Banning Books in 2022?

Happy Wednesday Scribblers. In case you missed it, the month is February, and the year is 2022 and yet here we are talking about banning books in libraries and schools. What the actual heck are we doing?! Are we sure this isn’t 1822 or 1922? I understand that not all books are for everyone. I understand that we all like and enjoy reading different things. Believe it or not, there are books I don’t like. There are books I had to read that I didn’t enjoy. There are books I run across today wondering how these works of literature ever made into print. But never, and I mean ever, have I thought we should ban a book. Never! That is insane.

You want to control a population start by controlling the media. Guess what folks; books are media. And I’m not pointing a finger at one party or another. Banning Books happens on both sides of the cultural divide. People are going to say and do things we don’t like. We don’t have to agree with them and we sure don’t have to like them. However, it’s not up to us to squash them and destroy them. It’s up to us to educate them and ourselves. Listen to their concerns and fears and try, as hard as it may be, to understand them. We do not give them a pass and we sure don’t let them ban books or censor our media. Look into history and see how well that has worked out for everyone in the past.

A quote from Stephen King sums up my thoughts on the entire Book Banning perfectly:

When books are run out-of-school classrooms and libraries. I’m never much disturbed. Not as a citizen, not as a writer, not even as a schoolteacher… which I used to be.

What I tell kids is, don’t get mad, get even.

Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest non-school library or the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned.

Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’ exactly what you need to know.

I think what Stephen King says sums it all up perfectly, and I’m thrilled to see Maus on the New York Time’s Best-Selling list, because that shows we are voting with our wallets and sending a loud message to those who want and support censorship, aka Banning Books.

In short, don’t let them control you. Don’t get angry or protest, do what Stephen King suggests, go out, buy the book and read it, see if you agree or disagree, but the choice of what you like or don’t like should and always be with you. The Reader.

Until next time, have a great week.

Writing Process and How Writing Works… For me Now.

Happy Wednesday Scribblers, I hope you are having a pleasant week. Over the last several weeks, I’ve been working on several writing related projects. I’ve been doing auditions for my next audiobook. I’ve been listening to a current audiobook in production. I’ve been writing a couple of different articles that have been requested of me from some different online sites. I’ve been working with my author groups on planning some events for 2022. I’ve been finalizing some new promotional pieces. And the list goes on.

It’s an odd thing when you are working on unique items and see how your time splits between them, and it got me thinking about how things were at the start.

When I first started writing, I had the luxury of sitting back and working on a single story at a time. Once that one was finished, I would move on to the next one, while I put the first story through my writing group for critics and comments. That wasn’t quite how it always worked out. Sometimes I worked on a couple of manuscripts at once, but mostly, I worked on one story at a time. Now… that’s not how things work.

As an author, now with five books, two short-stories, three audiobooks, and two anthologies out, my writing time seems to drip away. Because you have to focus on addition writing related tasks. You have to work on editing. You have to work on marketing and PR. You have to work on getting your books turned into audiobooks (which I have four, five and six on the way). You have to engage with readers, plan reading events, work with other authors to grow your community. The list goes on. Everything I mentioned in one way or the other affects my writing process. Where I could once sit down and write a couple of chapters a week. I’m lucky if I get a chapter in a week. Sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks or even a month to get a chapter finished.

I’m not complaining and I love working on my author business and brand, but I miss the days of having characters come forward and say hello and start telling me their stories. It still happens, just not as much.

Additionally, and much to my dismay, I haven’t been adding general characters to my trunk of characters for future stories, which is a shame because I love that process. If you don’t understand what I mean. There was a time when I could sit down and write general characters bios and save them for later use. When I would need a character for a story, I could go to my ‘trunk’ and pull one out for use. It was a great way to have characters ready to go when I need them.

I still have characters packed away, but not near as many as I once had, and I haven’t added any in years.

