Lotheus' Labyrinth

Rolling!

2008-05-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

Well, the new book is rolling along, and I am feeling great about it! At first I was worried that I was becoming a hack by writing something more marketable, but the more I get into this story, the more I like it. I like a lot of the characters and the situations, and the plot is developing nicely. I wish I could tell you more than that, but I don't like to divulge much while I'm in the first couple of drafts. Suffice it to say that it is a topic that I have always been interested in and I am very happy with my take on it thus far.

One of the hardest thing for me about writing an entire novel is that when the concept is new and, ahem, "novel," sorry, had to, it is easy to get into. But then as you get more familiar with the story it sometimes loses its luster, and you really have to force yourself to stay in it; to stay true to your original vision and just push on. Thus far, I haven't had to push myself. I have been looking forward to getting the next scene down, and as I write around the framework I have envisioned, new ideas pop up. New ways of handling in-story problems emerge. It is exciting. I hope it stays this way...

He's Got a Great Personality...

2008-05-07T19:24:00.001-07:00

My Personality


Neuroticism	65
Extraversion	32
Openness to Experience	32
Agreeableness	41
Conscientiousness	10

You do not feel nervous in social situations, and have a good impression of what others think of you, however you feel strong cravings and urges that you have difficulty resisting. You tend to prefer short-term pleasures and rewards over long-term consequences. You are not prone to spells of energetic high spirits. You prefer familiar routines and for things to stay the same. You can tend to feel uncomfortable with change. You do not like to claim that you are better than other people, and generally shy from talking yourself up, however you generally see others as selfish, devious, and sometimes potentially dangerous. You have a strong sense of duty and obligation, and feel a moral obligation to do the right thing.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report.

UK Discount Ugg Boots

Wow. Now I hate myself even more than before. I don't know how much stock I put in these things, but I saw it on one of my fellow QT'ers blogs http://sboman.livejournal.com/ and thought I would give it a try. Let me say right now that she is much nicer than me.

Forging Ahead

2008-05-04T15:29:00.001-07:00

I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but after feeling less than thrilled with the results of my just-finished second novel, I have begun to write my third. My wife thinks I have lost my mind. Now let me clarify: there was a lot I liked about my second book, tentatively titled "The Crystal Hills." There were some good characters and some exciting situations, but ultimately I have this feeling that it wouldn't sell. Now, I have long followed the axiom that says you should write what you want and not worry about the market. Considering the market makes you a hack. A HACK! I hate that word. Anyone who considers themselves an artist at any level doesn't want to be one, because it connotes that you have sold your artistic soul for commercial success. I would like commercial success for several reasons:

It would allow me to focus more on my writing. Between work, my kids, Querytracker and other things that I have going on, it is difficult to really focus on the craft. And for me to be able to do it well, it has to be focused on.

Commercial success would give me confidence. Knowing that people like what I write and want to read it would allow me some measure of freedom from second-guessing myself. I doubt I will ever reach the point where I no longer ask myself, "Is this a bunch of crap?" At least I hope not.

It could give me more freedom to pursue projects that might not necessarily be as "mainstream" as others. I say "could" because previous success does not necessarily mean future success. But once you are an established author, you have a little more leeway in what you can submit.

I get to write for a living. Self explanatory, no?

So taking these things into consideration, I have shelved my newly completed novel and began one that I thought might have a better market. I still like the story I am telling and I like the characters involved, so I feel like it is a better use of my time. There are others who want to beat me over the head for not finishing what I've already started, and, honestly, sometimes so do I. But I feel that if I have a story that will be easier to sell, I will have a better chance with my second novel in the future. I don't know what that says about me, but there it is. Sorry honey. Yet another first draft for you to suffer through!

Crisis

2008-04-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

I am suffering an artistic crisis. I feel completely silly even saying that, but I am self-observant enough to be able to tell what is going on. I have lost faith in my ability (it is even difficult for me to write ability. I was going to say "talent," but somehow that seems far too lofty) and I am having difficulty pushing on. Logically, rationally, I know that pushing on is the key, but the lethargy is setting in and it would be so satisfying to just wallow in inactivity. I won't lie, I can be a lazy person, and it is much easier not to write. Writing takes effort, and when there is no external reward for that effort, it can be easy to put it aside. I convince myself that I suck, and so why bother anyway. Just sit on the couch and watch a movie you've seen a dozen times. Or read a good book. That's kinda like writing. You can at least identify with the skill and hard work it took to write it. Anything but writing myself.

Writing is a difficult craft, because it is very hard to judge whether or not you're any good. Very bad writers can make plenty of money, and very good writers can and do remain unpublished. So how can you tell if your writing is any good? My wife tells me I'm a good writer, but she loves me and wants me to be happy. I don't doubt her sincerity in saying what she says, but she is too close to me to be able to make a clear judgment. People who don't like me will say that my writing is terrible, but they are biased in the opposite direction. I have even had people who have no idea who I am read my work, and the results have been mixed. How fair is that? If unbiased people universally disliked my work, I could easily say I suck and should just PUT THE PEN DOWN! On the other hand, if it was universally liked, I could easily make the argument to myself that I just haven't found the right agent yet. But when some like it and some don't, all I can safely assume is that my work is mediocre and appeals to a narrow audience. Great. So how do you know?

