So you say you’ll vote third party or sit out the election because Clinton makes you angry. You’re not worried about Trump because he’ll lose anyway, and besides, if Clinton loses, it will be because she failed to bring the left wing together.

You keep saying that a Trump win would be “on Clinton.” The contention, as near as I can tell, is that if Trump wins, it will be Clinton’s fault. I guess this helps you soothe your conscience as a voter.

So let’s be honest about what we’re talking about here. One of the candidates is a transparent fascist, a man who has publicly announced his intent to use nuclear weapons and drag the entire globe into war, a man who constantly denigrates women and makes lewd comments about his own daughter on national television, and who has repeatedly threatened to make life hell for everyone who is not a cisgendered white male. The other is a progressive with an excellent resume whose politics you don’t agree with 100%.

Because you are “angry,” because you are “disillusioned,” you’ve decided to withhold your vote from this race. You have the power to influence the result, or at least the strength of the result, in what is without a doubt the most important presidential election in our lifetimes, but rather than use that power you will abdicate it. This is okay in your mind because if Clinton loses it will be her own fault for not being exactly the person you think she should be.

Is that it? Am I understanding the argument?

Because my understanding is that YOU are the voter. YOU will be making a choice, either to have a voice in this election or to stay silent. If YOU make the decision to cut off YOUR OWN voice, that is not on Clinton. That is on YOU.

Tell yourself whatever lies you need to so that you can find a way to “stand on principle” and grant this horrific egomaniac, this wannabe dictator, a chance for power on a global stage. Tell yourself they’re the same. Tell yourself that Clinton would be just as bad – that she would also use national catastrophes to talk about how right she is, that she would also turn families against each other and advocate violence as a solution to political disagreement, that she would actively seek to dismantle our free press, share military secrets with Russia, and “joke” about how great fascism is.

But you cannot change the fact that responsibility for your vote is YOURS. It is not Clinton’s. It is not Trump’s (at least, not yet). It’s not mine, no matter how much your decision may appall me. It is YOURS. Pretending otherwise is cowardly and intellectually dishonest.

You’re better than that . . . aren’t you?

So you may have heard about these emails that Russian hackers got ahold of and released to Wikileaks. I see some Sanders supporters claiming they’re proof of a “rigged election” and some Clinton supporters claiming they really don’t matter, but this post isn’t about my opinion in that regard. This post is about one particular line of attack laid out in the emails—namely, a proposal to attack Bernie Sanders for his suspected atheism—and why I am so happy to see it.

Here’s the quote (from ABC News link above):

“It may make no difference but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Brad Marshall, CFO of the DNC, wrote in an email on May 5, 2016. “He had skated on having a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

So. The DNC considered trying to label Sanders an atheist, on the assumption that such a label would really hurt him in Kentucky and Washington. As an atheist, shouldn’t I be outraged? Shouldn’t I be marching and chanting and trying to shut down the National Convention?

Absolutely not. I’m happy. Thrilled, in fact. Why? Because they discussed this tactic, and didn’t do it. Someone at the DNC said no.

This Brad Marshall is the CFO there. That’s no small position. I assume he commands some respect and bends plenty of ears. But either someone higher up shut the idea down, or someone with a cooler head persuaded him out of the idea. Either way, the strategy died in his Out Box.

This is an absolute, abject win for atheists and a resounding affirmation of my plan to vote blue in November. Marshall is probably right: labeling a candidate as an atheist probably would bring down his support, particularly in the South. Atheists are the country’s punching bag: it’s a free hit, everyone can take a turn! From that standpoint, it was a sound, if ruthless, political strategy. The Republicans wouldn’t have hesitated to employ it against Sanders or any other candidate. To them, atheist is a dirty word, dirtier than gay, black, or even (gasp!) Muslim—at least in politics. Ten years ago, the same would’ve been true of the Democrats. I can’t remember a time in the past when they’ve hesitated to slam someone for their secularism.

But they did this time.

Why? Is it because they’ve had a change of heart? They’ve taken on a greater interest in the secular cause? Is it maybe because they realized nearly 23% of Americans now have no religious affiliation, and a lot of ’em are probably progressives?