These days, I have to schedule my writing times. I have to sit down with purpose and focus… okay, who am I kidding? I still get up in the middle of the night to write. Or I’ll get up early on the weekends and pump out a few thousand words. Then sometimes all I want to do is sit and work on my writing and my current story, letting everything else fall to side.

I love these days.

In the end. I still have novels coming out. I still manage to create and write whenever I have a free moment. And my characters still come and talk to me and tell me their tales. These characters of mine continue to even play nice when they aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

I think they understand better than I do. And they are a lot more forgiving than I am as well.

Overall, my writing process has both grown and changed over the years. Do I long for how simple things were at the start. Sure. That was a time of writing innocence for me. Now I’ve grown… dare I say matured, as has my writing and my author life. Perhaps someday, when I have a catalog of books out there as long as my arm, I’ll be able to pass on some of these more mundane tasks to an assistant or marketing professional and focus solely on my writing and creating new worlds for people to visit. That would be lovely. However, until that time, as I grow and move forward, so does my writing process and how it all works itself out. I guess it all a matter of juggling, where once it was only two balls, I seem to now have five or six. Who knew I could juggle?

Until next time, have a great week.

How and When did you know?

Happy Wednesday Scribblers. A few years back I wrote this article about my coming out and how that has affected my writing. Today, after so many years, I thought I would revisit the post and see if there is anything I want to add or change, because as we all know, time has a way of changing our perspective on life. Especially with how my journey has influenced my writing.

People ask and are curious about my coming out. I get this question a lot from my straight co-workers and friends. The query is kind of funny because if you flip the question ‘when did you know you were straight?’ it’s silly. Anyway, I don’t mind sharing my story, so here it is.

As a kid, I always understood I was different, at least on some level.

I grew up in the 80s, so yep, I’m old. Anyway, I never gave much thought to my sexual feelings or identity in middle school. Sure, I was ‘sensitive’, but I had a wonderful group of ‘nerd’ and ‘stoner’ friends, so I never suffered from any personal angst. I never understood what the big deal about girls was. Sure, they were pretty, and some were friends, but I wasn’t interested in kissing them or anything like that. I never was ‘girl crazy’ and found that I enjoyed their company and we had fun together, but I wasn’t interested in anything else. Friendship was fine with me.

Where there any girls that liked me. Maybe. I suppose there were a few girls who liked me, but honestly, I had no clue.

I wasn’t supper popular in school, but I wasn’t an outcast either. If I had to describe my school experience; you know, in the movies, you see all the kids in the background that are there and appear to be having a good time and aren’t the center of attention. That would have been me. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good time in school, so it wasn’t bad and I have some great friends who I’m still in contact with today (thank you, social media).

Anyway, I didn’t really deal with my sexual identity until my later teens and early twenties. I had a few girlfriends and even was engaged to be married, but something didn’t seem right. Again, I didn’t really know, clueless as I was, what the ‘it’ was. I found guys so much more attractive than girls, but I still thought I was ‘normal’.

Once, my engagement fell apart (her doing and not mine) that was when everything crashed in around me. I realized I had all these fake walls and barriers up. For the first time, I had to take an honest look in the mirror and accept that I spent my younger years in deep denial. At one point, I even remember my sister Dawn and I talking. She told me she thought I was homophobic, not mean or cruel or anything like that, just not as friendly or as open-minded as she thought I would be. Thinking about it now, I guess I was trying to hide who I was and didn’t want to come across as ‘gay’, which of course is stupid, because I was in fact gay. Live and learn, I guess.

As I got older, I remembered I had major crushes on guys and I denied it… hid it. I had even fooled around with a few friends, but again, these experiences were all pushed behind these walls I created, and this life I wanted to live—I needed to live in. For me, this pressure wasn’t so much from an outside source, but internal ones. No one told me to be one way or the other. Those rules and thoughts all came from me. Anyway, when all the walls crashed down, I fell to pieces. It wasn’t until I thought about killing myself that I figured something needed to change. I couldn’t be like this anymore. I had to pull myself together if I were to have a happy and healthy life.

