Hi, there, welcome to Prose Night at the Writing Life. I’ve been giving you, my readers, some sneak peeks into some of my works in progress, among other offerings. Tonight will be similar to last month, as you’ll see possibly the beginning section of my latest book1.
The book I’m talking about is the newly imagined sequel to my book The Holy Fool, the first novel I ever had published in 2019. In all honesty, the book had been in the planning process for several years prior to publication, a slowly simmering stew of thriller and the themes of the decline and fall of traditional media in the United States. As both an American and a former journalist myself, the story that cooked and matured over those years grew into something I was compelled to write.
Since the events of the book took place during the heated presidential election of 2008 and the beginnings of what became The Great Recession, it technically was historical fiction when it came out. Part of the theme of the book was the idea journalism as it existed was not sustainable in the way it had been back in the 19th and 20th centuries. Whether it was a combination of the rules changing or technologies making old journalistic mediums obsolete, my main character, the newspaper columnist and eventual blogger Sonny Turner, was seeing this as it happened, and part of his journey was exploring whether there was another way to tell the truth about the world as he saw it.
I don’t claim to be as much of a prognosticator as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, William Gibson, or many other science fiction writers, but I do think I sensed where trends were going. And as American journalism continued to face challenges in the current political environment, I began to wonder what Sonny and his colleagues might have to say about it.
It was an intriguing idea, but I didn’t just want to return to a character I began writing nearly a decade ago just to put out a new book for publication. However, the story that eventually presented itself I thought was compelling enough to attract reader interest. At least, it was interesting enough to start writing.
When we last left Sonny Turner, it was Labor Day 2009, and he was launching his brand-new news web site, The Fool (which will serve as the title of the series) in Switzerland, under investigation for publishing secret US government files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than fifteen years later, we’ll rejoin Sonny as he observes events in the US from his new home in Switzerland.
Election Night 2024
An excerpt from The Fool 2
6 November 2024, Geneva, Switzerland, offices of The Fool
He started at the screens, waiting for them to hit him with the bad news.
Sam “Sonny” Turner sat in the main conference room of The Fool, an independent non-profit news site now celebrating its fifteenth year of operations. The conference room was one of the larger walled-off spaces in The Fool’s offices. On one side of the conference room was a massive whiteboard, and on the other side were nine wide-screen televisions mounted on the wall, tuned to different media outlets on either side of the Atlantic. With the six-hour time difference between New York and Geneva, he could easily tell the American outlets from their nighttime scenes and the British and European outlets with their morning scenes.
Sonny, who had founded The Fool and served as its executive editor, knew there were a couple of staff reporters both there in Geneva and in the US were liveblogging the US elections, but The Fool was not doing a live webcast. His organization had never been considered part of what some quaintly called the “mainstream media.” Its offices only occupied a single floor of a former factory in the Plainpalais section of Geneva and had no other offices, although it had correspondents in various European countries, North America, and other locations.
He knew he might have to put together a column for the site after they called the race, and he had already drafted out two different versions, depending on who won. I’ll have to do a video too, he grumbled to himself. I always look like an ass on video.
Sonny was American, although he had not lived in America for sixteen years and had not even set foot in America for three. His staff was a mix of American expats and Europeans, some who had been with him from the beginning and a rash of other younger recruits Sonny could not help seeing as kids. Most of the older ones were Americans and the younger ones were Swiss, Europeans, and expats from some other locations, including some from West Africa and places like Hong Kong.
Sixteen years. I’ve been here for twice as long as I was at the Chicago Journal full-time. I thought I was going to spend my entire career in newspapers, like Gus and Ed did. But I forgot it was the 21st century, not the 20th. And I couldn’t stay out of trouble, either.
He leaned back in the black leather office chair, a white handle-less mug full of chicory-blend coffee he imported from some company in New Orleans, as he watched the muted screens of American maps begin to fill with blue and a lot more red. Sonny had turned forty-eight that year. He had a beer-barrel body, with a thick chest and short but muscled arms and legs. His close-cut chestnut brown hair and beard were infiltrated with iron grey, and he had narrowed, dark brown russet eyes. He dressed in a black and gold University of Iowa hoodie, black athletic shorts, and black Nike sandals worn over white socks. The main reason he wasn’t grossly overweight was because he walked most places nowadays, made use of the small weight room at the office, and had started using one of the new weight loss drugs a couple years back.
