Patrick Todoroff's Blog, page 28
October 21, 2013
October 18, 2013
Ranger Martin and the Zombie Apocalypse
Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead (great movie!) The Walking Dead… we have quite the appetite for rotting flesh, don’t we? *snirk*
Fellow genre writer Jack Flacco’s debut novel “Ranger Martin and the Zombie Apocalypse” continues in this fine tradition with a story about a grizzled survivor, a rusty pick-up, and his trusty 12-gauge. Protecting fellow survivors, uncovering an insidious conspiracy, and above all, blasting away at hordes of shambling undead is what this is all about. 
The genuinely refreshing thing is while RM is fraught with tension and action, (and zombies) it keeps from decomposing into ponderous, grim darkness with a salting of black humor and a light tone. Thankfully, the book keeps on the side of a good old-fashioned Saturday morning cartoon rather than decomposing into a relentless, dreary tale of survival. It’s the undead with their tongue firmly in cheek.
If you’re looking to waste some time with some good old-fashioned Zed-blasting, this is the book for you.
Be sure to click through to his Website to stay notified of the release date. I’m looking forward to more from this guy.
* Full Disclosure: I know the author through online venues and received an ARC of Ranger Martin.
Writer or Salesperson?
Couple recent experiences drove home the notion that successful writing these days isn’t so much due to good prose as slick promotion. A recent Writing Conference standard “Ten-Minute Pitch” where you get a hasty sit-down with a real ‘literary agent’ had a friend discussing not her books/stories but her online presence. Then, a local seminar by an indie author was all about full-time marketing and not an ounce about craft.
No more ‘Can you write?” but “Do you FacebookPintrestTumblrTweetBlogGoodreadsAmazonPromoBlogTour?”
I know as much effort and creativity go into marketing a product as the making the product, (maybe more) and I get that advertising/promotion is important, but it feels like shill and gush have priority over plot and character. Save recommendations from friends, family, known-authors, my trust factor for ads and 5-Star reviews is waaaay down lately. Is it just me getting grumpy in my dotage, or is there some validity in this assessment?
I’ll end with today’s serendipitous post from Seth Godin “Marketing Good”-
Marketing good is the McMansion that looks good at an open house but isn’t particularly well built or designed for actual living.
Marketing good is the catalog of gimcracks and doodads that entices the casual shopper but sells stuff that ends up in a closet.
Marketing good is the cover of a magazine decreed by the number crunchers in the newsstand sales group, not the editors and the readers they care about.
Marketing good is sensational or edgy or somehow catchy, but is a service that never gets renewed.
As you’ve guessed, marketing good isn’t actually marketing good, not any more. It’s just junk.
Second and third order recommendations and word of mouth and the way we talk about the things that are “good good” is the new marketing.
Your initial response rate, newsstand sales or first episode ratings are a measure of old-fashioned marketing prowess. Now, we care an awful lot more about just plain good. Or perhaps, if you really want to make an impact, great.
October 13, 2013
War is no game.
The following is so clear and poignant, I think it deserves to be read by everyone. What I do here is a hobby, a diversion. It's part strategy game, part artisan-craft, all geek. In no way am I trying to trivialize or glorify the real thing. War may be a regrettable necessity at times, but it is always ugly.
***
October 10, 2013
Guest Post : author Lee Stephen
From fellow author and friend, Lee Stephen.
***
Several weeks ago, Patrick approached me about the prospect of writing a guest entry for HSSJ. As someone who’s never been asked to partake in guest blogging before, I leapt at the opportunity to splatter my thoughts all over someone else’s blog like a fat bug on a car windshield. Admittedly, I am a terrible blogger, as anyone who frequents my own blog at www.epicuniverse.com undoubtedly knows. I fall into the category of “writers who hate writing and who hate themselves for being good at writing, as opposed to, say, math.” Unfortunately for me, blogging falls under the “writing” category, so…yeah. A love affair with the craft, this isn’t.
Hey, at least I’m honest.
