Teacher Our Young to Be Creative

Back in my high school days, I liked my music loud and aggressive.  My favorite bands shifted over the years from heavy metal icons Motley Crue to perennial rockers AC/DC and then to industrial juggernauts Nine Inch Nails and KFMDM.

While my music tastes have broadened considerably since that time—I listen to the local pop radio station about as much as I listen to my MP3 collection, which even includes some Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and even Katie Perry believe it or not—I still can’t pass up the opportunity to see my favorite bands when they tour in the area.

In just a few minutes my lovely wife and I (along with the kids and grandparents who will be babysitting) will be off to Pittsburgh.  We (just my wife and I) are going to see KMFDM.  I haven’t been this excited to see a show in a long time.  I saw them once before back in 1997, and of the few dozen concerts I’ve been to in my life, I will always credit that 1997 show as being the best.  Heck, I even saw Nine Inch Nails with the Jim Rose Circus freak show act and an unknown Marilyn Manson at the time, but even that one didn’t compare to KMFDM.

I’m not going to hoot and haw over them, because I doubt hardly anyone has heard of them.  Their most popular songs have been “A Drug Against War” and “Juke Joint Jezebel” in the 90s.  They received a bit of unfortunate notoriety after the Columbine massacre because one of the shooters was a huge fan and posted a few of their songs on his website.  And their music does generally portray a message of standing up to the authority.  KFMDM itself is an initialization of “Kein Mehrheit Fur Die Mitleid”, which loosely translates to “no pity for the majority.”  So yeah, it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea.  Loud, in your face, industrial music with heavy guitar riffs, screeching male and female vocals, horns and brass instruments.  Great stuff in my opinion.

I’ve always been a huge fan of music, although I’ve never really pursued it as a skill.  I own a couple of guitars and can play a few chords, and long ago I was invited and entertained the idea of trying out for several bands.  People always got a kick out of my deep voice, and I could play rhythm guitar well enough for a garage or bar band.  But I never did because I was always too busy or had some other excuse (perhaps I was a bit too introverted at the time).

But I was always big on art and, of course, writing.  I took an art class every year from K to 10, and the only reason I stopped in my junior year was that the art classes offered at my high school interfered with honors and AP courses.  I recall in 7^th grade, though, having our first, real, not-making-silly-crafts-out-of-shoeboxes art class, and on the very first day our teacher asked us to draw her.  Simple enough.  Just draw her on a sheet of plain 8.5” x 11” white paper with a number 2 pencil.  When we were finished, she looked over the drawings, nodding every so often, and then handed them back to us.  Only three of us in a class of twenty-five drew her as they saw her rather than curly squiggles for hair and child-like noses and smiles and whatnot.  I was surprised by this, because while I drew like that when I was younger, somewhere along the line I realized that drawing circles and squiggles, shapes and patterns, was so limiting to reality.  And I mean, just think about it—we see circles everywhere, like my webcam lens or my cup or my fan, and yet all of these things were manufactured by man.  How many circles do we see in nature that are naturally occurring?  Not very many, unless you are looking at the atomic level.  When you look at a person’s hair, is it really just a bunch of squiggly curly q’s?  No, nobody’s hair REALLY looks like that.  Are eyes really shaped like ellipses?  No.  Are faces ever oval?  No.

In 9^th grade and then even more so in college, I took creative writing classes.  I always did well in those classes, and I’d attribute that to my inquisitive mind.  I’m never satisfied with most stories I read or movies I watch, because I’m always so quick to find plot holes or silly bits of writing.  For example, I saw a trailer for Stephenie Meyer’s new movie, The Host, and I was so irritated by the monologue.  The girl says, “This is the beginning of a love story.  It might not seem like a big deal, except for one thing: this is the future, and humanity is all but extinct.”

I’ve not read Stephenie Meyer’s books, and I’ve only been able to stomach through one or two of the Twilight movies.  She is successful, and I have to give her credit there, but that monologue just pains me.  Why?  Because nobody would EVER refer to themselves as being in the future.  Think about it.  I’m not going to call my mom and say, “Hey Mom, this is the future, right?  It’s not like it was back when you were a teenager—back in the present.”  You never actually EXIST in the future unless you have time-travelled there, and then when you are there, it is still your PRESENT.  I get the fact that she’s trying to tell us that the setting is in the future, that’s fine, but by saying, “THIS is the future,” it just sounds silly to me.  How about, “This is the beginning of a love story.  It might not seem like a big deal, except for one thing: it happens/takes place/occurs IN THE FUTURE, where humanity is all but extinct.”

I digress.

Music, art, literature.  All of these things are so precious and valuable.  Yeah, very few people will become rich and famous by making music or selling their art or writing books, and that’s partly the reason why they tend to be neglected in some institutions of learning.  None of those courses are as important as math or science.  Reading, yeah, but writing?  Not so much.

Yet even a doctor with all of his knowledge of the human anatomy needs creative skills to diagnose patients.  If it’s not this ailment, then it could be this one, and if it’s not this one, then it could be that one.  Computer programmers need creative skills to envision new algorithms and solutions for automating processes.  Even investors need to be creative when it comes to identifying trends and studying markets.  Without creativity, we’d accomplish nothing.

If you have a little one, I’d strongly encourage you to have him/her draw or write or learn an instrument.  Allow that little mind to not just learn a new skill but also the ability to imagine and envision.  I once had a crazy old teacher named Mrs. Harvey who had her ladder of abstraction, and while everyone scoffed at her teaching style—which was probably more fitting for gifted elementary school kids and not teenagers—she was very right about one thing: kids need to learn how to think for themselves—and think in the abstract.

Because we really don’t want or need a world full of followers, unable to think or do anything outside of what they are told.

Promoting Yourself on Twitter

As an “Indie” author, I can say that getting your name out there can be frustrating—especially if you are intent on getting recognized.  I’ve always somewhat shied away from the limelight, only because I don’t want that type of complication in my life.  Yes, I’d love to sell more books (who wouldn’t?), but that’s not why I write.  I write because I love telling stories.  If I suddenly became a world-famous author, I wouldn’t complain, but that’s not my ultimate goal.

Yes, I’ve submitted dozens of query letters to agents.  It’s amusing to me how some will be courteous enough to send you a rejection letter while others won’t even acknowledge you sent them your work.  I know that if I ever became a literary agent, I would at least respect the people who took the time to send submissions to me.  But the literary world is also changing, and ebooks are all the rage now.  You don’t need an agent to publish your book today with tools like Amazon KDP and Smashwords.  Promoting your book, on the other hand, is a different beast altogether.

Obviously I’m not an expert on promoting books.  Otherwise I’d be popping up on best seller’s lists.  But I have humbly amassed a moderately-sized Twitter following just by being a writer and following other writers.  It hasn’t been too terribly difficult to do, either.  For a while when I started I would add followers and then delete those who didn’t follow back.  And I would interact with those people who followed me by conversing and retweeting.  I did this for several months—long enough to get past the pesky 2000 following threshold, and now I have well over 6000 followers.  I don’t really follow people first now either.  Every day I’ll get ten to fifteen followers, and I’ll choose the real people (not bots and spammers), interact with them, and follow them back.  And it seems to work well.

Why is this important?  Well, when I would tweet a promotion for one of my books or a blog post prior to amassing the followers I have now, I would receive maybe 10 hits.  Now when I do it, I get between 50 and 100.  Bumping up your number of Twitter followers has its advantages, and so for anyone just starting out, I’d suggest you invest some time in Twitter.