I don’t know the reason and likely never will, but the optimist in me can’t help taking a great deal of heart from their decision. Secretly I hope it was because some number of the high-ranking muckety-mucks in the DNC are atheists themselves.

Whatever the reason, they refrained—and for all the 23% of Americans who may have been slighted by such an attack, regardless of political stripe or social status, that can only be good news.

A full-throated defense of instilling drive in our children.

There’s a growing trend in parenting, and it really bugs me. That trend is “Don’t tell your kids they can be anything.” For a little example, take a look at this opinion piece in The Washington Post by clinical psychologist, parent educator, and mother of two, Erica Reischer.

The argument goes that no given kid can be anything they want, so we should stop telling them they can. Ms. Reischer’s piece claims that children who strive toward a dream get hurt in the long run (though none of the so-called “evidence” for this claim is actually relevant), and that chance plays a much larger factor in most success stories than skill or hard work.

Strangely, Ms. Reischer seems to stop short of explaining to us what we should be telling our kids. “Don’t work hard, it’s all up to chance?” Or perhaps, “Don’t aim high, it will be damaging to your psyche?”

Of course no child can be everything. Of course most children won’t grow up to be astronauts or Supreme Court justices. But since when did unvarnished truth become the best way to raise children?

This trend infuriates me, because it always comes from a bunch of adults who think they have to “adult-splain” the world to kids. The world is different for kids. They don’t understand how it works. They are just learning. My six-year-old wanted to be an astronaut. She also wants to be a ninja, a teacher, and a McDonald’s employee. Apparently I am supposed to tell her, “There are no ninjas anymore, you’ll never be an astronaut because most people aren’t, and teachers and McDonald’s employees are underpaid.”

Here are my main issues with this point of view:

1) Where do you draw the line?

News flash: astronauts exist. So do presidents, ambassadors, best-selling authors, world-famous pop stars, and Really Good Sportsers.

Actually, so do senators, and state representatives, and college coaches and not-bestselling-but-still-quite-fulfilled-thank-you-very-much authors, musicians, and game designers.

As do city council members, community organizers, local high school debate coaches, and cover bands.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? Why only cut off the top tier? As long as we’re telling our children precisely what they can’t be, why not try to nail it down a little further?

“Timmy, you can’t be a Supreme Court justice. That’s just not in the cards for most people. Even an appointee to a federal bench is honestly a long shot. State court? Maaaaybe, but probably not. Most people don’t do that either. Instead of hearing cases, you could present them. They always need public defenders, but the budget really isn’t there for them and I hear the job sucks, and obviously being a high-powered corporate attorney is out the window because most people don’t do that either. You know what, maybe you should just forget the entire legal system. It’s just not for you. Now go brush your teeth and get ready for bed.”

Furthermore, what seems unachievable in one home will seem like the only possibility in another. Eliminating the idea that kids can be anything they want to be means incrementally normalizing the idea that kids should be what their parents want them to be. Most parents already put enough pressure on their kids in this direction, but the idea that kids should have no limits on their aspirations currently serves to combat it. Once we as a society decide kids shouldn’t be “lied to” any more about their odds, why not take that conversation to the next step?

“You know, Timmy, Daddy’s always been a project manager. That’s a nice, reasonable job to aim for with a decent salary. Obviously it’s something you can achieve, because it’s something I achieved, and I’m incapable of looking beyond my own personal experience when deciding what you should do when you grow up.”

2) Who the hell are we?

How do we know what our kids are going to be when they grow up, and who gave us the right to tell them what they can and can’t do? We don’t know the future. We only know the odds.

I can tell my daughter, “There are no ninjas,” but do I really know that? The kid has a serious knack for hiding and sneaking into rooms undetected. There are professions where that kind of skill can be handy. (Unless being spec ops is aiming too high. Maybe a cop? Can she be a cop? Maybe that’s aiming too high, too. Is PI okay?)

Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s parents believe she would be a Supreme Court justice (and a damned good one, at that)? Doubtful. If she’d mentioned it as a young child (which she probably didn’t) and they’d told her to aim lower, wouldn’t they have looked like small-minded idiots?

