Tony Bertauski's Blog, page 4

Magic at Twilight (not sparkly)...

The twilight of sleep. When the conscious mind begins pulling the shutters and the subconscious goes out for the night.

The other night I was between the sheets and going under when I heard and saw a girl at the side of my bed. I will repeat that. I heard and saw a girl lean over my bed. It wasn't long, happened in a less than a second. She whispered so clearly.

Wake up, Tony.

She said that. I heard it. I saw it. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was no girl there. Of course not.

I'm not suggesting she was real. In fact, it's not the first time I've heard something like that, always in the twilight zone (boom!). I don't believe in ghosts, I don't think anyone was trying to communicate from another plane. I guess all those things could be true, I'm just saying I don't believe that's the case.

I can't remember which book it was, maybe Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, that gave pretty good insight into how our brains function. There's a fact that I'm totally going to butcher, but it was something like, given medical technology today, we've learn more about the brain in the last couple of decades than all the time preceding it.


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Magic at Twilight (not sparkly vampires)...

The twilight of sleep. When the conscious mind begins pulling the shutters and the subconscious goes out for the night.

The other night I was between the sheets and going under when I heard and saw a girl at the side of my bed. I will repeat that. I heard and saw a girl lean over my bed. It wasn't long, happened in a less than a second. She whispered so clearly.

Wake up, Tony.

She said that. Yep. I heard it. I saw it. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was no girl there. Of course not.

I'm not suggesting she was real. I don't believe in ghosts, I don't think anyone was trying to communicate from another plane. I guess all those things could be true, I'm just saying I don't believe that's the case.

I can't remember which book it was, maybe Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, that gave pretty good insight into how our brains function. There's a fact that I'm totally going to butcher, but it was something like, given medical technology today, we've learn more about the brain in the last couple of decades than all the time preceding it.

Whether it was Pinker's book or one similar, it described brain abnormalities and how easy perception can be fooled. Check our the rubber hand experiment. Reality isn't always what we think. And abnormalities where parts of our brain are over or under active can result in neuroses. People can actually hear voices. They hear them because that part of the brain is behaving abnormally, or as I understand it, interrupting thoughts or making them vivid.

We had a friend who was convinced she was possessed by demons. She heard their voices and felt their compulsions. She just wanted someone to believe her. I think there were many who did believe she was hearing voices, but not for the reasons she believed.

I heard a voice and, full confession, I was a little freaked out. But then I went right back to sleep. However, put me in a dank basement with things scurrying in the dark, I'll be a full believer in minutes.

It's all about perspective.

I think twilight is a strange state for the brain, when thoughts are more vivid than normal waking and can be mistaken for something else. There's a creative window that opens.  I find some of my best writing solutions occur in the twilight before falling asleep. If the conditions are right, I'll lay there with a storyline (or other problem). More often than not, answers appear and I remember them come morning.

One happened the other night.

It's not exactly enlightenment or genius. In fact, the idea was so simple I even wondered how I didn't see it before and figured the time just wasn't right.

I finished the FOREVERLAND and HALFSKIN trilogies a few years ago. Since then I continued writing in the Claus Universe (Ronin, Book 6 is on the way). I'm almost completely done with Ronin and about a third of the way through book 2 rough draft in the Maze series. Then it hits me.

Foreverland and Halfskin aren't finished.
In a flash, I saw how the characters in both stories should not only continue but crossover. I have a lot of ground to cover before I start digging in and not sure where I'll start, but I've seen the future. My worlds are born. I don't need to make more.

I just need to see how far they go.

Foreverland and Halfskin to Continue...

There's a creative window that opens during sleep.

I think it has something to do with shuttering the conscious mind and letting the subconscious run wild. I find some of my best writing solutions occur in the twilight before falling asleep. If the conditions are right, I'll lay there with a storyline (or other problem). More often than not, answers appear and I remember them come morning.

A good one happened the other night.

It's not exactly enlightenment or genius. In fact, the idea was so simple I even wondered how I didn't see it before and figured the time just wasn't right.

I finished the FOREVERLAND and HALFSKIN trilogies a few years ago. Since then I continued writing in the Claus Universe (Ronin, Book 6 is on the way), finished a Drayton novel and began the Maze series. I'm almost completely done with Ronin and about a third of the way through book 2 rough draft in the Maze series. Then it hits me last night.

Foreverland and Halfskin aren't finished.
In a flash of insight, I saw how the characters in both stories should not only continue but crossover. I have a lot of ground to cover before I start digging in and not sure where I'll start, but I've seen the future. My worlds are born. I don't need to make more. I just need to see how far they go.

