Checking In and Saying Thanks

It’s been a little over three weeks since Alex, our older daughter, lost her two and a half year battle with cancer. It feels like more. It feels like less.

We have had celebrations of her life in New York City and in our little home town in Tennessee. Both were crowded and loud and fun. Both were filled with laughter and tears, music and good food, and lots and lots of remembrances of our brilliant, funny, beautiful child. (Yes, she was 28. Still, she will always be our child, our first baby, our darling little girl.) We have been overwhelmed by the love shown us by friends and family near and distant. By the generosity — spiritual, emotional, material — of so many. Cards, gifts, flowers, food, phone calls, and texts. And yes, comments by the hundreds on social media posts. We are humbled and grateful beyond words for every expression of support and sympathy. Thank you a thousand times.

At this point, the celebrations of her life are over. Guests from out of town have left. Erin has gone back home. Nancy is starting to work again, and I am gearing up to do the same. We are, I suppose, stepping back into “normal” life. Except there is nothing normal about it, and in ways that truly matter, in ways that will remain with us for the rest of our lives, it will never really be normal at all, ever again.

How do we navigate this path? I honestly don’t know. It’s a terrible cliché, but I guess we do so one day at a time, one moment at a time, one breath at a time. In and out. Take a step. And breathe again. Rinse, repeat.

It’s a good thought, I suppose. It feels inadequate to the task. Already, in just these few weeks, I have reached for my phone more times than I can count, intending to text Alex, or check for a text from her. I want desperately to hear her voice, to know once again the music of her laughter, to ask her questions about her work, or the new restaurant she’s tried out most recently, or the music she currently has on looped-play. And each time, reality kicks me in the gut.

I watch TV and am shocked by the number of times some character, on-screen or off, is said to have cancer. There is no escaping it. We hear news of a celebrity passing away — cancer again. News of lost children assaults us from all corners of the globe, wars claiming their collateral toll, gun violence here in the States stealing more innocent young lives. These tidings were always awful to hear, but they were abstract in some way. Anonymous. Not anymore. Children are lost. Parents grieve. We are members of a club no parent wants to join.

Alex’s death hit so many people so hard, and in one sense that was a product of her amazing personality, her magnetism. But I am wise enough to understand that there is far more to it than that. The outpouring of love and grief from her friends comes in part from the simple truth that, for many of them, she is the first of their contemporaries to die. Tragedy has breached their generational line far too soon, and they are shell-shocked. The outpouring of love and grief from our friends comes in part from the recognition that this is every parent’s nightmare. Losing one’s child is unthinkable, unimaginable, unendurable. It happens, of course. Too often, actually. That club has more members than we ever knew. Several have reached out to me to say so, and to offer support and guidance. But for so many, our loss is a terrifying echo of their deepest unspoken fear.

Another truth: After Alex’s diagnosis in March of 2021, I found myself imagining the worst all the time. I couldn’t stop myself. Therapy helped some, but not completely. I lived with the constant dread of this ending, with the unrelenting awareness of the odds against her, of the near inevitability of her decline. Unimaginable? Hardly.

These days, I’m often asked, “How are you doing?” I don’t know how to answer. My emotions are in constant flux. At times I feel okay, and I can see a way forward. Other times I feel numb. And still others I am as fragile as spring ice. One wrong step and I’ll shatter. This is normal, I know. Grief is not linear. It can’t be prescribed, and while breaking it down into stages might appear to clarify the maelstrom of feelings raging around me, the construct strikes me as artificial and less than helpful. I know better than to be seduced by those moments when I feel as though I have a handle on my loss. I sense that I will get there eventually, but I’m not there yet, and won’t be for a long time. I also know better than to panic when I feel out of control. That will pass as well.

The numbness, though — that bothers me. I want to feel. I want to weep for my child or laugh at a golden memory. I want to feel pain and love and loss and connection, because those keep my vision of Alex fresh and present. Numbness threatens oblivion. Numbness makes the loss seem complete, irretrievable — and that I don’t want. Not ever. Better to cry every day for the rest of my life than lose my hold on these emotions.

