David Dubrow

Author

Update, September 2023

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Hi! It’s been some time since I last updated the blog.

I’m still writing. Every day I put words on the page. It’s slow going. I wish I could write faster.

My most recent story, Gods, Men, and Nephilim, was published in the anthology Swords and Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 6.

Prior to that, my story The Mistress of the Marsh was published in the anthology Swords and Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 5.

Clever readers will notice a trend. I’m turning these and other unpublished stories into the chapters of a novel taking place in a fantasy version of ancient Rome. A straightforward swords and sorcery tale, something fun to read.

Still, it’s been a few years since I produced a work of any length. My last novel, The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, was published in 2018. Five years is a long time between books, and my current work won’t be ready for publication until at least 2024.

So what happened?

The easy answer is that Covid happened. I didn’t get terribly sick, but the lockdowns and associated insanity ate up a good bit of my time and attention.

When my son’s school went digital at the beginning of the lockdowns it fell to me to be his schoolteacher. I made sure he did his elementary school assignments, added extra reading, and took him places throughout the day to get him out of the house. We didn’t lock down. We went to parks and nature preserves and playgrounds every single day, because it would be destructive and stupid to keep a growing, healthy child indoors all day over a disease that had an effectively zero percent chance to kill him or even make him seriously ill.

The Covid lockdowns were my chance to shine as a man who ranks high on the Disagreeability Scale. When everyone was complaining about weight gain (the Covid 19), I adopted a system of fasting and weightlifting that I still use today. When our leaders suggested we stay inside to keep from getting sick, I went outside to get fresh air and sunlight. When Doordash and Uber Eats became the way to eat, we had more and more home-cooked meals. In the end, the pandemic did wonders for my family’s health, and my son’s reading/language skills raised significantly.

Even so, the time spent being my son’s teacher, while a great experience, pretty much killed my writing for months. By March of 2020, when the state instituted lockdowns, I’d written the first draft of one novel and was about a quarter of the way through the sequel when I had to stop writing until June. This was a good thing: the books weren’t good. Jealous of writers who could crank out a novel once every two months, I had been trying to emulate that success in both speed and marketability, rather than writing good books. Much of it was crap, as I learned upon a good long review of the first draft. It’s salvageable, and I want to get back to it some day, but by the time I was able to sit back down at the writing desk, I had lost faith in the project. (Superheroes. A novel series about superheroes. I know. It’s still a cool concept, what I worked out.)

I got about halfway through my next project, which was a space opera about First Contact with intelligent alien life, before I needed a break. I had a decent outline and knew where I wanted it to go, but I was concerned that the format might be too close to my first novel series, which was complex, bordering on complicated. Too many characters, too much going on. Some day I want to pick that back up, too.

The break I took was to write a swords and sorcery story; I’d found an advertisement from Parallel Universe Publications looking for stories in that genre, and it’s something I’d always wanted to dip into. The success of that story, The Green Wood, spurred me to write more in that setting, leading me to today.

There it is. A peek under the hood. It takes me longer to write not because I’m so great, but because it just takes me longer to write. My friend Joe Hirsch has a much higher output, and he’s one of the best writers I know.

So, I’m still here. Still at it.

Thank you for reading, as always.

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Top Ten Books of 2021

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When you decide that you’re going to write books, no matter what kind, the decision irrevocably changes how you read. Writers read for pleasure like everyone else, but they also analyze what they read, determining what works from what doesn’t and why.

I do that, at least.

The best fiction makes you forget that you’re in the act of reading; the best non-fiction turns you into an engaged student (or activist).

What follows is a list of which books made the greatest impression on me over the last twelve months. Lists like this tend to be quite personal. I’ll leave it up to the reader to suss out what makes me tick. I already know.

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10. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. The first in a sci-fi trilogy, it’s a taut, imaginative trip into near-future technology, extraterrestrial intelligence, and recent Chinese history, viewed through a purely materialistic lens. There’s nothing spiritual or aspirational about it, making it the Hugo-winning apotheosis of 21st century science fiction, which tends to explore nihilism over grace. Books two and three (The Dark Forest and Death’s End, respectively) got progressively less interesting, and the physics, as it advanced, became more like magic than science (A.C. Clarke, call your agent). If you read Three-Body, you’ll have to read the other two. You should read Three-Body anyway.

9. Grendel by John Gardner. The story of Beowulf as told by the monster, it’s a novel to be both enjoyed and admired. Clever, funny, gory, literary, and thoughtful, you only need to read the first page to understand why it’s a classic piece of literature. Gardner was a brilliant writer who died way too soon.

8. Wilderness of Mirrors by David C Martin. The non-fiction story of two men, William King Harvey and James Jesus Angleton, who worked for the CIA; Harvey was instrumental in exposing Soviet spy Kim Philby (who was in England’s MI-6), and Angleton had known Philby for years without suspecting a thing. Both Harvey and Angleton were complete loons in their own way, and if you ever thought that America’s clandestine intelligence service was anything other than accidentally competent, this book will disabuse you of that notion.