FOREVERLANDHALFSKINSOCKET GREENY MAZE CLAUSDRAYTON



(Side note. I had entered the twilight of sleep a few nights ago when I heard and saw a girl at the side of my bed. She whispered my name and I was wide awake. I believe twilight is a strange state for the brain, when thoughts are more vivid than normal waking and be mistaken for something else. But full confession, I was a little freaked out.)

The Biggest and Baddest of them all...

The champion a major theme for me.

Imagine a guardian that's always got your back. It stands at the foot of your bed, it watches over you when the day is dark, follows you down narrow alleys and carries you when you need it most. I think I just described Jesus. But for the non-Christian or secular soul, it could be anything--the angel, the spirit, the good luck charm.

A big scary dog.

Aussie (white) and Jake guarding the kayaks.
It's comforting to believe everything will be all right. Nothing willhurt us. It's not possible, really, but it's the lie that comforts. The truth is, there is suffering. We can't avoid it. And our guardian isn't going to protect us in that way. Not if they're compassionate.

We told our kids, early on, our jobs as parents were to help them grow up. To become adults. When our son turned 21, we was still living at home. He'd just finished college. We told him we weren't helping him by living here. On his 21 birthday, he moved to an apartment on his own. Scariest thing he'd ever done.

Thing of it is, I'm 51 and still growing up. I've been sitting meditation for over thirty years, been to quite a few retreats and listened to countless talks. But it's taken that long to realize something that's obvious.

I'm a consumer.

We have to eat and breathe to survive. Other organisms are harmed in order for us to live. It's the nature of the world we live in. But I'm consuming other things, too. The little addictions of getting... the high of great sex, the charge of a positive review, the dirty thrill of a politician getting just desserts, the sweetness of an email or Facebook mention or Instagram like or the gut-warming thrill of slamming a ping pong ball down my son's throat. I'm an the emotional cookie monster.


Nom-nom-nom-nom.



I think growing up is the slow awakening to the fact that this is a shit show. We're not here to get what we want. I'm 51 and still trying to get off the tit. It's a tough thing to give up. That protective embrace, the dad who will stop an intruder.

Life, as we know it, isn't here to serve us. The bear eats the baby deer and we all die. Those stark facts are too much for kids. I lost a lot of sleep because I was convinced someone would climb up the TV antennae and do something. I don't know what. Punch me, shoot me. Didn't matter. I remember hearing someone on the news talk about a case of blackmail. It sounded terrifying. At school, I confessed to the teacher I was really afraid of being blackmailed.

I still remember the look on her face.

Then it was The Exorcist. I swear my sister's bed was levitating. Then Freddy Krueger, don't fall asleep. Then Amityville Horror, there was nowhere to hide. My brother would have night terrors of Bloody Mary coming for him and wake up screaming. I was right there with him.

What kind of world is this?

That was all bullshit, turns out. But the truth was just as overwhelming. There are children born into families where they are harmed. Countries where they are punished. Schools where they are beaten. That shit happens and it's happening now. I can't remember what book I was reading, it might have been Sam Harris's Waking Up, where he described a boy's account of being repeatedly raped by his stepfather in brutal detail that had gone on for years. It was gut-wrenching. Even now, years later, it's difficult to accept this is the world we live in.

That explains my reaction to Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls. It was the last time I bawled fiercely while reading. And then the movie, holy shit. The scene in the school where the monster says It is time for the third tale...

How did I not see this theme earlier in my life?

Flury: Journey of a Snowman was the first time I saw it. Flury is the snowman, if you haven't read it, and I started the book with a scene in mind. Made me all weepy when I got to it. Now there's Ronin. This is so obvious, what I'm doing. Writing about the champion in always wished was in my life.

I'm in the final edits for Ronin: The Last Reindeer. If you want a peek into my head, it'll be available November 1 of this year and available for preorder I don't know when. The main character is a boy named Ryder Mack. Strange things have happened all of his life, especially when he's in danger. But a surreal turn of events reveals who his secret guardian is, and the plan someone has to capture him.

Ronin is the biggest and baddest of them all, the one no one has ever sang about, the one who protects the herd and a young boy. He's no Rudolf. He's is the last reindeer.

And he's bad ass.


http://bertauski.com/claus

12,000 words into the Maze...

12,000 words into The Essence of Sunny Grimm (Book 2 of the Maze).

