A little over thirteen years ago, I experienced a trauma so great I couldn’t write fiction for about six months.

I was home alone, working, when a live report of the Sandy Hook school shooting appeared on my news feed, and then I turned on the television and watched the events unfold live.

My wife Kim was a teacher at the time (in Connecticut), both of my own children were attending school at the time of the event (in Connecticut). I write books for young people, many of which are set in schools (in Connecticut).

The original impetus for the Generation Dead series was a response (a trauma response?) to a news program I watched while on the road concerning the use of social media to promote bullying in schools.

The initial impulse to write Break My Heart 1,000 Times, where the United States is filled with ghosts, was a response (a trauma response?) to my feelings about how we as a nation were dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. In the bonus features of the Blu-ray of the movie version of that book, I Still See You, I speak about those feelings and about spending the week after 9/11 assisting with the initial restoration of the Pentagon, an action which both escalated and assuaged my personal trauma.

In preparing for this post, I read that the surviving children of Sandy Hook Elementary returned to school (a different school, but still) just three weeks after. How could I, or anyone else, possibly understand what that was like for them or their families? I can’t. How could I try and explain the effect not writing for six months had on me, personally and professionally, when prior to that moment writing fiction was a daily practice for me, an organizing principle that gave every aspect of my life shape and meaning? I can’t. When something scratches my soul, my response is to try and write about it and suddenly I couldn’t. Trauma. It ripples through us all.

But at some point, trauma triggered anger and with anger came a spirit of resilience. Around six months after watching that event unfold live before my streaming eyes, I tried to write “about” it; I’m not a journalist, and I’m not interested in writing fictionalized accounts of what really happened. My method for dealing with trauma in fiction, collective and personal, is to write obliquely, but also directly about it. To try and examine the theme from several angles, lenses, and points of view; to present counterpoints, questions, and maybe hint towards answers in the rare moments of clarity.

Be Disarming, which will be published through OMZ Press on July 4th of this year, is my attempt to process and reconcile my thoughts and feelings about a society that could produce an event like the Sandy Hook shooting. The book took years to write and has undergone more drafts and directional changes than anything I’ve worked on prior, almost as if I had to reimagine everything I was doing with each of the many, many, many, many, too many mass shooting events the country has endured since.

Today is the five-year anniversary of another event that left most Americans traumatized in some way. After 9/11 and Sandy Hook, the January 6th insurrection was the event that affected me the most, more so than the pandemic, even. There is a scene in Be Disarming, a scene which I wrote several years prior to Jan 6, 2021, which is oddly predictive of the events of that terrible day. The fictional event in the book—a city-wide riot—completely redefines who gets to be a “citizen” and leads to a very literal interpretation and reverse of the Edward Abbey quote:

“When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws.”

In the world of Be Disarming, Citizens are required to carry guns—“Personal Defense Armaments”, or PDAs—by the government. But there’s a large group of people, people like my main protagonist Maudlin Angeles, who aren’t Citizens any more, they have been reduced to the level of npc, or “non-participant civilian”, forced into menial and service roles (or eliminated outright, when more convenient) by not only the militarized institutions which are the foundation of the government, but also by their once fellow-Citizens.

Sound familiar? I wish it didn’t!

In the fictional world, at least, there’s some hope; despite her lowly status, Maudlin Angeles, urban street artist and parkour traceuse extraordinaire, is relentless in her attempts to be an agent of positive change. I’ll write more about her life in the world of Be Disarming over the next few months leading up to publication, so please stick around for future news.

Please note: I don’t intend to minimize anyone else’s trauma, or equate my trauma with anyone else’s, especially those directly affected by any of the events I mention above; everyone experiences trauma differently. I’m just trying to articulate my own trauma responses.

*Also, I am looking for reviewers to read and post an honest review/vlog/blog/tiktok/whatever of Be Disarming ahead of publication. If the book sounds like something you would relate to, or react to, or if, like me, you struggle with coping with our society’s attitudes regarding violence, please contact me directly at:

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