And so I stumble onward, trying to figure it all out, hurting and remembering and loving most of all. I don’t know when I will post again. Soon, I hope. I believe writing this has helped, and I am certain I will have more to write in the days, weeks, and months to come. Thank you for reading. Thank you for your sympathy and friendship, and also for your continued patience and respect of our privacy as we attempt to find our way.

Hug those you love.

Alexis Jordan Berner-Coe, 1995-2023

Alexis J. Berner-CoeThis is the post I never wanted to write. The one I dreaded, the one that was, not so long ago, unthinkable, and, more recently, heartrendingly inevitable.

Our darling older daughter, Alexis Jordan Berner-Coe, has died, after a two and a half year battle with cancer. She was 28 years old.

How do I begin to tell you about her without seeming to be just a grieving father lionizing his lost child? She was extraordinary, but you would expect me to say as much. She was brilliant, but you’d expect me to say that, too. She was kind and generous, articulate and wise, courageous beyond belief and beautiful beyond words. What else could I possibly say? And yet it’s all so true.

She was charismatic. To know her was to want to be her friend, and this was true from the time she was little. She would meet a kid her age, say, on an airplane, or at a park, and within minutes they would be fast friends. Yeah, I know — proud dad. Well, consider this: When Alex was ten, we moved to Australia for a year while Nancy was on sabbatical. We moved there in August and a couple of weeks later she and her younger sister started attending a public elementary school in Wollongong. In December, Alex was elected student president of the school.

She was accomplished and driven and smart as a whip. Of course I would say so. But consider this: She attended NYU and graduated with honors. Not long after she graduated, she found a job with a sound production studio in New York, a company called One Thousand Birds. They hired her as an office assistant. Within six months, she had worked her way into a position as a producer. Three years later she was an Executive Producer and Director of Business Partnerships.

Strong, brave, resolute. Just words. But after Alex’s sophomore year in high school, she did an outdoor program that culminated in a summiting of Mount Rainier. Prior to the trip she had gotten new hiking boots, and we tried to warn her about the importance of breaking them in. But she was 16 and, well that’s really all I need to say, right? Her group leader later told us that in over decade of leading outdoor adventures like this one, he had never seen a worse case of blisters. Her feet were a bloody, ragged mess. But she never complained, never begged out of any activity, and never thought twice about completing the trek to the top of Rainier, some 14,000+ feet above sea level.

She wasn’t perfect. Far from it. She could be stubborn and prickly, self-centered and opinionated, sometimes aggressively so. But her imperfections were, to those of us who knew and loved her, part of her charm, part of what made her Alex, or ABC, as so many people called her.

She was passionate about music and books, movies and art. And she was an eager and adventuresome traveler. She spent half of her junior year in high school in Costa Rica at the Cloud Forest School. She traveled to Berlin for half of her sophomore year in college, and enjoyed being abroad so much that she spent all of her junior year in Madrid. In July of this year, while battling cancer and recovering from her latest treatments, she went to Europe for two weeks. She wasn’t back more than a week before she started making plans for her next trip.

Sadly, she never got to take it.

She faced cancer with the same wisdom, strength, and courage that she brought to every other part of her life. She was first diagnosed back in March 2021, but she had been sick for far longer and the cancer was advanced when at last it was discovered. She was scared, of course, but also resolute in her belief that she could beat the odds. She never allowed herself to identify as a cancer patient. She was, she insisted, the same person she had always been, except she happened to have cancer now. She didn’t give in to despair or self-pity or bitterness. She dealt with her treatments and side-effects with quiet dignity and an uncompromising determination to live on her own terms. She continued to work, to travel, to go to concerts, to see friends and throw parties. Losing her hair bothered her a lot, but she totally rocked her head scarves, which became A Thing. All of this to say that her vivaciousness was absolutely unquenchable.

