Merry Xmas to the Xians, the majority faithful to the American brand of Xianity
What is an Xian? Formerly known as Christian but now without considering Christ, his life and teachings, as part of their faith. In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the Ghost of Christmas Present describes what I call Xians to Scrooge in this way: “‘There are some upon this earth of yours . . . who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kiln, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
The “us” referred to are the 2,000 and more Spirits of Christmas Present that have walked upon Earth since the birth of Christ.
I’m looking forward to Streets of Nashville. I’m confident I’ll spend some time on a top-drawer Whiskey review for that one if it’s even in the ballpark of your previous work. I still recommend A Twilight Reel every chance I get.
Published May 27, 2021
This book of stories was more than twenty-five years in the making. I began it while working on my Master of Arts in English at Western Carolina University under the direction of Rick Boyer (before Ron Rash landed at WCU). Three stories–“The Wine of Astonishment,” “Overwinter,” and “A Poster of Marilyn Monroe”–appeared in my WCU master’s thesis in 1995. The work continued until I finished the final story–“Witness Tree”–in May 2019.
Many of the stories were published as stand-alones through the intervening years:
“Overwinter” (Yemassee 1997)
“The Wine of Astonishment” (Short Story 2000)
“A Poster of Marilyn Monroe” (Pisgah Review 2005)
“The Flutist” (Yemassee 2014)
“The Invisible World around Them” (The Chaffin Journal 2014)
“Two Floors above the Dead” (Tampa Review 2017)
“Conversion” (Still: The Journal 2021)
Thanks to Andy Reed, Pisgah Press, and all who have supported A Twilight Reel over it’s 1,039 days in the world through review, purchase, reading, and on and on. It means a lot.
It isn’t like The West Wing or Veep or Designated Survivor. So, what, you might ask, is The Kakistocracy about. Well, if you somehow missed Season One, you didn’t miss much . . . except some of the most royal screw ups ever pulled off at the highest levels of government! Season Two promises even more of the same. Some are expecting a catastrophic level of more of the same.
That first season of The Kakistocracy went by the simple tag: “Government by the worst people!” The second season’s tag makes promises:
More government by the worst people . . . only more so!
So that it’s not just a remake of the first season, Season Two promises not even to pretend legitimacy or seriousness and start with the most unqualified buffoons available—from the cold opening! That’s a laugh riot, right there!
And in what industry insiders are calling something of a SPOILER ALERT, The Kakistocracy will be rolling out an extended tagline after the first 100 days:
Join us on a laughable, embarrassing, chaotic romp toward The Idiocracy!
We’ve been wondering when we would have a spinoff, and now it’s looking like we won’t have to wait more than four years to see what the “minds” behind The Kakistocracy have in “mind” for the former greatest nation on Earth.
This might not be the moment to quote one of the white, slave-holding “Founding Fathers,” but in spite of those marks against him, he wrote these prophetic thoughts during the Revolutionary War:
I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years’ imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion. (emphasis added)
This is from Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1787.
“From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill” — Have we hit rock bottom two hundred forty-eight years after July 4, 1776? We can only hope this–and the few years that follow–are the bottom. In the years that come after Donald Trump and his MAGA nightmare are dead and gone, will we rise again to strive toward living up to our founding ideals?
Garbage Man
(with apologies to sanitation workers)
An Indigenous author I admire wrote this about Garbage Man (and nobody has more right to criticize such a white-orange, Euro-American legacy-immigrant than a Native):
Trump is the embodiment of refuse–self-interest and disregard wrapped in decay, like something abandoned in a dumpster. His legacy is a reminder that not all waste is disposable, nor without lasting impact.
The Idiocracy is upon us!
I’m disappointed in US, and I’m embarrassed for US. We have become the village idiots of the world
Looks like liberty has given up on us and moved to . . . Scotland maybe?