Sonny was alone in the conference room. There were the half-dozen people in the main newsroom, the overnight crew holding down the fort until the day team showed up. Nobody had disturbed him yet, at least not any staff. He heard the glass door creak open.
“They called it yet?” Josephine “Joey” Holverson called out.
“Once Ohio goes to him, I think that’ll be it.”
“Yeah.” She pulled up an office chair and sat next to him with her own handless coffee mug. Glancing over at him, she reached out with her right hand to take the left hand resting on his leg. “You all right?”
“Not looking forward to recording a video about this rubbish,” he grumbled. That prompted a giggle from Joey.
Sonny couldn’t help but smile as she rubbed his arm. Joey always claimed not to be conventionally pretty – she thought her mouth was too wide, her nose too prominent, her hazel eyes more squinty than gleaming, and she always thought her hips too wide for her frame. But all Sonny had eyes for was her, after years of semi-successful dates and relationships with other women. Only a couple of laugh lines at the corners of her eyes hinted at her true age of forty-three.
He’d gotten to know Joey at the Chicago Journal intimately during the last few months of his employment there. Unlike Sonny, Joey hadn’t been looking to make journalism a career – her work as an administrative assistant and staff writer for the Arts and Entertainment desk had been a way for her to help pay the bills while she was finishing up her studies at the Chicago Art Institute.
When she agreed to leave the US with him after he quit the Journal, it was a surprise. He remembered how he had bought her a plane ticket to return to the US right when they arrived in Switzerland, just in case she ever changed her mind. Within a year, she had him sell the ticket and then they got married a few months later. She had worked for the past several years as Design Director for The Fool, creating its iconic logo and oversaw the visual design of its web pages. This past year, she had been training some of her subordinates to take over the role from her so she could retire from the paper and continue her independent artwork, featured in galleries throughout Switzerland, Europe, and even back home in the United States. In addition to her artwork, she had some other priorities she wanted to pay more attention to as well.
“C’est quoi cette merde?” a young girl’s voice called out from the door to the conference room.
“Sam, language,” Joey said.
“Yeah, Mère, it’s language. It’s French,” Samantha Victoria Holverson Turner said.
“Yes, quite the joke,” Joey sighed.
Less than a year after Sonny and Joey had married, Samantha had come along. Joey thought about naming their first child Samuel Turner Jr., but when it turned out to be a girl, she went with Samantha.
Now fourteen years old, Sam was an echo of her mother’s old high school yearbook photos, except for the squared jaw and more prominent brow of her father. She grew up speaking French alongside English and now spoke better German than her parents. Sam shared her mother’s talent for art and both her parents’ tendency toward black and obscure humor.
“Scheiße, was ist das?” said a second voice, a younger boy.
“You don’t have permission to start swearing all over the place, either,” Sonny growled. “Don’t you all got school to get to today?”
“Today’s a… what do you call it when the teachers have to be in school to work but the students don’t?” Edward “Eddie” John Holverson Turner said.
Sonny nodded. “Back in the US, they called those in-service days.”
“Well, I forget what the school called them, but it’s that,” Eddie said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get cereal in a bit.”
Eddie sat down at one of the chairs around the conference table next to Sonny while his sister decided to stand. Eddie was twelve and built like his dad, but with his mother’s wider mouth and hazel eyes. He had a wide variety of interests, from hiking in some of the nearby mountains, tabletop gaming, and boating and fishing in Lake Geneva and the nearby Rhone River when he had time. He’d inherited or gained an interest in writing from his father. Unlike him, Eddie preferred writing fantasy and science fiction rather than any journalistic bent. This was despite his willingness to entertain his father’s tales of reporting and the fact he was named after two of his father’s late professional mentors, Journal editor Jack DeFoe and columnist Ed Mazur.
