It’s Sunday, which means I’m in a Starbucks getting ready to spend half the day working on writing projects. Today, I’m starting the day by talking about my “first” novel, The Repossessed Ghost. Actually, I’m going to talk about self-publishing, good versus good enough, querying, and a few other publishing related thoughts.

A Few Words about The Repossessed Ghost

I have talked about this story before. If you want to know about the story itself, the inspiration, and my writing process when drafting The Repossessed Ghost, please click the link at the beginning of this section. I’m sure I will talk about the story again, but not in this post.

Last weekend, I finished what I think of as the 4th draft. I had no intention of working on that story again unless I saw a path forward to publishing it. Recently, I decided to pursue self-publishing, which prompted me to look at the story with fresh, critical eyes.

The 4th draft did not involve a lot of major changes. I corrected a lot of passive voice and weird sentence structures. I fixed a few squirrelly bits at the end, paragraphs and sentences that didn’t quite make sense after I rewrote the ending. I punched up the prose a little bit and applied some of the lessons I’ve learned the last several years.

I think the story needs a prologue and an epilogue. If you scour the online writing community for any amount of time, you’ll find a lot of strong opinions about prologues and epilogues. Some people are absolutely vehement that they have no use. Other people are less passionate about it, but still suggest you take what would be the prologue and make that chapter 1.

I believe prologues and epilogues should exist if they have a purpose. What would a prologue do for The Repossessed Ghost? It would allow me to use a framing device to say a few things about the story on a meta level. Specifically, it would allow me to organically state that the story takes place in the early part of the 2010’s. This is important because a surprising number of things pertinent to the plot have changed in the last decade. For example, people don’t really talk about hurricane Katrina anymore, but it was still on people’s mind back then. Marijuana became legal in most states since I wrote the first draft. Cell phones became even more ubiquitous. The radio may still be playing music from 10 years ago (or 15 years ago, or 20 years ago… that’s an entirely different topic) but things are different enough that rereading The Repossessed Ghost now makes it a little bit strange, especially if you assume it it takes place today.

Also, the entire novel is written in first person which for some readers, lowers the stakes. First person means that the person telling the story survives to tell the story, right? In this prologue, I can artificially re-raise the stakes because I can establish that the story would be told whether or not Mel survived.

To Self-Publish or Not Self-Publish

This novel is the first I wrote that might be commercially viable. It is good! I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

Why self-publish now? I made it clear many times on this blog that I’m not interested in self-publishing. I want a team backing me that understands marketing. I can take the time to learn the marketing and business of publishing, but that’s time spent not writing. Also, being one person with a finite amount of resources, it is unlikely I’ll do as well marketing my book as a team of people with experience and access to information beyond my perception.

There are a few reasons to self-publish The Repossessed Ghost. First, I have an unexpected fan: my mother-in-law, Susan. Melissa shared her print out of Spin City with her and ever since, she’s asked about more books from me. I could probably print The Repossessed Ghost the same way I printed Spin City, but I think Susan deserves a real book.

Also, a number of people have asked me where they can buy my books. I tell people about my short story in Tales From the Goldilocks Zone, but it’s not the same. If you search Amazon for my name, it does not land on that book. I’m not paid for any of those sales and I have no idea how many copies of that book have sold. It’s great that it allows me say I’m a published author, but in all the ways that matter, it feels like The Goldilocks Zone is someone else’s book. I want one of my own.

Self-publishing makes sense for The Repossessed Ghost because it is an urban fantasy, and I have heard over and over again from agents and publishers that new authors are not landing contracts for urban fantasy. That subgenre has been gobbled up by indie publishing. If I want to see The Repossessed Ghost as an actual printed book, I will probably have to do it myself.

But is it Good Enough?

If you ask a writer about the quality of their work, you will get an answer that is a reflection of the author more than the work itself. It takes a tremendous amount of ego to create something like a book, a form of entertainment that requires a commitment of time and energy for the reader to consume. From that standpoint, one would think a writer will always say their book is good enough. In practice, many writers lose sight of what makes their story great in the first place, and will describe their books as trash or unworthy. Even Stephen King occasionally speaks in derogatory terms about his own body of work.

Is The Repossessed Ghost good enough? It is not the best thing I’ve ever written, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough. Logically, a writer should continue to improve with each story they craft, so their earlier work shouldn’t be their best. I’ve written two other novels and dozens of short stories since The Repossessed Ghost. It would be very disappointing if my first novel was my best.