Losing her leaves a gaping hole in our lives. Nancy, Erin, and I are shattered, especially Erin, who was Alex’s closest friend in the universe and who utterly adored her sister. But all of us know that Alex wouldn’t want us to become mired in our grief. She would want us to celebrate her life and to honor her by living with the same zest and verve she brought to this world during her too brief time here.

And so that is what we intend to do.

Be at peace, Sweetie. We love you to the moon and back.

Tuesday Musings (Yeah, I Know…): Another (Brief) Update

I’ve started this post several times, only to flame out after a few lines. The truth is, I have nothing I want to write. I am in New York again, staying with my older daughter, doing what I can to help her through this most difficult time. That includes little things — shopping for her, keeping the apartment clean, cooking, doing small repairs on stuff that’s been broken for too long — and bigger things, like taking her to the hospital for small procedures and scheduling appointments with various doctors (Nancy or Erin or I will be taking her to those as well).

And I am also here to sit and talk with her, to keep her company, to do whatever simple things I can to make her comfortable and allow her to focus on healing and coping.

She has remarkable doctors and remarkable friends. Her support system is wonderful.

And so is ours. Nancy, Erin, and I have been so grateful to the many caring, loving friends and relatives who have done what they can to ease our burden. And I so appreciate the support I feel and see on my social media feeds, in my email inbox, in my snail mail postal box.

I don’t know how much I will be posting in the days and weeks, to come. I want to maintain the blog, but I also know that my focus right now needs to be elsewhere. So, thank you in advance for your understanding. Trust that I am doing as well as I can. I am taking care of myself, even as I also minister to my child. I am seeking out the help I need when I need it.

Wishing you all the best. Hug those you love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Monday Musings: Family Update

We are in New York this weekend — an impromptu trip to help our older daughter who is suffering through some rough side-effects after her most recent treatments. We are dealing with a lot right now. Her most of all. I won’t get into details, but I will say that the situation remains serious and difficult, and all of us — mom, dad, sister, patient — are struggling.

Through it all, our older daughter, Alex, has been remarkable. Remarkable. Courageous, wise, positive, resilient, matter-of-fact. I have been humbled by her strength and spirit again and again and again. And Erin, our younger daughter, has been amazing as well. She has been the rock on whom all of us have leaned. She, too, has been brave and brilliant, knowledgable (from her work in the health care field) and compassionate, a point of stability and also a constant source of humor and light.

I will resist my usual impulse when writing about my children, which is to deflect all credit for their amazing qualities toward their mom. Yes, they both remind me so much of her, and display so many of the attributes that drew me to Nancy years ago. But the truth is, I recognize myself in both girls as well. They are a blend of the two of us. Parenting them has been the great joy of our lives, and we have done a good job of it.

People write not-so-flattering things about Millennials and Gen Z-ers. It’s easy to find articles online and in papers about the shortcomings of the generations that have followed us older folks. I don’t see it. Alex’s friends — all of them her age or younger — have been incredible. They have offered her care, support, and companionship. They have taken her to appointments, cooked for her, picked up prescriptions for her. Back in 2021, when Alex began her first chemo treatment, and started to lose her hair, one of them drove down to Brooklyn from Maine so that she could get her head shaved as Alex was having hers done.

There is no greater point to all of this post. Not really. We as a family have been going through a hard time for two and a half years now, since Alex’s initial cancer diagnosis. We have had more than our share of setbacks and we honestly do not know what will happen ultimately. All of us want to be optimistic. All of us need to be realistic. Reconciling those two impulses isn’t always easy.

In the meantime, though, we are spending time together. We were in Colorado as a family in July. We are in NY with Alex now (Erin was here all week before we arrived, and Nancy was up here the week before that). When we leave tomorrow, Alex will come with us to Tennessee for a ceremony honoring Nancy’s service to the university there and unveiling her official portrait. After that, we’re not entirely sure, though we don’t think that Alex can be alone for the time being. So, at least one of us will fly back with her. Maybe both of us.

We do what needs to be done for the people we love, because love demands no less, because they deserve no less, because we know they would do the same for us.