No one realized I was going through any of this because, by my early twenties, I was amazing at hiding my drama.

I found a therapist and spent about a year going to treatment once a week. She helped me face who I was and where I needed to be. After therapy, I could come out to everyone. Keep in mind this was in the early 90s, so AIDS was still a big thing and society wasn’t nearly as open and welcoming as now. First, my friends. Then my sister. And finally, my parents.

I was lucky, very lucky, because I was my own worst enemy. Everyone in my life supported me and was there for me. And those that weren’t quickly dropped from my life. I was the hurdle. I was the one that created all my problems. I tried to make myself fit into this perfect image I had in my head.

The journey wasn’t always easy. I lost a couple of friends, made friends with some of the wrong people, and I even lost a job because of who I was, but I never blamed them, I knew I was better without them and bigger and better things were waiting for me.

I guess what this journey boils down to, for me, is that I always realized I was gay. I always understood, but I wasn’t willing to face it. Still, I never blamed society or anyone (as I said my family and friends were way more accepting than I was) and I don’t judge it as a failing of the time I grew up in, it was more what I was willing to accept. Maybe, if there were more positive gay male figures when I grew up things would have been different, I honestly don’t know, but like I said for me, it wasn’t so much the outside influences, but my internal thoughts that caused me the most trouble.

Part of what I write is to provide positive LGBTQ characters with a voice because I do agree we need more of them. My goal is to show them without this ‘queer struggle’ I want my characters to face other issues. That doesn’t mean they live in a world filled with sunshine and rainbows. They have a past, as we all do, that affects them and their lives. All my characters carry a little of me in them and their internal journey may differ from mine, but if you look into them deep enough, you will see my journey there as well. Telling honest stories with believable, imperfect queer characters is my goal. The LBGTQ thing is a part of them and not the focus. My opinion is that the more people/society can see us, all of us, and relate to us on a non-sexual identity level, the better.

I share this because people ask about my ‘gay struggle’ and how it affects my writing. My experience is unique to me and this personal journey is different for everyone. As I say, I was lucky.

There you have it, my coming out journey and how it affects my writing. I hope you got something helpful from this. Until next time, have a great week.

Who Invited Them? by Eric David Roman

Happy Wednesday Scribblers. This week I’m pleased to welcome Eric David Roman to my blog to chat about his experience as an author and what it’s like writing and finding your balance in the middle of our current planetary event (aka COVID-19). Eric hits on several authorly fears and anxieties that remind us we are all going through this together and we need to stop listening to those uninvited voices in our head. Whether or not you're an author, this is a wonderful article that I hope you enjoy.

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If you ask any Golden Girls’ fan, they’ll tell you the best moments, the best episodes, in fact, are those with our fab four gathered around their iconic kitchen table late one night. It’s not ideal for us to be around a table to laugh, eat, and discuss life while we share stories that help us get through the days. But if you’d permit me this indulgence, I’d like you to take a moment to visualize their cozy kitchen (or any kitchen really, theirs is the safest space I can think of). And see us around a table covered with cookies, cheesecake, chips, a side of pork if you like—I never judge a food kink. We’re comfy in our robes, we have our coffee, our tea, or our cannabis.

We’ve been laughing and jovial, but try as we might, we cannot steer our convo away from the topics of the outside world. We all know it’s damn near impossible lately to even say hello without current events being the next topic. Eventually, rolling belly laughs dim into faint chuckles as the memory of the amusing comment fades, and the conversation eases into one of its natural lulls. One of us sighs and another laments about life never returning to normal, and we wonder aloud how we’ll face the challenges ahead of us. I’m itching to be chatty, so when its asked what’s the most challenging aspect of writing now, I jump in:

From the moment we writers pick up a pen and feel it glide along the paper as smooth as figure skater Surya Bonaly zipped across the ice, we’re hooked—okay, yes, maybe for some of you it was a keyboard or a tablet that popped your writer cherry, I’m trying to be poetic dammit. But from that moment there’s no getting off this ride. It’s a deep emphatic love which binds us to the words, and then we’re caught in this gig for the long haul. And truthfully, it’s not fun a lot of the time, even during the best of times being a writer is an arduous trek; the rejection, the crippling self-doubt, that pesky internal Critic always pulling double shifts to make us feel like the absolute worst.