There are a litany of blog entries out there in the author-blogger ocean that offer writing advice. This will not be one of them. What this entry will offer is writer advice, which is entirely different. How so? Well when it comes to the actual process of writing, in my experience, the advice of most profiting indie authors is, “be just like me.” Are there exceptions? Sure. But in my own personal experience as a realist, I’ve found that most indie authors dedicate a lot of blog time to explaining how great they are, and how if you pattern your entire existence after them, you could be almost as great (but not quite). I would highly recommend these blogs to people who have no sense of self-worth or direction. But that’s not you!
So what is writer advice, exactly, and why is it so different? Writer advice (or at least my incarnation of it) has to do with attitude. It isn’t worried about things like daily tweet quotas or mandatory words-per-day levels. Writer advice has to do with you. It’s also not advice you’ll hear in very many places, because it’s kind of heretical. But as I like to say, “yeah whatever.”
ADVICE #1: Avoid most writers.
So I guess this one warrants explanation, eh? Basically…most writers are self-centered attention hogs who only care about you for the size of your fan base. Oh, snap!
Once again, the above does not classify all writers. But as a general rule, it’s kind of true, isn’t it? I actually debated this point recently with someone who was about to dive head-first into the realm of indie writers. I warned them, I flailed my arms, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Writers suck!” But they didn’t believe me. They started talking to writers. They went to writers’ group meetings. They joined the writing community. And sure enough, it was only a matter of time until they came back and said, “Lee, you were right. Writers completely suck.” I am fortunate to have three good writer friends in Patrick here, Robert Fanney, a fantasy author I’ve known for years, and Erik Sabol, WHO DESPERATELY NEEDS TO GET HIS FIRST NOVEL OUT, ERIK. I would tell anyone looking for writer friends to find 1-3 writers they can relate to and who they can toss ideas back and forth with. Leave the rest in the dust. In YOUR dust. Because you’re better than them. Which leads us to…
ADVICE #2: Do your own thing.
There actually is a practical reason for Advice #1, and this is it. When you get too caught up in group-think, you lose your sense of identity. You start buying into this FAKE mentality that there are certain things you absolutely, positively must do in order to be successful, based purely off what other people are telling you that you have to do. You probably don’t even realize how prevalent this is, but it’s true. Think about it. Right now, in 2013, in order to be a successful indie author, you must do at least two of the following:
1. Have a blog and blog consistently.
2. Tweet daily.
3. Make yourself write every single day.
I mean, those are like, the basics, right? Anyone with any hope of getting anywhere pretty much has to adhere some of those. Right? Wrong. Not one of those things is remotely necessary, as evidenced by the fact that I do none of them. Get the concept of a “must” list out of your head. There’s only one thing you need to focus on: standing out by the things that you do.
When you start avoiding writers, this becomes easier. It’s not about being antisocial. It’s about practicing your independence. When you start plugging into the collective, you start losing the uniqueness that makes you you. You become a mimicker as opposed to a trailblazer. You lose the ability to do things that get you noticed. Take the audiobook, for example. Just think of that word: audiobook. What comes to mind? What’s the first thought that enters your head?
Chances are, it wasn’t this: http://www.epicuniverse.com/DODCh5Sample.mp3
That’s where independent thought can take you. That clip is a sample of the soon-to-be-released audiobook adaptation for the first book in my Epic series, Dawn of Destiny. Had I gotten audiobook advice from other writers, that probably wouldn’t have been the result. I’d have probably hired a narrator to read the whole book or read it myself – not that either of those things are bad! They’re just not necessarily new. I wanted to produce an audiobook for people who don’t like audiobooks, meaning I had to erase every preconceived notion of what I thought an audiobook was supposed to be from my head. In doing so, I like to think I’ve gone in a direction few folks have gone before. You can do this with anything. All you have to do is realize you can do it. Cut the “writing community” umbilical cord. It’ll make you stand out in a ridiculously overcrowded field.
ADVICE #3: Just be nice.
