How do you factor inspiration's role when writing a blog, publishing a book, or posting little photo essays about a experience that is as ordinary as going to work each day? Over this past decade of commuting, these activities have been part of my Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) experience. Writing and creating has been a coping mechanism for the frustration of the experience, but it also has been a positive shared communal activity with many of my fellow Atlantans, unlike attending a stadium-sized sporting event (an artificial sense of community).
From those daily commutes, I did begin to appreciate that there are plots, characters and themes, and these snowballed into what became Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire. Once I finished writing the book, I had some closure, resigning myself that MARTA “is, what it is” and as the saying goes --- “it” usually isn’t very good. Satires really are the work of optimists as they point out the fallacies in hopes of things will be better. Imagine my disappointment.
Down & Outbound will be making one its rare public appearances at the Georgia Book and Paper Fair at the Decatur Book Festival. I will be working at the Destination Books pop-up book stall all day Saturday, August 31st and Sunday, September 1st. (Details here) Stop by and we can discuss this further. Perhaps you can buy a book (any book), and may be you can apply to be the next president of the MARTA Book Club.
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