It’s good enough to get positive feedback from the people that have read it. Those were earlier drafts, so most gave me feedback for how I could improve the story. The first 10,000 words made the top 10 in the Ink and Insights competition of 2019, in the master’s division. It’s generally well liked. With a good editor, I might be able to make it excellent.

Querying and Other Considerations

My story is probably good enough to publish, but is it the best story to start my career as a novelist? It’s a fun urban fantasy story, but most of what I write are intellectual SciFi, with an occasional dabbling in fantasy. If this is the first impression I give people of my stories, it might be the wrong impression.

On the other hand, my authorial voice is as present in this story as it is in my other stories. When you read a Chuck Wendig book, you get Chuck Wendig’s storytelling style, whether it’s a Star Wars book, a book on writing, or a story about people caught up in a wandering pandemic.

If I get past the idea that publishing this story will somehow setup my brand incorrectly, the next thing I have to consider is cost. I’m not going to just take this draft and toss it up on Amazon and hope for the best. I’m going to be a professional and hire professionals to help me make this the best book I can make. That means hiring at least one editor. It also means hiring an artist for cover art. It may mean paying for other services, some of which I haven’t discovered yet. Being the publisher means I am putting some financial risk into this story. How will I react if I lose money on my first book?

This last Wednesday, I wanted to work on my self-publishing plans and after taking all of these thoughts into consideration, I wound up searching Manuscript Wish List instead. I even found a couple of people looking for urban fantasy, so I sent off a query.

I’m not holding my breath on getting The Repossessed Ghost traditionally published. It’s a good story, but I believe the people that told me there is no traditional market for it. Then again, people told the author of Harry Potter there was no market for a story about a wizard school, so maybe the experts don’t always know what they’re talking about.

Final Thoughts

I still need to work on my self-publishing plan. It will take me a little while, so whatever querying I do this week has time to be rejected. I might get to the end of this pursuit and determine that it is too risky to spend the money on being a publisher. The future is uncertain.

I’m going to keep showing up and writing. I have lots of stories I still need to tell. As discouraged as I feel sometimes, I keep going, writing and pushing even when I’m not feeling very hopeful.

One of the best things I can keep doing is updating this blog. As an author platform, it is a full record of my writing journey over the last decade. As I put fiction in places where people can buy it or read it online, I can keep updating the links at the top.

In other words, if you’ve been watching this space already, keep watching. If you’re hungry for the kind of stories I have to tell, I will feed you more soon.

When I don’t write, the depression gets me. I’ve known this for a long time, and I’m sure I’ve talked about it before. With everything that happened last year, I froze up and stopped writing. My mood became darker and darker, my emotions more erratic. It got bad.

But now I’m writing again. A couple weeks ago, I finished the first draft of a project I was supposed to finish by May of 2020. I’m editing it now, trying to get it under 14,000 words.

I want to start blogging again. I want to get back to feeling like myself.

In no particular order, here is a list of accomplishments and changes that help me return to the person I want to be:

• Got my 2nd Moderna shot on May 4th
• Returned to working 4 days a week at the office
• They gave me an actual office at work
• Writing at Starbucks on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings again
• Finished the first draft of Dead Weight: Air Superiority
• Continued to contribute to a writing group borne out of Writing Excuses Alumni
• Committed to the Writing Excuses Retreat later this year
• Lost close to 15 pounds since the beginning of May
• Walked so much on the treadmill that I burned out the motor

I’m leaving out a lot, but you get the idea. I’m moving forward again.

Once I finish this edit of Air Superiority and pass it on to Michael, I’ll need to figure out the next project. There’s a short story I outlined while on the cruise that I’m a little bit excited about. There’s a fantasy novel I tried in 2011 before I had the skill to see it through. I still need to work on the 2nd draft of Synthetic Dreams. I’ve also been thinking strongly about looking at The Repossessed Ghost for self-publishing. As an Urban Fantasy, that’s really the only way it’ll ever get published.

This is going to be a busy summer. I hope I have more good writing news to share soon.

It’s been a while. I didn’t want to write a recap for 2020 because everyone pretty much covered that. I didn’t want to make my first post of 2021 about politics because, quite honestly, the topic is as exhausting for me to write as it is for you to read. This isn’t to say that I won’t talk about politics soon. We did just have an attempted coup, after all.

Tonight, I’d like to distract myself by talking about the activity I’ve been using to distract myself. I built a game, and it is successful.

Don’t get too excited. This is not likely to be the kind of game you’ll want to play. It’s entirely text-based. It’s slow paced, dependent on old technology, and it doesn’t attract a wide audience anymore. I built a MUSH.

