The Itinerant D

Sneak Peek: The Watchman

2013-09-19T09:05:00.000-04:00

Last but not least in the Anthology is The Watchman, inspired by Ezekiel 33. It's been a fun ride for me; I hope you've enjoyed these little previews as well. As I mentioned, this one makes the turn toward fantasy; so don't be thrown by the weird names all of the sudden.

THE WATCHMAN

The only life saved by retreating would be his own.

Merrak stood in the shadow of a large maple, barely daring to breathe. Slowly and smoothly he raised his bow; his muscles tensed, and strained, as he drew the arrow to his cheek. He peered down the shaft of the arrow, willing himself to be calm and steady. He could not afford to miss. Drawing one smooth breath, his fingers relaxed, and the arrow sprang forward.

He smiled, and lowered the bow; a nice buck, one he and the Brothers could eat of for at least a week. Rubbing his arms briskly, Merrak eyed the skin of the deer, thinking of the winter that would soon arrive.

He approached the buck and leaned his bow against it. As he worked to pull the arrow free, he stopped suddenly, sat back, and listened intently. The forest was quiet, and the wind passed through branches long bereft of foliage. He turned slowly, catching a glimpse of a man ducking behind a tree to his left.

Merrak turned back to the deer and pulled the arrow free. He wiped the head in the dirt, and cleaned it of blood. Grasping his bow, in one fluid motion he drew the arrow, turned to his left, and sent the shaft flying into the oak. The man stood half behind it, raised his arms, and smiled.

“Easy, friend, I mean no harm,” the man said, stepping fully out from behind the tree.

“Why do you think I sent the arrow into the tree, instead of your heart?” Merrak asked without malice. He lowered his bow. “Is it your custom, friend, to go skulking behind trees then?”

“Only in unfamiliar woods, approaching an unfamiliar person wielding a bow so expertly as yourself,” the man replied. “My name is Lordgrim, of Novam.”

“A lord?” Merrak asked.

The man laughed lightly. “Unfortunately, no; I am afraid my parents had higher aspirations than I did. Though,” he paused, considering. “I am not sure how Lord Lordgrim sounds, as an appellation.”

“I am Merrak, of nowhere in particular. What brings you so near Castle Fleete?” Merrak asked, rising to his feet.

“Just passing through, as it were,” replied Lordgrim. “The plague has struck Novam, and I am seeking a safe route through to the coast.”

“Are you indeed?” Merrak asked. “Since the war began, routes of safety are scarce in number, especially near Castle Fleete. I am surprised you did not know.”

“I had heard the fighting moved northward?”

“The fighting moves like a wasp,” Merrak replied. “First it is in the north, then it is in the south. One cannot know where the fighting is from week to week, sometimes.”

“A strange war,” Lordgrim mused. “You seem to have avoided it?”

“I stay with the Brothers in Weylyr Abbey,” Merrak replied. “We are left to ourselves.”

“And whose side are you on?” Lordgrim asked suddenly.

Merrak smiled. “We are left to ourselves,” he repeated. “I kill only that which is required for the Brothers and I to survive, and only to supplement what we can grow from the earth. Anything else seems unnecessary to me.”

Faintly, on the wind, Merrak heard a horse snort, and a branch snap as though trod upon.

Don't forget to go here to purchase -- for a mere $0.99 -- all the stories you've just previewed. Hope you've had fun; see you around the interwebs.

Sneak Peek: The Butterfly in Brazil

2013-09-17T09:01:00.000-04:00

Today's story has a bit more complex inspiration. Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October contains a scene wherein a Russian mail-clerk delays an important letter from the captain of the titular submarine to one of his superiors. Clancy spent a good deal of time on this very incidental character, all for the purpose of showing the letter was delayed. I wondered: "Would it be possible to write a story from the point of view of everyone around the main character?" Well, I don't think a novel would work, but a short story seems to. See if you agree.

THE BUTTERFLY IN BRAZIL

Chaos theory says a butterfly may flap its wings and cause a hurricane across the world. I wonder if the butterfly ever knows that.

They had one left. Samantha -- her friends called her Sam -- had walked by it once and didn’t even notice it sitting on the bottom shelf -- all alone, the poor teddy bear. It was so perfect; this one had what resembled hiking boots, for some reason. Sam and her friend Brianne hadn’t been able to go climbing in a long time; Brianne had been in and out of the hospital for months, with one thing wrong after another. Sam knew the bear would be perfect for Brianne for Christmas. Sam could even attach a little carabiner with a note “I’ll always be your belay” or something.

But just as she stepped forward to pick it up, a man came down the aisle with his cart. She stepped back with a smile to let him pass, but he didn’t pass. He stopped right in front of her, cell phone to his ear, cart in her way.

“So what do you think she’ll like?” he was saying. “Well I don’t know! What do ten-year-old girls like?” His head swiveled as he scanned the shelves. Sam folded her arms, trying to keep her smile. “She’s your granddaughter . . . Well, mine by marriage. Doesn’t mean I know what she likes.” His head dropped. “What about a teddy bear?”

No, she would not like a teddy bear. Who likes teddy bears? Sam thought frantically. Brianne would, but she’s the only one. Ten-year-olds do not like teddy bears with hiking boots!

“Well whatever. I’ll get it, and hopefully she’ll like it. Even if she doesn’t, it’s only ten bucks.”

The bear was gone, the cart rattled down the aisle, the old man with the black leather jacket and the cell phone was gone, and Sam’s smile was gone.

It would have been so perfect.

To say he was having a rough day would have been an injustice; Lance was having a terrible day. Night. Whatever. To people who work night shifts, days are divided by when you get up and when you go to sleep. Unless you had school to do, and you didn’t get sleep, and you had to go into work early, and it was the holiday season, and an abnormal amount of stupid customers bothered you with every little thing you couldn’t even imagine.

The worst part was that he saw it coming; he saw the old man with a cart full of stuff, a teddy bear in one hand and a cell phone in the other, and indecision in his face. So when the old man put the teddy bear on a shelf full of electronics -- where it obviously didn’t belong -- he wasn’t surprised. After eight years at Bridgedale Wal-Mart, nothing surprised him anymore. As the old man wandered off, Lance wondered how many of the items in the man’s cart would end up at other places in the store. Most of them, probably.

Well, he thought, letting out a sigh, he may as well return the teddy bear. In an effort to confuse their customers, the managers at Wal-Mart had decided to put some bears on a special display closer to the main doors, and the rest of them in toys where they were supposed to be. Somehow, the teddy bears with hiking boots hadn't made it to the main door display. He returned it to all its brothers and sisters in toys, and walked back to electronics. His manager was there, waiting for him.

"Where have you been?" the manager, Lisa, asked abruptly.

Here's the full story, as well as six others! Final installment tomorrow, a bit of a delve into fantasy (finally!): The Watchman, a man who must decide whether to upset his peaceful life to deliver a warning that might go unheeded.

Sneak Peek: Casualties of Wars

2013-09-16T08:52:00.000-04:00

Good Monday! Continuing the series of Sneak Peeks for my anthology now at a new price of only $0.99. This excerpt is from Casualties of Wars, story #5 in the anthology, and looks at those who suffer a different kind of wounding. The inspiration for this one was a little more odd: a song by Natalie Walker called "Empty Road." I began imagining 'hearing the sounds of an empty road' and why someone would be doing it, and eventually this popped out. I hope you enjoy it.

CASUALTIES OF WARS

Sacrificing your life does not always mean dying.

I sat alone in the window seat, in the chill air trapped between the glass and the drapes as I gazed toward the quiet road in front of the house. The sounds of the family of ten, of which I was the eldest, were beginning to die down, warm cider and cheese calming toddlers eager for the arrival of St. Nick. My mother was herding the last few, shushing them and ordering them to their beds, when she caught sight of me.

“Jane, shouldn’t you be in bed?” she asked.

I didn’t turn immediately. “Am I a child?” I asked quietly.

There was only silence, and I pulled the drapes aside to look at her. Mother took a few creaking steps toward me, wiping her hands on her apron. “Which means you should be leading the example, Jane.”

“I just want to wait…John wrote that he might make it tonight. I just thought…”

I knew that my eyes – always shutter-less windows – emanated the quiet and too-frequent fear that clogged my throat and parched my tongue. My mother’s eyes, like tarnished mirrors, faintly reflected back that worry, stirred also with drops of concern for me which occasionally pooled in the corners. We shared the gaze, frozen as the fire cracked, for several moments before she turned and left. It may have been a nod she parted with, or the acceptance she conveyed only made me perceive it. I turned back to the chill window, drawing up my legs and settling bare feet against prickling-cold wood. I remembered John’s letter of companies marching without shoes; I prayed his march back home this December would not be as cold as the pins that pricked my soles.

