Joe DeRouen, Author of the Small Things trilogy

What I Believe

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 06 May 2011 22:17:00 +0000

I've been arguing with a friend on Facebook about religion, specifically her Christian beliefs that being gay is a sin. I'm not gay and thus have no horse in this race, other than I believe all people should be treated equally and allowed the benefits that the rest of us enjoy. It's ludicrous to tell gay people that they can't be married. If you believe that your god doesn't like it, well, that's your belief. You have no right to push that belief on others. Morality should never be legislated. If a particular church doesn't wish to marry certain people, I have no problem with that. But to say two people of the same sex can't be legally married, that they cannot enjoy insurance and hospital visitation rights and the other things that come along with being married, is bigotry, plain and simple.

All this got me to thinking, what do I believe? I'm not a Christian, and I'm not an Atheist. I'm not a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Wiccan. I'm an Agnostic, which, for the uninformed, means I don't know whether or not god exists. I can't know. No one can, regardless of what they tell you. You can have faith, you can believe, but you cannot know. No one can, at least not in this lifetime.

I have a good friend who is an Atheist. It's his belief, as I understand it, that once you die, that's it. You're gone. There is no afterlife. There's nothing.

I don't want to believe that. Maybe it's hubris, but I can't imagine not existing. Everything else in nature recycles, so why not psyches? Why not souls? Thus my belief in reincarnation. As far as an afterlife goes, that makes sense to me. A leaf dies and falls from a tree. It lands in the soil, it rots, and is absorbed into the soil, and, through the roots of the tree, back into the tree itself. The energy that leaf represented isn't gone, just changed. Maybe some people, instead of being reincarnated, chose to wander the earth, observing. Or perhaps they take off for the stars.

I can't believe that everything came from nothing. Oh, sure, I believe in the big bang, I believe that the earth is billions of years old, and I believe in evolution. But there had to be something that sparked it all. I don't believe it's the Christian capital "G" God, nor do I believe it's any of the other gods represented by the multitude of religions humanity has created over the course of time. I think whatever that spark was, that intelligence that started all of this, is unknowable. Hell, maybe we're all Sims in a computer game played by a kid in another universe. I don't know. But I do believe there is something out there beyond what we can currently perceive.

I've experienced enough things in my life that prove, at least to me, that there is more to the universe than what we regularly observe. I've had premonitions, usually in the form of dreams, that came true. And not just once, but multiple times throughout my life. I knew the moment my first wife died, though prior to that moment I had faith that, like every other time, she'd pull out of it and eventually beat cancer. But in that moment, when I'd just left the hospital to go get something to eat, I knew, when there was no logical way that I could.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167, William Shakespeare. It's an oft-quoted line, because it's true.

I am open to the possibilities that exist in the universe. What I'm not open to is believing in a god that would condemn the 10% of humanity (and animals, too) that are born homosexual. Why would god care? The answer is, he/she/it wouldn't. People care, because they fear what they don't understand and what is different from them. And someone writes something down, puts his own prejudices into a book, and people believe it.

They may not be prejudiced themselves, but they believe that because it's written in the bible that it's true and should be followed. They recognize on one hand that the bible was written by men and translated by other men over and over, yet on the other hand refuse to believe that maybe some of these men had agendas that Jesus of Nazareth (for I do believe he existed, though I think he was as human as any of us) would have wept over if he'd realized that, two thousand years later, would be used to oppress certain segments of the population in his name.

So maybe it's time someone wrote a new bible.

Another friend suggested that I hate Christians. I don't. I hate when people use a religion, any religion, to justify not allowing homosexuals the rights that heterosexuals enjoy. I hate when a supposedly good Christian child at my son's school tells him that if he doesn't believe in god he'll go to hell. I hate when religion is used to put down, separate, or vilify those who don't follow that religion. That's what I hate.

And it harm none, do what thou will. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Those are the two basic principals I try to follow in life. I say try because I often fail. I'm far from perfect. But I'll keep trying, just as I'll keep trying to change the opinions out there that I don't agree with, and if I'm wrong, well, I'll admit it.

The Christian friend I referred to in the first paragraph of this now-long blog entry still believes that homosexuality is a sin, but she hasn't stopped responding to my points, so there's dialogue. I'll take that as a win, at least for now.