I have been told that I have a materialistic view of success. Meaning that I would view my writing as successful if it was accepted by the current process, ie, if I got an agent, got published, and made some money. That is the way I look at it. But there is another factor involved. I do write because I like doing it. I enjoy the process of creating a story and bringing it to life. But at the same time it is a lot of work, and seems horribly futile if I am going to be the only one ever to read it. Boo-hoo, poor me, I know.

Oil World

2008-03-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

I am really interested in alternative fuel sources, especially lately as gasoline prices go through the roof. I have three oil refineries surrounding my city and yet I still pay $3.15 a gallon for gas, and my cars only get 17-24 miles to the gallon. I hate math, so I'll leave the doing of it to you, but needless to say I, like most other Americans, pay a lot of money for gas every month. So I started looking into alternative fuel vehicles before I bought my most recent vehicle, and it seems the progress we have made in this area is surprisingly limited. On a lot of models it seems like the car manufacturers just slapped the word "Hybrid" on their vehicles to make people feel better. In all models that I looked at except the Toyota Prius, gas mileage was no better than 25 mpg! My Toyota RAV4 gets that on a regular gas engine. So why should I pay the extra $10,000 to get the same mileage? Fuel cell vehicles look promising, but they are also at least a year or two off and promise to be even more expensive than hybrids. So what if, for $7,000 to $10,000 , you could retrofit you current vehicle to run on a fuel that is plentiful, environmentally friendly, and that you can manufacture yourself? Well guess what? If it wasn't for your government looking out for your safety, you could!

There is a company in New Mexico, United Nuclear, that has designed and successfully tested a retrofit hydrogen fuel system that will work on modern gasoline engines. Check out their site and read the information. http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/ And even better, part of the package is a hydrogen generator that will create all the fuel you will ever need out of nothing more than air, water, and electricity. Too good to be true, you say? There must be a catch? Well, you're right. There is a catch. The Consumer Product Safety Commission shut down United Nuclear's program because some of the main components in their system could also be used for illegal fireworks manufacturing. Now, call me crazy, but do we really have an epidemic of illegal firewoks in our country right now? I know we have toys imported from China that are poisoning our children, and yet they still flow over the borders. I know that some of the commissioners were busy taking luxurious trips paid for by lobbyists and manufacturers, so they probably didn't have time to make sure that imported toys didn't have significant levels of lead paint, but they did take time out of their crowded travel schedule to take notice of the fact that some of the key components of United Nuclear's hydrogen fuel system could possibly be used to manufacture illegal fireworks. Here's a link to the CPSC's injunction against United Nuclear, if you are interested in reading the actual document. http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml07/07249.pdf

Who, I wonder, would have anything to gain by shutting this cutting edge technology down? Who would have the most to lose if this technology became prevalent? I think you already know the answer too. Big oil. And who is a major influence for big oil? Why, it's the President of the United States, George W. Bush, who continues to push Congress to give billions of your tax dollars to oil companies like Exxon, even when they are reporting record profits! Can you imagine what would happen to those companies if we could suddenly make our fuel with solar panels and water? I can think of many scenarios, among them a huge shift in our economy and a major change for a lot of people. People would lose jobs, and oil moguls like the Bush family would have to look for new ways to exploit Americans so they can maintain their standard of living. But at least our children might be able to look forward to having a planet that they could still live on. That would be nice.

Now, I know people love a good conspiracy, and many of us have heard stories about the guy who posted the design for an engine that gets 100+ mpg on the internet, and the next day the plans were gone and no one ever heard from the guy again. And Bob Lazar, the gentleman who runs United Nuclear catches some flack because he claimed to have worked at S-4, a super secret military base near Area 51 where he claimed to have studied and worked on the reverse-engineering of the propulsion systems of extraterrestrial space vehicles. Regardless of what you think of this, the fact remains that Lazar is a physist who has worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, so it would be an understatement to say he knows his science. The facts still remain that the US government, with whom Lazar has tangled before, took notice of this small science supply company. Why? Because they had a revolutionary idea that threatened interests at the highest levels of our government. With something like this hydrogen system powering our vehicles, we would no longer be beholden to the middle east for our oil and the costs for shipping products would drop dramatically. There would be difficulty, without a doubt, but this country has faced and overcome adversity far worse. That's part of what makes America great.

Feedback

2008-03-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is going to be a blatant case of down-on-the-knees begging. I'm gonna do it, and I'm not ashamed. Ready? TALK TO ME, PEOPLE!! :-) I know there are a few of you who read this, and I appreciate it. I love it that there are people reading my words because I am an egomaniac and I need to be validated by having others tell me how much they think of me. No, what I really would like to see is just your comments or your thoughts on the subjects that I put out there. Boring? Fine, tell me. Lame? I know. What do you think is interesting? Let me know. Though I indulge my own little fantasy that people like to hear what I have to say, I know that I would like to hear what YOU have to say. Let 'er rip!

Age

2008-03-11T10:17:00.001-07:00

I am 38 years old this month. That is getting dangerously close to 40. There is a lot of pressure to "succeed" before the age of 40, and though I don't usually think a lot about those sort of landmarks, this one is weighing on me. My 20th class reunion will be this summer and I don't think I will be attending. I tell myself that I there is really no one that I need to reconnect with, but I hereby admit that part of me is embarrassed that I am twenty years out of high school and still just plugging along. I never became an actor or a musician or made a million dollars. I still live in the same town, just a few blocks from the high school from which I graduated. I have a wife and three great kids, and I am proud of them, but I have no need to parade them in front of these people hoping that they will pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful my family is. Their opinion of me never mattered all that much then, why should it matter now?

