words & worlds

I tend to hang onto things. Not physical things. We run pretty lean in our house. I mean injustices. On me or anybody, which makes it especially hard for me to even turn on the news. Drives me nuts and my blood pressure through the roof. But I have to say something about this injustice that has been chewing its way through my patience for the last five years. Here it is.

In 2013 my wife and I started to looking for a home to buy in Irvine, California. I wanted to use my VA loan and had determined with a single phone call that I was eligible for over $600,000 because of the cost of living in Orange County. Excited, we started visiting all of the new home developments in Irvine. And I mean all of them.

Not a single one accepted VA loans and used the excuse that our benefits did not provide loans that were large enough to buy their homes priced in the $500,000’s and up. At the first few I explained to anyone who would listen that I was eligible, but they ignored me with a silent dismissal and walked away to find a more appropriate customer. The real irony was that the majority of the developments were (and still are) being built on the old NAS El Toro site, where servicemen served and some died protecting our country.

But we certainly cannot live there.

I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, so I thought I would communicate with the Irvine Mayor, Steven Choi’s office. After writing a nice letter explaining my research, results and how to verify the VA loan thresholds, I waited for a response. It took two months and the response was almost word for word what I was told at each and every development. Now I was getting pissed. To prove I was right it literally took two minutes (I timed it) to find the website on my phone.

This was an example of lazy leadership at its worst. Our soldiers and sailors study and train for months before they are deployed. They spend days awake standing guard, achieving mission objectives, repairing underfunded equipment, all the while knowing the devil and death is in the details. We have seen too many innocent tragedies lately because our boys and girls are overworked and over deployed, but Steven Choi couldn’t take two minutes to consider an entire population group in his city.

The real tragedy is he spent  a hundredfold more time communicating with and working to approve the developer’s plans, than he did considering the vets that made his entire life possible. Veterans are successful leaders, entrepreneurs, managers, Police Chiefs and Fire Captains who can more than afford Irvine’s homes. I could, but instead we found a home in Orange where we could raise our horses, dogs, grandchildren and hopefully write the next great story. Your loss Irvine.

Check out number eleven on the music player for a little admonishment from my generation for Irvine’s fortunate sons and daughters.

The American band is still grand, but like me and the rest of us boomers, aging into grandpa-hood. I was flying this week from Atlanta to Little Rock and had the privilege to sit among some of the members of Grand Funk Railroad. My row mate, Dave Johnson, Stage Manager for the band, was a classic grandpa roady in his top shelf Harley shirt and neatly trimmed pure white goatee. A few rows up front the drummer and founding member Don Brewer read his paper through some fashionable bifocals. These guys were bad-ass.

I am not saying that in the past tense, I mean they are amazing now. According to Dave, they do fifty shows a year although they are in their late sixties and early seventies. They have successful marriages, great families and a grip of grandchildren. So put all of that together with culturally fundamental rock and roll, and you have some bad-ass rockers.

Imagine being able to follow your passion and express your art in such a way as to be a creative or motive force in an entire generation. I believe this is a goal of many if not all artists. I know it is mine.

So back to the trip. As we all boarded, Don Brewer took his seat in the first row, of first class, and after a few passengers, a tall, striking young blonde slid into the seat next to him. The contextual irony was not lost on me. Don is a good looking, fit grandpa with a full head of wavy silver hair to his shoulders, but the young girl barely noticed his existence. Take this scene back forty years and she would have been passed out at his feet after screaming like she had been shot to the heart.

As a boomer it is sometimes hard to feel relevant in these fast moving times. This scene did not help that, but it did help in other ways. When I called my wife from the airport in Little Rock, she immediately went to our collection of vinyl looking for our Grand Funk record albums. We laughed and expressed how cool the whole event was and signed off with expressions of love and missing each other.

In the car I realized that all boomers had formed a bedrock culture of music, conviction, civil unrest, art and innovation that is critically fundamental to the world we live in today. Rock and Roll of the sixties and seventies energized, inspired and expressed us in ways too numerous and complex to measure, but are evident in every millenial’s or gen x’er’s daily life. It is too bad if they fail to recognize it when it is sitting right next to them. I didn’t, and I am grateful for it. Thank you Dave Johnson for your time, and for reminding me just how cool my own generation was and is.

Check out number 10 on the music player and you will see what I mean. Rock on.

