Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Briar Rose Series
(1889)

"May your EndDays experience be enhanced by the foolhardiness I have laid down on the following pages."

A Preface should properly prepare a reader for whatever comes next, but I suspect that in this instance, it should at least attempt to accomplish something else, for should this Preface succeed in properly preparing you for whatever comes next, it might erase any need you might now possess to read the damned thing. As the author, I’d much rather you retain your interest at least until you can learn for yourself whether or not you should agree to finish reading this. This means you’ll have to start reading in order to achieve this end, but then that’s my objective. What’s yours?

What moved you to pick up this book? Perhaps you received it as a gift, maybe even received “for your own good,” as if your benefactor had sensed some shortcoming in your understanding and was offering you a path toward deliverance. If this was the case, you already possess more than enough evidence to reject that notion from the outset. Who should willingly participate in their own reformation? Precisely nobody, and especially not you! As the author of this upcoming experience, though, I can reassure you that I wrote this collection of stories in no way to reform anybody, especially me. Should you read through them to the end, I can reassure you that I will seem little improved from my condition at the beginning, hopefully proving this point.

But what will the book be about? That depends upon how you interpret it. It has meant something a little different to its author as I created each of the ninety-two installments, thirteen full weeks in creation from beginning to curious ending. The presenting premise never changed, for I intended to trace the EndDays of our incompetent incumbent’s hapless term, the one where he sure seemed both bound and determined not to actually ever get around to administering anything. I wanted to pay careful close attention to the downfall and disappearance, and, hopefully, the beginning of the comeupance, too. The news, as I started this series, predicted every morning the rapidly impending demise. I reasoned that three months might be more than enough time for the downfall to run its course. Of course, I reasoned wrong.

So, this series, this book, began with the most auspicious possible sign, an ultimately false premise with which I justified this writing effort to myself. Each morning for three full months, I pulled myself up by imaginary bootstraps and created a lasting impression of whatever I sensed might have been going on then. Much of the result chronicled what was happening inside the writer, for I had the clearest access to that data, certainly more clear than any hearsay evidence reported in the media. This might mean the book you’re looking to tackle will likely be about what was happening to me under the influence of presumed EndDays. That might be close, but under the weary adage that the most personal tends also to be the most universal, the personal sketches might be best acknowledged to primarily be about the reader. That depends, too, on how the reader interprets their experience. No author can be in charge of this facet.

Two parallel threads weave their way through this collection. The publication of my Cluelessness book, which finally happened along about episode 42, though the story leading up to the actual publication was definitely part of the same storyline. Also, a data center was proposed for our valley. The Muse, my wife in her public role as local Port Commissioner, was deeply involved in the decision to invite in the developer. This decision sparked division within the county, where an opposition emerged more dedicated to undermining than to honestly exploring the possibility. The ensuing ad hominem attacks on The Muse’s and my character perfectly demonstrated how MAGA tactics favored by our EndDays protagonist had poisoned public discourse. The progressives adopted regressive tactics, signaling another unwanted EndDays offering.

The following work might prove to be nothing more than one man’s honest accounting of his personal experience of an abiding sense of impending doom. Like anyone, I searched in vain for resolutions, finding respite in the insights that seeking inevitably yields. Even if no ending appears at these EndDays, the deep considering might have kept the chronicler awake through the proceedings. Like my Cluelessness, A Book of Mirrors, EndDays manages to simultaneously become a philosophical, autobiographical, historical, and fictional work. Its author found creating it enormously entertaining and hopes you, dear reader, might find it at least as entertaining. May your EndDays experience be enhanced by the foolhardiness I have laid down on the following pages. Welcome!

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays