Book Stages

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There are stages to it.  Writing a book, I mean.  One stage, for me, is realizing that you’re writing one.  I started work on Sleepy Hollow as American Myth years ago, without realizing it.  That was followed by the stage of comprehending that I had a book idea and intentionally writing it.  I suspect that, in the throes of The Wicker Man, I thought “I should do a similar book on Sleepy Hollow.”  Devils Advocates, which is an excellent series, however, feeling the strain on academic presses, was moving to hardcover-first releases (the kiss of death).  I started writing the book anyway, hoping that maybe it might find trade interest.  It is still possible that an agent is out there who would’ve moved it in that direction, but I wanted the book out before Lindsey Beer’s movie gets released.  After the book is drafted, the next stage: find a publisher. (Unless you have an agent.)

Since this is my sixth book, I felt confident (a strange, foreign feeling for me) that I could locate a publisher.  I’d done it five times before.  McFarland did a nice job with Holy Horror, but what sold me is that they dropped the price on it.  Many academic publishers continue to raise prices each year, so if you don’t buy a book right away you’ll end up paying a lot for this muffler.  The next stage is waiting to see what the cover will look like.  That wait is over.  Here it is, the cover of Sleepy Hollow as American Myth:

(Feel free to share widely, get everyone all excited!)  I’m currently in the waiting stage.  Waiting for proofs.  Of course, I’ve been working on my next couple of books as well.  You can’t just sit around, otherwise these tomes will never get written.  I haven’t decided which one will cross the finish line first.  If I had an agent they’d be able to tell me which might be more marketable, but since I work alone I’m left to my own devices.  I am bound and determined that the next book will go to a trade press.  I’m trying hard to scrub any whiff of academia from it.  In the meantime, however, I’m enjoying looking at the cover for my current book.  There aren’t a ton of nonfiction books out there on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  In fact, as nonfiction I know of only one other.  This isn’t what we in the biz call “a crowded bookshelf.”  I’m doing all the pre-publication promo that I can.  I’d be grateful for any shares or likes at this stage.

Good Timing?

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Timing is important.  I hope I have a sense of it, but it doesn’t always work out the way you hope.  My last book, The Wicker Man, was released on the fiftieth anniversary of that cult film.  A bigger publisher with better reach published their own Wicker Man book that year, and mine garnered no attention.  I decided to turn to Sleepy Hollow instead.  This is a story that has been quite well known since 1820.  Although the Fox television series ran out of steam in 2017, I wrote the book when I did because Lindsey Beer has been tapped to direct a reboot of the Tim Burton film of 1999.  Looking for books on the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” I found very little.  This is what is known of in the biz as “a gap.”  I decided to try to fill it.  Fandom helps in situations like this.

I’ve been trying to find the Sleepy Hollow fandom and engage with it before Sleepy Hollow as American Myth comes out.  I am confident that there are fans out there.  The tragic collapse of the Fox series didn’t lead to lack of love for the tale.  Indeed, further renditions have continued to appear.  Some have gained considerable attention.  The online fan base, however, seems to be, ah, sleeping.  I’m not sure when the Beer movie is slated for release.  It was announced in several media outlets but now we’ve come to the lull where updates have ceased to surface.  I’m certainly no Hollywood insider and I generally don’t even find out about movies until after they’ve left theaters (unless they’re very big).  I hope the timing is right this time.

It takes a couple years, at least, for me to write a book.  I’ve been working on this Sleepy Hollow project, in some way or other, since before Holy Horror came out in 2018.  I sure hope I got the timing right on this one.  The many trade publishers and agents I approached didn’t think so.  Maybe it’s just that people aren’t curious enough to read a book about Washington Irving’s story.  I try to make the case in my book that it has risen to the level of an American myth.  The story’s known world-wide, but its largest fan base is here in the States.  Had the Fox series been handled a bit better, keeping both people of color and the apocalypse in the foreground, it might’ve run a couple more seasons.  The underlying story’s not quite dead in the grave yet, I hope.  But then, timing hasn’t always been my strong suit.

