Before you know it
you're on the path.
The table in question sits on the second floor of a bright pink two-story on Santa Rita Avenue. It’s a kitchen table, tall enough to stand at, wooden, with corroded white legs and a strong brown surface.
Next to said table is a package.
A lone package, a rogue package, a package I’m procrastinating (like a nervous teenager) to send.
The last package.
Inside said package is a book, the same one that likely sits somewhere in your living room, or beneath the coffee table, or in the back seat.
People often ask me about the book in question:
You wrote an entire book? How? What inspired you?
There are a million answers to that question. The first comes from The Handmaid’s Tale’s Margaret Atwood.
I’ve always been fascinated by language.
In college, a friend encouraged me to study Linguistics. Instead, I chose Economics (for pragmatism) and English (for passion). Instead of studying, I would nestle down in my favorite corner on the lawn in front of Healy Hall , with a book of short stories, and write one of my own.
In high school, I wrote essays pretending to be inanimate objects.
Two English teachers, Mr. Brocato and Mr Kenney, asked for “creative writing,” but gave us free rein. I didn’t write about a football game, or Hemingway’s boat, or Charle’s Dickens. I took the perspective of a candle holder living in Nazi Germany, and the bullet that killed JFK.
Looking back, I even see it in elementary school.
One month-long period comes to mind. I covered our entire basement with toys: army men, superheroes, Russian dolls, animals, wizards, athletes, firetrucks, ladders, pokemon. Every day, I would go into my lair and bring those characters to life. Then, a day later, we’d pickup where we had left off …🤔
How about today?
The book, inside the package, at the foot of the table, upstairs in the bright-pink two-story in Austin, Texas was born out of 25-year-old-Jeremy being:
A cold-hearted Creature of Habit
A lonesome 8-wing-7
And…… obsessive
Next week I’ll dive into exactly what I mean by:
Some housekeeping:
I’m being encouraged to publish some of the short stories I’ve written over the last few years. If you like this idea and would want to read them, let me know.
—Ciao amigos. Appreciate your reading 🙏
Jeremy