Running for my local School Board

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:44:00 +0000

I feel like such a grown-up! Yes, I'm running for the Benton County School of the Arts school board. I want to be an elected official on the board of the school that my third-grade son attends. Does this mean I'll have to start drinking coffee, learn to golf, and do other "grown-up" things I've been putting off all these years?

Will I have to join the PTO?? (Oh wait, I already did that.)

My goal in joining the school board, should I be elected, is to bring about more and better communication between the board and the rest of us, something I feel has been lacking in recent years. If I can help bring about this change, the parents will hopefully feel more involved and the teachers will feel more appreciated, both of which can only benefit the students. It's a win-win situation for everyone.

Okay, so maybe being a grown-up isn't so bad after all.

Life Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Life Sucks. At least sometimes. My wife has been unemployed for well over a year, and my business has slowed down a lot because of the economy. I hate being poor. And I hate not writing, though I haven't in quite some time. For whatever reason, I just can't put virtual pen to virtual paper these days. I need someone to pay me in advance for all of my future writing output, so I can stop worrying about bills for a while and take the time to write. Any takers?

Today, we awoke to find that some moron had put "Glenn Beck 2012" and Beck/Bachmann 2012" on our cars. That was annoying. I'd almost sooner vote for a resurrected Nixon than either of those two jackasses.

It's been a year since I wrote in this blog. Will it be another year before the next entry? Who knows? I'm going to do my best, though. Maybe it'll actually inspire me to get back to fiction.

Avatar

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:42:00 +0000

Just got back from seeing Avatar and was blown away. It was a phenomenal movie, emotionally triumphant, and anyone who says otherwise... well, I just don't get it. What more could you want from a movie?

I've heard people say it was thin on plot, and, aside from not explaining just what in the hell made Unobtainium (silly name!) so valuable, I disagree. Sure, the plot was fairly straightforward - humans stealing land from the seemingly-primitive aliens - and yes, it's an allegory for what we did to the American Indians, but so what? It was a beautiful story told beautifully. It was amazing, both in the scope of the completely alien world and, yes, in the special effects.

I may be going out on a limb here, but in ten or twenty years I think people will revere it much the same way we revere Star Wars today: as an amazing, landmark movie that changed the face of film as we know it.

Reviews of Books I've Read Lately

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:54:00 +0000

WWW:Wake by Robert J. Sawyer

It's alright. This was actually the first full-length novel I read on my new Kindle. WWW: Wake is the story of a blind girl named Caitlin who undergoes an experimental surgery that could give her sight. Scientists implant a device behind one of her eyes that is supposed to let her see. Soon enough, though, she discovers that, instead of reality, she is perceiving the World Wide Web. What at first she takes to be simple noise turns out to be a sentient entity that has risen from the Internet. Interesting but predictable. WWW: Wake is the first in a series, so maybe subsequent books will be better.

Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man's Song, and Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry

An excellent dark urban fantasy/horror trilogy! Thirty years after the death of a serial killer known as the Reaper, the citizens of Pine Deep, a small tourist town in Pennsylvania (nicknamed "the most haunted town in America") must come to grips with more strange murders, a crop blight that threatens to wipe out the town's farmers, and some really, really evil folks hell bent on bringing about the end of the world as we know it.

ex-cop, martial arts expert, comic book store owner, and near-victim of the original Reaper, Malcolm Crow finds himself thrust into the role of hero, responsible for not only protecting childhood sweetheart Val (Maberry falls into the Dean Koontz trap here, of making Val The Most Perfect Woman in the World) but the whole town. I won't get into the plot too much here, but if you like folklore, vampires, and werewolves, you'll love this trilogy. And there aren't vamps and wolves from popular culture either; they're straight from the legends of old. Be warned: crosses and stakes through the heart may not work on real vampires...

Replay by Ken Grimwood

What if you could live your life over again? REPLAY takes that age-old wish one step beyond. Jeff Winston, a not-very-successful radio journalist in his forties, begins the greatest journey anyone could ever know.

He awakens from his death in the past, in his college dorm room. It's 1963, exactly 25 years earlier. At first thinking that he's in a dream or a coma-induced hallucination, Jeff eventually accepts his situation as reality. Forced to live the last 25 years of his life over again, Jeff swears not to make the same mistakes again.

Jeff uses his knowledge of the future to build a financial empire, but true happiness manages to elude him. Eventually marrying a wealthy heiress, the loveless union produces the one thing that his previous life could never give him; a child.