I'll let you in on a little bit of geek truth. Yes, I was a geek in high school. Not a full-blown nerd, though I don't think I was very far from that, but still, I didn't play football or basketball or wrestle. I was in choir and drama, and I did pretty well. I was in the most prestigious choir in school, and my partner and I won the state championship for serious duo in competitive drama. Thanks for holding me together on that one, Traci. I still remember having to cut a couple of minutes out of a scene that we had been performing all season when one particularly competitive coach (TED!!!) timed us and found that we were over the allowed time limit. He threatened to file a complaint if we didn't get under the time limit, and I freaked. Traci held it together, though, and we did it and won state. That was a good year. However, the fact that I lettered in choir and drama was, and still is in some cases, a joke to a lot of people. So the bit of geek truth is, no matter how much we hated and resented those people who ostracized us because we didn't fit their ideal, we still want them to be impressed with us now that we are adults. We want to come to the reunion with better jobs and hotter wives and smarter kids than those jocks that laughed at us back in school. But WHY, for God's sake? Why should I care what they think? My wife loves me for who I am now, and my kids love me because I am their dad, why should I give a rat's ass what a complete stranger that I barely knew twenty years ago thinks about me? It upsets me to even acknowledge it.

But to return to the focus of this entry, when I think about my 20th class reunion, I begin to feel old. Not ancient, but at that point where a majority of people no longer consider me a young man. I have mentioned before that I have always had a youthful perspective on life, and think that I have a pretty young attitude, but if I ponder how old I am, I begin to feel older. So that got me thinking: how much of aging is dependent on how old you feel? I know that I am wiser in some areas of my life than I was when I was sixteen, and I know there are some things that I used to do when I was sixteen that I can't now that I am thirty-eight, but I still feel sixteen in my mind. So at what point to I begin to feel thirty-eight? Is sixteen the age at which I finally became fully aware of myself as a person and therefore am permanently fixed there, rooted in time? I just don't know, but when I'm sixty-four and my mind thinks I'm sixteen, I foresee problems.

Failure and Determination

2008-02-08T23:42:00.001-08:00

I recently participated in Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page contest, found here: http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/01/surprisingly-essential-first-page.html That was a difficult thing for me to do, but I had a current work in progress that I thought I would put out there and see what kind of reaction it got. It didn't get shredded by the few people that took on the task of trying to critique all the entries (there were nearly 700) but it didn't get any "wows" either. And I didn't win. Or even make the finalists list. I don't think I was even considered to be honest, and I can see why. The finalists really did have awesome first pages, especially the winner. Duh, right? Well, often I can find a way of saying, "Pshaw, my stuff is as good as that." Ha! Not this time. There were some good pages. The winner, who went by Heather!Ann! wrote a great first page that I definitely want to read more of. Nicely done Heather, if that's your real name. I was impressed.

There's nothing quite like a contest to make you feel inadequate. Well, not if you win the contest, but if you don't even place in a contest like this you begin to question yourself. If my first page wasn't good enough to be in the top ten of 675, then how is it going to be good enough to stand out in the thousands of stories that agents see every day? One person commented on the blog after the contest and stated that he wished he had never entered, because now his confidence was shaken. I can understand that. But does that mean I'm going to quit. Nope. I don't think I'm going to get any worse at this whole writing thing, at least I hope not, so what do I have to lose? I keep writing, I keep getting better, and maybe one day, that awesome first page will be mine. I still have plenty of stories to tell, and who knows which one of those might be the one that makes everyone stop and think, "Hmm. This might be the next big thing."

Writers often hear stories of how many times they were rejected before they finally got a book deal, just as entrepreneurs and inventors hear about how many time businesses and inventions failed before they finally succeeded. That's what I like to keep in the back of my mind. Every failure is another step toward success. There are those who succeed with their first novels and I congratulate them wholeheartedly. Jessica Verday, one of the members of the Querytracker.net community just signed with Rachel Vater, and she had the enviable displeasure of having to choose between four well-known agents that offered to represent her book. Wow! Is that better than paying your dues and getting rejected hundreds of times? I would say so! I also think Jessica paid her dues through her work, perfecting and polishing it until it was ready to go out. Alas, such fortune did not occur for me. I have learned much, and I do believe I am improving, so I will continue to tap away. I will wear keyboards out. I will watch laptops go obsolete, and maybe one day, it will happen to me, too. I just hope I'm still young enough to enjoy it.

Ninja and the Geek

2008-02-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

Yes, ninjas. I have had a fascination with the whole idea of the ninja ever since I saw Berry Gordy's "The Last Dragon" back in the '80s. Sho 'nuff! Great movie, for as campy as it seems now. Taimak was really fantastic in it and at one point he dressed up in shinobi shozoku, or ninja uniform, and went to rescue his girlfriend from a group of thugs that were holding her captive. One guy armed only with some throwing spikes (shaken) and his fists taking on gangsters with guns! Man that would be awesome! Completely insane, as I learned from years of martial arts training, but, hey, it was a movie. And it was a lot of fun. Anyway, that inspired me and several buddies to spend the summer of 1985 skulking around our neighborhood in really cool black uniforms that we ordered from some martial arts catalog, throwing cheap shuriken at poor, innocent trees. Yeah, we were living the dream. Never once were we spotted taking out those trees either. You better believe it.

