An Exchange of Words: David B. Coe’s Weblog

Jim Hines, one of my cyber-buddies from sfnovelists.com, has a new book, Goblin War, coming out on March 4th.  Today I post an interview Jim recently did as a way of introducing him to you and, I hope, getting some of you interested in his work.  Readers have dubbed Jim the Goblin King.  Goblin War is his third book.  His goblins are also showing up in France, Germany, Russia, and several other nations.  The books have earned praise from the likes of Julie Czerneda, Ed Greenwood, and even Wil Wheaton, who called Goblin Quest “too f***ing cool for words!”

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How many times have you wished for an extra day?  How many times have you thought that if you just had one day without obligations you could catch up on chores long neglected, or take the time to write a letter to that friend you’ve been missing, or spend extra time with your kids or spouse or partner without feeling that you were shirking professional responsibilities?  How many times have you thought that it would be great just to slip away unnoticed and give yourself a day to do whatever you wanted to do — maybe go for a walk in the woods, or a drive in the country, or maybe just sit around and read a book, or pretend to read a book and actually take a nap?

That’s what Leap Day should be.  February 29th should be a national holiday.  It’s a freebie, an extra day.  It’s like found money.  We shouldn’t use it for business as usual, nor should it be commercialized into a Giant Sale Day, or a day for giving senseless greeting cards and chocolate.  (Though, if you have chocolate lying around and want to have some, by all means, go ahead.  It’s Leap Day.  Knock yourself out.)  Leap Day should be each of ours to do with what we want.  

So have a happy Leap Day.  Or not.  It’s really up to you.

Today’s music:  Lowell George (Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here)

First, a birthday shout out to my friend Stephen Leigh!  Hope it’s a great one!

Things here remain as they have been, with a snow day for my younger daughter thrown in for good measure.  My older kid and I go back to the doctor today to see if the injection of antibiotics she got yesterday did any good.  If the doctor isn’t satisfied with her progress, the next step is admission to the local hospital.  We’d all like to avoid that, thank you very much.

On the professional front, I learned the other day that of the 5,500 hardcover copies printed of THE SORCERERS’ PLAGUE, fewer than 120 remain in Tor’s warehouses.  There will be returns, of course, but that’s a pretty good sell-through.  Maybe they’ll even go back to press with it.  Fingers crossed.

I also seem to have sold the first of the two short stories I’ve written in the last few months.  There are still a few editing details to be worked out, but barring something unforeseen, I’ve got my first sale of 2008.  The second story is out, but I’ve yet to hear anything back.

And that’s all the news that I’m fit to print…..

Today’s music:  Unidentified classical piece on NPR

My local newspaper ticked me off this morning.  At least half of it did.  For those of you who don’t know, the Chattanooga Times-Free Press used to be two papers, one progressive, the other conservative.  The papers merged and since neither editorial board was willing to cede control of content or opinions to the other, they both maintained (and continue to maintain) editorial pages.  Anyway, the conservative side of the paper was attacking Barack Obama today for saying that he thought the United States should use foreign aid funds to combat world poverty.  According to the paper, Obama’s proposal would cost up to $865 billion over 13 years.  Nevermind that the war in Iraq, which this side of the paper supports wholeheartedly, would cost more than twice that amount over the same period.  Wouldn’t combatting poverty be a better use of our treasure and power?  Isn’t it possible that we’d be thought of better throughout the world if we were as generous with food and medicine as we are aggressive with guns and bombs?

My daughter (the older one) is reading the Constitution and Bill of Rights for homework.  And because it’s densely written, and because Dad has a Ph.D. in history, we’ve been going through it together whenever she has trouble deciphering a section.  Reading it through once more, explaining to her what the clauses mean and why they’re important, I’m struck repeatedly by the genius of the Founders.  In particular I was struck by the following clause in Article I, Section 8, which gave Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”  My daughter thought it very cool that the copyright I enjoy on my books is provided for in the Constitution.  I thought it was cool that our Founders so prominently recognized the importance of the arts and sciences, even if our current leaders do not.