After all, all of these SEO and book marketing people do the same thing.  They follow people in droves, then unfollow those who haven’t followed back, then try to get money from you to promote your work to all the followers they’ve amassed.  Why pay money to those people when you can just do that yourself?

One mistake I see people make all the time is that they’ll hit that 2000 following limit, then go in and indiscriminately unfollow a bunch of people so that they are only following a few hundred.  This is absolutely one of the worst Twitter moves you can do if you want to amass a ton of followers.  First of all, for those who do follow you, it’s annoying.  I took the time and effort (really just a second and a click--why am I complaining?) to follow you, so when you stop following me, that means to me that you aren’t interested in what I have to say.  I waste no time whatsoever unfollowing those who aren’t following me back.  A few times a week I’ll use one utility or another (Who Unfollowed Me, Twitter Karma when it works) to list the people that aren’t following me back, and I’ll unfollow those people.  I’m always amazed, too, at how many people show up in this list.  Smart Twitter users who actively manage their followings aren’t going to fall for it.  And the second issue with indiscriminately mass unfollowing is that if you attempt to follow more people after you’ve already unfollowed most of your followers, chances are you’ll just be following the same people again—people who are already following you in the first place.  I’ve seen at least a dozen instances of someone following me, me following back, that person then unfollowing me, me unfollowing back, and then that person following again.  Had I not unfollowed them like a smart Tweeter, they would all be wasting their time following me back a second time.  Sure, you may be able to get past that 2000 following limit by doing this, but as people start to unfollow you back, your numbers are going to dive.  Not the way to do it, folks.  Twitter isn't all about you.

If you are following 2000 people and only have 1000 followers, you need to unfollow a lot of folks.  There was a time when I would follow celebs, but that became tedious and boring.  Celebrities just don’t interest me—they are just people like you and me—people with big paychecks and cameras shoved into their faces, but who often have nothing more to offer than a hundred other people you may follow.  And celebs aren’t going to follow you back.  They aren’t going to converse with you.  Why bother?  Subscribe to their Facebook pages or an RSS celeb feed instead, because chances are if some celeb tweeted something interesting or shocking, you’ll read all about it there.

Keep your following/followers numbers roughly the same, and you’ll have no problem bypassing that 2000 following limit.  Oh, and take advantage of the bots and fake people who follow you.  Many people will report those accounts as spam, but I don’t.  I just don’t follow those accounts back—allowing them to pad my number of followers until they are eventually deleted.  I think Twitter allows you to follow only 10% more people than are following you after you reach 2000, so as long as you have over 1800 followers, you can keep on following.  Just make sure you always unfollow those who aren’t following you back.

It takes time.  I’ve been working at it for several years now.  Every day it grows a little bigger, and every day the hits to my blog and book sites go up a bit more.  Just keep at it.  Keep following back, unfollowing those who aren’t following you back, and tweeting, retweeting, and conversing with others.  The more you do, the more success you’ll see.

Oh, and don’t forget to keep writing!  For a while there I think I spent more time each evening on Twitter than I did actually writing.  Managing your Twitter followers should only take ten or fifteen minutes per day at the most.

Hope that helps!

Hitting That Writing Dream Zone

It was a dark and stormy night when the detective found the body of Mrs. Smith.  As he searched her apartment, he found a trace of blood near the bathroom sink where the killer had apparently tried to clean himself.  CSI collected the blood sample, and it turned out to be the woman’s estranged husband, who was jealous of her relationship with a new man.  The end.

What’s wrong with this story?  Yeah, it’s rather boring.  We’ve heard it a million times.  National best seller?  Hollywood Blockbuster?  I think not.

And yet the reason we’ve heard that story so many times is that it’s one of the more likely scenarios in a murder case.  Typically they happen at night.  Typically the murderer will leave evidence.  Typically it will involve a past or current lover.  Watch Investigation Discovery a few times a day and I’m certain you’ll come across a real-life story just like this.

In attempts to spice up their work, some writers will take a simple story like this, interject fancy language or controversial subject matter or something of the sort.  Others, like me, will add in plot twists to try to keep the story fresh and the reader guessing.  Some may include drama, suspense, humor, or some other kind of literary tool.

It was a dark and stormy night when the detective, an alien from the planet Bortros, found the body of the Queen of England.  As he searched the royal grounds with his extrasensory perception, he discovered a trace of the killer’s blood in the royal chambers.  Scotland Yard criminalists matched the blood to a royal guardsman, but as it turns out, the man was actually an alien from the planet Ecliptos.  Bortrosians and Ecliptosians had long been at war, and knowing the Bortrosian detective was the best lawman and fighter Bortros had, the entire investigation of the murder of the Queen on Earth had simply been an Ecliptosian distraction developed to gain a better advantage in their war on Bortros.

Ummm, yeah, OK.  Same relative story—a murder mystery—but what in the heck is going on here?  Warring alien planets, a prominent figure, and a very strange twist make this story unbelievable and just weird.  Sure, some sci fi geek out there might like it in an unabbreviated form, but it’s not going to draw in a huge reading audience.

Creativity isn’t bestowed upon everyone.  Some people couldn’t fabricate an entertaining and believable story if their lives depended on it.  Sure they could write out sixty-thousand words, but it would probably be dull, drab, uneventful or else have the entire thing be so unbelievably odd or complex or full of plot holes that the novel becomes intellectually offsetting.

My case in point, I was reading an Indie author’s work the other day, and it started out well with a cowboy in a saloon in the Old West.  The man was being harassed by other patrons, and the writer foreshadowed his  character's bad-assery very well by making the cowboy restrain himself--similar to the character of Phillip Jennings in the pilot of that new show The Americans on FX.  Regarding The Americans, Mr. Jennings has a run in with a huge bald-headed man while shopping at the mall with his daughter.  The bald man blatantly hits on Mr. Jennings' tween daughter, mocks him about it, and Mr. Jennings just walks away--only to show up at the guy's house at the very end, in disguise, and give him a whooping.  Yes, you should watch that show--it's a good one!  Anyway, this Indie author's cowboy character apparently only had one intended target, so he tolerated the harassment until his target appeared.  And then suddenly, without warning, he slaughtered the target and all of the patrons.  Good beginning, sure, but then the next few pages just threw me.  This cowboy was actually some sort of time-travelling, alien, undead-hunting super cop.  And no, I’m not kidding.  Needless to say, I got through maybe thirty pages and just had to stop before space-faring elves or steampunk vampires appeared.

A narrow, ideal, dream zone exists between writing some boring crap that nobody wants to read and writing something that is over-the-top and painful to endure.  Finding that zone can be a challenge.  Add to that bad grammar, misspellings, overused clichés and verbiage (like “it was a dark and stormy night”), and even if you find that dream zone, you still won’t have droves of people eager to read your work.

I’d bet that every writer misses that zone more often than he/she hits it.  So what’s a person to do?  Well, if you want to be a writer, you have to write.  Plain and simple.  Pound out at least a thousand words per day and strive for five-thousand.  The math is elementary—if you can manage five-thousand words per day, in less than two weeks you’ll have yourself a full-length novel.  Will it hit that zone and be a success?  Probably not.  But having others critique your work will help you fix the problems in your writing, and practice makes perfect.  Just keep at it!

