ESSAYS

Edward Rooster

Jul 05, 2023

This is a page for essays, for reminiscing, remembering, regretting, and imagining.

Like everything else, it’s a work in progress and will evolve.

This connecting theme is less fiction but it’s still story-telling.

Everything is narrative.

It’s stories all the way down.

Looking Back From The Future

Edward Rooster

December 31, 2022

December 31, 2023, 11:00 PM EST 2023. What a year. Unexpected. Some good. Some bad. Some disappointments. Some nice surprises. Some great days. I wish I could put those wins in a jar to turn bad days into good ones. Some of those hopes, looking back, it’s funny.

Read full story

You've Got That Infinite Feeling

Edward Rooster

October 7, 2022

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) What do we do when we feel and can do almost anything with our minds? What happens …

Read full story

The Days Dad Started Over

Edward Rooster

January 13, 2023

This is an origin story. I’m sending it out late at night, after a day of doing something I’m grateful for, writing. Today marks two years since my Dad passed away. It’s the reason, you see, that you’re reading this. In the past, I gave in to doubt, fear, concern about what others think - to every handmaiden of regret. These last two years, though, someth…

Read full story

A Great Interruption Begins

Edward Rooster

July 17, 2023

This is a riff on an Age of Interaction, during which we began to surrender our attention in an Age of Distraction, where networks consume every waking moment. A Great Interruption of the hijacking our time and attention is just over the horizon. Technology delivered onto us something powerful, and although we have reason to be wary, we also have reason t…

Read full story

We Remember "The Future" Before We Create It

Edward Rooster

July 24, 2023

We Remember "The Future" Before We Create It

This is a riff about “the future”. I use my future and fiction filters to distill thoughts into words. It’s an essay and it’s fiction. It’s history and story. In an earlier piece about Information and Attention, “A Great Interruption Begins”, I upset Engineering and English majors alike. This week’s follow-up risks irrit…

Read full story

Breach The Sky To Brave The Stars

Edward Rooster

August 3, 2023

Read full story

Our Imagination Is A Camera Of The Mind

Edward Rooster

August 15, 2023

Welcome to an essay “From The Future”. After this essay, I plan to share chapters for my novels as part of writing in public. Future + Fiction, Story + History, is my formula for everything From The Future, whether it’s an essay, story or ch…

Read full story

The Syntax Of Reality

Edward Rooster

September 24, 2023

Welcome to a piece “From The Future”. Each week, I alternate between essays or fiction. Read along as I finish three books, including a draft for “Book #3, RETRIEVE”. Future + Fiction is the formula for everything, whether it’s an essay, story or chapter

Read full story

A Blind Spot In The Panopticon

Edward Rooster

October 30, 2023

This is a riff about privacy and attention. I have questions, no answers.

Read full story

The End of A Draft Is the Beginning

Edward Rooster

November 8, 2022

We’re almost done with this year and I’m almost done with a book I’m writing. Hello readers and welcome to new members, thank you for signing up, you’re just in time to see the birth of the first of two novels, and a series of essays, short fiction, and poetry tied to both the past and future.

Read full story

A Stranger In A Storytelling Land

Edward Rooster

September 19, 2023

Welcome to a piece “From The Future”. Each week, I alternate between essays or fiction. My primary focus is completing three books, including a draft for “Book #3, RETRIEVE”. Future + Fiction is the formula for everything, whether it’s an essay, story

Read full story

An Errand Boy Who Wrote Tales To Astonish

Edward Rooster

July 9, 2023

An Errand Boy Who Wrote Tales To Astonish

“Every one of us are a product of all the things we’ve experienced, seen, read, and heard in our lives. So when I write, I’m remembering things that happened, those things become part of the story.” I tell myself that I’m a storyteller, when I’m “feeling”

Read full story

You Do Not Have To Be Perfect

Edward Rooster

October 11, 2022

This is a submission, intended for the Soaring Twenties Social Club’s Symposium, a collaboration amongst writers of the STSC, for a monthly theme of “Work”.

Read full story

The Great Herenow

Edward Rooster

May 6, 2023

This is a piece for the STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration of artists, for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC), around a set theme. The latest theme is “DEATH”. This is not a meditation, a scary story, a horror story, a story with a wry ironic end. I’m writing about right “now” to you, right now.

Read full story

Where Everything Always Happens

Edward Rooster

November 5, 2022

nostalgia is a paradox where everything always happens it is an impossible place untouchable reaches of intimate realities celestial reasons for unreachable reveries filled with invisible grace when the only thing that matters was that it once happened

Read full story

These Are Going To Be "Heads Up" Messages

Edward Rooster

May 1, 2023

These Are Going To Be "Heads Up" Messages

Heavens help me, this is my “official” post of how I will use Notes for 3 purposes: I will write things over time that I do NOT email to you, because they are “long”, and I have both mercy and fear in my heart about sharing them with you. Everything lives in the “

Read full story

Thirty Days Revisited

Edward Rooster

February 6, 2023

Two years ago, I began to do something because I needed to do something that wasn’t self-destructive to body, mind and spirit, for escape. Those of you who know anything about me knew what life was like. I chose writing and that’s what I do. The escape became experimentation with writing, it led to writing and some books.

Read full story

My Anti-Rules of Storytelling

Edward Rooster

September 12, 2022

I don’t write like anyone else, not the way it’s supposed to be done according to others. I broke everyone else’s rules because I don’t know them. I’ve been riffing. This is a riff on a growing part of my life since Jan 2021. This is me at my worst & best.

Read full story

The Best Stories Make Offers We Can't Refuse

Edward Rooster

September 19, 2022

The Best Stories Make Offers We Can't Refuse

Inside a great story, there’s another which makes us stay and start something new. This is about “The Offer”, a series about the behind-the-scenes story about the film adaptation of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather”. Years ago, I was a kid, up late with Dad while he watched “The Godfather”.

Read full story

That Post Which Tells You Why I've Been Away

Edward Rooster

December 17, 2022

That Post Which Tells You Why I've Been Away

Hello to those who signed up a while ago and to newcomers, I hope you’ve all been doing well. I have a ton of writing to send to you in 2023. I wish you and yours a wonderful and festive holiday. Pleasantries dispensed with, my update is below. This is my first post in a month. I’ve been editing two piles of words, book-ending about two years of my life,…

Read full story

The Future Has A Price, It Must Be Made

Edward Rooster

September 20, 2022

The Future is not taken, it is fashioned by hand. It is protected, nurtured, and guided. We credit old gods but it was always us. Our stories of the past, even our myths, are a message to the future. Prometheus, last of the Titans — grandson of the Heavens and the Earth.

Read full story

The Love Of Moving On

Edward Rooster

September 12, 2022

I see an immoveable feast of the same stuff swallowed up as if there’s no tomorrow. The problem with acronyms is that there aren’t enough to go around. There’s a shortage of meme building blocks, short-hand for some of the dumbest ideas of modern social network society. FOMO, YOLO, and whatever alphabet soup TLDR packages t…

Read full story

Leaving Eternity's Parking Lot

Edward Rooster

October 2, 2022

Preface: I wrote most of this a couple of months ago, but moved it over to this new “fresh-start” page, and I made changes. I wanted to close out old “stuff”, keep what mattered to me. Some of you may have read it but either way I don’t think you mind. You get it.

Read full story

These pieces are best read online, via the Substack’s App, when you have fifteen minutes.

Share With Those Curious About The Future