One of the aspects of the writing profession that I still don’t understand, 10 years into it, is the idea that readers “want to know the writer.”
Really? Because I have to tell you, I never cared about James Patterson’s life. I know nothing about Nora Roberts (I’ve read her JD murder mysteries)… or Janet Evanovich or Lee Goldberg. I know little about Lee Child. If I work at it, I can tell you a few details about Larry Correia or John Ringo, and some about Timothy Zahn and David Weber… but not much. I know …. very little about Steve Cannell, or Leslie Charteris or Agatha Christie, Ian Rankin, Preston and Child, Jon Land or Kim Harrison.
I’ve read all these people, and I may be able to pick half of them out of a lineup. I certainly can’t tell you a single biographical detail of most of them.
Let’s be honest.
Take me for a moment.
Do you care that I’ve seen most of the country because I grew up as a mascot for the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Scientists? My mother was a lab scientist, my father an educator, and the ASCLS meeting was our summer vacation. I was able to see San Francisco and Chicago and New Orleans, and a few other places that I’ve blown up along the way.
Personally, I think it matters more than I took those settings and made them into set pieces in novels. Or that I took the microbiology I learned and applied it to vampires.
Does it matter one wit that an ex-girlfriend took my attitude of chastity-before-marriage as a personal affront, and she slipped me a mickey so I would be cooperative?
Yes, yes, I was raped once when I was 24. I’m 40 now. I think I’m over it.
Somehow, I cannot see how that translates into “Quick! Buy my book!”
That just seems tacky.
At most it translates into, “Don’t try to be friends with an ex.”
Do you care that I was nearly thrown out of high school for being a terrorist? Apparently, if you parody the wrong Gilbert and Sullivan song from The Mikado and make it fit your high school, all sorts of bad things can happen. I didn’t even think about blowing up the school before then. Afterwards, in my professional capacity as a writer, I’ve contemplated it a few times. But honestly, they’re not worth the ink to blast them to Hell.
… Okay, I should probably expand that one, it’s funnier. In retrospect, but funnier.
Once upon a time, three months before I graduated high school, I wrote a song parody about the school. It was a parody in which I named names, made fun of specific people for specific traits, and I used the original opening four lines of the song in my parody.
The title of both the parody and the ORIGINAL song was "I have a little list," from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
If you suddenly have a bad feeling about where this is going … don't worry, it gets worse.
And of course, being a stupid teenager, one day, I had the bright idea to take this parody into high school.
Granted, I at least had the notion that this would be something I should ONLY be showing to a privileged few. I showed it to a group of friends I had acquired, some of whom helped me assemble parts of the high school yearbook. Yes, I was on yearbook. Because I had creativity and certain ideas that I wanted to get in … but they would only get in if I did it myself.
Anyway, everything was going great until one of the crew said, “This is great! This is hilarious! This should be in the yearbook. Hey, guys, look at this!”
The next thing I know, the parody is changing hands, and ends up four tables away to who my friend was calling out to. Said target just happened to be sitting next to someone who hadn't liked me since Freshman year.
And no, this isn’t actually where this gets worse.
My day went on fine. I had one, maybe two people ask about the parody. That was it. I slipped it inside of a folder inside my briefcase, and went on with the rest of my day. After lunch, I thought my bag had been very neatly repositioned within my locker, but I thought nothing of it. After all, I needed to get to the next class.
No. This isn’t the point where it gets worse. But we’re getting warmer.
The funny thing is, if I had gone home that day right after classes, I suspect things would have been very different. My usual routine was to stop by the library on the way out the door, sort out the librarian’s life, and move along. Yes, the librarian was a mess, and I was a young compulsive with nothing better to do.
One of the associate deans stopped by the library, and told me that I was wanted in the Principal’s office. They would have called for me over the public address system, but this guy knew where I would be, since I was almost always in the library… I did say I was a little compulsive, right?
I walked down to the office, confused. Just to prove how stupid I was at the time, I genuinely had no clue what was up. I couldn’t honestly recall one thing I could have done that was interesting enough to put me on anyone's radar. For anything, good or ill. I showed up to classes, I went home, I did my work, who cared? Hell, I was the guy who could sit in a small room with two other people, and they didn't even notice I was there. It was an ability I had mastered by the time I was in college.
When I arrived at the Principal’s office, I was greeted by the principal … and the dean of discipline, and the guidance counselor.
The principal closed the door behind me, and said, “We hear you have a little list.”
And so, of course, I laughed.
Whew. I thought it was something serious.
… In retrospect, it wasn’t the best reaction I could have had.
I sat down at the little card table they used for meetings, and then they slid a copy of the song parody across the table to me.
This is the point where even my dim, 18-year-old brain started to get a clue. But, like a moron, I dismissed that sinking feeling, and figured, Okay, this is just a misunderstanding. They're taking this seriously. And this is as far from serious as we can get.
I elaborated, "Well, you know Gilbert and Sullivan, right? You know their Mikado?"
No. No they did not.
They barely knew Gilbert and Sullivan, and they didn't know The Mikado.
If you’re thinking that’s where things get really bad, not quite. Because, you see, the date is March 26, 2000. It wasn’t until later that someone pointed out that this was less than a month before the first anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre.
This is the point where all of you having a bad feeling can relax, because it just keeps going down hill from there. Because it’s going to get worse. Oh yeah. Much worse.
The high school made a deal. If I saw a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and they both declared me sane, this would all go away.
Okay, fine. I was clinically sane. I was strange, but otherwise sane.
