DAVID B. COE

It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog, and while I don’t think I have much to say, I thought I should at least say something. So….

Hi. How’re’ya doin’?

Good, good…

How am I?

That’s…complicated. Generally, I’m okay. Life flows along. I had a birthday not so long ago. Never mind which one. But I saw friends and family. I heard from lots of people. And despite the inexorable march of time, I felt pretty good about the whole thing. Especially considering the alternative….

A few days later, though, I was feeling down, and I couldn’t explain it. As I say, I’d just had a nice birthday, and things seemed to be going along pretty well. Yet, I was just so very sad. Why? I finally said something to Nancy, and she reacted with something akin to, “Well, yeah, of course.” And then she reminded me that we were, almost to the day, five years removed from the day Alex called to tell us of her cancer diagnosis.

Suddenly, it made sense. As my therapist used to say, the body remembers. Even if the mind doesn’t actively, the body responds on a primal level to things like seasonal changes — the weather, the angle of sun, the awakening of trees and wildlife. My body remembered the trauma of that conversation, and more, it associated it with this time of year. And once I understood, I felt better. I was still sad, of course, but at least I understood why, and that I could handle.

So, yeah, ups and downs.

Speaking of seasonal changes… Spring insinuates itself daily into the landscape and weather. Spring in Tennessee was a frenzied affair. Temperatures rose quickly, everything seemed to bloom at once, and it wasn’t uncommon to go from winter to spring to days that felt like mid-summer in the span of a single month. Spring here in the Northeast is a far more gradual process, as if the land itself is savoring its rebirth. Fits and starts. Warm days give way to cold ones, which in turn are followed by warmer ones. The end of last week was downright cold. It snowed here yesterday. But earlier in the week, it reached 70. It’s supposed to do the same early this week. And then we could have more snow on Thursday or Friday. Nuts, right? Our crocuses are up. Tulips and daffodils are emerging, but not yet showing blooms. Tree buds are beginning to swell. A few more bird species are flocking to our feeders. The general trend is clear and heartening after a long winter.

With spring, of course, comes baseball, which is still my sport of choice. I love soccer (excuse me: football), but my connection to baseball goes back to some of the earliest memories of my childhood. Playing ball on our little dead end street with the neighborhood kids, playing stickball on my school playground, collecting baseball cards, poring over boxscores in the newspaper literally every day of the season, watching games on TV with my dad, listening to games on my radio on weeknights when I should have been trying to sleep.

I don’t watch as much as I used to. When I was ten, I didn’t have to justify wasting a couple of hours watching a televised game. These days, there always seems to be something else I ought to be doing. But MLB.com airs radio broadcasts of Major League games from all over the country, and because I’m a subscriber, they’re basically free. So, I intend to listen this summer. There is something magical about baseball on the radio, announced by someone who knows what they’re doing. Maybe it’s the slower pace of the sport that makes it work. Maybe it’s just my love of the game. Whatever. I’m looking forward to it.

What? Work? Yeah, I’m doing some work. I am editing stories for the upcoming anthology, Disruptive Intent, which I am co-editing with Sarah J. Sover for Falstaff Books. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but that is to be expected when working on a project with so many moving parts. I can’t wait to see the final product. We have a terrific set of stories from our roster of wonderful writers, and working with Sarah has been a joy.

When not working on those edits, I have been writing my new book. I am not setting any land speed records with my output, but that’s okay. I’m not in any rush. I’m making progress, and I continue to love the concept and the main character.

I did my taxes this past week (which is also part of “work,” since I’m self-employed). That’s really all I care to say on that subject….

Finally, this past weekend, I took part in downtown Albany’s small but passionate No-King’s Rally. The city hosted a couple of rallies, and the region hosted more than a dozen. The one I attended began in the shadow of New York’s statehouse and then marched through the streets surrounding the Capitol Plaza. We chanted and held signs and all that good stuff, and we joined the millions worldwide who called for an end to the war-of-choice in Iran, the extra-legal brutality of ICE, the weaponization of the Justice Department, the assault on voting rights, and the systemic protection of Jeffrey Epstein’s allies and enablers in the White House and elsewhere. It felt good to do something positive with my simmering anger at this Administration, and to be surrounded by so many like-minded people.

