Loose Wires

Things I would have posted about on social media this past week, but didn’t.

My son drew this picture of me. I sent it to his grandma and she thinks he’s the next Basquiat now.

1

One day, when my daughter is much older, I’m going to be able to tell her that when she was three years old we went to a book reading and she had a chance to give Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a hug, but instead she had to be quickly escorted out of venue because she kept yelling “poop” out loud and everyone around us stared at her — and me.

Mostly me.

2

I had a really stressful week — things piling up at the day job, a few different deadlines outside of my day job, and my son started a brand new school and was struggling with the transition in the midst of all of this — and for some reason, I kept thinking to myself that buying the new Apple Watch would solve all of my problems.

I’m not sure how this idea burrowed its way into my mind, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t shake it.

Ain’t capitalism a motherfucking bitch?

3

My son read a whole book on his own for the very first time this week — largely because his mom and I spent hours each night at the dining table helping practice through it so he could complete his homework assignment at his new school, which was to upload a video of him reading the entire book (10 pages) by himself by the end of the week.

When he finally completed the assignment on his own on Friday evening, I felt so proud — prouder, even than the publication of my own book or any subsequent honor that it has received since publication.

4

While helping my son with his homework this week, I had to point out to him who the author of this book was, as well as the illustrator, and explain to him the job of both people.

I’ve told my son that I write books before, but he’s never really understood. He’s five. But for the first time, I feel like he did.

“You wrote a book?” he asked.

I pulled my debut novel Victim off a shelf. “Yes, Daddy wrote this book.”

He looked at it for a second. “When?”

“In the mornings, when you were asleep.”

“And did you make the cover?”

“No, a designer did.”

“So what did you do?”

“I wrote the words.”

Another stare at the cover. “But you didn’t make the cover?”

“No, a designer did.” I opened the book and skimmed through the pages, showing him the words. “Daddy typed all these words up and put them in the book.”

“Oh,” he said. And then, “but you didn’t make the cover?”

“No, I didn’t make the cover.”

He tossed the book on the table and left to go and play with his toys in his bedroom.

5

I’ve been asked for a lot of blurbs lately — I have three in the queue I’m on the hook for — and I realize now why writers complain about this so much. It is a lot of unpaid work to read a novel you weren’t necessarily asking to read, and this unpaid work starts to really add up when you already have other things to do and other books you want to read for your own fulfillment.

For whatever reason, I was thinking a lot about this work ahead of me this week, and that made me think about some of the writers who helped me with blurbs along the way when Victim was in it’s publication process. I thought about this so much that I randomly sent one of the writers who helped me out a ton an email, just to thank them again.

He is a superstar writer, and I realize now, just with the requests that I’ve gotten lately (I’m nowhere near his level), just how special it was for him to take time out of his schedule to read my work and give me a blurb and answer all the emails he’d previously answered from me about agents and so forth before I even sent him the completed novel.

So, yes, as difficult as it is to juggle the work of providing blurbs in the midst of my other work and responsibilities, I’m happy to do it. Although it can feel stressful at times, and I have all these other books I’ve purchased that I want to read, it feels pretty damn cool to be able to pay it forward and make the sorts of sacrifices that others made for me when they totally didn’t have to.

6

I’m on record as saying that I read my Goodreads reviews. I think most writers do, they just don’t like to admit it — or they find that it’s cooler to say things like, “I don’t read my reviews.”

I just like to keep it a buck with you.

In any case, I checked in recently and saw there were over 4,000 ratings of Victim. It felt pretty amazing to know that many people have not only read the novel, but also took the time to rate it.

I really liked the latest review that I saw, which was a five star review from a reader named Amy who simply said: “what an uncomfortable read.”

7

Now that I’m an author with a novel out in the world, whenever Latino History Month rolls around, I feel the need to remind people I’m Puerto Rican. But then I feel weird incredibly about doing so.

Why should this random month make me want to advertise my identity? Who created this game? What’s the point of participating? If you really wanted to read about Latino culture, do you really need a month — which is really like the mid section of two months — to remind you to do so?

But also, did I tell you that I’m Puerto Rican?

8

I don’t know how I landed on it, but I started listening to some episodes of Theo Von’s podcast, This Past Weekend.

I like Theo Von. I’d never listened to him before, and have never seen him anywhere else — though I gather he’s a comedian of some sort? In my mind, he’s sort of like Joe Rogan, but I like him because he’s more earnest. He’s also less into psychedelics and aliens and doesn’t go off on tangents nearly as much.