Be kind to one another. Tell the people you love how you feel about them, how much you appreciate them. When you need help from others, ask for it. Just as you wouldn’t hesitate to come to the aid of those you love most, so they would not waver in their support for you.

Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Professional Wednesday: DragonCon and Professional Community

I am back from DragonCon, and I have a shortened week in which to get done a great deal, so today’s post will be fairly brief. Mostly, I want to say thank you — to the convention organizers, who did a wonderful job — yet again — with a near impossible task: keeping 65,000 people happy and safe throughout a weekend of fun, spectacle, and, for many of us professional networking and promotional activity. I want to thank the track chairs who once again welcomed me into their programming, treated me with respect and courtesy, and guided my colleagues and me through productive and interesting discussions. I want to thank the fans who came out to listen to us speak and buy our books. Without you, we writers are just a bunch of people with word processing software and voices in our heads.

And most of all, I want to thank my friends, of whom there are too many to name, who made me laugh, who engaged me in wonderful conversations — some silly, others fascinating, the best ones a combination of the two — and who expressed concern and support for me and for my family. This was a fun weekend for me, but also a hard one. At a time in my life when a part of me wants to retreat into my work and interact with no one, you all made my interactions feel safe and positive and comforting. I’m grateful to you all.

I often write and speak about the solitary nature of the writing profession. Most of us work in relative isolation, crafting our stories, polishing them, and venturing onto social media to promote them. Conventions like DragonCon offer us opportunities to emerge from our shells and reconnect with people we care about, people who understand the unique challenges of a publishing career, people who are witty and intelligent, passionate about their art and compassionate with their friends. I love to write, but I was reminded this week that I also love being a writer and having a diverse and committed creative community.

As part of my professional activity this weekend, I gave a series of brief mentoring sessions for aspiring writers. During each one, and also in several extracurricular conversations with writers seeking to break into publishing, I found myself asking them if they had Beta readers, people they could ask to read their work who would then give them honest feedback. Most of them had some, but clearly needed to widen their circle of such friends.

Since these Professional Wednesday posts are usually geared toward writing advice, I will close with this: cultivate those relationships. Find fellow writers with whom you can share your work, with whom you can talk shop, with whom you can commiserate over disappointments and celebrate successes. They are more than people who can help you improve your writing. They are your future colleagues, your convention friends, the people you will see year after year, picking up where you left off at the end of the last con that you attended together. They are your moral support and your sounding boards, your partners in goofiness and the emotional undergirding that will sustain you for the rest of what I hope will be long and fruitful careers.

Keep writing!

Monday Musings (On Tuesday): Feeling the Loss of Jimmy Buffett

Living And Dying In 3/4 Time, by Jimmy BuffettThe news of Jimmy Buffett’s death this past weekend, hit me surprisingly hard, and I am still trying to figure out why. Buffett, the “Roguish Bard of Island Escapism,” as the New York Times called him in an online obituary, was a strong musical presence in my life. I have been listening to his music for more than four decades, I own a bunch of his albums, and over the years I have learned to play many of his songs on my guitars (none of them is particularly difficult to master). But the truth is, if asked to name my top five or top ten or even top twenty-five favorite bands and musicians, he probably wouldn’t make it onto any of those lists. So why do I feel as though I’ve lost a friend?

As with so much of the music I listen to, I was introduced to Jimmy Buffett’s songs by my oldest brother, Bill. This was long before Buffett’s fans came to be known as “Parrot-Heads.” It was before the song “Margaritaville,” Buffett’s biggest hit, had even been written or released. There was certainly not yet a chain of restaurants named for the song. Buffett had yet to become a bestselling author, or a musical icon, or a billionaire, all of which he achieved over the course of his career.

