Strictly Personal! Self-Serving Altruism by Robert Eggleton (Guest Blogger)

Thanks, Esther, for inviting me to share my motivation for writing Rarity from the Hollow, an adult social science fiction adventure that raises funds to help abused children. An oxymoron ignited when I was a child, I blame my mother for everything – my lifetime of low wages working for nonprofit agencies, fifty-two years paying into the Social Security fund that now keeps me so poor that I’ll never have to pay income taxes again, and for making me write a debut novel many years after her death – self-serving altruism lives on, blessed to be a blessing, an enduring love.

My mother was one of those women who would share the little that we had with perfect strangers: eggs and coffee to hobos riding the trains, commodity peanut butter on homemade biscuits for hungry kids in the neighborhood. A good man deep down inside, my father returned from WWII damaged: severe PTSD, night terrors, and anger outbursts exasperated by alcoholism. Despite rotting teeth and in refusal of the role of downtrodden victim, my mother’s glow was infectious, a satisfaction from helping others that some never achieve in life, and a gift that sunk into me as I matured.

I started working as a child to help feed our family, sometimes dismayed when my mother would share the gains with others. For example, I cleaned the back alley of a grocery store and was paid in dented and unlabeled canned goods, and boxes of dry good too crushed to sell off the shelf. My first minimum was job was at age 12. I kept my mouth shut and watched my mother perform her magic, knowing that someday I would understand.

That day came during my youth. At age 15 or so, I had become increasingly active in social justice issues: civil rights and anti-war protests. Inspired by my mother’s unconditional respect for always doing the right things in life, music with a message, and the times during the tumultuous ‘60s in America, I camped at a tent city when a traditionally Black neighborhood was to be demolished for interstate construction and was kicked out of high school for unauthorized distribution of youth organizing anti-war literature. Before I was old enough to be drafted into the Army, I volunteered to be trained by students from Antioch College in Draft Counseling and worked at our local Legal Aid Society office in that field. I also volunteered at two walk-in drug counseling programs, mostly talking down kids who were experiencing bad acid trips. I became hooked on self-serving altruism just like my mother had exhibited. It finally all made sense.

I went to summer school in high school to get my last credit and enrolled at WV State College, a traditionally Black institution that I believed might be a good fit. At the same time, although idealistic, I was also very practical – my family needed money. After admission, I overheard a professor say that there would always be jobs in the field of child welfare, whether the country was going through good or bad times. My other academic subjects were not particularly strong as public school had always been mostly a place where I dissociated from my own traumas related to domestic violence, or where I organized other kids to fight for social justice, instead of a place that I valued learning. So, I checked out becoming a social work major. I was awarded a Master’s Degree in 1977 and have served as a children’s advocate for over forty years.

Now looking back as a 68 year old debut novelist, early adversities in my life have enhanced my overall quality of life. I’m the oldest son of four children. Since there was no money for toys or recreation growing up, we didn’t have a television or car, perhaps to help us all escape a harsh reality, I started writing and sharing short stories to entertain my family, peers, and others in the neighborhood. My stories got better and my audience grew. In the eighth grade I won the school’s short story writing competition and began to dream of getting my family out of poverty by becoming a rich and famous author. I’m still dreaming about that one. (LOL)

After I finished graduate school, all of my jobs included writing nonfiction related to child welfare: service manuals, policy, investigative reports about systems, institutions, and programs; research and statistical reports on child abuse and delinquency… I was passionate about issues that adversely affected child welfare, and it showed in my writing. This was a huge personal weakness that I’ve worked hard to overcome in my nonfiction and my gains have helped my fiction, as well.

Over the years, I can’t remember a day that I didn’t take work home with me, emotionally. For example, many tears were shed when writing an investigative report for the West Virginia Supreme Court: “Daniel’s Death, West Virginia’s First Child Maltreatment Fatality Report.” I had to write that report at home because I didn’t want to become a mess at work where everybody was dressed up as emotionally-detached professionals. My state established its first child fatality review process, in large part, as a result of this report. I was appointed by the State Medical Examiner to our first child fatality review team. Emotionally difficult and vigorous editing of my work, caused me to become a better and more experienced writer in control of my own emotions. Much of my nonfiction is now archived by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. 

In 2002, I accepted a job as a psychotherapist at our local mental health center in a children’s day program. Many of the children were victims of child abuse, some had been sexually abused. (Yes, I also earned that clinical license.) It was an emotionally draining job, but I only cried one time at work during the next thirteen years. During an individual therapy session, a twelve year old disclosed how her mother had sold her and then detailed what had happened to her that summer before she was rescued. Every evening at home, I replayed the children’s stories in my head. 

