Back (Again)

I seem to be back, but I have no idea for how long. I hope it's a good long time.

I know what's driven me back. It's several things really. There have been some major changes in my life and I'm hoping to add this to the pot.

• After fifteen years with a company, it gets hard to leave. There had been some huge changes there as well, but I still had my boss, and I liked his leadership style and his coaching. Hard to leave that. But I did. I was offered an opportunity I just couldn't pass up. It resulted in a huge promotion, a very sizable raise, and a chance to focus on training innovation for the refining industry workforce unlike I've done it before. So all in all it's a good change.

• In the matter of not good changes, I've taken stock of several of aspects of my life and let some things go that weren't overly healthy. I decided to resign from my part time gig that I've had for almost twenty years. The job was becoming stagnant, and it just didn't align with my lifestyle, certainly not after I took the new job. I let some friendship wane, some that were significant and long. Having looked at them I realized they were no longer a healthy part of my life and I was trying too hard to keep them afloat. I figure those that were meant to be will prove to be resilient, and those friends will work to keep me in their lives. Those that aren't meant to be will drift away into memories. It's feels right to let those things go and let them work themselves out. 

• I'm working through my mid-life crises by taking up piano lessons again, and reviving my Spanish lessons. Those are both daily exercises that are equivalent to this daily exercise of writing. I don't think I'll mind adding this to the list. 

There are a couple of other reasons . . . but I need something to write about tomorrow so I'll hold off on writing those . . . give you a reason to check back!

Jesus Saved . . .So Should You

No I'm not making light of Jesus in my title, nor am I trying to piss off any non-Christians in the audience. Truth is I'm stealing a tag line I saw once that made a fairly compelling impression on me. I played lacrosse in college, a mid-fielder, which meant I ran a lot and every now and then got to shoot. There was this one goalie who had written prominently in tape on his helmet, "Jesus Saves . . . So Do I!"

During this month of NaNoWriMo I read a lot from my Facebook friends and others about their word counts and their stories coming together. Last night, while working on OneNote, an applicaiton that has the benefit of automatically saving everything you type at the time you type it, I lost a lot of work. I don't know if it was a slip of the finger or a mistake in terms of a command key, but all of a sudden Chapters 3 through 18 of my book disappeared completely. I hit Ctrl Z over and over hoping to bring it back but nothing worked.

Thankfully I had downloaded a copy to MS Word just a day prior so it wasn't a complete loss. I ended up losing just a few hundred to maybe thousand or so words, BUT it did make me wonder about what if I hadn't just downloaded that story to MS Word? I would have lost it all.

Save early and save often that should be your motto with writing. And if it helps think about what the goalie's helmet said. That's stuck with me for over 20 years now.

Another Quick Short Story

Time to post another short story. I started this little, now-blossoming tradition a few months (see here and here). So here's a snippet for one I wrote in 2010 and a link if you want to read more. Funny, but this isn't the final, this was the draft 1 final, but I changed the story to a different version. So I'll be interested in knowing if readers see a difference.

Seven Six Two Divorce

Servando sighted along the barrel of his Remington 700, then slowly peered through the powerful telescopic sight. He could see the small, red, front door of the condo across the street. Without hesitating he inserted a round into the chamber.  He noticed how the late afternoon sun glimmered off of the brass casing. This, he thought, was the part he had wondered about. The point where he placed the bullet into the rifle was to him, that point where he knew he was committing himself to the action. He knew that he would never see that bullet again. He would see the hollow, spent casing at the end of the evening, but the round would be buried in human flesh far beneath his hide position, hopefully followed by several others. He had chosen this round, as well as the rifle, his firing position, everything carefully and he was filled with both anxiety about his plan as well as excitement. He felt some degree of comfort in the motions he took and the equipment. He had used this weapon system before as a Sniper in the Marines, but when he was in the military they had called it an M24 and he had shot a 7.62 mm round. He would be using a much heavier caliber bullet for his work today and he frowned unhappily that this chore was being brought to his doorstep for this final conclusion.

The plan started truly taking shape once the alibi was in place. Servando had been dreaming of this night for several years. The plan had morphed and changed some, but always there was the problem of an alibi. It was Kier who ultimately had provided that final catalyst that kicked the plan into action.  Kier, Servando’s old friend from high school was flying up to Seattle on a flight using Servando’s ID, while Servando was flying up five hours later using Kier’s. They looked enough alike that it the plan was destined to work, and it gave Servando five hours within which to operate. Five hours to do what he wanted without the worry that the police would want to know his whereabouts. They would know his whereabouts and according to the airlines he would be two miles up, winging his way from Houston to Seattle. He worried whether or not he could trust Kier, but Kier accepted Servando need and not asked a single question about why. He was the one variable that was not completely in Servando’s control.