Always alone, Jeff accepts his fate as time marches on, enjoying the company of his daughter Gretchen. On October 18th 1988, at exactly 1:06 pm, he dies again..

..Only to awaken again in 1963, a little further along in his original timeline.

REPLAY follows the lives of Jeff Winston with angst, sadness, intrigue, and just a touch of humor, and is my all-time favorite novel. I've read the book probably a 14 or 15 times in the years since I first found it (in 1987) and I never tire of it. It's as close to perfect as a novel can get.

My Kindle and Me

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:02:00 +0000

I purchased a Kindle 2 from Amazon.com a little over a month ago, and I love it. I wasn't sure I would. I mean, I love books - I like how they feel in your hand, I enjoy the smell, delight in turning the pages. Guess what? Other than the smell, the Kindle duplicates these things just about perfectly. So much, in fact, that I often forget I'm reading it, and scan the room for my bookmark when I want to put my book down.

In the month that I've had my Kindle, I've used it to read five novels, a novella, and countless blogs and newsletters. And if you stop in the middle of a newsletter, say, and decide to start reading a novel, and then go back to the newsletter later, you pick up exactly where you left off. Multiple bookmarks, just like with "real" books!

And, yes, you quickly get used to turning pages via a button. I know it's hard to believe now, but by halfway through Stephen King's novella UR, it had become almost second nature to press that "next page" button. And one of the nicer things about the Kindle is that, if you want to find a piece of information you remember reading earlier in the book, it's only a text search away!

The Kindle 2 runs $299 and the Kindle DX, it's larger cousin, (10.4" x 7.2" x 0.38" vs. 8" x 5.3" x 0.36") costs $489. I almost bought the DX. but in the end couldn't really justify the cost difference, especially when you consider that the price difference ($190) can buy a lot of eBooks! And though I occasionally wish I'd sprung for the bigger Kindle - magazines and graphic novels, while readable on the K2, would certainly be much more readable on the DX - I'm overall happy with my decision. If nothing else, when they eventually come out with the Kindle Color (or maybe Kindle Kolor - geez, I hope not!) I'll only be replacing a $300 device, and not a $500 one.

For those who don't know, the K2 holds approximately 1,500 eBooks. That's a lot of reading material, and at this point I don't think I've even used 5% of that space. And even if I do, I can archive material on my PC or simply let Amazon do it for me. They keep a listing of everything you've purchased through them or had them convert, (they have a service that will convert .txt, .doc, and a whole bunch of other file formats to the Kindle format, via attaching the file to an email and sending it to your special Kindle address, for $.15) so if you want to physically delete something from your Kindle, you still have it in your Kindle page on Amazon.com.

And, of course, everything is delivered to your device wirelessly, via WhisperNet, Amazon's 3G network. There are no monthly or start-up fees. You buy the Kindle, you have access to WhisperNet, simple as that. And, really, you never have to spend a dime after the initial purchase of the Kindle. Go to Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) and download all the free classic eBooks you want. You can even forgo Amazon's $.15 translation into Kindle format fee by sending the file to a special address that, instead of then sending the converted file to your Kindle, sends it back to you. Then you're only a USB cable away from uploading it to your Kindle yourself. (There are also independent utilities out there that you can use to convert files to the Kindle format without Amazon's involvement.)

I could write a lot more about the K2 features - text-to-speech, for instance, or the ability to play MP3's - but really, the proof is in the pudding. If you have a friend or a relative with a Kindle 2, DX, or even the first generation Kindle, ask them if you can give it a spin. For me, it was actually holding and using my brother-in-law's first-gen Kindle that sold me on the concept. Before that, I was one of the "I'll never give up real books" people. Afterward, I couldn't wait to own my very own Kindle 2.

Another nice thing about the Kindle format is the price of books. Most new hard cover novels are anywhere from $24.95 to $27.95. In Kindle format, most are $9.99. (There are some as high as $14.95.) That's a huge savings, not to mention the benefit of not having to sandwich yet another beefy novel into your already-overcrowded bookshelf. If, like me, you read a lot, both the money and the space saved, over the long term, will more than make up for the initial $300 cash outlay.

So, have I sold you yet? If you want to check out the Kindle 2 or Kindle DX for yourself, head on over to Amazon and give it a whirl!