This was back in the early 1970s, when he was still a rather obscure country musician, albeit one with a terrific sense of humor and a unique sound. Bill played me songs from albums titled A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean and Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. Some of the songs were irreverent and funny (“Why Don’t We Get Drunk” and “The Great Filling Station Holdup”), others were memorably beautiful (“Come Monday” and “He Went To Paris”) and still others were just plain fun to listen to. Buffett’s studio musicians, whom he dubbed “The Coral Reefer Band,” were skilled and versatile, feeling equally at home with country, rock, reggae, and ballads.

So, yes, I enjoyed his music. But his loss means more to me than that. I mentioned earlier that I play several of his songs on guitar. I have for decades. I regularly performed some of them in college, when I played with my dear friends Alan Goldberg and Amy (Linenthal) Halliday. We played “Sugar Trade,” a song Buffett wrote with James Taylor, and “Wonder Why We Ever Go Home,” yet another beautiful ballad.

During one memorable night in the student pub, Bill came down from Boston to see us play and to perform a few songs with me. Bill was a skilled harmonica player and had a band of his own that performed regularly in New England. He and I played “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a song I usually played during my solo set. Bill had prepared meticulously for our set; I hadn’t. I messed up my accompaniment to his harmonica solo in the middle of the song, getting the rhythm wrong and forcing him to adjust on the fly. He was gracious about it, but to this day I can’t listen to “Son of a Son” without cringing at the memory.

Jimmy Buffett’s music, more than that of most artists, touched me personally. I associate it with family, with friendship, with some of the most wonderful memories of my college days, with the comfort and joy I still draw from playing my guitars and singing — for myself, for Nancy, for our daughters.

And for some reason, I remember with incredible clarity an evening when Bill was playing Jimmy Buffett music not only for me, but also for my mom and dad on the stereo in their living room. He put on a song called “God’s Own Drunk,” a song originally written by Lord Buckley that Buffett covered brilliantly on Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. It is actually a story more than a song, and it is spoken over a slow country blues. It tells the tale of a man who, while guarding his brother’s moonshine still, partakes of some powerful booze and then encounters a bear, “a Kodiak-lookin’ fella about nineteen feet tall . . . .” I remember my father and particularly my mother getting such a kick out of the song, and Bill looking so pleased to have made them laugh.

As I say, Buffett was a musician and songwriter whom I enjoyed and respected, even though I was never a fanatic, never a Parrot-Head. His music has been a golden thread through my life for more years than I care to count. I’ll miss him.

Have a great week.

Professional Wednesday: Heading To DragonCon!

This coming weekend, I will be in Atlanta for DragonCon, the annual highlight of my professional calendar. For those of you unfamiliar with the phenomenon known as DragonCon, it is a huge convention that takes over Atlanta’s Peachtree Center every Labor Day weekend. In the past, the convention has attracted as many as 80,000 people. This year, in an attempt to control the crowd just a little, I believe attendance at the con has been capped at 65,000. Yeah, that’s still pretty big.

The con attracts television and movie stars (although I don’t know how the SAG strike will impact their numbers this year), directors, producers, writers (of scripts, novels, comic books, non-fiction, poetry, and pretty much every other written form), agents, editors, artists working in all media, musicians, animators, stand-up comics, costuming professionals, jewelry-makers, crafts-people of all sorts, and, of course, fans from all over the world.

The Chalice War: Sword, by David B. CoeIt is a spectacle. It is Mardi Gras for geeks. It is a party. It is a chance to do business. It is an opportunity to reconnect with friends. It is more fun than being six years old.

I will be on programming again this year, doing panels, signings, and a few mentoring sessions for the writers’ track. And when I am not involved in official convention programming, I will be in the Westin Hotel bar. If you’re in Atlanta for the weekend, please come by and say hello!

Here is my official schedule. (Note: I am listed in all program literature under “D.B. Jackson.”)