I enjoy Theo’s, I’m just a dumb guy from Louisiana asking questions, schtick. His questions are actually pretty good, and I think his affect goes a long way toward disarming his high-profile guests and getting them to show sides of themselves that you don’t normally see.

I recently listened to episodes featuring Sam Altman, Alexandr Wang, Mark Zukerberg, and Ben Affleck, all of which I enjoyed.

9

I bought these books this past week, for reasons I’ve tried to nail down here.

Everyone seems to be concerned with the fact that not enough people are reading these days, and that publishing houses and the people who work for them are struggling to understand what gets someone to actually spend money on a novel. I thought it might help to spell my own purchases out.

1. Exiles by Mason Coile — I read the New York Times review of this novel, which found the book uneven, but I liked enough of what I read to want to give it a try.

2. Discontent by Beatriz Serrano — I saw that this novel was on the USA Today Bestseller list and I really liked the description of it. I like workplace novels and want to write one of my own one day, so I justified this random purchase as “research.”
   

3. Muscle Man by Jordan Castro — I vaguely knew that Castro’s new novel was coming out soon, and I’ve been meaning to read it as I enjoyed The Novelist and find him to be an interesting contemporary writer. I’ve also met him in person once and he was pretty cool.
   

4. Square Waves by Mark De Silva — Before I got off social media I noticed De Silva posting on X, and was curious who the hell he was. In any case, I noticed he was on a podcast and listened to it and enjoyed it and realized he’d written a couple of novels that were well regarded in the past so I decided to give one a spin.
   

5. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw — I honestly don’t remember why I ordered this one. I saw something, somewhere, probably in an article, that referenced that the play (which I didn’t even know it was a play until it arrived in the mail) was about class mobility. That was enough to get me to pull out my wallet. I think a lot about class mobility, and will probably be writing about it for the rest of my career in one way or another.

11

When I took my kids to the Sonia Sotomayor book event the other night, one of the things that I did stick around to hear (before I had to drag my daughter out kicking and screaming, and before my son before had to be taken out by a friend who also brought their kids who were also acting up) was that Sotomayor was a rambunctious kid when she was younger and often gave her mother a lot of problems.

The morning after the book reading, as I reflected about how poorly it went — I didn’t get to see a good chunk of her talk, or get my book signed — I was with my son waiting for his swimming class to start. He was jumping between benches and jumping off the walls (literally) and I realized, perhaps for the first time, that he actually couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t being disobedient. He’s just five years old and a hyperactive boy and doesn’t have it in him to sit still at this age. He has all this pent up energy and it’s dying to escape.

It often bothers me that my kids have trouble sitting still. Or, actually, that’s not true. It bothers me that I see other kids out there who seemingly can sit still, or who don’t seem to be as hyperactive as my own. It makes me wonder if I’m doing something wrong. Am I the problem?

I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. But I will say that hearing a brilliant Supreme Court Justice share that she acted the way my children did as a child, made me feel a hell of a lot better.

12

I ended up buying the new Apple Watch. It didn’t solve all of my problems, but it is pretty cool.

End Notes:

I recently decided I don’t have enough time to spend on social media, or Substack notes — which is social media. It’s the new Twitter. It’s fun to post there, but checking notifications and responding to things ends up taking a lot of time, and I’m trying to be really careful about how I spend my time.

What I don’t like about social media, among many other things, is that it rewires your brain to think in terms of posts. You’re just living through your life and experiencing something and think, oh, I should post that. But that’s fucking weird if you stop and think about it. Without even realizing it, this platform, these algorithms, these engineers, have wired us to experience things or think things and then instantly consider how we might translate those experiences, or those thoughts, to others in bite-size forms so other people can read them and like them and comment on them and share them or stew about them and post their own things in response to them and we all just stay on the platform longer and longer.

My brain has been rewired in this way, sadly, and I’ve decided that since I’m off social media for the most part, I’ll gather some of the random missives I have thought about posting and collect them here. Something about writing them out and shaping them in this space, and releasing them on my own terms, feels a little healthier.

In other news, if you’re in Miami, I implore you to come to Books & Books in Coral Gables on Thursday, October 2nd, as I’ll be in conversation with John J. Lennon about his book The Tragedy of True Crime. John is currently incarcerated (he’s serving year 25 of a 28 year bid for murder) and the conversation between us will take place on the phone (he’ll be phoning in from his cell). It’s a bit of an experimental event, to say the least, and I’m honored to be part of it. John’s book is also fucking incredible, and will make you rethink entirely your proclivities for reading or watching true crime.

Peace,

Andrew