I am extremely thankful Tina and the girls helped me make Bookcon a priority this year. It’s been such a long time since I wrote anything that wasn’t aimed at making my kids laugh that I’d forgotten I had a bunch of other interests in the world of letters. I’ve talked with my friend Hugh J. Martin (a veteran and poet friend of mine) about coincidence in the past, and I do believe many of the “crazy” interactions we have in our lives probably aren’t all that crazy to anyone other than ourselves. But yesterday, my table was beside Jim and Marianne Zarzana’s. They were both great to talk to, and I’m grateful that is where Grace Downey and the crew at the library put me because meeting both of them made the day a lot more enjoyable.
The crazy coincidence of the say was not that I was seated next to writers at a book convention, but when Jim and Marianne left to teach a workshop for an hour, their friend sat-in for them to sell their books until they returned. Tom O'Grady was his name, and we chatted a bit about this and that before Flann O’Brien came up. I can’t remember how we got onto the subject, but Flann is one of the writers who helped get me through my Ph. D when I was nearing my wits’ end. O’Grady was not only a fan of O’Brien, but he’d written articles about him, and then he pointed me to The Parish Review where he has at least one article online currently (something about a pub O’Brien was banned from it seems; I wanted to read it yesterday, but when Bookcon was over, it was quickly apparent that I still had 3 kids and my wife had a conference she needed to pack for; reality dropped the hammer on me quick and hard). Then O’Grady mentioned that a friend of his had just recently completed an Irish language biography of Flann O’Brien and that this friend works at Notre Dame. So it seems there may be more Flann O’Brien in my future.
Okay, fine, Hugh. So you say this is no big deal. That could happen to anyone.
Then O’Grady brings up my military experience to see if I might be interested in learning that one of his daughters (of which he has 3, just like I do), happens to be a correspondent for The Washington Post for the war in Ukraine. Of course I was interested because I am in the process of returning to writing and making art about war and to have more information about the people it is affecting currently will help me to do a much better job of understanding it so that I can do my job better—be it in fiction, nonfiction or painting. So, offhand, I mentioned that I’ve been reading a writer recommended by my friend, Hugh. The writer is Luke Mogelsson, and O’Grady says, “Oh. My daughter is friends with him.” Now it is not surprising that two writers living in Kyiv writing about the war know one another because I assume there are only a few places where journalists stay, but still, it was a nice coincidence to hear that too.
Talking to a stranger about common interests was, of course, not the main goal of the conference, but I never would’ve had this opportunity to have this interaction if a bunch of things outside my control had not happened exactly as they did. The one thing that was essential for me to do in order to make this happen was for me to sign on as a participant in Bookcon and then for me to be there in the seat. It is a coincidence that I was seated next to a man with 3 daughters, who wrote about Flann O’Brien and whose daughter is friends with a writer whose work I am a fan of, and that this man was merely sitting at the table because he was “pinch sitting” (as he liked to say) for his friends while they taught a free workshop at the South Bend Public Library. But had I not said hello, asked questions, and then answered his with honest engagement then surely my time at Bookcon wouldn’t have meant as much.
I don’t want to merely spend time talking about coincidence because there was a lot of good that happened yesterday. My wife and daughters stopped by to say hello. I was glad to disappoint my daughters when I told them I hadn’t sold any books yet. I did walk away with more money than I entered Bookcon with, but I gave more copies to people I chatted with than I sold. Not a good business model, I know. But yesterday what I got more than anything else was a sense of the community that is right here in Michiana that I would not have known about if I had stayed at home.
A great moment was when Dan Breen of Pan-O-Ply stopped by the table to share the current issue with me and let me know that it is a magazine dedicated to local writers and artists. Since my main goal currently is to be involved in art and writing locally, there wasn’t a better person to meet. If you are a local artist or writer then you should check out their website and submit something. I will be soon. First I need to tackle a couple commissions so that my plate is cleared off before summer arrives and my kids start staring at me with wild-eyed wonder and saying, “Daddy, I’m bored,” at 6 a.m.
I don’t now that the folks who stopped at the table want their names scribbled onto the internet, so I will just say I had a few great conversations with people. A couple counseling students came by and gave me a lot of hope for the future with the way they talked about their goals, both of them working toward their degrees while mothering small children. I tip my hat to them because studying is tough enough when you don’t have little ones dependent on you. I talked to an ROTC student attending Notre Dame who plans to go to medical school after finishing her degree in Neuroscience, and I was again given hope for the future because anytime someone who is healthy, intelligent and hard-working chooses to serve the country in that way it reminds me that no matter what things may seem like if you watch network news; good people are doing good things in the world to keep the wolves at bay.
Another great moment was when a woman stopped by with her friends and (husband?) to chat a little, and I found out that her husband worked on A-10s. Those are, and likely always will be, my favorite planes. So it was cool to be able to talk about them for a little while. Yes a coincidence, but this also happened to me once when the guy installing my garage doors let me know that he was in the Air National Guard and is a crew chief for an A-10. There was a squadron based here in Indiana, but I believe they are getting shipped someplace else and being replaced with F-16s. Maybe that’s a story for another time.
Lastly Adam stopped by to talk. He is the library’s social media-er. I don’t know the full job title, but I do know that he had something pretty great to say about advertising. He and I commiserated about how gross it feels to “sell” yourself, but what he said was that doing social media work for this Bookcon and other library events was great because he gets to tell people about things that are free. And that made me pretty happy too.
It took a lot of people to make this event happen, and I’m grateful to them for their work. We are lucky to have such great libraries here in St. Joseph County, and we’re lucky the folks who work there are so engaged in bringing people in the community together to show that we have a lot of interesting stuff going on. It is a big world and there is a lot to be seen out there, but don’t forget to look around where you live too. There’s a lot more worth looking at in your backyard than the internet would like you to think.