F.O.C. Darley, from Le Magasin pittoresque, public domain

Politics As Usual

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What J. D. Vance does on, or to, his couch is his own business.  Sexual preferences between consenting adults, and furniture, is a private matter.  (Vance isn’t the first writer whose publications have come back to bite him.)   Forgive and forget.  And maybe reupholster.  What Vance has done that’s unforgivable is betray the poor.  I read Hillbilly Elegy years ago and was taken by his enumerating the harms visited on the poor by our capitalistic system.  Having grown up poor myself, I found many of those damages in my own self-inventory.  But even just after I read the book I heard whisperings that Vance really didn’t care for the poor, but for himself.  That puts him in the same category as Trump, I suppose.  A team that would only push what makes them personally look good, if elected.  It’s a mockery of democracy that a convicted felon is even permitted to run for president.

Betrayal of the poor is perhaps the most unconscionable of sins.  To have grown up knowing how difficult life is for many Americans and then to throw them to the wolves for personal aggrandizement is a move worthy of Satan himself.  Indeed, his running mate was born excessively wealthy.  I recently saw a quote from J. P. Morgan: “I owe the public nothing.”  Morgan,  one of the wealthiest men of his era, apparently believed using others to get yourself to the top is fine.  Trump, who sees people as disposable (ask his wives) never had to struggle.  Neither did Morgan.  But Vance, if his book is to be believed, did.  Knowing what it means to grow up that way and then to hitch yourself to the Trump-wagon is, in my opinion, about as low as you can go.  It’s a lack of honesty.

If we’re honest we’ll admit that all people lie.  True, Trump has made eiling (actually telling the truth) a thing.  He basically never eils, so we can assume anything he says is false.  Biden told lies.  Harris told lies.  Vance told lies.  Even though I’m an honest guy, I’ve told lies in my long time on this planet.  Not many, I hope, but I’m human.  Show me a politician who never lies and I’ll show you a liar.  I never thought I’d live to see a major party ticket pair felons, sex criminals, and betrayers together and tell Americans they’ll make the country great again.  The question that won’t let me go, however, is what of the poor?  We know that the rich, left to their own devices, tend toward Morgan’s quip.  Honestly, who will make safety nets for those who are victims of business as usual?

Opposites?

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Not having the money to subscribe, I limit myself to the daily headlines of Publishers Weekly.  When physically in the office in New York City, it circulated among editors in print form.  I do miss that.  The weekly is a great place to stay informed of what’s going on in the book world.  Interestingly, the headlines—which are often linked together newsletter-style—noted that the annual preview of religion books was on the way.  This was followed by “On the exact opposite side of the publishing spectrum, Orbit has launched its fourth imprint, Run for It, capitalizing on the horror boom.”  So there it was staring me in the face.  Religion and horror are exact opposites.  Now, I can’t expect even experts in publishing to be aware of all the trends, but the religion-horror connection has been alive and growing for a few years now and those of us who publish books in it might dispute the “exact opposite side” designation.

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

Horror and religion are closely related.  Many in the religion camp would want to deny that, but those who know horror know that religion quite often wanders in.  More than that, religion often drives the horror.  They’re not so much exact opposites as they are playmates.  Rather like the Bible depicts God being the chum of Leviathan.  (Who is, after all, a perfectly good monster.)  While my own humble efforts are frequently overlooked, the last four books I’ve written explore different aspects of religion and horror.  This includes my forthcoming Sleepy Hollow book.

Even if you’re not a fan of horror movies, if you pay close attention religion is not the opposite of horror.  We have this mental image of religion as a pure and holy thing in and of itself.  We don’t often stop to think that religions are invented by humans.  Yes, they are often in response to what believers see as divine stimuli, but the way that they are conducted is part of our human ingenuity.  They are considered good because of their emphasis on love and positive virtues.  If you watch enough horror you’ll notice that the menace is often a threat to love.  In other words, horror too emphasizes the value of love.  It’s a perception problem that sees horror as the opposite of religion.  Simplistic categories are often necessary to get through life—that’s why we stereotype.  Those of us who like to stop and think through things can gum up the works.  Even a headline in a magazine we like can lead us to wonder about the deeper implications and the biases they perpetuate.

Tech Trust

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Tech problems are a part of life, of course.  The recent problem at CrowdStrike that grounded airlines and prevented 911 from working and interfered with medical services is a scary thing.  The word “fragility” was used in the New York Times.  Please allow me this jeremiad.  I appreciate technology and what it can do for us.  I really do.  I can usually find a movie to watch online on a day off work.  I can navigate most places without a map (although recently when there was no 4G coverage, I was left lost for a little while).  What’s really scary, to me, is those who claim tech, and only tech, is our future.  I’m a simple guy with simple tastes.  I enjoy reading books and watching movies to stimulate my restless imagination.  Yet I’m constantly being told that I should read on a screen, not on paper.  And that artificial “intelligence” can—or worse—should run things.  What happens when the grid goes down?

