equality and abortion rights and legal protections for suspects and availability of contraception and the freedom to love who and how we wish in the privacy of our homes, are all suddenly at risk again from a judicial system that responds not to legal doctrine, but to the vicissitudes of partisan politics, we are broken.

When elected officials treat educators and librarians and trans children like they’re criminals, and work harder at banning books from our schools and libraries than they do at banning weapons of war from our streets and classrooms, we are broken.

When global climate change is convincingly linked to exploding incidences of catastrophic floods, devastating storms, historic droughts, and hellish, record-setting fires, and still our body politic consistently proves itself incapable of doing anything to save our planet, we are broken.

When economic inequality in our country continues to grow, building on a forty-year trend, with no end in sight, and no true remedial steps under serious consideration, we are broken.

When our problems are so very easy to list, and our progress so very hard to maintain, we are broken.

I resist the urge to leave this post at that. I am weary and angry and despondent. But I am also a father, and someday I expect to be a grandfather. Which means I cannot and will not give up. Barack Obama famously said to an enthusiastic campaign crowd booing a certain 2016 Presidential candidate, “Don’t boo! Vote!” He also famously said, “Elections have consequences.”

Some look at the problems facing our country and say “Burn it all down.” As if that is a solution. As if that isn’t what the other side wants. As if with all their guns and their survivalist shit, the other side isn’t better prepared for such a scenario than we are.

No, the answer isn’t to boo or to burn. It’s to work and to vote and to never forget the anger so many of us feel right now.

Have a good week. Keep fighting.

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

Monday Musings: So Many Of Us Just Coping — A #HoldOnToTheLight Post

#HoldOnToTheLight

So, I don’t know where this post is going. I feel it’s important to make that clear up front. And I also want to say that, all things considered, I am doing pretty well right now. Our older daughter’s health is stable, and she is active, happy, enjoying her work and her friends. Our younger daughter is settling in to a new life out in Colorado with her love. She has an interesting job, a nice apartment, and the excitement of beginning a new chapter. And Nancy and I are solid as ever, partners in all we do, as always able to laugh and talk and enjoy each other’s company.

But I have been reflecting on the simple truth that life is just hard. Yeah, I know: quite the revelation.

I remember when I was younger, and I would go through a rough patch and think, “I just want life to get back to normal,” by which I seemed to mean a place where things were easy and smooth and not filled with heartache.

The naïveté of youth.

I’m not trying to get all existential, nor do I wish to say I think life is nothing but a slog through grief and worry and difficulty. Because I don’t. Life is wondrous. I have spent the last thirty-plus years (and intend to spend the next thirty-plus years) living with someone who is my best friend as well as the love of my life. I have two incredible daughters. I have the privilege of writing stories for a living. I have family and friends whom I adore. Life is good.

But it’s hard. Everywhere I look, I see friends and family — people I care about — dealing with loss, grief, tragedy, heartbreak. And, perhaps because I’m older now, and a bit wiser, a bit more jaded, I understand that this is life. There is no normal. The easy, smooth moments are the exceptions. In the last week or so alone, I have learned of one friend heading into a messy, difficult divorce. I have word from another that they are sick with a serious illness. And still another is dealing with as-yet-undetermined health issues. Less than a month ago, Nancy lost her mom. Our family — immediate and extended — have ongoing medical issues to deal with. Moreover, quite apart from all the other stuff, the pandemic has taken its toll. So has the ongoing right-wing assault on our democracy. And the epidemic of gun violence. Etc., etc., etc.

I could go on, but I actually don’t mean for the litany to become the point. Nor do I wish to extract from my readers expressions of sympathy. This stuff is happening to all of us, and I really am doing all right.

The point is not the difficulty, but rather the coping.

And I believe this brings us back to where I started, because I think dealing with the challenges life presents begins with acknowledging them, with having compassion both for ourselves and for those around us. I am part of an online writing group that keeps in touch via emails in which we share news, ask one another for advice, offer and seek moral support in times of difficulty, and even ask for word-of-mouth help in publicizing new releases and such. Recently, activity on that mailing list had slowed to a trickle and someone sent out a message asking if, after many years of activity, our group had finally given up.

No, came one reply. I’m still here. Just struggling with career issues, and pandemic exhaustion, and some personal problems.

Me, too, said another member. Still here. But I have a lot going on.

Same.

Same.

Same.

Before long, a bunch of us had checked in, reaffirming our enthusiasm for being in the group, but also confiding about all we had been through over the past few years. It was simultaneously warming and chilling. So many of us happy for even this small opportunity to reach out and reconnect, so many of us struggling with life issues that threatened to overwhelm.

I believe our tiny online community is reflective of something going on all over the country, all over the world. And I think my point in writing today is this: Life is hard. Life right now is REALLY hard. It’s all right to reach out. It’s all right to make ourselves vulnerable in that way. More, it’s all right to reach back, to be compassionate, to share and confide and commiserate and try to make others feel better. That, it seems to me, is a positive way to confront life’s challenges.

Twice now I have said I am doing okay. The third time makes it true (at least that’s how stuff works in the Celtic urban fantasy I’m working on . . .). I am.

And I hope you are, too.

Have a great week.