Dear Subscriber,
This is the first line in my story Cousins about Edgar Allan Poe in 1848, following the death of his young wife, Virginia:
The author writes to stay sane.
Many other authors and artists say this, including Franz Kafka, probably the most influential author of the post-industrial era. How many other writers and artists today say this same thing? Does writing keep you from being swept up in what Dr. Gabor Maté calls the “toxic society” of insane values?
Or, do you remain mute and go along with the current social climate (including the Climate Crisis)?
I need my writing to exist in a sane manner and to voice my free speech against those societal pressures and “insanity” with which I disagree and about which I need to satirize.
For example, Chinawoman’s Chance, the novel that is technically also horror, is the first mystery in my Portia of the Pacific series. Many folks, even other authors, believed my title was offensive to the Chinese people. Now that we’re almost on the brink of a world war with these folks, I want to show how a woman who wrote “romantic Chinese novels” refused to review my book because of its title:
I explained that this title was a play on the term “Chinaman’s chance in hell,” which was invented in the U.S.A. (where my story takes place) as a slur against the coolies who were sent to place the charges in the mountains to detonate the dynamite for the railroad tycoons. It was before Alfred Nobel invented the “safe explosives,” so these Chinamen would be blasted to smithereens. The Chinawomen in California were also being sold into sex trafficking bordellos and they died as well, so I thought the title was very appropriate. She didn’t see it that way because she lived inside mainland China’s rose-colored vistas, one supposes. I wonder what they think happened in the U.S.A. with their populace in the Nineteenth Century? She still refused to review my book. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks, I suppose, except when those are rocks of “truth.”
Three Months of Free Stories
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For Halloween, I’m offering a three months free trial period to receive a story from me per month (or week). Just sign-up at my author’s home page. You be getting stories I’ve written that have been published in award-winning anthologies and in my own collections. You’ll also be getting the newest stories, like Cousins (mentioned above) before anybody else gets to read them through my exclusively private subscription delivery system, which will also allow you to see multimedia titles as part of the deal.
Thanks, and have a fabulous weekend!
James Musgrave
San Diego, CA