While exhaustive at times, being a psychotherapist was also my first professional job that didn’t include the production of written materials. My need to write was unmet and began to gnaw on me. I’m not sure that I would have returned to fiction had I not felt compelled to accept this job, and if I had not met a very special eleven year old with stringy brown hair during a group psychotherapy session. In 2006, I met the real-life Lacy Dawn, the protagonist of my stories. She was an empowered survivor of extreme child abuse who spoke about her hopes and dreams for a bright future – finding a loving family that would protect her forever. I was inspired and my need to write was peaking, so I returned to writing fiction. The Lacy Dawn Adventures project was born and Rarity from the Hollow is the first full-length adventure.

Over the years, my feelings that something much more needed to be done to help maltreated children grew and grew. The United States has one of the worst records among industrialized nations in protecting kids – losing an average of between four and seven children every day due to child abuse and neglect. (Link to http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/#1) All of the tears in the world, however, will do little to help needful children.

I established realistic goals for the Rarity from the Hollow project: (1) to sensitize readers to the huge social problem of child maltreatment and, 2) raise some money to help a wonderful nonprofit agency where I worked in the early ‘80s, http://www.childhswv.org/. I was the Director of Emergency Children’s Shelters. Half of author proceeds from this project are donated. These goals make me feel good about myself, a self-serving altruism.

Okay, okay, call it ego, but I wanted something more out of my debut novel. Probably as a psychological defense, I tried to convince myself that it was a fundraising strategy. I wanted my novel to be fun to read. Based on my experience raising money for small nonprofit agencies, I knew that benefactors wanted to have fun during functions, such as dinners or auctions, and not focus on depressing issues. That’s how they remain active, having fun, not just because of their heartfelt convictions.   

I was motivated to write something very different than a straight exposé or a memoir on child victimization. Maybe I did: “It is funny and irreverent but beneath the hallucinatory story of visits to shopping planets and interstellar shopping games, there is a profound critique of social problems, substance abuse, child sexual abuse and child murder that is quite eye opening… Rarity from the Hollow is very, very good… I’d recommend Rarity From the Hollow to anybody who likes a side helping of the lunatic with their science fiction and fantasy.”

“…a hillbilly version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, only instead of the earth being destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, Lacy Dawn must… The author has managed to do what I would have thought impossible; taken serious subjects like poverty, ignorance, abuse, and written about them with tongue-in-cheek humor without trivializing them… Eggleton sucks you into the Hollow, dunks you in the creek, rolls you in the mud, and splays you in the sun to dry off. Tucked between the folds of humor are some profound observations on human nature and modern society that you have to read to appreciate…it’s a funny book that most sci-fi fans will thoroughly enjoy.” – Awesome Indies Gold Medal

“Full of cranky characters and crazy situations, Rarity From the Hollow sneaks up you and, before you know it, you are either laughing like crazy or crying in despair, but the one thing you won’t be is unmoved… Robert Eggleton is a brilliant writer whose work is better read on several levels. I appreciated this story on all of them.” - Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal

I was also motivated to write something that outlived me. Maybe I did: “Brilliant satires such as this are genius works of literature in the same class as Orwell’s Animal Farm. I can picture American Lit professors sometime in the distant future placing this masterpiece on their reading list.”

There are a lot of book reviews on Amazon, most of them glowing, if someone wants to check them out.

I remain motivated to promote this project.

Thanks, again, Esther, for providing this opportunity to tell your readers about the Rarity from the Hollow project.

I have benefitted more that I could ever explain by concern for and my actions on behalf of maltreated kids. I am forever grateful that I learned about self-serving altruism from my mother and I hope that your readers benefit from me having shared my perspective.

Here’s the link to a very cool video that was donated to the project.

Anything the anyone can do to promote Rarity from the Hollow would be appreciated, and it just might make you feel good if you do:

• If you have a Twitter account, like and retweet posts about the novel from here.  
• If you're on Facebook, like this page and share posts about the novel. 
• Rarity from the Hollow was recently nominated, vetted, and accepted by the upcoming Author Academy Awards. If your readers want to support his project, please consider voting for it on page 11, Science Fiction Books. Scroll down from the top of the main page to a big rectangle that has Nonfiction Books on top. There’s an arrow on the right. Click it ten times to get to SF Books and click on the book cover (attached). It’s free and easy. 

“And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” The Beatles, Abbey Road