I thought I was going to live in Switzerland for a little bit, and now I’ve lived here a third of my life, Sonny thought as he smiled at both his kids. I thought I might have kids at some point, but I wasn’t expecting to have Swiss kids. They grew up speaking French and German while it was a slog for me and Joey to learn them. They’ve got dual US and Swiss citizenship, but I have to explain America to them. They don’t know about it at all except what they see on television and the Internet.
In the middle drawer of his desk back at his apartment downstairs, he had two passports: a dark blue one with the Great Seal of the United States and a bright red one with a white cross near the top right-hand corner. He and Joey had finally gotten Swiss citizenship back in 2020 and later qualified their children to gain it as well. Both the kids were surprised when he gave them their passports and told them they were Swiss citizens, because they had thought they already were. Sonny had to explain to them Switzerland didn’t give citizenship to people just because they were born there like America did.
“Don’t worry, Poppa,” Eddie said. “We’ll go back to the flat and make something for breakfast.”
“We’ve got bacon and eggs in the fridge, and frozen waffles in the freezer,” Joey said. “Coffee should be on downstairs, too.” The kids had each started to make their own simple meals halfway through elementary school thanks to Joey’s instructions and started cooking for the entire family by the time Eddie had made it to middle school.
“You want some for both of you?” Sam asked.
“Wouldn’t say no,” Sonny said.
“Okay, Pops, we’ll get on it,” Sam said. She reached over and swatted Eddie on the shoulder. “C’mon, sooner we start, sooner we eat.”
Sonny saw a flash on one of the screens, one of them in the top left corner of the wall. “There it is,” he said, certainty in his voice. “That’s it.”
He pointed to the screen. It was the election coverage of Fox News. The chyron at the bottom of the screen announced Donald Trump would become the next president of the United States of America.
“Do you think they’re wrong?” Joey whispered to him. “You think they’re trying to lie about it?”
Sonny was silent for a long moment. He considered all the current vote counts he’d tracked on the screens in front of him, on his iPhone. He played with the numbers in his head, from other sources as well as Fox. He knew the answer. “Naw, he’s got this. The other networks might wait a while to call it, but he’s got this.”
“The fuck?” Joey gasped, then covered her mouth as she glanced at the kids. Sonny draped an arm around her and kissed her on the temple.
“I’m sorry,” Sonny said.
“Not your fault.”
“Poppa? What’s going to happen? Is everything all right?” Eddie asked.
Sonny sighed. “We’ll be all right,” he tried to reassure them. “Don’t know about America, though.”
“Aren’t we Americans, though?” Eddie replied.
Sort of. “Well, you’re not just Americans, though. We’re Swiss, too. You’ll be all right. You going to make breakfast? We just had coffee down here; I’m beginning to get hungry.”
Sam nodded. “I know you want hog, not charcoal for bacon, right?”
“My girl,” he said.
“You want scrambled eggs or an omelet?” Eddie asked.
Sonny shrugged. “Either way. If you make omelets, make sure you use Swiss or Provolone, not American cheese, yeah?”
“Got it, Pops.”
“Did you walk Buddy?” Buddy was the kid’s new beagle pup, which had taken the place of Sonny’s late lamented beagle Pica, who had passed away at sixteen years old the previous year.
“Yes, Mére, before we got here,” Sam said.
“All right.”
Sam leaned over and kissed both parents on the tops of their heads. As she led Eddie out the door, she turned to them. “Sorry,” she said. “Love you both.”
“Love you too, girl,” Sonny said, and Joey repeated the same.
After the kids walked out of the room, Joey leaned her head on his shoulder for a while. “Fuck this,” she muttered, doing her best to shake her head.
Sonny stroked the top of Joey’s head. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Like you said, I might be all right, but I don’t know about everyone back home. I’m worried this idiot is going to enact The Handmaiden’s Tale to piss off women and start up a police state.”
“Didn’t happen last time, though not for lack of trying,”
“This is different, though, and you know it. He’s gotten rid of everyone who told him ‘no’ before. He’s more senile. He’s going to do whatever he wants, and the only thing he cares about is getting money or women.”
