Plague: The Great Leveler

Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic these last few weeks has reminded me of a section of my unpublished novel, Nocturn: The Ethiopian Orthodox. In it I describe the shift that occurs in a population as a disease moves from bubonic form, carried by fleas, to pneumonic form, carried through the air. In it the gap between…

In Praise of Illness

I was sick last week. It was that cold thing going around. I can’t remember the last time I took off two sick days in a row because of a cold. Usually I’m that guy who comes to work and infects everyone else (sorry, I’ll try to be better about that). It occurred to me…