That night, my family and I came to a decision: an email. We would explain to my friends exactly what was written, exactly what was going on, and exactly what steps would actually happen. I would attach the parody, and spell out everything.
That Tuesday, the 27, I took the MMPI, a scantron True/False test from Hell, designed to figure out if I was crazy.
Though, truthfully, it would have worked best on those who were both crazy and stupid. At the time, I was taking advanced placement psychology for college credit (did I mention I had no social life?), so I chuckled at the questions, knowing which question tested for what.
When I left the room, my father was waiting. The email that was supposed to calm things down and suppress rumors? It had gotten around. At least one parent saw the email, and the accompanying parody, and called the school. The high school called the cops, because informing my friends that the administrators were idiots was apparently a high crime. They sicced the cops on family at their places of work. They went after friends of mine in the school. Anyone who defended me in public was harassed.
After that, it still gets worse. Because the high school withdrew the previous offer, and issued an ultimatum, because we had stood up to pisspot little dictators: withdraw from the school in 48 hours, or be expelled.
What were the charges? What crime did I commit? I was “issuing terrorist threats.”
Yes. Really…
As I said, this was 2000, so “terrorist threats” had yet to undergo a redefinition in the September of the following year.
My parents went to have a calm conversation with the morons. They met, but the morons didn't listen. My parents were even verbally assaulted by a teacher in the parking lot, and nearly physically assaulted.
However, this is the point in the story where I should mention that my uncle is a lawyer.
He is a lawyer who told lawyer jokes, and my entire family swears that he modeled himself on Nigel Bruce, from the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films.
When we invited said uncle over to the house on his way from work, he read the parody, heard the story, and for the only time in my life, I heard him curse as he bellowed out "IT'S THE F%#KING MIKADO! THEY'RE F%#KING IDIOTS!"
On Wednesday, I kept the appointment with the psychiatrist, since that was part of the original deal. We were going to keep the deal.
The psychiatrist asked “So, why don’t you want to burn down the school?”
I blinked, then explained to him in small words that burning down the school and killing people would be wrong. After an hour of questions like that, where I questioned his sanity, he not only found me sane, he signed it as an alumnus of the high school. I think I still have that paperwork.
On April 4th, 2000, I was in a judge’s chambers. The new deal was simple: I would graduate from the high school, working from home. I told him about the AP classes, and he said arrangements would be made. He asked me what it was for, and the entire room laughed when I said “Psychology.” The judge, court reporter, the bailiff, and even the school’s lawyer laughed.
The principal and the president of the high school did not.
When I left the courthouse, it started to drizzle. When we were all secure in he car, it started to rain in earnest We drove past the principal and the president as they walked all the way back to the high school … several miles… in the pouring rain, and without raincoats or umbrellas. My family and I had a good laugh at their expense.
Suddenly, my life became strange. I was two months from graduation, and had no idea what was going to happen. Friends disappeared, and people I never heard of magically started talking to me, consoling and supporting me. I became popular with people I had never met, who were all good people, and people who I had been friends with just quietly slipped away, never to be heard from again. I still can't get some of them to be friends on Facebook.
The school valedictorian became one of my best friends, and was going to write an article on it for the school newspaper.
The article was spiked because I gave a chocolate rabbit to the secretaries for Easter.
The incident of the terrorist bunny was a Charlie Foxtrot that could have only happened to me.
My local bakery sold three-foot chocolate rabbits for Easter, and I always gave the secretaries a little something for holidays. My mother, who had been doing the runs to pick up my assignments, delivered it. The principal took a piece of the chocolate rabbit. It’s a good thing he did, too, because that’s the piece that supposedly had glass in it.
Yes, things became interesting because somewhere, over in Germany, a glass jar broke in a factory, fell into a vat of chocolate, which became a chocolate block, shipped to America to be shaped into the foam of a chocolate rabbit, just so my principal could bite into it.
Lucky me, huh?
This was used as a pretense to spike the story about the absurdity of my whole Kafka-esque ordeal, since I was now “a continuing threat to the school.”
Oooh, ain’t I scary?
So, yeah, that was an interesting couple of months. I had been banned from all high school functions, including a prom I had put a down payment on, several other dances … and from graduation, and it was suggested that I didn’t even get off at that train stop near the school. I had people who I thought were good friends of mine vaporize, overnight, because they didn’t want to get too close.
On the other hand, I was supported by people who I honestly thought couldn’t pick me out of a lineup. At least one of these friends was someone who I couldn’t have picked out of a lineup.
Frankly, I think it will be far more interesting as the background for Mathew Kovach than it has ever been for me.
An entertaining postscript on this incident is, of course, that Memorial Day weekend, where I joined my father on his trip to Boston for the annual meeting of the American Association of Physician Assistants.
Anyway…Now, the PA’s came out of the military —too many medical personnel experienced in trauma, but they aren’t technically doctors. If you’ve read my Love at First Bite series, you know this, because this is the background of Marco Catalano. If you haven’t read it, it’s coming back. Honest. (When I throw everything into my books, I throw EVERYTHING.)
Since I had off that Memorial Day, I joined him up in Boston. It was … interesting.
So when you have a Memorial Day panel at the AAPA meeting, it’s going to be something special.
And you will never… I mean never… really fully recover from a room full of officers in full dress uniform, holding hands and swaying as they sing along to “I’m proud to be an American.”
Though if any of the above convinces you to read my work, please, let me know, I’d love to know why.
That was refreshingly honest and frankly a little moving. Bravo for the courage to stand up, speak out and move through the traumas of Life without drowning beneath the waves!
That was a (very enjoyable) hoot.