J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Personal Updates Page 1 of 10

A Few Words About My Dad

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On December 26

In Personal Updates

My father, John Roaldseth Moyer, died on November 16th 2024, of natural causes. He was with his wife Kristin, at their home in the village of St. Hilaire d’Ozilhan, France.

I flew to France to attend his funeral. We gave him a great send-off with an abundance of flowers. Many of his friends from Geneva (where he and Kristin worked for many years) made the trip to the village, and several members of Kristin’s family flew in from Norway to pay their respects. My dad was loved by many.

This obituary on the World Council of Churches site is a good one, especially when it comes to his career. For those interested in Frontier Internship in Mission, the Geneva-based NGO my dad directed for many years, Ada Forcer’s dissertation is a good place to start (PDF link).

On a more personal note, I want to share some thoughts about what kind of father he was.

  • My dad was a hobbyist. He had a huge model train setup in our garage in Berkeley, which my brother and I were absolutely fascinated by. He also built model boats from kits, and even briefly took up oil painting. As far as I know he was entirely self-taught, but approached each activity with a fearless sense of exploration that I admired (and I like to think rubbed off on me).
  • My dad was gentle. I’m sure he got angry at my brother and me at times, but none of those moments have stuck with me. I think we did get a few comically light spankings when we were little (as was the tradition at the time), but neither of us ever feared him physically, and he rarely raised his voice.
  • He was strong, too. My brother and I were both surprised by one particular incident where my dad confronted someone who tried to cut in line at the airport. He did so with utter confidence and no anger, and the line cutter backed off without protest. Later, discussing the moment, my brother and I realized we’d both had the same thought–Dad is kind of a badass… (though he never acted “macho”).
  • He led a number of family adventures, including building a cabin in the Oregon woods, a week-long sailing trip on a small boat, and moving to Europe for a number of years.
  • He made and maintained lifelong friendships, including Bill Hepworth (from high school), Gus Schultz, Chuck Harper, Marvin and Erdmut Brown, and many others.
  • He had “joie de vie” to the utmost. He loved parties and he loved to host. He loved wine, probably a little too much (St. Hilaire d’Ozilhan is a small village with six wineries), but most of all he enjoyed sitting with friends and talking endlessly. John and Kristin had an endless flow of guests through their house, all who felt loved and welcome.

My father had his struggles as well, which he included in a series of informal memoirs that he wrote for family. And my relationship with him wasn’t always easy. But I loved him greatly, and looked up to him in many ways, and am grateful that he positively modeled so many aspects of life for me.

Here are a few pictures from various phases of his life. If you want to learn more about my dad for any reason, feel free to get in touch.

 

No More Building on Sand

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On June 16

In Culture Rants/Shares, Personal Updates

When Twitter went downhill, I wasn’t sure what to “do” about social media. Many of the authors and artists I followed fled the platform, and my feed became a cesspool of vile posts from accounts I was not following. Though my Twitter/X feed has become more sane, I rarely go there anymore. The company dismantled TweetDeck, my preferred mode of viewing and posting, and I just lost interest.

Until then, Twitter had been my preferred social media platform. I posted to Facebook and Instagram a few times a year, usually to promote a new release. But I was on Twitter daily, posting at least a few times a week, sharing thoughts, opinions, and retweeting items of interest.

Post-Twitter, I decided not to rush the process of finding my next “main” social media site. I signed up for Bluesky, Threads, and Mastadon, but I didn’t spend much time on any of them.

I’d been burned. I’d spent significant time on Twitter, and my experience had been ruined by Elon Musk’s ego purchase and atrociously poor management (firing top engineers, dismantling moderation teams, inviting fascists and bigots back to the platform, alienating advertisers, and generally running the company into the ground). I didn’t want to repeat my mistake by hopping on a new bandwagon.

Then, a few weeks ago, I had a realization. I already had a “main” social media site. It’s this website. It’s self-hosted WordPress.

If I have something to say or share, long-form text is usually my preferred mode of communication. Sometimes I like to share a picture or two, but usually it’s just words. So a WordPress blog is perfect. People can comment on my posts if they want, or message me. And I can share posts to different audiences on Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn, depending on the subject matter and vibe.

Many of my family and friends visit my site occasionally to see what I’m up to. I keep up with them by following their posts on whatever social media site(s) they post on, or just call and say hi (a Gen X thing). So my blog does function as a social media site, in addition to being a place where anyone can read my posts or learn more about my fiction writing and music.

And I’m no longer building on sand. No one can rug pull my own site, or buy it and ruin it. Nothing lasts forever, but WordPress.org is open source software. I own my own domain and my own content. Being the sole moderator, I can edit or remove old posts or comments whenever I want.

So welcome to my social media platform.

Alta (She Made History)

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On April 6

In Culture Rants/Shares, Personal Updates

My mother-in-law passed away recently. I had a good relationship with her, despite the fact that we were both stubborn people with frequently divergent opinions.

Alta was a poet, famous in some circles for both her poetry and her press. Andrew Gilbert has written an outstanding obituary on kqed.org that really does her justice.

Though Alta was complex, loved attention, and was sometimes overly dramatic, I liked her and have an enormous respect for her life’s body of work. She dedicated herself to art, compassion, equality, and all the qualities that I consider to be progress in the greater picture of civilization.

We live in an era where the radical right is actively dismantling human rights, especially women’s rights. Abortion rights have been trashed, they are coming hard for birth control, and famous influencers say publicly that women should lose the right to vote.