Servando tightened the tripod mount, focusing the rifle not on the door but where he expected his target to stand upon exiting. He calculated the distance at just under two hundred meters. It was an easy shot and he knew that he would have no trouble with it. The only problem would be that the target was moving. He had been adept at shooting far longer shots, with less favorable conditions, and with far poorer sights than the Leopold ten power scope that was currently mounted and zeroed onto his rifle. Despite the fact that the target would be moving, Servando felt confident he could take him down. His work zeroing in the rifle had also been conducted under an assumed name, using a license that he had moved heaven and earth to procure. But now, at four minutes to five o’clock, with only a few short minutes until the operation kicked off, all of the planning, the meticulous questioning, and delicate, almost military style maneuvering, had come together to find Servando looking down the barrel of his rifle waiting patiently for his father in law to exit the red door.

Servando thought about all of the preparation and planning that the last few weeks had included. Buying the rifle from an out of state dealer, fake email accounts, fake pay accounts, and worst of all the innumerable drives to the far side of town to use the internet at different seeding copy stores to ensure that each piece of the lethal puzzle he was assembling would be completely and wholly untraceable.

Servando snuggled in behind the stock of the M24 and felt the cool comfort of the composite stock against his cheek. He loosened the tripod and swiveled the weapon from the door to the intersection that was just a hundred meters further away. These shots would be more difficult, but Servando knew that by the time he had to make these shots, his accuracy would not be as important. These shots would not have to be perfect, just close enough to give Servando time. Just long enough to make his father-in-law, Jake, suffer.

Again, Servando swiveled the tripod around to focus on the door. The light was graying in the horizon and soon it would start to turn dark. It was during that transition from daylight to dark that he planned to strike. He remembered the many times he and his team in the Marines had taken advantage of dusk and dawn to begin raids or attacks, and the training he had perfected in the Marines would serve as the basis for what he considered the most secret and perhaps most important mission of his life.

Whenever Servando thought about his wedding he smiled. Both he and Cynthia had planned the wedding carefully and had not fallen victim to the whims and desires of their parents of friends. They had an eleven o’clock wedding followed by a jazz brunch reception where a trio of jazz instruments and a singer strolling the reception hall. The wedding was tailored around their own personalities and desires. They had met over brunch and enjoyed going out to eat in the mornings. Naturally they wanted to share that type of enjoyment with friends and family. Servando remembered how much he had enjoyed hearing Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dean Martin songs echoing slowly through the reception area. He frowned as he thought of Jake, and how he had stood up and toasted the wedding and the marriage.

Feel like reading the rest? See it all HERE!

Dwarsliggers

“A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic,” the cosmologist Carl Sagan once said. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.”

This was an intriguing thing to read, and even more intriguing was the article that it preceded and the subject matter (see here). "Dwarsliggers" are apparently on the rise in the Netherlands. Tiny, pocket size books are going to be the next thing according to this article.

The name is interesting by itself and I wouldn't blame anyone if they thought I was re-cycling my post on strange fun words! (see HERE) That article that talked about words the English language should steal.

Personally, I see it nothing more than a novelty. I think it would be convenient to carry a smaller book, but would it be more convenient than an iPhone? Doubtful.

I can see where this might be a fun thing to have around the house. Imagine a whole book shelf of Dwarsliggers in your living room. But would they actually be read?

I find it interesting in terms of how we process information. When I got my MBA back in 2003 we discussed the changing nature of information processing on different generations. When I grew up sending a hand written thank you note through the mail was a normal and expected thing. My children who have not known a world without email will not see the post office or writing letters the same way. Soon, what hand written thank you's are to email, email will be to chat. The fact that these are printed in layout rather than portrait makes me wonder about that aspect of things.

Beyond that, nothing but a fad says I.

Second Book; First Line

I don't ever do this . . . read two books at once, but I have been lately.

When I was younger it was anathema for me to have anything else on my mind, much less be reading another book, while in the midst of reading one. But lately, when I go to sleep, I put the smart phone away, no Twitter, no Facebooks, no Blogs, no Kindle,  . . . nope, nothing but a good old fashioned book.

Sure I still have the Kindle book I'm reading, I just don't read it before going to sleep. For sleeping I read a real, page turning book.

Right now I'm reading Hampton Sides' "On Desperate Ground," (see here) a non-fiction account of the Korean War and the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir. The Korean War is easily one of my favorite conflicts, and Hampton Sides, writer of Ghost Soldiers as well, is one of my favorite non-fiction authors.

