Tag Archives: New York

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

Wednesday Musings: Big, Big News!

Yes, I’ve been quiet for a while. Things are okay. Really. More than okay, actually. But Nancy and I have been hella busy. With travel, with family stuff. But most of all with the big news that is the subject of this post.

Our new home in NY!!This [see the photo above] will soon be our new home. It is in New York’s Hudson Valley, near Albany, on six-plus acres of beautiful land, complete with gardens, fruit trees, and a small pond. More important, it is maybe twenty minutes from my brother and sister-in-law, is equally close to one of my dearest friends and his partner, and is within easy drives of many other friends and family.

We have lived in our current house for nearly twenty-six years, and in our small college town here in on the Cumberland Plateau for more than thirty-two. We raised our girls here, built a home, nurtured successful careers here, made friendships that will last for the rest of our days. Even as we have chafed at the backward, hateful politics of Tennessee, we have reveled in the state’s natural beauty and the friendliness of so many of its people. It is strange and a bit sad to contemplate our imminent departure from this home which we love. (Yeah, we still have to sell the place, but we’re hoping that won’t be too difficult.)

But the rightward tilt of the state, the Tennessee GOP’s fetishistic obsession with gun culture, and the legislature’s unrelenting assault on the rights of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community have worsened significantly over the past few years. And, of course, since losing our older daughter, living in the house in which she grew up has become difficult to say the least. It is time for us to leave.

Nancy is deeply grateful to Sewanee: The University of the South for all the opportunities offered to her over the course of her academic career here. She has served in a variety of roles — assistant professor, associate professor, full professor, department chair, associate dean, associate provost, provost, and finally interim Vice-Chancellor of the University. She is the first biology professor to hold the William Henderson Chair in Biology and the first woman in the history of the university to serve as VC. She has loved working for the school.

And I have been so pleased to be part of the Southeast’s speculative fiction community for the past twenty-seven years. I have established wonderful relationships and have been welcomed at literally hundreds of conventions across the region, including many for which I have been designated as a special guest or guest of honor. In 2022, I received the Phoenix Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Southern Fandom Confederation. As I said, I have built a career here, and I will forever be grateful to the fans and colleagues who have become valued friends.

What’s next? What will life be like for us in New York? Well, it’ll be colder. There’ll be more snow. Nancy will be retired, but has plenty of interests and projects to keep herself busy and very, very happy. I intend to keep writing and editing, although I imagine my output will be somewhat lower than it has been in recent years. Then again, who knows. I have no shortage of projects I look forward to taking on. And given how much travel we want to fit in, I’ll need to make some money . . .

We will have more time with family, which will be wonderful. My college friend and I love playing music together, so I am hopeful that music, and even the occasional performance, will become a larger part of my life.

And we will continue to heal, to rely upon each other, and upon Erin, for love, support, hope, and laughter. It won’t be perfect, of course. Nothing ever is. But it is our next adventure, and we’re looking forward to it. I promise that we’ll keep you informed. In a social media sense, I’m not going anywhere.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

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

Wednesday Musings: (No, That’s Not a Typo) Let’s Spend a Flight Delay Together

I have little to say professionally this week, but I have been thinking a good deal about a great many things. So, I’m double-dipping on musings . . . .

On Monday of this week, after a busy weekend in Brooklyn visiting Alex, our older daughter, Nancy and I accompanied Alex back to Tennessee for some midweek events here honoring Nancy. Alex is still in pretty rough shape and could not have traveled alone.

We were flying out of Newark and were scheduled to leave at 2:30 for a nonstop flight back to Nashville. But even as we were driving to the airport, I could see thunderheads forming to the west, piling on top of one another, like hulking gray boulders in the sky. I figured we would be fortunate to get out on time. Hah! Little did I know . . . .

We boarded, taxied, stopped, waited, waited some more, waited a whole lot more. Eventually, we taxied back to the gate, and eventually after that, we were allowed to deplane into the terminal so that we could get food, use the restrooms, stretch our legs, etc. By now, it was 5:00. Again, Nancy and I were traveling with our daughter who has cancer, who is weakened by treatments and generally exhausted. This was already going to be a long, trying day for her. Now it was getting worse.

An hour passed. And then another. The storms finally moved through, leaving the sky fiery and gorgeous. We were allowed to board again, told we would finally be leaving. We taxied, stopped, waited. Again.

We took off at 8:30, six hours late, and by the time we arrived, got our luggage, got the car, situated Alex, and drove the 90 miles from Nashville Airport to our house, didn’t get home until close to midnight. Too long a day. Too tiring. Too stressful. And yet . . . .