One of my dearest friends from college, Carla Wise, a brilliant, wonderful woman who has studied science and ecology for years and years, is now making a go of writing professionally.  Her focus is on sustainable agriculture and the local foods movement.  Here’s a link to her latest blog post, which is well worth reading:  http://eatdrinkbetter.com/

I’ll be signing books today at my local bookstore.  It’s my favorite place to sign, mostly because I know people will show up.  It’s a small town, and it’s filled with friends, many of whom read my books.  (How small is the town?  We have one newspaper, which comes out once a week.  And the story announcing my signing was on the front page.  Above the fold…) The signing becomes more like a social hour, people coming and going, but always hanging around long enough to chat for a while.  (Unlike mall booksignings, where people hurry by the table, actually avoiding eye contact – those are the pits.)  The manager of the bookstore is terrific, and she usually arranges to have cookies and hot cider or coffee out next to the signing table. 

So if any of you are in the area, stop by and say hello.

Today’s music:  Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris (All the Roadrunning)

I started playing guitar when I was fourteen, and I played all through high school, college, and graduate school.  During my college years, when I was most serious about music, I played in an acoustic trio that performed regularly and generated something of a following.  For years, I thought of myself as a Musician — it was one of my defining identities, if you know what I mean.

But then other identities started to impose themselves on me and on my life:  Husband, Father, Historian for a short while, and then of course, Writer.  Sometimes these days I even think of myself as a Photographer.  I wouldn’t want to give up any of these, but as the Musician within me has been shunted to the side, I’ve found that I miss making music.  Occasionally I go back to my guitar, but I don’t play nearly as well now as I once did.  I used to play for hours every day.  Now I’ll go for months without playing at all.  Is it any wonder that I sound terrible?  I get frustrated, I put the guitar away again, and I go back to missing it.

The other day, a friend of mine — another guitar player; another Musician who is also a Husband and a Father, as well as a Doctor, and, right now, a Guy-Who’s-Building-A-Home — mentioned to me that he had taken his guitar out of its case and put it on a guitar stand where he sees it all the time.  As a result, when he has a minute or two of free time, he picks it up and he plays.

I have a guitar stand, too — a cherished relic from my performing days, very much like my guitar itself.  After talking to my friend, I pulled out the stand, put it in a corner of my office, and put my guitar on it.  That was Monday.  I’ve played every day this week.  I haven’t played a lot; I have too many other things to do.  Besides, I sound like crap and my fingers start to hurt after two or three songs.  I can’t yet claim to be a Musician again.  Not by a long shot.  But I’m playing, and that feels really good.

Today’s music:  Pat Metheny (One Quiet Night)

Was on the road with my family for 10 days, and though I left with every intention of posting along the way, it was nice to get away from writing for a little while.  Saw many friends and spent time with family (mine and Nancy’s).  Lots of driving, but we had Harry Potter books 2 and 4 on cd with us and that kept all of us, including the girls, happy and entertained for 2,400 miles.

Now we’re back, and aside from sitting beside a fire, watching a little football, and taking care of a few small chores around the house, we have nothing planned for today.

I have resolutions for the New Year, of course.  Some are obvious — write more, blog as often as possible, be more efficient with my work time, continue to exercise, etc.  Others I’m less willing to share.  I know the things I need to do to make myself a better person, a better Dad, a better friend.  And I’ll try to do them.

My wishes for 2008 (aside from happiness and good health for my family and friends, and an end to the war):

1) A pennant for the Mets.  Yeah, I know.  But I can dream, can’t I?

2) A bestseller.  Not really; I know better.  But I would enjoy a year of good reviews, improved sales, and big fat book contracts.

3) A Presidential Campaign that addresses real issues, rises above the politics of ”swift-boating” and  wedge issues, mud-slinging and personal attacks, sound bites and pandering.  If we’re going to stretch out the political season, let’s at least have a debate that edifies, that makes people think about the issues and about the real sacrifices we will all have to make in order to solve the problems facing this country.