Bitter Agent Woes

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:43:00 +0000

On January 3rd, 2006, I queried the agent of one of my favorite authors. She said she really liked my query letter, but was up to her eyeballs in work. She asked, if I didn't have an agent in three months time, to e-mail her again. I did, and she said she wanted to look as the manuscript, but to wait another three months to send it off. I agreed, and sent it off three months later. And I waited.

Was I put off by waiting? Well, sure. Of course. But she was upfront and honest with me, and it was my choice to wait. She didn't put a gun to my head. So I waited. This was around August of 2006. I wrote her again in December of that same year, and she said she hadn't yet been able to read it. Her assistant, a junior agent, wrote me and said she'd like to read it. I agreed, and the first agent passed it off to the second agent.

And that's when the fun began. This was around the first of January, 2007, just about a year since I'd originally sent off the manuscript. The junior agent gave me the three month time frame, and when I wrote in three months, gave me another three month time frame. I am patient, but my patience was starting to wear thin. I wrote said junior agent, and she didn't respond. I waited a month and wrote again, with the same results. Eventually I wrote the original agent, who spoke to her junior associate, who apparently said, "I think I rejected it."

I wrote junior agent yet again, to confirm this, and got no response. Finally, she returned on e-mail in July of 2008. " I have been excessively tardy in replying to you, for which I profusely apologize," she said. " I am writing to see if you are still interested in having me read the material you sent me, in regards to potential representation. If you would like to withdraw it from consideration, I will not be offended in the least. Please let me know how you would like to proceed."

I wrote her back and said, yes, I'm still interested, but how long will it take?

A month later, she wrote me back, stating: "Probably within three months, which is my standard response time frame now. "

She hadn't had time to read my novel, but yet had time to post almost daily updates to her blog.

This was in August of 2008, mind you, two and a half years since I'd queried the original agent, and over a year and a half since the junior agent had agreed to read the ms. Flabbergasted, I put it out of my mind and set a reminder to e-mail her again in three months. No response, though I did get a mass e-mail telling me that she had left the employ of the original agent to start her own agency.

Finally, in February of 2009 - over three years from the date of my initial query - she finally returned my e-mail, and said that she had decided against representing the novel, because she had decided to "no longer represent horror."

I deleted the e-mail. My novel wasn't horror. It's an urban fantasy. After all that time, she still hadn't actually read the thing but had apparently gotten tired of my increasingly-annoyed e-mails and finally decided to blow me off.

To this day, I have absolutely no problem with the first agent. She was polite, informed me of the long wait, and when she still couldn't get to it she passed it off to someone she thought could. That's professional and courteous, and I really appreciated her efforts.

The second agent, however, I will always have problems with. She not only repeatedly lied to me, but she also lied to her boss when she told me she had rejected my ms. I can only imagine that she's treated others the same way. It was my choice to keep waiting for her (which in retrospect I much regret) but, by her chosen career, she's put herself in a position between the publisher and the author, a potential gateway if you will, and she has a responsibility to treat both ends of that equation fairly. In my case, at least, she failed tremendously.

It was demoralizing and depressing, to say the least. I'm not naming names because of my respect for the original agent, but I will say that if the junior agent came to me with a publishing contract in hand and an offer to represent me, I would not think twice about walking away. I certainly bear some responsibility for being silly enough to wait that long, during which time I stopped querying other agents, but I never would have done that had this junior agent not kept stringing me along. I'll certainly never make that mistake again.

Plot Points or How to Resurrect the Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:23:00 +0000

Okay, so I'm still working on my third novel. 90,000 words and counting. But there's a problem. Without giving too much of the plot away, there are these two bad... guys, we'll call them. They've stolen a body from the morgue, a body they need to resurrect, but for plot purposes I need them to wait a night before attempting to perform the ritual needed to resurrect it.

I need a reason - a logical (within the framework of the supernatural, of course) reason that they have to delay 24 hours. I've come up with a couple of reasons - the ritual needs to happen at midnight and it's 12:30 by the time they escape with the body, it has to happen under a full moon and tomorrow just so happens to be a full moon - but none of them feel right.

Any ideas?

Simpatico with My Words

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 01:03:00 +0000

simpatico

PRONUNCIATION:

(sim-PAH-ti-ko, -PAT-i-)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Like-minded; compatible.
2. Congenial; likable.

