Occupations…
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes think about what my life might have been if I chose to follow one of the professions that attracted me as a kid. Beyond the usual fireman, policeman, or doctor, I had a few unusual ones on my childhood list.
I read a lot—comics at first and then short fiction and novels. Many of the latter were sci-fi, so I imagined myself as a space explorer. Dare I say “rocket man”? In other words, a fellow who flew spaceships and went where no one has gone before in the cosmos. The closest I came to that was in my previous life as a scientist. I suppose some of my sci-fi that’s more space operatic owes a bit to those imaginings, but my ETs as an author are a lot better (see, for example, The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection).
I also read mysteries and thrillers (back then the latter were called adventure stories). I imagined myself as a detective, either PI or cop, a fellow walking around with a toothpick in his mouth and solving complex crimes. I suppose my Detective Castilblanco owes some of his characteristics to that imagining. Of course he’s hooked on Tums, not a toothpick, because he likes spicy ethnic foods (so do I).
I loved music, although my tastes were somewhat abnormal, I suppose. At first, my instrument was the trombone. I imagined myself in a dance band or orchestra; I liked both, and I did both, not professionally of course because I realized I wasn’t quite good enough. That trombone solo in Mahler’s third mentioned in the sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel? I could play that. Later, I learned the guitar (folk music took off) and sold that in Colombia to buy a tiple, a typical instrument from that country. Around forty, I learned the piano. My teacher actually got me to play some Beethoven, but now I just play melody with the right hand and chords with the left, noodling with the help of a fake book (no relation to “fake news”). Music plays a big role in Mayhem, Murder, and Music, a free short story collection you can download (see the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” for directions).
I also thought I might become an anthropologist or archaeologist. I read all the books about anthropology I could find in our hometown’s public library—Margaret Meade and a lot of others. I decided human beings were just too complicated to study scientifically. That’s how I opted for science and mathematics; both seemed a lot easier than studying human beings. Some of that predilection for the social sciences went into the short story “Marcello and Me,” which A. B. Carolan has turned into a spiffy new novel (see below—the main character Asako is a sociologist).
With all the above, some readers might ask why I’m now a fiction writer. There are many reasons, of course, but you can probably imagine one: With my characters, I can do all the professions mentioned above! Not only that, so can you, dear reader. Only writing fiction allows that.
The only occupation mentioned that hasn’t been filled by one of my characters is anthropologist, although Asako comes close (much closer in Carolan’s book than in my short story, in fact). Creating such a character seems difficult, but I like challenges. Given all the good books and good authors, does any reader know of any novel where one of the main characters is an anthropologist? I might be onto something here.
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Did you miss The Secret Lab? This sci-fi mystery for young adults features four tweens in the future living on the International Space Station who try to discover the origins of a mathematical mutant cat. Available in ebook format on Amazon and Smashwords and all their affiliated ebook retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo etc) and in a print version on Amazon. And don’t miss the next A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mystery The Secret of the Urns—coming soon!
In libris libertas….