Back in the mid-1980s, Don Henley put out a great album titled Building the Perfect Beast. For that project, he wrote a song titled “A Month of Sundays,” in which an old man thinks back on his life and work as he watches life in Reagan’s USA pass in front of him. At one point in the song the lyric goes like this:
My grandson, he comes home from college. He says, “We get the government we deserve.” My son-in-law just shakes his head and says, “That little punk, he never had to serve.”
These lyrics keep playing over in my mind as we approach Election Day 2024. Like the kid coming home from college (I would’ve been about that kid’s age, maybe a little older, when that song came out), I’m thinking we get the government we deserve.
Veterans from the “son-in-law” in this lyric to my father and my friends who served, swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution. Not to the flag or the national anthem. Not to the president. Certainly, not to a man like Donald Trump, who had said that he would like to get rid of the Constitution, undermining and devaluing all the sacrifices made and lives lost. And still, I’m guessing that most of the veterans I know will vote for Trump.
Now, I know many will say that they can’t abide this or that about the liberals, the Democrats, Kamala Harris, and I’m sure I don’t know everything about what she might do as president and might not like everything she might do.
But one thing I feel in my bones is that nothing–NOTHING–Kamala Harris might propose or do threatens the very existence of the United States of America. If any actual Republicans remain out there, a Harris win will be like it’s always been: you live under it for four years and then you get to vote again to try and put your political ideology forward.
I feel just as strongly that if Donald Trump wins, the United States of America will not exist–not as we have known it for going on 250 years–by the time his four years are up. (His four years, I fear, will never be up until he’s passed away.) But the Trumpers (actual Republicans seem no longer to exist in any significant numbers–or they’re all in hiding, hoping that the Trump nightmare will go away), I say, the Trumpers care about nothing but winning. And if he wins this vote, the end of voting is in sight.
If a third world war is brewing with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran as the aggressors, then Trump is the worst leader we could have. He’s weak and doesn’t know it. He follows after Putin and other dictators like a 12-year-old boy with a crush on the high school football captain. He’s ignorant and doesn’t know it. He’s without talent or savvy and doesn’t know it. Obviously, he’s without any leadership skills. In short, he is without one redeeming quality beyond the common humanness we share that’s buried beneath all of his bullshit.
If the USA actually elects Donald Trump in two weeks, we who made/let it happen will get the government we deserve.
Ye Boomers so afraid of electing a woman of color and so attached to the teats of Trump, how will you survive if you lose your social security benefits (for which you’ve worked for years and years)? Forbes magazine included an article, just a day or so ago, I think, “Trump’s Views On Social Security And Medicare—As Group Warns Funds Could Run Out In 6 Years Under His Plans.”
Are you banking on the belief that he won’t mess with your money and healthcare? You know good and well he will if your benefits will benefit him. He neither cares for nor considers you. (Then a year or so beyond the election he’ll die of old age and cheeseburgers and leave us in the hands of JD Vance.)
My blogging schedule calls for some monthly writing on writing every first Wednesday. I missed it by a couple of days. . . .
So, here’s some brief news about what’s going on in my writing life.
Gabriel’s Songbook audiobook “cover”—photo by Ed Huskey; original design by Andy Reed and Michael Cody; audiobook adaptation by Jamie Reeves
When the Spring 2024 semester ended, I spent a couple of weeks in May driving over the mountain to Asheville, where I wound up at The Talking Book studio to record my own narration of Gabriel’s Songbook. Dave Burr was the engineer, and I had a great time working with and getting to know him. The audiobook is now out in the world. It’s available on a number of platforms—Libro.fm, Spotify, and others. It should appear soon on Audible.
I’m no actor. I’m no voice actor either. But I don’t cringe when listening to the finished version, which makes me think that it’s all right. Give it a listen!
Bouchercon 2024! According to the website, “Bouchercon® is the annual world mystery convention where every year readers, writers, publishers, editors, agents, booksellers and other lovers of crime fiction gather for a 4-day weekend of education, entertainment, and fun!” This is my first time to attend this convention, which meets at the end of this month (August 28 – September 1) in Nashville.
