An Awful Lot Like Work

Ok. So, the book publishing thing has ceased to be fun and now has become stressful. Much progress has been made, but with each completed task comes a new, more demanding one. In the next week I am to make a final decision on the cover art as well as picking out an interior scheme. Then I have a meeting with some guy in charge of author websites and something called my book’s digital presence. After that it will be marketing plans and pricing etc…Suddenly this seems an awful lot like work.

Its still exciting, although I much prefer the actual writing part, everything else has been a challenge, dragging me kicking and screaming into things I’m not at all comfortable with. But maybe this is all a good thing. It is natural for people as they get older to become fixed and rigid, a little too comfortable in our routines. Its what leads to the grumpy old man syndrome. I would like to avoid going any deeper into that abyss than I already am. I’ve been told that taking on new challenges is a good way to fight complacency. Consider me challenged.

I’ve shared the two cover art finalists with several people and gotten all of their opinions. I’m pretty sure that I will choose this one…

I like this one for several reasons. First, my protagonist has a miraculous gift that allows him to win games of chance, so the roulette wheel eyeball is cool.  Secondly, dreams play a huge part in the story so there is a tension throughout between reality and dreams which makes the droopy eyelid very cool.

Results of My Tech-Fast

Yes, I did survive my 24 hour technology boycott, but not without a few hiccups along the way. I did carve out a few exceptions to facilitate my business requirements. After arriving at the office I tried to log in to my broker-dealer site and was reminded to type in the 6-digit authentication code, which was available only on the Authentication app on my smartphone, which was facedown on the desk in my home library! After driving all the way home then all the way back (luckily for me a ten minute round trip), I retrieved the code then promptly turned off the phone and never used it again. All day long I never once checked Facebook or Instagram, my emails and texts, or even the stock market. When I discovered the next morning that while I was unplugged the markets had their best day by far of the year, I couldn’t help but smile. A friend of mine suggested that maybe I should go off the grid so he could retire next year!

When I broke my techno-fast I had 47 emails, 16 texts and quite a few Facebook notifications—none of which really mattered. During the 4-plus hours a day that I normally would have been online in some capacity, I was putting a puzzle together, and reading two of the physical books I got for Christmas, finishing them both. I’m kind of a fast reader.

So, what conclusions did I draw from this experiment? For one, I was surprised at the almost physical discomfort I experienced in the first part of the day simply from the fear that I was missing out on something. FOMO is a thing, I’m told. Of course I wasn’t missing out on anything important in hind-site, but I might have been. Maybe Pam got side swiped by a drunk in a pickup truck on her way to school and was desperate to speak with me. Maybe my house was on fire and Jamie was trying to call. In either of those cases my decision to forego the modern convenience of instant and portable communication would have been a tragic error in judgment, not to mention the doghouse that I would have been in as a result. But, it turned out to be a normal day. No harm, no foul.

By the end of the day I felt like I had accomplished something, although I’m not exactly sure what. I suppose what I learned was something I already knew and that is that I spend too much time on social media. Without resorting to a boycott, I could improve my overall mental health by cutting my usage in half—without missing a single thing of lasting importance.

Also, during my boycott day I had some extra time to explore more closely the many Christmas presents I received. I had almost forgotten this one. I can’t remember who gave it to me—it was either my sister-in-law Sharon or my son-in-law Jon—since it fits their unusual humor profiles…

This baby is going into the office tomorrow!!

24 Hours Without the Internet?

For the record, I have not seen the film Leave the World Behind, and I don’t intend to. I have enough to worry about without having to endure artificial hysteria from Hollywood. Although the film’s premise is something I have long worried about, I’m thinking that watching a two hour movie about the sudden destruction of the internet which leaves most of the western world helpless would do absolutely nothing to help me sleep better at night. So, I’ll pass on Barack and Michelle Obama’s latest vanity project.

But, I will freely admit that modern technology worries me. Yes, I have benefitted greatly from the digital revolution and so have you, but every time my Apple Watch tells me that my screen time increased 22% last week, I worry. I have become totally dependent on a functioning internet. If somebody bombed the United States Postal Service out of existence tomorrow, I would hardly bat an eye. But if my email box went dark I would be lost. How would I even get paid? Right now when I see money in my brokerage account I click a key on my laptop and the money appears in my checking account within 24 hours. How would I actually buy anything? Research anything? Communicate with my kids? Find Dad Jokes? Thanks to me uncanny sense of direction I could at least remember how to drive to Maine, but since my car is essentially a computer on wheels, it probably wouldn't even start. But, enough doom and gloom.