And don’t hesitate to really dig in and even get help in determining your writing weaknesses.  Some people are so wonderfully creative, yet they lack direction or purpose with their writing.  Others need to brush up on their grammar and spelling.  Some need to work on their vocabulary skills.  No writer—even the most famous ones—is perfect in the craft.  That’s why writers utilize proofreaders and editors to assist them.

You’ll know whether you have talent, I think, from the constructive criticism you receive.  Acquire the aid of friends and family at first, although be prepared to receive skewed criticism.  I’ve found that if people close to you tell you that they read your book in a single day or that they couldn’t wait to find out what happened with this character or that, you’ll know it was entertaining to them.  If your mom or wife merely says it was “good” or that he/she enjoyed it, and yet that person never mention it to you again, you’ll know it probably wasn’t one of your best.  A decent story will stick with someone and have that person talking about it for months or years.  Heck, I can still remember some of the more meaningful books and stories I read even twenty years ago.

And because a writer misses that dream zone more often than not, the only way you’re going to hit it is if you keep writing.  Success in anything very rarely comes overnight.  I’m always a bit tickled by the people who spend years writing a book and then expect it to be a huge success.  Unless you have some major connections with a successful author, agent, or publisher, your work that you spent years on probably is going to spend more time on a flash drive in your desk drawer than it will on the NYT Best Seller's List.

So keep writing.  Write at least a thousand words a day—roughly the length of this post.  If you can do that, you may just be successful.

Get Yourself a Cow-Catcher

Anyone who writes knows that it’s entirely too easy to find yourself off-track.  I’m not just talking about digressions within a story-line but even putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.  Distractions of all sorts surround us, and more often than not our best intentions have not been met because we’ve become sidetracked.

When a sketch artist sits down to draw, he or she will have his paper, pencils and charcoal and shading tools and erasers, proper lighting, etc.  No sketch artist who loves his work will walk over to his drawing, sketch in five or six lines, and then get up to go do something else.  Or even sketch in a few lines and then just sit there thinking about a grocery list or a project at work.  He’ll devote at least thirty minutes of uninterrupted sketching to complete at least a portion of his work.

Writers, or at least the ones I know, tend to be different.  While the overall product of writers and sketchers is similar, i.e. something has been created from nothing, writers must rely on their thoughts and ideas and memories to create.  Most sketchers will have at least a model of some sort to work from, either a photograph or an object like a bowl of fruit.  And therein lies the problem with writers.  Taking what you see and drawing a complex copy of it requires some skill, but what you see will usually never deviate much or at all during the course of a sketch.  Our thoughts, however, are never in a fixed, static state, and thus our writing and direction and focus can constantly change.

I mean no disrespect to people who sketch or paint, by the way.  I love to sketch myself, and yet I’ve always found the art elusive.  A wrong angle here or a line that’s become too long there can totally throw off the finished product, and thus drawing requires a ton of patience and a keen eye that few of us possess.

Yet my point with writing is that our models are constantly shifting.  Add in life, that is,  the time we spend doing things like work, spending time with family, running errands, etc., and our best ideas can often be lost or forgotten.  And thus some of our most compelling thoughts are never written down.

I keep telling myself, “Ryan, you need to get yourself a cow-catcher.”  What I mean by that is that I need to be able to push things aside to pursue my passion and dreams.  I first need to move out all the daily crap I deal with and allot myself the time to sit and write, rather than jotting down a few paragraphs every so often when I have a minute here or there.

And I’m not alone.  Anyone can find a free half hour in a week to set aside for accomplishing something.  I was informed of an incident a while back at a company where a boss, during the final quarter of a year when schedules were hectic, stated that year that nobody had time until the first quarter to do an important hour-long training (that had been annually conducted in the fourth quarter for numerous years prior).  That was 62 business days to work with, or 465 hours, and nobody had one hour (0.2% of the total time) to spare.  Really?  Really??  Seems a bit ludicrous to me, especially when daily people could be seen standing in the halls and chatting about personal stuff or sending emails to friends or even surfing the web for a few minutes.

Anyone who uses the excuse that he/she doesn’t have a half hour or an hour to spare in a week is kidding him/herself.  If you are telling yourself that you don’t have an hour, it sounds like you need to take a step back from your life and make some assessments about how you manage your time.  If you are a workaholic, does that project that is due three months from now really require twelve hours a day from you—in other words, you can’t even spare an hour?  If not, you’re probably overworked or need far better time management skills (and possibly even psychiatric help).  If you watch TV, can’t you pick your least favorite of your favorite shows and stop watching it—or else record the season on your DVR and watch it in the summer when reruns abound? (And if you are that glued to your TV, you may need psychiatric help as well!)  If you are a stay-at-home mom, can’t you run a load of laundry and start dinner at the same time, or maybe even get your kids to help you with mixing or stirring or setting the table?  We ALL can find an hour a week, and probably a whole lot more if we really try.

So once you find the time to write (or exercise or learn to play a musical instrument or whatever it is you are passionate about), the next step is to push aside all of the chaos swirling around in your head and focus.  One of the best ways I know to do this is to deep breathe or meditate.  Inhale 5 seconds through your nose, hold for two seconds, then exhale 5 seconds out your mouth.  Count the seconds, focus only on your breathing, and do this for five or ten minutes.  At the end of that brief time, you’ll find yourself relaxed and hopefully focused enough to begin work.  I’ve been trying to do this any time I’m about to start on something that requires a lot of thought, and I’m always surprised at how well it works.  Picture a math professor’s whiteboard filled with all the formulas from the previous lecture, and imagine if he tried to cram in new equations for your class.  You wouldn’t want that, would you?  No, you’d want a clean slate.  It’s the same principle.

And then, when your mind is free, just write.  Sounds easy enough, but I always get caught up in re-reading my last chapter and editing.  Then when I get to the bottom and should start writing new material, I want to take a break because I’m mentally fatigued from all the editing I just did.  Or else I only have twenty minutes left of the time I’ve allotted myself, and so I make the excuse that I can’t write anything meaningful in twenty minutes.  “Get yourself a cow-catcher, Ryan.”  Push that perfectionist out of the way, forget about re-reading and editing, familiarize yourself with where you left off, and then JUST WRITE.  When I manage to do that, it’s usually at that point that the words start to flow, and before long I’ll have completed a whole chapter.

But there are other obstacles that may be in my way.  I’m fortunate enough through my IT work to have developed some quick fingers.  I’ve seen and heard and read of other writers who struggle with typing.  If you can’t type, and you like to write, ditch the keyboard and pick up a pen.  Someone who types 25 words per minute will ultimately lose their ideas and thoughts because they are spending too long trying to get them out.  And if writing won’t work, get some speech recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking and dictate your thoughts.  It’s akin to someone who loves to exercise but has bad knees or bunions.  You can still exercise, but running may not be the best way to do it.  You can work to improve on physical or mental or emotional limitations, but don’t let them become roadblocks to your accomplishments.

We all have obstacles that prevent us from achieving greatness, like cows standing on the railroad tracks.  So get yourself a cow-catcher, push those obstacles clear of your path, and accomplish something that makes you proud!

Writer's (Lego) Block

I think I’ve hit a wall with my writing.  I pounded out three novels in a matter of eighteen months.  I had a fourth that I began to write, then put that one on hold and switched to another of a slightly different genre.  I’ve been working on the “other” book now for the past six months or so, and I have a decent concept but no direction.  I can’t figure out where I want my characters to go, how I want it to end, or anything in between.

