John Michael Cummings

Hi there - I love to write about relationships, fitness, mental health, self-improvement, and the creative life. My news stories and essays have appeared in The Newark Star-Ledger, The Providence Journal, Orlando Sentinel, New York Daily News, Fairfax County Times, Twin Cities Business Monthly, Utne Reader, and the Charleston Gazette-Mail. I'm also very skilled in all areas of book editing, including developmental, structural, content, and line editing. I've authored four literary novels and a short story collection. Publishers include Penguin Random House, University of Wisconsin/Cornerstone Books, and West Virginia University Press. My debut novel, The Night I Freed John Brown, won the 2009 Paterson Prize. My short stories have appeared in more than a hundred literary magazines, including North American Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Iowa Review. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, "The Scratchboard Project" won an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007. I hold a BA in fine arts from George Mason University and a MFA in creative/fiction writing from the University of Central Florida. Most of all, I look forward to becoming a member on your editorial team. I've pasted my resume and a writing sample below. I look forward to hearing back from you. Thank you kindly, John Michael Cummings (304) 620-4246 John Michael Cummings - journalist, author, and editor 1608 West Washington Street Harpers Ferry, WV 25425 (304) 620-4246 johnmcummings@aol.com www.pw.org/directory/writers/john_michael_cummings · Written essays and news stories for New York Daily News, The Newark Star-Ledger, Orlando Sentinel, Fairfax County Times, Twin Cities Business Monthly, Utne Reader, Identity Theory, Charleston Gazette- Mail, and The Providence Journal. · Taught grammar and composition at Seminole State College of Florida. · Author of three literary novels and two collections of short stories. Publishers include Penguin Random House, University of Wisconsin/Cornerstone Press, West Virginia University, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Short story publishers: The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The North American Review. · Winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers. Honorable Mention in The Best American Short Stories series. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Education · George Mason University, BA in Fine Arts, 1990 · University of Central Florida, MFA in Fiction Writing, 2011 The Newark Star-Ledger (published Jul. 18, 2020, 9:31 a.m.) We Are Mere Mortals, Masked by John Michael Cummings Say, weren’t we already social distancing? That is, the space around each of us, since the dawn of civilization, has been expanding with our sense of self. At the same time, we’ve shrunk with the stuff of life. We save too much time-juggling tasks. We don’t read literature, play Ouija, can tomatoes, bake our neighbor a chocolate cake, or go to town hall meetings, and we never color dinosaurs with our baby niece. Throughout the world, we’re crammed full of one another, yet each of us is a loner self-quarantined inside our top-loftiness. We need our own space, our personal distance, our private sphere, but we also want to sit on top of the world and go, go, go, pushy and complain about everything. Modern life is digital — spaceless — so why bemoan remaining six feet apart when everyone everywhere is still six gloved handshakes away from one another? Remember the notion of six degrees of separation? You know, I’m a friend of your friend, who’s a friend of my other friend, and after a few introductions, all of us can be great pals. Six is still a good number. Our mugs have vanished behind surgical masks, N95 respirators, homemade cloth face coverings, headscarves, and double-muffle do-rags. Only our eyes, the windows to our souls, are left. But before the viral menace hit the air, our eyes were already cautious, if not fearful. Our faces were already wooden. By race, religion, and political affiliation have we not been standoffish throughout recent years? Our cities have long been impersonal, and many of us have lost our humanity by feeling nameless. We’ve been backing up from one another for a very long time. Let’s ask ourselves: before our mouths were muzzled by a mask or Black Sabbath bandanna, how often did we smile, talk, tell a funny story, ask questions, show a frown of worry, have compassion for a fellow human being and let our sweet lips be the voice of our God-loving, virtuous forefathers? Or did we avert our eyes, be lazy, keep walking and later send emoticons to do our winking, grinning and crying? Are our names now sparkleboy@gmail.com and dogloverbabe@yahoo.com? Is our reality now down to one-dimensional, and our field of vision only 14″ x 10″, with pixelated eyesight? Do we prefer to push-to-talk, speak with a keypad and make our longest reflection on life 280 characters? Part of me wants to say — we had our chance at a little social harmony and a piece of good fortune. But we blew it. In large numbers, we held our heads down and saw less of the world by locking our faces on iPhones and tweeting nasty words. We delete and block, binge-watch, turn soundbites into comprehension, and ghost the heck out of romantic hopefuls on dating sites. Now, we’re required to put one another at arm’s length, times two. Kind of serves us right. If I sound like a reactionary, I inherited the attitude. Seven generations of my family are resting their dear souls in an American Civil War town, and a whopping 11 of us were retired soldiers. I have a vested interest in what happens to the Land of Liberty. Listen. Being social is having seven friends in our living room. Distancing is what we do with an unfaithful old flame. Six feet is the distance from our freezer to the floor. A pandemic is not a plague. Above all, we mortals are far too incredible for us not to trust that a vaccine is well on the way. So calm the heck down, everyone! This summer take a drive to the family cemetery with a little bleach and water in a spray bottle and make your kin’s stone shine. Bring the family photo albums down from the attic. Show a lad in your neighborhood the fun of coin-flipping. These days, I cling to memories of simpler times, like when I’d sit on my granddad’s front porch and we’d talk Orioles while having a spitting contest: how many watermelon seeds we could sail out into the flowerbed. Laurel and Hardy are gone, and so are my honest-to-goodness grandparents, but humanity is still here. Despite the many tragic flaws of human nature, I think the COVID-19 mask requirement has given us all a wonderful opportunity to choose words that inspire and to nurse others with our warmth and empathy. Today, we must listen. There are no facial gestures to be seen, to give us a head start on understanding one another. But there’s no dialog distancing, and we can’t so easily look at one another superficially, competitively or critically. Ironically — and irony is the name of the game to perception — our masks can cover our false faces, and we — you, me and all others — can let our true selves show. Soon enough, we’ll be living in one another’s pocket again. I ask myself: what will I do differently this time with those six feet? Will I love all faces, whether appealing or hard-looking? In the old TV series The Twilight Zone— of late we know well the twilight zone — the episode “Eye of the Beholder” tells of a lovely gal whose face, once unbandaged from an injury, is seen as grotesque by an alien race. The skiffy tale shows us that what a person says can be beautiful and looks don’t own the aesthetic. Remember, if we have a voice we cannot be faceless. So for now let’s contemplate the purpose of life while enjoying kale smoothies. We must wait out these off-course times. We’re survivors. We will see better days. Until then, take good care. - John Michael Cummings is the author of The Spirit In My Shoes.