“You’re right,” Sonny said. “Still, it’s not like other governments were that perfect. Shoot, I still remember how screwed up GWB’s administration was, and I didn’t return to the US when Obama took over. That jerk had me under federal investigation for six years.”
“Oh, come on, you know it’s different,” Joey moaned. “At least Bush’s people acted like they knew what they were doing. This crowd isn’t even going to pretend. Don’t tell me you’re thinking like those other corporate media people.”
Sonny sighed at that. “No, I know it’s different. It was always headed this way … but it’s different.”
Joey looked up and at the digital clock in the conference room showing the time in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Geneva, Beijing, and Tokyo. “You going to post something?”
“Yeah, I’ve already got the column ready to go; I’ll send it out once the rest of the US journos call it too. And a quick video. No need for a massive speech right now,” Sonny replied as he got up.
“You recording it now?”
“Naw, headed back to my office to call someone.”
“Who’s that?”
“You know who.”
“Ugh,” Joey said. “You think he’s still up at this hour?”
“You know he is, the old dog.”
#
“Sonny boy! To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” Arthur “Gus” Pulaski called out in a brighter and livelier tone than his appearance would suggest.
“Jeez, Gus, aren’t you getting any sleep tonight?” Sonny said over the Zoom link.
“You’re one to talk,” Gus chuckled from his desk in the half-filled newsroom of the Chicago Journal. “You’re still up.”
“We’re six hours ahead of you, Gus, remember? I got seven hours asleep and woke up to the nonsense of Washington. What’s your excuse?”
Gus shrugged. “It’s the business, Sonny, you know how it is. It’s the business.”
Gus had devoted all his almost fifty years of professional career in journalism to the Journal. He’d started freelancing for the paper after just turning 20 years old, the same year Sonny was born, and had risen from beat reporter to copy editor, city editor, and managing editor shortly after Sonny left the paper after eight years of full-time service. Carlo Massino had been the editor in chief since Sonny’s departure up until four years ago, when he’d accepted a job running the University of Pennsylvania’s journalism school. Even though Gus had been within grasp of qualifying for Medicare back then, there was nobody else who would seriously challenge him for the role of editor in chief. It was his time, Sonny thought.
Now, as Sonny glanced at his one-time mentor through the screen, he started to wonder if Gus’ time was already up. The white light from the long tracks of overhead fluorescent bulbs did Gus no favors, but Sonny had a feeling there would still be a greenish-grayish tinge to Gus’ complexion. Now sixty-eight years old, what remained of his white hair gathered above and behind his ears, completing a semi-circle at the back of his head. Gus had been an overweight 280 pounds or so when he first knew him, but now it looked like he’d lost about forty pounds, skin sagging on his neck and arms. Sonny had no faith in his amateur diagnostic prowess, but something was tripping the old reporter’s intuition. He’s not doing well.
“So, what’s your plans now that Orange is back in charge?”
“Sonny…” Gus began, then sighed. “What we always do when this happens. We get in contact with his press office or transitional team and we start reporting again.”
“You think it’s going to be like normal?” Sonny said, trying to keep his voice gentle. “His people barely talked with you the first time around. You guys got maybe two in-person interviews with him in four years. As much as he and his boys lied to your face, I don’t even think those interviews were worth the trouble you went through to get them.”
“You’ve got to engage with people in power, Sonny, that’s what I always taught you, right? Even if you don’t agree with their beliefs, you got to engage with them.”
Sonny shook his head. “That assumes they aren’t going to lie about stuff like whether the sky is blue or if there’s salt in the oceans. I mean, we’ve been headed this way for a long time, ever since we got squeamish about saying someone lied when they lied.”
“We put it in the headline when he lied, all the time!” Gus shot back. “You know better than to say that about us.”