The first line, which I read before hitting the rack the other night, was:

In the misting rain, they pressed against the metal skins of their boats and peeked over the gunwales for a glimpse of the shores they were about to attack. Some thirteen thousand men of the First Marine Division, the spearhead of the invasion, had clambered down from the ships on swinging nets of rope and then had crammed themselves into a motley flotilla of craft that now wallowed and bobbed in the channel. Several of the rusty old hulks, having been commandeered from Japanese trawlermen, smelled of sour urine and rotten fish heads. The Marines, many of them green from seasickness, saw the outlines of the charred foothills that rose above the port, and caught the scent of the brackish marshes and the slime of the mudflats. Corsairs, bent-winged like swallows, dove over the city, dropping thousand-pound bombs and sending five-inch rockets deep into hillside nests where the enemy was said to be dug in. Far out at sea, the naval guns rained fire upon the city, damaging tanks of butane that now flared and belched palls of smoke.

On this warm, humid morning of September 15, 1950, the Marines had arrived at their destination halfway around the world, to stun their foe and turn the war around: a surprise amphibious attack, on an immense scale, deep behind the battle lines. Only a few months before, these young men, fresh from their farms and hick towns, had piled into chartered trains and clattered across America to California. Then they climbed aboard transport ships, where many of them did their basic training, learning how to strip and rebuild M1 rifles, drilling on the crowded decks, practicing their marksmanship on floating targets towed from the fantails. They crossed the Pacific and stopped briefly in Japan, then heaved their way through a full-scale typhoon. They rounded the peninsula and moved in convoy up the west coast, through the silted waters of the Yellow Sea.

Sides, Hampton - On Desperate Ground

That's a great opening right there. Who couldn't want but to read on!

Sunset Perfect

Isn't it funny the things we convince ourselves of over time and in life. And how wrong we realize we are when we look back.

I had a girlfriend once and we were sure we were in love with each other. Didn't last. No matter how hard we tried it just couldn't last. In her case it had the most to do with distance and space. Distance does NOT make the heart grow stronger, instead what I've found is that it undermines and degrades love unless one finds other ways to keep it strong.

Another girl, wasn't at love "love", has contacted me in the past bit. I was sure back when I dated her that she was the end all beat all for me. She was a sales girl for Hormel meat products and always drove around with a trunk full of meat to sell. What more could a starving, kid from the Army who never had money want than a girlfriend with ready access to great meat!

Now that she and I talk there is nothing there. It's like the pilot light just went out with her.

What's the point?

Things change. People change. Feelings change.

I think about something that my grandmother, Muzzie, once told me. She said that she thought her son, Richard, loved her, but that he didn't like her. How often has that been the case. I know it has been for me, and has been recently. Where I loved someone but I didn't necessarily like them. It's a tough feeling to have.

What's this have to do with writing?

I have a novel I'm currently working on called Sunset Perfect (great title right?). It's all about this. Loving someone but falling out of like with them. The title too is indicative of this difficulty. On the face of it the title sounds like a description of a perfect sunset, but the novel is about the challenges the two main characters face. That perfection has a sunset clause or an end. Toughest novel I've written, but I'm thinking that that fact, the fact that it's the toughest might make it worthwhile in the long run.

Stake Remains Grounded

A few weeks ago I put a stake in the ground (here) about how I was going to write. I said I was going to channel among others Frank Herbert and how he wrote Dune in small snatches while sitting in his car during his lunch hours. Although I haven't done that, I have tried to write more consistently rather than constantly (see my post on that here). And so far, I have to say it's been working.

In the past I was a huge advocate of NaNoWriMo. I was doing NaNo before it was cool. I think my first NaNo was way back in 2004. I've been a member of that community for 14 years (here). I've written alot about my NaNoWriMo writing (see here) and for the most part it's a great way to write. It's a brain dump where for a whole month you can write all you want, anything you want, with the goal of just getting it down.

I think I've changed in the past 14 years. I no longer enjoy that brain dump style of writing, but instead am really enjoying the slow, steady, turtle writing I'm engaged in now. In the past few weeks I've added to my Sunset Perfect novel by several thousand words, I've completed a short story that I've sent to my old friend Janice for an edit and review, and have pecked away at an older short story as well.

The stake in the ground in working, and it only emphasizes the changing nature of lifestyle and how we write. Best to keep up with those changes and roll with the punches.

The Business Side of Writing

My new friend, A. Piper Burgi (see here) has a great post about the business side of writing (see here).

