How can one remain silent?

I’ve felt for some time that I write human compassion and equality into every story I write and people should know how I feel about things. But how can I not say something explicit?

Me: Black Lives Matter.

Reader: All Lives Matter.

Me: I’m glad you agree with me.

Reader: What? You said…

Me: You can’t believe that all lives matter if you don’t believe black lives matter.

Reader: You’re saying the rest of us don’t....

Me: No. I’m saying the lives that are in danger right now are black. Don’t worry, cupcake. You still matter.

I read an interesting article written by a Rhode Island police trainer (Dave Bissonnette), decrying the murder of George Floyd and condemning his murderers. That’s not the way police work is done, he declared. Unfortunately, he went on to minimize things by trotting out the threadbare trope, “Not all cops.” He holds that only 1% of police are bad cops and begs us not to condemn the 99% of good cops.

There are approximately 1.2 million sworn in law enforcement officers at the Federal, State, and Local level in the United States. “Sworn in” means they can arrest people. There are at least that many civilian workers in law enforcement as well. It’s difficult to get an exact number because there is apparently no database of how many officers there are in the country. According to the Rhode Island police trainer, that means there are only 12,000 bad cops in America.

The evidence has been mounting against this position. Two police officers were arrested in Buffalo for assaulting a senior citizen and leaving him bleeding on the pavement. Fifty-four officers resigned in protest against their arrest. This tells me the two arrested were not the only bad cops. If a "Good Cop" is not arresting, denouncing, and preventing the "Bad Cops" he or she is not a good cop.

In the 1960s we marched for civil rights, we protested the Vietnam war, and people purporting to be good cops and National Guard soldiers, beat us, killed us, and did everything they could to prevent us. Having entered a 60-year time warp, we are marching and protesting again. Police are beating and killing again. But in the words of our 1960s theme song, “We shall overcome.”

Now, on to my travels, right?

In May, I moved from Pharr, Texas to Worley, ID. Google was kind enough to send me the full color depiction of my travels.

They say 2,269 miles in 39 hours. Of course, they only know the miles when I had Google Maps running. My records say 2,622 miles in ten days. I got here to Sun Meadow on May 28 and haven’t moved since. I’ll need to go to Coeur d’Alene on June 15 for supplies and meds.

What am I doing?

I’m writing. You might remember me going on and on about my new story American Royalty 1: Coming of Age when I wrote it in November as part of NaNoWriMo or when I rewrote it in February to give to editors. Now you can listen to me go on about Rise and Awaken, a Destiny’s Call novel. My February rewrite of Coming of Age was really a cleanup and cut. Rise and Awaken is a complete rewrite based on criticism from my editors.

The basic concept is still the same. An alternate universe America in which there are well-defined classes based on the character of the individual, not occupation, heredity, or wealth. In that construct, a young man comes to grips with what it means to be a Leader and is mentored by his personal assistant, an Advisor.

My editors pointed out that the classes were confusing and not well-defined. The POV was hard to follow. Characters were stereotypes or clichés. It wasn’t set apart from any other coming of age story. There was more emphasis on the relationship between the two protagonists than on the story, with too little actually happening other than their love affair. Oh yes, and the chapters were too long.

Yes, as usual, it is too long. You already knew that. :)
 The time frame is ambiguous, but not in a good way. You do have several contemporary phrases buried in there, but I didn't mark them. If you go back and try to make it more detailed and more identifiable, it would make it even longer. And that would not be a good thing. It is too slow-moving already, and the characters are just not grabbing me.

Love my editors. I took their criticism to heart and started writing the story from scratch again. The emerging result is Rise and Awaken. I’m nine chapters and 35,000 words into the rewrite and think it’s an improvement. We’ll see what the editors say this time.

I’m writing two Devon Layne books at the same time, so I’m only getting a couple of chapters of each out each week. A far different productivity path than I was on last year when I was writing a chapter a day and ended the year with 1.2 million new words written. But I’m still on track for 600k this year.

I see this view from my window every morning. Hope you are staying sane and safe during these turbulent times.