“You guys did better than most, although your wording was mushy,” Sonny replied. “He’s been making you guys the enemy ever since ’15. I keep telling you, you all can’t cover him like he’s some podunk senator from the good old days. It’s more like covering Putin, Duerte, or Pinochet or Franco. You’re in enemy territory, brother. We’ve been treating the White House and the government like that ever since we got started. We’re not begging to be in the stenographer pool.”
“Notice you’re happy enough to use our coverage of his press conferences on your site,” Gus chuckled.
“Fair point, but we’re not using it as the basis for our coverage,” Sonny said. “We’re working our sources in the shadows, not taking what they say on face value – like you taught me to do, Gus.”
“I know.” Gus leaned back in his cracked black leather office chair and sighed. “So, what are your guys going to be doing?”
“Same as we’ve been doing the past fifteen years. Stay lean, stay mean, and find the stories people in power don’t want found.”
“Well, if what you’re saying is true, your guys over here might have to look over their shoulders going forward.”
“Don’t I know it.” Sonny sighed as he examined his friend through the screen. “Hell, Gus, when are you going to take a step back? You’re overdue for one; nobody can say you didn’t do anything for the Journal.”
“You say that, but you didn’t say anything to Ed when he worked right up until he kicked it,” Gus snorted.
“Ed was working part time, and he wasn’t in charge of the whole place,” Sonny retorted in disbelief. “That’s a big difference.”
“It’s going to be that easy for you to step back, once you get to where I’m at?”
“Maybe easier than you might think.”
“I’ll remember that fifteen years from now and see if you change your mind.”
“I hope you are around in fifteen years, but you won’t be at the rate you’re going.”
“Fuck,” Gus breathed. “That was a low blow, Sonny.”
“I’m telling the truth, though, aren’t I? Look, give yourself another title, Editor Emeritus or something like that. Come in Mondays and Fridays, mentor whoever takes over for you. Talk to the kids coming in and show them how to do their jobs. There have to be candidates to take over your job, some good people there.”
Gus was quiet for a few moments. “Randy Barber here’s been a good managing editor. He’s about your age, but I don’t have a feel for whether he’d want the big job.”
“I’d ask him. Even if he says no, at least you know you need to get recruiting.”
“All of the younger guys out here seem to want to join up with you nowadays,” Gus said with a smile.
“If you need to poach a couple of my guys to fill out your ranks, go right ahead. But honestly, with all the people other newspapers and television newsrooms cut over the past decade or two, you should be able to find at least a few seasoned guys willing to jump back into the journalism pond. How are you guys doing, really?”
Gus shrugged. “Wouldn’t say we’re seeing massive growth, but we’re stable enough to keep the lights on. How about you all?”
“Oh, we’re doing pretty well, actually. Low overhead and everything help out a bit.”
“I’m sure… hey, who’s that I see?”
Sonny glanced over his right shoulder to see Eddie hovering behind him. “What’s up, kid?”
“Is that Eddie I see? Wow, you’ve grown since the last time your dad shared those pictures.”
“You remember Gus from the Journal, right?” Sonny said.
“Sure, I do. Hello, Gus,” Eddie said with a wave.
“What’s up, kid?”
“We’ve got breakfast ready to go and brought it upstairs from the flat,” Eddie said. “Mother said to fetch you to come eat.”
“All right. Tell Mom I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”
“D’accord, Papa,” Eddie said with a pat on the shoulder, then he departed.
“How old is he again, kid?”
“Twelve.”
“Christ, I am getting old. I remember seeing his baby pics. And he really speaks French?”
“Talks more in French than English, but part of that is us living here in Geneva,” Sonny replied. “He has a good handle on German, too. I remember you and Ed talking about raising kids and all the stuff to expect, but I didn’t expect to be raising Swiss kids.”
“They seem bright as hell, speaking more than one language. It’s a good problem to have.”
“Your kids?”
“Doing fine.”
Sonny nodded. “Well, family calls. Think about what I said. And whatever you need logistically, just call me, all right?”
“Will do.”
“Take care, Boss.”
“You too, Kid.”
#
At about 11:45 p.m., Sonny stepped into a small room in The Fool’s offices that served as a broadcast location for the site. CBS, the Associated Press, and other news organizations had officially called the race for Trump just after 5:30 a.m. New York time.
