I decided to write a novel, or two, or three a half a century ago when I accidentally discovered I might have the penchant for putting pen to paper, so I began writing in earnest in 2011 with my first novel Liars the News Industry. Liars is a hard look at our liberal dominated media and the aristocrats who own them and are bent on changing the nation with their control over the truth. These publishers and their pawns in the Democrat Party have always believed themselves untouchable until one fateful day when their empires are attacked. My second novel is WTF! This Is a Liberal Utopia! is a satire on liberalism which speaks to the issue of what America might look like by 2050 if the kooks on the left ultimately prevailed. Corn has become the bedrock of the American economy. What cars there are are either Mexican lowriders, or battery powered bubble cars. Rioting and something that looks like football, but with hockey sticks and Pillsbury Doughboy padding, are the national pastimes. Yes, America had become a place turned upside on its head and you get to see it through the eyes of one of its liberal founders, Ivy League Professor Felix Schwartz. Now, on to a little more about my sojourn into writing. It began many moons ago before long hair, pot, surfing, driving and girls had come on the scene. The part of the 1960s I am speaking of is the part of that era when Simon and Garfunkel, the weekly television show Kung Fu and the comedy hour of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In were voted most popular in our junior high year book. This was before Woodstock, drugs and long hair, so you were either a ‘jock,’ as evidenced by wearing a school jersey; a ‘hoodlum,’ as evidenced by the pack of cigarettes rolled up in ones short sleeve shirt; a ‘future hippie’ who wore their shirts untucked. Or, you could be ‘Miss Popular,’ one of the cheerleaders; a ‘wallflower’ who slinked unseen from class to class, a ‘nerd’ with their leather briefcase; or another brainier type who took Latin, while the rest of us took Español. My epiphany came to me one typical school day when I was sitting at a desk peeking out at freedom from a third story window. The tardy bell would have by that time rung out echoing down the largely empty hallways. This was followed shortly by the English teacher closing the one and only doorway for my escape. I was getting great grades at the time, so it was not like I hated school, just English Literature. The hour slowly ticked by as the red second hand of the wall mounted Simplex advanced with that hesitating, analog motion. As the minute hand closed in on the end of the period the teacher announced she would be reading a short story from one of her students, someone in one of her half dozen classes who deserved meritorious mention. She started reading the paper and I still remember thinking, “Wow, that’s really kind of killer, I wonder which goody two shoes wrote it!” It was not until the second or third paragraph into her monologue that I realized the teacher was reading mein paper, an ephemeral account of the last thoughts of a man on death row in the closing hours before heading to the electric chair. Macabre I know, nevertheless that was what I assessed the homework assignment called for and may have had something to do with being a preacher’s kid and prisoner to an autocratically run household. Anyway, being put in the spotlight for that briefest of moments had never come up before and resonated with me, becoming one of my proudest moments. I still call to mind the pride I felt as the classroom listened in near riveted silence and now, a half-century later, that far flung memory has returned. Would my decades of experience in business help me? Would the self-taught nature of my education be enough? Only time and several more books will tell.