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I love art glass, but I’ve also broken quite a bit of it over the years because life is rough and tumble.  Some fragility is part of the attraction. For a while, when I was young, I was fascinated by card houses.  Constructing one that used an entire deck was not only a goal, but its own kind of art.  Sometimes the beauty of art inheres in its very fragility. The house of cards took skill, but someone slamming a door, or even walking into the room could bring it all down.  A trembling hand or a drop from a millimeter too high could spell the end of this particular installation.  But nobody died.  No worldwide travel plans were interrupted.  The consequences were minimal.

I don’t dislike computers.  It’s just that I think balance is desirable.  After work, which is pretty much all online these days, I tend to move away from the internet for the rest of the day.  I pick up a book, made of paper.  Sometimes I’ll watch some media, preferably on DVD.  I don’t miss VHS tapes, I assure you—although we still have quite a few of them, some of which contain media that has never been released either on disc or online.  I can’t watch them.  Oh, if I had the time, gumption, and cash I could purchase a player.  I’d have to buy some kind of adapter to connect it to the TV.  Is that a downgrade?  My understanding is that CrowdStrike’s problem was all caused by an upgrade.  I’ve known smaller catastrophes with upgrades, and they seem to come every couple of months now.  What’s to be done?  Maybe we should slow down a little and read a book.

Summerween

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Okay, so why didn’t anybody tell me?  Well, I suppose it’s because few people know me.  But still, I had to find out about Summerween from the New York Times.  Folks, I don’t spend a lot of time online.  I work long days and I read books and mow the lawn.  I just don’t have time.  I wasn’t aware that Summerween was happening.  Interestingly, the idea got started from Gravity Falls, an animated television show based on Twin Peaks and The X-Files.  I actually watched this show because a couple of young friends, who spend a lot of time online, started showing it to me.  I didn’t remember, however, that in one episode the population of Gravity Falls decides to celebrate a second Halloween in the summer.  And now internet influencers (I’m more of an unfluencer) are popularizing the holiday.  

The need for spooky holidays is encouraging to me.  I’ve long been exploring the spirituality of the unexpected, and Summerween has the possibility of contributing to it.  According to the New York Times article there’s no set date for the celebration.  It’s more of a party aesthetic, but, the story notes, Michaels, the arts and crafts chain, has already caught on and is stocking scary summer decorations.  I have long opined (and fifteen years is a lot of daily posting—nearly five-and-a-half thousand of them) that people are afraid.  That’s why they run after unlikely political leaders and seek shelter beneath the wings of the Almighty.  Horror movies, and Halloween, simply bring this out into the open.  And what’s wrong with having a little fun with it along the way?

By the by, if you haven’t checked out Gravity Falls, you don’t know what you’re missing.  It’s a Disney production and it’s aimed at a younger crowd.  That’s one of the disconnects I experience here: Halloween is something younger people love.  At work I can’t count the number of people who’ve said (not to me directly, since few speak to me that way) that Halloween is their favorite holiday.  I guess you wouldn’t expect to find a kindred spirit among old guys who edit biblical studies, of all people.  I venture to guess that any of them would be surprised to learn that someone of my vintage even knows what Gravity Falls or Summerween is.  Well, they’d have been right about the latter, had it not been for an article yesterday in the Gray Lady.  And what a more adult way to find something out might there be?

Copyright: Disney. Summerween trickster, Gravity Falls

Powerful Belief

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Even someone who’s spent a lifetime studying religion can’t know every single sect.  People are far too creative in that regard, and some belief groups are fairly small.  I had never heard of Unarius, for example, before reading this book.  If I had, it simply washed over me, getting lost in the noise.  Part of the trouble with defining Unarius is that it calls itself a science.  Words can be slippery, and Christian Scientists also use that designation in a similar way.  The word “science,” etymologically speaking, denotes “knowledge.”  In our materialist culture we often suppose that means the physical sciences, grudgingly allowing it to be borrowed by the “social sciences.”  There is a science of religion, but this leads to its own set of discussion points.  Let’s look at Diana Tumminia’s title: When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying Saucer Group.  That give you an idea. 