Snow was falling lightly, the flakes ticking against the window pane, faintly above the cracking and popping of the fire in the hearth. It was a night for tea and buttered biscuits, not for being away from home. Yet he was out there, somewhere. It’s funny how it happens; a year or two ago neither of us heard much of King George, except the rare occasions when I was allowed to go to town and I would hear when his name was appended to “Long Live…!” Those calls seemed gradually less frequent, certainly, and garnered more and more angry looks, and fewer and fewer mugs raised in agreement. But father seemed hesitant to treat me as an adult even then, which went fine until mother and I were the oldest family members still at home. I suppose my brother Nathan was doing alright, but he was too young to replace such a man as father.

I set my feet back on the floor to try to rid them of the chill, but the warmth of the fire reached barely farther than its glow. My legs cast wavering shadows against the soft brown paneling below the window. I paused to gaze at it, remembering the shadows John and I learned to cast against that very spot as children, long before amorous thoughts entered our minds…

The snow was falling thickly outside, promising a pillowy blanket by morning. A carriage with swinging lanterns on its roof went slowly by outside, travelers coming late from a to-do somewhere nearer town. Though a full moon struggled to pierce the clouds, it was enough to see a dark-complexioned face below the tall hat of the driver whose head bent into the light wind. I could not see it without remembering John – but then, he never truly left my mind.

He had always kept a clearer eye on events in the world. I knew several of our neighbors who had Negro servants, and that seemed fine; but John always told me that trouble was coming, down south. Sometimes it troubled me, how much he had changed; as the snow slackened for a moment, I remembered a night just like this barely seven years ago. I had been upstairs, attempting to sleep, when something came tap! against my window. I blinked and rolled over, and it came again. I got up and went to the window; there was John in our yard below, digging through the snow to find another pebble. He cocked his arm back before he saw me, flashing me a grin as the stone fell from his hand. I raised the window as quietly as I could.

“Want to go sledding on Blind Man’s Hill?” he whispered loudly, gesturing to the sled behind him.

As always, if you want to keep reading, head over here to pick up the full copy. Next up: "The Butterfly in Brazil", the story of one man whose self-absorbed actions ripple outward to everyone he sees, and a few he doesn't see. See you then!

Sneak Peek: No One Heard Her

2013-09-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sneak Peek Part III: No One Heard Her. This story was inspired by (and answers the question of) the Casting Crowns' song: "Does Anybody Hear Her?" I hope you enjoy it.

NO ONE HEARD HER

The dead tell no tales only because we close our ears to their cries.

The months after Nikki Powers' death were certainly the hardest in my young pastoral career. I say that not to complain: as the son of a pastor, I knew that ministering to a congregation was more than baptisms and communion. But what struck me most were not the questions of death and life after and what could have been done to prevent it -- those I had anticipated. What struck me instead was the story of young Nikki that unfolded one cold December day, six months to the day after her car had plunged over a cliff into the lake outside of town.

The first part of the story was related to me shortly after 9. I had left my office to go downstairs and grab a cup of coffee, and I was reminding my secretary of a few things when an elderly woman approached me coming down the hall.

"Good morning," I said cheerily, raising my mug of coffee in salutation. "How are you today?"

The woman did not reflect my cheer. "May I speak with you, Pastor?” she said. “In your office?"

"Of course," I said, and showed her the way. After I had closed the door behind her, and we had taken seats, she began.

"My name is Marjorie Holcomb," she said. "I can imagine you wonder why I'm here, Pastor Martincic; on this day, particularly."

I pursed my lips for a second. Though our congregation was not small, I knew the greater majority of my flock. Marjorie -- though I recognized she attended -- escaped me.

"The young girl who died six months ago?" she prodded.

Of course, I thought to myself. Today is the 9th, isn't it? "Did you know Nicolette Powers?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, no not really. Which is what I came to talk to you about." She glanced down at her hands folded on her lap, then back up at me. "She came to our church -- the church I used to attend -- the Sunday she died."

I raised my eyebrows. "Did she?" I asked. I had not known that; I did know for the three or four Sundays before her death, she had stopped attending ours.

Mrs. Holcomb nodded, and glanced down at her hands once more. "That's why I started coming here after -- after I heard the news. Ours is an old church; everyone there has been there since they were children, and their children and grandchildren attend...everyone knows everyone, and everything about everyone." She shook her head and sighed. "So when her prayer was announced, everyone knew who it was."

"I'm sorry," I interrupted. "Her prayer?" I knew what she had needed prayer for; I couldn't imagine she had actually told a foreign congregation.

"She needed strength, because she was pregnant and didn't know how to tell her boyfriend," Mrs. Holcomb replied. She paused, glancing away before answering my silent question. "I think she didn't realize our prayer cards were read aloud after they were collected. I was sitting next to her. That poor little girl; I had never seen someone so mortified. I'm ashamed to say we didn't react the way we should have, Pastor," she continued, looking at me once more. "I was the worst, because I was sitting beside her. I laid a hand on her arm as if I cared; but she saw through it and pulled away. I guess the masks we wear only fool ourselves, sometimes."

"Hmm," was all I could think to respond.

"Yes. Well. After I heard the news of what happened, I left that church. We were too comfortable; we all had our ideas of what salvation meant. The worst part is, even after we heard what happened, many of the congregation rationalized it away. A lot of us clung to the idea that it wasn't suicide. But even if it wasn't, it doesn't forgive the way we treated that poor, confused young girl."

"So you decided to attend our church at that point?" I asked.

"Yes. I don't know exactly why. Maybe it's some sort of penance for me. But it's not that either. I've wanted to tell her parents, and I just haven't been able to yet. But I had to tell someone today." She paused, and her breath caught for a moment. "Do you think God has forgiven me?"

"First John tells us if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us," I said. "You have confessed to me; if you have confessed to God, then He has forgiven you."

"Thank you, Pastor," Mrs. Holcomb replied.

"Do you mind if I pray for us?"

"Please, thank you," she said with a small smile.

After she had gone, I sat brooding over my cup of coffee. After six months, the pain of Nikki's loss had begun to fade, even from my mind. I didn't like it being brought back, especially under such a revelation. One question that had remained in my mind, though I distracted myself often in helping others try to cope, was why she had fled from our church. Though that question remained unanswered, it was made more painful by knowing she had tried to go somewhere else.

Reaching for the phone, I dialed a number I had memorized through use. It rang twice before it was answered.

"Mrs. Powers," I told the voice at the other end. "Pastor Martincic."

There was a sigh. "I suppose I should have anticipated this call," Nikki's mother, Catherine, replied.

On Monday we'll look at story #4 of the anthology: "Casualties of Wars", a story reminding us that those who fight are not the only ones who might be wounded. Don't forget to go here if you want to read all of it now, and thank you! Or stop back for the next preview.

Sneak Peek: Not in the Whirlwind

2013-09-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sneak Peek Part II: Not in the Whirlwind. I wrote this for Creative Writing class, taking a bit of inspiration from my alma mater (the college setting is identical, I've excerpted one of the lectures I've heard, and his professor is a modification of one of my professor's names). I hope you enjoy it.

NOT IN THE WHIRLWIND

If a tree falls down on your room and you’re not there to hear it, does it still affect your life?

The trees were engaging in a bare knuckle brawl as the autumn wind decried their violence. Leaves fell and played Frogger across the highway, and were bashed into dervishes by passing semis. His head bent on cold pavement, Nigel Armstrong trudged up College Hill, feeling the university grow further and further distant even as he walked toward it, and wishing it actually would. He turned the corner, punched the pedestrian button three times and stepped toward the curb. The thoughts weighing in his head and pulling his features into a frown lent him momentum and carried him absently into the street.

“Dude!” someone shouted, yanking him back to the yellow curb as a car horn whined past.

The light turned red, and the white LED man across the way on a pole took a step, and the crosswalk flooded with morning students. Nigel squeezed through the narrow gate with students all around him, carrying him down the hill and up the other side toward Campus Main. With barely a pause to gaze to the sky along with the bell tower, long bereft of its bell, Nigel was swept inside and up the circling stairs. Laughter and conversations of last weekend battered against his thoughts; his hand stretched forth his ID card to be anonymously swiped by the attending student, then handed back.

Inside, the flow of students washed up against the stage, a whitecap of mid-term papers curling from their wave as they placed them in waiting cardboard bins. Nigel dug through his backpack as he walked up and scanned the boxes for his class section. He paused, hand buried amidst books and folders, as the covers gazing at him from the stage caught his eye. He pulled his own paper out and glanced at it, knowing the glaring blank space where a title should be would be staring back at him. Muttering, he pushed his way backward, pulled out a pen, and quickly scrawled something appropriate on the title page. He clicked the pen closed, tossed his paper into the box, and then found a seat near the middle of a row near the back so late-comers wouldn’t crawl over him with briefly-muttered apologies as they grinned at friends sitting far away.

The college was founded in 1837, when the average weight of students was somewhere near one-fifty. Now Nigel was compressed by students whose combined weight might have been near 500; elbows tucked, hands outward to write on blue-lined paper might have looked like a “why me?” gesture to the professor at the front; and if it would have helped, Nigel may have offered it.