It’s not that I have writer’s block.  At least I don't think.  I can write on and on aimlessly for hours and hours upon end.  I’m sure if you are a regular reader of my blog, that’s quite apparent.  My problem is that I can’t seem to put more than a few paragraphs together without getting distracted.  Or bored.  I’m thinking it’s probably time to put this one up on the shelf for a while as well and start a new concept, but I hate starting things and not finishing them.

It also doesn’t help matters that I had this brilliant idea in late October about a new book.  This thought spawned from a very real saga that I alone became witness to, and while the saga ended without much ado, it would play out wonderfully as a work of fiction.  Ever since that point, I’ve struggled on with my current novel, trying to hammer out some new ideas and give my characters more identity and purpose and plot.  But my thoughts are constantly trailing back to this other idea.

It's more like I have writer's Lego blocks.  I started on a magnificent castle, ran out of the pieces I thought I needed to finish, then examined the other options I had and started something new.  I'm sure the pieces were all there in my giant Lego block tub, but I either couldn't find them or needed a fresh perspective.  Maybe my castle needed another tower or levels or something of the sort.  Maybe if I come back to it in six months or a year, I'll look at it completely differently, get that spark I need, and create something amazing.

So that’s it.  I’ve decided, today, that my current novel is on hold while I pursue this new idea.  I’ll now have two half-novels, each about 25,000 words so far, sitting in my Google Drive waiting to be finished.  But why waste any more time working on something that only half interests me when I have a new project that I’m overly-excited to delve into?

I think everyone has this problem from time to time, and probably more often than most would admit.  We fear change.  We avoid the unknown.  Yet sometimes that’s exactly what we need.  Otherwise we keep moving along, beating a dead horse, going through the motions, etc. etc. etc.

Lack of inspiration is a common problem among writers and artists and creative types.  That’s probably why many of them tend to be “starving”.  They get so far with their work, become uninspired, and then either keep piddling with it for months or years or ultimately quit.

I will finish those two novels.  But I’ll finish them after this new idea—one that I’m fairly confident I can write in only a few short months.  Wish me luck.  And good luck to you if you ever find yourself in the same boat!

To New Beginnings

I always give myself resolutions for the New Year, and I never stick to them.  If I had, I’d probably be slim, rich, a well-known author of twenty published novels, have three or four degrees and numerous certifications, etc.  Yeah, maybe I’m giving myself too much to do.  Instead of reaching for all the stars, maybe I should be reaching for just one.  Or maybe I shouldn’t be reaching for the stars at all.  Maybe I should be reaching for the entire galaxy.

My problem is that I can’t decide on just one area I need to improve.  I know that if I really focused on just one thing, like my writing for example, I could pound out two or three books in a year.  But darnnit if life doesn’t get in the way, and then I’m spending time exercising or reading up on news or tinkering with a new gadget or wondrous piece of technology and my books sit on my digital shelf gathering digital dust.  And the next thing I know, my resolution is lost or at the very least muddled, and then I’m scrambling to get it back on track, and then by June or July I’ve given up on it entirely.

This year I think I’m going to simply focus on being a better person.  I know it may sound like a bit of a cop out, but hear me out.  Rather than just focusing on every little goal, I’m going to set one big umbrella-like goal for myself: improve on the person I’ve become.

How should I go about doing that?  Well, I’d already say I’m a pretty good father, but in a few weeks I’ll be a father twice over when we welcome our second son to the world.  Will I be as successful raising two boys as I have so far raising one?  Challenges await me, I’m well aware, but that’s one area of how I intend to become a better person.

Will I lose a bunch of weight?  Hopefully, but that’s not really what I’m focusing on.  Eating healthier, being more active, drinking more water, etc.—all of these things will contribute to weight loss, and if I’m better at all of them, I should see a difference.

What about my writing?  Well, I’ve realized over the past year with my blog and my novels that I tend to write too much.  I write and write and write and then spend eons rewriting and editing.  Look at some of my previous blog posts, and you can only imagine the time I spent on them.  So don’t be surprised if these posts become much shorter.

I think it’s a good resolution.  Be a better person.  No more crankiness when I’m sick or driving or stressed.  Just be a better person.  Hopefully this one will last.  Hopefully.

I'd Like to Introduce You to Cole Pierce

Who is Cole Pierce?  Well, he’s the protagonist in my new novel, Terminal Restraint.  I think you’ll like him.  He’s you.  He’s me (not really me, although there are a few small similarities).  He’s your average, everyday, normal, working-class guy, trying to excel at his job and plan for his future with his girlfriend.  He has a great group of friends—although they are a little eccentric—and he’s quite content with his life.

What’s so special about him?

He dies.

Yep, there you go.  Major spoiler.  My protagonist dies in my new novel.  But that’s half the fun, as he doesn’t just die.  He becomes something far worse.  Not a zombie, which are a bit over-played in the entertainment industry right now.  Not a vampire, which are REALLY overplayed (sorry, Bill Compton and Eric Northman).  Cole doesn’t even become a ghost.  He transforms into an undead creature who survives by draining the life of the living.  Sentient, yes.  Able-bodied, certainly.  Filled with revenge, you bet!

Intrigued?  Well, let me tell you a little more.  Before this all happens, Cole’s thinking of proposing to his theater actress girlfriend, Malaya, and his life couldn’t be happier.  But life takes a turn for the worse, unfortunately for him, and he finds himself in some hot water with an executive at the company that employs him.  This executive, Roland LaDuc, is an uptight prude with a home life that is beginning to fray—a wife that won’t speak to him and teenage boys that despise him.  A client complains about work that Cole performed—although the complaint is really unfounded—and as a few other incidents occur, Roland unfairly takes his frustrations out on Cole.

Cole’s upset, for sure, because he’s always trying to do his best and please everyone, and he’s incredibly upset by Roland’s harsh criticism.  And who wouldn’t be?

Cole’s best friend, Trev, would never take that kind of abuse from a superior, although he doesn’t have to because he owns his own tattoo shop.  Trev’s wife, Jillian, is a forensic pathologist who performs autopsies.  Oh, and did I mention they are members of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan?  Wait, what?!?

An eccentric group, yes, but along with their friends Becca and Scott, they are all a tight-knit little family.  And they look out for one another, which is why Jillian decides to cast a black magic protection spell on her friends, including a very hesitant Cole.  Only the spell she casts isn’t quite what she thinks it to be, and that’s not good news for our protagonist.  You see, aside from Cole and Roland’s little spat, there are some much darker bad guys on the horizon, and one of them gets the best of poor Cole, killing him in his own basement.

But as I said, Cole is not dead.  Death doesn’t come for everyone, apparently.

What will happen to Cole?  Will he take out his revenge on Roland?  Will he discover the identity of his killer?  Is he really an undead creature?  Are his days on Earth, alive or dead, numbered?

Check out Terminal Restraint here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/233534.  I’ll soon have it available elsewhere.  Smashwords is currently out of ISBNs, so as soon as they get them in, I’ll get one assigned so that it can be purchased through Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and Sony.  I also plan to have it available on the Kindle within a week or two after I have the ISBN.

And if you want a coupon to get it for free on Smashwords, just ask!

And if you like my books, tell your friends!

And if you like Terminal Restraint, check out my other books!

Creating a Convincing Villain

Writing is easy.  It’s just a bunch of words typed in or scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper, with proper grammar and punctuation and all of that.  Most people can accomplish that fairly well enough to write an email or letter to a friend or whatever.  Well, maybe most people over the age of thirty.  I worry about the younger generations of today.  Either our nation’s English teachers are suddenly, miserably failing, or texting and IMing is destroying our youth’s ability to write cohesive sentences.