That's the word of the day. Well, one of several words of the day, actually. I subscribe to at least three different WotD e-mail lists: Wordsmith.org, Dictionary.com, and Visual Thesaurus. I saw "at least three" because I think there are more, but that's all I can find at the moment. Simpaticio, my favorite of the three words for today, is from Wordsmith.

I save these. I have WotD's stored in various e-mail archives, going back to 2001. Why do I save them? I guess I'm convinced that, some day, when I really need the perfect word, I'll be able to search through my e-mail and find it. Hasn't happened yet, but all it would take is just once to make all that archiving worthwhile. Right?

Or maybe I save them just because I love words. Simpatico, oblation, stultify, incongruous, euphoric, luau, azimuth, frangible, foundling, ragamuffin, attendee, tarradiddle and Kafkaesque. That's just a small sampling of the words sitting in my inbox, and reading them now makes me happy. Even if I never actually use them in one of my novels or articles.

It was stultifyingly hot at the luau, thought the ragamuffin, her long pants and thick wool sweater incongruous with the short skirts and loud Hawaiian shirts worn by the other attendees around her.

I guess I'm just feeling simpatico with my words. And now I'm off to search out more WotD lists. Because, you know, three really isn't enough. And who knows? Maybe I'll find inspiration to finally complete that third novel. That would leave me feeling euphoric indeed. And that's no tarradiddle!

Universal Health Care

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:12:00 +0000

I really don't get why certain people begrudge health care for others. "Well, sure, I think everyone should be able to go to the doctor... but not if it raises my taxes!" Since when did the American people become so selfish, so single-minded?

My wife and our son and I went to a democratic rally over the weekend, and the number of people outside the gates holding anti-health care signs were amazing. They somehow equate health care reform with Communism, trojan horses (whatever the hell that even means,) and Socialism. Personally, I'm all for Socialism, but what the dems are considering is so far from Socialism it's ridiculous. The idea of universal health care has been watered down to a public option, and now we probably won't even get that.

And speaking of which, I just love the argument that "the USA is bigger than (Canada, the UK, France, Germany, whatever) so we can't afford universal health care." There's a hole in that argument so huge that you could drive a fleet of Haliburton trucks through it. Yes, we ARE bigger - but so is our GNP. We'd have to spend more money to make universal health care happen, but, not so ironically, we also have more money to spend. If the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France can make universal health care work - and, yes, despite that the Republicans might want you to believe, it DOES indeed work - then why can't we?

At this point, I'm not going to be satisfied with anything less than a public option. I have no clue whether it's going to happen or not, but it needs to happen. It would be the first step toward true universal health care, which should be everyone's ultimate goal.

Except, of course, for the conservatives, who would prefer the massive insurance companies just keep on making money hand over fist and denying sick people and people who can't afford health insurance health care, their supposed Christian values be damned.

Why do I bother?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:13:00 +0000

It's been over a year since I last posted to this blog, and almost that long since I worked on my third novel. I need to get out there, contact agents, submit stuff, but the whole process is so frustrating. Agents don't seem to want you unless you can guarantee to make them a mint, and who can? Publishers don't want you without an agent.

And yet I know some people make it through this vicious cycle. Do I not have the dedication? Am I just going to let my 2.75 novels languish forever on my hard drive? Am I really willing to give up? I have no idea. As of now, I'm frustrated, but at least half of that frustration comes from myself, my seeming inability to get off my ass and get back into the query game.

Do I self-publish? I know some people have has success with that, but would I? I dearly want a real contract from a real publishing house and a real advance check, but as it stands now, no one is reading my novels. Wouldn't it be better that people at least have the chance to read them, even if they were only print on demand and ebooks?

I don't know. I do know that the novels are good, well-crafted, and intelligent works of art, if I do say so myself. I'm a good writer, and my novels are certainly better than some of the dreck I see being published out there. So why not me? Why do I seemingly lack that drive to keep pushing, pushing, pushing, to make it happen? Am I afraid to succeed? Do I overestimate my own talent? I just don't know.

Frustration and Comic Con

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:36:00 +0000

So it's been nearly a year since I've posted to this blog. I've been frustrated by my inability to sell my novels, and that frustration has taken a toll on my writing. Sad, but true. I've got to start doing better.