As a writer I have a gift and a curse called PTSD. First the curse. In the back of my thoughts is a dark demon trapped behind a wall of discipline and reality. Imagine one of the most frightening scenes in a horror movie. The protagonist is trapped under a sheet of clear plastic struggling to break free and screaming their last breath. The room is silent and you perceive the struggle so intensely you want to breath for them. It is a captivating scene for the moviegoer soliciting gasps and grabbed hands.

The moviegoer knows it isn’t real, but sometimes they must look away and perceive reality for just a moment. The anxiety created in their mind is almost too powerful, and a look away brings desperate relief. In my case the demon is trapped. I know he struggles for  life, but I won’t let him. To be drawn into that scene is to trade places and there is too much in this world to love, live for, appreciate and express to let that happen, although at times it gets close. Today was one of those days.

Triggers become a regular part of our life. Sounds, open spaces, closed spaces, faces, places, and of course, the night. Dreams rarely are free although I have flown more in the last decade than all my years before. Night shadows no longer form into foes and having to pee is what wakes me up. Today’s trigger was a surprise.

I took our bloodhound, lab mix puppy to the vet, not paying attention to the emotional pressure I was already under. He freaked out and the fear in his eyes was piercing, and familiar. There is a look that most of us never forget. It is a deep fear projected darkly from the eyes of a man that sees his death clearly whether imagined or real. Izzy’s was a desperate plea for me not to leave him alone, but they took him away anyway and there was nothing I could do. The loss of control and helplessness set my demon free. The ensuing battle has taken most of today and I’m exhausted.

The gift is, we vets with PTSD, have a knowledge of soul bound pain that most writers will never be able to tap into. Some geniuses have their own mania that helps in the creation of paragraphs and phrases that stoke the deepest emotions from their readers. Others possess a familiar angst they can detail in ways we all connect with, and the introvert can craft worlds dreamt of behind closed doors that transport us to new heights and realms. The challenge for me, and the other vets that have taken to writing, is to assemble the words that share our struggle without losing ourselves or our readers.

I am being taught to do this by my characters. As I work to make them come alive I see parts of me in them and my struggles are not absent. At first it was hard to look at in the light of a real word, but now I believe I am learning to weave them into people with depth and real anxieties all their own. Now, are they still likeable is the question. I have to leave that up to my readers and trust my characters. A difficult task for vets, but worth the strength that will be gained.

As I think of the best way to close this post, I have to look away for moment. What I see is my dogs at my feet hiding from the vacuum. My office is in a home my wife and I bought together. I hear her cleaning at seven thirty at night because she has her own issues, and I love every one of them. Pictures of my children and my birthday cards remind me I am loved and necessary, while the partially completed canvas on my easel tells me there is still much art to create. This is the reality I have and no picture show in the corner of my mind is going to change that. Score one for me.

I am listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Carry On” as I close. Number nine. Peace, out.

I have always been a one woman guy. Cheating just never sat right with me, and love was hard enough. Cheating seemed like it would make it even harder, so rewriting a first draft that I loved felt like cheating. But I am learning to love it. Does that make me a bad man, but a good writer? Am I sacrificing a part of my artistic soul to the editorial gods?

Based upon the pleasure I am getting out of the rewrite of my first Giants book, I feel satisfied, and maybe a little dirty, but in no way am I cheating. That being said, this is not my first round of editing, hardly. I had already gone through the book eight times, before starting the rewrite. Kind of like going through a series of dates to find  out what you truly want in a life partner.

Now, I am a hypocrite when it comes to this dating logic. It was love at first sight when I met my wife, and I was good to go the distance by the end of our first date. However, before her, there was a long chain of varied relationships and a failed marriage, so I guess maybe I’m not so hypocritical after all, just stupid.

Edits and rewrites can be like that. Trying this and that until that light shines out of your work to illuminate the vision you had when your book’s premise first fell on you like a holy ghost. That just happened to me and I had to stop and write about it. That first love for my book is back, and now like my marriage, is even better after all this time and a lot of work.

Gotta get back to work. Thanks for listening.

Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Lady” from his Innervisions album played in the background while writing this, check it out. Number 12 on the music player.

I learned a big lesson the morning after my last post “Hit the Gas or Get Out of the Way”, my wife reads my blog, and everything I confess here better be okay by her. Performing death defying maneuvers on the freeway got me a scolding and the look. She has dark brown Latina eyes and when she’s ticked, well, they pierce me all the way back to birth.

So, I better watch what I’m doing on this blog and the freeway.

