Idlewild was released without much fanfare last weekend. I have limited knowledge of book marketing services, and by that I don’t mean purchasing Amazon or Goodreads reviews. I mean getting the word out about this novel. It seems that most writers are not really ‘noticed’ until their sixth or seventh book, so I am holding out hope. For now, am selling about a copy a week of Bad Moon Rising and For None of Woman Born. Idlewild is my favorite because it more accurately reflects my home life growing up, although the majority of it is fiction.

Have started another novel along similar lines as Idlewild; the story started off as a story about how I lost my mind and wound up living in Central Massachusetts just down the street from that degenerate who had three dead babies living in her house in Blackstone. It has turned into something else, a rally cry, perhaps, for the Millennials who are tired of being told that they are good for nothings and have no ambition. I’ve sat in cafes with books before without anyone noticing. The older generation hasn’t paid any attention at all. However, the time I brought in a tablet, I could hear the old people whispering about why I didn’t have a book and how this generation spends all of its time online. I was reading Kerouac or Pynchon, I can’t be sure which, but the older generation looks down upon us because they think somehow our lives are so easy that we take everything for granted. I suppose that is true, to a certain extent. We do take a lot for granted. There are a lot of things we don’t even think about because in a perfect world we shouldn’t have to worry about having to drop out of school to care for a sick parent. We shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not the meal we are about to receive has gone through so many processes to get to its final shape.

I hang around with two groups of people. Much like in Idlewild, I sit with a bunch of old guys on the cusp of the grave in Wakefield, where all they do is complain about this generation. In Wilmington, where my other friends hang out, the focus is on how drunk someone can get before passing out or how many beers a week someone can have before being called an alcoholic. Both groups spend so much time tearing other people down they forget their own hopes and dreams are passing them by.

Saw a documentary on Netflix yesterday called ‘Race to Nowhere.’ It’s about how much pressure we put on children today to succeed and we are robbing them of a childhood. We are literally stealing from the next generation of children, who have no idea how they are going to succeed in life without a college degree. Most of my favorite writers and actors don’t have much in the way of college. Kerouac was at Columbia for a year. Stephen King does have a B.A. from the University of Maine but there is strong evidence that he would have been successful even without that.

Writing today; I’ll update again later in the week.