3) Kids don’t differentiate

Like I said, my daughter considered McDonald’s worker, astronaut, and ninja all to be completely interchangeable and perfectly valid life goals. If I tell her she won’t be an astronaut and to start aiming lower, she has no context for that. She doesn’t understand what “aiming lower” means. She doesn’t consider McDonald’s employee to be “lower.” She understands it’s different, but not that it pays less or requires less skill and is therefore more achievable, nor should she.

So her takeaway message is simple: “I can’t.”

Daddy said I can’t do the thing I wanted to do. He had reasons, but I’m six, and my main takeaway is that I can’t do what I want to do.

This is a kick in the teeth to the development process. The message is: Stop aspiring. Stop planning. Stop acting like such a child.

4) You must aim high

 This is an obvious one, so obvious that it floors me that people don’t think of it and automatically short-circuit this asinine argument on their own. Yes, it’s true: you will rarely hit your goal.

BUT THE HIGHER YOU AIM, THE HIGHER YOU HIT.

This is a simple lesson that a six-year-old can understand. If you aim for the stars, you might hit the stars. But if you don’t, you may hit the moon, or at least the top of the next tree over. Both are better than landing in the dirt, which is what will happen if you start by aiming for the top of the tree. And if you start by aiming at the dirt, or not aiming at all, you’ll most likely fall flat on your face.

My children don’t need to know that I’m trying to set them up to fly as far as they can by letting them aim as high as they want. If they miss their mark (as most people do), at least they’ll have taken the shot, and despite Ms. Reischer’s insistence that goals are bad for us, they will be better human beings for having made the attempt.

If my daughter doesn’t get to be the President of These United States, I bet you her interest therein will result in an adult that’s well-rounded, informed about politics, and an excellent civil citizen. That’s a pretty nice bar to clear, and if she ends up in law or a political career of any kind because of her interest in the path toward the presidency, I’d say she did pretty well for herself.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Then I wanted to make movies, then I wanted to make video games. I wrote out lots of video games in notebooks. My interest in this passion drove me to learn computer programming, a skill which I used to great effect during my time in corporate America and in my independent pursuits. It also drove me to write pen-and-paper game systems, lots of them, many of which I have played with my friends. It has become a lifelong hobby that has brought me thousands of hours of excitement and enjoyment. I have never sold one of these games, nor even tried. No, I never became a video game designer, but to this day I feel pretty confident that I could’ve (and probably still could, if I wanted to).

If my mother had told me, “You’re aiming too high. Most people don’t get to become video game designers, Adam. Aim lower,” it might have stripped me of one of the most precious hobbies I have.

5) Exploration is part of development

It is normal for kids to lurch around from interest to interest, trying them all, and to fantasize about what they could achieve within the realm of each. It is healthy. It is necessary. There is no need for a parent to gum up the works by inserting their perspective into the process. We keep that crap to ourselves because our kids need to explore—not get shut down.

 6) Kids will enter the School of Hard Knocks soon enough

 And the horrible, sad truth is, they are so easy to shut down. The world is going to chew them up and spit them out. It is not going to encourage them. It is not going to tell them they can do it. That voice needs to come from within them, or it won’t come at all.

But guess what? That internal voice isn’t theirs. As parents, we are our kids’ internal voices. Ours are the words of support or despair that they hear in their hearts when the world gets rough.

We have those first few, precious years to get them ready for a life of beatings. The message doesn’t need to be deeply nuanced. It’s actually pretty simple: “Yes, it will be hard. Yes, it will take a lot of work. But you can do it. I believe in you.”

Those early years with my mom, she was constantly propping me up, constantly telling me I could do anything. It gave me enough self-esteem to weather a lot of crap. She is still a wellspring of that support today. When she tells me she believes in me, it is like gassing up at the station before diving back in to the endless, brutal road trip of the universe.

Of course our kids need to know that hard work matters. Of course they need to know that we’ll be proud of them and love them whether they hit those stars or just skim the treetops. And of course, if they don’t eventually realize it on their own, we can help them understand that chance also plays a role.

But without that core of confidence, they will have no strength to make it through the first round of pummelings that the world sends their way. Infuse them with strength. Start them off powerful, so after the world has worn them down, there is still something there.

Tell them they can be anything. Let them try everything.

They will find something wonderful.

