The other night I had a prophetic vision. Sort of like Isaiah and Jeremiah and that bunch. I should have turned on the light and written it down. Prophetic visions don’t happen much these days.

I guess my prophetic gift needs work; when I woke in the morning, it was vague on details. Basically, it was follow directions (something I’ve never been much good at), and good things will happen.

Full disclosure. My vision did not apply to anyone but me.

Specifically, it was a command to stop putzing around with the series of novels I drafted in 1993, put the finishing touches on them, publish them, and enjoy the adulation that will surely follow. Yes!

The time is finally right for the first one (tentatively titled Saddam’s Niece). It’s no longer likely to be thought “unpatriotic” or “subversive” just because it questions the advisability of the first war on Iraq and does not view all Arabs as terrorists.

Also, so much time has passed since the book’s inception, it has become a historical novel. That’s good. The market is always hungry for those, especially these days, with life in the present being what it is.

Another thing. Saddam’s Niece and the whole series is solidly at home in the current zeitgeist; it’s suffused with DEI. How can you top a star-crossed romance between a Texas WASP and an Iraqi revolutionary?

It’s chock-a-block with colorful characters – an Australian soldier of fortune, Iraqi pro- and anti-Saddam figures, and both honest and corrupt American foreign service officers. Lesbians, too.

As we go into another dark period of Trump rule, Saddam’s Neice is clearly a novel for our time; a major theme is “my country right or wrong” versus deep-state resistance.

And every book in the series has enough action to qualify easily as an airplane novel. They are as diverting as all get out.

You might ask then, as I have, why publishers have not competed fiercely to land these gems. Several possibilities come to mind.

Maybe it’s because the foreign policy questions in Saddam’s Niece are treated as complex. Simple is preferable in such matters.

Or perhaps it’s because the just-graduated English majors who are agents’ and publishers’ first readers found them to be not well written. Even if these pups had been correct – they weren’t – that should not make any difference. Lousy writing is published all the time.

One rejection required no speculation about the reason. A well-known editor at Scribner’s told me to my face that her outfit couldn’t publish my books – though she thought they were excellent – because I am not a woman or a minority (even though I’m an Episcopalian).

Anyway, all that frustration is behind me now. In recent years I have come to know well the owner of a small publishing company that will publish Saddam’s Niece. All I have to do is edit and revise and satisfy myself that it is ready.

Trouble is, my midnight vision failed to take into account how many impediments there are to these last steps.

There are the usual things, of course. Take out the garbage, do some grocery shopping, talk to tech support in Mumbai, make trips to the kiosk on Broadway to buy lottery tickets. Why, just last week, I had to go to the Post Office. I don’t live in a writer’s colony.

And I’m no good at writing or anything else without naps, which takes a good-sized piece out of every workday what with making coffee afterward and enjoying a piece of pie and washing up.

But the most telling distraction comes via the internet. A few of you send me positive responses to these Geezerblockhead pieces. Even small amounts of positive regard are addictive, so I have to keep writing them. I will not reveal here how long it takes me to get happy with a 650-word essay. Suffice to say, they don’t leave much time for novel writing.

Nevertheless, when you have an urge so strong that it masquerades as a prophetic vision, you have to pay attention to it. So, once again I’m working on Saddam’s Neice. You will be the first to know when I’m finished.