I started playing on MUSHes in August, 1996, and I continued playing regularly until 2003. The main MUSH I played was the original Star Wars MUSH. It’s still up, and I could connect and play there right now, but it’s not the same. Not because the people have left. Most of them have. I don’t want to play there because it’s full of ghosts, and memories, and a kind of nostalgia I neither need nor want right now.

Here is a web page with all kinds of information about the game I made, Companion Cresh. It includes directions for how to connect, as well as information about the setting, character information, and logs.

Why did I start working on this? For starters, I needed the distraction. I wasn’t writing any fiction at all. I kept trying. I put my butt in the chair, my hands on the keyboard, and it just hurt. I felt pain while not writing and agony when I tried to force it.

Then my friend Donna asked me to re-host a MUSH instance, and I said sure. I fired up an old backup, connected, and saw that it was missing a number of systems vital to making it playable. Then I went into what can probably be described as a coding fugue. For weeks, I connected to this fledgling MUSH and wrote systems.

I thought I was building sandcastles, or carving intricate ice sculptures. I wrote code for the Star Wars MUSH for years, but this new code came after spending a couple of decades as an actual programmer, and it was good.

The reality of writing a game like that, using technology over 2 decades old, struck me as masochistic. At one point, I looked at the brand new character generation system, and the modifications I made to the space system, and all of the other intricate systems I created and installed… and I despaired. I didn’t believe I was digging a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field. It felt more like the Winchester Mystery House, a construction wrought by my madness, with hallways and stairs and passageways that would never know proper use.

In October, I started writing the code. By the beginning of November, I finished enough of the game that we could start inviting people to try it out. Donna worked on the web page I linked above and she found ways to advertise the game. And then, miraculously, we had players.

I stopped treating it like a feverish coding project. It became a place where I exercised my other creative writing muscles. I created two characters and started playing. The words flowed.

A MUSH is almost a perfect game for a writer because you are forced to use all of the skills you use when working on stories. Dialog, characterization, voice, plot, setting… you have to do it all at once, all the time, and in tiny sprints. Like Exquisite Corpse, you take turns with other writers to craft scenes together, only they’re generally more coherent. And FUN.

This isn’t the end of my regular writing. I feel like what I’m doing on the MUSH is akin to physical therapy. It’s like a runner rebuilding the strength in their legs after a terrible accident by working out in a pool. I don’t feel the same kind of weight when I’m writing on the MUSH as I do when I’m trying to write a regular story.

It’s probably going to be a little while before I get back into a regular writing rhythm again. Not being able to get out of the house and hang out at a Starbucks twice a week killed my schedule. Feeling all of the pain and disappointment with what my country is going through, from the pandemic to the politics, has wounded me in other ways.

But I’m still going. I’m still here. I’d be lying if I said I still had the same faith in my dreams, but I’m still a writer. Writers write. And so I do.

It took less than a day for my happiness at Trump losing the election to fade. Perhaps Alex Trebek’s death darkened my mood. Maybe I’m just in the habit of feeling gloomy after everything else that’s happened this year. My garage is getting colder and I’m getting grumpier.

I still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re as divided as we ever were and Mitch McConnell is still in power. At least two of the nine Supreme Court justices are supremely unqualified for the position they hold. The pandemic is surging, with disturbing news about a mutation through minks bad enough that Denmark is killing all of the little creatures they can find.

We still have systemic racial injustice. We still have greedy corporations acting without accountability. We still have more problems than solutions, and people are dying.

I think Biden is probably a good and decent man. But what can he do?

Let’s face it… the run-off elections for the senate seats in Georgia are a long shot. This is Georgia we’re talking about. The same place where Stacey Abrams had her election stolen from her.

Biden is going into power with his hands tied. The GOP that produced Donald Trump is still in power and they will not allow Biden to do the things necessary to right the ship. The GOP will continue their hypocrisy, their blind war against progressive idealism, and the mess will continue to pile up.

The problem, at least for me, is a matter of hope. I just can’t bring myself to hope anymore. Yesterday, DoomScrolling was replaced with HopeSurfing, and I could only ride the wave for so long. In my experience, to hope is to set yourself up for pain in the form of disappointment or worse.

Hope and hurt are both 4 letter words.

It’s a bleak, secret truth, but it’s not the end. Whether there is hope of success or not, we keep trying. We write the next chapter. We clock in and do the work. We keep going in spite of hopelessness.

