Insanity, Figment of Imagination, or Actual Presence of God

Every working day at lunchtime I write my climate change novel on my laptop propped between my belly and the steering wheel. There can be no Internet in the parking garage deep underneath my job’s building. There are no distractions. It is absolute privacy: the best environment for writing. The chapter I was working on this particular day concerned father and son characters who hate each other. The scene as I had written it ended with the father saying, “Why do you have to be so God-damned right all the time, so damned smart?”

Then I noticed another line on the screen. It was two words: “they hug.” I did not remember writing those words. That was not how I viewed the scene. I did not know why those words were there or how they got there. But then I thought to myself that this is exactly what the scene needs. I needed to rewrite the chapter so at the end of it the father and son hug each other: each one sobbing. It will be one of the strongest scenes in the book. It will be the culmination of their relationship so far and the start of their relationship going forward.

Suddenly, my whole body started to tingle. It was not from emotions. It was physical. There was something in the car with me, just over my right shoulder. I turned, but there was nothing there. My first thought was to open the car door and start running. I needed to run as fast as I could possibly go, as far away as I could get. And I knew I had to go to an ocean. The safest place would be a boat in the middle of the biggest ocean I could find. —This is all true. That is what I thought.

Then just as suddenly as it appeared, the tingling, the presence in the car, was gone. I sat there trying to breathe. I was again safe. And I thought, “Jonah.” That was how Jonah must have felt when God came to him and asked him to go to Nineveh. I had always wondered, as a kid, why Jonah ran. How could he not have known it was impossible to get away from an all-powerful God? But that was exactly what I had wanted to do. There was something in my car that was far too powerful for me to be next to. I had known I needed to get away, before that power stopped my heart from beating. If that being had stayed any longer in the car with me, I would have died.

Of course, over the next few days this was all I thought about. I didn’t think I was crazy. I am not religious enough, egotistical enough, or stupid enough to believe God would come into my car and put words on my computer screen. So, I decided that it must have been a figment of my imagination. I must have typed those words. What had happened was the result of my having read the story of Jonah during Yom Kippur services, and I had recalled the scene from the movie, “Oh God,” in which George Burns’s, playing God, makes it rain inside a car. But it felt so real. For the rest of my life, I’ll have doubts that it might actually have happened.

I would like to add a comment that this novel is coming along far, far, better than I could possibly have imagined when I started it. I never thought I had the talent to write something as good as the novel I am currently writing.

I hope I am being funny when I say, “Hey God, if you are helping me out here, well, then, thank you.”

The Conceit Behind MOURNING DOVE, the Novel I Am Currently Writing

Lincoln said to Harriett Beecher Stowe, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Climate change may destroy civilization in my son's lifetime. I am trying my hardest to write the novel that will start the war against global broiling.

The odds are extremely high that I'll fail at it, but I won't fail. To write a novel takes incredible hubris. All novelists must believe what they have to say is so important and will be done so well that the world will want to read it. For this novel, I additionally have to overcome the lies that climate change is a hoax, harmless, or disputed and that doing anything to fix it is wasted effort that will cost the country jobs. Goethe said, "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain." Forgive my mixed metaphor, but I'm tilting against that windmill (perhaps building them). To beat this billion dollar brainwashing, my novel has to be impossible to put down, grab at the heartstrings like no other novel before it, and be incredibly persuasive without the readers realizing they've been persuaded. In other words, it has to be one of the greatest novels ever written. It will be. I have that chutzpah. I have that talent. I know that this novel will have an impact in saving the world. And, so far, as I finish each chapter, I find myself saying, "I can't believe I've written something this great. I'll never be able to write as amazing a chapter ever again in my life." And then I finish the next chapter and say the same thing. I am currently on chapter nine and each chapter has been that way. Knowing that the goal of this novel is to do something incredibly important has "raised my game" considerably. As of now, I'm this book's only reader. But I'm convinced of its power to achieve what I am trying achieve. Someday, you will be as well.

Query for Mourning Dove

MOURNING DOVE is 75,000 words. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s apocryphal quote to Harriett Beecher Stowe, it was written to be the little novel that starts the great war against global warming.

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Jen, sleeping, sensed that Mom entered her room, bent over her, and kissed her cheek. Jen loved it when her mother woke her this way.

“G’morning, Honey,” Mom said “It’s our last launch day and we need to talk. You turn sixteen tomorrow and you don’t know what guys your age even look like. You and your brothers have to be with other kids. Grams might listen to you; she doesn’t listen to me. She built this place and doesn’t want to leave, but we have to. I need you to convince her. And if Grams and Grandpa don’t come with us, we’re flying to our family and civilization in Antarctica without them. You got to be my partner in this. Are you in? Can I count on you?”

“Mom. Of course you can. I’m in. It will be my mission, from almost sixteen onward.”

Mom put her arms around Jen and hugged her close. It felt good.

“I love you, Mom.”

She hugged Mom back. Mom said, “Love you, Jen.”

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A flash snowstorm coated the ground seconds before liftoff. Jen and Grandpa in the command bunker followed the take-off on live video. When the rocket left the camera’s view, she watched another video feed showing her older brother, Fred, at the outdoor weather station. He bent over backward, staring straight up, tracking the flight. Suddenly, both legs flew out from under him. At first, she thought it was funny. But their launch center was on top of a mountain. He was on a narrow asphalt path, overlooking a steep drop, and the blacktop was slippery. Mom, suddenly in the picture, reached for Fred to keep him from going over the cliff. But as she grabbed him, she lost her footing, too, and they both slid over the edge clutching each other. Grandpa wrapped Jen in his arms. On a speaker somewhere, she heard her mother scream. Seeing the empty cliff, Jen shouted, “No!. Mommie! Come back. I need you. Mommie!” Jen sobbed, clutching her Grandpa.

In his arms, she could still feel her mother kissing her awake that morning. She would never have that again. Her mother’s mission? Her mission? She dropped out of her grandfather’s arms onto the floor. She curled up into a ball, crying.

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Ballantine Books published my novella "Oceans Away" in Stellar Short Novels. I ghosted for Senator Paula Hawkins, and our op-eds appeared throughout the United States. On Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a blog, I have 50,000 connections, following MOURNING DOVE and anxious for a copy. My day job is Beltway bandit wordslinger.

Thank you for your time and consideration.