A Video Tribute to My Dad

 

As part of my Dad's celebration of life, I volunteered to make a video slideshow. Making the video was a feat. I had to scan old pictures, label pictures, find dates, and sort through hundreds of pictures spanning from 1952 to 2023. I had to make some tough decisions on what to include and what ended up on the cutting room floor. But in the end, I think the final product turned out pretty good.

I try not to think about it like this, but this is the final thing I did for my Dad. I like to think that I had the honor and the pleasure of telling his life story. As a creative person, that's the best gift I can give.

George's Journey - A Tribute to George Lortz from JordiScrubbings on Vimeo.

A Tribute to My Dad

On December 23, 2023, I joined a club few if any want to join. Unfortunately, in the course of life, time makes many of us members. Now in my mid-40s, many of my friends have lost a parent or two. And as much as I feel comfort knowing I have people who are there for me and have felt this loss, it’s still hard.

My Dad is gone. I’ll never talk to him again.

My Dad was proud of me. Of that there was no dispute. I followed close enough in his footsteps that he knew the route, even if I walked on different paths.

My Dad was a complicated man who wanted the world to be simple. He enjoyed Jeopardy, Jim Beam, and James Bond. He thought there were too many dinosaurs. He could be obstinate. He could be argumentative. He was quick with what is now appropriately called “a Dad joke”. He taught me to drive as fast as I wanted, as long I didn’t endanger anyone. Seventeen speeding tickets later, he would tell me not to speed.

I learned a lot from my Dad. Most of it true, some of it not. For years, I thought the bungee cord was invented by a man named Arthur J. Bungee. According to my Dad, Arthur J. developed the bungee cord in 1942 to preserve rubber for the war effort. My Dad told me that Mr. Bungee’s new cords were used on aircraft carriers and helped America win World War II. Of course I believed him.

I wrote in the dedication of my novel, Curveball at the Crossroads, that my Dad introduced me to baseball and the Blues. I remember when he took me to my first Major League Baseball game, Back to School Day at Shea Stadium, 1985. I received a free Mets school binder that day that I still have. My Dad religiously watched those mid-80s Mets, descendants of the ‘69 Mets he witnessed win the World Series. In that year in which the second most amazing event was a man on the moon, my Dad was selling programs and scorecards from Shea Stadium’s upper deck.

One of my Dad’s favorite stories about his time as a vendor was when the Mets won the division for the first time in their history. When the final out was recorded, bedlam erupted and the fans rushed the field to celebrate. As an employee, my Dad was supposed to stay in the stands, but on this day he joined the jubilee in the grass. When a policeman grabbed him and asked why he was on the field, my Dad told the officer that in order to sell his stuff, he had to be where his customers were.

I remember when my Dad introduced me to the Blues. I was a hip-hop kid in the 90’s, much to my parents’ chagrin. During one my first visits home from the Army, however, I asked my Dad if he could make me a cassette of Jimi Hendrix songs. As he recorded most of the classics from his vinyl collection, he asked me to listen to “Red House” before he copied it. Red House is Hendrix’s most bluesy song. I wanted that song on the cassette. That lead to me finding a CD entitled “Jimi Hendrix Blues”, one of my favorite albums of all time.

My Dad taught me that most music is influenced by something earlier. I remember him listening to Dr Dre and immediately recognizing Parliament-Funkadelic samples. He challenged me to find the source of my music. In my growing Blues fandom, that led me to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the legendary crossroads where Robert Johnson allegedly made his deal with the Devil.  If that sounds familiar, then you understand my Dad’s influence on my novel.

Throughout the years, my Dad and I went to a lot of events together. In 2008, I took him to his first World Series game in 39 years. I took him to see Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and almost every year from 2000 to 2010, we saw the legendary BB King play the Blues. 

Sometimes our events required long drives. For a few years, he would journey to Tampa and join me in trips to Tallahassee to see FSU football. As part of those weekends, I introduced him to the Bradfordville Blues Club, a small music venue outside of Tallahassee that was one of the last juke joints in America.