And that’s me right now.

I hope you are well, that the onset of spring brings you joy, and that you have a wonderful week.

I have a very good friend, also a writer, with whom I often discuss the depressing state of the writing world at this point in history. We have a sort of gallows humor about the whole thing — a lot of joking comments about low pay, the dearth of readers, the way New York publishing has basically lost interest in the midlist author, and the generally low quality of self-published works that we encounter when we dare to dip our toes into those murky waters. (No slight intended to anyone — seriously, if you are self-published, please don’t tell me that I have insulted you. There are good self-published books out there. But let’s be honest: The self-pubbed gems tend to be overwhelmed by the dross. Too many self-published books have had no serious editing or proofing, leaving them overlong and filled with errors that might easily have been avoided.)

Writers starting today face formidable obstacles that did not exist when I began my career (you know, back in the day when we carved novels into stone tablets….). There are more wannabe writers hawking their wares on various online platforms now than there have ever been. The democratization of publishing technology has convinced many that they can be professionals simply by writing something, slapping it into the appropriate app, and putting it up for sale. Again, some of those books might be very good, but none of them have had to make their way through any vetting process. I am a dedicated amateur photographer, and I am pretty good. I have even sold some of my work and had images published. But I am not truly a professional. I know professionals. Most of them are far, far better than I am. But I have access to digital photo equipment that has helped me elevate my skill. I have access to printing services that make my photos look professional. I have even put together a book of my work that looks like any other coffee table photography book. In short, I have benefited from the same sort of democratization in photography that I am describing with respect to publishing, even though I KNOW that I am not nearly as good a photographer as most professionals.

So, anyway, that is one obstacle: The sheer number of authors out there these days, competing for the attention of an ever-shrinking pool of potential readers.

Why ever-shrinking? That’s obstacle number two. I actually think the absolute number of devoted readers has remained roughly the same over the course of the past, say, fifty years. But if that number is remaining relatively static while the population grows, and while the number of would-be authors grows… well, you do the math.

The third obstacle I mentioned above: New York publishing — a moniker used to refer to what some might call legacy publishing — basically means the publishing houses that have dominated the industry for so long: Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, Saint Martins (which includes my old publisher, Tor Books), and other such behemoths. When I started writing, these big publishing houses were still (mostly) independently owned. They ran their businesses with at least some sense of the mission of their founders. They understood that publishing was not simply another profit-maker. The success of big-name authors allowed these houses to nurture the careers of beginning writers, and of those in the so-called midlist who had solid readership but who were probably never going to break into the ranks of those bestsellers. (And allow me to say here that legacy publishing was far from an idyllic business world. Yes, it supported authors in a range of sales categories. But the vast, vast majority of its authors were male and White.) Around the turn of the millennium, New York publishing began to consolidate. Mergers and buyouts disrupted that old model, and when the dust settled, many of the remaining publishing houses were subsidiaries of larger corporations that had no interest in sustaining the careers of authors who didn’t sell all that well. They still gave contracts to the big names, and they still gave contracts to young writers who showed promise, but they had little patience if those young voices didn’t catch on quickly, and they stopped maintaining the midlist pretty much entirely.

The publishers also squeezed out a lot of editors, feeling that editing was a luxury, and an expensive one at that. “Look at all those self-published titles selling online,” they said. “They’re not edited, and their readers don’t seem to care. Why should we spend so much when most readers just aren’t that discerning?” My editor at the start of my career was, to put it mildly, a problematic character. He was difficult to work with, unreliable, and slow. And eventually, he was fired for cause. And yet, I learned a ton from him. He taught me about the business. He taught me to be a much, much better writer, simply by working with me to improve my craft. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I owe much of my career to his peculiar brand of wisdom. Young writers need that sort of mentorship. And in today’s world, few of them get it.