We are fine. Alex was tired the next day and had some relatively minor, unexpected issues crop up. But we got through the day in good spirits and in good shape. This musings post, though, isn’t about us. Not really, at least.

You see, the storms that stopped our flight from leaving, grounded every flight out of Newark, indeed out of all three New York airports (and also out of Boston’s Logan and others across the Northeast). When we returned to the gate after our initial attempt to leave, we found the terminal packed with people, all of them in the same situation we were in. I went searching for food and wandered far and wide, trying to find the exact thing our poor girl wanted to eat.

Not once did I see anyone complaining. Nor did I see anyone being nasty or berating gate agents or losing their patience with the crowds of fellow passengers. People were smiling, laughing, striking up conversations with strangers, playing with their kids, talking to their travel companions. You never would have known that every one of them had been inconvenienced for hours.

As I said, this was Monday. September 11. And I was reminded of that terrible day twenty-two years ago, and of the days after, when New Yorkers and New Jerseyans and Washingtonians and Pennsylvanians drew together in the wake of tragedy, treating one another with kindness and courtesy, with compassion and humanity. This year’s September 11th was a far easier, gentler day. We were delayed; we weren’t confronted by evil. But the same spirit of cooperation and good humor suffused our experience.

I’ve lived in the Southeast for more than thirty years now. And still, when I tell people that I’m originally from New York, I am often told how unfriendly people are up there, or how fortunate I am to live among the welcoming communities of the South.

And in some ways I am fortunate. Nancy and I have had a wonderful life in our little blue corner of Tennessee.

But let’s be very clear: In my experience, New Yorkers are no less friendly than Tennesseans, they are no more prone to rudeness, they are no less considerate, they are no less community-minded. In many respects, they are MORE considerate of others, more accepting of people on their own terms, more inclined to go out of their way in service to the well-being of those around them. I have lived in New York and New England, California and the South. No region has a monopoly on courtesy. No region has a monopoly on ill-mannered boors.

And for those who believe the New York metro area is populated by unfriendly, unrefined jerks, think again. Need proof? Spend a flight delay among the region’s people.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing

My Weekend in NYC

I have just returned from what was a truly glorious weekend in New York City, where I attended the annual conference of the American Historical Association. Now, as a veteran of AHA conventions and someone who attended many of the conferences as a frightened graduate student interviewing for jobs and presenting papers in an attempt to make myself look more attractive to potential employers, I know that “glorious” and “AHA” don’t often appear together in a single sentence. But this weekend was very special for me.

I was at the convention to speak on a panel about writing fiction as a trained historian no longer working in academia. Our panel, which was chaired by agent Jennifer Goloboy and included Andrea Roberston Cremer, Laura Croghan Kamoie, and me, was tremendous fun. We had a large, engaged audience, and our discussion touched on matters of craft and business, as well as on ways in which we all use our history backgrounds to enhance our writing.  (I talked about the Thieftaker Chronicles, which I write as D. B. Jackson, and which are set in pre-Revolutionary Boston.) I also sat in on a career fair, where I spoke with graduate students and employed academics alike about ways in which they might incorporate creative writing into their careers.

Long ago, when I made the jump from academia to writing fantasy, I had no interest in maintaining close ties to the academy. I didn’t enjoy scholarly writing and I don’t believe I was especially good at it. I know that I was not yet mature enough to be an effective teacher, and I believe my lack of passion for history crept into my pedagogy. (I am a much, much better teacher of writing than I ever was a teacher of history.) I left the academy with an excellent academic job offer in hand, and I did it to pursue my true passion, a profession I love. It was the right choice and I have never had any regrets. And yet there was a part of me that felt as though I had “failed” at history.

So there was something redemptive about this weekend. It took going back to the AHA as a professional writer to make me realize that I hadn’t failed after all. I left on my own terms and as much as I enjoyed the weekend, I realized more forcefully than ever that my life would not be as rich as it is had I stayed in academia. More, the weekend affirmed for me something that I’ve come to realize as I’ve written the Thieftaker books. I still love history. I don’t want to be a historian, but I still enjoy the discipline, and in blending my interest in it with my passion for writing fantasy, I have, at long last, found a bridge between the two professional worlds in which I’ve lived. I suppose that was part of what this weekend was about for me: realizing that I can still call myself a historian even as I continue to be a writer of speculative fiction. It was a deeply satisfying experience.

Of course, the best part of the weekend was catching up with a couple of my closest friends from graduate school, and then spending a memorable evening with my two closest friends from college and their families. I also caught up with some cousins I hadn’t seen in years. Fellowship, love, laughter, and an exploration of history on so many levels — intellectual, personal, familial.

So, yeah. A glorious weekend at the AHA convention. Who would have thunk it?