It has started me to thinking—something I’m not always comfortable with. Instead of contemplating the collapse of the internet and the chaos it would bring, I have been asking myself a more mundane question. Could I go one day, 24 hours, without it? Could I intentionally leave my cellphone on my nightstand, park my Apple Watch in the charging stand and close my laptop and iPad for 24 hours? I mean, after I finish writing this blog. Actually, I don’t think I could, not because I couldn’t muster the necessary discipline but because I couldn’t function at work…

Kristin: I need the password to Riskalyze.

Me: I don’t have it.

Kristin: Look on your phone. They just texted it to you.

Me: Maybe so, but I’m not using technology today.

Kristin: You’re an idiot.

Who am I kidding? Even if I could manage to get through a day at the office without the internet, could I really go all day long without checking the markets, checking my social media feeds or checking how many page-views this post got? Of course I could. Couldn’t I? I wonder. If I were to carve out an exception for business-specific requirements like the aforementioned Riskalyze password in order to avoid Kristin’s epic eye-roll, could I lay the rest of it down for 24 hours?

Meet me here tomorrow morning and let’s all find out!

Where Am I?

A friend of mine sent me an email recently to inform me that he was reading a book that I just had to read—immediately! It was written by Dave Barry about his ten year old dog and carried the title: Lessons From Lucy: The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog. Barry was a guy I used to read all the time back in the day, and since his dog’s name was “Lucy”, it seemed a perfect book for me. My Lucy is also ten years old. I downloaded it that same afternoon.

Mr. Barry was something of a hero to me years ago, he of the sharp wit and Beatles haircut. His sarcastic and hilarious observations about, well everything, suited my tastes back then. Eventually I tired of him. As a writer he was very much a one trick pony and since I stopped taking the Times-Dispatch two decades ago, we lost touch. It’s been wonderful to get reacquainted.

I bring this up not to talk about the book, which by the way was wonderful, but because after I finished reading it I found myself in quite the sentimental mood. The fact is that Lucy is getting old. In dog years she is 70. Her face has taken on that white glow. She is on the back nine of her life. She has probably two or three more years with us, then we will have to say goodbye. Its how it works with dogs. They are not life-long companions. They blaze into our lives like a meteorite, light us up in a thousand ways and then go back where they came from…most likely, heaven.

Which brings me to a Christmas present I received this year that I haven’t been able to stop staring at…

Perfect. Its just perfect. Lucy, standing at the end of a dock, gazing in wonder at the lake and the hills across the way, waiting for someone to come sit down next to her. Waiting for me. But where am I? What is keeping me? What could I possibly be doing that’s more important than sitting in that chair having a conversation with Lucy? For me, this photograph is two things. An invitation and a rebuke. And thanks to Mr. Dave Barry a reminder that time is short.

Reminiscing

My wife likes to have the television on when she’s busy on the sofa with some project or another. Sometimes she actually watches what’s on but mostly its just background noise. Occasionally I will come downstairs and she will have some impossibly gorgeous snowy cabin scene up on the screen, the sounds of an unseen roaring fire in the background. Other times it will be an endless scrolling slideshow of every photograph we’ve taken in the digital era, all 10,000+ of them. She was in the kitchen the other night making dinner when I walked through the living room and saw a photograph of my Dad with my nieces Jenny and Christina around him, all smiling brightly. It was taken at the beach many years ago. The girls looked so young and carefree. Dad looked proud and contented.

I sat down on the loveseat and watched a series of random pictures scroll by, no two of them having any connection to what came before or after. There was one of Pam and me along with Patrick and Sarah in front of a restaurant in Nashville. It was the night we met her for the first time. There was another of Lucy when she was a six month old puppy. Her fur was short and blonde and she was smiling at the camera. I watched those pictures roll by for maybe ten minutes, each of them evoking a memory, each of them a snapshot in time, a glimpse into my past.

It is an odd sensation, the reminiscing that photographs produces in me. On the one hand it warms the heart to be reminded of the joys you have experienced in life, on the other it ushers in a surprising melancholy, a longing for a simpler time, only it wasn’t simpler back then. Each year of our lives has its own difficulties. Its only after we survive and look back that we tell ourselves that life was simpler back then. But mostly its an overwhelming sense of the relentlessness of time. It stops for no one and reminds us that as each day passes into history we will never get them back. We get one shot. The most important day of our lives, the one with the most opportunity is always…this one.