And now for the Comic Con part of the subject line. We (myself, my wife, and our six-year-old son) went to Comic Con for the very first time last weekend and had a blast. There were some downsides, to be sure, (the massive, headache-inducing crowds!) but we had a really good time nevertheless. Spent way too much money, but, hey, it's a vacation, and that's what you do on vacations, right?

We didn't attend a lot of panels, something I regret and intend to rectify if we ever go again. But the exhibit hall was truly a site to behold, and where I spent nearly all my time. We were there Wednesday night, Thursday, and Friday, and I barely managed to get through the entire hall. I bought a lot of stuff, got a fair amount of freebies, and took a lot of pictures with my son posed with various costumed people. His favorite? People dressed up as characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender, of course.

We also went to Legoland and the crowds there were thin by comparison. Pretty much everything there is built from Legos! A really fun place, and my son had a great time -and so did we!

And now back to the writing thing. I'm still working on my third novel. I need to stop worrying about selling them and just get back to writing them. Not that selling isn't my ultimate goal, and one I'll continue to work at, but I'm going to have to get past the point where I let it distract me from actually sitting down and writing. Wish me luck!

What have I been up to?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:00:00 +0000

I haven't updated this blog in a long time - and the longer I put it off, the harder it is to start writing again. (Funny how that works!) But I've been working on finishing and editing last year's Nano effort, and trying to decide if I'm even going to participate this year. If I don't, it'll be the first time in four years since I haven't, and so I probably will, but...

It's frustrating. I'm currently waiting on two agents to get back to me - one who has had my book for nearly a year! - and I just want to sell the thing and move on to the next. I've been advised by at least two big-name authors, both of whom I have huge respect for, to send directly to the publisher and avoid the agent, but somehow I haven't done that yet. I want an agent. (Now, please, as opposed to later, thank you very much.)

And thus I keep plugging away.

Too Long

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:57:00 +0000

It's been way too long since I've updated this blog, and I'm sorry about that. If I made New Year's resolutions, I'd resolve to do better in 2007 - but since I don't, I'll just have to make a concerted effort to actually write in this thing more than once a month!

Nano went alright this year. 50k wasn't too difficult, but finishing up the novel is proving to be challenging. I have everything worked out, and I just need to put it down on paper. November and December, however, are busy months, and I just haven't done it. I guess I'll be tackling the ending in January.

So how is everyone out there doing? Do I even still have any readers left?

Six Weird Things About Me

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:56:00 +0000

I found this on another blog and thought I'd answer it on my own:

Each player of this game starts with the “6 weird things about you”. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says “you are tagged” in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

And here are my answers:

I'm the useless psychic. I always know mundane things just before they're going to happen. About a year ago, my son turned the thermostat on the refrigerator to the maximum level, freezing the line that dispensed water. A few weeks later, I dreamt that I got out of bed, walked into the kitchen, and pressed the dispenser button. Something inside the fridge clinked and, finally, the water worked again. I woke up and followed the pattern from my dream and, sure enough, everything happened exactly as I'd seen. Even the "clink." I also knew the exact moment my first wife died, though I was nowhere near the hospital when it happened.
I'm the owner and webmaster of the Official Chris de Burgh (think "Lady in Red") website. That's not weird in itself, but most people in the US have no clue who he is.
When I was a kid, my friend Brad and I were putting together a tent in the front yard when we decided to put all the tent poles together and see how high we could make them. We hit an electric wire and nearly electrocuted ourselves. The bottom of my feet were burned.
I collect action figure from the 1970's, and probably have more toys than my five-year-old son does.
I'm double-jointed in the second-to-last finger in my right hand. I can "lock" that finger into place, pointing straight out, even while the rest of my fingers are balled into a fist. I've never met anyone else who can do this, and you can't either. Go ahead, try it.
I can recite all of the phone numbers, driver's license numbers, and credit card numbers that I've ever had, but have a hard time remembering my anniversary.

Want to join in the fun? Reply to this post and tell everyone six weird things about yourself!

I've been busy...

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:41:00 +0000

I'm sorry for not posting to this for so long. Both my wife and I have been down with a killer cold for the last two weeks - and then there's Nano. I've participated in NanoWrimo every year since 2003, and have reached the requisite 50k every time. It's going to be hard to do it this year, though I'm going to do my best to prevail.

I'll write more later when I'm feeling a bit better.

Thanks to everyone who left comments, suggested names, and what have you. I really appreciate you reading!