*****

Title: A Fond Farewell to Mrs. Maisel *Spoiler Warning*
Description: The final season of Mrs. Maisel took Midge’s career in a new direction, while her entire family is growing in new, unexpected ways. We might have gotten flashes of Midge’s future, but there are still plenty of things for our panelists to discuss.
Panelists: Jenna Johnson, D.B. Jackson, Dan Jolley, Cecilia Dominic, Elizabeth Carpenter(M)
Time: Fri 11:30 am
Location: Augusta Courtland Grand (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: D.B. Jackson signing booth 1201
Description: Come to the special author signing at The Missing Volume booth 1201
Panelists: D.B. Jackson
Time: Fri 01:00 pm
Location: Vendor Hall Floor 1 Mart2 (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Themed Signing Alternate & Historic Fiction Track: History with a Twist
Panelists: Jean Marie Ward, Tamsin L. Silver, D.B. Jackson, David Boop, Gail Z. Martin, Walter Hunt
Time: Fri 05:30 pm
Location: Overlook Westin (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: The Gather: Welcome Home!!!!!!
Description: The best Gathering around of authors and fans! Who knows what surprises and treasures are to be found. We have more authors than the app will allow us to list, so you will be sure to find some great books to take home with your amazing Con stories.
Panelists: Milton J. Davis(O), John G. Hartness, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Philip Ligon, Jay Boyce, Jeffrey Falcon Logue, Patrick Dugan, William Joseph Roberts, Michael J Allen, Chris Jackson, Marc Alan Edelheit, Tamsin L. Silver, G. S. Jennsen, Katie Cross, David Boop, Quincy J. Allen, Tyra Burton, Matt Dinniman, Gini Koch, James Palmer, Darin Kennedy, Joelle Presby, Tao Wong, Harmon Cooper, D.B. Jackson, AJ Hartley, D.R. Perry, John Jackson Miller, Megan Mackie, Ellie Raine, Esther Friesner, Sean Fletcher, Katharine E. Wibell, Kaitlin Bevis, Isabelle Hardesty, Stacey Rourke, Mari Mancusi, Eric R. Asher, Frank Morin, Leanna Renee Hieber, Madaug Hishinuma, Wesley Chu, Bobby Nash, Howard Andrew Jones, Dennis Lee Robinson
Time: Fri 08:00 pm
Location: International South Hyatt (Length: 4 Hours)

Title: Anthology: A Buncha Great Writers Got Together…
Description: Wondering about anthologies? How to get invited into one? We’re going to lead you down the pathway to writing for anthologies.
Panelists: Trisha J. Wooldridge, Esther Friesner, Jeff Burns, Nancy Knight, Jean Marie Ward, D.B. Jackson
Time: Fri 08:30 pm
Location: Embassy EF Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: A Fan Discussion of The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die *Spoiler Alert*
Description: Seven Kings Must Die was our last look into the world of Uthred, son of Uthred, and his companions. What did you think of the movie as compared to the TV series? What excited you, or left you wanting more? Did you feel that it wrapped up things nicely? Come discuss with your fellow fans!
Panelists: Emily Myerscough(M), Corey Applegate, Cathalson, Katie Brewster, D.B. Jackson
Time: Sat 02:30 pm
Location: Macon Courtland Grand (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: How Epic is Epic?
Description: Some stories are so big they require more than one book…sometimes many more than one. These can be called epic stories. What makes a story epic? How do authors decide how many books their big story requires?
Panelists: Kevin J. Anderson, Jean Marie Ward, David Weber, D.B. Jackson, Timothy Zahn
Time: Sat 05:30 pm
Location: International South Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Back in Time: Historical Urban Fantasy
Description: Our panelists explore supernatural beings & magic set in historical real-world settings.
Panelists: Cherie M. Priest, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Marie Brennan, D.B. Jackson, Carol Malcolm(M), Aaron Michael Ritchey
Time: Sat 08:30 pm
Location: Chastain 1-2 Westin (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Many Tongues, 1 World: Using or Creating Languages in Literature
Description: We will be pulling in authors and a linguist to discuss using and creating languages for fantasy settings. Sometimes they may pull from the real world, other times it might be making things from scratch.
Panelists: Davis Ashura, Mera Rose, Mel Todd, Kevin McLaughlin, D.B. Jackson, Alex Shvartsman
Time: Sun 01:00 pm
Location: Embassy CD Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: 15 Minute Mentor Sessions
Description: A chance for budding authors to talk one-on-one with a successful industry professional about business, promotion, the writing process, & career advice. Sign up in the Writer’s Track. (Embassy E/F)
Panelists: James Nettles, Darin Kennedy, D.B. Jackson, R.J. Blain
Time: Sun 02:30 pm
Location: Embassy G Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Are You a Good Witch, or a Bad Witch? Varieties & Approaches in UF
Description: Witches in Urban Fantasy run the gamut from helpful to extremely dangerous and self-serving, often in the same story. Our authors discuss their characters and the categories they fall into.
Panelists: Jennifer Blackstream, D.B. Jackson, Rachel Rawlings, Meg M Robinson, Melissa F. Olson, Carol Malcolm(M)
Time: Sun 05:30 pm
Location: Chastain 1-2 Westin (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: D.B. Jackson/David B. Coe signing booth 1201
Description: Come to the special author signing at The Missing Volume booth 1201
Panelists: D.B. Jackson/David B. Coe
Time: Mon 11:00 am
Location: Vendor Hall Floor 1 Mart2 (Length: 1 Hour)

