“It’s Always 9/11” was published in August 2021. I’d finished the last sentence about 14 months before, at the height of the lockdown. The claustrophobia of “Shelter at Home” along with the national sense of paranoia, isolation and division, lent my writing an intensified power.

Now, two years later, I feel like we are finally emerging from that fog of isolation and fear, blooming tentatively like the forsythia poking forth on the bushes outside my window. Looking around and wondering “where did that time go?”. “Where are we now?” We’ve all been changed by the past few years, in differing ways. Personally, it made me a lot more libertarian. It shocked me how fast situations could change, how quickly freedoms could be taken away. I’d always been aware, and protective of, our constitutional right to free speech and assembly. But personal rights? The right to leave one’s own home? The right to gather with one’s family? A stifling conformity descended. There were opinions were dared not speak, feelings that labeled us a bad person, a form of “proper thinking” that was totalitarian to its core. “Left” and “Right” lost their significance. I didn’t believe in any of those bundled collections of righteous opinions. I didn’t know who to believe, so I had to rely on my ears and eyes, intution, a semblance of logical thinking, my own conscience.

Of course, that’s what “It’s Always 9/11” is all about, even though I wrote all but the final draft before the pandemic. And it’s still as relevant as ever. The other question I ask myself as I survey the altered world is “How do we crawl out from under the wreckage?”. The passivity wrought by the pandemic still lingers, like a fatalistic stupor stubbornly pulling people back in. The major societal impetus is still to sit it out, to buy the stories we are told, to accept things we should not.

I’ve wondered why I’m so drawn to writing about teenagers. My first novel, “Wrong Highway”, had a teenager at the heart of it. “It’s Always 9/11” does as well. Before that I wrote several short stories, all starring teenagers. I think its because, through decades of life experiences, I’ve never lost a certain teenage quality, that one where the passion still burns. Where you if you sit it out, you’re risking not only your freedoms and your country, but your very soul.