Agents

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 23:35:00 +0000

We were discussing literary agents in the comment section of another blog, and the discussion was so interesting that I thought I'd bring it over here. Agents, like people in general, range from the nice ones to the dreadful ones, and I've encountered all three. Some will blow you off with a tiny slip of paper essentially saying "Thanks for wasting my time." Some will ignore you completely. But the worst will blow you off while also trying to sell you their "editing services," and those are the agents I have absolutely no respect for.

I've been a full-time non-fiction freelancer for twelve years, but have yet to even get my foot in the door in the world of fiction. I've written three novels, the first of which has gone through multiple revisions to the point where I believe I've honed it into something to be proud of. Scratch that: I am proud of it. But that's not enough. I want to sell the damned thing, and its sequels. And, in order to do that, I need an agent.

And it's frustrating. I've been trying to find an agent for going on three years now, which is why I can lay claim to having encountered all of the types mentioned in the first paragraph at the start of this entry. Now I just need to encounter one who'll take the time to actually read the book, and who can hopefully see the potential in not only the novel but in me as well. I'm willing to work hard to make them and the publishing house they sell my novels to a lot of money. I just need to be given the chance.

So, gentle reader, (I always hated that phrase, but it somehow seems appropriate here!) what are some of your experiences - good and bad - with agents?

I need help choosing a name

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:06:00 +0000

I'm working on a novel and I need a surname for one of the families I'm writing about. Without revealing too much, I'll outline this --

Bernard "Bernie" Noname is the father of the family. He's twice divorced. He's also recently dead. Born and raised in a small Midwestern town in Illinois, he has many secrets about his family's history that apparently died with him.

Connor Noname is the product of Bernie's first marriage. He's in his late twenties, disgruntled, estranged from his father, came back to the town he grew up in for his father's funeral but mainly to see his half-sister from his father's second marriage, Sabrina.

Sabrina Noname. Sixteen, coming out of a bit of a Goth girl phase but sweet underneath. Very intelligent. Popular in school, but has had a tendency to "go along with the crowd" to gain that popularity. Missed her brother, happy to see him but at the same time resentful that it took the death of their father to bring him home.

Here are some of the last name I'm been considering:

Blake
Black
Hawthorne
Underlay
Wayne
Murdoch
Madison

So what do you think?

Help me out with this and, if I use the name you suggest, I'll list you in the "thank yours" when and if the book is published.

You can go home again, but just for a while

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 21:25:00 +0000

I went to the Carthage, Illinois (population: 3,000) school system from Kindergarten through 11th, then moved to Dallas, Texas for my 12th. As you can imagine, I never really bonded with the kids in 12th, so always considered Carthage my school. Even though I hated it. (More on that later.)

Anyway, I found out a couple of weeks ago that they were having the 20th high school reunion. I vacillated on going, and finally decided last Monday to take the eight-hour drive. And I'm glad I did!

I didn't have a good school life. I was a chubby kid and constantly picked on. My dad was a violent alcoholic and so I had that to contend with at home. All in all, it made for a rough life growing up. And having not seen these kids in 21 years, well, I had no idea what to expect, and was nervous as hell going back there.

But my first instinct was that, if nothing else, the experience would be cathartic, and my first instinct was right. All the pain and grudges I felt over school have pretty much gone away. Everyone was happy to see me, I was actually one of the most gregarious of the bunch at the reunion (I was painfully shy in school,) and had a great time.

But, more than that, it was great to reconnect with friends and classmates. I even confessed my school crushes to each of the crushees, something I'd never done in high school. It was very freeing. And, amazingly, all five of us that bowled together on a team were there, so we managed to take a bowling picture together.

Here are some pics of the trip:

http://www.sparkynet.com/1986/

So what's all this have to do with writing, you might ask? (You there, in the third row. Yeah, you, wearing the hat, I just heard you.) Well, my first two novels are set almost entirely in Carthage, and Carthage makes a cameo in my third novel. There's a lot of material there, in my past, and even more now that I've made the trip home again.

The Language We Use

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:23:00 +0000

My wife bought a new comforter for our bed. When my four-year-old son Fletcher saw the new comforter, he asked what happened to the old one. We told him it had a rip in it and that we didn't need it anymore. He was still curious what we'd done with it. The conversation went something like this:

"Where's the old comforter with the rip?" Fletcher asked.

