It is finished. Today really needs to begin with a biblical quote. After three and a half years of writing, editing, agonizing, and anemic sales, I signed off on the final proof of the third and final volume of The Accidental Plague Diaries and told my publisher to flip the switches and send it out through the usual channels. It should be up on Amazon by the weekend and I’ll let everyone know when I spot it there. But is it really over and done? I have to get off my butt and see if I can gin up some interest and see if I can get some copies sold and make my publisher happy. I’ve never been good at PR and selling myself. I’ve always kind of hoped that if I do good work, people will notice but that’s really not how American culture works with its emphasis on hype and media attention. It’s no accident why we hear about some things and not others. There’s a multibillion dollar industry out there devoted to making sure we hear about whatever it is their clients wish us to. I’m not part of that landscape. I’m not sure I want to be. I decided a long time ago that I might not mind being famous for having done something of import but I’ve never had any desire to be a celebrity in the modern sense of the word. I prefer to do my grocery shopping without creating a mob scene.
Although the books are done, there are a few more things still to be considered. Putting out an e-book version for Kindle. Doing an audio version (and I would need to do the narration- the material is too personal for an objective voice). The man I sold my Forest Park house to is a professional audio book narrator. He converted Tommy’s wig studio into his workplace where he records audiobooks for a living. I might be able to get a deal on studio time. But I don’t know a thing about editing or distribution to Audible or other platforms. And there’s still the thought about turning some of the material into a Spalding Gray type theatrical monologue/one man show. I have a director who has expressed some interest in shaping the material. Now that I can breathe, I’ll take him to dinner and we can start discussing what would have to happen for that to take shape. Great – another monologue to learn. And one of about ninety or a hundred minutes rather than ten.
This weekend was about children. I got up Saturday morning and trudged out to one of the suburban high schools where I was a judge for the annual Trumbauer competition. It’s the state of Alabama’s annual competition for high school theater students in both performance and technical categories. There aren’t enough theater teachers in the state to act as judges for all the entrants so my theater teacher friends are always reaching out into the local theater community looking for adults with experience who will give up their day to judge. I try to do it every year unless I have something else going on that day I can’t get out of. I usually end up judging a musical theater performance category (although one year I was given classic dramatic monologues – lots of mangled Shakespeare). This year it was dramatic musical solos from the modern literature (1980-2016). The Disney shows were big. Lots of ‘Anastasia’. Lots of ‘Dreamgirls’. A few who didn’t understand the assignment and sang from ‘Godspell’ and ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’. There were some very talented kids. And some… not so talented. But we’re not supposed to say ‘Have you considered a career in construction?” But rather give them encouragement and constructive criticism and focus on what they are doing well. Sometime’s it tough when they’re singing a song from ‘The Hannah Montana Movie’ in a dialect where every word is unintelligible. I and my judging partner did our jobs, passed the worthy on to the state finals, and ate too many chocolate muffins.
I also got up Sunday morning (thank you time change), this time to make it to church and pinch hit in the elementary Sunday school class after service. I’m on the teaching roster but was supposed to be off this week but they were one short so I did my Good Samaritan turn for the week and showed up. (The lesson was actually on the parable of The Good Samaritan and its implications – at least for those 8-10 years old). I enjoy teaching Sunday school. It gives me kid time that’s strictly time limited. At 12:30 PM they are no longer my responsibility. We have a very strict rule at church regarding children. Any activity involving those under 18 must have a minimum of two unrelated adults present to prevent any sort of inappropriate behavior or allegations and we are all background checked. I think that’s pretty standard in Unitarian Universalist congregations and I’ve never heard of the grooming and predatory behavior that seems to happen with great regularity in more conservative denominations happening. This means we always team teach and I am usually paired with someone who has kids or a background in childhood education of some sort.
When I’m working with the kids, I try to remember how I was parented and bring some of those things forward. I encourage them to think through things. I tell them to look things up. I give them suggestions of things to read. They’re sponges at this age, very bright and often come up with some very insightful questions where I have to think a bit about how to answer them with concepts that they can understand. I often do that through storytelling (it makes me feel like a tribal elder). Some of them are from literature or myth. Some from my own experience but they can get the gist of what the concept is from the story and we talk about the meanings of such words as metaphor and allegory. I worry sometimes about what the congregation thinks of the sixty something year old gay man working with kids but I’ve been around so long, they’re used to me and know I’m pretty harmless. One of them asked me yesterday how old I was so I told them. They were surprised. They had decided I was in my late 40s. I was gratified. At least they’re seeing me as a parent figure rather than as a grandparent figure.
I’ve been told I’ve been cast in a holiday show so that will give me something theatrical the next couple of months and I know already what I’m doing in January/February and in April so the season is pretty full. Further details as I know them. Will the books being done leave a hole that needs filling in life? I don’t know. I’ll have to see how it feels over the next couple of months. If anyone wants to introduce me to a literary agent, that person might point me towards something that may sell. I don’t want to get rich but it would be nice to know that people enjoy what you labor over.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 