Writing fiction, though, takes a bit more skill.  When I write, I’m usually rather adept at creating a protagonist.  I take some of my own (or my wife’s, son’s, friends’) endearing qualities, add in some flaws (not typically my own, but ones that I am usually personally familiar with), create a back story, and voila I have a protagonist.  Most of the time it works.  Of course, I don’t just reveal all of this to the reader in the first few paragraphs or even the first chapter.  Most of the time I’ll stretch it out across the first third to half of the book, and because I love to add plot twists, I may switch it up and add a new or different quality or attribute somewhere in the latter half.  Either way, creating a convincing protagonist isn’t too difficult.

But the antagonist, on the other hand, is a bit trickier.  First of all, it’s quite difficult to create a villain without falling into a cliché.  If your villain is a bank robber, and he’s done it a dozen times before, it’s easy to get carried away with how “perfect” he is at robbing a bank—a crime that leads to apprehension nearly 99% of the time.  He may not have been caught all those other times, but each new robbery needs to be treated like his first with regards to the dangers he faces.  I don’t care who he is, unless he’s taking a ton of Xanax and is somehow immune to the sleeping/numbing effects,, he’s not going to be going in there with much confidence.

Likewise, if your villain is a high school bully, it’s easy to make him a bigger, lonely kid who comes from a bad home life and who, in the end, is just looking for attention.  Or if he’s a military drill sergeant, he barks orders to the point of breaking soldiers and never seems to have a softer side.  In other words, it’s easy to create a one-dimensional villain, and that’s where, as writers, people tend to make mistakes.

In my book, Project Utopia, my villain is a mental health doctor, and while he fits the mold of many others, I try to turn the tables on the reader by making him seem like he’s not necessarily the mastermind behind the entire evil plan.  Likewise, my villain in Paradox is quite sinister, and yet the reader learns midway through the book that his similarities to the antagonist are uncanny.

But beyond the clichés, I don’t think it’s very easy for most readers or writers to think like a villain, and therefore it’s not easy at all to write about them.  I mean, many writers go for a serial killer/mass murderer/horror movie villain, and yet unless those writers have actually committed some of those crimes, it’s really hard to put themselves into that mindset.  As an example, our nation has seen some tragic mass killings happen recently, and at one point my family was discussing the motives of the killers.  Some people are convinced that these men are/were crazy, and that may indeed be the case, but how do you describe crazy in a way that a reader can relate?  Or if they weren’t crazy, what were they thinking when they plotted and carried out these killings?  What does it feel like to be sadistic?  How can you make a reader relate to someone that is heartless or cold or uncompromisingly evil?

Sometimes I really struggle with coming up with a human, run-of-the-mill villain, and the reason, I think (or hope) is that the average person doesn’t think like a villain.  I envision Joe Blow from his lovely little abode “off the street” as being a kind soul, and so unless he has some mental health issues, why is he going to hurt this person or commit this crime or cause tension or pain to my protagonist?  And if this guy (or girl or dog or alien or whatever) has made the decision to create or be a part of some conflict with my main character, the explanation as to why has to be clear to the reader.  Because a good story relies heavily on the conflict itself, and if the author doesn’t have enough detail in that conflict, the reader will think the story isn’t very good.

My wife scares me sometimes in her penchant for real-life crime stories on Investigation Discovery and A&E.  And we both recently signed up for additional life insurance so that our kids will be well-cared for if one of us meets his or her demise.  I keep joking with her that she’s going to poison my food, but she is clear to point out that, really, it’s pointless to murder someone, because it’s impossible to pull off the perfect murder.  And then I think it’s just a little twisted that we are having a discussion about murdering me (or people in general), and while we laugh it off, it’s still a little unsettling.  I mean, the idea of killing someone else isn’t really something that most people think about.  Is it?  Or perhaps they think about it, but would they ever have the ability to go through with it?  No.  And yet we read about villains in fiction works that are ruthless killers ALL THE TIME.  Where do all of these evildoers come from??

How do you create a convincing villain without alienating readers?  I mean, it’s one thing to write about a guy that wants to kill, kill, kill, but most readers aren’t going to relate.  And the ones who do, well, they’ll probably think your idea is corny, because they’ll probably be megalomaniacal themselves, deeming anyone else’s theories or ideas as trivial to theirs.  It’s quite a riddle—one that great writers have apparently been able to solve.

I’m not an expert in villain creation.  Heck, I’m not even an expert in writing fiction, because if I were, well, I’d be a great writer on the New York Times’ Bestsellers List.  But I’ll certainly try my best at creating a convincing character that has a legitimate reason for creating conflict with my protagonist.  Maybe I’ll fail, or maybe I’ll succeed—that’s up to you, as the reader, to decide.  Either way, just know that it’s not easy taking the imagination into the realm of the perverse and leaving with a believable, multi-faceted antagonist.

P. S.  If you are a fellow writer, let me know your thoughts!  How do you create a realistic and convincing evil mastermind?

My Short Story Tribute to Ray Bradbury and Other Inspiring Authors

I love great short stories.  They are quick, stimulating, and they always leave you wanting more—as long as they are written well.  I participate in a lot of flash fiction contests, which are challenges designed at creating meaningful fiction tales within only a hundred or two hundred words.  Definitely not easy, yet it’s great fun to challenge myself as a writer in that way.

One of my favorite authors, Jeffery Deaver, released a few compilations of short stories: Twisted and More Twisted, and I have to say they were two of my favorite books.  I’d just pick one up, read a short story or two, and walk away instantly satisfied.  And just as the names suggest, Deaver loves to turn the tables on his readers by including crazy and unforeseen twists, and he does not disappoint in either of these collections.

And likewise as I’d mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man is a collection of his short stories.  Bradbury’s stories were written for Sci-Fi enthusiasts, and while he still had some shocking twists to his tales, the more notable aspect of his writing is how he details futuristic and often dystopian worlds with chillingly realistic details.

In tribute to these two great authors, I’ve released one of my own short stories, “Class One Act.”  I’ll probably have a few more in the near future.  If you are reading this and you’d like to check it out FOR FREE (rather than paying for a copy on Smashwords.com), let me know and I’ll send you a coupon.

And don’t hesitate to let me know if you think it stinks!  Because really, I can only get better when I know where and how I’ve erred!

Click here to check out "Class One Act!"

Life Imitating Art

Several news stories popped up over the past couple of days that seemed eerily similar to some TV shows and movies I’ve recently watched.  Sure, all art comes from inspirations we find in our everyday lives, but I find it extremely fascinating when the reverse happens.  It’s like a paradox of sorts—and if you like paradoxes and shameless plugs, check out my book Paradox, available through the links on the header above.

ANYWAY, take for example this story of a boy who wandered out of the woods and into Berlin last year.

He claimed he lived in the forest with his father for years, but when his father died, he buried him and walked five days north to Berlin.  He then quickly adapted to technology and city life after being assigned a legal guardian and cared for by youth services.

Now doesn’t this remind you of the movie Hannah, where the girl is a trained assassin who lives in a forest in Germany with her father?  I mean, there are striking similarities there.  Could he be a real-life Hannah, trained by his rogue assassin father to kill ruthlessly?  Perhaps.  I think more will come from this story as the months progress.

Next we have this story, about a pair of human lungs apparently found on a sidewalk in Los Angeles.