We have to continue paying attention and calling out racial injustices. We have to hold the people we elect accountable. We have to remember that black lives matter as matter as much as white lives, and that “all lives matter” is a lie as long as anyone is put in danger based on the color of their skin.

We have to remember that trans rights are human rights.

Different is not the same as lesser. Different is just different.

We have to keep doing the work, even if there is no hope of changing the world. Even if the work is just pouring your heart into a blog that hardly anyone reads. It’s not about hope. It’s about doing what’s Right.

I keep putting off writing.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. It’s not that I don’t want to write. There’s just no wind in my sales. All the old tricks I used to use aren’t granting me forward motion. The waters of my mind are still and deep. And I haven’t wanted to talk about it because we’re all depressed enough.

There is a lot going on. I don’t want to talk about any of that, either. You all have access to the news the same as I do. A pivotal election, perhaps the last free election we’ll ever have in the US, is almost upon us. It is a lot.

At this moment, I should be attending a panel at the online Surrey International Writer’s Conference. I attended one earlier today, but I kept thinking, “Yes, I know” and “I will” and “Yup, got it.”

The panel wasn’t bad! The conference is good. I’m just in a terrible headspace for it. I feel like a soccer player sitting in the stands, watching the rest of my team run through practices while I’m trying to recover from a serious leg injury.

I’m not in the game right now. I’m not sure when or if I’ll be in the game again.

It actually isn’t that complicated, now that I’m thinking about it. Writing makes me happy. I normally want a career as a writer because I’d be adding stories to a world that always needs stories, and that type of activity makes me feel fulfilled and happy.

I write because it makes me happy. Maybe I’m not writing right now because I don’t want to be happy right now. Not with everything else going on.

Maybe taking vacation time to attend an online conference was a mistake. Maybe I should have just taken vacation time in order to take vacation time.

Going back to the analogy I used to start this post, the wind will blow again. The calm can’t last forever. I will try to be patient with myself and get through this difficult time.

Quitting isn’t an option. Maybe I can wait it out.

Since my last posted essay on Money, I’ve written a couple of other posts that I did not publish because they were just too depressing. I want to chronicle my journey as a writer and include all the highs and lows, but if what I’ve written is simply too dark, I try to spare you all from it.

So let’s talk about death.

Before I dive in, let me say that if you have lost someone recently, I am very sorry for your loss. I’m not writing this because I failed to read the room during a global pandemic. I’m writing this because death is common, painful, inevitable, and writing about painful topics is one of my coping mechanisms. If you’re grieving, what I have to say here may not provide much comfort, but I will happily listen to you and offer sympathy in whatever medium best serves you.

In this essay, I’m going to talk about what it means to die, and I’m going to give my real and non-religious thoughts about the afterlife.

The Human Soul

If humans are endowed with a spark of the divine, then the part of us that remains after our bodies have stopped serving us must be our immortal soul.

I want to believe we are spiritual beings, and that there is more to us than just the meat we are made from. Objectively speaking, we have nothing to support the existence of the soul. We cannot detect it with any of our senses. It cannot be measured. If we are to believe that we have a soul, we can only do so by faith.

If you have such faith, I will not try to dissuade you. I often share in that faith. In order to maintain such belief, it is important not to ask too many questions.

For example, what part does the soul play in a person’s life? Identity? Conscience? Personality? All of those aspects about you change over time. For most of us, the changes are slow, a natural part of aging. But some people are subjected to severe brain trauma that can drastically change aspects of who they are in such a way that they become unrecognizable from who they were before.

There are people surviving COVID-19 that have had their personalities reshaped as a result of severe illness. Some of these changes may be permanent.

If our memories and personality can be so altered by the modification of our brain meat, what must happen to us when that gray matter stops functioning altogether?

I want to believe I have a soul, but I cannot help but doubt. Did my soul exist before I was born? If so, what was I like? What purpose did that soul serve? What good is my soul doing me now? Why should we believe the soul will have greater utility once we no longer have a body and cannot affect the world?

The parts of me that I think are beautiful, unique, and rare are the parts crafted and balanced within my brain. My identity, my perspective, my rational processing of the sum of my experiences. If all those aspects of self disappear when the brain stops functioning, I don’t think it matters if I have a soul or not. I will be gone, and there won’t even be enough of me left to know the loss.

The Act of Dying

Let’s put aside the philosophical for a moment and get practical. What is it like to be dead?

What was it like before you were born?

It was nothing. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Not some endless, cold void like being lost in space. You did not experience temperature or light. You experienced nothing. You were nothing. You did not exist.

