As it says in my profile, I retired at the end of 2019 after 27 years as an academic and 20 years before that in software development. I am now embarking on an encore career in which I plan to write. It is something I love to do. But this point was a long time in coming. Perhaps a little background is in order.
My first teaching job was at the University of Florida, in the mid 1970's, where I was a graduate teaching assistant. I don't recall how many courses I taught there but it was more than 6 and less than a dozen. And, I had a lot of really interesting experiences. One's perception of professors, adjuncts, or graduate teaching assistants is very different from the experience of being any of the aforesaid. For example, students in the class often feel that the instructor has all the power as they assign grades. However, with some rare exceptions, the instructor perceives the students as having all the power as they fill out evaluations and talk to other students and faculty. Further, the students often perceive the instructor as all-knowing whereas the instructor, especially adjuncts and graduate teaching assistants, often feel inadequate. This experience led me to consider writing a book to reveal this gap of perception. So, this was my first inspiration to write something almost a half a century ago. But, at this point, it was merely a dream.
About a decade later, the idea came back to me again. By then I had taught several courses as an adjunct at several different universities while working full time during the day. So, my first book attempt, started in the late 1980's, but never finished, was to be called Professor? Oh, You Mean Me. I had planned to write a memoir of sorts about my days as an adjunct professor. I thought it was a good idea because people who have never done adjunct teaching have no idea what it is really like. Sadly, I only got a couple chapters written. But I had realized how much I love to write. So, I didn't see it as giving up on the book. I saw it as postponing my writing until I had more time and a better idea.
Another decade later, I had already become a full-time academic and had written several scholarly papers. But writing scholarly papers is not fun and I wanted to write something fun. One of my research topics was the role of stories in computer ethics and it occurred to me that I should develop some skills for writing fiction that may dovetail with this other research.
So, I came up with an idea which was way too ambitious and started writing chapters which I emailed to some colleagues for comment. The title of the novel was Dybuks in the Portal and was based on the unworkable premise of some specially chosen spirits getting misdirected between lives and landing up in my imagination. I got about six chapters into it before I realized that I just didn't have what it took to make it work.
Being sufficiently chastened by my experience with Dybuks, I decided to try something in genre fiction which was a little more constrained. I created a detective named Thaddeus Wentworth and used Foggy Bottom University as a setting. This was more my speed. I, again, emailed the chapters out once a week to colleagues who read them primarily because the characters were based on people on the email list. The book was called Identity and I managed to finish it. I continued in this vein for two more Wentworth books which I finished but did not publish at the time. They were Along Came a Spider, and Confidence. All three of these are available on Amazon (see my website a DrJohnArtz.com ).
I put Wentworth aside and wrote a manuscript which I called The Ghost of Socrates exploring philosophical issues in information systems. I made the manuscript freely available online and did not publish it until after I retired.
Then, as luck would have it, I got an opportunity to teach a Writing in the Disciplines course called Writing Stories to Explore the Ethics of Technology. This opportunity was a godsend, and I spent the next five or six years developing the idea and my writing skills for fiction. Much of the foundation work for Writing Stories to Explore Possible Worlds was developed during this time. Possible Worlds will be available in late 2023.
The first three Wentworth books were written in the late 1990's and early 2000's. I am currently working on a fourth called Hamartia which will also be out in late 2023. I have one more Wentworth book called Closure scheduled to come out in late 2024.
Possible Worlds and Closure mark the end of my current phase of writing. I have some more ambitious fiction planned for the next phase. When people hear that I retired four years ago and will have ten books published in that time they think that is unbelievable. But, in reality, it took a lot longer.
Some people ask me if I love writing so much why did I wait so long to do it seriously. The answer is simple. I had bills to pay and a family to take care of. And the work I was doing and being well compensated for was not horrible. There are some jobs that I think should be pursued by people with more experience. I won't get into my theory about young people’s jobs and jobs for people with more experience. But I will say that putting off writing was a good choice for me. I don't have to worry about paying the bills. I have a lot more experience. And I have had a lot of time to read and think. So, here I am Lego, Cogito and now Scribo.
