I am excited to announce that my poem “Leave the Funerals to the Dead” was featured in the second issue of the Parliament Literary Journal this past Valentine’s Day! You can check out that and several amazing other poems and photographs here. I am enormously proud of that poem, specifically because it was the first poem, I had written post-novel promotional blitz. Up until that point, all my attention had been focused on promoting my book on Instagram and well doing my best not to neglect this poor blog. Since being a published author is completely new for me, figuring out how to maximize the number of readers I could get through social media posts and giveaways monopolized a lot of time. I was beginning to get a little depressed about the fact that nothing new was manifesting on my word document in the form of poems and was beginning to wonder if I lost “it.” I know to many of you reading that might sound hyperbolic or ridiculous, but it’s a frequent source of anxiety for me. I remember a Rolling Stone article about Velvet Revolver around 2002/2003 where the interviewer was observing the group backstage in the green room. He made a point to emphasize how Slash was always noodling on his guitar, seldom ever putting it down to eat or go to the restroom. When he asked Slash why, the guitarist had confided (and I’m paraphrasing) that he was “afraid to forget how to play guitar” which is why he never put it down. I remember that resonated a great deal with me. Since I was a thirteen-year-old kid, I’ve always had a notebook and pen (or these days) a word document open, or my phone notepad out always ready to catch any lines or thoughts that may nonchalantly pass by. I’m always making a point to write something, even if its barely a line or two for a potential poem. There is just that perpetual trepidation that the ability to just finish a thought or commit to a concept will just disappear completely. I had been carrying a lot of that I’m a total hack indignation while I was finding modest success (and I do mean MODEST success) getting copies of my book into the hands of readers. One day I found myself driving around with my two boys, running errands and trying to get them both to nap when I started having that shitty feeling about myself. Here I was, three months into being a published author and absolutely nothing felt different about my life. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely had some very cool and humbling moments where I was fortunate to reconnect with old friends/acquaintances and make new friends simply be either sharing the same publisher or having them find me on social media. I certainly don’t take these things for granted at all. I guess, I just felt like…here I had a book and I’m still an unemployed stay at home parent. I have a book, and I thought setting a goal to 500 books sold was very modest…I’ll be lucky if I crack 200. While I certainly never harbored the delusion that I would be an overnight success and a New York Times Best-Selling author by the conclusion of 2021, I guess I felt like an imposter because I had written a book and my life (for the most part) remained very much…the same. I guess because I had nothing else to compare being a newly published author to, I thought certainly I would know when something would feel fundamentally different. I don’t know why, but I struggled with this (and still do) tremendously. That was when I started essentially writing lines about how stupid feeling bad about all of this was. There I was feeling sorry for myself that I wasn’t someone that could still walk down the street and pass by scores of people who didn’t know and certainly don’t care I wrote a book. That felt vain and selfish of me, then I kept thinking how important this story was to me, so I became more ambivalent about the way I felt. The thing I kept coming back to was that no matter how many or how few books I had sold, my one and three-year-old sons will always know their dada as a published writer. The earliest memory that my children will have about me is this big accomplishment that took me twenty something years that no one else cared about. I started texting lines into my cell phone in a Kohl’s parking lot before pulling into a vacant parking lot near a cemetery in my town to finish it. I couldn’t help but appreciate the juxtaposition of two sleeping kids in the backseat of my car and monuments to the dead behind them. Something about that image really resonated with me as I had always anticipated I’d be buried sooner than I’d become a father. “Leave the Funerals for the Dead,” just felt like the most appropriate summary of the ideologies and feelings leading to an affirmation that had eluded me most of my life. So there was a lot of pride in reaching that point, finishing this thought, and then I came across this publication one night when I was diligently attempting to find publications where my work would be a good fit and a few weeks later the publisher of Parliament Lit reached out to me to express how much that moment resonated with her. Before I knew it? I found myself exchanging e-mails almost daily with the magazine’s publisher Nikki. Somehow, I had not just found my poetic voice again, and made a new friend, but then I wound up being featured in the journal as well. A genuinely great feeling for someone who doesn’t get the opportunity to engage with too many other writers or publishers. Then this past Thursday another very cool opportunity came up for me, I was asked by a very dear friend I made in Graduate school if I’d be interested in talking to her students about writing. I won’t lie, the idea made me extremely neurotic and nervous but I couldn’t pass it up due both to how much I respect and adore my friend Khristy but also because when the hell would I ever get an opportunity like this again in my lifetime? It was honestly one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had in my life. The chance to finally talk to Khristy face to face (well, via Google Hangout) and to address her students’ questions they had collected prior to the call about my process, what advice I had for young writers, and where this story came from…as corny as this is going to sound? It made me feel present.
More importantly? I had the rare opportunity to watch my friend thrive in her natural element as an educator and as an advocate for these young writers who might be entertaining the idea of submitting their own poetry, or stories. I was proud of her, I was proud to see her exude this commitment to inclusion, and empathy, and to this role as someone who is constantly nurturing these young individuals and helping them cultivate their talents and their passions. When the call ended…in a weird way I felt like something was missing. I guess I hadn’t realized during this whole ordeal how much I really miss conversation, interaction, and just being and existing in a space with other people. Like so many of you, really I’m sure all of you…I’m so sick of winter, I’m sick of politics, I’m sick of this pandemic, and I’m sick of trepidation I feel every day not knowing when this is going to end, and where we’re going to end up as a civilization or as a country. It feels like we’re living this perpetual hour between dogs and wolves. That’s a whole other blog for a different day. I did my best to end the day by checking in on my Atmosphere Press friends (they are based out of Texas which as you know is in the middle of an absolute disaster right now), expressing my infinite gratitude for Khristy and even reached out to Nikki to see if I could get those two to cross paths…if nothing else? To pick each other’s brains seeing as how they’re both writers and educators. As for me? I don’t know, man. I’m in a head space right now. I’m still writing a lot of poems, I am still fleshing out the details for the next manuscript I want to write, I even applied for the substitute teaching role at my wife’s school. There is just a lot of not knowing where the hell I’m going, or where I am supposed to be right now. I guess my biggest problem is always trying to anticipate what is going to happen next.
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September 2021
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