I do have to say it’s about time for accountability for centuries of subjugation, and the rise of the powerful woman. When I say rise, it doesn’t mean women haven’t been powerful all along, they have, but also ignored, discounted, mistrusted, and all around devalued. I saw it in the military in the seventies and eighties. Strong and smart women working twice as hard to get to the same rank or position of influence as mediocre men, and I had the privilege to meet or work with a few.

Innocence of my faults in this is not where I am going. One of the worst times early in my marriage was because of the disrespect I showed my wife’s opinion. When I finally saw it, the realization was painful that I had treated the woman I love that way. I vowed to change, and it was hard, but more than worth any effort or sacrifice. Almost thirty years later we share an awesome marriage and partnership.

Where I am going is this; powerful and flawed female protagonists are awesome to write about. I was at work when I first heard Miranda Lambert’s “Vice”. It hit me like a slap to the face and I couldn’t wait to get home to write. That was the beginning of my first pure mystery of the same name. My protagonist, May, is an awesome character with a ton of talents, super smart and deeply flawed, who has surprised me more than I imagined. Right now, I am about halfway through the first draft, and working on a second half worthy of who she has become.

Since then , I have also written a short story with a strong female protagonist, “Highway Radio”, that I think you might like. I posted it on my “stuff” page for your reading pleasure. You gotta scroll for it.

Keeping in the spirit, I have added to the music player, the Pistol Annies’ “Hell on Heels” from their  album of the same name. Number eight on the dial. Turn it up.

U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Keith Brown

 

I love cars, but I hate traffic. As I said on my “me” page I am a veteran with some fractures and failings. When I’m alone in the car and and the level of moronosity around me goes up, I go a little crazy. Really. I’ve made maneuvers in my Mercedes at speeds that should only be accomplished by professionals. My car goes really fast and I like the accelerator. Gives me back control. Kind of important because if I lose control my PTSD kicks in, and like I said, I go a little crazy.

Okay, maybe more than a little.

But this post is about acceleration, not my commuter craziness. As I mentioned in an earlier post Elon Musk and the crew at SpaceX just accelerated 119,900 pounds of awesomeness from a dead stop to the outer limits of Earth’s gravity. It is loud, earth shaking, all around impressive, and a critical step to realizing what writers like me imagine everyday.

While SpaceX was building and preparing the Falcon Heavy, other bio-engineers have been quietly accelerating our knowledge and the application of genetic engineering to provide new cancer therapies, grow pig organs for transplant to humans, and clone primates. Let me repeat that, clone primates. A different kind of acceleration.

Recently I have started to see, hear about, and read articles describing how we are tinkering with embryos for this or that, cloning and manufacturing stem cells, and reversing genetic birth defects. I find all of this exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Then there is Artificial Intelligence. The rise of the machines, Asimov’s future, Hal, and of course, Skynet, manufacturing a whole race of terminators. Are we on the way down these roads? I don’t know, but it certainly provided a great foundation (Asimov pun) for my Acceleration series, of which the first manuscript, “The 9th Acceleration: Ignition” is complete and in final editing before I start querying.

This book and the series is pure science fiction with an eco-fiction after taste. Here is the premise. Several hundred years in the future after a geneticide wipes out most of mankind throughout the solar system, humanity must now leave Earth in order to save her. For decades eight sections of a massive space station have been accelerated into orbit around Saturn. The final and main section is about to launch with the rest of humanity when it is seized and held for a peculiar ransom. A three hundred year old book and a secret file.

Find out more on the book’s page, titled “9th”. Also, listen to Boston’s “Smokin” while reading this post and I think you’ll get a little accelerated yourself. Number 7 on the music player. The monkey below was cloned by the Chinese. Too cute right?

Creating a world from nothing is a pile of fun, creating a world from the remains of another is double the fun. If you are an engineer or a deeply afflicted science geek, of which I am both, world building is the ultimate exercise of severe obsessive compulsion and imagination. This is how I got started building the world for “In the Land of Giants”.

One of my favorite stories as a kid was “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” He was innocent enough for a young boy, but also enough of a scamp to have a great adventure in the midst of an overanxious family and great personal danger. At the end I never once thought he regretted anything he did and would probably do it all again given the chance. I like that.

When I was a boy in Vermont my family was very structured. I had a ton of chores everyday, schoolwork that had to result in all “A’s” or else, required family reading (the whole Encyclopedia Britannica by age ten), and three sisters that I believe were intent on ending my life. More stories to come about that.