Besides music and sports, I understood my Dad professionally. After a few years with various other defense contractors, he worked for Northrop Grumman for over 30 years. In my career, I have worked for over a dozen different defense contractors, to include Northop Grumman for a year. My Dad was very excited I joined his company, but not so excited when I complained about my time with the company and left after nine months. I had to tell my Dad that although the company is the same, my division and my experiences were vastly different. Whereas he worked on a Northrop Grumman campus, with Northrop Grumman equipment, in Northrop Grumman buildings, I’ve always worked on military bases, surrounded by military people, doing military things. In my Northrop Grumman job, that base was in Doha, Qatar, where I enjoyed being until it was time to come home. When I came back, the company had no stateside positions for me so I moved on.

For someone who never put on the uniform, my Dad had a love for the military that went above and beyond. The equipment he worked on in his forty-plus years in defense contracting saved lives and helped win wars. And when I left for basic training on August 21, 1995, it was my Dad who drove me to the recruiting station in his pearl white, 1971 Datsun 240z. If you knew my Dad, you knew that car only came out for special drives. When we got to the recruiting station, he cried, gave me a big hug, and told me how proud he was.

I am going to remember a lot about my Dad. Although he could be a pain in the ass, we had a lot of good times. But time moves on. Shea Stadium is gone, leveled in 2009. BB King passed away in 2015, and the Bradfordville Blues Club closed its doors early last year. Many of the people and places I shared with my Dad are gone. Now he is gone as well.

I’m gonna miss you, Dad.

Buy Curveball at the Crossroads from Ingram Spark

Curveball at the Crossroads

Lortz, Michael and Anderson, Grego "MojoHand"

Buy Now

Buy Curveball at the Crossroads directly from my distributor for only $13.64! 

That's almost $4 off the cover price!

Open the link via QR code!

Ahead of my time with a chili submission

Longtime readers of this blog might remember a post I wrote way back in 2012. In the post, "When Victory Tastes Like Wendy's", I wrote about how I entered a chili contest using Wendy's chili and an added dabble of hot sauce.

Last week, I saw this tiktok/instagram reel/youtube short. It had over 7 million total views.

Apparently, I was ahead of my time by 10 years. And I should have videoed my experience - from making the chili to submitting it to the winning announcement. That might have gotten some views. I could have been a social media superstar.

Spoke with WMNF Tampa on Crypto Currency

A few weeks ago, I had a very cool opportunity to chat with my friend Patro Mabili on WMNF 88.5 Tampa a few weeks ago. Mabili hosts a show called Community Speaks and wanted me to talk about crypto currency and how criminals use technology to illegally use funds. Although that isn't my area of expertise, I think I did a good job covering the basics.

Check it out here:

https://sound.wmnf.org//sound//wmnf_231016_120600_csp1_474.MP3

Book Review on Suncoast Blues Society webpage

 

I wrote a book review of the book Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson over at the Suncoast Blues Society blog.

Book Review: Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson - Suncoast Blues Society blog, 10/10/23

Making a Best Sellers List

My book signing at Bookstore1 in Sarasota was a success. I sold out of all the books they ordered. In doing so, I made the Bookstore1 weekly Best Sellers list. This information gets sent up to the New York Times for their overall Best Sellers list. While I don't expect to make the top of that list, it is awesome that my book is somewhere on there. Maybe they print a list of all book data submitted. I wouldn't mind making the top 1,000.

Thoughts on the passing of Tim Wakefield

I had the honor and pleasure of writing a piece on BallNine.com recently on the passing of former Boston Red Sox pitcher and hometown hero Tim Wakefield. Thanks to the Chris Vitali and the team at BallNine for letting me cameo over there.

REMEMBERING WAKE - BallNine.com, 10/13/2023

Comparison to a New York Times Best Seller

I am incredibly passionate about my novel Curveball at the Crossroads. I love my book.