The “prophecy” part concerns a “failed” prediction, or two, of when the spaceships would land.  Being a sociologist, Tumminia’s real interest is what happens then.  And here’s where things get interesting.  Failed predictions generally don’t lead to true believers giving up their convictions.  History has played and replayed this for us—it’s happening around us this very second—and yet “rationality” supposes that when the ships don’t land, people simply move on.  The Millerites outlived “the Great Disappointment,” after all, when the world didn’t end as predicted.  Their heirs include a sizable Christian denomination.  All this talk of AI has muddled our thinking about what it means to be human.  We are emotional.  More than that, we are believing creatures.  Our society is living proof.

Perhaps the most important, and ill-studied facet of being human, is belief.  Belief (no matter what in) is a religious phenomenon.  This study of a fairly small group shows that convinced people cannot be dissuaded, no matter how many facts are presented to them.  One need not look far to find the same phenomenon surrounding Trump.  (I do not condone violence, but history can inform us if we allow it.)  Make no mistake—he is the center of a new religion.  Unarians have absolute belief that their system is right.  Mistaken predictions—even very public ones—will not convince true believers otherwise.  It seems to me that our society, our democracy, cannot survive without intensive study of belief and how it affects the way otherwise completely rational people think.  My study is full of books exploring various aspects of belief, but we are still no closer to any kind of definitive answer.  And voters, at least a great many of them, follow their beliefs.

A Kind of Shine

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Sometimes you just can’t not comment.  A few weeks after Donald Sutherland—known by some of us for his horror roles—passed away, Shelley Duvall has died.  It feels like the passing of an era for horror fans.  I never saw Sutherland in MASH, although I’m sure he made a good Hawkeye.  I did see him in Don’t Look Now, however, and An American Haunting.  Shelley Duvall grasped her claim to fame in The Shining, of course.  I can remember the apprehension that gripped me, after years of everyone telling me how scary it was, when I first saw it.  The Shining has its detractors, of course, but it remains one of my favorites.  That’s in no small measure due to Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy.

Duvall did other things, of course.  Since I tend to fixate on the things I like, I never followed her further career, but I did see her now and again.  She was in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie.  For those looking forward to The Myth of Sleepy Hollow (I know I am), she’ll appear as the creator of Tall Tales & Legends.  She also created Nightmare Classics, which I have to admit to never having seen.  Although she was involved in other genres, she seemed to have a real interest in horror.  She retired from acting early in the millennium, but came out for one final film, last year.  It was the horror movie The Forest Hills.  Horror gets its hooks into you, I know.  But it keeps coming back to The Shining.  

In part it’s the claustrophobia of three people, only three, in an isolated hotel.  Of course it’s haunted as well, but the isolation premise alone is frightening.  Especially when one of the three (or maybe two) is becoming unhinged.  We live in an era of remakes and it’s possible someone will be foolhardy enough to try to remake Kubrick’s classic.  Even if it were a more faithful adaptation (Stephen King’s book is scary in its own right) it’s difficult to imagine that it could be better.  Part of it probably has to do with how Kubrick’s treatment of Duvall pushed her to the edge.  Fame has its cost.  And I suppose (since I wouldn’t know) that fame in a horror role comes with its own burdens.  Duvall went on to create things of her own.  More’s the pity that they’re not easily found either for streaming or on disc.  And things seem just a little bit quieter now, don’t they?

Doing Without

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I’m a creature of habit.  Although I’m no internet junkie (I still read books made of paper), I’ve come to rely on it for how I start my day.  I get up early and do my writing and reading before work.  I generally check my email first thing, and that’s where something went wrong.  No internet.  We’ve been going through one of those popular heat waves, and a band of thunderstorms (tried to check on their progress so I could see if it’s okay to open the windows, but wait—I need the internet to do that) had rolled through three hours ago, at about midnight.  Maybe they’d knocked out power?  The phone was out too so I had to call our provider on my cell.  The robovoice cheerily told me there was a service outage and that for updates I could check their website.  Hmmm.