I escaped in a number of ways, books first of all, but also exploring the valley and mountains around us. I feel blessed and privileged to have been surrounded by so much beauty and nature during those years. In spring I would explore all of the melt ponds to watch the tadpoles erupting and growing so fast. The creek behind our house would run fast and icy while trout worked their way upstream, and everywhere there were more blooms and species than I could ever color or remember.

In the summer I spent hours hiking through the mountains or climbing through a myriad of abandoned barns, houses and silos. The smell of the old barn wood and ancient hay still lingers. Could I have gotten hurt, bit or lost, sure, but that was part of the fun. Fall was amazing, the forests smelled thick with new loam and the leaves blazed in a thousand shades of red and orange. Winter was fort building season and of course the prelude to Christmas. All of this resonated deep within me when I read “The Adventures of Tom Sayer”.

So my world for itlog needed to feel and look like this, be built on the ruins of this world, and have an array of the fantastic to boot.

It was actually pretty easy since the news each day was providing plenty of fuel for my imagination. Rising oceans from global warming, earthquakes from fracking, continental storms, devastating hurricanes and monsoons reshaping coastlines in a matter of hours. New technology and structures were made insignificant and obsolete in months rather than decades. Mass migrations and extinctions, and of course the ever pervasive stupidity and stubbornness of mankind in general. Through it all mother nature seemingly cooked up threats never seen or imagined, which ignited my new world.

So imagine this, scientists say sea levels will rise approximately three meters by 2100, but cannot estimate if there is a critical mass somewhere in the timeline that incorporates contributions of carbon from melting permafrost that will result in accelerated rise. The current water incursion models top out at about eighty feet in a couple of hundred years, but since this sci-fi, we’ll double that.

Goodbye all coastal cities, a huge swath of middle America following the Mississippi river turns into a shallow inland sea. Likewise, California’s San Fernando valley also becomes another inland sea. But this is just the beginning of our world building calamities. Two hundred years of fracking have weakened the geologic substructure of of middle America and the added weight of water causes a cascading collapse that lowers the surface elevation by another hundred feet. The ocean rushes in even further.

This brings all of the energy of the Gulf inland, and hurricanes are carried as far north as the Great Lakes. A battle between hot southern water and the arctic jet stream cause a hundred years of rain that swells the lakes to the breaking point, spilling them into the inland sea. The relentless rains and violent shifts of the arctic jet stream wreak havoc in the mountains from the Rockies and Tetons, through Canada, and back down to the Appalachians. All across the world similar scenarios play out and mankind is reduced to a few million trying to survive.

But, we all know how resilient we can be and new societies, traditions and cultures start to form. It is here where we find our characters, and our story. By the way, of course, some technology survives as well, but I’ll leave that for my books.

I was listening to the Gipsy Kings when I wrote this. Their song “Este Mundo” seems appropriate. Number 6 on the music player.

 

 

 

 

A few months ago, I was listening to some Bob Dylan and remembering a bit of my childhood in the early sixties. At that time the memory of Kennedy’s assassination was still fresh in the national dialogue, the word beatnik was pop lingo, Andy Warhol was all the rage, and our new Rambler American was the talk of the valley.

Our town was in rural Vermont, picture postcard typical, and stuck in the fifties. We had a party line phone and a one room school house. I loved everything about it. My free time was spent exploring ponds and abandoned barns, climbing trees and reading everything I could get my hands on. When the LIFE or National Geographic magazines showed up, I was the first to consume them front to back.

One day a young couple moved into the abandoned general store next door and the sixties had arrived. He had long hair and bell bottom jeans and she looked like Ali McGraw (you’ll probably have to look her up) with long dark hair and the thick eyebrows that were popular as a more natural look. Picture rennaisance fair girl and you will know what I mean. Rumor had it he was an artist and they were remodeling the old store into a home gallery. My Mom told me to stay away, but my curiosity got the best of me. I had read about hippies, but had never seen one, let alone talked to one.

I watched their progress from the limb of a maple tree that stood between our homes. He would smile up at me and I would wave. Finally, when they were done, he waved me down and offered me a chance to see the inside. I was young, but smart enough to know great work when I saw it, and they had turned that old store into a beautiful home that would be all the rustic rage today. Then I saw something I had never seen before. Actually two things.