In his third semester, Nigel was staring a third major-change down the throat. He had established so far in his college career that he was not supposed to be a biologist, a writer, or a Public Relations guy. Psychology was supposedly the most useless degree in America today, which might suit him just fine except he hated listening to people. That more than likely led to his lack of girlfriend; a year and a half, and not even a glimmer of interest. His Gingerness didn’t help, he was sure; it was, in all likelihood, the only thing he was sure of. That, and if the professor didn’t finish soon, he might suffocate – he was quite sure of that, too.

“Your phone vibed,” the student to his left joked.

Nigel didn’t joke back that it was no small wonder, with half a thigh in Nigel’s lap, the student could feel it. “I’ll get it after class,” he whispered, turning his attention back to the front.

“An adventure,” the professor was saying, “is made of five parts. Five things must be present in a real adventure: there must be real peril, to the body or the soul of the adventurer. There must also be real prohibition – real boundaries which the adventurer cannot cross under any circumstances. If Gandalf can use magic anytime he wants for any reason he wants, why, he can simply whisk Frodo straight to the cracks of Mount Doom and get rid of the ring. That wouldn’t give us much of a story, however. Third, there must be real obligations: the ring must be destroyed, or Middle Earth will be destroyed – there is no hiding the ring, no ignoring it. Fourth, the hero must make decisions: the story cannot simply happen to him. Frodo must choose to leave Bag End, and he must choose to leave Rivendell, and he must choose to leave the Fellowship and continue alone with Sam. Finally, the hero must bear the consequences of his decisions. Frodo cannot go back to Bag End when the going gets rough, he must press on, even if the ring ends up consuming him.”

Why, oh why do I need this? Nigel sat wondering. As if I will ever have anything of an adventure.

The professor did finish before he suffocated, and he stood and waited for the mob to exemplify the worst reaction to a fire drill ever as they clogged the doors and narrow stairway to freedom. It was not Nigel’s stairway to freedom, however, as he had American Government class next door.

“Don’t forget your phone,” the student who had been on his left said as they finally exited the lecture hall.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Nigel said, pulling his phone from his pocket. He pressed the “end” button, but nothing happened. He pressed and held it, and it vibrated violently as it turned on. Still holding the phone, Nigel scratched his lip with a tenuously-extended index finger as the Verizon fire arced across the face of the display. A picture of some random scrawling on his Notes app displayed first, then switched to a picture of his mountain bike that he had put on his primary wall-paper.

“I could use a ride, too,” he mumbled, waiting as the phone continued to load all its start-up programs. Best decision ever, this super-smart phone. The phone vibrated three times as an orange envelope popped up on the taskbar. Yes, I know I have a text, he thought. Why do you think I turned you on?

From his Mom: “Bad storm…tree fell took out the house call home.”

Part III tomorrow: "No One Heard Her", the story of a girl who may have committed suicide because she found no love in the church. If you like it so far, check out the whole thing here -- and remember, it's only $0.99! Or stop back by for the next preview.

Sneak Peek

2013-09-12T11:21:00.000-04:00

Hey all, we both know I've been gone a long time. Rather than use this post to catch up on everything that's happened, let's just continue and we'll pick things up as we go (hint: I was working a lot). So what's in the Sneak Peek? My anthology, If They Keep Silent.

There's going to be several of these, but this is sort of the intro. See, my anthology is on sale right now at Amazon for $0.99. Because I want people to read it, and good writing aside it's difficult to justify $2.99 for a book you haven't read, that isn't one continuous story, and when you can get a full-length novel elsewhere for free. But rather than offer it for free (because I did put the time in to edit it several times -- something most of those free books have clearly and painfully not done) I'm offering over the next several posts a teaser of each story. That way, if you like where it's going and want to follow it to the end, for less than the cost of a McBurger you can do so.

The first story, "The Beast Within", can be previewed on Amazon, so I won't waste your time with that one. Without further ado, I offer you "The Storm". I hope you enjoy it.

THE STORM

A walking stick when you’re blind is indispensable. Mine just walked off to get help.

It was Friday, night probably: I was high in the mountains, in the middle of a storm. I was drenched, cold, I was alone, my leg was broken, and, oh yeah, I was blind. Literally. I had lost my sight four months earlier in a really bad crash on my mountain bike in Moab, Utah. The doctors weren’t sure if it would ever come back. “Maybe,” they had said, and I could imagine their fake smiles, wasted on someone who couldn’t see them.

I was wondering, as another bolt of lightning cracked close by, if my girlfriend Alison would ever come back for me. She had left a long time before to try to find help. It’s an odd thing that when tree limbs are cracking and breaking in the wind, and you can’t see, it sounds like they are breaking right overhead. I kept waiting for the tree I was under to break in half and crush me. As much as it moved against my back, I didn’t feel I would have to wait much longer. I closed my eyes – completely unnecessary, but it helped me think – and tried to remember happier times. Not surprisingly, Alison came to mind.

The crash had done more damage than just to my eyes, and I had been bed-ridden for several weeks. When I was able, and for a treat, the nurse took me to the cafeteria to eat the crap there instead of having it delivered. I don’t know if maybe she thought eating it before it had journeyed through the halls on a cart would make it taste better – it didn’t. She also made the mistake of giving me a cane and leaving an independent soul like me alone while she went and chatted with her girlfriends. I played a game for a little while of stabbing the food on my plate and trying to guess what it was before sticking it in my mouth. But there is only so long one can lose at a game before he tires of it. I sat back and listened to the wide open echoes of the cafeteria. My hand fell onto my cane and I tilted my head towards it. I thought: why not?

I stood shakily and tentatively, sweeping the cane before me. I had no idea where I was going, but I needed to walk, and walk I did. I made it five steps before cracking the cane against someone’s chair and then kicking it for good measure.

“Easy there, Tiger,” a feminine voice said. A very beautiful feminine voice, I thought.

“Sorry,” I said without really meaning it. “I’m blind.”

“I can see that. Did a chair do that to you?” she asked.

“Um, no,” I replied.

“So really, you don’t need to take it out on a chair, do you?”

I straightened a little, bristling. “I’m very sorry, madam. Trust me, if I could see, I would be much more careful about assaulting your chair.”

She laughed lightly. “Madam?” she asked.

It was something about her laugh, I still don’t know what, but I felt a half-smile on my lips. “Do you often make fun of a man with a stick in his hand?” I asked.

“I’ve seen you use that stick, I’m not worried. Either you’re very new at being blind, or you never had a piñata at your birthday parties.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Both. I–” A hand came down on my shoulder then, and I jumped.

“Mr. Devin, you shouldn’t have walked off on your own,” the nurse said gruffly.

“I didn’t get far, ma’am.”

“No you didn’t, Mr. Devin?” the feminine voice said with a chuckle.

“James,” I said.

“James,” she corrected herself. It sounded so much better coming from her than me. “I’m Alison. I would like to hear more about what happened to you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I probably have to return to my room now,” I said, turning my head to the hand that was still on my shoulder.

“I’m visiting a friend, so I’ll be here again tomorrow,” Alison replied. I smiled and nodded once. The hand unapologetically turned me around and marched me through the cafeteria to the exit.

Alison was there the next day, and the next. She was there every day until I was released. I found out later her friend had taken a turn for the worse the afternoon I met her and died the next day, and still she came to the cafeteria every afternoon to see me. I never could tell talking to her. She always seemed happy and interested in me when we talked.

Lightning cracked very close by, ripping me from my thoughts and sending a fresh jolt of pain down my leg.

Stop back tomorrow for "Not in the Whirlwind", a story of a college student who loses his room back home when a tornado comes to visit. You can also go here to pick up a copy. If you read it, and enjoy, please leave me a review; every bit helps!

Rhetoric: The Small Stuff

2013-05-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

I’m starting a two-part series with this post – two part; so, blink and you might miss it. But I want to talk to you about rhetoric – you know, that stuff you hear on the news all the time that’s keeping politicians from actually getting anything done? Fortunately, I’m kidding: today’s political rhetoric is about as juvenile as college humor compared to what it actually means. It is, technically, using words to convince the listener of the rightness of the speaker. In its highest form, though, it’s supposed to convince the opposition of the rightness of the speaker – not convince those who already agree, like political rhetoric tends to do.

This understanding – along with spending an entire semester studying it – has enormously influenced the way I look at writing. Because, despite the exhortation to leave the reader with questions and no answers (can you even do that, and have anything of a resolution to your novel?), I think writing at its best tries – subtly, not allegorically or didactically – to convince the reader of a certain perspective on reality.

Which is why my innards start twisting when a writer, or teacher, or whomever, gives the vague, completely useless advice to “cut all unnecessary words.” Because they never follow up with what exactly constitutes an unnecessary word. The prospective writer is, I suppose, just to intuit that answer, or abandon all desires to be a good writer.