Happy New Year to all of you.  May 2008 bring you joy, love, prosperity, and good health.

I feel like I’m standing in the eye of a storm.  

As you grow older with your cohort of friends, you find that life events come in waves.  For a while, in the years after college, everyone was falling in love and getting married; in the year of our wedding, Nancy and I must have attended at least a dozen other weddings.  Then, a few years later, all of us started families.  Baby showers and birth announcements, brises and christenings.  And not long after, many of us began to lose our parents; sad, yes, but also to be expected.

We’ve reached a new phase now; this one’s darker, harder to accept.  All around us, it seems, couples are splitting up, and people our age are getting sick with the types of diseases that only older people are supposed to get.  It seems that now we’re older people.  And I feel like I should just keep my head down and hope that the gods take no notice of my family and me.  Is it tempting fate to acknowledge how fortunate we’ve been?  Just typing the words, I feel compelled to knock three times on my wood desk.

Within just a few years, Nancy and I, along with so many of our college and grad school friends will have kids going off to college.  Not long after that, those children will begin to marry and start families of their own.  Rites of passage; blessings to be celebrated.  But right now, at midlife, I feel like we’re just trying to weather the storms that rage all around us.

It’s grey outside, and turning colder.  And today I’m sad for my friends who are suffering.

Today’s music:  Steve Earle (Train a Comin’)

Last night, I went to a play called Letters To Sala.  The play is a work in progress, directed and written by Beth Lincks, who also goes by the name Arlene Hutton (she writes under the latter name, directs under the former).  Letters To Sala was inspired by the book Sala’s Gift, by Ann Kirshner, the daughter of the title character.

Sala, a Polish Jew, was sent to a Nazi labor camp at the age of sixteen.  Actually, she volunteered to go, taking the place of her older sister, who was too sickly to make the journey herself.  At the time she left home, she believed she would be released after six months in the camp.  Instead, she remained a prisoner of the Nazis until the end of the war over five years later.

Over the course of her imprisonment, Sala kept a secret diary and managed to hold on to every piece of correspondence she received — over 350 letters from family, friends, and suitors – though she was forbidden to do so by the Nazis.  She concealed these letters and the diary despite inspections and despite being moved to seven different labor camps — an act of courage and defiance so powerful and so subtle, that I can scarcely comprehend it.  In 1991, she gave the letters to her daughter, who began to read through them, research the names of the camps and the correspondents.  Ann wrote her book, and eventually, over the objections of her own daughters, donated the documents to the New York Public Library.  They are currently on display in the Senate Rotunda in Washington.

Beth’s play is remarkable — the script is powerful, the staging is brilliant.  When eventually it’s completed and produced in New York, it will be a stunning success; I’m certain of it. 

As a Jew, I was moved to tears more than once, not only by my outrage and grief for all that Sala endured, but also by my pride in her resilience and bravery.  As I writer, I was struck again and again by the power of memory and the written word.  This is, as Beth puts it, a play about letters.  But more than that, it’s a play about the connections forged when we put pen to paper.  As Sala herself said — and I’m paraphrasing here — she kept those letters, because in doing so she kept alive every person who had written to her.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry about the digitizing of written material and what we lose when the actual document is gone.  Letters To Sala is, on some level, about that same thing.  Even if we were to assume for a moment that the technology had existed at the time, or if we were to project Sala into the digital age, this story would have no power with digital communication — emails instead of letters.  The paper itself was a treasure.  The feel of those pages; the knowledge that her sister or mother or friend had at one point touched that same envelope.  That’s why it was so important that she keep every one of them; that’s what allowed her to turn correspondence into defiance, to make her longing for those she loved into a weapon that she could use against her oppressors.

There is power in the written word.  But more, there is power in the printed page itself, or even in a simple note written in a familiar hand.

The Festival of Lights begins at sundown tonight.

Happy Hanukkah to all of you.  May your holidays be filled with light and love and joy.

D.