Yesterday my first novel, Alex, hit an incredible milestone: 1,000 reader reviews on Amazon.com.

The big 1-K.

When I published the book three years ago as an independent author, I never would have guessed that I could hit this level.  There are authors out there selling significantly more books than I am, that have a bigger backlist and more readers than I do, that don’t get half this number of reviews on their best-selling novels.  I certainly never expected to get the kind of review volumes normally reserved for Stephen King books.

If there’s one thing that writing has taught me, it’s that the definition of “success” is fluid.  To one person it might mean sales, to another it might mean connecting with people on an emotional level.  To another the definition might morph, constantly taking on whatever shape is necessary in order to disqualify that person’s achievements to date.  I’ll admit that I’ve struggled with that last one in the past.  

But man… it’s hard to argue with that number.  I’m still astounded by the idea that 1,000 people have even read a book of mine, let alone that that many were affected enough by what they read (one way or another) to leave a review.   Yesterday my son saw Alex’s product page and asked what the review number meant.  After I told him, he said, “What??  A thousand people??  I never knew my dad was famous!”  In that instant I realized what my personal definition of success was.  I also realized that I’d hit it.

I want to write a lot of novels.  My plans have been disrupted over and over again since the moment when I had planned to focus on writing more heavily, which is a constant source of trepidation for me and a fact that I am always beating myself up with.  But today, I’m cutting myself a little slack.

One thousand?  Wow.

Cool.

My goal this year was to release two books: A Season of Rendings and another, “Alex-ey” type book with a TBD title.  I’ve spent the year to date working hard on Season, but it turns out the idea of writing a novel of that length and complexity in six months had absolutely no basis in reality.  Given that its predecessor, Children of a Broken Sky, took about 10 years to write, I suppose this information shouldn’t surprise me.

Put simply, there is no way I’m going to finish Season this year.  That leaves me with two options.

1) Plow forward on Season and release it when it’s ready, probably late next year.

2) Take a break to finish the other book, already nearing the 10% mark.

I’ve decided to go ahead with option 2.  The book is tentatively titled Todd.  

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve heard me complain about this already, but Season is really complex and difficult to write.  That’s not to say I don’t enjoy doing it – I do.  I love the setting and the characters and I am really psyched to share the events of the second book.  But it goes slowly, because it is the second book in a 6-part series and it’s fantasy.  You might think fantasy would be easier to write because you can just make up the world as you go along, but that’s not the case.  Every few paragraphs I have to stop to double-check some bit of minutiae and make sure I’m not making a mistake.  Can I use the word “ounce?”  Am I spelling this First Tongue word correctly?  Am I referring to events from the last book correctly?  Is this a good place to foreshadow something that happens two books from now?  Do I want to foreshadow that event?  Have I decided for sure that’s how things are going down?

Contrast this with Todd, which involves two main characters in a story told in the real world from a first-person POV.  The themes are established and straight-forward; I know the beginning, middle, and end.  Opposite Season, writing Todd  is downright free-wheeling.

There is a phrase many authors are familiar with, regardless of their stripe: “Publish or die.”  I quit a day job nearly two years ago to spend more time writing books.  I refuse to let a year go by without publishing a novel.

I want to re-emphasize that Season is not going away.  I will spend more time working on it next year, and I’m still in the process of getting the cover done as we speak.  I’m not leaving the The Redemption Chronicle; I’ve put too much effort into it and loved the place for too long to abandon it.  But I do need to be realistic about how much time it takes to write.  My electrician once asked me if TRC would be my Dark Tower.  Maybe the answer is yes, in more ways than one.  Dark Tower came out more-or-less piecemeal over a number of decades.  I don’t plan to let TRC run out that long, but if I were to focus on it exclusively, my output would probably drop to one book every couple years. That’s just too slow.  And the truth is, I would be disappointing a number of my fans who started reading with Alex and don’t really read fantasy.  The better solution, I think, is to keep writing the “Alex-ey” books (I have six or seven write-able ideas) and work on TRC between them.  That way, I can try to keep everyone as happy as possible, including myself.

So that’s the plan.  I’ll keep you posted on Season’s progress and expected release date.  In the interim, I can promise you that Todd will be available by the end of the year.