Monday Musings: Confessions Of A Boring Old Guy

A few weeks ago, while we were vacationing in Colorado, I got high. When I was young — high school, college, and into grad school, I used to get high a lot. Too much, probably. But upon marrying Nancy and starting to pretend to be an adult, I gave up weed. For a long time, I was fine with that. I didn’t miss it. More recently, that began to change. I was curious: would I enjoy getting high now, as an old man, as much as I did as a kid?

Surprise! I did! I enjoyed it a lot. I took a gummy — a fraction of one, actually. I’m fully aware that today’s marijuana is a lot more potent than the stuff I was used to in my youth. And I ate the gummy with a clean conscience, since the evil weed is legal in Colorado. When I have the opportunity, I will do it again.

Why the confession?

The other day, I ran across an article in the New York Times that basically consisted of writers confessing to stuff they do that is of questionable morality and, in some cases, legality. Some of the testimonials were fairly mild — playing violent video games, shopping at Amazon. Others were more serious. One writer confessed to being a serial shoplifter. Another likes to drop acid at concerts. My confessions aren’t likely to be nearly so entertaining, but still I figured, yeah, I do some embarrassing stuff, too. So, why not?

For the record, as much as I dislike Amazon and lament the site’s impact on the literary marketplace, I shop there, too. All the time. All. The. Time. What can I say? It’s cheap, quick, convenient. I’m not proud of this, but this post is all about honesty, right?

I also play stupid games on my phone. Not violent ones — I don’t enjoy those. But dumb, wasteful, pointless? Check, check, and check. I play them daily. I do all the silly daily-goal tasks, I accumulate . . . stuff — whatever the game tells me I ought to accumulate. And I enjoy the games immensely. I am ridiculously pleased when things go well, and comically frustrated when they don’t.

I really, really enjoyed the Bridgerton spin-off, Queen Charlotte. Yes, I did.

I have a stunningly large baseball card collection. It numbers between 15,000 and 17,000 cards, the oldest being from the 1950s and the newest being from the early 2000s. I started collecting when I was five years old, and I still have many of those original cards. And I will admit that when I was a kid, I stole a few packs of baseball cards from a local store. Not proud of that at all.

I have watched the entirety of The West Wing — from series pilot to series finale, seven season’s worth, 154 episodes — at least ten or twelve times. What can I say? I love the characters, have long been a political junkie, and think that Aaron Sorkin writes like a god. I will also admit that during the George W. Bush Administration, and again during the Orange Guy’s Administration, I took refuge emotionally in the Bartlet White House.

I have a TERRIBLE sweet tooth. I manage to control it for periods, and I eat well in other ways. But oh, how I love my desserts. Candy, cookies (I love, love, love cookies) ice cream, cake, puddings. I just took a break from writing this post to eat a bunch of Nutella straight out of the jar. My favorites? Chocolate chip cookies, Twizzlers, any ice cream with caramel or butterscotch in it. There are a few things I don’t like — cheesecake, desserts with nuts in them, anything pumpkin flavored — but usually, if it’s sweet, I love it.

