"Hard Times" by Hubert von Herkomer.

Hard(ish) Times

Back in March, I wrote a cheeky blog entry about how COVID-19 wouldn’t change my work as a writer a sin­gle bit.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Despite peo­ple hav­ing more free time on their hands, my and oth­er writ­ers’ book sales are down dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Because schools and libraries are closed for the fore­see­able future, the paid speak­ing and pre­sen­ta­tion engage­ments that I’d been count­ing on to sup­ple­ment my book income are not going to hap­pen this year. Since my wife and neigh­bors (and, appar­ent­ly, their dogs) are now work­ing from home, the peace and qui­et I need in order to write and engage in the busi­ness of being an author have dis­ap­peared. With restau­rants closed, I’ve found more and more of my day con­sumed by meal prepa­ra­tion. And final­ly, the over­all state of the world (the pan­dem­ic, the econ­o­my, the polit­i­cal land­scape) has deeply depressed me, mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult to do what do, which is to write cre­ative­ly and enter­tain read­ers.

Still, if there’s one thing that being a full-time writer over the past 25 years has giv­en me, it’s the abil­i­ty to forge ahead in uncer­tain­ty and to count my bless­ings. Unlike Charles Bronson’s char­ac­ter in one of my favorite movies, Hard Times, I don’t have to “ride the rails” around the coun­try look­ing to make mon­ey in bare-knuck­le box­ing match­es. I just have to keep writ­ing, which is a lot eas­i­er on the hands and face than fight­ing, that’s for sure.

I rec­og­nize that there are peo­ple in the U.S. and the world right now who are tru­ly strug­gling. A lot of peo­ple have been laid off, or are being fur­loughed, or are hav­ing their wages cut. It’s all ter­ri­bly trag­ic and depress­ing, but there is a sil­ver lin­ing: peo­ple have more time to read, and are mak­ing escape into the world of fic­tion more a part of their lives. I mean, seriously—there are only so many news reports you can see about racial injus­tice, vio­lent protests, loot­ing, police bru­tal­i­ty, etc. before you just want to quit soci­ety alto­geth­er, move to the North­east King­dom of Ver­mont and start a maple syrup farm. I know this is how I feel, and I have a sense that it’s how a lot of read­ers feel.

Recent­ly I received gush­ing mes­sages from two readers—one via email, the oth­er via Face­book. Both read­ers thanked me for what I do, and both added some­thing to this effect: Chris, with all of this COVID-19 chaos in the world right now, it’s been real­ly great to be able to escape into your books—places where there’s no pan­dem­ic, no pan­ic, no social media—just enter­tain­ing sto­ry, wit­ty dia­logue and hours of read­ing enjoy­ment. (Okay, I admit that I added that “hours of read­ing enjoy­ment” bit.)

One of the read­ers who con­tact­ed me said she’d down­loaded the entire Dako­ta Stevens Mys­tery Series. Hav­ing just fin­ished book one, she was sad that there were only five books in the series and asked me when book six was com­ing out.

Well…I’m work­ing on it—slowly.

Still, although my progress has been slow and I’ve been low on self-moti­va­tion, I have been inch­ing along—particularly with the “Big Book,” my “teen epic” about a group of teenagers in 1986.
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The John Nash-like (BEAUTIFUL MIND) work area, where the “Big Book” is being culled and refined into 10+ small­er books.
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A close-up of the Big Book, divid­ed into pos­si­ble small­er books.
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While read­ing and revis­ing the 600,000-word, 2,000-page man­u­script, and divid­ing it into a series of small­er books, I’ve been keep­ing myself steeped in the world of the 80s, lis­ten­ing to songs like Def Leppard’s “Pho­to­graph,” Scor­pi­ons’ “Rock You Like A Hur­ri­cane,” and, it goes with­out say­ing, Van Halen’s entire pre-1986 oeu­vre (David Lee Roth for­ev­er!). (On an unre­lat­ed note, I’ve been remind­ed of how awe­some Möt­ley Crüe was, too—especially their “Kick­start My Heart.”)
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https://youtu.be/fuKDBPw8wQA
Van Halen’s “Pana­ma”: One of my favorite work­out songs in 1986, and one that gets a LOT of play for me now that I’m writ­ing about that year in the Big Book.
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Orcutt, May 2019, about to go deliv­er a pre­sen­ta­tion about the Big Book to Mill­brook High School.
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Oth­er 21st cen­tu­ry “hard(ish) times” devel­op­ments for me: I had patel­lar ten­donitis for the month of March, brought on by too much exer­cise; my old 3G “slid­er” cell phone died and I’ve had to learn how to use my first-ever smart­phone; and I’ve exhaust­ed all of the “binge­wor­thy” pro­grams on Net­flix, Ama­zon Prime and Dis­ney Plus—programs like Vic­to­ria, The Crown, Poldark and Bear Grylls. Hav­ing exhaust­ed all of the qual­i­ty TV pro­grams, I’m back to read­ing epic-length works, includ­ing Gibbon’s tome The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Alexan­dre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, and Stephen Ambrose’s biog­ra­phy of the Lewis and Clark expe­di­tion enti­tled Undaunt­ed Courage.

I know…rough.

Snoopy and Wood­stock are feel­ing the hard times from COVID-19 as well. Won’t you help them afford a prop­er dog­house by buy­ing one of my ebooks, now on sale for the low, low price of $2.99?
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By Chris Orcutt

CHRIS ORCUTT is an American novelist and fiction writer with over 30 years' writing experience and more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Since 2015, Chris been working exclusively on his magnum opus. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig is a 9-episode novel about teens in the 1980s. It’s about ’80s teens, but for adults (in other words, it’s decidedly not YA literature), and he’s applied this epic storytelling approach to the least examined, most misunderstood, most marginalized narrative space in American literature: the lives and inner worlds of teenagers.

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