This brought to mind a recent House episode I watched, where House has a pair of lungs and must find out what is medically wrong with them prior to transplanting them into a patient.  The episode was a memorable one because it transitioned House from prison back to the hospital this last season, although the lungs themselves really didn’t play much of a part in the story.  Still, it was shocking to see a pair of lungs removed from a body, and it must have been very frightening to just find them lounging around on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, soaking up the sun’s rays as they sipped at a Pina Colada (that’s my own generalized visualization of what every Californian does each day).  I mean, I know experts say coughing up a lung is not possible, but could they be mistaken?  Were these organs intended for a transplant as the ones in House, but somehow they got lost?  “Hey Joe, did you grab me a cheeseburger?”  “Yeah.”  “And the lungs?  Did you bring them?”  “Oh…uh…”  You know, people find body parts all the time, mostly due to nefarious actions of serial killers and whatnot, but lungs?  Lungs?!?

And finally we have this story out of Middleborough, Massachusetts, where the residents of the town voted to fine people $20 for swearing in public.

They say the law was enacted to prevent teens from swearing in the downtown area and public parks, but when I read this I had to think of the scenes in Demolition Man where Sylvester Stallone’s character is repeatedly fined for swearing by the little machines strategically placed everywhere he goes.  Funny in a movie, but not so much in real life.  Luckily the ACLU is jumping all over this and hopefully putting an end to it.

I don’t mean to begin proselytizing here, but there’s a valid reason why the First Amendment exists and is the first of many amendments to our Constitution.  If you don’t understand why, I suggest you read Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four.  I really hate swearing in public as much as the next guy, and I cringe when someone says something vulgar within earshot of my three-year-old.  And I agree that people should be held accountable for it.  That’s what public nuisance and disturbing the peace laws are for.  Our nation’s laws should not be altered to limit what people have the right to SAY, and as soon as we start changing them to enforce that sort of thing, we begin treading down a treacherous path of sacrificing liberties that our nation was founded upon.

And really, consider the people you know who do swear in public.  I can think of maybe ten to fifteen people that do, and when I consider their lives, i.e. their financial situations and marital statuses and whatnot, I realize that those people are already being punished for their actions.  Sure, swearing in public is just one tiny little nuisance in the grand scheme of things, but those people who do utter expletives around others tend to be the dregs of our society.  Seriously, nobody is going to think of them as a professional, unless of course they are a rock star or have some other talent that trumps their foul-mouthed bad behavior.  Honestly though, do you know anyone in a prestigious position that walks through the grocery store saying “F#%” and “S@#^”?  No, I didn’t think so.

These types of news stories always catch my eye, as some of my stories and novels have had eerie similarities to real life events.  Take for example the mental hospital in my book, Project Utopia, which is based on the mental facility in Pittsburgh on the Pitt campus that was shot up by an assailant in March of this year.  And of course, anyone with ties to the University Pittsburgh knows about the string of bomb threats, some of which targeted the Cathedral of Learning, which also is a setting in that same book.  In April of this year, a shooting on the Oikos University campus in Oakland, California left seven dead, eerily similar to an aspect of my novel, Paradox.  Then a few weeks later, my wife told me a sad story of a young man in Philadelphia who had passed away, and his first initial and last name were an exact match to a character in one of my yet-to-be-published novels.

As a writer, these types of coincidences will tend to rattle you.  I know it’s pure happenstance that some of these events and settings are similar to my novels, and I’m sure many other writers have the same things happen to them.  Still, just a little part of my creative imagination has to wonder if the things I write manifest themselves into reality.  Perhaps I should start writing about an IT worker in his mid-thirties living in Pennsylvania who wins a billion dollars and signs a huge book deal.  Wouldn’t that be something?

We've Lost One of Our Own - Ray Bradbury RIP

As an author, I’d be remiss to not mention and honor the passing of one of my biggest influences, Ray Bradbury.  I can say without a doubt that his works were some of the most inspiring for me as a creative thinker and writer.  Everyone knows Fahrenheit 451, and if you haven’t read it, what’s wrong with you?  Seriously, though, the man contributed so much to the world of literature, and I’ll bet there will be a rush to buy many of his works.

I think my favorite story of his had to be “The Veldt.”  It’s so undeniably creepy that it will make anyone shiver.  The story was published in “The Saturday Evening Post” back in 1950, yeah 1950, and it just amazes me that someone could write a story like that—about virtual reality, nonetheless—so long ago.  I mean, I can’t even imagine what technology might exist fifty years from now, and yet Ray Bradbury conjured up a tale about a VR nursery and the pitfalls of such high-tech devices left in the hands of young minds.  I know I’ve thought about that story more than once watching my 3-year-old son navigate around the screens of phones and tablets and the Internet better than most adults.  It won’t be long until he comes close to surpassing me, and considering that technology is my forte, that’s quite a feat.  Still, hopefully I stay on his good side so that I do not face the dilemma and misfortune of the parents in Bradbury’s incredible short story.

If you would like to read “The Veldt” or any other of his fabulously deviant tales, pick up a copy of The Illustrated Man, which is a collection of his short stories.  While you are at it, get one for me, because I seem to have lost mine!  Grumble grumble!

There have been other great authors pass recently, including Maurice Sendak earlier this year, J. D. Salinger in 2010, and two of my favorites: Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton in 2008.  But out of all of them, I’d have to say that Ray Bradbury was the best, and he will be sorely missed.  Nobody will ever replace him, but as long as I continue to fancy writing and putting the crazy thoughts in my head on paper, I’ll certainly do my best to mimic the style of such a brilliant man.  Sure, I’ll probably pale in comparison, but I’ve always tried to do as he did, write at least 1000 words a day, and live by his profound advice:

"Just write every day of your life.  Read intensely.  Then see what happens.  Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers."  -Ray Bradbury

And finally, of all the quotes and stories Ray Bradbury ever gifted to us, this one has always been my favorite.  I think you'll understand why:

"I don't believe in being serious about anything.  I think life is too serious to be taken seriously." - Ray Bradbury

A Blast IN THE FACE From the Past

As I was cleaning up some old personal files, I came across my first finished novel—never published, and written in a style that isn't exactly rated PG.  I think I must have begun to seriously write back in the mid to late nineties, and I started something like fifteen or twenty different books before I actually finished one.  This one, Wrecking Ball, was the first.  Only a handful of people graciously read it, and I received mixed reviews on it.  Some raved about it, but some of the characters are based on real people, and those real people were quick to identify themselves and didn't much care for the way their characters were written.

Anyway, the novel is about a guy who, after years of bullying in high school, decides to become a "bully" himself to all those who have seemingly wronged him, and despite becoming successful in his two rather unorthodox careers, he subsequently spins out of control seeking revenge.  As I said, though, it’s rather crude in some spots, so I've censored the excerpt for my blog.  My writing in the past fifteen years has matured and softened greatly, so don't judge me too much on this.  Wrecking Ball seems to be filled with a lot of angst too, so please don't think I'm crazy.  I know when I was writing it, I wasn't filled with the kind of hatred that the main character, Rick Drexel, seems to have, but I was bullied briefly in high school, and so I did let some of those emotions out.  Still, it's a work of FICTION and should be viewed as such.

Below is an excerpt from the second chapter, which details Rick's first act of vengeance.  If you really like it, let me know and I’ll consider publishing it on Amazon and Smashwords.