“Everything up on the teleprompter?” Sonny asked Henri Roche, who was one of the tech staff for The Fool.
“Everything’s ready to go,”Henri said in French.
“Bon,” Sonny replied, then continued in French, “We’re going to do this live – no sense in editing this. One take should be all we need, anyway.”
“D’accord.”
Sonny sat down, straightened the sport coat he was wearing over a black The Fool polo shirt, and acknowledged Henri counting down to when they went live.
“Hello, everyone, Sonny Turner, executive editor for The Fool here,” he began, now back to English. “At this point, you have probably heard the news that Donald Trump has again been elected president of the United States, if not in a landslide, then at least by a solid lead in the Electoral College. There will be plenty of journalists, pundits, politicos, and ordinary people seeking to spread their opinions on this matter to all willing to read or listen. I’m not here to add to those opinions today, but to discuss, in brief, our plans for how to cover the events which are to come.
“This year, The Fool celebrated its fifteenth anniversary,” Sonny continued. “During those years, we evolved from a news organization made up mostly of American expatriates to a multinational one, with staff and correspondents from not just throughout Europe but the world. We’re a nonprofit organization interested not in profit margins and investor happiness but getting accurate information about your world to you, about journalism in its purest sense.
“If we have an editorial philosophy here at The Fool, it is that those with power in our world need to be held to account and their actions need to be known to everyone. No one person or entity in our society should hold unlimited or unchecked power over others, and we as journalists need to make people aware of when things aren’t working right in our world.
“On this issue, The Fool has been consistent no matter who in power has been at fault. I was wrongly accused of espionage under the waning days of the Bush Administration, but it was President Obama’s administration which pursued the case for six years before the federal courts dismissed it. We’ve investigated instances of how the Obama Administration pursued whistleblowers and the corruption evident when the first Trump Administration took office. And we questioned the fitness of both Biden and Trump to run for president, given their advanced age and health issues. But The Fool doesn’t believe in both-siderism. If this incoming administration commits wrongdoing, we’re going to report it, not try to downplay it to get access to those in power or to placate the ruling class.
“We’ve also turned our eyes toward the world outside the US, and despite our limited resources, I believe we have done as well, and in some cases, better than nearly every US-based journalistic organization and some outside the US of covering the world perspective and its issues. I’m proud of our coverage of the machinations behind the Leave vote and Brexit in the UK, its aftermath, and the Tory Party’s abdication of responsibility for those and other conditions. We’ve shared reporting from Hungary, Russia, and Turkey regarding the lives of people under autocratic rule, the decline and fall of democracy in Hong Kong, and the wars in Ukraine and Syria, among other issues.
“So, if you want to know how The Fool is going to cover Donald Trump, it’s the same way we’ve covered him and others in the past – straightforwardly and in plain language,” Sonny concluded. “We are going to be objective as possible, but we are not going to look out our windows, see a hurricane approaching, and merely tell you there might be more rain than usual. That’s how I was taught journalism should be, and it’s the philosophy The Fool and our fantastic staff follow as well. Thank you.”
He waited until the camera light went off, then sat up. “Looked good, Boss.”
The door came open and a rubber-limbed man close to Sonny’s age stuck his head framed with frizzy light brown and gray hair and a hawk nose. Unlike Sonny’s attempt at dressing up for the cameras, he wore a Daniel Johnston art T-shirt, strategically slashed Levis, and black Chuck Taylors despite the fact he now used foam inserts in them.
“Great speech, Boss. Any plan for the moment?” said Jeff “Woot” Mackenzie, The Fool’s chief information and technology officer and a fellow refugee from the Chicago Journal.
Sonny nodded. “Get Dieter and the rest of the lads together in the conference room. See which of the correspondents might be able to join in on Zoom.”
“So, an all-hands meeting?”
“I’m not one of those Silicone Valley pricks… but I guess yeah. Nobody gets fired if they don’t show up, but I’d like to see them there if they can.”
“On it,” Woot said.
#
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