Speaking of Great Books…

 New Year’s day, I spent three hours alone in my office cleaning out the clutter. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to leave anything on my desk when I go home each day so throughout the year, lots of stuff accumulates in every drawer of my desk and credenza. This year it was three tall kitchen bags full since I haven’t purged in several years. In the middle of this project I came across something that’s been with me in that office for nearly 30 years. For some reason I dropped everything and sat there staring at it wondering where the years have gone…

My daughter was five years old when she made this for me for Father’s Day. Her Mom helped her with the words since she could hardly write legibly at that point. But the story and the drawings were all her. The plot was simple enough. She was out to prove the title of this book with examples of my awesomeness…

I can attest to the accuracy of her account. I, in fact, did play the guitar for them often during bath time. Back in those days, this amounted to the sum total of quality time I had with them. I was working my tail off trying to provide for them the best I could in a business that offered zero guarantees, so I wasn’t with them very much. Bath time was wonderful.

Yes, I did. This probably explains the chronic back pain I suffer from to this day. But, what fun this was!

You might be wondering why I have kept this little book close to me all these years. Maybe in the darkest corner of my mind I think, Well, when I die and if it turns out that salvation comes from works after all, I’ll hand this to Saint Peter! 

Correct. I always gave them treats when they visited me at the office, because it was always the highlight of my day and cause for celebration.

I’m sure this particular aspect of the story will be troubling to my younger readers. I must confess that I did tell my kids some pretty terrifying stories. Some of them might have been a tad too graphic for five year olds. But, the moral of the stories was always the same—the world is full of danger, bad people and things, and the best way to live your life is with both eyes wide open…and never stray too far from your Dad because he and he alone can save the day. 

This might be the only embellishment in her account. The word always there is doing some serious heavy lifting in that sentence.

This is my favorite part of her story. My Dad told me once that the best thing I could ever do for my children was to love their mother. He was right.

But that doesn’t mean you have to share everything with Mom. These special treats of which she speaks were often just between the two of us!

So, there you have it. One of the finest works of literature you will ever read. Only one copy known to exist and it belongs to me.

The Latest Book News

On this, the most overhyped day on the Gregorian calendar, I thought I would update you all on the most recent book progress.

As of December 31, 2023 the editing process is finished. The proofreading is nearly complete. Now all attention is on two things, writing the teaser for the back cover and picking cover art, both inside and out. The single most surprising thing about all of this is how much fun it has been. Usually in my life when it comes to details I am a mess. Details bore me. The grind of working out the mechanics of a thing is usually something I happily delegate. But in this endeavor, although I have lots of talented people helping me, ultimate decision-making authority is mine along with all the responsibility that comes with it. So Mr. Dunnevant, describe for me in 200 words or less the driving force of your story, making sure to make it interesting and provocative, something that will grab a potential reader by the throat and compel him or her to buy your book!” No pressure. No pressure at all! Here’s what I came up with on my first attempt. I am currently awaiting the edited version:

Percy Hope had an extraordinary talent that earned him a fortune and the affections of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. 

Although his otherworldly talent had laid the world at his feet, Percy would soon tire of the lifestyle, and in time, he would lose it all, his talent, his fortune, his beautiful but troubled wife, and his will to live. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt he moves back home to take care of his dying parents and try to rebuild his life. That’s when the dreams begin.

A Life of Dreams is a story about a man who has it all and a women who took it all away, leaving them on the edge of despair, neither of them able to discern what is real and what is a dream, both of them wondering how it all went so wrong so fast. But its also about the miracle of forgiveness and the power as well as the limits of redemption. Its a story about healing and renewal where the agent of the supernatural just might be a stray dog named “Sam”.

But, compared to writing a teaser, picking cover art is so much harder! The art department at Atmosphere Press has sent me three different covers for review. I rejected one of them out of hand but the other two were both terrific. How to chose? Right now they are working on a couple of tweaks I requested along with coming up with a fourth attempt of an idea I’ve been kicking around in my head for a week or so. It’s from one of the central scenes from the book that I though might make a pretty cool cover. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will have to make a decision. Although I have asked for a couple of minor changes, this is the one I’m leaning towards at the moment:

So…would you buy this book?