Picture it, during what we can all agree is nowhere near the best of times, I got my first offer from a publisher, my first Yes (goal achieved). A writer’s life is often filled with rejection and harsh critiques, so one develops a proficiency at popping back up like a tweaked-out whack-a-mole hungry for more. Immediately, however, I found myself unsure what happens after the Yes. When does the instant fame kick in? (pimp book here). And I’ll venture to say that it’s not unfamiliar to anyone at this table to get bitch-slapped with a what the hell am I doing? moment so hard it freezes you in place. I was having such a monumental event occur concurrently with a once-in-a-lifetime global issue. The timing was a bit much.

I dove into the final polish of my book but found nothing I wrote seemed good enough, nothing I tried to convey in my writing was coming through. It felt like every character was one-dimensional, every plot device was contrived. Everything was muddled and filtered by the ever-evolving events happening outside in the world. A lot of creative frustrations began showing up to the party, which if you’re a writer, you’re nodding along cause you know. I was hounded by intrusive thoughts. Who’d want to read about the fake horrors I’d concocted when our own true-life horror show played out every day in real-time? Self-doubt weighed heavier than normal, and baby, that threatens the delicate creative ecosystem; listen it takes a certain degree of delusion to keep a writer going (yes, we are going to make it).

Anxieties from the global stuff slogged the creative process. And because the Critic, I guess, was lonely or whatever, they called a friend. And this ‘heffa’, Imposter Syndrome, showed up to tag-team me like no one’s business. It’s not a fun three-way. Plus, the Critic amped up their nonsense past the normal, You’re not good enough shtick, and started hitting on deeper levels: Why publish at all? The oceans are burning and you’re a joke. Who’s going to read you when the world is slowly crumbling around us? It’s a mistake, the publisher is going to email you that they were wrong. You’re a hot mess and everyone’s exhausted. The world’s running out supplies. They’re just going to watch Netflix and chill and ignore your scribbles. The Critic doesn’t play. And Imposter Syndrome, well, that hoe is still trying me; like who am I to ramble on about this for 1500 words?

Feeling extremely low and straddled with a deadline to turn in the final draft, the Yes was not the glamourous champagne popping moment I’d envisioned. I realized everything I’d worked for hinged on what I did next, so you know, no pressure or anything. I could spiral out or step my pussy up as the kids say and forge forward. I spiraled out. Sure, it’s messy, but it’s easier.

It took a minute, longer than I’ll admit, to realize I’d lost my creative equilibrium because I’d lost faith in my creative self. I’d gotten a yes; I was getting published and still didn’t believe I’d earned it. Nonsense really, as it’s since come out and been a huge hit (remember…delusion). A hard lesson along any healing journey is learning to trust the Universe, or your Higher Power of choice of course, but even more so, yourself—your intuition, your gut.

My healing story intersects with my creative one here, so, we’re going to get spiritual for a moment. But don’t worry, I’ll keep it lowkey, not really my vibe to preach about aligning chakras and waving crystals around like a loon—though meditation would save the world if we gave it a chance.

Despite the negativity in my head, the pulsing madness of the world, I focused my meditations on my creative self, and it took a minute, but I realized I was where I was supposed to be. Regardless of the outside world, I knew my book, the story I wanted to tell, did have a place in the world. That there was something to say even in a sea of loud voices. I trusted I had everything I needed to move forward, that I was safe as could be, considering. And my Yes, wasn’t a giant fluke they were going to take away. I did affirmations solely about rising above the self-doubt and defeating the Critic. They won’t ever be fully gone, they’re like a bad horror franchise, they keep coming back—but you can shut them up for a while. And I’d love to tell you I did the affirmations every day for months in an impressive, even inspiring display of tenacity, but no. And that’s okay, and I’ll continue to tell myself and you that.