This is an aspect that I NEVER focus on. I treat my writing as a hobby. It's something I do during my off hours. I don't sit down and grind it out on a daily basis and just fit it in when I can. Have I made some money on writing? I've gotten a royalty check or two from my three books (see here). But if I total up all my time spent and all that I've invested in writing, I'm certainly not in the black.

Many times I've thought about giving up the ole day to day grind of my job and trying to become a serious, professional writer. What's stopping me? Not much. I like my job sure. I love the people I work with. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment and there's few things better than doing something new in our industry and being successful at it.

Having a steady, weekly paycheck doesn't hurt either.

But I think it's time to ramp up toward professionalism. There's all sorts of tangential jobs that I can do that aren't directly related to just writing novels. There's editing, web-design and promotion, all sorts of talents that I have that could help me become a professional writer and author instead of the hobbyist that I am now.

A. Piper Burgi's post has come at the right time. Give it a year more, and if I'm in the same place with my life, you just might see me taking her posts seriously as a professional writer.

Walking Away Girl Covers . . . How Prevalent Are They?

Truth is that the first few lines of Dead End Girl (see here) did not grab me, and based on my reading speed so far, it hasn't helped me get into the book. I have had a change in the way I see first lines and catalog them (see here).

Based on the cover, and it's similarities to the cover of my own book, On the Edge, I wonder if I should do a series on covers where the reader only sees the back of the girl (see here).

Corduroy pants swished between Teresa’s thighs as she crossed the parking lot. She had a headache. That drive-thru headset gave her a headache every damn time. The band squeezed her skull like an old man trying to find a ripe cantaloupe in the produce department. Pressing and pressing until her temples throbbed. When the headaches were really bad, she got the aura. And it was gonna be a bad one tonight. She could already tell. By the time she got home, she’d be nauseous from the skull throb along with the stink of fryer grease clinging to her clothes and hair and skin. Sometimes she swore she could feel it permeating her pores. 

She placed a hand under the lid of the dumpster and lifted. The overhead lights in the parking lot glinted on the surface below. It looked like water, but it wasn’t. It was oil. Every night they emptied the fryers, dumping the used oil into this dumpster. It was a disgusting task. Worse than taking out the trash on a 90-degree summer day, when the flies got real thick, and the meat went rancid almost as soon as they put it in the bin. It was dead out. No traffic. No noise at all but her fiddling with the dumpster and the bucket.

Vargus, L.T - Dead End Girl

I'm hoping it comes along, but I just noticed this: the title is "Dead End Girl: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller." If the author has to put into the title that it's "gripping" it doesn't bode well for the rest of the book.

BUT! It was free and it's not all THAT bad yet. It's very much in the vein of Silence of the Lambs. We shall see where it goes.

Take it to 11

I am writing a novel right now that I’ve tentatively titled Dev Palmer. In this novel I have a villain. I think villains are very interesting. Think about villains from your childhood. The Joker. Cruella Deville. Lex Luthor. Norman Bates. They're all extreme personalities. That's what it takes to be a villain. 

What I genuinely try to do is take a characteristic and take it up to its nth degree. To 11.

In the movie this is spinal tap, the guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, is very proud of an amp that he owns that goes to 11 (see HERE). He keeps telling the interviewer: "if I need that extra little bit more than anyone else can provide then I just turn it to 11. Everyone else can only go to 10 but I can go to 11."

It’s an absurd moment in the movie but it makes sense in terms of villains.

Who wants to see a villain who is like anyone else? Would the joker be any fun if he was just a regular old Joe? Or what if Cruella Deville was just Grace Kelly wandering about in her lovely way like she does in Rear Window? No one wants to see a villain who is normal.

What makes villains great is that they are to 11. The villain I’m working on right now is someone who loves to play games. Loves the drama loves the problems created by the games that they play. A while back I wrote about some work difficulties and I’m sorry to say I’m still having to deal with that same problem at work. This person loves playing games. He is the model for the villain in this book.

What I did was I just took his game plane to 11. Like any good tennis match one player must play against someone as good or better if the game will be any fun to watch. So the protagonist in this novel is someone who can’t stand games. Like the protagonist, I love consistency in my life. Things that happen in an in an order and planned manner make sense to me (see my post HERE about consistency).

I am a project manager at my job so I’m very used to planning things and executing plans. Consistency is huge. So I took that to 11 with the protagonist. This protagonist loves consistency loves to have a plan come together has plans for everything. He and the villain clash because of their personalities boat at 11 both opposite to one another.

The villain loves to play games while the protagonist loves consistency. It's the same thing that I have to deal with in my life, it's just rare that it hits 11 in my life.