Here’s what’s never said: what makes a word necessary or not is if it will further your thoughts to the reader’s mind. Two things are necessary for this answer to be complete: you have to know your thoughts, and you have to know how the reader understands.

Knowing your thoughts should be simple – or, at least, you should be able to sit a while and figure out what you want to say to the reader. Knowing how the reader understands is something that only experience and practice will teach you.

But even a scientific dissertation will make the reader understand, given the proper technical depth of knowledge the reader possesses, or the layman’s terms the writer is able to use. But for writing to come alive, there are many other words necessary to the text.

It comes down, essentially, to the tone of your theme and your book. If the narrator becomes tinged by the character’s thoughts, then of course the writing must reflect the tone of that character – who may be a concise, minimalist character. But woe to you and to your story if the characters and themes are best supported by rambling, by verbosity, or by elegant description, and you do not do it.

So, when writers talk about getting rid of unnecessary words, remember: getting your word count as close to zero as possible while still telling a story is not always the benchmark of what is necessary. Do not apologize for intruding on your readers’ lives, and promise your story will only take a minute. What is absolutely necessary is for your writing to convey your meaning to the reader, and this happens not only in the specific words you use, but how your sentences and paragraphs are constructed.

Next Wednesday I’m going to talk about the big stuff: scenes and characters. Join me then!

Whose Work Is It?

2013-04-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

According to one sociological study, it was discovered that, throughout the world, the tasks that constituted “men’s” and “women’s” work varied widely – in one culture, washing clothes was considered “men’s” work. But even though the specific tasks varied, what was oddly universal was that each culture viewed “women’s” work as less important. Now, this may be a bit of a chicken & egg conversation: that tasks deemed less important are given to women; not that tasks the women do are therefore deemed less important. But the point I want to make is two-fold: we still see this, even in contemporary “liberal” western thought; and I find little evidence to support such thinking in the Biblical view of God’s kingdom.

As extrapolated in Dr. Del Tackett’s DVD series The Truth Project, when exploring a new area of the Christian worldview, we must ask what it is about the nature of God that can inform that area of study. It is not always enough to say: “the Bible says to do this”; often we must ask what it is about the nature of God that causes the Bible to say thus, and how that can then apply to our personal lives.

So let’s start by asking this: is man made in God’s image, but not woman? Obviously we understand this not to mean God has a physical form after which our biological bodies have been modeled: but is only the male able to reflect the nature of God? Genesis 1 certainly doesn't indicate that: it says “in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

And with only a few androgynous exceptions, every species on earth is made male and female. Almost as if they were all modeled after something foundational.

Okay: so what? The point is still that men have certain work to do, and women have other work that, typically, is to support the man. Isn't that what Paul teaches over and over again? Well, how were things in the beginning, before the Fall?

“And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28a, ASV).

Wait: there’s only one set of instructions there. You mean, God didn’t say to man do this, and to woman do the other? What about Paul?

Let’s remember our guiding principal: what is it about the nature of God that causes the Bible to say thus, and how can that apply to us today? Is it possible, do you think, that when Paul pointed out the woman as “the weaker partner” (1 Peter 3:7) he was pointing out a cultural reality rather than a spiritual one? Because even today, in western culture too, women rarely have the same power and influence as men. They are not inherently so, but rather culturally so; and if Scripture teaches anything about the Christ-follower, it is that we are not to conform to this world.

After all, does not Christ give us strength to do all things? Is he not the servant who washed the disciples’ feet, and did not he humble himself to death on a cross, that we as his followers might be able to come into God’s presence, and enjoy eternal life in him? Did he not give up equality with God in order to come down and lift us up with him into the heavenly realms?

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). Paul said that, too. Sounds like I should be humbling myself according to culture, and elevating her as an equal heir with me and Christ.

Equal heir.

Equal commands echoing from Creation.

Wife equal to husband.

Sorry if I annoy you with my “feminism”: just wait till you meet God.

Adding Character to Your Novel

2013-04-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

My new plan of revision (a revised revision plan?) is humming along nicely – it was supposed to, since the early chapters were already pretty solid. I’d say in a few weeks, as hard as I may try, I’ll be slowing down a bit. For now, the prologue and three chapters are locked in, and I’ve only started this last Saturday. So I’m pretty stoked about that. But what was really fun on Wednesday was adding some character to the novel.

How, do you ask? More thematic elements? Some symbolism to spice things up? Maybe a rip-roaring description? No, silly: by adding a character.

“Didn’t you already start doing that months ago, and isn’t that why you still haven’t finished your book?” Well, yes and no. This time, the character is already in there the whole time. What I’m adding are little scenes every so often (less than one per chapter) that cut back to what’s going on with Haydren’s first nemesis, the Earl’s son Guntsen. There’s a lot going on in the background, there, the effects of which are only seen as separate events in Haydren’s journey. So, to add a little complexity to the situation, and some sympathy to otherwise cardstock villains, I’m letting the reader inside a little bit.

The awesome thing is, I wrote the first scene this past Wednesday, and if I can brag just a little, I actually found myself feeling sorry for Guntsen. And I’m the one who knows the end of the novel. But here’s a young kid who thought he knew what he wanted, had the power to do some heinous things to get it, and finds it quite empty. He can’t go back, so what can he do but own it and make it seem like it’s still everything he wants? As Tom Berenger’s character General Longstreet noted in the movie Gettysburg: “We’d rather lose the war than admit to the mistake.”

It’s also drawing out the other villain, Lasserain, a little bit – but he may end up being more enigmatic than Guntsen. It’s all part of the fun of it.

So, at this pace – which I know I won’t maintain – I’d be done with final revisions by mid-June. As it will most likely turn out to be, I’ll still be done by July, which gives me the summer to start querying agents. That’s exciting.

The take-away? Deepening your book is almost always improving it. Know your age-market, sure; but complexity will elevate it beyond the stories you tell your friends on the weekends – or the ones you tell your friends about the weekends. I had taken my central cast and deepened them beyond where they were; now I’m taking two otherwise flat villains and making them deeper. And it’s going to make choosing sides that much more difficult.

Isn’t that like life, sometimes?

Trails of Literature

2013-04-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

There’s an interesting thing about the mountain bike trails in my area: I’ve ridden three (or four if you count my parents’ property) and each place, even though within 30 miles of one another, has a distinctive feel to them. One place has ten to fifteen miles of trails, another seven, a third has near 30 I believe, and my parents have six miles. But I’d be willing to bet you could drop me blindfolded in the middle of any one of those parks, take off the blindfold, and in a few minutes of riding I could tell you exactly where I am.

Okay, my parents’ place doesn’t really count because you could drop me blindfolded into any corner of that place and just by looking around I could tell you where I am. But I don’t know the all the trails of the other three – certainly not intimately enough to know, just by looking around, where I am. And yet, the way the trails are laid, what kind of obstacles they have, what the ground is like – it’s different, and distinct.

I noticed something the last time I was at the nearest bookstore (happens to be Books A Million – much rather have a B&N with a café, but hey…) and was perusing their fantasy section: a lot of epic fantasy books I looked at, by different authors, read a lot the same. Pick it up, check out the cool title, maybe scan the synopsis, flip open to any page, and within a paragraph or two (more, if I’d landed on dialogue) and I could affirm it was, indeed, epic fantasy.

But a literary novel in my hands. I’d be willing to bet, open up to any page and start reading, within a few paragraphs I would be able to tell is was a literary novel.

Romance, obviously, same thing (just look for absurdly detailed emotions).

Christian books – in fiction, it’s probably not terribly well-written (sorry, Christians).

I haven’t perused a lot of sci-fi, but I’m guessing hard SF is pretty easy to spot.

And it’s not necessarily because the characters are named Juorn in one, or they’re somewhere named Atrius V in another (or because it read like that one freshman’s short story that wasn’t really terrible, so you felt bad giving them a negative review – sorry Christians…) but it has a certain feel to it. It’s the word choice, and the syntax, or the gravitas (or lack thereof).

But I wonder, when I see patterns like I do in books like I had, whose word choice it is. Is it possible that each of those authors, on their own with no help from anybody, happened to write entire books that felt like every other book in their genre?

To put it another way: are authors like state parks? Or are they like trail segments within the same park? I’ve always considered them like state parks, and their stories like the trails. Now I’m not so sure.

What I dearly hope is that those similarities aren’t the fault of the editors. From an advanced editing class I took, I don’t think it is.

What I think it is, is the need to get out of your genre entirely, as often as you can. Go ride some other trails somewhere else, before you start building your own. How much more interesting would one trail network be if each trail within it was unique? What if each author in the epic fantasy genre wrote something unique – not just in the story or plot, but in the writing itself? If, instead of identifying the genre within a few paragraphs, you could identify the author?

Maybe those with more familiarity can tell the difference. For someone new to the trails, though, it all rides the same.