That's a little over 10% to the finish line, I think. About one legal pad of notes. In case you're dropping in on this blog and missed an earlier entry, my process is slow as shit. I write notes on a legal pad before I bang them out on the computer. It's usually me, a cup of coffee, and a pen and paper to record a slowly unfolding story.


The journey, this far, has gone in very scifi direction. So for those you of that couldn't wait till that Drayton-Urban Fantasy-SciFan horseshit was out of the way, here we are back in the scifi world and I've found myself diving a deeper into the slang and expanding on the technology that reminds a bit of Neuromancer or Altered Carbon.

The story has leaped farther into the future than I first anticipated. And a new dimension of interviews has introduced itself. So for those you who have read The Waking of Grey Grimm, remember the interview in the beginning and end of the book? I've expanded on that. And it's slowly become a bigger piece of the puzzle (or bigger piece of the Maze). I have a feeling it's not done growing, either. I think it's going to end up part of a huge twist.

These interviews remind me of HBO's True Detectives, season 1. The bits where Matthew McConaughey is telling the story after the fact. I found that to be the most intriguing. It jumped around the time line, made me wonder what had happened and why.

In The Essence of Sunny Grimm, the interviews will serve in much the same way. They'll help explain some of the terminology and tie up plot confusion. But it won't just be a generous platter to "tell" the story and not "show". Like I said, it's going to be a much bigger piece to the big twist.

Not sure how.

So far, it's all about Freddy. I didn't see that coming either. But so far he's following clues that relate to the memory of Sunny Grimm. So the book is still title Maze: The Essence of Sunny Grimm. I think it will remain that, but it's all been about Freddy so far. Will he fall in love with her? I don't think so, but there will be an element of grief, of lost love, of reunion, all that.

The thing about this story is the thought-experiment element. I'm so very grateful that social media and video games weren't at the level they are now when I was a kid. I think it would have ruined me. I would've posted shit that I shouldn't.

Back in my day, the only alternate realities (or what's been coined unreality in Essence) were things like Pacman. That's not much, but the compelling element to video games, I think, is more than the challenge of solving something, it's the absence of consequences where we bought another life for a quarter. Let's take that concept and go to the extreme.

Video games, or the Maze, or any unreality, are now accessible and completely subversive in The Essence of Sunny Grimm. As The Waking of Grey Grimm established, the Maze is so convincing that we can't tell the difference between an unreality and base reality (base reality being the one we're in right now). If that existed today, how many of us would choose unreality over base reality? What makes one more real than the other? And what created base reality in the first place? And the most important question The Essence of Sunny Grimm seeks to answer, why was base reality created?

In essence, what's the point of all of this?

So that's the aim of the arrow so far. I've enjoyed the first 10% of the ride through the unreality of my imagination. Let's see where it goes from here.

The Maze Want the Maze? Read or listen to the audiobook.

And So the Maze Begins...

One of my favorite parts.

The beginning of a new story. That time of tilling the ground and planting seeds. The wind pushing characters this way and that. An arc coming together.




The truth is, halfway through writing this thing I'll be swinging a hammer at the keyboard and sobbing into lukewarm coffee because I'll be lost and frustrated. It's like giving birth. Without the blood and tearing. But everything else.

I just finished the rough draft of Ronin: The Last Reindeer . That needs to simmer a few months before I polish it one last time. In the meantime, it's back to the notebook to start a new story.

Maze: The Essence of Sunny Grimm (Book 2)
So this is a sequel to The Waking of Grey Grimm. 

There's an upside to writing a sequel. There are already pieces to pick up. This is how I start. Write all the character names and what happened. Start scribbling possible story arcs in one line sound bytes. Circle the ones that have heat. Come up with possible twists. Mix in a pot and stir.

With no deadline, I like this. I come up with some ideas and sleep on it. That's where the creative knots get worked out, in the twilight of dreams. It's been been a couple of weeks  now and I haven't typed a single character, but I've sketched out the following.

It's twenty years since book 1. The Maze is now legal. Freddy (the detective in book 1) has become an agent with a special skill set. He can sense when he's in the Maze, can taste the essence of another reality. When he runs into an unusual case, he begins to follow clues that lead him back to an incident that happened twenty years earlier--the Grimm case. This will lead him a worldwide conspiracy and begin to reveal the true nature of the Maze, how it's absorbing this reality to make a new one. The only thing that's keeping that from happening is the essence of Sunny Grimm. But that might come to an end.

Or something like that.

