Meet Senior Columnist Alec Ott!
An Extraordinary Science Fiction Trilogy is Coming Soon From this Kentucky Catholic Creative Writer
Greetings. I live in Northern Kentucky, which is part of the greater Cincinnati, Ohio area. I was born here in 1966, as were my parents before me. I had a wonderful, idyllic childhood in the suburbs. I grew up in a Catholic area and home, and attended Catholic elementary school, receiving all of the sacraments on schedule for my age. I had all the riches of a large extended family — my parents and three siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and lots of cousins to play with.
In 1974 my father accepted a prestigious new job that caused us to move 500 miles away to Silver Spring, Maryland. We now lived in a town that butted up against the very edge of the most powerful city in the world, Washington, D.C. The world around us was so much larger and diverse, and I was now a boy from Kentucky living in the big city. I went to high school in Northwest D.C. At one point I worked as a messenger for a downtown law firm, and I got to know the city streets backwards and forwards. While still harboring a love of the Cincinnati Reds, I became a fan of the Redskins and the Baltimore Orioles. I got my BA from the University of Maryland. There I studied English Literature.
Then I met my future wife, Marygrace. She also was not native to the DC/MD area and had no intention of setting roots there. She wanted a large family and she wanted a home in which to raise them, so she gave me a choice – either we moved to her hometown of Buffalo, New York, or back to my old haunt of Northern Kentucky. Buffalo was never really a choice (it was expensive to live there as well), so Kentucky it was. I have now been back in my hometown for longer than I lived in DC, nearly 30 years. In that time, we were blessed with six children.
I’ve discovered in my middle years that having all the delights the world has to offer would never be enough. This is not to say that I could not possibly enjoy being rich and having all the best foods, owning properties in lovely places, and expensive cars, boats and aircraft, and (this seems to go along with all this) having multiple, serial wives. But I know that like everything else in this life, it would eventually fail to delight me. It would get old. I would get old.
I have this dream that’s become a re-occurring vision. I am inside a shadowy place, a luxurious beach house. It is nighttime and, as I gaze out into the darkness from the home’s picture windows, external lights Illuminate just enough for me to see continual breakers washing against the shore. I sense finery around me. A lit-up and stocked bar and expensive furnishings. The house is solitary. I am alone in it. I feel that I am now too old to really enjoy it. I feel a sense of loss, that it’s now too late. And it will always be nighttime here. The morning will never come.
I believe this vision was sent as a gift to me. It is the evening of my last days on earth were I ever to fully embrace the world and its riches. “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours,” Christ said in his Sermon on the Plain. Yet, the fact is, I am rich by the world’s standards. I was born in the United States where I could be successful through work. I live in a large home in a suburb; I own cars and several television sets; and I can afford go on vacation to lovely places. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” Christ continued in that same sermon. I stand convicted.
I am a happy man because I know that there is another, greater world that I was made for. One so wonderful that I cannot even imagine what it’s like while living in this world. So, in the meantime, I must be about my calling to get to that place. Mine continues as a husband, father, provider, parishioner, and writer. My wife and kids cannot be replaced, and I have the advantage of knowing that in the here and now.
Most of my long professional experience has involved the writing craft—I’ve been a technical, marketing, and proposal writer. Creatively, I have written a science fiction trilogy, a screenplay, several articles, short stories and poems. My favorite writers include Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis and P.G. Wodehouse, and I aspire to writing with what gifts I have at their level. I am a great fan of the original Star Trek and Star Wars and many other similar science fiction movies and television shows.
I am a devout Catholic. I am conservative in my political views. I believe that most fiscal issues we face in this country are best addressed by fixing our social ills, beginning with strengthening the traditional family and promoting a culture of life. And I believe that we must recognize that our culture needs to return to the Judeo-Christian values and beliefs that helped to found it. In the end, I hope that my work will help in some small way to combat the coercive, acidic and secular culture we now live in.