7. Couples by John Updike. I first read this novel in the mid-1990s, after finishing Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy, so I thought I would give it another spin. The themes of love, infidelity, and yearning remain relevant decades after the book was written. His graphic depictions of sex (especially in the 1960s) and frank discussions of intimacy are likewise shocking; Updike does not leave anything unsaid (one critic once said of him, “Did this guy ever have a thought he didn’t put on paper?”). I take it that the novel is at least a little bit autobiographical; I’m just glad I wasn’t Updike’s neighbor back then. This is still my favorite book of his.

6. Neighbors by Thomas Berger. Another novel of suburbia (after Updike’s Couples). Earl Kreese, a staid, boring, regular guy finds himself dealing with a pair of crazies who have just moved in next door. The absurdity in this novel borders on the surreal, but it’s hysterically funny for both the new neighbors’ antics and Earl’s reaction to them. Among many other excellent novels, Berger wrote Little Big Man.

5. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. This was my first Murakami novel, and remains my favorite. Bizarre, filled with magical realism, ghost sex, and questions of identity and grief, it keeps you interested, even throughout the frequent descriptions of the protagonist’s mundane doings when not encountering weird phenomena. Since Kafka I’ve read several other Murakami books, which range from the tedious (1Q84) to the fascinating (A Wild Sheep Chase). Murakami is a writer who most people either love or don’t. I liked a good bit of what I’ve read, and didn’t like other bits.

4. Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning. If you’ve ever wondered how average Germans could murder so many Jewish men, women, and children in Poland during WWII, this is your book. A nonfiction work of horror, once you read it you’ll never forget it. I disagree with the writer’s conclusions, which take at least some of the individual responsibility away from the murderers, but this is still a vital text. Graphic and brutal.

3. H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq. I’ve been an avid reader of Lovecraft and his associates since my teenage years, and Houellebecq’s analysis of the man and his mythos puts them in a new light, making them shine again. What an amazing book. I also enjoyed Houellebecq’s novels Serotonin and Submission in 2021, and highly recommend them.

2. The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. A guide to intermittent fasting: why it works and how you can make it work for you. Fasting has helped me immensely since I started it (I read Fung’s book in one night and began fasting that next morning). I look and feel better every day. Life-changing.

1. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor. I couldn’t stand O’Connor’s novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, but as a short story writer there was no one better in American literature. She shocks, she elevates, she hits you in the gut, sometimes in the same story. It’s an anthology I can’t wait to read again. The best book I read in 2021, and several of the previous years, also. Absolutely brilliant.

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I’m interested to see what 2022’s top ten are going to be. 2021 will be hard to beat!

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The Best of Appalling Stories: The Inside Story

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Several months ago I pulled the Appalling Stories four-book series from publication. There are a few physical copies available from Amazon, but that’s it. I did this because sales were low across the board, particularly for the later volumes. The cost of advertising and paying tiny royalties, plus the tax burden, made yanking them from the store an easy decision.

And yet there’s good work in there. So Ray Zacek and I collated our favorite individual stories from the entire series, added some new ones, and included the novella Escape from Trumplandia to create a new book called The Best of Appalling Stories: Tales from the Wrong Side of History. This volume includes an excellent foreword from Gordon Kushner, host of the podcast Another Bleeping Podcast. I’m proud of the book: it has several stories that I’d hate to see vanish, particularly my Her Bodies, Her Choice and Ray’s Detainer, both of which do exactly what a short story is supposed to do.

The new stories include Ray’s crime joint Wet City, which includes the unforgettable character Thugga T, and Happy Wife, Happy Life by me. I’d been working on and off on Happy Wife, Happy Life for some time; it was originally intended to be part of 2017’s Appalling Stories release under the title Bully, but I couldn’t come up with an ending that satisfied either me or the reader, so I scrapped it in favor of Cultural Overtones. It sat for years in a drawer before I could develop a conclusion to the thing, something that wrapped up the story while unsettling the reader, and in that I succeeded.

Sometimes, what’s interesting about a Best Of collection is what isn’t included. I didn’t include the bee stories, of which there are three, because some day I’d like to fold them into a short novel. If you’ve read The Bitterness of Honey, Dear Dad from the now-defunct CinderQ literary magazine, or My Lai, you know how strange they are; they should be (bee) together in some lengthier format. So they were out. Cultural Overtones, while it said what I wanted it to say, never seemed to grab anybody; the concept was there, the story worked, but for whatever reason it wasn’t a notable work. Ray originally wanted to leave out his The Orishas, but I persuaded him otherwise because it’s such a good, fun story that sticks with you.