In the next few years I did a lot of research into the martial arts that the ninja studied and their methods, and as is usually the case with these sort of fantastical characters, once you start to learn about them, you find your illusions being shattered. The real ninjas were mercenaries, spies, and assassins. They handled the jobs that were too dirty or dishonorable for the nobles or elite samurai. There is a very famous story of a ninja who hid in an toilet for three days until the nobleman he was hired to assassinate came in to use it. I mean down inside the outhouse hole. You know there wasn't going to be a samurai doing that. Certainly not the glamorous image of a black-clad warrior throwing deadly blades and then disappearing into a puff of smoke. Though they were used, they were always looked down on by the upper class. They were thugs and gangsters, and though they had their place, they were not respected in the culture of the time. And worst of all, ninjas almost never wore the black uniforms that we all associate so clearly with ninjas! Their objective was to blend in and get close to their target, so they would most often dress as samurai or monks or peasants, whatever allowed them to assimilate with their surroundings. A peasant ninja? How boring, right? But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Even when ninjas performed night raids, they often wore dark green or blue, even purple to blend with the natural colors of the night and the surroundings. A purple ninja?? I could hardly even stand the thought! So many of my preconceptions about what made the ninja so cool were disproved, and I found myself disenchanted with them. I studied the samurai for some time and found that though their code (bushido) was appealing, it turned out that many of them were just as bad as the ninja. So now what? Well, sadly, I gave up on them.

Then, after a long hiatus from the ninja obsession, broken only by the revival of GI Joe and Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, I played a game on PS2 called Ninja Gaiden, and you know what I decided? Who cares if the fantasy ninja never really existed? The fantasy is still fun and interesting. Yes, I know I'm probably too old to want to be a ninja, but I refuse to let it go. I probably won't be attending Ninja Academy this year, but I will always be a ninja in my mind. Who knows, I might even write a book. The world needs more ninjas.

New Year, New Goals

2008-01-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

The New Year is upon us, and though I am not much into the whole "New Year's Resolution" thing, I do believe it is a good time to set new goals. It's just a natural starting place, and it is easy to remember. So, upon noticing that I have not put up a new post since October, I have set a goal for myself to have at least one new post every month. I know now that the world hungers for my unique perspective and worldview, and my pithy, intelligent delivery of ideas. Ha! Actually, I had someone mention to me that I had not posted on my blog recently, and that surprised me. "You read my blog?" I said. Yes. Someone is reading my blog! I have sitemeter tracking my visitors, so I can see that a few people have been visiting, but for some reason it still surprised me. So, with that audience in mind I will discipline myself and keep my blog up to date. Thanks to all of you, or should I say both of you :-) that are reading.

My next goal will be about my writing. I have expressed before my desire to become a published author, and I have been working toward that goal, but this year, I have decided to "turn pro" as Steven Pressfield puts it. If you are a struggling writer, artist, whatever, and you haven't read Pressfield's "The War of Art," you are doing yourself a disservice. This is a highly motivational and logical approach to navigating the road toward artistic accomplishment. One of the pieces of advice he gives in the book is that if you want to do whatever it is that you love for a living, then you have to approach it as a profession, not a hobby. If you want to be a writer, then you need to believe that you are a writer, and you need to approach your work like a professional. You have to commit to writing every day. You wouldn't miss a day of work unless you had to, so you shouldn't miss a day of writing either. You get the idea. And though I feel I have done well, I haven't done as well as I could or as I should, so this year, I will not make excuses and I will not be lazy. I will finish the drafts of my second novel and complete at least the first draft of my third. I'll let you know how I do.

Finally, I hope to help my good friend Patrick by contributing more to his wonderful website Querytracker.net. He has created an invaluable resource for authors like me who dream about being published one day, and though I was there when the idea came to us, Patrick has done all the work. I say this openly and publicly. This site is the product of his vision and his hard work, and I applaud him for that. I will try to find a way to become more involved in the future, though, because I believe in what he has done, and I believe that the site has great value to all aspiring authors. Thanks to all those who have supported us over the last year, and we hope you are enjoying Querytracker 2.0! Happy New Year, and thanks for reading!

Rite of Passage

2007-10-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

My twelve-year-old son kicked my butt the other day. Not literally. No, he’s not quite there yet. But we were playing one-on-one in a Halo 3 Slayer match and he beat me. And not just by a little bit. I even think he might have let me get in a couple of kills just to make me feel better. Now, I don’t know how I should feel about this, but I can tell you how I do feel. I am ticked. I really want to beat him, but he is too good. He has surpassed me in this area. My wife points out that it is my own fault because I have raised them with video games, and that if I am going to feel anything besides shame for addicting them to brain-rotting, time-wasting, ultra-violent crap, (her opinion, not mine) that I should be proud that he has gotten so good. And I am proud. When it’s not me he’s shooting in the face with a shotgun.