Yeah, okay. Most of this is pretty tame stuff. I don’t drink to excess. I don’t cheat on my wife. I don’t drop psychedelics or break the law or lie on my tax returns. The fact is, I’m pretty boring. I’m a nice guy. In most respects, I always have been. When I was young, I was the kind of guy women wanted as a friend, but weren’t drawn to romantically. I wasn’t in any way edgy or “dangerous” or exciting. I also wasn’t tall or good-looking, which didn’t help . . . .

But that’s okay. The same qualities that make me a bit boring also make me a good husband, a good dad, a good friend. I’ll take that any day.

Have a great week!

Professional Wednesday: Reading Books Several Times

Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel KayI have just started reading a book that I have read at least one time before. Maybe two. It is Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay, a terrific historical fantasy set in a world modeled after Tang Dynasty China. The truth is, I read many of Guy’s books more than once. I read books by other authors multiple times as well, and I would recommend that others do the same — writers AND non-writers.

My first time through any book, I read for plot. Yes, I pay attention to the writing, to the character work, to the creation of setting, to the mechanics of narrative and pacing. But I also tend to rush my reading just a bit, as I am eager to know what happens next. On a second read, I can slow down and appreciate those elements of craft that I know I missed the first time through the book.

This is actually true for me of watching movies and television shows as well. I am a story teller by trade, and I learn something new about story, about dialogue, about pace and point of view, each time I experience a show or movie or book. With Kay’s work in particular, I find that I cannot gain a full appreciate of his magnificent prose and his explorations of character in only one reading. I need to dive back into a book a second, and maybe even a third time to explore it thoroughly.

I will admit that there are also books I have read not two or three times, but ten or twelve. This goes beyond learning craft. The story becomes something more — something akin to literary comfort food. The world of the book is a place I go — familiar, safe, predictable but also beautiful and nurturing. It’s like listening to a favorite old album; the well-worn melodies and lyrics bring peace and transport me to an earlier time.

I also will say that when I edit a story or novel, either for an anthology or for my freelance editing business, I ALWAYS read through the manuscript twice. I edit and make notes both times through, but invariably I find things on the second pass that I missed on the first (in part because I am more distracted by plot on the initial reading). And invariably as well, I find at least a few comments and criticisms that I offered the first time through that are “fixed” by later developments in the story.

There is an old saying that I repeat with some frequency, short and to the point: “Writers read.” We read for any number of reasons. To learn the marketplace and see what others are doing with the old tropes of our chosen genre or subgenre. To support our colleagues and friends in their pursuit of fame and fortune, or at least subsistence and an escape from obscurity. And we read to learn all we can about this marvelous and confounding career path we have chosen.

For that last, one reading is rarely enough. When we find a book that captivates us, that makes us envious of the skill and eloquence of the author, that makes us want to improve our own craft so that we might elicit from our own readers what the author has elicited from us, we are well served to go back and study the text in depth. My friend Faith Hunter often tells of her early reading of fantasy books, as she was making up her mind to write in the genre. She would take notes in the book margins, use highlighters of different colors coded to draw her attention to character development, setting, narrative structure, etc. She made herself a student of the genre, and in doing so mastered it, setting up her subsequent, well-deserved success.

I don’t mark up my books in that way, not because I think it’s a bad idea, but because I’m a little (maybe not so little?) compulsive about keeping my books pristine. But I do study the techniques of other writers. That is why I read certain texts over and over. And that is why I recommend you do the same. Even if you’re not an aspiring writer, there is much to be gained from such exploration. It is akin to pausing in a museum to look more closely at a painting, to study the shape and pattern of brush strokes. Sometimes appreciating fully the work of a story teller means taking the time to scrutinize their approach to telling that story.

Keep writing!

Books, stories, writing ephemera