Thoughts of a No-longer Precocious Individual
Philosophy, history, comics, alcoholism, fiction, politics, humor, and the occasional screed
Hello, fine people
I read C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian when I was young and was struck by a scene in which Peter is dictating to Dr. Cornelius a letter challenging the usurper Miraz to a duel. The doctor reads back what he has written: Narnia, comma, greeting. Ever since then, I always think of that phrase whenever I am composing a letter.
So here, now, for you:
Narnia, comma, greeting.
I am glad you came by. I’ve been a scribbler all my life, filling endless notebooks with various thoughts and asides and reflections on everything from Jane Roberts channeling Seth to whether Jim Keltner gets the credit he deserves. I type letters to my kids, write notes to my wife, religiously fill two journal pages every day. I find if I don’t the edges of my sanity start to brown and curl like a newspaper left too close to the fire. I also post interesting things to my Facebook feed, so much that it’s not unusual for people to tell me that they “love my Facebook,” a phrase rarely uttered in 2021 America.
Whether any of this is worth reading at all is dubious; whether it’s worth charging for is obvious, at least at this point. It’s not. At least not yet.
I’ll be honest with you: at the age of 55, I need to reinvent myself, to collect all the various pieces of my creative self scattered throughout the digital filing cabinets. As I tend to overdo almost everything, there is an ungodly amount of stuff.
For example, I’ve written more than three hundred micro-stories of 100-200 words each, hundreds of different comics, three complete novels (and four more in various states of revision and drafting), dozens of illustrations, a multitude of photographs, and many thousands of short social media commentaries posted over the past 15 years.
A few things have been published in such places as Iowa’s Emerging Writers, Slush Pile Magazine, 101 Words, and Flash Fiction Magazine, but most of this stuff lingers in digital limbo on pages that are stored but never viewed. The rest has never seen the light of day.
And there’s more. Every day, there is more.
Not that I am threatening you with a daily gush of mind-junk… but I do promise that signing up for this substack will entitle you to two or three posts a week as well as first crack at any and all creative efforts, old and new. This autumn I am launching my Hawser trilogy, and all subscribers are entitled to a free copy of each of the books in digital or audio format. There will also be comics, drawings, and photographs.
And throughout it all, there will be a connection between us.
I am scared and excited and I hope you can join me on this journey.
JHC
And please, tell your friends!