I remember a while back watching an episode of “Home Improvement” where Tim Taylor is having problems with his oldest son, and Wilson tells him that his son is reaching a point in his life where a lot of cultures begin treating boys like men. They begin their training for adulthood with a rite of passage. In this particular episode, Tim let his son use the cutting torch for the first time, proclaiming him a man because he had cut metal with fire. I have often wondered about that sort of rite of passage. I have heard stories that the Maasai would send boys out on their own to kill a lion, and if they came back alive with a lion, then they were men. The Spartans took their sons from their homes at seven years old and began training them to become soldiers. In America, we consider children to be adults at eighteen, and yet a lot of those eighteen-year-olds act nothing like adults. Is that because we have not taught them how? Is it because we don’t expect them to fend for themselves and provide for them up until that age? We send them out into the world after eighteen years of dependence and then expect them to know how to live on their own, and then we wonder why there are so many young adults returning home to live with their parents. It’s not that hard, we think. We did it, why can’t they? They have seen how we lived our lives and how we went to work every day, why can’t they follow our example?

So what defines adulthood, then? We can’t send them out to kill lions. That’s cruel, and there aren’t very many lions left in the world. So how do we know that our children have made the transition? Self-sufficiency is a good sign. Living on their own and holding down a job. Grocery shopping by themselves. Making positive choices in their lives. Having a good marriage and/or a rewarding career. But most of all, I think it’s that moment when a child returns to their parents and says, “I’m sorry for all the crap I put you through, and thank you for everything” that makes a parent realize that they have done well by their children and they have completed their rite of passage. And then you laugh at them when their kids shoot them in the face with a shotgun!

A World of Communication

2007-10-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

I remember in the fall of 1981 being 11 years old and having heard of an amazing technological advance. A friend of mine had come to school and told us about the "answering machine!" Apparently, when you were not at home to answer the phone, this fantastic futuristic device would answer it for you and take a message from whoever it was that called. After school that day, my friend Scott and I spent a few hours calling numbers out of the phone book, trying to get an answering machine, but we had no luck. But I remember thinking how cool that device was.

Then in about 1992, answering machines had become commonplace, but a new and more exciting device had come into being. A roommate of mine at the time, who was a real tech gear junkie, got one of the very first Motorola flip phones. I remember thinking how much it reminded me of the old Star Trek communicators. But man was it ever cool! There was hardly any coverage on it and the battery lasted for like two hours, but it was a phone that you could use anywhere. We were truly in the future.

Now it's 2007, and everyone has a cell phone. Even my mother in-law has a cell phone. And you can't call someone's home number, if they even have one, without getting the answering machine or the voice mail. I spend hours sometimes trying to get ahold of someone who has three phones (home, work, cell), and instant messenger on the computer. How can it be that with so many options for communication, we seem to be communicating less? I think the answer is that we are communicating more selectively. With more and more options for people to find us, we are finding it harder to be unreachable. Whenever I turn on my computer, people who I communicate with on instant messenger know that I am on. But then I have the option to "appear offline." I can refuse to answer my home phone and let the answering machine pick up. I can ignore my cell and let it go to voice mail. Then I can choose when I want to talk to all these people that are trying to talk to me. Of course they all have the same options that I do, so sometimes I end up having a conversation over voicemail. Have you ever been surprised, and even a little annoyed, when someone actually answers the phone when you were expecting to leave a message? I have. I like leaving messages for the same reasons I like instant messenger and email. You have that little buffer of time to organize your thoughts and to edit yourself that you don't have when you are talking to someone in "real time." Ever say something stupid and wish you could take it back? Guess what? With messenger you can! As long as you don't press enter...

I guess the point of this all is that we humans are constantly reinventing the way we communicate with each other, but in doing so I think it is important that we are careful that we don't isolate ourselves from each other. I have friends that I have only spoken to online, but I still have that desire to one day get together and meet them face to face. Sit down, have a pizza and talk to then in person. And that is good. I think once we start to lose that, we will lose some of what makes us human.

Assault!

2007-10-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

Well it finally happened. After three years of working with inmates at the county jail I finally got attacked. On Wednesday I was working our maximum security unit and an inmate broke the rules. I then ordered him to go to his cell and lock down. Isn't it interesting how much these people act like, and then are treated like children? You did a bad thing. Go to your room! Anyway, he didn't want to go to his room, so then I had to put him there. Long story short, he punched me in the left eye, I then subdued him and he got a new felony charge for assaulting a peace officer. I heard yesterday that he received a $20,000 bond on that, so I don't think he'll be going anywhere any time soon. Now that all laid out as it is, I would like to comment on some feelings I had during the event.

