This Is Where I Live

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Jeremiah Murphy

Please indulge me while I make it about me for a second:

This is my home. I live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, along with thousands upon thousands of other people. I don’t keep a home here and go back to my constituency every summer and winter. I don’t intern here and go back to where I came from. And I sure as hell don’t go to places where other people live and try to overthrow the government.

I live close to the National Guard Armory, and during our nightly walks, my roommate and I stroll by it. We have never seen people there before this month. Dozens of buses filled with camouflage-wearing men and women have been pulling up. The streets are full of soldiers, and armored vehicles drive past my block constantly.

The Capitol is close to my apartment. It’s far enough that a walk home from there while having to go to the bathroom is agony, but it’s close enough that it dominates the skyline if I walk a couple of blocks. It’s close enough that, if some entitled psychopaths decided to start torching residences, it wouldn’t take them long to reach me.

There is a park six blocks from my apartment where I go every weekend to have a latte and write. It’s full of young couples with their babies and children punching while their mothers tell them to “CUT THAT OUT!” Older people (who are, to my horror, not much older than I) go to the café on the outskirts there for meetups. There is a dog park there I’m not sure is actually a dog park, but put enough affluent people in a place with dogs, and it becomes one. Right-wing groups have been posting that they are using it as a gathering ground before they start their upcoming insurrections.

Restaurants in my neighborhood are not allowed to have outdoor seating until the end of the month. My doctor’s office closed because no one can get to the building through the barricades. There is an eight-foot fence surrounding the Capitol, previously one of the most accessible government buildings.

They don’t care. The people who are coming to town over the coming week to disrupt the legitimate swearing in of a new president couldn’t give a shit about the lives they’re disturbing, about the fact that they’re putting a city under martial law. It doesn’t matter to them because they are RIGHT. They are on a CRUSADE. The president they voted for, who isn’t all that popular in the first place, is the TRUE LEADER, and they don’t care whose lives they have to disrupt to make this TRUE.

This is my home. I’m so tired.

Hedging my Bets

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Jeremiah Murphy

When I was first writing the books that would make up my Urban Fantasy series, On the Hedge, my ex-wife asked me what I planned to do with all of them (I was about three in at this point). I told her nothing. I was writing the books for the sake of writing the books, and I didn’t want to put myself through the soul-crushing hell of trying to find an agent over some fluff I cranked out at weird hours of the morning.

Today, the first book in that series (The Web of Nightmares) is out on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, and the reception has been … disappointing. I posted a link to the book onto an Urban Fantasy group page I follow, and the response was tepid. What did I do wrong? Was my blurb uninteresting? Did I pick a bad title? It the series name lousy? Is the book itself rancid garbage? I know it’s not the cover because the cover is amazing.

What do I have to do to get those people’s attention? Some of them like heavy action, some prefer more psychological drama. Some want romance, some won’t read a book with a hint of romance in it. Some want heroes, some want heroines. Some want vampires, some loathe vampires. A lot of them won’t even look at a book that’s self-published. It’s almost like they’re individual people with individual tastes or something. I could make myself crazy trying to figure out what they want.

So I’m not gonna. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’m not going to do anything different. (I might pay for advertising, though.) What was the whole point of this exercise I’m undertaking this year? Was it to become a bestseller, to quit my job, to save up for a vacation, to make money? No. It was to give my books the covers they deserve, to have a website and an author’s page on Amazon and a long list of credits on Goodreads. To have a physical novel in my hands that I can autograph for anyone who’s interested (coming in July). It’s to give me a goal to write toward. It was to make my books available, how I want them available, for anyone to see if they’re interested. To maybe pick up a few readers here and here. Money would be nice. A little notoriety would be nice, but you need a lot of luck, a much thicker skin, and a willingness to do a lot of things that aren’t writing to have that, and I have none of those things.

Do I write for the fame? To reach the widest variety of people to give them what they want? No. I write for me. I write to see words and situations and a style that I can’t get anywhere else. I write to process grief and trauma and philosophy. I write so that I can relive events in my life from a different perspective. I write to live out a fantasy of me, whether that makes me a monster-fighting witch, a sleazy philanderer, an out-of-control tomboy, or an IT person still in love with an old flame. None of these reasons are for the money, and I steadfastly refuse to change. This won’t make me a success, but I don’t want to be a success. I want to be a writer.

So stay tuned. This is going to be a big year for me. And, for the love of God, buy some of my books. I’d like to sell at least a few copies.

2020 Hindsight

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Jeremiah Murphy

The year 2020 was a terrible bust. A lot of people died for no good reason, politics somehow became even more toxic than it had been before, our government has proven itself to be incompetent and yet got (mostly) reelected in the fall, we haven’t been able to go on vacations, our economy’s collapsing without a reasonable federal response to keep it from getting worse, and we’re under quarantine for a disease that could be contained if people would stop being so stubborn and selfish.

I’m not here to pile on. Enough people are making anti-2020 memes and blog posts that my voice would add absolutely nothing. Even though the world is suffering right now, a lot of good things happened in my life, and not that 2021 is here, I want to look back on them in my effort to be a more positive person.

I found a job in the nick of time so I wasn’t a temp during the quarantine. I have health insurance, a(nother) 401K, holiday pay, and sick leave. My job is the least stressful job I’ve ever had, and it’s relaxing enough that I can stay focused on my current project when I’m not working.

I’ve saved up enough money to invest a large chunk of it for retirement. When I was married, my retirement was going to be funded by my rich father-in-law, but once that went away, I suddenly faced my encroaching sixties with fear and uncertainty. But I’m on the right track now, and I won’t have to worry about getting old.

Also, thanks to the job, I can purchase professional-looking covers for all of the novels I want to publish this year. My plan is that, under Jeremiah Murphy and James Newcastle, I am going to publish sixteen books in 2021, maybe more. Who knows what the plan will be in six months? This entire focus came to me in 2020. I know I won’t be a bestseller, or really much of a seller at all, but I will be out there, and anybody who’s curious can find me now.

I’ve written six novels in 2020, and I have an awesome website.

Because of Nicole’s class schedule and my reduced schedule, I have been cooking more, and I stopped being intimidated by it. I used to cook all the time, but then I quit for some reason and haven’t been able to get back into it. Thanks to this year, I have. After our “family dinners,” Nicole and I have been taking 2.5-mile walks around the area, which are an excellent bonding opportunity. Things were a little strained between us at the beginning of the pandemic, but in the summer, we found a groove and have slipped into it, and now things are perfect.

I get to spend a lot of time with my cat, who received a spotless bill of health in the fall. He’s actively sabotaging me as I try to work by being an aggressive cuddler, and I let him because he’s my buddy. He’s still pretty annoying, though.

I was furloughed and then let go from my job at The Container Store. As enriching and, at times, fun, as it was to work at the Reston store, the Washington D.C. store was a bit of a mismanaged mess, and I never really found my place there. It’s gone, and I don’t really miss it, and I can afford not to have this job now.

I built a lot of LEGO models and discovered a passion for it. I have space constraints and can only have one out at a time, but that gives me an excuse to break down models and rebuild them at a later date.

These are all minor things that are important to me and probably only me. They won’t comfort anyone who lost a job or lost a family member or friend to COVID—or even worse, came down with it themselves. But to me, they’re all huge. I was insanely lucky last year, and the last thing you can accuse me of is not being grateful enough for it.

The New Year is a construct. We are going into 2021 without any of our 2020 problems solved, and they won’t be solved for the foreseeable future. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a calendar rollover will make everything better. I’m getting through this with my cat, my roommate, and my dreams. I hope you can find something to hold onto that makes you grateful.