However, here is a fact: Curveball at the Crossroads is not yet a NY Times Bestseller. I won't tell you how many books I have sold, but it is not at NY Times level. Yet.

I know authors are not supposed to compare themselves to other authors. We are all on our own journey. But there is one author I can't help but compare myself to. Our debut novels came out at the same time, but we could not be on more different journeys.

She and I have a lot in common. We both worked serious jobs and wrote on the side. However, while I have been published in the Tampa Bay Times, on sports websites, national defense websites, cybersecurity websites, and as many places that will have me, she was never published prior to her debut novel as far a I know. You would think that would give me an advantage. You would be wrong.

I recently watched Sarah Penner's presentation at the Southern Voices 2023 convention. She is a featured speaker at a book convention. She was selected as her debut novel, The Lost Apothecary, was a NY Times Bestseller. One for one right off the bat.

I have written before that I gave up on traditional, big market publishing. I didn't want to deal with agents and queries and all that rigmarole, especially as I was looking for a steady job and a steady relationship at the same time. That is a lot of possible rejection.

Sarah embraced the struggle to be published as she had a steady career and a steady relationship. That gave her the base in which to be patient in her creative endeavor. She pitched and pitched until she hooked an agent who found several publishers interested and her career as an author took off.

Sarah Penner's debut is about a strong woman who goes on a journey in the 1880s in London. Facts: women read more fiction than men. As Sarah mentions in her talk, women readers want to read about strong women. Books that take place in the past are also well-regarded. Sarah gave her readers what they wanted.

People have often asked me what year does Curveball at the Crossroads take place. To be honest, I didn't really think about that when I wrote it. I don't think that hurts the story, it is just not defined. The Lost Apothecary takes place in a defined era.

Curveball at the Crossroads’s primary audience is sports fiction fans. That is not a huge, robust audience. I am a white writer who wrote about a Black kid from rural Mississippi. My novel uses a very familiar trope in the deal with Devil. There is a lot of wordplay and unique phrasing throughout the book. Although I like to think publishers might look differently after the reviews I have received, I don't blame them for passing on it.

Then there was my fiasco with Legacy Book Publishing and the horrible first edition Gabriel Vaughn released with my name on it. Luckily, I had the rights to my book and was able to re-release it the way I wanted. 

Because Sarah had an agent, a publisher, and wrote to her audience, her book was able to take off. She didn't have the problems I had to get a book published. She was given a huge advance. Meanwhile, I am still trying to get out of the hole on my book investment. She is now a full-time author. I am still working my nine to five.

Sarah doesn't have to worry about marketing or distribution or contacting bookstores. In a way, she has become part of her publisher's product. I contact bookstores, coordinate my own signings, pay for my own marketing material, and post about my book on every social media possible.

I am out at breweries and book fairs, sports bars and parking lots selling Curveball at the Crossroads. I am on whatever and whoever's podcast will have me. I booked my own morning TV appearance. I will sell Curveball at the Crossroads on a train, on a plane, on a boat, or in a moat. I don't care. And every sale is noted on a huge spreadsheet I maintain to keep track of costs.

I am not hating Sarah Penner. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I applaud her. She has been nice enough to reply to some social media comments I have made. I congratulated her on her debut novel and on the launch of her second. But I can't help but compare myself to her, even if to realize how different two authors' journeys can be.

Curveball at the Crossroads at the Bookstore1 Book Fair

BIG NEWS:

I will be at Bookstore1 in downtown Sarasota on October 21st from 10am to 2pm selling and signing my debut novel Curveball at the Crossroads. Bookstore1 is a great bookstore run by great people. This will be my third time doing their book fair.

Bookstore1 already has copies of Curveball at the Crossroads on hand. If you want to buy your copy beforehand, and bring it to be signed, you can do that. Or you can order the book, and pick it up there on the day of the book fair.

I am also happy to be doing this book fair with my friend Josh Ginsburg. He has some great books about the interesting and odd of Tampa Bay and Orlando. Definitely recommend checking out his books.