"It's in the back of the car," my wife said, "so we can donate it to Salvation Army."

"Why?"

"So other people can have it."

"Who will have it?"

"We donate things so that poor people can use them."

"Poor people like things with rips?" he asked.

My wife and I broke into laughter. As far as I know, poor people don't enjoy sleeping under a ripped comforter any more than rich or middle-class people enjoy sleeping under a ripped comforter. And, really, it's probably poor form to refer to whoever ends up with our castoff comforter as "poor people."

But the whole thing made me laugh and, later, thing about just how influential language can be. Which ties the whole thing into this column, which is, after all, supposed to be at least vaguely about writing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find some more ripped stuff - an old shirt, perhaps, and more than a few pairs of socks - to give away to the poor.

National Novel Writing Month

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:25:00 +0000

I've done National Novel Writing Month (or Nano for short,) in which you do your dead-level best to write a novel in thirty days, every year since 2003. Small Things was my first effort, though it required a good two years editing and rewriting until it was up to snuff. Next came Threads, the second book in the eventual Small Things trilogy. Last year I tried something different, a stand-alone, as-of-yet-untitled novel that I'm still working on.

So why am I tell you all of this? To inform you about Nano, for certain, but also to vent about my frustration over having not yet gotten the first book published. Certainly there's some hubris there - why should I, my first novel out, get published, when it takes some authors virtually dozens of books before they finally sell even one? But I'm confident in the book, and have revised it and revised it, and I know it's a good read. And so I keep trudging along, trying to get an agent (I'm just targeting one in particular right now, waiting to hear back from her) and continuing to write.

So will I do Nano again this year? Sure, I will. It's September and I haven't quite decided what to tackle yet, but I'm for sure going to do it. For one thing, it'll be my third year being the Municipal Liaisons for the Northwest Arkansas area, and I've got to set a good example. But that's not the only reason I'm doing it.

As frustrated as I am at not having an agent, at not selling the first novel, I love to write. Though I still have high hopes for a career as a novelist, I imagine I'll keep writing forever, published or not. I'm a writer, after all, and that's what I do. I'm still confident that I'm going to sell that novel - or another novel - but until that time (and, I'm imagine, well after) I'll keep plugging away, putting words down on the page and dreaming of walking into Borders or Barnes and Noble and seeing Small Things or another one of my books on the shelf. And then I'll cackle like a madman, kick up my heels, pull out a sharpie and sign every last one.

Are Writing Source Books Really Helpful?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:45:00 +0000

Are writing source books really helpful? Other than making the writer of said source material money, I'm not so sure. In my experience, few are worth the price, but a couple do stand out for me:

Writer's Guide to Places, by Don Prues and Jack Heffron, has proven to be invaluable to me as a writer. Sure, some will argue, it doesn't cover every aspect of any give place (how could it?) but it does generally provide you with enough information to fake it.

Write what you know, they say. That's all well and good, but not every story can be set in your hometown. If you need to get the general layout of, say, Chicago, because you're writing a few scenes there, you could do a lot worse than this book. Sure, it's no substitute for actually being there, but it gives you enough details to add much-needed flavor to your words.

Descriptionary, by Marc McCutcheon, is another book worth adding to your resource library. The subtitle of Descriptionary says it's "the book for when you know what it is, but not what it's called." That actually happens to me a fair amount. If you own this book, however, you can quickly flip through the included glossaries and find out, for instance, that the highest ranking officer in the Navy is a Fleet Admiral, that cryptology is the science of deciphering hidden or disguised communication, and that a Parsec is a measurement equaling 3.26 light years. Pretty darned useful, if you ask me.

There are other useful books out there, to be sure, but I've found these to be two of the best.

Confessions of an Un/Published Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 03:38:00 +0000

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat - I'm not an unpublished writer, it's just that I've yet to sell any of my novels, hence the title of this blog. I've been a full-time non-fiction freelancer for over ten years and have published well over a thousand articles and reviews, and yet haven't been able to get my foot in the door in the world of fiction.

And, yes, it's frustrating. I have two and a half novels under my belt, and I know I'm good, but getting an agent to even look at the thing let alone consider representing you seems tantamount to winning the U.S. Open without a tennis racquet. But yet I persevere.

This blog will chronicle my experiences as I continue to write, submit to agents and, hopefully one day, sell that first novel.