I choose a book and explain the why

I have made the choice I promised to make 11 days ago. The book I will complete and send to the publisher this month is called It’s Going to Be All Right, and I plan to ship it to the printer by midweek. By this time next week, it ought to be available for pre-order with a publication date of Oct. 20.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wasn’t I going to publish a book a month? Why, yes. So why can’t you buy the September book before Sept. 30? Well, I have slowly learned in these challenging times that there are important things to do before a book’s release, and so I’m parsing words a bit and saying I promised “send to the publisher” instead of “publish.” Once we get past this month, when I completed a book but didn’t actually release it, my intention is to ship a book to the world at least once a month, starting with this one.

So what is It’s Going to Be All Right about? It’s another short book mostly collected from these daily writings, 117 pages, and here is the blurb:

It has become almost a cliche to refer to these times with anxious adjectives: These challenging times, these trying times, these unprecedented times, these stressful times, these times, these times, these times.

For more than a decade now, the world has gotten angrier and meaner and more afraid. Log into your favorite “social media” site, anytime, and someone will alert you about some outrage, someone will warn you about some threat, and someone will be shouting down voices of reason and calm and peace.

This book has a simple but powerful message: Never mind that the world is scary and raging; if you reach inside to a calm place, you’ll find the most basic of truths: It’s going to be all right. Oh, change is inevitable, and tomorrow will not look like yesterday, but it’s going to be all right.

Of course, second-guessing yourself is in the job description for anyone who puts a part of themselves into the marketplace, and as I’m currently reading Starr O’Hara’s very cool and insightful book How to Survive Dystopia (with your humanity intact), I wonder if it’s wise to be putting out a book called It’s Going to Be All Right, because there are often days when it seems it isn’t going to be all right for a very long time.

Then I remember that it depends on what we mean by “It.” If by “It” we mean society and the world in general, things are indeed going to hell in a hand basket, and much of the bad stuff is in the “things I cannot change” bin.

But the stuff O’Hara writes about — independent thinking, freedom, honesty, resourcefulness, peace of mind, faith, gratitude, a sense of humor — and the knowledge that the secret is not electing the right boss, it’s about realizing that I am the boss of me? Those are definitely in the “things I can change” bin.

And a book that encourages people to take heart and not despair as the rhetoric rages and the fear mongers ramp up their mongering, because evil cannot prevail for long? It might even be a nice complement to O’Hara’s outstanding book. A book with a subtitle “Reasons for hope in troubled times” might be just what we need.

It’s certainly going to get worse before it gets better, but like anyone who believes that humans are slowly growing, I believe freedom will out in the end, and it’s going to be all right — eventually. And it’s precisely because it doesn’t look like it’s going to be all right anytime soon that people need to hear this message.

I’ll let you know when you can pre-order.