When I started writing The Repossessed Ghost, it was just after midnight on November 1st, 2013. In the story, Mel stole the ’74 Chevy Nova during Halloween, right before the first chapter begins. In other words, I set The Repossessed Ghost in the same time period as I was writing the story.

It took years to actually finish the book, and it was about a decade after I began it that it was published. It’s remains readable because I didn’t put in too many temporally topical subjects. The worst offender is probably a mention of hurricane Katrina, and that’s only a problem because hurricanes like that are fairly common now.

I mention this today because I’m working on The Psychic Out of Time, and there sure are a lot of temporally relevant topics on mind right now.

I can tell you that I’m going to mention Covid. I’m probably not going to mention Trump directly. While I may have strong opinions about US politics, Mel is not me, and he’s mostly focused on the supernatural world. I’m not necessarily doing this to make my story palatable to a broader audience, but I’m also not not doing that, if you get my meaning. The story is the boss, Mel is driving it, and I’m writing a supernatural thriller, not a political thriller.

That being said, I can’t help but take a moment today to think about the state of the US as of today, and maybe offer some advice to like-minded individuals. We are living in unprecedented times.

Here is my list of advice, or things to remember, in no particular order:

• Do not expect The Constitution to protect you. We gave a lawless man the keys to the kingdom, and he’s violated The Constitution before without repercussion, during his first term. The question is no longer whether an action or inaction is constitutional or not. The question is what will the courts enforce.
• Human lives are worth more than money. This is a big one, and in this day and age, the hardest one for people to overcome. The power that the oligarchy wields is their wealth, and if you cannot be bought and told what to do via the promise of a cash payout, you cannot be controlled. There will always be people that value money over human life. Make sure you, your friends, and your family aren’t amongst that crowd, and you should be fine.
• We have more in common than differences. I’m not just talking about Democrats, or liberals, or people like me. All of us, regardless of the color of our skin, the gender in our hearts, the ancestry in our blood, are more alike than we are different. It’s through finding our common ground that we can connect and hold each other up.
• De-escalate without compromise. For the foreseeable future, we’re going to experience a lot of conflict. The best thing we can do is try to keep the conflict civil. Find the common ground. Find ways to keep things from getting violent. But also, do not compromise with people that are acting in bad faith. We cannot compromise with people that want to end the existence of other people. The current targeted demographic is trans people. This is a small minority of our population, and they’re just people trying to live their best life. We have to protect them without compromise, and we have to find a way to do so while trying to de-escalate tensions. Artists and storytellers, this is what we were made for.
• Remain skeptical, especially when the message comes from something without a face, and particularly if it is trying to heap praise on Trump he does not deserve. The most recent example is TikTok. Trump started the ball rolling on the TikTok ban. Two days before getting sworn in, the TikTok ban took effect. It was down for less than 24 hours. The reality is that the law was signed into effect by Biden, who said he was not going to enforce the law. TikTok went down anyway, with a message stating that Trump would fix it as president. Then it came back up, before Trump was president, praising him for restoring it. It’s propaganda, and shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone.
• You do not need to participate in every argument you’re invited to.
• When you rebel, be smart about it. You have one life. No one enjoys their own martyrdom.

That’s probably enough for now. We have one life, and we have each other. We’re probably going to see atrocities, but the future is uncertain.

We had a chance to course correct in November, and we collectively blew it. Now, it’s up to us to hold onto what we can and hold each other up.