But because of the work of Alta and her peers, the right faces an uphill battle. There are too many female role models in all walks of life to say with any credibility that women “can’t” occupy a particular societal role. There are simply too many living, successful counter-examples of women playing prominent roles in the arts, politics, sciences, and every other sphere. Women still face discrimination prejudice, and under-representation in many fields, but culturally we’re in a much different place than when Alta was growing up. And that’s partially due to her work.

So hats off, and respect.

What’s Next? Post-Pandemic Expansiveness…

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On July 26

In Creative Work/Career, Personal Updates

Guess which one bit me?

Over the course of the pandemic, I had a pervasive sense of deferment. I postponed many projects and activities with the mindset of “just trying to get through.” Which was appropriate, I think, given that the pandemic took a mental toll on me, as it did with most people. I prioritized the things that absolutely had to get done. For 2020 through 2022 that included:

  • Finding a better school for my kid and everything else that involved (moving, remodeling and renting out our house, adjusting to a new location)
  • Retooling my tech skills and taking on some new clients
  • Continuing to write fiction and make music
  • Doing my best to stay healthy and avoid getting a bad case of Covid (getting vaccinated, reducing social exposure, etc.)

But many things were backburnered, including:

  • Actively advancing my writing career (finding an agent, submitting new work)
  • Social plans, maintaining relationships with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances
  • Fitness and sport
  • Many of my hobbies (especially tabletop gaming and miniature painting, which I used to do every week)
  • Travel

The pandemic is generally considered to be over, but the world still feels chaotic, and the temptation to keep deferring things is strong. Climate disasters are unfolding left and right, fascists and bigots are on the rise in the US and worldwide, the war in Ukraine is far from over, and the US economy is iffy at best.

But personally, I do have more bandwidth. I’m trying to decide how I want to use my free time and attention. Generally I’m feeling more expansive. I want to see old friends and make new ones. I want to write and publish more fiction and more music. I’d like to travel to places I’ve seen as well as to locations I’ve never visited.

That said, I’ll probably take on too much and then feel overwhelmed. But for now, the plan is to DO MORE and SAY YES more often.

Oh, and one thing to share, a new melodic house music Spotify playlist from me and Spesh, just some tracks we’re enjoying at the moment.

And one more thing, I’m @johndavidmoyer on Threads, haven’t fully committed yet but I did tweet my first thread, or whatever. About the new secretly filmed BART movie.

Communications from my Past Self (and other reasons to write)

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On May 20

In Creative Work/Career, Metablog, Personal Updates, Writing

East Cut neighborhood in San Francisco

I’m gearing up for some changes to this site. Probably a new theme, and hopefully a better system for signing up for my newsletter.

Considering these changes has led me to consider what this blog is for. Self-expression? Self-promotion? Is it a lifestyle blog? A health blog? A creativity blog?

Sure, all of the above. But here are the reasons that resonate with me the most right now:

1. To think more clearly. For me at least, there’s no substitute for writing about a topic in order to understand it, to formulate and articulate my views. I write, therefore I think.

2. To have a record of what I was thinking and feeling at a particular time. Just today I reread a post I’d written from when I’d overcommitted to work, and was feeling overwhelmed. At the moment I feel like I don’t have quite enough freelance work, which creates some financial stress. But reading my previous post reminded me that I said some no-thank-yous to give myself more time to work on writing and music. So that’s what I should do.

3. To grow my readership. I haven’t put much energy into this, but it is important to me. Having regular readers is great for so many reasons. But it’s a responsibility, a two-way street, and if I’m not writing interesting and helpful posts then I can’t expect an audience to stick around.

And here are a couple reasons that don’t, or no longer, resonate with me:

1. To write about health topics. Bottom line, I’m not a medical professional. I have a deep interest in nutrition and human health, but there are also huge gaps in my knowledge. In another life I might have become a nutritionist or naturopath, but that’s not the path I chose. And that’s not the kind of reader I want to attract or interact with.

2. To sell something. This blog will never become a sales funnel to buy my course or eBook. I just have no interest in that. If you happen to discover one of my novels that you think you’d enjoy, and buy it, fantastic! But the primary purpose of this blog never was and never will be to make a quick buck.

Personal Updates

  • I recently returned from the Nebulas Conference in Anaheim. It was my first in-person writing conference since the beginning of the pandemic, and being around other authors was incredibly energizing. I didn’t have any particular agenda beyond learning and socializing, but I ended the weekend with a slew of new ideas and a recharged writing battery. My friend Jane was nominated for a game-writing Nebula for her work on a recent D&D book, and though GRRM won the award for Elden Ring, I felt very happy for her and her team. I also met Steve Lerner, the writer of Stray (nominated in the same category)–I look forward to playing the cyber-cat game. As for novels, I’m currently reading and enjoying Daughters of Tith by J. Patricia Anderson.
  • The quiver of complete, unpublished fiction is getting pretty full, and in the coming months I’ll be shifting my efforts to submitting more work for publication, and possibly taking another crack at the agent querying process. At the moment I’m working on revisions of Green Dawn (previously titled The Savior Virus), a near-future medical thriller/sci-fi novel.
  • There are a few social issues I’m trying to think more clearly about, so I’ll probably write about them in the near future. A few of the questions I’m considering:
    • What Should the Left Do About Men? (high male unemployment, falling educational levels, social isolation, etc.)
    • How Can Labor Disrupt the False Promises of AI-Enhanced Productivity?
    • What are the Most Effective Ways Citizenry can Reclaim Power from Fascist/Authoritarian Leaders and Groups?
  • I have two new EDM releases out:

That’s all for today, hope you are enjoying your weekend!

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