I can read and write without the internet.  I’m on Facebook for, literally, less than two minutes a day.  I stop long enough to post my blog entry and check my notices.  I hit what used to be Twitter a few times a day, but since people tend to communicate (if they do) via email, that’s how the day begins.  This morning I had no internet and I wondered how tech giants would live without it.  I’m no fan of AI.  I use technology and I believe it has many good points, but mistaking it for human—or thinking that human brains are biological computers—flies in the face of all the evidence.  Our brains evolved to help our biological bodies survive.  And more.  The older I get the more I’m certain that there’s a soul tucked in there somewhere too.  Call it a mind, a psyche, a spirit, a personality, or consciousness itself, it’s there.  And it’s not a computer.

Our brains rely on emotion as well as rationality.  How we feel affects our reality.  Our perspective can change a bad situation into a good one.  So I’m sitting here in my study, sweating since, well, heat wave.  It was storming just a few hours ago and I can’t check the radar to see if the system has cleared out or not.  What to do?  Open the windows.  I’ll feel better at any rate.  And in case the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, “open the windows” is a metaphor as well as a literal act on my part.  And I don’t think AI gets metaphors.  At least not without being told directly.  And they call it “intelligence.”

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

Sudden Monoliths

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Okay, so I’ve been captivated by the monoliths.  You know, the ones that even make the New York Times.  These artistic pieces show up, unexpectedly, and unexplainedly, around the world.  The trend began in 2020 in Utah, as far as anybody knows.  These shiny pillars are excellently meme-worthy and are darlings of the internet.  And their history goes back before 2020.  Even before Stanley Kubrick.  You see, most news stories point out that Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—one of the most influential movies ever made—established the idea of monoliths as being alien beacons (a favorite kind of beacon).   People instantly know what a monolith symbolizes.  Or at least they think they do.  But monoliths have so, so much more to offer.

Perhaps the most famous monoliths in the world are found at Stonehenge.  Mysterious and beautiful, this monolithic ring has captured the imagination for generations.  When my wife and I lived in Scotland, we made a point of seeing as many stone circles as we could.  Way up in the Orkney Islands the Ring of Brodgar was probably the most impressive of them, owing to, in large part, its remoteness.  Standing next to these tall monoliths makes you realize how small people are but also what they can achieve when they cooperate.  While the UK may be better known for its monolith circles, even older ones appear elsewhere.  Rujm el-Hiri, for example, in Israel.  Although not a circle, the monolithic pillars at Göbekli Tepe should be rewriting history books.  Why the monolith?

Freudians would point to Tuto Fela in Ethiopia or other phallic architecture, but my mind tends toward Rapa Nui, or Easter Island.  The human being tends to stand taller than wide.  Evolutionary biologists tell us that was to help us see over the tall grass of the savannah.  (And if you doubt grass gets that tall, visit my yard sometime in the summer.)  These monuments seem to symbolize more that the procreative architecture of male human anatomy.  They seem to point to our ability to see over the obstacles in our way.  They seem to say, when people are divided against each other the plains remain barren.  When they decide to work together, Stonehenge emerges.  I don’t know the motivations of these modern artists.  I do admire their ability to put these monoliths into remote locations without leaving evidence of how they did it.  I really appreciate those creatures that stand tall and have a spirit of cooperation, even if others just don’t see the point.

Storming Fourth

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Our founders picked a day of uncertain weather to declare independence.  One gets the sense that people were more stoic about the weather in those days.  Of course, we’ve increased global warming and made things more extreme.  Nevertheless, I can remember very few fourths of July when the possibility of storms was zero.  The weather around here has been odd this year with a suddenly hot June, with a dry spell that killed quite a few plants, followed by a cool start to July and some very intense storms.  And now, on the fourth, the possibility of rain in the forecast.  The grass hadn’t been growing in the dry spell, but I’m hoping the rain will hold off today long enough for me to get that job done.  In fact, on this secular holiday I’d been hoping to get quite a few outdoors chores checked off the list.

When I was younger and fireworks were the main draw to the day, I noticed that just about every year rain fell, or threatened to, on July fourth.  I’m sure it’s not that way everywhere, but here in Pennsylvania, where the declaration was signed, it’s a reality of life.  Of course, the modern Independence Day celebrations evolved over time to include the cookout and fireworks—outdoor activities both.  For me, apart from the outdoor chores on a day off work, a movie seems like an indoor celebratory alternative.  Perhaps Return of the Living Dead, set on the fourth.  Or I Know What You Did Last Summer.  Or Graveyard Shift.  Maybe something else.