Cover of the Bouchercon Anthology 2024
Every year Bouchercon puts out a call for traditional crime short stories related to the conference’s host city. Having lived in Nashville through my twenties, I thought I’d give it a shot. I’d recently been working on a novel called Streets of Nashville (see below), which features a main character named Ezra MacRae. In the novel, Ezra is about five years into his attempt to establish a viable career as a songwriter, so I thought I would write a short story that explores Ezra’s backstory a little. My submission to the Bouchercon anthology was “I Could Be the One.” It tells of Ezra’s first days/months/year in Nashville as he tries to find his footing on Music Row. I looked through my song catalog and landed on an old piece of mine—”I Could Be the One,” of course. (Read more about the song here.)
The story was accepted and will be included in the Bouchercon anthology for the Nashville conference! I look at this as a fine feather in my cap. The anthology will debut at the conference and afterwards be available wherever books are sold. I still love Nashville, even more than thirty years gone from it, so I’m looking forward to reading the other stories in the anthology as well.
I wrote “I Could Be the One” in October 2023. As soon as I finished it, I jumped on another anthology opportunity.
I spent November 2023 writing “Carolina,” based on Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen’s song of the same name. It’s a bit of a murder ballad and includes suggestions of a man perhaps murdering his lover while sleepwalking. Whether he’s sleepwalking or not, he finds her (after she’s left him) and then wakes up later to find her dead.
This scenario immediately made me think of my work with the writings of Charles Brockden Brown, who wrote a couple of pieces in the late 18th / early 19th centuries about sleepwalking and murder. The first is his novel Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799). In 1805, Brown published a piece of short fiction titled “Somnambulism. A Fragment.” In this story, a young man named Althorpe fearfully obsesses over the safety of his beloved on a nighttime trip she is beginning with her father. Althorpe walks in his sleep and finds her in the night and murders her, bringing his obsessive fears to life—without knowing it.
In the song, the ill-fated girl is named Lily. I kept the name for my story and made her the centerpiece of a conflict between two men: the violent Al Thorpe and Asheville PD detective Eddie Huntly. This story was so much fun to write!
“Carolina” will appear in Madville Publishing‘s Wild Wind: Poems and Stories Inspired by the Songs of Robert Earl Keen. The book is scheduled for release on November 19 and will be available wherever books are sold.
Streets of Nashville is my second novel (third book of fiction). On April 15, 2025, Madville Publishing will release the novel into the wild world (whatever form that takes after the November election)! From the above, you can gather that its main character is a songwriter named Ezra MacRae, five years into his attempt to establish a viable career on Nashville’s Music Row. I won’t say much more about it right now. Madville’s editor and I are working with the final proofs of the text, so I should soon have an advance reading opportunity available for pre-release reviews. In the meantime, you can read the query letter that I sent to Madville, which led to acceptance and the start of the publishing process. (Thanks to the great Alex Kenna for providing this query letter space!)
This is a secret cover reveal! I’ll do a more public one on my socials as soon as the text of the book is finalized. For now, we’ll see if anybody actually reads this blog. And if anybody does, they’re the first to lay eyes on this cover.
“Make America Great Again” (MAGA) is an empty slogan that sways only those unable to consider its meaning (or rather its lack of meaning). In the right world context and with the right motivations and considerations of all, I could perhaps get behind the idea “Make America Great” (again, as long as the implication is not “and to hell with the rest”), but the addition of “Again” throws the phrase into nonsense. Simply put, never was there a time in the past—implied by “Again”—when the U.S. met every possible definition of “Great” for every individual citizen existing at that time. Absolutely never. Regardless of which political ideologues (so-called conservatives or so-called liberals) might wield such a slogan, it rallies only thoughtless, selfish people who interpret it according to some imaginary time/place they’ve romanticized the country as being good for them and their kind (and probably only for them and their kind).