A Good Imagination

2013-04-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

I read a verse last week as part of a new devotional that reminds us that God “is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20, NIV, emphasis mine). And we hear awesome, amazing stories of His fulfilling that promise. But I was thinking, as I read that verse, that surely it’s getting harder for Him: after all, since reading and hearing and seeing so many awesome stories of God’s providence, I’ve got to say I’ve got a pretty good imagination.

I can imagine writing terrific books that sell well, allow me to quit my job (the work is fine; the hours stink), let me write full-time (which would just be so amazingly fantastic), and let my wife and I live in a nice home that I can imagine waking up in on Christmas morning.

And I pray that most of that stuff happens – certainly the “writing full-time” part, because even though I like the work I’m doing now, the hours stink. And maybe some of it will happen even I don’t expect, or necessarily even wish for it. But it doesn’t stop me from imagining it.

(Now, what I’m about to say is not to be taken as anything like a foundation of my faith. I say that because I think it makes God seem rather small to assume something like this happened just for me. It’s not as miraculous as many stories, nor are its benefits assigned to myself alone.)

Last Monday, I was supposed to go for a bike ride. I hadn’t been able to go the previous week because of the weather. Looking ahead at Thursday, my day off again appeared to be going to crap: high percent-chance of thunderstorms basically all day. Well, that was okay: I go in to work later in the mornings, I could just ride one of the mornings it was supposed to be nice.

Who here has waited till the last minute to do taxes?

3am Monday morning, my wife and I were going to bed after finally submitting our taxes online. A ride was obviously out. That’s okay: Tuesday morning looked nice, too. I brought my bike home that night (apartment is too small to keep it here…) looking forward to a ride the next day.

But it began eating at me: mornings on the days I work are supposed to be for writing my book – you know, that thing I want to do full-time one day? Thursdays, except for riding, are to be spent doing all the other writing – blogs, articles, et cetera. And even if I could ride one morning and just do the book on Thursday, it didn’t feel right. I’m supposed to be disciplining myself to sit down and write – a discipline I will definitely need when I have all day to write, and can procrastinate like a snooze button.

So, I finally decided – disgruntledly – that I would do what I was supposed to and write. Riding had to take second place. So that’s what I did. Then, something happened that was beyond what I could ask or imagine.

The rain disappeared from the forecast. Tuesday morning, after writing and before I took my bike back to work un-ridden, I checked the weather. Instead of a 70% chance of rain most of the day, there was a 20% chance in the afternoon (which, come Thursday, disappeared almost altogether).

I’m sure there were folks whose day was ruined (somehow) by the nice weather – and a lot more people relished the day besides me. I won’t say God changed the weather because I was obedient. What I might say is that He pushed on my conscience so heavily – and, looking back on it, so inexplicably: why not just write on Thursday? – because He knew the forecast was going to change, and I was going to have a gorgeous day on which to ride on Thursday.

So, I can imagine the big things easily enough. I just never imagined He would care that I enjoyed riding; I imagined He would teach me to do the “right” thing, and learn to let go of the other thing.

I never imagined He would give me both.

Scent of Creativity

2013-04-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

So, I was working on my book this past week (yay!) and something interesting happened. Let me back up: I’m still deep in the middle of revising my book, getting everything aligned with the most recent vision of the stories events, and trying to make sure that I don’t have references to past (edited out) or future (abandoned ideas) plot lines – as well as generally fixing the issue with having a lack of sub-plots.

Now, when you’re revising, most writers drudge through it because they have to. In revising, especially the later stages of it, you’ve read your own book a thousand times. If you’re at all humble, you’re sick of it. You’re not creating, because it’s all been created; now you’re just fixing.

Unless, like me, you can’t stand not creating. I heard a story once about the actor Christopher Lee changing his delivery in each take, to give the director clear differences to choose between each take. I like to think of my book running that way: each draft, I try something a little bit different – take the plot this direction instead of that; make this character want this thing instead of the other.

Now, that’s not entirely true. Well, it is; but I’m not recommending it. But it is fun to imagine ways in which it could go differently, just to help keep the creative juices flowing until I can start the next book. What was a lot of fun, except for how long it kept me from actually moving forward with my book, was outlining an entirely different set of events for the current book – and it actually worked! I was able to change the theme (a little) how the characters met and traveled together (a little more) and their entire movements across the continent (a lot).

So, while I was working on my book this past week, I realized that Haydren focused a bit on Geoffrey’s unique appearance, which was similar to Haydren’s unique appearance. Then I remembered that, somewhere in the dungeons of notes I have for this book, I had written down that Haydren’s adoptive parents both came from the same village as Geoffrey – and that Geoffrey was certainly old enough to be Haydren’s father. Hmmm…

So, should I have Haydren wonder if maybe only his adoptive father had adopted him? That maybe his mother actually was his mother? And Geoffrey was his father?

That could be fun. But, for the purpose of the whole series, it would have to be a red herring, and it’s probably not worth spending much time on something like that, but that ends up going nowhere.

Still, it was a fun bit of creativity. Just to know I still have it. And it only took a few minutes of musings away from actually writing, which I’m sure I’ll make up with the shot of rejuvenation it gave me.

Onward.

The Three Percent

2013-04-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

I read an interesting statistic the other day on a buoy-me-up self-publishing picture: it said, in a contextual tone to suggest this was why self-publishing is awesome, that of all the manuscripts that are received yearly by traditional publishers, only about 3% are accepted. It also mentioned that, a few years ago, 86% of all books published were self-published. What it failed to mention was what percentage of that 86% found any kind of success. How much would you like to bet that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3%?

I don’t mean to bash self-publishing…really… What I do mean to bash is the notion that the 97% that aren’t accepted are just as good but not as lucky as the 3% that are.

It is true that many good stories are lost forever because a couple boneheads in New York City or Los Angeles think they know what everyone wants to read. Stories abound of books that were only begrudgingly and cheaply picked up, only to find huge commercial success; other stories talk about books that became overnight sensations with no explanation of why.

The stories that don’t seem to abound as much, even though they should, are the amounts of really, really bad self-published fiction. I’ve read five, so far, and previewed a couple more. One of them was good. It wasn’t as good as something professionally published, and it was perhaps only that good because the author did pay an editor to work on it a little.

The rest? One was labeled an epic fantasy: it was a novella that contained no more than six or seven major characters, none of whom used foul language, only replacement words – except one character who did use foul language, but only, it seemed, when it would decrease emphasis as much as possible. In another, the author hadn’t learned not to repeat himself – five times in two paragraphs, if I remember correctly. A third needed to be told a few more times to justify every single scene and cut whatever could not be justified – the fourth was their sequel, and they had obviously not been told enough times between book one and book two.

Sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort. If someone famous wants to write a book, and the publisher knows any book written by this famous person will make tons of money (Keith Richards, anyone?) they will bother hiring a ghostwriter and the extra editorial staff to produce this thing. But Joe Ego who studied engineering but “really likes to write” and has this “great story about a girl who goes to New York City and falls in love”? Why, yes, let’s dump time and money into this because, hey, it might be good.

Unlike many today, it seems, I don’t mind letting the best flutist have the best flute. I don’t think that just everyone who wants one deserves a flute, if they can’t use it to make good music – good music, after all, is the point and purpose of the flute. If I don’t get published, fine; I think by working hard enough, and I think I’m pretty good at it – it’ll happen eventually. But not because I kinda like to write and I think I have a good story; but because I’m passionate about language, and I want to be the absolute best writer I can be. If I do that in complete obscurity for all time, so be it.

But I also kinda think that if that happens, it’ll be no body’s fault but mine.

What is Truth?

2013-04-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

“Words have no inherent meaning, you know!” Every time I hear that, I have the strongest urge to continue talking to whoever uttered it in no language whatsoever. Objectively, that’s true: words are just sounds or symbols strung together. As long as you define it beforehand, any word can have any meaning you want. But subjectively, words are how we learn, communicate, and even think. Words, and their meanings, are inescapable. Without meaning, words are just sounds or symbols strung together, and accomplish no purpose.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Whoever has said this had probably just received a sharp lesson on words and their meanings. We can do our best to encode our meaning (though often we don’t really try our best) but for the hearer who decodes them, that meaning can be lost. The problem is when we get lazy about encoding our meaning.

See, meanings of words are incredibly critical – far more critical than the glib utterance that opened this post indicates. Words are nuanced, often by context, to carry negative or positive connotations – only in scientific dissertations are there words that can be truly neutral, and subsequently usually very dry. But even when words are completely neutral and terribly dry, nuance is still conveyed: this is a highly rational, highly reasonable, highly objective series of facts, and is therefore highly trustworthy.

But I think science has it wrong. Because day-to-day people are not highly rational, highly reasonable, or highly objective. Usually we’re emotional, passionate, and mired in context. What this does not mean is that day-to-day people cannot grasp the truth. And this is where things go horribly wrong.