I found assisting the other writers in my life with their own creative path helped my own creative confidence. I mean, that’s not groundbreaking stuff as any soul in recovery will tell you helping others and stepping out of self, helps them remain sober. I like to believe that idea applies to writing as well since my own words were flowing again. And the more I flowed with the Universe, the clearer they appeared. We, as a collective, experienced several rapid life-altering changes in a microsecond’s worth of time, learning to simply flow with those changes helped (still helps) me get through the mess. We can’t control what’s happening in the rooms we aren’t ever going to be invited into, try to not let it consume you. I know, easier said than done, but maybe it’ll help.

There was more of course: Journaling, physical exercise, seventeen broken vows to quit and go do anything else, three and a half mental breakdowns under my desk, but that’s all the boring stuff. The hardest part of regaining my equilibrium was remembering to trust in my creative self despite the Critic and Imposter Syndrome; they’re just noise in that complex and mysterious grey matter floating within our skulls, so why are we even listening to them? Why do we have to be reminded to not listen is what makes me scratch my head. And it can be hard to remember they aren’t the truth.

I was in a whole other headspace when I turned in the final draft; my creative ecosystem balanced with all the functional delusions back in their place (we are going to make it). I felt confident and knew my novel would carve out its place in the world, that its message, though wrapped in blood and gore, would seep through. That hopefully it would become someone’s favorite book. I felt pretty good sending the final draft off, and when I got another Yes from my publisher for a second book, I knew I was where I was supposed to be. I mean, of course, I repeated everything I described to you all over again, but this time it didn’t take so long, and I got this round down to only two meltdowns and ten broken vows that I was done with writing, so, yeah…progress.

About author Eric David Roman:

Eric David Roman spent twenty years wandering the wrong paths; he tends to get lost a lot (he’s from Florida). He worked the wrong jobs (as it turns out, streetwalking is not a profession for just anyone) and avoided his true passion—writing, or as he refers to it, shotgunning sleeves of gluten-free Double Stuff Oreos in a dark closet whilst crying. After hitting a low point while trapped in retail management hell (a harsh rock bottom), he rearranged his thinking (now with 75% less anxiety and depression), got a little spiritual (but isn’t all in-your-face about it), and switched his focus to writing; well, as much as his gAyDD allows. And now, you’re reading his bio, so things are progressing nicely. He is the author of the outrageous novella Despicable People, the new novel Long Night at Lake Never, and the upcoming short story collection: Pirate Station N.G.H.T. Eric remains socially distant in Northern Virginia (don’t stalk him, you’d just be disappointed), where he lives, writes, loves all things horror, campy, and queer. He spends the days with his adoring husband and loveable cat (both of whom remain indifferent to his self-proclaimed celebrity).

Where to Find Eric David Roman:

Facebook: Www.facebook.com/ericdavidroman

Instagram: @themwritervibes

Twitter: @themwritervibes

Website: https://ericdavidroman.com/

About Long Night at Lake Never:

Welcome to Camp Horizons, where they pray all day…and get slayed all night!

Nestled against scenic Lake Never, recently outed Tyler Wills has arrived at the secluded conversion camp, where the delusional staff of counselors believes he and his fellow camper’s queer affliction can be healed solely through the power of prayer.

After a full day spent rallying against sadistic deprogramming therapies, the deranged camp director, and planning his escape, Tyler discovers a larger problem—a mysterious stranger has rolled into camp with a grudge to settle and a very sharp axe.

When night falls, the terror and body count rise. And Tyler, along with his fellow campers, find themselves trapped between a brutal, unrelenting killer and their holier-than-thou prey as they desperately search for a way to survive the Long Night at Lake Never.

Where to buy: Long Night at Lake Never:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/longnightatlakenever/