When our brains stop processing signals, we will experience nothing. No pain. No joy. No worries or delight. Just as before we were born, so shall we become.

Nothing. That’s what it is to die. That last trip isn’t into some great unknown, because we have a taste of it every time we fall into the deepest, dreamless sleep. Our consciousness and our thoughts disappear, and we cease to be.

A Pause to Reflect

These do not have to be depressing thoughts.

It is sad when someone we love dies because the world that remains is not as bright. The laughter and love they brought to the world is no longer with us, and it is right to mourn that loss. Not for them, but for us that remain with the capacity to feel.

For them, there is no more pain. There is no more loss. If they suffered illness or pain up to the end of their life, then death itself is a relief. The suffering is done and gone. Their legacy remains with those that knew and loved them.

It is tragic when the young die because the potential of their life is cut short. It is sad when an old person dies because their wisdom and experiences are lost, and all we have from them is what we managed to record and incorporate in our own lives.

Those that are dead do not experience happiness or sadness. The tragedy and loss cannot touch them any longer.

Life is precious and fleeting because it is only during life that we are able to experience anything. It’s during this time that we matter. What we do matters. We cannot affect the world after we are dead anymore than we were able to affect it before we were born. It’s the time in the middle that’s important, so we should do as much with it as we can, while we still have such agency.

Heaven and Hell

We have no evidence that our consciousness will transport to some other place after death. If you have faith in a heaven or hell, I will not try to dissuade you from that faith. I have shared in it in the past.

The ideas of heaven and hell are meant to persuade people into certain behavior while they are alive. If you are only doing something because you think it will get you into heaven, are you really a good person? What kind of person are you if the only way to keep you from doing something truly evil is to threaten you with fire and damnation?

When I was younger, I asked a pastor what heaven was supposed to be like. The first answer was a cop-out. “Beyond anything we can imagine.” I asked another time, and the answer wasn’t very satisfying. “You’ll be with God, endlessly singing His praises.”

If I am no longer myself, does it matter if I go to heaven or hell? In either place, the bit of me that is unique and special is gone, either in endless supplication to a higher power, or in mind-blasting torment at the hands of the greatest evil.

When I think about my Christian faith, it comes down to this: the message of Jesus was love and forgiveness, and I will continue to live by that message to my dying day. This means empathy, compassion, and kindness while I’m alive. Whatever comes after does not matter, and what I know about heaven and hell is insufficient to change my mind.

Ghosts

Of all the afterlife options, I find ghosts to be the least appealing.

I don’t believe in ghosts. I wrote an entire novel that included ghosts and the afterlife, and that’s where I think ghosts belong: in fiction.

If somehow some bit of our consciousness manages to survive the destruction of our brain, how dreadful would it be to linger, unable to affect the world?

I won’t challenge your other beliefs, but I will tell you that ghosts aren’t real. If a ghost can pass through doors and walls, why don’t they fall through the floor? If they are unaffected by gravity or matter, what is keeping them from simply passing through the world and drifting off into space while the Earth continues to spin around the sun on its cosmic journey?

Aesthetically, ghosts are not pleasing, and it would be horribly boring to be a ghost. I don’t know why people are into them. They are fun to write about, though.

Final Thoughts

Life is precious and short. Too short to worry about the things we cannot change, and too important to waste on petty squabbles.

We should not worry ourselves over death unnecessarily, nor should we shy away from it when it is time to face it. We were not taught how to be born, and no one needs to teach us how to die. All of us will experience both.

It’s what happens in between those events that matters.

Before I jump into this alluring subject, let me tempt you with this: read all the way to the end to find out how to make money by wearing a mask.

Now let’s talk about money.

Time is money. Money is power. Money is the root of all evil. Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems. Money. Money. Money. Can’t get enough of that god damned money.

Living in a capitalist society, one that values money over actual human lives by way of for-profit medicine, I have a lot of thoughts on money.

Let’s begin with a hypothetical.

I built a space ship and loaded it with 20,000 people with diverse backgrounds and skills. Me and my 20,000 closest friends leave the Earth, bound for a distant star. We sleep for a thousand years and wake up on a brand new world that is rich in natural resources.

We brought with us incredible technology and in short order, we want for nothing. We have adequate shelter, sustainable food sources, and all the non-sentient robots we could ever need. The needs of humanity on this brand new world are completely met.