It’s my nature to be sarcastic. I think to think of sarcasm as the quintessential underrated spiritual gift! But I also do everything in my power to exercise kindness and courtesy. Sometimes I struggle, as all humans do. But I try my utmost to abide by the Golden Rule.
One of my favorite quotes is by Conan O’Brien, at the end of his final night hosting the Tonight Show. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Conan fan or not (I happen to be one), I find this advice absolutely fantastic. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e35SVmdx9nY&t=3m58s .
I can tell you this, without hesitation: simple kindness has taken me further than any amount of social media savvy or writing ability ever has. I have opportunities (the kind I can’t even talk about), right now, because of courtesy and literally nothing else. If you ignore every other piece of advice I mention, take note of this one. And the next one.
ADVICE #4: Be humble.
There’s a vast difference between confidence and arrogance. I love confidence – I love to see it in people, because it drives them to be the best. But arrogance is the ultimate turnoff. Always remember: you’re never as good as you think you are, and there’s always somebody better.
Don’t brag about sales. Don’t assume you’re doing it the right way. Don’t buy into the notion that because you might be having more financial success than the next guy, you must be better or more important than he is. These are all tell-tale signs of an insecure writer. The only person you need to worry about is you. Let everyone else do what and how they will.
For those who may be wondering about my level of success, simply for contextual purposes, I’ve been incredibly successful. I married the woman of my dreams, I have a one-year-old who lights up my life, and we live in a nice little house with a fence for the dog we rescued. Oh, and every now and then, I sell a book or two. But you don’t need to worry about that part.
Do your own thing. Blaze your own trails. Be relentlessly fearless. When you separate from the herd, it is amazing–amazing–what you can do.
Good luck out there!
***
If you’re a Sci Fi Action Fan, check out Lee’s Amazon Page for his Epic Universe series:
October 6, 2013
The root of the problem
Faith-based post for Sunday. Big idea I’ll try to keep brief.
***
There are over two hundred types of cancer, says the Cancer Society. Of these dozens upon dozens of ways your own cells rebel in your systems and organs, it’s the same basic problem manifesting itself in different ways. These different cancers require different approaches, treatment regimens, but all have the same desired goal: to stop the cancer, the internal treachery, before it spreads and kills.
There’s a lot of talk in religion over Sin: what is sin? is this or that behavior a sin? is Sin A worse that Sin B? etc, etc, ad nauseum. Now it certainly needs to be addressed; sin doesn’t make you bad – it makes you dead. But the discussion of a problem should never be at the expense of its remedy. Christian faith is the good news about the Remedy, specifically that God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is the effective, authentic solution to our deepest problem.
and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. “You are witnesses of these things.…” Luke 24:46-48
It seems to me three core theological foundations get lost in the furor of these ‘Sin’ debates.
The first is that we sin because we are sinners. The Spiritual Cancer is in all of us – it just manifests differently. Or to put it another way, our problem with God isn’t so much our Crimes as our Criminal Tendencies.
This is Christianity 101: we are not simply sick or broken; there’s a nasty rebellious streak in all of us. God’s holiness doesn’t demand judgment on merely sick people. That’s tyranny, and God is not the Big Sky Bully. The problem is a willful, selfish aspect to our being that knowingly denies and defies God. The whole ‘Original Sin, Fruit of the Tree, Garden of Eden’ story wasn’t about Satanic deception and arbitrary disobedience; it’s about human beings rejecting God as the final authority on Good and Evil, insisting we know better and are accountable to no one, except perhaps ourselves and only if we want to be.
This brings us to the second issue, the big R-word: Repentance. There’s no Redemption without it because the first step is acknowledging the problem. Repenting or “metanoia” is more that compliance to morality or conformity to dogma; it’s changing your mind about who you are and who God is. It’s allowing God to be God once again. It’s admitting you and I aren’t the center of the universe, we don’t know everything, and that God as Lord, Creator and Savior has the final say over our lives, over what’s Right and Wrong.
