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I am a writer – a writer in the age of treason. That’s the word I would choose if I had to pick only one to best describe me professionally (whatever that means nowadays). I write novels of all kinds or genres, from speculative science fiction to supernatural horror and from soul-searching literary fiction to (yes, once even that) romantic dramas.

I am also an academic, specializing in Gothic and horror fiction (parenthetically, it is incredible how much more effortless it is to write 250 pages of fiction compared to the same number of a doctoral dissertation; don’t try this at home, kids). So, writing has “always” been something I’ve been drawn to.

Hence, writing here is really nothing different than what I am already doing, but perhaps in a more stream-of-consciousness, flexible kind of way. To a certain extent, fictional writing can be free (particularly if we’re talking about literary fiction). But it also has certain constraints which I am trying to bypass here. There is more, however.

The Age of Treason: Stupid Loudmouths and Intelligent Sufferers

The title of this first post is The Age of Treason. Forgive the shamelessly obvious pun, but sometimes I can’t help but feel that something is rotten in our world, now, in the year 2017.

No, no, I’m not talking about the usual aspects – there have always been wars, suffering, injustice, and pain. Furthermore, there have always been stupid loudmouths and intelligent but, alas, silent sufferers. What bothers me the most is how the stupid have become even louder and the wise even more marginalized. How is that connected to writing, you will ask.

I hope I don’t come off as too self-important when I say that people like me, with the ability to employ words in a coherent manner, with the skill to produce and sustain a philosophical discussion based on arguments, with the artistry to create and populate fictional worlds and characters (that are still allegorically linked to “reality”), would have been revered masters and teachers in another time and another place – such as, to name one example, ancient Athens.

Instead, such people nowadays are more often than not ignored as educators (for too many mediocre loudmouths are referred to as “educators” while they have few skills other than their bombast behavior); they struggle as fiction writers (for in the infinite white noise of pulp mediocrity, it matters not what you have to say but how much it can sell); they are silenced as interlocutors (for today people become offended the nanosecond someone disagrees with their nonsensical drivel).

It is the Age of Treason. What have we betrayed?

But Reason, of course.