Watching the political theater unfold—and my, what a dramatic election year it’s been—perhaps a comedy horror is just about right for today.  This is going to take some thought.  Something to occupy my mind while doing those outdoor chores.  Of course, I’ve got a book to get submitted as well.  If the weeds can hold off for another day or two—is it wise to paint the porch when rain’s in the forecast?—maybe I can finish up Sleepy Hollow.  It’s a good American ghost story.  That might be appropriate as well.  You see, holidays are so rare that too many things crowd in on them.  They’re breaks from the constant earning of more money, which is the American way.  Of course, our founders were largely restless gentry.  For me a day off work is always a busy day.  Especially when the rains have returned and the grass has grown.  It must be the fourth of July.

Discovering Ordinary

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I wasn’t quite sure what sense of ordinariness to expect from Robert J. Wicks’ The Tao of Ordinariness.  I would say as a whole it is about becoming ordinary you.  I found the whole interesting, but it was chapter four that really caught my attention.  It’s here that Wicks starts to address those whose damaged childhoods have created a false (and frequently re-affirmed) sense of our ordinary selves.  I’ve always known I have issues—it’s pretty obvious that I’m not quite like other people I know.  I often lack confidence and, thanks to my career and publishing history, have had that sense pounded in even as an adult.  (Poundedness is not a protected category, however, and it won’t get you any special consideration.)  Up until that chapter I was thinking, “This is nice, but it just doesn’t match my experience of things.”  Then I learned why.

It is possible to change your outlook, of course.  It’s not an easy thing to do.  Our culture isn’t set up to allow for it, what with 9-2-5s and all that.  You see, my personality really fit the teaching mode and lifestyle.  I loved the work, although it was hard.  And I loved the fact that if you had free time during the day you could, if you needed to, run an errand or two.  I guess I’ve never been one to invest in that capitalistic idea that your employer is buying your time.  For some jobs, yes.  In fact, my first employment experiences were of that sort.  I started at nine, did physical work until five, with a lunch break in the middle.  Now work begins early and doesn’t really end.  Days off are few and they fly by quickly.  Changing your outlook requires time to think.  That, it seems, is what’s missing.  It makes it difficult to find out what my ordinary is.

Wicks’ book is a hopeful one.  His optimism comes through page after page.  He gives practical advice.  The subtitle reveals why the book is important: Humility and Simplicity in a Narcissistic Age.  (That last adjective is so common now that spell-check completes it automatically.)  Politicians have frequently been narcissists, but Trump has made it into a high art—care only for yourself and tell people the lies they want to hear.  You can see the calculating cynicism in every glance and gesture.  And yet, here we are.  Books like this are important.  We need to be told that there’s another way.  If only it were also possible to get your horse to drink.

The Teenth of June

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It’s only really when they have no choice.  The Wednesday holiday, that is.  No convenient weekend a day away.  So Juneteenth is actually celebrated on Juneteenth.  I believe in holidays.  I think they’re more than just time off work, and Juneteenth celebrates freedom.  And it reminds us that our African-American siblings aren’t yet truly free.  We still have much to learn and having a holiday to underscore that is important.  Capitalism does a good job of disguising freedom, of course.  Your worth is weighed by how much value you add to the company.  Taking a day off from that is an opportunity to reflect on how daily living could be improved for all.  Juneteenth is a necessary holiday.  We need constant reminding.

I don’t see many African-Americans flying flags on their houses declaring themselves “not woke.”  We prefer to believe we’ve reached perfection already.  Capitalism is great at spreading myths like that.  The basic premise behind it is greed, and people are easily divided into groups because of skin tone.  It’s a dangerous combination.  Somewhere along the way, “justice” came to be a swear word.  Particularly among one political party that has decided power, at any cost, is the sine qua non of human existence.  If that means oppressing others systemically, or if it means invading a neighboring sovereign state because you have nukes with which to threaten the rest of the world, it’s all the same.  Power is far more addictive than any opiate, but we  don’t have any laws preventing those unsuited to holding it from doing so.  Juneteenth uncovers a host of problems still to address. 

Slavery was hard to let go because it cut into profits.  Human beings love wealth more than each other.  Ironically, without others to compare with, wealth means nothing.  If money makes someone happy I have no problem with that, but it has to come with responsibility.  One way to handle it responsibly is to insist that only so much can be had before the surplus goes to insure that all people have enough.  Of course, where Supreme Court justices openly accept bribes we can’t wonder that there are legal loopholes to help the wealthy circumvent their civic duty.  We need constant reminders.  We need holidays like Juneteenth.  We need to give our African-American siblings the same rights and privileges all people should have.  It’s appropriate to celebrate small steps in that direction.  Even if it means giving a Wednesday off of work.