Because either we give off a sterile, highly rational, highly reasonable, highly objective, and totally unattainable legalism that no one is attracted to, and no one feels is particularly relevant to their life (and they’re probably right); or we get so mired in context that we lose sight of objective truth, and end up encouraging a post-modern, do-what-you-want-and-I-can’t-judge-you vibe that a lot of people like, and people who want to try to make the current world a little bit better can’t stand.

The point is this: you can speak as much of the pure truth as you want, but if the person walks away with a false view of reality because of what you’ve said, you have lied to them. Sure, some of the burden falls on their decoding of your words – but just as much depends on us being very careful about what we say, and being careful that those to whom we speak understand what we’re saying.

If we try to be radical, or poignant, or profound, or holy, we may miss being understood. And we desperately, desperately need to be understood.

Whack-A-Scene

2013-04-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

Not because it's relevant...just because it's
so darn cute

Well, one week down on the new schedule. If you follow me, you know I missed this past Wednesday. There’s a very good reason for that: I hadn’t written the post on the previous Thursday like I wanted to. Because once we get into the week, all bets are most definitely off. It’s incredible the things that can pop up, and you with hammer in hand can only do your best to pop them back down.

Which reminds me: revision. I’ve experienced quite a few methods of revision, in the process of perfecting my book. One method was let my then-girlfriend-then-fiancée read it and put comments in red along the sidebar. Talk about pressure-treating your relationship, not to mention trying to get used to seeing more red than black on a manuscript.

Later in life, I read through and came up with a list of revisions of things I wanted to change – sometimes it was whole scenes, sometimes a string of scenes for a minor sub-plot, sometimes it was one description; whatever it was, it got a number and I got to sit down each day (it was Winter Break – lovely time) and knock off a few items. That was the most effective bout of revisions I’ve ever experienced.

Then came the dreaded thorough overhaul when I thought I needed to outline every scene for an almost entirely new plot structure and rewrite half to three-quarters of the manuscript over again. Fortunately, though I learned the value of outlining, I didn’t need to learn the value of rewriting from scratch.

Now, though, much like my weekly “schedule” (we’ll laughingly call it), I’m playing something of a game of whack-a-scene: I have outlined some sub-plots, and know of some key scenes and events that need to be plugged into the book. It’s not as efficient nor as neatly detailed as that one Winter Break (ah, Winter Break…) but it’s definable. So I sit and chew on it. Eventually, a scene sticks in my mind and starts growing some sinews and flesh, and before you know it, it’s ready to pop out onto the page.

It’s almost never chronological. This past week, I wrote one scene at the climax of one character’s arc, and a few days later wrote the scene at the very beginning of another’s arc. It’s a definite direction; I know the game ends eventually, but fortunately not without my striking all the moles; and it allows me to still be creative in my process. I still have to sit down and focus sometimes (waiting for the muse is for amateurs, after all) but I’m not locked in on what to focus on. That allows me to keep my energy up, a little.

And so I soldier on. Not much moving on book two, unfortunately: maybe once tax season is over, or if I settle more securely in this new attempted schedule of mine. Oh, things still pop up; don’t they always? But there’s no sitting down in a concerted effort to produce something. But it’s coming.

Soon.

To theaters.

(That last one isn’t true.)

(Yet.)

***The picture for this blog post came up way down on a page of results for "multiple drafts." And it was cute, and it made me happy, unlike the rest of the results; so I decided to make you happy too. Enjoy.

Let's Make God More Palatable

2013-04-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

A strange thing has been happening, lately – or maybe not so lately. I was first clued in a week or so ago when my wife pointed out to me that modern translations of the Bible had removed John 5:4. Christians condemn Jehovah’s Witnesses to eternal damnation for taking out verses, but no one has ever mentioned this to me. The verse so disagreeable that it was removed without a whimper? “—and they waited for the moving of the waters. ⁴From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.”

It’s in the story of Jesus healing the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. I thought I remembered reading that bit when I was younger (I read in the KJV to be like my mother) but thought maybe that was somewhere else I’d heard it.

The second time was at church last week, when our pastor pointed out that Jesus, hanging on the cross, cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But in the original Greek, the word translated “cried out” was closer to “shrieked.”

Then, last Thursday, I was looking up a verse for a post I was going to do, and it ended up putting me in mind to write this post. Romans 8:28 is a much-loved verse among Christians as a means to comfort those suffering hardship. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” How wonderful to know that whatever might be going on, it will end up for our good.

Then I saw the footnote: “Or that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good—with those who have been called according to His purpose.”

“Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady” I hear Bono sing. And I hear many other things, most of them just frustrating sounds that aren’t really words. We claim and assume that God’s Word cannot be tampered with, that it is just as perfect now as it was when it was first penned. And yet we have the glaring example of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who have removed whole verses with no fire, brimstone, or lightning to strike them down and correct Scripture to its original perfection. It can be done. It has been done. Writers are doing it now.

God will work in, around, or through us according to His purposes. But everything we do to resist Him will rebound onto us – even if we’re softening His Word to make it just a little more palatable. And in case you’re wondering what a hypocrite I am writing fantasy – I’m trying to bring people to His Word, that they might find Him in there. My fiction is primarily meant to move people off of whatever La-Z-Boy they’re on, and not onto anything else more specific than Scripture.

Now I wonder if they’ll even find Him there. Christians are not immune to the effects of sin, not yet; Satan’s first and last ploy is to take God’s words and twist them to our eternal destruction. And as a Christian, my only foundation outside prayer is His Scripture, and now that is beginning to shake because of the arrogant pride that we know better how to give His message to the world.

And the Western church is getting it wrong. People are leaving it in droves.

I’m wondering why less and less.

Where Have You Been?

2013-04-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been everywhere, man; out in the desert it’s bare, man; I’ve breathed the mountain air, man… Well, okay: I’m still stuck in southwestern PA. My schedule has been shifting a bit lately, and I’m still trying to get settled into it and see where I can fit some time to write. It’s a little more cramped than the old place, but it’s cheaper. I think I found some space in the corner by the bookshelf.

I’m listening to piano classics done by a pianist named John O’Conner, with some other piano works thrown in from video games. I think, of all the instruments I might want to learn to play, the piano is at the top. Maybe a Celtic flute. But the piano is usually up top. I like keys, what can I say. They unlock hidden chests, and open doors that haven’t been opened and weren’t supposed to be opened for decades. They give form to my feeling, and allow me to express subtleties to those who can pick them out. And at ten possible notes at a time, they are a cacophony of sound put under the control of a master who can strike them at just the right time and force to rein those notes into perfect harmony.

Honestly, sometimes, I think it’s what draws me back to the computer to write, sometimes – just to feel the keys under my fingers. I can feel profoundly the difference between keyboard pressures – some are firm, almost solid, and respond only to the mechanical tapping and releasing of a finger; others require actual pressing. Sometimes keys get a little loose, and it feels flat when you strike it. Sometimes a little crumb of something gets wedged underneath a key, just small enough that the key will still press, but big enough that it only just barely presses. I’ve done surgery on those to get them back into working order.

It always takes me a little acclimatization to work a computer keyboard at the speed I average. The spacing and feel is never quite exact, and I’ll find myself striking wobbily on the edge of a key, in danger of spilling over and hitting “y” instead of “t,” or the “=” instead of “backspace.” Then some keyboards treat home, end, delete, and insert as if they don’t have a place – those step-keys that weren’t established on traditional typewriters, and they’re never loved quite as much as the blood-related keys. Like hobos they make their stew where they can, and hop a boxcar when the next laptop series comes along.

So what I’m trying now is writing the week’s blogs on my day off, and squirreling time in the mornings before work and evenings after work for my book and my freelance articles. It’s all about recognizing the time you have and using it, right? I’d give it the old college try, but I’m out of college now and trying to make it in the real world. But I’ll give it my best.

See you around the ether.

Destroy All Humans

2013-03-25T10:41:00.002-04:00

Yes, I know it’s the title of a video game; and as a standalone, it’s probably a dangerous title. But I mentioned last week about humans and the almost universal sense of us as defilers of nature. Now, obviously, it depends who you ask: but I think in the main, those who care for the environment see any trace of humanity as making impure that which is pure. This is called worshipping the creation.

“Take nothing but memories; leave nothing but tracks.” Because tracks go away, right? A boot-print a month old is just called the ground. The earth, and nature, is sacrosanct; humanity is a blight, and any trace of us having been there suddenly makes the ground defiled.

But aren’t these the same people who say humanity is on equal par with nature? Aren’t we just a product of stuff? Deer kill trees with their rubs; birds leave great big nests in trees; bears surely leave more than just a foot-print or two wherever they go. But they get a free pass as animals, while the rest of us animals deserve to be shot for building a house.