That sounds nice, right? An entire population of equals, free to pursue whatever it is that drives them. Art. Science. Exploration. Whatever activity an individual wishes to pursue, they are not constrained by the “day job” or money. The moment we got off the ship, any currency we had from Earth became worthless. We have no money, and we are all equal.

Eventually, Sam the Scientist realizes that he needs help with an experiment. There is a geological phenomena Sam is trying to study, and in order for them to collect the data, they need volunteers to spread out at a particular time of day, observe, and push a button at the right time. The non-sentient automatons won’t work because this task requires intuition and judgment beyond the capabilities of these simple robots. Sam needs 1,000 people, or this experiment will not work.

Sam puts out the call for volunteers, but only 50 people respond. That’s only 5% of what Sam needs. What is Sam to do?

How do you get a large number of people to sacrifice their time and energy for a single cause? How do you compel individuals to work as a team, to accomplish something none of us can do on our own?

How do you make this?

Before we build skyscrapers, we built wonders.

It took a lot of human hands to build the pyramids, but those hands weren’t free or equal. Humanity has a long and unfortunate history of turning people into property, putting them in chains and forcing them to do the bidding of others.

On the backs of slaves, great and terrible structures have been built. The American economy was built on top of Black lives, and Black lives are still paying the cost to this day.

But this scenario isn’t (directly) about racial inequality. We were talking about a scientist on a distant world trying to get 1,000 people to work with them. Not to build a pyramid or a skyscraper, but just to stand, observe, and push a button at the right time.

How will Sam get the help they require? If this took place on Earth, Sam would use money. They would raise funds and pay people to do the work.

Why? What makes money so compelling that people will sacrifice their time and attention in exchange for it? It doesn’t even have to be a lot. If I told you I would give you $1 and all you had to do was wear a mask every time you went outside, you would do it. A buck isn’t worth that much these days, but it’s an easy dollar, and it’s an activity you should be doing anyway.

Money works because we believe it has value. We have faith that when we have enough money, we can use it to buy all that we need and desire. We believe we can exchange currency for goods and services that are real and tangible. American dollars, by the way, are not real. They are not backed by gold or silver.

Money only has value because the society we live in says it has value, and that value is based entirely on faith.

I don’t know how Sam gets their volunteers. Perhaps some of the 50 that originally responded are charismatic enough to sway more people to the common cause. Perhaps Sam finds something of value to offer the volunteers, like a big party afterwards to celebrate the completion of the experiment.

Or, Sam could lie. Sam could send another announcement to the community, telling them that the stability of their home depends on the successful execution of the experiment. It’s unethical and wrong, but it’s an option on the table.

Money itself is a lie, and its what we trade in every day. It’s what we use to compel people to do things that they wouldn’t normally do on their own. It’s how we get people to continue to show up and perform jobs.

And, of course, I lied to you. I said at the beginning that I would tell you how to make money just by wearing a mask.

Here’s the truth: COVID-19 is out of control in the US, and if you have to be paid in order to wear a mask, you’re a special kind of idiot. The truth is, a simple cloth or paper mask is probably not going to protect you from catching the virus. It will, however, keep you from spreading the virus to the people around you.

There are a lot of people infected and they don’t know it. You may be one of them.

The truth is, the virus doesn’t care about money. It doesn’t care about politics or the economy. It’s invisible, it’s real, and it’s spreading.

We need to remember that lives are real, money is a lie, and we need to prioritize accordingly.

Do your part by wearing a mask, staying home, and staying away from people for their sake as much as yours.

Originally I called this “Return to Truth,” but then Obiwan whispered in my ear, “Many of truths we cling to depend on our point of view.”

This isn’t about truth. This is reality. Facts. Information that is sometimes difficult to witness, because it can’t be changed.

I’m about to talk about Trump, COVID19, and #BlackLivesMatter. I’m an old white dude living in California. I am privileged, but the only power I have is my voice. I’m going to use it to try and say something meaningful and right.

Part 1

George Floyd, a black man, was murdered on camera by a group of white police officers in Minneapolis. They had him handcuffed, on the ground, pleading for his life. They kept a knee on his neck for 9 minutes as he cried “I can’t breathe.”

What was your reaction when you first heard about the murder of George Floyd?

Now be honest. Would your reaction have been different if George Floyd had been a white man?

Look at the reactions around you. Look at the protests and the rioting. Look at the people clogging the streets. Most protests are peaceful, but many are flipping or setting police cars on fire. Look at the police holding the line, most doing their job appropriately. Some are even acting heroically.

But there are too many abusing their power. In Salt Lake City, police in riot gear knocked down an old man with a cane.