I'm still a little ways away from hitting keys. Once I do, this could all come together over night. Or fall apart. I was 10,000 words into Foreverland is Dead when I started over. That's the agony and the challenge, to see if I can pull this together and come up with a story that's compelling and unpredictable. No matter how painful, I keep coming back for more.

Same way people have more than one baby.

Visit the Maze!

Ronin: The Last Reindeer Cover Feedback

So the sixth book in the Claus Universe is nearing the finish.

I'm way out ahead this year, like six months. The release is scheduled for November 1, 2018. I'll be requesting ARC readers probably in October, but for now I went ahead and got the cover ready. The artist really dialed in on what I requested, but I want your feedback before I moved forward. Take a look and comment. You like?

Any feedback would be fantastic. Tell me what you'd like to see added or taken away or changed. This is your chance to shape this project.

Claus fans, comment below!

Drayton is Loose.

Today is day.Drayton is loose.
Get your copyhttp://bertauski.com/drayton

Kissing the Sky

Dope.

That's what I called weed the other day and a twenty-something thought that was hilarious. Heroin is dope. Weed is just weed.

She had a point. It's remarkable that weed is still federally illegal. It's also pretty amazing it's legal in ten states. How the hell is fentanyl still legal? Shit is killing people and a plant growing in ground is illegal?

What the hell.

I chat up the legalization of weed  often. I don't even use and I'm out there making the argument that if it was legal we'd all be growing it. You can't grow fentanyl in the backyard. That might have something to do with it.

My plans are to give weed another roll when I turn 60. I don't use it now because it never did me much good in college. I just got super paranoid. The last time I pissed my pants. Which is a pretty good reason.

I know enough users that have experienced very positive results from weed, psychologically and physically. And now there's some interest results coming from psychedelics, in particular mushrooms and LSD. Michael Pollan just wrote about using them to treat things such as PTSD, depression and end of life transition.

Pollan is better known for writing about food and ecology so this is a sharp turn. I recently heard him on Rogan's podcast discussing the scientific approach on their meaningful and lasting effects as well as our understanding of consciousness. You might think these substances light up brain activity but it actually has the opposite effect. An fMRI study revealed that wasn't true. Pollan suggested they actually suppressed brain activity, in particular where ego activity is located.

Someone described it's lasting effects like this. The mind is a snowy slope and our thoughts are stone rolling down it. Over time, groves develop and stones tend to fall these tracks. Habits develop and addictions result. A positive trip wipes the slope clean with a fresh layer of snow.

I like that analogy, but if you think I'm game, I'm not. I'm so intrigued and so wish I could, but I can't even handle weed. Keep in mind, Pollan points out these are guided trips where someone is there to talk the user through the experience. It's not for those with unstable personalities or psychological disorders. I still have a hard time peeing in public restrooms. There are doors I don't want to open.

I'll stay with meditation.

But this could be the beginning of some real treatments regarding mental health. I found my way through depression via meditation and therapy. It was hard work and a lot time, but that route was possible, at least it worked for me it did. If there are safe methods to significantly heal the mind, they should be explored. A hundred years from now, humanity might be astounded we just suffered through mental disease in the same way we look at our ancestors suffering through a illnesses that are easily cured today.

It's not hard to imagine our ancestors stumbling onto psychedelics. They saw God. Or a dinosaur.

The Handmaid's Tale

Whew.

Finished season one of Handmaid's Tale. It's rough at times to watch. Not from a cinematic point of view. It's the content.


I'd watched the first episode many months ago and got about halfway through. It seemed done well enough but I don't think I was in the right head space for it. After a second shot, I went through the first season fairly quick. The writing and dialog is very good. The acting as well, all around. Anything with Ann Dowd, you have my attention.

It's rough to watch at times for a number of reasons. The inhumane treatment of women, the systematic abuse and rape that's embraced by a zealous government and the hypocrisy of its leaders  maintaining and frequenting bordellos. The cinematography lends a dreary sense to the story and captures the everpresent hopelessness and callousness.

As dystopian and fictional as all this seems, it's not as far removed from reality as we want to believe. The Handmain's Tale is a good reminder that slavery was still legal less than 200 years ago in the United States and women gained the right to vote about 100 years ago. It's absurd to think these things were so relatively recent in human history.

Season 1 has a very gratifying ending. It's not one where June, the protagonist, gets revenge and rights all the wrongs. It holds to the distorted reality of the story. June uses the very system that has brought her suffering against the people who created it. An ending that stuck with me for days. While season 2 has already begun, I'm still ruminating on season 1.