Now, I’m being hyperbolic a little here, because obviously humans can do great damage to the environment, and have done so with careless abandon for centuries. I’m not saying our coal factories and piles of plastic rubbish are excusable. The problem occurs when we use hyperbole to prove a point, and never qualify it. When we keep saying: “Humans destroy nature!” without saying: “We also can tend it, if we’re careful and respectful!” pretty soon that second point is lost forever. Then the other side, in trying to back us down from our hyperbole, responds with their own hyperbole: “I am man, and I am above nature, and I can do what I want! God made the earth first so I could use it as I will!”

And the animals migrate, or try to.

But ask any serious gardener if traces of themselves make their gardens better or worse. Some plants are best served by periods of explosive life – but many plants choke and die if left untended, because other, hardier plants take life away. Ask a florist whether their flowers thrive and bloom without human interference. Ask a farmer if their fields grow on their own, and they just claim the land and rake in the harvest.

Products of human waste do great damage to the environment; I don’t think that’s up for debate. The magnitude of the damage is hotly contested, but the fact that it does is pretty well accepted. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that proper understanding of nature coupled with a healthy concern for it is what makes a human good or bad for the tending of the earth.

In any relationship, love of only self will destroy the relationship – either by destroying the other, or by irreconcilable separation. That is Scriptural: not whether we need to worship the earth, or whether the earth is here for our despotic domination.

Biographies

2013-03-22T09:13:00.001-04:00

It’s that special time of book-writing – at least, fantasy-book writing – when things start to come alive. I’ve had a map up on my wall for a while (more fully fleshed out from something I’ve had for quite a number of years now), with all the little towns and castle and villages and things; names that carry some amount of meaning; a little bit of history and culture worked out, and a description of a key point within the story that epitomizes the culture of the land today. Which is all well and good. But it hadn’t truly come alive. Yet.

Yesterday (and a little bit this morning as I sipped coffee and did the dishes) however, I began working on characters, and their biographies. While setting can be made very real – trees can grow, and birds can nest in them; winds caress the land and ripple fields of grass – it didn’t seem truly alive until I started putting people in it.

I don’t know if this is something foundational, or just prideful, but have you noticed that a place – let’s say some old building, or even a wide-open plain in Montana – even if birds and other animals are present and visible, can seem so very deserted. Something’s missing unless there are people around.

Sometimes this is a good thing: being alone, free from the press and expectations of people, can be invigorating and refreshing. But it is those times that we go to those deserted places specifically because there are no people. To borrow, paraphrase, and perhaps trivialize a feminist idea: we are still in reaction to the presence of people. Our expectations are for people to be around.

It’s probably the most jarring thing about post-Apocalyptic movies and books.

It brings sympathy to likeable characters.

It symbolizes the purity of nature (we can talk later about why humans seem almost universally to be a pollutant of nature).

And it brings otherwise vivid landscape to life. A town or village at the edge of a lake is one thing; have a character come from that village, have been raised in that village, and seek the comfort that village brought whenever she decides to finally leave – suddenly the place is alive. It’s important, it has meaning – and almost instantly it is populated with a bunch of other people. Who raised her? Who were her friends (if any)? How did these people live, and eat? Did they build their house, or someone else? Do they produce all their own food, or is there a market? Do people travel through this village? Do they bring news of the “outside” world? How does she and all these other people feel about the news they bring? And why are these three strangers looking for something that her grandmother who named her only told her about in bedtime stories?

Not to evoke Dr. Frankenstein, but: “It’s alive!” I can’t wait to discover more.

OMG OUTLINES!

2013-03-20T08:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry for my teenybopper outburst there, but I’ve just spent a few hours today revising my book, now that I have character arcs – complete with necessary scenes, incidents, and internal and external manifestations of each stage of the arc. It went so much better than any of the other of my attempts at revision, I just had to tell you about it.

The pitiable thing is, this is a lesson I keep learning: first it was the story as a whole that I needed to either build or recognize the structure; then it was themes; now it’s secondary character arcs. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think it gets much smaller than this, so I’m excited to simultaneously start working on outlining book two.

And even though I ran out of time yesterday to start outlining book two, with the massive success I had with starting to revise book one, I’m confident I’ll be starting this week.

What I did for the character outlines was this: each arc has four points – think of it as beginning, rising action, complication, solution. Because of the complicated natures of these sub-plots, and the themes they argue, it worked well to have the characters overshoot their solution, leading to a complication and eventual return to the proper solution.

Then I figured out what would be going on internally and externally for each of these steps. What are they thinking while they try to work out this part, and what are they doing? Sometimes it’s obvious that they haven’t figured out their question yet – other times, not so obvious.

Then I determined one dedicated scene per point, in which they are the main character for that scene. Additionally they each receive an internal incident (a moment in which there is no scene, per se, but the narrator focuses on them for a moment, either in reaction to or preparation for another event) and an external incident, both reflecting what I’d already established as their separate manifestations.

Now, of course, these are not the only times the characters are focused upon: many times their actions and reactions, and dialogue, are foregrounded – and these too will often reflect their general moods at that point. But, realizing that real people are not controlled by one emotion or intellectual problem at all times until that emotion has been dealt with, most times otherwise the dialogue goes as it must to be natural and fulfill the needs of the story.

But what’s nice is that I have very firmly in my head what needs to be in the story to complete the three secondary characters’ arcs – and it’s easy to know what that need has been adequately fulfilled. So instead of reading through and thinking “I could put something here, maybe…They need to kind of act like this, right?” I can say: “Next is this part, where this kind of scene needs to happen. Good? Yes, good, I like it. Next, over here…”

Because, see, the creative part – the drawing of the objects – has been done. All I’m doing now is filling in the lines, and shading, and contouring. The overall picture is still fixed; but the nuances are yet to be put in place. And recognizing where those lines are makes it so, so much easier.

Stuck in the Middle

2013-03-19T11:02:00.000-04:00

A little apropos, seeing as how this post is supposed to be on Monday, two days before the post on Wednesday. But, having missed two Monday’s in a row, I’ve stuck this one in the middle. And I want to talk about middles – no, this isn’t a fitness blog, and I’m not making up pet names for the Duchess of Cambridge: I’m talking about the war between two ideas that refuse to consider that the answer lies in the middle.

“Everything in moderation.” I don’t mean heroin in moderation is okay. What I mean is life as I’ve experienced it tends to find equilibrium with moderate doses of either side of an argument. Maybe that’s why I liked what little of Hegel I’ve been given. Evolution v. Creation. Acceptance v. Rejection. Punishment v. Grace. Orthodoxy v. Non-Denominational.

Emotion v. Reason.

“The best way to solve a problem is through objective, scientific, fact-based argument.”

“Follow your heart, and be yourself.”

Objective, scientific, fact-based arguments say that abortion is protected by privacy – even though euthanizing and suicide isn’t. (I don’t agree with either one; I’m saying “privacy” was applied because they really couldn’t think of anything better - and they must have really wanted it to happen, so they tied it to the Constitution any way they could.) It also uses evolution to butt God out of the room, when – if anything – the billion-and-one preposterous coincidences needed for, not just one evolutionary process, but all of them, proves to me even more concretely that something was in control.

Our hearts are selfish, self-centered, devious (see previous paragraph) and I wouldn’t follow my heart into the next room. Wife-beaters be themselves, as do bullies, alcoholics, rapists, thieves, murderers – some might slip through the crack of dire circumstances, but if they all did our prisons would be empty. It was heart, not reason, that came up with the ridiculous phrase: “Live your life with no regrets, because in the end, they make you who you are.” Ignoring the problematic grammar, who says “who you are” is a good thing (see previous sentence), making regrets unnecessary?

And yet, Christ is very clear that feeling and emotion are very good things: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40 NIV). And I don’t think he meant a cerebral, intellectual love when He said: “The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them” (John 14:21 NIV).

But He also used the Scripture to defeat Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4). And Joshua tells us: “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:8 NIV); while David sings: “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long” (Psalm 119:97 NIV) and Jesus echoes: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21 NIV).

God is too infinite to understand and know with just one faculty – even our human relationships are incomplete if we engage only our minds, or only our hearts. But stuck in the middle with God means experiencing Him emotionally, and knowing Him intellectually. Because without knowing Him intellectually, our hearts can lead us to say “There is no real Hell, and everyone goes to Heaven”; without knowing Him personally, our intellect will say: “You do not obey God as well as I do, and you do not know the proper answers; so you are a bad Christian.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like some clowns and jokers to me.

New, Magical Waters

2013-03-15T08:30:00.000-04:00

The day has come; the time is rotten (I let it ripen a little too much; lot’s going on, you know). I have character arcs in hand – well, in Word, but you know – I have scenes planned, even a couple all worked out in my head. It’s going to be fun.

And now that that is taken care of, it’s time to chop up By Ways Unseen into little bite-size pieces and revise. But also, it’s time to look deeper into Rodigger Kytes and why his story is the best one to tell next in the series.