It’s unthinkably cruel to shove an elderly man using a cane to walk.

Let’s be honest. Too many cops have a bad attitude. And they act out with force unreasonably and with a sense of impunity. Time for serious reform. pic.twitter.com/7Tgo7trORY

— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) May 31, 2020

In Chicago, John Cusack tried to use his phone to film a police car on fire. The police chased him away and attacked him with their baton.

Cops didn’t like me filming the burning car so they came at me with batons. Hitting my bike.
Ahhm here’s the audio pic.twitter.com/tfaOoVCw5v”

— John Cusack (@johncusack) May 31, 2020

Way, way too many examples of police attacking reporters and journalists, in violation of the First Ammendment.

Local television reporter teargassed while about to go on the air, Louisville. https://t.co/1YIg5ncbzZ

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) May 31, 2020

How we react is important. What we do with the power we have is important.

It is true that all lives matter. Only racists and scumbags would disagree with that notion. All lives matter, regardless of the color of their skin or their profession.

That is not what #BlackLivesMatter is about. It is not about black lives being more important than other lives, or putting one race above any other. It is about seeking justice in a system that is not serving all of its people equally.

According to Mapping Police Violence, there were about 1100 people killed by police in 2019. A quarter of those people were black, even though black people make up less than 15% of the population.

If you don’t like that site, how about PBS? This article talks about how statistically, black people are still more likely to die when dealing with the police than white people.

Black Lives Matter, but black lives are more at risk.

Black Lives Matter, but black men and women are not getting equal treatment in our system.

You can say “All Lives Matter” all you want, but you can not factually say that all lives matter and are given equal treatment in our United States. If that is your response to #BlackLivesMatter, you are demonstrating your ignorance, your lack of empathy, or your racism.

Part 2

I could stop there. Maybe I should stop there. However, there are riots and protests all across my country, and I cannot stop thinking about them.

What is my reaction? Should the riots be celebrated or condoned?

It’s not that simple.

I do not condone the violence or destruction of property. There are innocent people getting hurt. Bystanders. People that had nothing to do with the system that killed George Floyd are losing their livelihood. I am sympathetic.

However, all other choices have been exhausted. The peaceful protests were either met with scorn or ignored. So what’s left?

Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem in order to protest police brutality against black men in America. It was a peaceful protest where an athlete used his power and his voice to expose a serious injustice in this country.

Trump responded by calling him a sonofabitch. Pence staged a walkout of a game when the players knelt during the national anthem. Kaepernick ultimately lost his position and hasn’t been allowed to play in the NFL.

What did the peaceful protest accomplish? It’s been three years since Kaepernick first took a knee, and black men are still dying at a disproportionate rate.

What’s left when the peaceful protests fail? Exactly what we have today.

George Floyd was not the only black person killed at the hands of the police. There have been many, many others. Too many others. It is a systemic problem that cannot be fixed until it is acknowledged. Not enough people are recognizing it as a problem, so we will have violence and chaos until the ignorance is cured.

Only then can we build a new system which is just and equal to all.

Part 3

While these protests are going on, we are still dealing with a pandemic. Across the United States there are 1.8 million total cases of COVID19, with 400,000 people recovered and 105,000 people dead.

We still don’t have widespread testing and contact tracing, so those numbers could be even higher.

People are taking to the street during the pandemic. Many are wearing masks, but how much will that matter when they’re all in close contact with each other? How much will the virus spread while people are calling for justice?

In some cities, police are using tear gas to control crowds. Sometimes they use the gas preemptively. Imagine that. Tear gas used during a pandemic that attacks people’s ability to breathe.

What the United States needs in order to get through these crises is leadership. Unfortunately, we have Trump.

Trump, exacerbating the race tensions with his racist dog whistles and his complete lack of empathy.

Trump, with his lies and incompetence, dangerously suggesting that maybe people can inject bleach in order to fight the virus.

Trump, ignoring the briefings about the virus and choosing instead to play golf and downplay the danger by saying “it’ll clear up like a miracle in May.”

Finale

I don’t want to end this with the taste of that man’s name in my mouth. It leaves me bitter and angry.

Instead, I will implore you to consider empathy.

When I talk about empathy, I’m not referring to the magical ability of Counselor Deana Troi from Star Trek. I’m talking about something much simpler than that.

Empathy is about trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s about taking some scenario and imaging how it might make someone else feel.

