Irate No More

I’ve linked a couple of times in the past to Irate Savant, and once to Spectral City. As many have speculated (and almost as many argued this couldn’t be the case), both blogs were works of fiction. They were created by Lein Shory, who is an old friend of mine.

Irate Savant, Lein’s first attempt at a novel in blog form, was a smashing success. It built a steady readership, and more than a few people were convinced that the unhinged title character and narrator was in fact a real person. I hope one of these days Lein will post or publish some of the emails he got from the latter group. One set of correspondance between the Savant and a clueless Huffington Post editor is fall-on-the-floor hysterical.

A few months back, the Savant apruptly stopped posting. Some speculated that he’d met with foul play, others assumed he’d just gotten bored, and a few figured it out–he’d gone away because that was the end of his story.

Lein updated both sites today, revealing their true nature and quite a bit more:

I planned the return of the Irate Savant. I put together a post bringing him back. It was classic Savant, and I was eager to get back into it, to rant and bloviate with that insane, arrogant freedom that his fictional voice allowed. Since the comments were a great part of the fun of the blog, I was going to experiment with open threads, and possibly more guests. Maybe even turn a buck or two (unlikely, I know). I was going to try to take the Savant to the next level–whatever that would be.

I loaded the post into Blogger the night of Tuesday, the 25th, and saved it as a draft. The morning of Wednesday, the 26th, I came very close to hitting the publish button.

Then that afternoon, my second son, Logan, was born. Within seconds of his birth, we realized something was very wrong–what we later that day learned was a serious heart defect.

In addition to several other heart complications, he has what’s known as Transposition of the Great Vessels. His aorta is where his pulmonary artery should be, and vice versa.

The doctors managed to stabilize him, and on Monday, the 1st, he had surgery on his heart–a temporary measure designed to get his blood flowing the right way long enough for him to grow and strengthen for yet another surgery several months from now. And another one may follow in several years.

He’s a tough little guy. It’s hard to look at such a tiny baby and realize he’s gone through so much in just a week of life. At the moment, he seems to be doing well. But we all have a very long way to go.

So I’m ending Irate Savant and Spectral City.

Lein contines,

I’m not going to stop blogging, though. I’m going to start a new, non-fiction one entitled Ad Hoc Existence, chronicling how I, Logan, and my family deal with this crisis. In part, it’s for my sanity; after waking up several mornings to a crushing wave of depression and misery, I realized I am going to need some outlet for coping. Another reason is the hope that others might find the information useful, and that eventually I might be able to turn the effort into at least a small source of revenue, possibly as a book. If you read those last words and think that I’m being crass and opportunistic with my son’s condition, think again. I’m faced with a new reality of financial requirements, and basically the only damn skill I have is writing; perhaps I can at least put that skill to some true productive use.

I’ve known how good a writer Lein is since we first met in Elly Welt’s writing class at Auburn, nearly 20 years ago. As anybody reading his stuff can see, he’s got the chops, and then some. So if you enjoyed either Irate Savant or Spectral City, or even if you didn’t catch either during their runs, by all means head over to Ad Hoc Existence. Especially if you’re a book editor or literary agent, capice?