Though the character is no match for Hennecy’s real-life activist credentials and socialist bonafides..the heart that drives them and the philosophy that guides them are the same. I can speak with confidence on the matter because Sludge is, more or less, me — that is, he, shortcomings and all, represents my present-day influence on my own book about events from the long-ago past. He is the mentor that I’ve had to be for myself while my wordsmith nature daydreams the story into existence. He is the secular patron saint of every independent author who has been compelled to write while working, in the world but not quite of it, to support a family and promote their own work as a one-person DIY writer-publisher in late stage capitalist America.