Twitter Disaster and Sun God Children

I haven’t written a blog post in a while, but I suspect the blog postings will become more frequent now that Elon Musk has decided that Twitter is his own, private, entertainment software. For a while, I have been posting on Twitter, trying to generate interest in the book that I continue to work on (almost 10 years now). But there is no engagement there anymore. I guess rather than being for creatives, the forum is for outlandish statements and controversial political viewpoints, which is not a place that’s likely to be a pillar of intellectual discussion or entertainment. I know this sounds a bit like sour grapes and if it is, so be it. Part of being a writer/illustrator is being fiercely independent so that I feel free to push the bounds of creative endeavors, such as traditional boundaries with my writing of Literary Fiction. Sometimes my writing makes people feel a bit disturbed when they read it. It’s called “feeling something”, a ritual much needed into today’s homogenized, stereotyped content. Literary Fiction is acutely known for helping people learn to feel empathy and Literary Fiction works struggle to fulfill that promise in a strong way. Many movies on the screen, today, struggle with this. You can tell the ones that fail to make you feel something when you start getting that feeling that you are watching a video game on Autoplay.

There have been a number of really great movies that have flopped recently simply because you watch them and feel nothing. This especially happens in movies where the creators have really cool ideas and really great special effect that scream, “Hey, I’m cool. You should want to live in my world.” One that comes to mind is Disney’s recent “Tron Legacy” movie. That movie is really cool on the surface. I really don’t think they could have done a better job on special effects. But in terms of emotional connection… it was like watching a rockem sockem robots video game. The character, Cora, actually does break through all the blather with her expressions and body language. Those two elements were so strong she could have been screaming emotional dialog yet she accomplished the same thing with just a glance. As they say in the movie, it’s her innocence, her naivety on the treachery of humans, yet her seemingly, quiet, profound intelligence that made her communication so strong. The fact that she could operate and understand all of the technology of the world, be well read for the real world, yet so gullible screams real, live, sensitive human being. You can’t help but be on her side… be empathetic. The Flynns… well, robot father who creates robot world that traps robot son. They are so busy trying to convince you that they are so cool and profound that really, they come across as spoiled people who you couldn’t give a shit about. On the flipside of this equation is Disney’s Andor series playing on Disney+. I was stunned that anyone, let alone Disney, would make a series based on something that, at least script wise, seems like Literary Fiction. It’s well worth a watch. If you think it is too slow and boring, go visit TikTok. They have content for you.

So as I sit at 592,000 words on “Stefan’s Owl from Oblivion” and wonder how to make it better, I leave you with an excerpt from the book. In a sense, I am experimenting on you to see what you will do with it. And by the way, if you have JavaScript turned off on your browser while you read this, then you don’t exist. My web statistics software will not see you as a human, but as a robot or some hacker. Certainly not as a flesh and blood reader.

In the excerpt below, Patrick and Syon look like normal fourteen-year-old boys except that they have yellow patches in their otherwise blue eyes. What the world doesn’t know (and Syon doesn’t know yet) is that they are Sun Gods. Patrick and Syon are twins raised apart who can hear each other's thoughts, with Patrick being raised by an Air Force General (the one who shot down the ship bringing these Sun God children as a gift to humanity) and Syon has been adopted and is being raised by a perpetually drunk person in the UK who frequently beats him bloody. In this scene, Syon has been released from the hospital after being treated for a severe fall down concrete steps. Ty is an eight-year-old boy adopted by Fredrick Docherty, a former British assassin. Docherty would like to get Syon away from his abusive father and mother, and adopt Syon as his son. Right now, he is temporarily sheltering Syon.