It’s back to the beginning, now, folks; that magical time when anything can grow if you plant it – an iron rod may become a living lamppost…or a character may move from secondary to Protagonist while the Former Protagonist suddenly makes his exit permanently (but not violently, no precious; not violently at all).

A whole new world opens up when you realize that no matter how boxed in you seem, no matter how difficult or impossible alternatives may appear, you do ultimately have a choice. And when you’re faced with so many choices, the dilemma then becomes which one? How do I know that this difficult/impossible/absurd choice is the right one? Feeling? Logic? Culture? Gender? Religion? Authority? A lovely little mix of all six? A six-mix? But then what if, this time, exception rules and the easy choice is the right one?

Now stuff it into a young man’s head who, heretofore, had always just done what his hero told him – because, silly, his hero was always right. But now he doesn’t have his hero around to ask, and he does, ultimately, want to get it right. And he knows there is a wrong way. Not intuitively: he experiences a few things that, shall we say, makes him start to wonder.

And then there’s the young woman who is everything Roddiger is not: independent, yet seeks wise counsel; traditionalist, but only when those traditions still run true; and she can love him, if he ever stops loving himself more.

And let’s not forget ageless Deuel, who is antithetical to much of what Rodigger thinks is right and true. But Deuel is not quite so fathomable as most people Rodigger meets, nor as easily argued with. And there’s something, way down deep, way back in history, at the bitter core of such a very large onion, that absolutely no one has ever breached – until something is discovered deep in the mountains, as deep as Deuel’s bottomless gaze.

At least, that’s where things stand pre-outline. But it’s a magical time; anything can grow from the most unlikely seeds.

You're Showing Too Much

2013-03-13T08:56:00.000-04:00

If you’ve been interested in writing for more than a year, and have read at least two blogs or books on writing, you’ve heard “show, don’t tell.” I talked about it here myself. And as I also talk about there, sometimes we lose the point among all the emphasis – we tell, instead of show, how to show instead of tell. But it doesn’t end there.

I didn’t even realize the problem existed. I was enlightened of its malicious presence this past week, after following a link to a free e-book. (I may make Wednesday’s my e-book learning day – the material to be found in such places…but anyway). The problem, for those who skipped past the title of this post, is showing too much.

I’ve changed the name of the character, and I won’t say the book title or author’s name. Supposedly it has been read (and presumably loved) by thousands. It’s book one of a lengthy series. I read page one of the prologue in the free preview offered by Amazon, and put it away. Then I thought, well, sometimes people try to get funky with the prologue; I’ll read chapter 1 in case it gets better.

I’m not sure how to put this, because I’m aware I have my own self-published anthology on Kindle; but there’s a reason editors have been around as long as they have. So let’s take a look at the opening scene of this book I found, and see what happens. What I want to focus on primarily is setting detail – what do we know about setting at the end of each paragraph. I’ll use superscript numbers for each detail. Let’s go:

“The sun sank slowly over the mountains to the west¹, taking with it warmth² and leaving behind a streak of crimson. The air was cool², cooler now without the direct sunlight to warm the forest³ below. Winter was coming sooner⁴ than most hoped it would, and apparently it was coming with a vengeance². The atmosphere of the treed canopy changed almost subconsciously as insects began to buzz and nocturnal predators began to stir¹. The wind blew cold², wistfully down the mountain slopes as breath turned to crystals² and day turned to night¹.”

Here’s what we know so far:

¹ Time of day.

² Temperature.

³ Specific location of POV.

⁴Time of year.

Let’s continue, using the same numbers, picking up a few extras, too:

“Steve tracked the beast stealthily through the forest³, carefully deciding each footfall. The rains had begun a week earlier, softening the loam and fallen leaves⁵ cushioning each step. Occasionally he would lose sight of the crafty creature behind brush or a large tree, though tracking it thus far had been easy enough. Several times he believed he had a shot but, unwilling to take it and miss, had not yet drawn his bow.

“Thus he crept silently stalking the beast, arrow knocked, waiting for the perfect shot that he feared would never come. Though it was late in the fall⁴ and leaves⁵ carpeted the forest³ floor, the canopy above him was vast and still blocked out much of the light¹. The scent of rain was heavy in the air and from time to time he could see a glimpse of the cloud-covered sky above. Darkness was nearing¹ and with it yet another storm.”

⁵ Type of ground.

I nit-picked a little in that last section, I admit: but that tends to happen as a problem recurs continually. Each of these missteps mount up, nettling me ever more until I put the book away in disgust.

But you see my point: unless your readers are very, very young, or have Alzheimer’s, you don’t need to tell them five times that it’s evening and night is approaching, or five times that it’s cold – certainly not five times in two or three paragraphs – even if you’re changing how you’re telling them.

So read over what you’ve written: when a setting detail is given (time of day, time of year, temperature, weather, location, age of character, et cetera) mark it down, and don’t mention it again until it changes.

Because if you’re not careful, you might show too much. And people don’t usually go for that.

Plan to Look at Planning Ahead

2013-03-08T08:30:00.000-05:00

Be careful of those who look too far ahead, because they often don’t know where they are. The downfall of the idealist is they don’t often know how to get from where they are to where they want to be – they’re so intent on what should be that they can’t recognize what, for now, only can be. But there is a good way to look forward, that I’m practicing right now with my writing.

See, I have a book. I know, shocker to most. But I have no intention of stopping with just one book – in fact, I’m stewing over eight, in varying measures at varying times. The variance comes, often, as each book relates to others in the series – an event in book 1 connects later with an event in book 6, and an event in book 6 will serve to inform a seemingly innocuous event in book 2.

So it’s not like I can write these from the hip, necessarily. (As the current round of revision is ongoing, it seems I shouldn’t write them from the hip, ever, but that’s fodder for another post.) But what I can do, what I did at a micro level in writing this book, is keep where I’m going in mind, with gradually decreasing focus as I get further away. I still keep themes and characters in book 8 in mind, but I needn’t hash out specific plot details or write a comprehensive structure while I’m still revising book 1.

Often times, an idea will just spark: for that I have the awesome journal my wife got me last year. I can scribble down the geographic setting of the novel (that’s been sorted for a couple years now) and keep under that heading events and ideas related to that book. Lately I’ve taken to sitting down intentionally with a book and working out a few more specific plot details to see how this series unfolds.

Because, along with the plots – and, to a certain extent, characters (Spoilers!) – the themes are developing as the series progresses as well. The themes for book 1 are kind of basic and rudimentary, though more so for some than others. Each successive book builds on the assumptions learned in the previous, until some pretty complex themes emerge in the last few books.

At least, that’s the plan. And I’m looking forward to it.

Oh, and I’m beginning to outline book 2. Stay tuned.

A Taste of Spring

2013-03-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

Going to take a different track, today. I’m still holding steady in the novel-writing arena, without any major, major breakthroughs (outside of some new ideas for book 3, and finishing up minor tasks toward the revision of book 1). So I thought I’d talk about another passion of mine: cycling.

This is a difficult time of year for cyclists like me. I’m getting the itch, to be sure, but conditions outside are either null because I’m at work, or less than ideal to ride in when you’re slightly out of shape. Or if you’re really out of shape.

But I’m writing articles on cycling as I get ready for a self-made freelance opportunity on hubpages.com. I’m watching the ABSA Cape Epic XC Race highlights on YouTube while I work for my wife. And I work in a bike shop.

And my mountain bike sits on a hook at said bike shop, waiting for me to find pedals and time to pedal.

For now, I’m riding my trainer two days a week, getting my lungs and legs in shape for what we lovingly term “hills” here in southwestern PA. Like the ones at my local park that allow you to climb 300+ feet of elevation in the first three-quarters of a mile from the trailhead. “It’s a small hill,” I can hear the people say as they come west from the Appalachians. “We’ll just go straight up it.”

I did get in shape on those hills, back when I first got my mountain bike after a year of not having one. But since the weather is worse now than it was then, and since I’m working more now than I was then, I can content myself with riding the trainer. There will be a lot of nice days to come. A lot of them.

For now I forge ahead, head down and legs and brain spinning, knowing one day I’ll enjoy the bliss of singletrack. Sometimes you just have to put your time in.

Like, for now I’ll put my head down and revise, spitting out words like a cheap spray gun – great globs spattering here and there, but getting a coat on the wall either way. Later I can smooth it out. After that a professional can come in and make it look crystalline; put some sealer on it for future generations to enjoy.

It might suck now. It kind of does suck now. But if I keep at it I’m confident I’ll enjoy published bliss. Like singletrack, I’m sure it’ll still be hard work and long nights – but plenty of euphoria-inducing moments swooping through pine-needle carpets and flowing around the writer’s marketplace. I’ll arrive at the book-launch sweaty and panting with dirt covering my face and bike and I won’t help but smile as my metaphors get so confused you wonder if a mountain man is going to end up signing your copy.

He won’t. Around here, we only have hills.

I’ll be a hill man.

Speaking of Hillman, the State Park? The trails there…