Remember George Floyd. Imagine what it must have felt like to be pressed to the ground, the hard, gritty concrete scraping your skin, while another man is over you, their knee crushing the back of your neck.

Imagine instead that it isn’t you being murdered by the police on camera, but your brother or sister. Someone that looks like you. Someone that lived a life like yours, laughed at the same jokes you laughed at, loved their friends and family the way you love yours.

That’s empathy. That’s what the world needs more of if we’re to make our current shared reality greater than it is.

Work and games occupy my time. After I reached the end of Breath of the Wild, I played Factorio. Once I launched the rocket, I dabbled with some older games still sitting on my computer. No Man’s Sky. Grand Theft Auto V. Darkest Dungeon.

After watching someone stream it a little bit, I played Griftlands. The card aspect of the game triggered an impulse to open up Magic the Gathering again, but I resisted. If I slide back into that hole right now, I won’t have the strength to pull myself out.

Last night I installed The Witcher 3. I haven’t played it yet. I’m afraid it’s going to be like Skyrim where I have it and I want to play it, but the size and scope of the game intimidate me away from spending actual time in the game.

I still want to write. I just haven’t been able to bring myself to the page.

With all of this focus on games and distraction, I slid sideways into game development. I started an online learning subscription and delved into some Unity 3D tutorials. I still remembered quite a bit from when I tried to teach Unity and programming to some high school kids, so I picked it right back up. I now have viable clones of Flappy Bird and 90% of Bomberman, thanks to the tutorials.

The ultimate goal of the game development is to take the pen and paper game I developed when I was much younger and make it digital and cool. In the game, you build robot dogs and pit them against other robots in an arena. No dogs, actual or figurative, are harmed in the game, which I think makes it more ethical than Pokemon.

I haven’t written any code for the game yet. Honestly, I’m still unsure if Unity 3D is the best fit. Unity 3D is good for solo developers. I looked briefly into Unreal, but that engine path is better if you have a team, or if you’re a digital artist.

Making my robot fighting game a reality will be cool on its own, but there is another reason why I want to work on it. I reference it in Spin City. At the back of my mind, there’s a few neurons misfiring, saying “if you get your intellectual property out in the world through a game, it will improve your chances of getting a book deal.”

Really, I just think it would be cool and to play this game and share it with the world.

I still want to write. In the last few months, I haven’t written any new fiction. I haven’t touched the novelette which I intended to finish by the beginning of May. Ideas for stories still float through my mind, but even thinking about writing has been painful.

This post, ostensibly about games, is an attempt to make me write something. The word engine within my brain seized, its gears gummed up and its inner workings unresponsive. The blog is my way of smacking the side of the machine with the flat of my hand, hoping to shake something loose and get it moving again.

Stay safe, everyone. And be kind to yourself so you may be kind to each other.

At the beginning of this month, I decided I would try to put myself out in the world more. I said on Twitter (half joking) that it was the #MonthOfBrian. I intended to focus outwardly.

I arranged to go to Portugal, Italy, New Zealand, and a third Writing Excuses cruise. Along with a handful of minor successes, it felt like momentum. People won’t be able to discover my writing if I hide in my garage.

The reality is I entered March with a lot of bluster in order to stay positive and suppress bad, counterproductive feelings. My emotions are irrational and non-negotiable, so I decided to work around.

When the reality of Covid-19 hit home, all my plans went out the window. The trip with Sierra Nevada College canceled first. I recently heard New Zealand WorldCon is canceled, though I personally haven’t received notification. The final decision hasn’t been made the Writing Excuses Cruise, but let’s be real. It’s a cruise. It will be canceled.

I responded to all this by not responding. I all but disappeared from social media. A handful of people reached out to me to check in, and I told them I’m fine.

Am I fine? I don’t know. I would rather have nothing to do with my irrational, non-negotiable emotions. Critical self-analysis has not been my highest priority. Avoidance is the name of the game, both personally and socially.

During this crisis, I try to do the best I can for Melissa and the kids. I work during the working hours. I contribute around the house. In the evening, I play Breath of the Wild.

I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been making plans. I’m not interested in books or movies or music. There’s work, the family, and the nightly video game distraction.

At 2AM today, I finished Breath of the Wild. The game was fantastic and I enjoyed it. But now what?

I used the game to avoid reality, but I don’t think I can do that anymore. I should write. I need to write. I don’t know if I can. Right now, going to that place where the words live is like sticking my naked hand into a hot oven to pull out a pan.

As they say at the end of the podcast, I’m out of excuses. It’s time to roll up my sleeve and get back to work.