A Year Not Quite On Fire, But Almost...
Thinking about 2024 and what's to come in 2025
To all good people in turmoil,
Cities are burning. The world is threatened with global war. American eccentrics want a gulf named after Amerigo Vespucci. I mean, why? Hasn’t this guy had enough named after him? This explorer and penner of letters, who might have fabricated a few voyages, needs more more more?
Amerigo’s been called a swindler and fabricator, among other things. Did he really find a New World? Even way back in 1515, Sebastian Cabot said that mofo hadn’t gone anywhere in 1497 except to the toilet. Okay, maybe he didn’t say that exactly.
The new world, or the new old world, is aflame, at least in California, and if we think about it, America is burning in about a hundred different ways. Did you hear something? That’s bird flu squawking at 2025’s door to Open, please, and let the disease right in.
Are people still talking about egg prices, or did that end a few days ago when Imperialism reared its ugly head and some politician said, “Let’s take Greenland!”
But the fires.
They’re going on in the Southland as I type, and they suck, and people are hurting.
I sure hope you’re not worried about Mark Hamill’s light saber collection going up in flames like an exploding cybertruck. I’m more worried about all the essential workers and teachers who just lost their apartments and jobs. James Woods insurance policy doesn’t nearly concern me as much as the fact that at least two schools have burned to the ground amid all this conflagration chaos.
Shall we look away from the flames for a moment lest we forget all those North Korean troops eagerly throwing their bodies into hails of gunfire even though their own rifles probably don’t have bullets? And the Canadian government going up in smoke? Cheech and Chong can’t fix that chaos no matter how big the doobie. Can’t forget Trudeau’s parting thought that he wishes he’d changed Canada’s election processes, meaning, he wished he found a way to stay in business.
Now ask yourself, would Amerigo even care about any of this?
The year 2024 isn’t looking so bad, or so good. I mean, as a whole, not great again, or ever? I mean, that’s if you’re a pessimist like me and think of the world as a tinderbox floating above endless rivers of magma. Which also circles a burning hot sun.
Thank goodness we’re not Mercury, yeah? Always one side of its ass pressed against the sun’s turbo-burners.
Still, how can I not say this has been a life-changing year for me.
Getting a novel published is still a dream come true. But I have to say that The Deading, released back in July, was a literary experiment meant to raise awareness about climate change. It could have easily been a book about fire. Instead, I chose water. My ocean-revenge novel starts off presenting bio-science speak about ocean blobs and mass Common Murre seabird die-offs, information I’d researched over and over. I’d also found dead murres on beaches, and being a birder, kept up on the murre and gray whale die-offs over the past several years, finding several whale carcasses during that time, and reading whatever research I could find about them and ocean blobs. Fast-forward to December 2024, basically now, where you can find information just released on exactly how many murres died, and how devastating this is.
In “The ‘Blob,’ an unprecedented marine heat wave, killed 4 million seabirds,” Jake Beuhler writes “the abrupt loss of millions of birds and probably many other animals, may be the largest wildlife mortality event recorded in modern times.”
The largest. Maybe? Is. The largest die-off. In modern times. What would we call four million humans dying. Oh yeah, a holocaust? A die-off? Two different things, but you get my drift, this is unprecedented. Don’t wait until people start dying by the millions before you start caring about overheated oceans caused by mankind’s stupidity.
It’s devastating to read about those murres. It’s horrible. Mass death shakes me to my core. Whether it’s ten thousand Russians and Ukrainians dying in a day of combat, mass casualties from an Isis hitman on Bourbon Street, or all that constant death in the Middle East, it shakes you. And die-offs without factory made bombs should shock you (though superheated oceans are likened to a grip of underwater nuclear bombs going off).
So, yes, I was onto something about animal die-offs when writing The Deading. I was channeling our fate, maybe? Hope not. And we need to pay attention to this, because when ecosystems are at stake, and if that precarious balance is ever tipped, then wars are nothing like what nature will do to humanity.
The Deading is onto something. My consciousness is onto something. My very love for writing is onto something. The thing is, yeah, buy the book or not, there is a horror at work between man and nature, and we are destroying the world around us, and this is all part of us, and we have to fight for and care about nature. And yeah, 2024 wasn’t perfect, but The Deading allowed me the opportunity to talk about this kind of thing. And I’ll keep talking about it—because we have to. And soon in a different way. Ten Sleep is coming out in June, and that book will allow me to talk about parallel concerns. Like, colonialism and imperialism and the destruction of nature. More on that very soon.
So, back to 2024. Some highlights from my personal life. My oldest son got married. The family has even more musicians now! Jane changed jobs to District Librarian and is now attending San Jose State University. She might be writing a novel. Maybe. You’ll have to ask her. Oh, and I found nearly three-hundred-and-fifty bird species in 2024. Mediocre for an American birder. Overwhelming to a non-birder.
I also wrote some essayish things I’m proud of, like how to craft monster birds in literature, and about eco-horror as a genre, including some bits on how the surreal in nature is real. I also gave a talk on “Blending Genres in Fiction” at UC Riverside Palm Desert MFA’s residency, which I really enjoyed. And The Deading was well received in many publications including the New York Times Book Review, where the article’s artwork featured a scene from my novel!
I’ve already started the year off with 159 bird species and it’s only the beginning of the second week of January. My favorite so far? A rare Baltimore Oriole I found at the park across the street here in San Luis Obispo. Like a big sassy ripe orange with bright white wingbars. Lovely. In the meantime, Ten Sleep has been getting endorsements from cool speculative fiction writers like Ai Jiang and Abigail F. Taylor! I’m half finished writing my next horror novel, and I’ve got a big event coming up at La Quinta Library on February 1 with Monika Kim and Kathryn E. McGee as part of the La Quinta Book Fest. Check it out!
That’s all I got for now. Gloom and doom and happy things.
Love to you all . . .
Some 2024 favorites:
Fave novel of 2024: Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Fave song of 2024: “Messy” by Lola Young
Fave movie of 2024: Nosferatu
Fave bird of 2024: Long-billed Thrasher