People often ask me one question in particular when they find out I work at the jail. They want to know if I am afraid working around all those inmates, and the answer is no. Most of the time. I explained in a previous post that we have all sorts of inmates in the jail, ranging from jaywalkers to multiple murderers, and at times I will be in the same room with forty-four of any mixture of them. Most times I am not afraid, because I have worked there long enough to realize that most times even murderers are still just people. They are not monsters. I will say this, though, and I suggest that you never tell your children this. There are monsters out there. We like to tell our kids that monsters are just make believe, but I have met a few, so I know they are real. But they are exceptionally rare, so as I stated before, I am usually not afraid to be in a room with forty-four inmates. On the day I got assaulted, I was in a room with two inmates and another officer, and though I think I remained as rational as you can in this sort of situation, I was afraid. Unless you are in a sport fighting match and you expect to get hit, the moment someone hits you in the face, you are fighting for your life. Adrenalin levels go through the roof. Your heart rate skyrockets and your vision narrows. All you can think of is either neutralizing or escaping the threat. It's not a good feeling. But, at the same time it is. It's a primal kind of feeling rooted in the very beginnings of our beings, and even though it is scary, it feels almost right. Your body is doing what its core programming was meant to do. You're not sitting in front of a computer screen or shuffling papers from here to there. You are fighting for your very survival. It's something that has been going on for eons, and though we have lost touch with that most basic version of ourselves through all of our superficial modern society, I was shown proof that we are still animals, and if we are forced to, we will fight to survive.

This is not a boast, but I won that fight. The reason I don't consider it bragging is that when it comes down to us (detention officers) versus them (inmates), we always win. In order for us to lose, someone would have to die, or inmates would have to escape, and we do our very best every day to make sure that neither of those two things happen. We are looked down upon by our colleagues in street patrol as being "just jailers," but they drop their problems on us and then they leave. We are the ones that have to deal with these people on a daily basis. We have to manage the problem instead of dropping it on someone else to handle. In this kind of a situation, having to manage a population of people that already have a disregard for the rules, you find yourself building relationships with inmates. They must remain professional and never reach a personal level, but they are necessary for gathering information and accomplishing tasks. There are even several inmates that I personally like. I will never associate with them on the outside, but if I see them on the street I say hello and might even chat with them for a few minutes, but they will never be coming over for dinner on Sunday. I have also now developed a relationship with the inmate who decided to hit me. I feel almost like we've shared something now. We've gone through combat together and we have survived, and that connects us somehow. Of course we won't be able to discuss it since he probably going to prison for a long time, but that's all right, because I doubt he places the same kind of significance on the event. For me it becomes about finding meaning in a place where everything seems so pointless. Where lives are squandered and people a lot of times have lost hope. It's easy to be drawn into apathy in a place like that, and that is why it is important to examine events such as this and realize that they do have meaning. It allows you to maintain some sense of hope, and that is incredibly important in this type of environment.

Rewrite!

2007-10-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

So as I may have mentioned before I love writing. Love it. The creative process, though at times frustrating, is most often cathartic, therapeutic, and in my case, recreational. Any of you who are writers know that the creative portion of the novel-writing process is the easy part, because after the initial flood of the first draft come the... rewrites. That's right, my pen wielding brothers-and-sisters-in-arms. I heard you all gasp. For those of you who don't know why we would gasp, let me explain.

There is a famous quote about writing that I hate, but is nonetheless true. 90% (and the percentage is debatable as well) of writing is RE-writing. Going in and hacking and slashing that manuscript that you laughed and cried and lavished attention over in the first draft into something lean and mean and tight. Editing is manuscript boot camp, only the manuscript doesn't do any of the work. Not fair. I already worked hard, and now I have to work harder? Not only do you have to work harder, but you have to work longer, because that first polish you rub onto your manuscript is called the second draft, not the final. Oh, no. There is much more to be done. Ask anyone who belongs to a critique group and they will tell you. Fix this and then this isn't quite right. Mend that and then this creaks a little. Oil that and then this seems dull. Polish that and then this is loose. Tighten that... Well, you get the picture. When you are writing a book, you are in for the long haul if you want it to be any good. Anyone who dashes off a first draft and thinks it is ready for print is fooling only themselves. I've known good writers who give up after a fifth draft and say, "If that's not good enough, it never will be."

Which brings me to another writing quote that I wish I could credit, and that is: A writer never finishes a book. He abandons it. That's the truth. There will never be a time when I am completely happy with an entire piece of work. There will always be improvements that could be made, but at some point you just have to let it go. You have to say, "This is good enough," and hope to God that you're right.

For the Love of Books

2007-10-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Over on Sharing the Brain, the blog of one of my Querytracker friend's crit group they are discussing book banning and challenged books, so I thought I would chime in here with my own comments on the subject. I have loved books for as long as I can remember, and though there are probably always going to be books that parents don't want their kids to read, I think it is a huge mistake to put up a big sign that says "THESE BOOKS ARE BANNED!!!" Everyone remembers being a kid, and if you think back you will remember that if you were to see such a sign, the first thing you would want to do is read those books. Rational, logical discussion with a child about what you as a parent consider to be age-appropriate reading material is the best course of action. They are going to get their hands on whatever they want. You should know that. However, if they know why we don't want them reading those sorts of things, and we give them the power to make the right decision, then maybe they will surprise us and actually make that decision.

I spoke a little bit about Richard Brautigan on Sharing the Brain, but I wanted to mention it here as well. "The Hawkline Monster" was one of the weirdest, most wonderful books I ever read when I was younger. It was full of vivid sexual imagery, and probably not appropriate for me at that age, but it's surreal settings and bizarre characters gave me an appreciation for what can be accomplished in the written word. If anyone goes out and reads this and decides that it is crap, that's your opinion, but for me it was very influential. I got detention for that book, too. My teacher saw me reading it one day and took it off my stack of books that I had piled on the sidewalk while I waited for the bus. She took it home and read it over the weekend, and then told the principal on Monday. My parents got a call, and I got in trouble, but, thankfully, I didn't stop reading. I was reading Stephen King when I was that age as well, and though some would say that his work is not appropriate for younger readers, I would say that I turned out well enough in spite of his influence.