We had to include my Deprogram and Ray’s Obsolete Man, because they remain topical years later. The majority of the blurbs we got for the entire series describe how the stories are prophetic, which is true on a certain level: we took cultural trends and extended them to their logical conclusions. Our driving intent, however, was to entertain readers by turning the people you’re not supposed to make fun of into antagonists. If there’s a protected class, we wanted to skewer it, and we did.

The one story I waffled on including was my Bake Me a Cake: it either turns you off the book completely or has you snickering. It was originally the first story in the first volume of the Appalling Stories series, and set the tone for the book being aggressively anti-PC. As broad satire, the point was to be on-the-nose and in-your-face. It’s the “go big or go home” of Appalling Stories, and I’m still proud of it. So it’s in. It’s supposed to disgust you.

Whether you find the themes troubling or not, The Best of Appalling Stories is an entertaining foray into the current cultural moment. I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Joseph Simonet

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This was from the last shoot I did with Joseph

I want to tell you about my friend Joseph.

In all ways, Joseph was a big guy: tall, muscular, enormous personality and generosity. Both a polymath and an autodidact, he was always amazingly well-read. He was possessed of a terrific sense of humor, and could go from more dry, subtle jokes to my kind of fifth-grade bathroom humor at any time. An absolutely enjoyable fellow to spend time with under any circumstances.

Joseph’s business was martial arts and fitness, both of which he did better than anyone else I ever worked with. Always experimenting, always learning, always innovating, he had achieved mastery in a number of martial arts, including Tracy’s Kenpo, Pentjak Silat, Wing Chun Kung Fu, Doce Pares Eskrima, and even Yang style Tai Chi Chuan, among others. Over time he began to bridge the gap between martial arts theory and real-world self-defense, making him a truly formidable instructor-trainer.

He had several higher-profile clients, including former Detroit Lions player Mike Utley, whom he helped with physical rehab after Utley’s paralysis, and former Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland.

I got to work with him on many instructional video projects, and the DVDs still hold pride of place front and center on my video shelf. He was a great man to work with: professional, eager, high-energy, always on.

Earlier I said he was a big guy. He’s now suffering from primary progressive aphasia, which is a type of dementia. It’s a dreadful thing to happen to such a great man. Dementia takes you away from your loved ones before it kills you, and for this to happen to Joseph is awful in a way that’s impossible to describe.

His daughter Carly is asking for your help to defray the cost of his care. Please click the link and give what you can. Or if you can’t afford to, share the link far and wide. Just a few years ago, Joseph had it all: a martial arts school in Wenatchee, Washington; a huge, beautiful property in Chelan; and a wife and family. This illness has taken so much from him, and he deserves comfort.

I wish you could’ve met Joseph when I knew him. I’m lucky to have been his friend.

I’d never ask this for myself, no matter what. Please help my friend Joseph.

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Update: 6-1-2020

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Over the last several weeks of distance learning for my son and dealing with the other effects of the Corona crisis, I’ve found time to read books in the wee small hours.

A notable effort is Alex Berenson’s nonfiction book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence. The issue of pot in America is so fraught with misinformation, competing political narratives, and controversy that before Berenson’s book it was impossible to determine fact from fiction about any of it. After Berenson’s book it’s still impossible, but what Berenson does is shine a spotlight on the potential dangers of marijuana, and how we did so little research of any kind before decriminalizing it in major areas of the U.S. There’s a massive difference between cannabinoid oil used for medicinal purposes and the THC in today’s marijuana, and pot lobbyists have exploited ignorance about the one to promote use of the other. We don’t know a great deal about both long- and short-term use of today’s strains of pot, and yet we’ve accepted marijuana as a cure-all for everything from insomnia to nausea to anxiety. Berenson does as well as anyone can to cut through the jargon and misinformation, but there’s so much garbage that his book can only be considered a necessary first step to understanding a subject few people seem to want to get to the bottom of.

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I first discovered Jonathan Carroll’s novels in the house of friends who let me stay with them the first few weeks I moved to Colorado decades ago, and I’ll be eternally grateful to them for both their hospitality and library. At the time I started with Carroll’s Sleeping in Flame, a book about a man who discovers that he comes from a far stranger and yet more familiar place than he realizes, and he has to come to terms with a nightmarish legacy that threatens to turn his entire reality inside-out. Surreal, bizarre, and yet matter-of-fact, it’s the perfect introduction to Carroll’s incredible universe of magical realism. Over the years I acquired every Carroll book I could get my hands on, and enjoyed them all.

But, as it turned out, I’d read some of them out of order, namely the Answered Prayers series.