Empowerment

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Recommended as a worthwhile contemporary gothic novel, Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches is a feminist tour de force.  Set in a world similar, or perhaps parallel, to ours, it follows three witch sisters in 1893.  The sisters are estranged, having been raised by an abusive father, and each has found her own way to New Salem.  The old Salem had been destroyed after the witch trials.  The three find their lives drawn together, not even knowing the others are there.  But there are also still witch hunters.  None worse than Gideon Hill, the leading candidate for mayor.  I’ve long known that books written after Trump are often fairly obvious for the hatred that oozes from political leaders.  This is one such case.  The story is one of female empowerment in the face of constant male opposition.  It goes fairly quickly for a book its size.

It’s an enjoyable read but it grows, well, harrowing towards the end.  You come to like these three very different sisters and appreciate the gifts they offer to their world.  Men, however, make the rules and often they feel that women have no place in making decisions for the public good.  I’m amazed at the number of people who still believe this.  It makes novels such as this so important.  Women with power are crucial examples to present.  The three sisters may cause mayhem, but it is generally good for the city.  When men are in charge, things tend to get repressive.  Sound familiar?

Conveying the gist of a 500-page novel isn’t a simple task so I’ll simply say that this isn’t a conventional witch story.  There’s never a question that witches are good, but capable of doing bad things.  In other words, they are pretty much like all of us.  That’s not to deny that some people become evil and that such people will gain ardent, blind followers.  The characters are memorable and likable in their very humanness.  As far as genre goes, this is a magical realism novel.  As you get drawn into Harrow’s world it becomes believable.  It’s a book that should be widely read and its plea for tolerance must be heard.  I can think of other comparisons—others have also conveyed that an unquestioning religion may become evil unintentionally.  Such conversions aren’t the kind publicly discussed, but they do fit with human experience.  I’ve intentionally left out spoilers since I want to encourage readers.  It certainly has left me thoughtful.

Going Once, Going Twice

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Do you ever get that feeling that you’ve been sold?  One thing I learned early on in academic publishing is that buyouts aren’t that unusual.  I recently wrote about Transaction being acquired by Taylor and Francis, for example.  Just a couple days ago I noticed in Publishers Weekly that Bloomsbury had bought out Rowman & Littlefield’s academic wing.  Then, at a company meeting the buyout was mentioned again.  Finally, I had an email from R & L letting me know.  You see, Nightmares with the Bible was published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic.  This is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.  This means the rights to Nightmares have just been sold to Bloomsbury.  I do hope Bloomsbury has a more progressive idea about paperbacks!  In one of those strange synchronicities (all of this happened on the same day), I’d emailed one of the series editors of Horror and Scripture, asking if the series was still going.

I have no real concerns about being owned by Bloomsbury.  If you haven’t heard of them, it’s probably because they were a small operation until they took a chance on an unknown author by the name of J. K. Rowling.  Suddenly flush with cash, they started buying out smaller presses.  Big fish got to eat too!  Rowman & Littlefield had been buying out other publishers for years.  If you’re an academic you probably remember University Press of America.  Ever wonder where it went?  They bought Rowman & Littlefield in the late eighties and took over their name.  They bought other “assets”: Prometheus, Scarecrow Press, Hal Leonard.  They grew an enormous list of academic titles, now owned by Bloomsbury.

As someone who has knocked around academic publishing for some years now, it seems like this small world is getting even smaller.  Companies buy other companies and sometimes it works out for the benefit of authors.  Sometimes not.  Bloomsbury is only 37 years old.  Rowman & Littlefield was 75.  University Press of America (which first bought R & L, would’ve been 49.)  The younger buying out their elders.  Perhaps it’s because of my career malfunction, but I’ve discovered academic publishing to be a fascinating world in its own right.  Many academics pay little attention to the publisher, especially outside the big-name university presses.  But there are stories here.  I know that before I began working in the industry I’d never heard of Bloomsbury.  Then they bought out Continuum, which had bought out T & T Clark, from my beloved Edinburgh.  Now one of my books is under their umbrella.  And I have to wonder who will be sold next.