An Excerpt from Wrecking Ball:

            So, on this Wednesday before Thanksgiving at about 2:15 PM, i.e., twenty minutes before the school day ended, I drove my bleep brown Plymouth Voyager down to the grocery store.  Yes, I drove a minivan.  Probably another reason kids still picked on me, but I’m sorry that my daddy didn’t buy me a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse like everyone else’s daddies did.  Anyway, I walked into the store and went straight for the meat department.  Fish, to be exact.  Catfish, to be exact.  I bought four platters of catfish.  Twenty freaking bucks, but it was money well spent.

            I then drove over to the school and watched as everyone left for vacation.  The parking lots cleared quickly, and I just strolled right in without anyone saying a word.  Teachers and administrators didn’t actually lock the doors until 3 PM, so I had plenty of time.  The halls were bare, too.  I passed less than a handful of people.  Bleep school didn’t even have security cameras.  Maybe if they did, they’d have seen all the abuse that some of the students received.  Maybe the administration didn't even care.

            Feeling somewhat like a mafia thug--you know, the guy who places a fish in a newspaper and leaves it somewhere to send a message--I proceeded to the locker of one of my bullies, unwrapped the first tray of catfish, and just dumped it onto his books.  The bleep had one bleep of a messy locker, too, and it already smelled of body odor and pot.  The next locker was a little neater, and it didn’t stink quite as much as the first, but it would soon.  After hitting the last two lockers, I casually walked out of the school to my car and left.

            Did you ever experience catfish after it’s been sitting out for five freaking days?  Don’t.  Trust me.  If the sight of maggots doesn’t get you, the smell certainly will.  You’ll vomit.  Trust me.

            So this is how I became who I am today.  This is how I ended up being some crazy psycho burning things, breaking things, screwing with peoples’ minds, and destroying anything in my path.  Yep, I trace it back to catfish.

            Most people with mental problems can trace their disorder back to some traumatic experience.  A car wreck.  A lover who died.  An abusive father or mother.  I’m sure some people would trace my “mental problems” back to all those years of being bullied.  It’s all just bleep, though.  Nobody really has mental problems.  I knew exactly what I was doing then, and I know exactly what I’m doing now.  The word ‘sanity’ shouldn’t even be in the dictionary.

            Yes, so I was just a pathetic kid who couldn’t handle the tortures inflicted on me by school bullies.  Hurry, call the doctor!  Call him now!  I think I have mental issues!

            No, I’m not running around destroying things today because I’m some psychotic idiot.  I’m not a nutball.  This whole catfish thing just helped me realize that I can strike back.  I’m not helpless.  This was the first time I really stood up for myself, and it felt pretty bleep good.

            When Tuesday rolled around after the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to go to school a little early.  I walked near the first victim’s locker and could already smell the nauseating odor.  I was actually surprised that the janitors didn’t notice the smell over the holiday, but then I figured that they probably used pine-scented cleaning solutions to mop the floors, and so I doubted they smelled anything.  They probably cleaned Wednesday evening as well, and the smell wouldn’t have been that bad by then.  I smiled as I walked past this jerk’s locker.  People would certainly smell something when the bleep opened their locker doors, and I guarantee it wouldn’t smell like pine trees.

            I took a bleep and then proceeded to my own locker to await the calamity.  My locker was about twenty-five feet down the hall from the third bleep locker.  I saw him walk in with his friends and drop his bag in front of his locker.  He stood there talking to his friends for a few minutes.  I stood there gathering my books for my first few periods and watching him out of the corner of my eye. 

            The kid was such an bleep.  He just looked like an bleep.  When you go to a bar, and you see the guy walking around like he’s the bleep and trying to pick up every woman in the building, you know he’s an bleep.  This kid was an bleep. 

As I stood there watching and waiting in anticipation, Robbie or whatever his name was finally opening the door of his locker.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone shout “What the bleep?” so loud in my life.  The entire hallway just shut up and stared at him.  Then the bleep threw up.  The sight was so bleep amusing; I probably would have bleep myself had I not gone earlier.

            He just stood there gagging for a good ten or fifteen seconds before his breakfast made its return appearance.  Surprise!  Vomit out of thin air!  How could you not laugh?

            I could only imagine the sight of the rotting catfish in his locker.  Maggots crawling in and out through the gray rotting matter.  Other kids were crowding around at a safe distance just to see the gift I’d left him.  Two of them began to gag.  Both vomited.  One homely girl screamed.

            Then the smell hit me.  Catfish sitting out for five days is bad enough.  Picturing the maggots eating away at the rotting fish and the flies buzzing around just made the stench even worse.  Not even the worst outhouse could smell that bad.  Mix that odor with the stench of human bile, and you’ll instantly start gagging.  The odor was beyond vile.  I’m serious, even raw sewage didn’t smell that bad.

            The whole bleep school turned into a puke fest.  I didn’t throw up, but considering that most of the kids had just had breakfast, I’m not sure how I managed not to.  The scene was just disgusting.  It reminded me of that part in Stand by Me where the one kid is telling a story about a pie eating contest.  People puking everywhere.  I never imagined I’d actually see it.

            They made everyone who hadn’t been sick report to the cafeteria, and then they sent everyone home.  The janitors worked non-stop that day cleaning up the halls.  They had to bleach everything.  The school still reeked for almost a month after that.  Although it smelled strongly of disinfectant industrial cleaners, you could still faintly smell the bile and fish odors.

            The four bleep had to throw their books and stuff into the garbage.  The one went home crying.  I went home smiling.

            The following day, they made a special announcement asking that anyone with any information regarding the culprits should please report to the principal’s office, and that those responsible would certainly be caught.  Culprits?  They didn’t believe that one person could do this?  Regardless, I was never caught.  I was a good kid enrolled in honor’s classes.  Even if someone suspected I had done it, which they didn’t, nobody could have proved it was me, and my character alone spoke for me.

            When the final total of the damage came in, I was just stunned.  One thousand dollars in damage counting man-hours for the janitors, new books for the four bleep, their personal items, and cleaning supplies.  I spent twenty bucks and about a half hour of my time, and I managed to cause fifty times that amount in damage.  “Wow” was the only word that came to my mind.

            Those kids didn’t bleep with anyone for a while after that.  I wasn’t the only person they bullied, and I think they were too afraid of what would happen to them next if they picked on anyone else again.  They knew they were targets because of how they treated other kids.  They weren’t dumb; they were just bullies who needed to torment other kids to feel better about themselves.

            After my little stunt, they wouldn’t feel better about themselves for a long time.  The embarrassment alone was enough to insure that.  They became known as the “Fishies”.  They’d be teased about it for years.  Payback is a bleep.

            The one kid even got busted for having a joint in his locker.  He was suspended for a month over that.  He should have been expelled.  Who the bleep is stupid enough to bring marijuana into school, anyway?

Regardless, I had fixed the bleep problem.

            When I finally graduated high school, I was still chuckling over the incident.  I never told my friends or family or anyone that I was the mastermind.  During the graduation ceremony, the valedictorian even mentioned it in her speech.  It was most likely the single biggest event to happen in the high school in a decade.

            So that’s where this all began.  Rick Drexel, the prankster.  The jokester.  The vigilante.  Bleep with me, and I will kill you.  I never thought I’d be doing bleep like that for the rest of my life.  It’s amazing how the course of time leads us down so many twisty paths and through so many forks.  Robert Frost, eat your heart out.

The Terminator Got Him!