The first was his wife breast feeding. That was embarassing. Second, was an eight foot tall screen printing of Bob Dylan. I had no idea who it was, but I liked it. This started my on the job education in pop art and the movements of the sixties. He was a sculptist, so I spent time running the blower of his forge, gophering trash and tools, and listening to all of his hippie records. That time was special and an important part of my life, and I am eternally grateful to Peter for all he shared. My short story “A Little Bob Dylan” is a taste of that time. You can find it after “Hubcap Jones” on my stuff page. Of course the musical reference is “Blowin’ in the Wind”. Number 5 on the music player. Be cool.

Falcon Heavy schmevy. So what. It doesn’t compare to this launch of my blog. Dreaming, building and successfully launching the world’s biggest rocket (of today). Dreaming, building, and launching a Saturn V with nothing, but a government paycheck and a slide rule, now that’s something. It was an incredible national achievement that changed the world.

This blog is a big achievement for me, just like the first time speaking in public, except it stays there, forever. The audience is not a group you can see and touch, it is strangers with varied backgrounds, norms, ethics, bias, pains and preferences. The distrust that has been beaten into me by life, loves, friends and enemies is screaming for me to stop and pull my blanket of privacy over my head.

Just one problem with that, I don’t, and won’t, live my life controlled by fear of others or things. If I had, I would never have survived living on the street, horrendous abuses, ten years of a hot Cold War, the battles with my PTSD or all the times I was physically, emotionally or spiritually emptied by what seemed a relentless onslaught of challenges. I want to be an author and have spent the last ten years writing and studying my craft. It is time to come out and live the life, which means making my art available.

This might not change the whole world, but it will change mine, and hopefully add to yours. Please be frank if you want to critique or comment, just keep in mind I write for  middle grade readers,  so cleanliness and courtesy should be a given. If you want to bully, I am more than up for meeting you after school. Trolls are, well, trolls. The word coward fits better. Fight your own fight.

So, let’s do this. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

A good song for this is “Escape” by Journey from the album by the same name and number 4 on the music player. It also reminds me of the movie “Heavy Metal” that starts with a Corvette falling through space just like Elon’s Tesla. Coincidence, I don’t think so.

Dilemma’s are funny. Like looking up at the Great Wall of China from the ground, being awestruck, then realizing you’re on the wrong side, type of funny. The problem is simple, but solving it may be impossible. My itlog dilemma is like that.

First, itlog is an acronym for “In the Land of Giants”, my fiction series mentioned in my first blog post, and the subject of the “itlog” page above. Second, like the traveler to the Great Wall, I did not realize I was in a dilemma until I was.

At the Writer’s Digest conference pitch slam in 2016, I had huge success pitching “Giants” and copies of my pages flew around the internet to more than my fair share of agents. After a suitable period my rejections started to flow in.

They were polite and held a common theme, even phrases, which sparked my natural curiosity. Was there an agents rejection letter style manual, complete with canned phrases suitable for copying and pasting into all forms of correspondence, or was there a true issue, that was too difficult to state. So I asked. All of them.

My two responses were eye opening and exciting. Now I am in no way afraid of rejection. High school, a decade of dating, job hunting and credit apps had toughened me up quite a bit. So, these two responses were like gold, not poison. One explained that the world and characters I had created were too different and challenging to market for that particular agent. Actually, I was deeply encouraged from this observation, and concluded that I was on the right track.

The second was my trip to the wall without me realizing it. The agent was hand picked by me from extensive research. I had made an early introduction through LinkedIn, which was my hook at the pitch slam. She was as pleasant and professional as I hoped she would be, so my trust in her words and intent was well placed. She did not connect with my protagonist and promised she would consider my rewrite.

Simple enough. (Place cuss word here). I enjoyed deepening my friend. He was now more vulnerable and visible, and everything worked until about halfway through the story. All of the new angst and challenge had sucked the innocence out of my story.

This is a big deal. These characters are simple Riverfolk, in love with their world and how they fit into it. The villains and evil of what they are facing are supposed to stand in stark juxtaposition with who they are. This contrast seems to be slipping away, and frankly, I am not sure how to bring it back.

I have been stuck here for a year.

But here is the beauty of writing this out. I have come to the realization maybe that is what is supposed to happen, and the magic of the story will be restoring that innocence in the end. If I am feeling this way, then possibly my readers will sense that same loss and rejoice when they find it again. Suddenly that wall isn’t as big as it looks. Gotta go.

BTW listen to the song I picked from “O Brother Where Art Thou” to get a sense of the innocence I am talking about. Number 3 on the music player. Enjoy.