What bothers me, and frankly scares me a little, is that people are no longer reading! This in unfathomable to me. In a National Endowment for the Arts report it was said that only 57% of Americans read a book in 2002. A book! One! That doesn't just make me sad, it makes me ill. For those of us that are avid readers and those that aspire to be writers, the thought that people aren't reading is appalling. Books are one of the simple joys that are fading, and if at some point in my lifetime the written word, printed on paper and bound between covers, dies out as a media, the I will know that we have lost our way. Many have pointed to immorality, the disintegrating family, and fading religious convictions as a reason for the decline in American culture, but I say it is the death of reading. If there is one thing that I am proud of in my writing endeavors, it is that it got my wife Laurie interested in reading. She is a bright, intelligent person who just never had time for books, but then I finished my first novel and she read it for me. Then she read the Harry Potter series, and has been reading non-stop since. And that gives me hope. Maybe if one person can find their way back to the joy of books, then maybe a whole lot of others can too.

Stuff I Help With

2007-09-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

So I figured that now is as good a time as any to plug a couple of ventures that I am associated with. Seeing as no one is really reading this, I don't know what good a plug will do, but I wanted to talk about it so I will. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am aspiring to be an author. I write fiction and want to be a storyteller. It's something I enjoy, and I hope it is something I am at least marginally talented at. It's very hard to tell. If you are a published author and your story sells several million copies, then it must be easy to say, "Well. I must be a pretty good writer!" Awards are pretty good for letting a writer know that they are accomplished in their craft, but I am far from the Pulitzer, so I have to work on faith. My wife and kids love me, thank God, so they can't say, "Gee, Jason, this really sucks," so I have very little to gauge my work against. That is why I just have to do what I know how to do, and then redo it until a book is done. After that, all I can do is hope that someone down the line will read it and say, "Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe I can sell it." Anyway, what this is all leading to is that my good friend for many years and writing partner, Patrick McDonald, has put together a couple of websites that I am involved in, and I felt that this was the perfect place for me to talk about it.

The first site is http://www.farwalkers.com/. This is the official site for the series of middle grade stories I intend to finish one day. The first book is called "Farwalkers: The First Crossing," and is currently in the submission process, or as I have come to call it, the rejection process. The site is very cool, though, and won an award in Writer's Digest for being one of the top ten author's websites. That's right, my name was in the esteemed pages of Writer's Digest right there alongside the man who did all the work. I'm still pretty proud, even though I almost feel like I was riding on his coattails. I hope that when I finish my next couple of books that he will help me design at least pages for them if not entire websites.

The second site I am very excited about. In the process of learning about how to query agents in an attempt to get someone to buy our book, we found that there were several sites out there that listed the agents that were available, but nothing to keep track of which agents you had already queried and which ones were left. From this simple problem, http://www.querytracker.net/ was born. Querytracker is much more than just a list of agents, though. It had become much more than that. It is a tool for authors to more accurately target their queries to agents who are interested in their genres. This is accomplished by providing users with statistics gathered from all users on the site. As each user inputs data, it is compiled and presented in query statistics reports that show authors how quick an agent responded to a query, how often they rejected it and how often they asked for more material. Querytracker also shows you what genre individual agents are more likely to respond to, what sort of word count they are partial to, and even what seasons they are more active in. It is a fantastic site and every writer should be using it. Once again, Patrick McDonald is responsible for creating this wonderful tool and community for writers. His "Social Data Gathering" model uses the power of the Internet to benefit everyone involved. I am proud to be involved in such a great endeavor and hope that one day it revolutionizes how authors reach agents.

HALO 3!

2007-09-25T17:27:00.001-07:00

Ah, yes, Halo 3 came out today, and I am happy. It is as awesome as everyone hoped and as Bungie promised. The textures, the graphics, the gameplay. Yay! I am giddy. I can't wait to get into it a little deeper, and especially to play the multiplayer with my oldest son. He had No Child Left Behind testing today, so he didn't have any homework, so he and a few of his friends got together after school and had a ball with it. Now this always brings up the question with my wife about whether or not these games are too violent for a 12-year-old to be playing. I always say no, because he has the ability to separate the game from reality. It's not like he's going to be grabbing himself a rocket launcher and blasting up the school. However, one concern I do share is the amount of time spent playing the games. I know I can spend hours at a time in front of the screen when I am engaged in a good game. Other than being a waste of time, it's not detrimental to me. Until my wife finds out and wonders why I am playing a video game instead of cleaning the house or doing yardwork, then it's detrimental to me! With the kids, though, I always feel that they should be spending more time exercising or reading. But it is especially difficult to convince them that they should put down the controller and go outside when I am still sitting on the couch with the controller in my hand!

Video games have been a big part of my life since the early '80s when Pac Man first came out. I can't even tell you how many quarters I spent on Defender, and when I worked at Aladdin's Castle, a local video game arcade, when I was in my early twenties, they became an even bigger part. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II were huge, and I loved them all. I was a little sad as consoles began to get more and more powerful and fewer and fewer people went to the arcades, but the quality of the games became so much better that there was no need to go anywhere to play a good game anymore. Instead of coming to the arcade for the higher quality games and settling for whatever happened to come close on the console, now the consoles are the top of the line, and they are amazing. The pure eye candy of games like Halo 3 make them so much better than their arcade predecessors, that they are well worth the $60 that they cost. I bet I spent twice that trying to beat Smash TV.