The third foundation is people are saved by Who they know, not What they know. I’m all for sound doctrine, apologetics, credible and consistent theology. But directions to the doctor aren’t the same as the doctor. The guardrails and signposts on the narrow road to life are only there to help prevent wrecks and getting lost. Morality stems from what God likes/dislikes, Doctrine from what he said, but Salvation is a Gift from a Person. It’s an ongoing spiritual relationship with a living, resurrected Savior.
These two recent posts http://mycropht.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/judgecooking/
http://mikeduran.com/2013/10/interview-w-stephanie-drury-of-stuff-christian-culture-likes/
brought this statement to my attention:
MIKE: Loaded question: Do you think it’s possible to believe homosexuality is a sin and still be a “good Christian”?
STEPHANIE: It depends on how you define a “good Christian.” If by it you mean someone who falls in line with what their pastor or denomination says, then yes. If by it you mean someone who engages the teachings of Jesus fully and thoughtfully, then no.
I’m not going to try and understand the logic behind that assertion. It strikes me as a sad and silly statement on many levels. I agree emphatically with Katherine Coble that Christian faith doesn’t rest on my response to another person’s sexual behavior – It’s based on my response to Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible is no more ‘anti-gay’ than it is ‘anti-liar’, ‘anti-adulterer’, ‘anti-greed’, or ‘anti-thief’. Sexual immorality – of which homosexuality is one type – is clearly stated, numerous times, as symptomatic of Mankind’s isolated, broken and defiant nature.
I’m aware it’s not currently popular to say that, but see the ‘Repentance’ part above. I don’t get to say what’s right and wrong. But I also reject the fear and hate mongering against people who deal with that particular sin. God loves people and offers forgiveness, redemption and transformation to anyone who comes to Him.
I’ll end with this remarkable testimony. Have a good week.
October 4, 2013
The Barrow Lover
chasing inspiration here – a ghost story popped into my head. here’s the start
***
THE BARROW LOVER
Part One – The White Lady’s Headstone
“The dead are patient,” my mother used to say. “They can’t come back to us but they know in their bones we all go to them, sooner or later.”
It wasn’t true, what my mother said. Not that we don’t all die; we do. No escaping that. It was the dead she was wrong about: they can come back.
And not all of them are patient.
***
Padraig O’Doule was a Dowser. Which was good, except when it wasn’t.
You see the problem with Paddy – or his dowsing, depending on how you looked at it – was that he tended to find stuff people had hid on purpose, stuff they didn’t want found.
Dirty things. Dark things.
And digging up secrets – ugly or otherwise – had a way of getting people mad. And mad people – depending on who they were – were dangerous. Dangerous to Paddy. Dangerous to me, his best mate, Declan Flood.
Dangerous to a whole lot of folk, as it turned out.
But it’s not like them mad, dangerous people plant markers saying “Leave this one be, ya daft bastard!” So I ask you, how could we have known?
It started a fair enough day. The snow was weeks gone. An earnest sun was peeking through the trees, pledging yet another summer. The birds were larking away and the air was all snappy with new green and hawthorn. I was along for the shoveling and Paddy was just doing what he always did, that morning in the woods: dowsing.
Which is how we found a locket atop a little hill.
I had turned the spade maybe three times before Paddy bent over and plucked it from the dirt.
“Shit me,” I said. “That looks old.”
“Fookin yeah it does,” Paddy answered. “Worth a bit, you think?”
“Two silver, if it’s olden.”
Paddy spit, rubbed with his thumb. It gleamed through the smeary mud. “Fookin flash, is what it is, Dec. Two for sure.”
“Lemme see,” I cried, and he tossed it my way.
Round, heavy, flat as a river stone, it fit nice in my palm. I hefted it for show, then winked at Paddy for good luck before scrutinizing the finding.
Saliva and tobacco juice had cleared the loam, revealing that dull yellow we were so keen on. I hawked my own sauce and rubbed more.
Indeed, indeedy do, gold is what it was.