So the actor who played John Connor in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is missing.  Nick Stahl, who also starred in Sin City, The Thin Red Line, and Disturbing Behavior among countless other films, played an adult John Connor, once again trying to elude the Terminator model T-X with the help of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s inferior T-101 (800 or 850 series for all of you Terminator buffs).  I liked this movie, almost as much as T2, although it didn’t do quite as well at the box office as the first two and was essentially just one big chase scene.  Anyway, apparently Nick Stahl’s estranged wife reported to police that she’d last heard from her husband a week ago, and they believe drugs and/or alcohol may be a factor in his disappearance.

I don’t mean to make light of what could be a very serious and sad situation, but wouldn’t it be just absolutely crazy if Nick Stahl met his demise from an actual Terminator?  I mean, we know NASA and the SETI program (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) are constantly sending radio and video signals into space hoping that intelligent life out there will receive it and communicate back.  Perhaps they sent out Terminator 3, the signal found its way into a wormhole, and it was recovered by intelligent machines on Earth a couple hundred years from now.  Not knowing the movie was a fictional tale, they created a time machine and sent back a Terminator to take Nick Stahl out, thinking he would someday lead a resistance against them.  Highly unlikely, but theoretically possible?  Maybe?

The biggest question is whether or not time travel is possible.  And, surprise, it is!  I’m serious.  It’s been proven.  Einstein theorized it.  You see, as an object’s speed approaches that of light, time dilation occurs.  Time dilation is basically the difference of elapsed time between two objects moving at different speeds.  So if humans could build a spaceship that travelled at the speed of light, and an occupant of that ship and someone else both had a stopwatch, and they both started them at the same exact time, the person’s stopwatch on the ship would be behind the other’s.  Depending on how long that person in the ship travelled, that person could have aged 9 years as opposed to the other's 10.  Likewise, gravity and the mass of objects can affect the speed of time in a similar manner.  In space, time moves more quickly, because there’s nothing of substantial mass slowing it down.  Picture heavy people walking slowly through the mall while skinny people zip around from store to store.  Not really the same scientific principle, at least I don’t think it is, but you get my point.  Maybe that's why bigger folks tend to die earlier--because they age faster.  Just one more reason I need to shed a few pounds!

Seriously though, all of this time travel stuff has been scientifically proven through tests over the past fifty years.  That being said, travelling backwards through time is still up for debate.  Not only could it create time paradoxes, where an effect of an action in time could potentially alter its cause, thereby nullifying itself, but the math and science and theoretic proposals behind it just aren’t really there to substantiate it.  Yet.  I mean, when I consider the instance above, it seems to me that the person in the spaceship has actually traveled backwards in time, because he’s a year younger than the other.  But he didn’t travel backwards in his own time, and perhaps that’s the sticking point.

The thing is, though, there is so much about the cosmos that we have yet to decipher.  We’re still chasing the existence of the Higgs boson, the particle that scientists believe is responsible for mass.  I tend to look at it all as if we are all still cavemen, writing on the walls of our caves with mud and poop and having not the tiniest inclination that the sun is a huge concentration of burning gases or that some day little children will walk around with iPads flinging cartoon birds at pigs in the same way we spear our dinners.  There’s just so much we still have to learn, and that will never change.  As scientists continue to work and study the fundamentals of our existence, all we can really do is sit back, take in all they tell us, and maybe write some crafty stories and scripts like Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Terminator that lean on both the proven and unproven theories.

As I was thinking of new ideas for a novel about a year ago, I read a story about how metamaterials are being used to create cloaking devices.  Metamaterials are man-made materials created by meshing together certain elements in a way that the material itself behaves as a whole rather than as a sum of its parts.  Scientists have found that light travels over the threads of the material entirely rather than through it like it does through a thin cotton T-shirt.  If you cut a hole into the metamaterial, light still travels around it and not even through the hole.  Thus, if you put something into that hole, that object becomes invisible.

Now taking this thought one step further, if light bends around this object, and time moves at the speed of light, could time bend around this object as well?  I’m totally oversimplifying the idea there, but apparently other scientists thought along similar lines and used metamaterials to test the theory.  They found that time still does travel through metamaterials even though photons pass right over and around them.

These results, seemingly disproving time travel, were discovered after I’d already finished the rough draft of my novel, but I was a “sharp tool in the shed” and had included in my novel references to a fictional sub-atomic particle as well that worked in conjunction with metamaterials to make time travel possible.  My novel, Paradox, takes some fictional liberties with all this and relies more on the action to tell the tale, but if you are curious or want to check it out, an excerpt is below.

In the meantime, we can all just wonder, can’t we?  I think that’s one of the things that makes humans so remarkable: our imaginations.  I can’t imagine dogs and cats sitting around contemplating about time and space and how they interact with each other.  My in-laws' dog, Candy, seems more interested in figuring out how he can get into every trash can in the house.

And hopefully Nick Stahl is just hanging out somewhere, playing it cool, safe and sound.  But, if the Terminators did get him, well, I suggest we all better stock up on lots of guns and ammo.  And liquid nitrogen.

An excerpt from my novel, Paradox:

As his mind raced with the implications of being a suspect in a campus bombing, a strange ticking noise began to emanate from near the door.  The sound was odd, like a tap-tick-tap-tick-tap-tap-tap.  It sounded a little like the second hands of several clocks moving out of synchronization, but he looked around the door and didn’t see anything.  In fact, the room was very drab—gray-painted cinder block walls, a thin, high window with steel mesh on the outside of the glass, the large mirror, the table, and the two chairs.

The odd noise continued—quiet and ominous—and Jon stood up and walked the few feet over to the door.  He had no idea if people on the other side of the mirror were watching him, but nobody came rushing in the door, and so maybe they thought he was just stretching and nobody else heard the sound.

Jon listened by the wall, then by the door, then by the edge of the mirror, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from.  It’s source seemed to be inside the room—definitely not outside—but each time he moved, the sound seemed to come from somewhere else.  Was his mind playing tricks on him?

As he moved back closer to the table, he noticed that the sound was getting gradually louder.  He also felt a breeze, like a fan, blowing behind him.  The ticking-tapping sounds began to intensify, and Jon realized that the breeze was actually more of a sucking feeling—like a giant invisible vacuum was pulling the air into the middle of the room.

Jon took a few steps back, and as he watched in awe, a tiny orb of light began to appear in the space in front of him, floating in mid-air between the table and the door.  The sound became louder—so loud that anyone outside would have definitely heard it—and the orb began to both grow in size and become brighter—like a tiny little star forming in the middle of the room.

Jon scurried back into a corner, both amazed and terrified at the sight before him.

As the air began to be feverishly sucked into the middle of the room, Jon felt himself begin to be pulled as well.  It wasn’t strong like a tornado, but it still brought his horror to an entirely new level, and he hunched down and stuck both his arms out onto the adjoining walls to support himself.

The orb grew and grew, and it began to shine with such intensity that he was blinded.  The sound became deafening, and Jon closed his eyes and tried to cover his right ear into his shoulder—fearful that if he moved his hands from the walls, he would get sucked in.

When the sound became so loud that he thought his eardrums were going to shatter, it suddenly ended with a dull pop, and the light and vacuum vanished just as quickly as they had appeared.

Jon opened his eyes, unable to see at first because the light had been so blinding, and he blinked them several times before he realized that someone was in the room.  He rubbed at his eyes, and as his vision finally began to return, he shrank back in horror.

Standing in front of him was the gunman in the strange, shiny, grey-black suit.