A friend and I were discussing what we would have thought if we had been given these games to play ten years ago. We decided that we would have lost our minds. Our heads might have actually exploded. Thank goodness this kind of progress is gradual...

Incarceration

2007-09-23T20:43:00.000-07:00

As I walk the path of the aspiring writer, I have a day job to pay the bills. Well, it's an afternoon job. I work swing shift at the county jail, supervising inmates for eight hours a day. Before I started working here I had no clue what jail was like. I had never been in jail, and I had never been to the jail. All I knew was what I saw on TV. Jail is nothing like what you see on TV. If you want to see a great show about what jail is really like, check out Inside American Jail on Court TV. That's what it is really like. But that is not what I wanted to focus on in this entry. What I have discovered since working here is how easy it is to end up in jail! I had no idea that even the most innocuous of "crimes" like jaywalking or speeding could land you in jail. And it has given me a much better perspective on the power that law enforcement holds in this country, and how easy it would be for them to set someone up. I don't think it happens nearly as often as it is claimed, but it would be surprisingly easy for a cop to plant drugs on you if he wanted to, and there you would be, sitting in jail.

Another thing that surprised me was the kind of people who end up here. Mostly it's people who can't learn from their mistakes or can't handle the responsibility of having to show up for court when their ticket says to. There are bad guys in here, too. Drug dealers, rapists, child molesters, murderers. But even among them, there are few evil people. Mistakes, bad decisions, even stupidity account for a lot of crime, but the truly evil person is a rare breed. They're almost like an exotic animal. When you actually see one it is almost exciting. I have worked at this jail for three years, and in that time have dealt with thousands of inmates, we booked around 24,000 in that time, and of all those, two were people I would consider evil.

What would be considered evil? Well, in my eyes, aside from the biblical definition, an evil person has a blatant disregard for anyone other than themselves. In one particular case, an individual enjoyed watching others suffer from the things he did. He even enjoyed thinking about the pain and worry he caused to the families of his victims. He told me right before he went to prison that as soon as he got out, the first thing he was going to do was hurt someone. Now in some people you can chalk this up to tough talk and someone's desire to be perceived as a thug, but this guy is the real deal. When you see them, you know.

Now, that being said, this is still a tough world to live in, and there are a lot of guys in here that I would not want to live with. In our medium and maximum security units, inmates live 18 1/2 to 23 hours a day in an 8x10 cell... with another guy. Not ideal living arrangements. Even the most patient people can be pushed to the breaking point. So make sure you stay out of here. You won't like it.

My Buddy

2007-09-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

So I read a couple of things today that I felt the need to comment on, and, unfortunately for all you who might be unwise enough to venture here, it is about religion. YAY, religion! Am I religious? Yes. There, I said it. I believe in God, and I am not ashamed to admit it. Does that mean that I hate everyone who doesn't believe in God? NO! It also doesn't mean that I ask for any sort of special accommodation because I do, but I do wonder this. Why do people who don't believe feel the need to make sure that anyone who does never mentions it again? I don't believe in the bogeyman, so you can talk about him all you want. I don't care. So why do atheists feel the need to silence religious people? Why do atheistic state senators file lawsuits against God? I think it's because they are scared of faith, because if we're right, then they're screwed, and they don't want to have to think about it. I have friends, very close friends, who were atheists, and, yes, I tried to convince them to think about God. I would never try to convert a Muslim or a Jew, because I think we all have something in common, and that is a recognition that this is all to big to be something that "just happened."

Now, along those lines, I recently read that Kathy Griffin stated, "Suck it, Jesus" when she accepted and award recently. I find that appalling, but I'm not all a-twitter about it. I do want to mention this, however. You attack Judaism, you're an anti-Semite. You attack Islam, you're an intolerant bigot. You attack Christianity, you're a comedian. I find it utterly hilarious that at the bottom of the web page that the article was published on, there were ads for tickets to Kathy Griffin shows and then right below those ads were ads for religious sites. Now, wouldn't it be ironic if Kathy Griffin saying "Suck it, Jesus" sent someone to that article, who then proceeded to click on one of those links, learned about Jesus, and then became a Christian? I think that would be... divine.

So it begins... And who cares?

2007-09-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would do it, but I have been inspired by those who have gone before me, and here it is. My first post on my very own blog. What do I have to say? What do I have to contribute to the universe? Well, not a whole lot right now. I will say that I am a writer, though not published. In case you were wondering about my opinion, and if you weren't, why would you be reading this blog, I don't believe that you have to be published to be a writer. A writer writes. I know, I know. It's used and worn out, but it's true. I write because I want to. Because I need to. I may suck to high heaven, but you know what? I don't even care. Well, that's not true. I don't want to suck, so I guess that means I do care. But what I am saying is that I will write even if I do suck. Even if I never publish a word, and no one but my wife and kids ever read it, I will still write, so in my opinion, that makes me a writer. Scoff if you will, but one day, who knows? Maybe my persistence will be rewarded.