I should also say (in a post that is already lengthy) that today’s young writers also have to compete with a faceless, soulless technology that can produce passable stories at virtually no cost, in virtually no time. How the hell are human authors supposed to compete with that? Yes, AI generated characters and stories are not very good (yet). But again, many readers have come to accept mediocrity as entertainment, so long as it has a plot and serviceable characters. It may not be great, but it will divert my attention for a little while.

And all around us, civilization collapses….

That brings me to the larger point of this post. Last year, at ConCarolinas, I was given the Polaris Award, in large part for the mentoring of young writers I have done, and continue to do. Right now, I have no fewer than half a dozen writers who consider me a mentor. Over the course of my career, that number is far, far higher. I benefited from the wisdom of many established authors when first I began my career. I have always felt that it was my duty, and also my privilege, to offer the same guidance to those coming up after me. I love mentoring.

But in recent years, I have come to wonder how I can offer encouragement to young writers knowing how difficult a path they face in this profession. I have discussed this at length with the friend I mentioned at the beginning of this post. He feels much the same way, and yet he continues to mentor, too. Why do we do this?

At the risk of speaking on his behalf…. We do everything in our power not to mislead our mentees. We tell them all that I have said in this post about the state of the publishing world. We try to make certain that they understand fully the challenges laid before them. We make sure they know that there are many easier careers available to them, all of them more lucrative. But the truthis, this litany of obstacles usually does little to dissuade them. Which also begs that simple question: Why?

I believe the answer is the same for those seeking mentorship as it is for those of us who mentor. And I find hope in that answer. Storytelling is fundamental to being human. So is the act of receiving stories. Yes, that explains the glutting of the marketplace. But it also explains why so many of us continue to write for a world that seems less and less interested in the tales we create. Many of my friends who are writers tell me that they can’t not write. Writing is an imperative. It is as fundamental to their (our) being as breathing, eating, sleeping. This has been true for me for as long as I can remember. And it is also true for those seeking mentorship today. Just as reading (or listening to books and stories) is essential to those who still seek out books at cons and in bookstores. I have said repeatedly in this post that many readers are not all that discerning. They will accept stories that are just so-so in the absense of anything else. But I also believe that when they encounter a story written with passion and elegance, they recognize it, and they celebrate it.

This is a difficult time for the arts — not just writing, but also music, photography, painting, theater, dance, etc. Our digital world competes with those endeavors for our time, our ears and eyes, our money. And with the digital in our palms all the time, it has a huge advantage. And yet, new creators, with new creations, emerge from obscurity every day. Because at an elemental level, we yearn for art, for story and narrative, for beauty. These things are part of what make us human. I refuse to believe that they won’t remain so for generations to come.

Have a great week.

Last week, our septic system died. It had been giving us trouble for a while, making dyspeptic noises when we did the laundry or ran too much water through the pipes, draining too slowly, and generally seeming not well. You might say the whole thing crapped out on us. But shit happens….

We had someone come in to check it, and they told us the tank needed pumping. But when we had another someone come in to do that, they discovered that the tank, which is made out of cement, was broken, and had been KNOWN to be broken by the previous owners of the house, who had set up some weird makeshift patches over the broken section to hide or at least mitigate the problem. So, that was something of a pisser….

Then we had a third someone come in to remove the broken tank and replace it with one that, well, wasn’t broken. This was set to cost us a great deal of money — a butt-load, if you will. And they discovered that the broken tank was actually resting on a second tank, which was deeper in the ground. At which point, their already-substantial estimate ballooned further. That really stank. It felt like we were just flushing money down the toilet….

And actually, we had previously — as in just a couple of weeks ago — had to replace our hot water heater. Hence, you might say that the septic issues were our number two problem….

Okay, I’ll stop now with the terribly immature scatological humor. The septic problems were real — not something I made up to work in these awful jokes. Fortunately, the work is done, the expense has been borne, the bird feeders are back up, and the yard has been patched, though it will take a while for it to recover fully. The guys doing the tank replacement (who were great — professional, considerate, friendly, reliable, and determined to get the work done quickly) had to bring in some heavy equipment. There was nothing to be done about the lawn.

But that’s a small matter. Everything (for now) is working as it’s supposed to. You might even say that our problems are behind us now….

Enjoy your weekend!