“James, for all our sake, will you get out of there before you are just another obit? If you are so fatalistic about the eventual attack that will take you out you must find a new situation for yourself. You apparently enjoyed your trip out west so "Go west young man". I'm just a stranger but feel that I have come to know you. Please take care.”
Dave M
Thank you Dave, for your concern.
Man, if I was young I would have never come back from Wyoming.
But I’m not young. I have put multiple lifetimes on a below average body. Now, as I have a hard time getting into a car, I feel like all 600-plus stick fights happened yesterday. I read thousands of books at the cost of only getting an average of 1.5 hours sleep a day for about 15 years. I just started sleeping more than four hours a day this year—I think, it’s been hazing up lately, the near rear view—and all of a sudden need six, eight…
Sex, which used to be a welcome relief from misery, is now a regular apocalypse of the ego: is the hip going to go out? What about the aductor—is missionary work really forever gone? How much more can my balls hurt before getting an erection causes so much pain that I pass out on the poor girl? With a hand broken seven times even digital sex is harrowing!
To the extent that I try to survive it is only to deny victory to the low life’s who threaten me in the moment and to keep writing. I have never tried to enjoy life, though it has occasionally happened. I have been a survivor and someone who selfishly, obsessively, excessively follows his odd interests. My entire life is structured around the writing. Now, if I were a successful writer I would move to a small town in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. But I do not make enough money to support myself outside of a depressed urban area. I could not live in a bigger city that has higher rent either. In order to live in a rural area I would need to work full time to provide myself with a car which would kill the entire writing thing. I would post a couple times a week, do a book a year and not accomplish much.
Now, B, our reader from Israel, actually sent me a business plan [with a suggestion that I move out of Baltimore], a method by which I could, using only the internet, expand my sales to the point where I could live a decent rural or suburban life off of the writing income. However, this would require me to focus significant writing time on promoting my better selling writing, which would mean pretty much giving up on writing the stuff that no one reads, which is, ironically the writing I care most about.
To the extent that I have any writing income, it is entirely dependent upon the only categories of book I sell, which is the Harm City stuff, and to a lesser extent the boxing stuff. Funny thing, most of my boxing readers are turned away by the Harm City material. They come for a boxing article and leave after they read a Harm City article.
Let me give you one example: Samuel Finlay has written one book. That book has sold more than all of my 110 books combined. Jack Donovan has written 4 books and they have far out sold my 110 books. That is because these guys have done what a writer is supposed to do. Write a book, then spend years talking and writing about it in order to build a readership. I understand that, but can’t do that. I want to get better at writing. If I wanted to make money I would be managing a supermarket for 100K a year and giving most of the money away to women and grandchildren.
There is also a commitment thing to consider. With the breakout of state-sponsored mob crime from Baltimore City into the outlying areas where my sons, grandchildren, mother, aunt, sister and both of my girlfriends live, I lack the resources [both in terms of finances and persuasiveness] to get all of these people out to some safe location where we could all live in safety. I am also wondering, with the rapid dissolution of this nation—happening in such a denied manner under a cloud of perverse delusion—if there is such a place that will be permitted to remain such a place. My family think I’m strange and the ladies wonder why they put up with me, but I’ve proven to be handy in a crisis situation and I do not want to abandon them while I am still useful. There are also the three Baltimore Area fighters I coach and wanting to hang around a few more years to help them through their athletic prime.
There is a reason why writers typically only publish in one narrow field, because modern/postmodern readership is so narrow and fickle that not only do readers not cross over from let’s say, history to boxing to fantasy, but if you write fantasy they won’t trust your history and if your crime writing is not politically correct they won’t read your science-fiction because you’re an asshole.
I am simply writing compulsively, attempting to use my last years to synthesize as much of what I have learned into a readable format on the various subjects which are of interest to me, in hopes that one of these books might help some kid in 2074, just like Will Durant and Robert E. Howard helped me get through the cultural wasteland I was drifting through back in 1974.
This website has become my writing desk and personal library. The only thing that keeps it going, and only barely, is the Harm City writing. If I leave Harm City, within six months there would never again be such an article and the site would die off except for the 100 readers that follow my fiction.
As bad as this place is, I manage to rent a room, eat, go to the dentist twice a year, have two drinks a day, visit a doctor when necessary for free—because we’re friends—and take my grandson out to eat twice a month on only $150 per week, which requires me to work only 18 hours at a grocery store. This festering pit of iniquitous savagery not only provides a writer a cheap place to practice his craft, but also a ringside seat at the Fall of Western Civilization and the rise of whatever shall replace it.
Dave, I have existed for 53 years. Only the last six years have had any substantive meaning to me. The 47-years leading up to this was nothing but a soul-eating struggle to provide for my family and stay alive. Meaning, purpose beyond food and shelter, utterly eluded me for most of what I regard as a cursed existence. Reading and fighting kept me sane—although this is currently a subject of some debate. The younger men in my family have taken on the provider role. The only thing that really keeps me going is peeking behind the curtains of the lie that binds us and attempting to leave a record for whoever my damned counterpart of the future is. I count myself lucky to have lasted this long and will not willingly enter a hospital again. Hopefully, when I overcome my fear of heights—and I’m going to—I will die on the top of that mountain Ishmael and I are going to climb next year, so I don’t have to hear a goddamn siren as I pass. Baring that, I must suppose that eventually one of these hoodrats is going to catch me slipping up. I even fall asleep sometimes while I’m walking these days, so it’s bound to happen. It makes the prospect of heading out West again that much more appealing.
Once a week I stay out of town to decompress and have—thanks to some generous readers—been taking some trips to less stressful areas—R & R from this war of the urban will.
However, if I get lucky and a couple of these books take off, I’d like to fade away at a desk in some quiet corner of the wooded East.
Thanks, Dave.
Thriving in Bad Places
Could use Lynn or your entrepreneurially-minded kid to do the marketing stuff I talked about.
Pop into town once a year for a month on safari, then use that to write two or three more books. You know, Hemingway-style. Distance gives perspective, perspective creates quality.
At 53 you can go another 20 years easily. Maybe 40, since you're not a smoker and you're drinking the exact recommended amount to minimize disease. The stuff that put wear and tear on your joints, ligaments, tendons, etc. had the side effect of building cardiovascular surplus and serious bone density, which is the stuff that keeps you going in the long run.
I don't know what effect such long term sleep deprivation has. Probably none if you were getting in naps throughout the day (polyphasic sleep.) Lots of famous people did fine on this routine, including the Gaon (genius) of Vilna, who supposedly slept 2 hours a day broken into 30 minute stretches so as to maximize his time learning Torah.
Point is that writing yourself off to be scarfed by Dindus because of chronic injuries which any combat athlete builds up is dumb. This is the point where you've built up enough wisdom to give to others in a big and meaningful way.
When the Amerika blog talks about the natural aristocracy, I am convinced you exemplify the type of man they mean. Not necessarily successful, but intelligent, conscientious, and productive (in your own way). I don't want to suck up to you, but after reading this, I just have to buy and read your book.
You probably hate me for this in the same way Kurt Cobain hated his fans.
Sir, i have to tell you: you're one of the most interesting humans i've ever read about. Thank you for the articles on this website.
Have you ever considered a patreon account? I know its probably not the sort of idea which would appeal to a man like yourself, but if Howard can teach us anything through his literature or his life; its that even the strongest iron man will eventually break. I just discovered your writing recently, but I would like to keep reading it as long as I can.
James,
Of all your feats, the most startling one to me is living on so little sleep for so long. How the hell did you do it? Please write an article (or ten) on this topic, it baffles me how anybody could live like this.