My novel was published today.
Don’t panic. I’m not going to ask you to buy it. I only wanted to share the story behind the story, the events that made the endeavor possible. It’s a bittersweet tale, one I feel may be of interest to others toiling with creative expression, if only to provide an extra bit of oomph to your day.
The idea behind my novel, Freelight, was born on a Thursday. It was March 16th, 2006. Read that year again, it’s not a typo. I was at my day-job, daydreaming it into existence. Years later, I had a jumble of notes and journals and false starts that would be most appropriately measured in pounds, rather than pages.
I wish I could claim this groundwork was necessary, that I’d been truly, diligently at work on my book-to-be all that time. But it would be a lie. The truth? I was tinkering. I was always tinkering. Ever since high school I was tinkering, pushing the real work off toward the horizon, setting it inside an optimistic picture frame with a little brass nameplate that read:
Someday
The problem with Someday is it remains fixed to that horizon. The world keeps turning, and gradually — almost imperceptibly at first — the picture frame begins to slip away. It shrinks before your eyes, sending you into a panic. So you give chase. Feet slapping the pavement, heart pounding, lungs battered as if under siege. Your confidence falters, and you become convinced the frame will diminish to a pinpoint and be lost forever. The sun goes down, the light goes out.
My father was the creative type too. He had been chasing dreams in music until work and family life put his efforts on hold. He also pinned his heart to Someday. The domain of his performances shrank to the living room, where he’d march about like a grand troubadour, singing The Beatles’ catalog to my brother and me. These are precious childhood memories, but in retrospect I find myself wondering how often he imagined a bigger venue. Time crept ever onward as it always did, and the guitars receded into their cases. Days piled up into years.
Long after I moved away and joined the adult world (and was deep into my afore-mentioned tinkering), I noticed a change upon returning home one day. The guitars were out again. Sheets of paper with lyrics and chord progressions too. My father even bought me a portable amp, a hint I ought to get my own paltry skills back up to speed as a practice partner. He had plans, dreams rekindled.
Those who know me personally, know how this story ends. Cancer took him early. Someday became Never in the blink of an eye.
To this day, it remains impossible to explain the paralysis that hit me in the wake of that loss. If you’ve been there, you know. When my faculties started moving forward again, they did so with a terrifying energy, transforming trite advice like “Make every day count!” from gray afterthought to vibrant neon. I got back on my feet and turned my eyes to the horizon. My Someday frame was still out there, but it seemed impossibly far away, as though I were gazing at it through binoculars turned backwards.
To recount the changes I made would be a journey into the cliché. We’ve all heard that sort of story before, so I’ll simply distill it to the following: I made hobby into habit, and habit into discipline. The key to beating the tinkering trap was to accept I couldn’t defeat it overnight, despite a heart full of fire. The road to discipline has more than a few graduations. Celebrate them when reached, but don’t dwell. Press onward with the mindset of an eternal student.
A few weeks ago, a proof of my book arrived in the mail — the very one in the picture below. With spellbound eyes, I held it in my hands, a dumb smile erupting on my face. As one would shuffle a deck of cards, I bent the book into an arc and listened to the crisp flutter made by the pages racing past the tip of my thumb.
I didn’t realize it at first, but this moment wasn’t about the book. Long repetition makes one numb to endpoints, and so it was here. The moment was about that picture frame on the horizon. I had caught it at last, and pulled it down from the sky. It was in my hands now, unable to escape. With zeal, I pried off the nameplate that read Someday and replaced it with a new one. It read:
Today
This one’s for you, Dad.
Jon Aspen’s first novel was published today, August 15th, 2018, by Winterleafe Press. Jon Aspen still can’t believe this day has finally come.