Bookmarks
While it’s true that books are often talked about as if they were the only marker of an author’s achievement, plenty of writers find satisfaction putting words to much shorter stories, issues and characters that require no cover page. For example, during most of my twenties, even while I was struggling to find direction, I spent a great deal of time studying and writing about faith and Christianity, lengthy papers that now rest in a closet cabinet. After college, after publishing my first book on the history of church segregation in the United States, I shifted into American politics and published several articles with the Independent Voter Network between 2012 and 2013, all of which are now archived, but available online. Below is a snapshot of my writing history and, maybe to a lesser degree, my as-yet-unpublished writing future.
INDEPENDENT VOTER NETWORK
Petraeus, Eisenhower, and the Cold War Pledge – November 22, 2012
Charlie Crist: The Provisional Independent – December 9, 2012
Waiting for the World to End in 2012 – December 21, 2012
On the Regulation and Infringement of Bearing Arms – January 27, 2013
On the Hunger Strikes of Guantanamo – March 24, 2013
On the Defining of Marriage, for Better or Worse – April 7, 2013
On Immigration Reform and Public Opinion Since 9/11 – June 27, 2013
On Congressional Majorities and the Management of a Nation – July 16, 2013
Throwing Sticks and Stones at the IRS – September 22, 2013
FUTURE PROJECTS
MEANWHILE: A STORY OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS – Historical Nonfiction – This is my lengthy pet project. Since graduating from college in 2008, I’ve had a growing fascination with American History through the eyes of its many presidents. I’ve also spent the last decade or so collecting every significant memoir, biography, diary, or letter collection that might help in my private research (which means my home library is thick with presidential history). My goal is to overlap the major and minor stories that happen in the lives of each president during the same window of time (aka, meanwhile) between 1789 and the present. Because of the amount of research that would be required to pull this off, I don’t imagine finishing anytime in the near future, but it’s a work in progress.
THE WINDS OF ANTIORRA – Fiction – If I’m being honest, this is the story I most want to write in the next couple of years, but it’s also a story, or at least a narrative, I prefer to mostly keep quiet. During a trip to the British Isles with Melissa in 2017, I kept a little notebook with me and jotted down thoughts over the two weeks we were overseas. These observations inspired me to begin writing a Scottish story that definitely hasn’t been told. At this point, I have 3-4 chapters written, a clear setting, and a number of characters, but I’m keeping it on the shelf for a few more months before starting again. What I can say, however, is that The Florida Writer was kind enough to publish a single-page snippet here, in June of 2022.
A BRUSH WITH STRANGERS – Fiction – Fifteen days before Christmas, Jake Nolan arrives at the home of his closest friend, gift in hand, unaware of any conflict between them. Before he can knock, the door opens and he finds himself being pushed back, cursed out, and turned away, a fragile scene he plays over and over in his head, in his dreams, in different ways. Ripping these two married and middle-aged men apart is an untouchable, unavailable young woman whose love and affection they both once sought but never received. Suddenly cut off and isolated with a gift he tosses into the trunk of his car, Jake begins to replay other scenes from his life, his relationships with other women over the years, wondering whether his memories are just as fragile.
IN SEARCH OF A COMMON INTEREST: A TEACHER’S HISTORY OF K12 PUBLIC EDUCATION IN FLORIDA – Non-Fiction – In a state that houses more outsiders than insiders, more people born elsewhere than those born somewhere inside its borders, Florida schools have often been tagged with a blanket of bad reputations and low expectations. Parents and teachers have equally argued that we, as Floridians, must return to a time when things made more sense, when our system of education did a better job than it does now. But a careful, comprehensive look at history suggests that Florida has never functioned under the guise of universal consensus. If anything, we’ve continually struggled to find (or even believe we have) anything in common. This is a research-based account of that history.
ANDREW JOHNSON AND THE SAGO PALM – Historical Fiction – As an avid consumer of history, I was in the middle of reading through William Seale’s 1300-page account of the President’s House when I stopped after the departure of our once beleaguered and impeached President Andrew Johnson. Several years back, on a vacation in Gatlinburg, I had been to his hometown of Greeneville, Tennessee and even visited his grave, often thinking of him in the way most of us do if we’re familiar, that he was ambitious and self-serving, that he was a drunk and a racist. But what caught me in the Seale account was his sincere and almost endearing love of children, his grandchildren in particular, even consulting with them about some of the issues he was dealing with as president. So for 24 hours straight (minus six hours of sleep), I pulled together 45 pages of research on the Johnson presidency, learning that he once held a 60th Birthday Party for himself and invited roughly 300 kids from the D.C. area, that he was among the first to hold an Easter Egg Hunt at the White House, and that, fortuitously, he was also paid a visit by Charles Dickens, on his second and final tour through the United States. That leaves plenty to write about, but this will be my first attempt at historical fiction, writing about those first few complicated, post-Civil-War years through the eyes and minds of Johnson’s grandchildren.
DISOWNING CHRISTIANITY – Religious Biography – A great deal of research and writing was done on this project between 2013 and 2019, which is to say that a few months of serious, intentional writing could probably wrap it up. But 5-6 years of picking away at a project made me tire of the story. Not to mention, taking two years to write an Educational Biography with Don’t Quit On Us, then following it up with a self-defacing confessional in Cold Turkey Rage means that I have less and less interest in sharing (or publishing) another memoir, at least for now.
NO HEAVEN FOR ME: A TYRANNICAL HISTORY OF KING GEORGE III – Historical Nonfiction – Jefferson called him a tyrant. And American history remembers him as a lunatic, someone who lost his rational mind. But on the other side of the pond, as they say, King George III has a much more colorful and epic story. At this stage, I’ve conducted a massive amount of research to date and written about 1/4 of the book. Writing the rest will take time, but it’s definitely a side project with no connection to anything else I’ve ever tried to write. Honestly, what I love about working on this book is that it gives me a chance to try and tell someone else’s lesser known story.
THE ANGEL OF THE BLACK RIVER – Fiction – Based loosely on the true story of Christopher and Lucas Leonard, who were beaten for eight hours in the basement of a church in upstate New York (Lucas died soon after and Christopher survived), I wanted to tell that story with a different lens. I started dabbling with this project a few years ago, but the content and the storyline was extremely dark, darker than I normally tend to dive. I had also set this up as a personal writing challenge over the summer of 2018, believing it might be possible to write a novel in less than two months.