Answered Prayers follows the lives of people touched by the surreal, all of whom know each other in some way: Walker Easterling, Cullen James, Weber Gregston, and others. Odd names, yes. And, like most of Carroll’s books, at least some of the action takes place in Vienna, Austria. While I don’t think I missed anything by reading them out of order, over the last few weeks I reread the series in order of publication, getting the overarching story in full:

  1. Bones of the Moon
  2. Sleeping in Flame
  3. A Child Across the Sky
  4. Outside the Dog Museum
  5. After Silence
  6. From the Teeth of Angels

After Silence is a bit of an outlier, referencing characters from the other novels but lacking the magical connection that binds them. Outside the Dog Museum is kind of a frustrating read, with the protagonist a difficult person to like and a lot going on without much resolution. From the Teeth of Angels is the most disturbing work of the series, and leaves an unsettling mark on you long after you’re done reading it.

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In addition to reading, I did some writing for Romans One.

This piece talks about going somewhere outside of Hollywood for your entertainment:

You can rail about empty Hollywood tripe produced by hateful narcissists every single day, but until you make the difficult and necessary choice of not watching it, even the stuff you like, you’re contributing to a horribly corrosive system that will never change on its own. The more time and money you give them, the more sewage they’ll pump out.

And here, I discuss social media:

The use of social media, with its laughing/crying emojis, eye-rolling gifs, and relative anonymity, separates the true self from the internet version in ways that make us all seem awful and unlovable. The consequences of ruining someone’s afternoon over a disagreement are minimal, at best. Pile-ons are encouraged. If your ideological opponent says something patently stupid, it would be wrong not to ratio him. Right? Teach that “dummy” a lesson.

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Reading books and avoiding the social media dopamine circus make me more into the person I want to be, so I’m going to continue to do that. I encourage you to do the same.

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Deeper Glimpses into the Corona Universe

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The Coronavirus death toll has risen of late, but the number of Corona cases has dropped. Because we’ve been relying on models that have been wrong from the very beginning, and nobody seems to have a decent grasp on the data, it’s difficult to determine how much of this is an improvement. The talking heads in our news media, those who don’t have an interest in maintaining a sense of panic, have suggested that we’re turning the corner or flattening the curve: choose the cliché that best comforts.

If the improvement is to be believed, then we should consider next steps: examining our reaction to the crisis and doing what’s necessary to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Many of us are already demanding accountability, whether that comes from impeaching the Bad Orange Man again, demanding reparations from Xi Jinpooh, or some combination of that. We don’t live in a world of accountability anymore, if we ever did. People fail up, not down. Not only that, but demands for accountability are, for the most part, misplaced in their targets. I know who I’d want to hold accountable, and it’s most likely not who you’d want to pay for the loss of lives and livelihood. The people hollering for accountability also generally tend to demand closure in personal relationships, which is a virtual impossibility. Closure, the way it’s wished for, is a gift as rare as the Hope Diamond. It never happens the way you want it. The only people who can offer closure are fiction writers, and that’s their job: to give you the make-believe justice you don’t get in the real world. A world that offers closure is a world that doesn’t need stories. No accountability, no closure. Deal with it.

So the best we can do is hunker down, protect our own, and prepare for the next dose of abject stupidity from our political, cultural, and intellectual leaders.

What’s odd about this situation is how convenient it is, from a broader political/cultural standpoint. We’re told that the best thing we could do during this major worldwide crisis is literally stay at home. Don’t interact with others outside of the gigantic poisonous cauldron that is social media. Don’t go to church or synagogue. Just sit there and suckle the glass teat until you’re told it’s safe to go out again. It’s the Slacktivist Cataclysm, where social media and television-addicted shut-ins are saving the world by doing what they do every day: holing up and ordering delivery. Previous generations went without sugar and meat, they planted victory gardens for food to support the war effort. Today, we hoard toilet paper and glue our eyes to Netflix to support the War on COVID-19. And if you question the wisdom of shutting down the world economy to combat Coronavirus, you find yourself trapped in Manichean stupidity: Don’t die for Wall Street. Stay inside or you’re killing grandpa. Don’t you care?

I’ve noticed a creeping escalation in my locale, where requiring social distance through force of law is no longer good enough. First they told us not to gather in large groups. Then they shut down non-essential businesses (I’d argue that if your business remaining open means the difference between personal ruin and personal survival, it’s pretty damned essential). Now they’re shutting down entire public areas to make sure you diseased proles stay socially distanced.

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CLOSED. No swings for you. People could die, you know. And it’d be your fault.

Also CLOSED. For your own good. 

Not only is this playground CLOSED, but the powers that be took the extraordinary step of removing the basketball hoops and backboards from the posts because HORSE kills. 

This is the world we live in: misery and isolation, with neighborhood oligarchs hoarding toilet paper. CHOOSE SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

Next week I might have something different, something non-COVID-related, but who knows? It’s the only story anywhere. The information we get is different every day, the massaged data is sketchy at best, and virus mitigation techniques have already devolved into stupid TSA-style security theater. Just keep your mouth shut and stay inside.

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