Joseph Grammer, Author

The stories of author Joe Grammer.

Mutant Cyborg

someone’s been shaking the leaves of my tree, because a lot has happened this year

my dad died

I started taking medicine for depression

I fell apart a bit

my mom bought me a new car

I did some work that I’m proud of

my brother got married (really happy)

my family is growing

I learned that hospitals are a little traumatic

I found my wife a birthday present she liked (yay)

I took my wife for some really good pizza in a very traditional New Jersey place where everyone gets either plain or pepperoni and she puts lots of unorthodox toppings on it and everyone stared at us and I made fun of her a little but really I didn’t care because I love her, and if she wants toppings on her pizza, she can damn well do it

I held my dad’s hand while he died and I didn’t cry, I wasn’t able to cry until a few weeks ago

I still feel like a ghost but I’m happy there are people I love who help me

I wrote more of my books

I felt guilty about making an old shitty book, but my author friends told me never to think like that, and I respect them

I hung out with very cool authors who all spoke Spanish and I listened as best as I could and tried not to mangle their beautiful language too badly

My wife and I watched this one guy on Twitch who was very bro-y and comical but then he started talking about his testicular cancer and I was engrossed in the fact that I was watching this total stranger through a screen as he talked about his relationship with death and dying and his deepest pain, and I felt like technology is a window into our souls, sometimes

We got a chinchilla named Frank Sinatra

Chinchillas can live for 30 years and they jump 6 feet in the air

Chinchillas have the densest fur of any land mammal, and they can’t get wet or they’ll catch a fungus and die

Chinchillas’ natural enemy seems to be the rain

The chinchilla has an Instagram, because this is 2019

One of my good friends went on a dangerous journey and came back safely and that made me very happy

I helped save one of my best friend’s lives

I learned more about philosophy, which is a fun way of trying out new brain frameworks — Deleuze seems cool

I went to some fun weddings, broke a glass, carried my friend on a chair, got to know Queens better, learned to take things a bit easier

My wife and I saw a bunch of plucky beavers in a swamp, then some muskrats

The swamp is pretty fecund, and the word fecund only really makes sense when talking about swamps

The car that my mom bought for me has Bluetooth and modern technology things and I got to catch up on all the things cars can do now, and I’m very grateful for her and love her, not because she bought me a car with her own money, but because she’s very selfless and kind and she visited my dad in the hospital every day until he died, just because that’s the kind of person she is

I watched basketball with my dad on Christmas night, because I didn’t want him to be alone, and that hospital room has a very deep place in my heart and I don’t think it will ever leave me

I drank a lot of espresso

I wish I had seen my friends more, because I love them

Sometimes I feel like I’m going to crack apart and die, but other times I feel like a tough little stone that hops around in a hurricane, flying around in the wind but not overly worried or stressed about it

I think my experiences are pretty normal, except for my mom buying a car for me, that’s extremely rare and I’m exceedingly lucky

Growing older is like becoming a mutant cyborg because you’re extra strong but also you’re kind of horrifying, and the question isn’t so much “Should I exist” as “What does this completely freakish being like me get to do in a world full of regular humans” and the answer to that is whatever you were doing before, but cooler.

About Joe

Joseph Grammer - Author of novels and short stories

Joseph Grammer is a writer and editor who lives in Alexandria, VA. He currently serves as a Curriculum and Technical Report Writer for the Suicide CPR Initiative and Managing Editor for NOVADog Magazine, Northern Virginia’s main canine publication. He also works in a freelance capacity with different clients, helping them refine message strategies, edit articles, and other linguistic business like that.

Help Joe find other readers who like this kind of fiction in any or all of the following ways:

Read Interviews with Joe

On reaching the reader:

To me, directly attempting to teach the reader is heavy-handed. It’s too close to moralizing, and I think one of my criticisms about myself is that I unconsciously do this from time to time. At best, I hope to show readers a glimmer of what is possible through the lens of another person—often someone who appears different from them.
→ Read the rest on Strand’s Simply Tips

On forming characters:

I tried to take characters who were similar to me and characters who were very different from me and force them to interact. My opinion is that diversity breeds peace and love, but there is almost always an initial friction or awkwardness when individuals of different mindsets, worldviews, or backgrounds come into contact with one another.
→ Read the rest on Missy Writes

Why I Write

I write to push myself to connect. It’s not an easy business for me—not in a whining, self-pity way, but realistically. My hardware has issues with it. I also write to give others a worthy sense of participation with something that breathes and moves in their head. It’s fun to imagine and follow a plot, and my goal is to give you that experience.

The stories I make can seem weird, or disturbing. I’d like to qualify those perceptions by saying I strive for satisfaction and inner peace on a daily basis. I cook food with real nutrients, talk to random people on the subway, identify what I’m feeling and why. When my brain says, “Do this, it’ll make you happy,” I ask it questions.

My basic purpose in breathing and moving is to forge healthy relationships, and to help others do so, too. That said, some of the things I write deal with unhealthy aspects of connecting and being alive. I dislike bland optimism, and I enjoy a full portrait of the human crapshoot.

Is this a lame way of justifying why I might offend someone? Hopefully not. But to write is to divide, in many ways, and it can only be helped to some extent. I ask you to remember that, at heart, I’m coming from a goal of peace and other passé notions from Earth’s major religions.

Love,
Joe

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to Anna Tulchinskaya, for her artistic skills, devotion, and patient mind; his family, for their unconditional support; and to his friends, who accept his odd ways and only occasionally heckle him.

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