But even curiouser was the engraving; tiny, twisty script coiling around the edge, spiraling in to the center. Or spiraling out from the center, depending on how you looked at it.
I had stayed in school ’til my secondaries, but these weren’t like any letters I’d ever seen. “Gold, yes. Olden, maybe. Foreign, sure as sure,” I murmured.
“Three silver!” Paddy shouted with a wild, happy grin. “Done for the day, I say. We hit Fade’s on the way back to town. Cash up, then it’s Teagan’s best in my cup for lunch.”
“And dinner.”
“And dinner,” Paddy admitted.
Teagan Cooney ran the local watering hole, and she was good for plenty, including leaving you to sleep at the tables, providing you’d tipped back enough of her cider. She was the easy part of the plan. Fade was another matter.
Meechum Fade was a purveyor of ‘Curiosities and Antiques’, which mostly meant busted old farm furniture and oddments scrounged from the town dump. A thick boar of a man, he was a notorious skinflint, and the only pawn for twenty miles in any direction.
Local wag had Fade being somebody of mention in his younger days, most popular story painting him a fancy-pants banker who fell afoul of his patron for skimming too much cream off the action. Tale went he barely escaped the guillotine, and fled the ireful gentry in the wee hours with naught but the clothes on his back and purse full of silver crowns. When he finally ran out of steam, he found himself in Carn, County Crae, so he changed his moniker, hung a shingle, and set to fleecing us locals in a vain attempt to regain his fortune. Meechum Fade traded his silk and big head pomp for a life of homespun anonymity with his head still attached.
Whoever Fade used to be, he’d been heaped behind his counter like a sack of unwashed laundry, haggling over knickknacks day in and day out for the better part of two decades. He had scowly, jowly baby face, two tufts of wire brush hair at odds with his dome, and a jeweler’s loupe ‘petually screwed in one eye. Grunts and numbers being the extent of his conversations, to say Fade was a man with a tight fist and few words would be generous indeed.
At the very back of Fade’s, under a long and battered brass piano lamp, stood a small glass case of assorted shiny bits: ancient pocket watches leashed to tarnished chains, jilted nuptial bands, loops of spindly silver necklaces, Grannies’ old broach … two shelves of mothy velvet lined with memories bartered away for a handful of copper. Paddy was sure ole Fade would nudge a space for this pretty dollop of mislaid bygones, easy as pie. Then the two of us could enjoy the rewards of our labor for a pair of days, at least.
Cupping it like a scoop of water on one hand, I lifted the locket close and traced the swirly script with my other finger. I squinted in case it’d help with ciphering. Paddy leaned in to watch me, the both of us bent over, breathing all nosey and hush-like. But it was no use. Any reading off that spider scratch needed a big city preceptor with a tonsure and halitosis.
Just then, the sky dropped like a wool tarp and the light drained right out of the woods. The air turned with a nip. A bank of clouds had rolled in. My finger must have hit the latch in that same instant, because the face popped up like a cricket.
Paddy jumped back. “Fook Dec, ya startled me.”
A chill bit my thumb where I was holding the rim, but I squeezed out a laugh. “Near widdled my knickers too.” I smirked. “Look at us, all scardy at some skirt’s old trinket.”
Paddy jutted his chin. “So open it then, you’re so plucky.”
I teased the lid back with my finger… and there she was. The saddest, prettiest girl I’d ever laid eyes on.
There are plenty of lookers in County Crae, the Sweeney Triplets being at the top of my To Do list. But this one… this girl was near holy as an angel; fancy dress, dark hair bundled up, long neck, fine, high cheeks. A mouth sweet as a plum and made for kisses. She was the kind of woman you go to war in distant lands for, fair as a summer’s eve, eternal as the moon.
Loveliness drew your gaze, but it was her loneliness that threw the bolt. Made me want to cry, the sadness seeping off that tiny face. It was like every love ever lost and every promise ever broken, a stain deeper than the sepia she was colored in.
Strangest of all was her eyes were shut.
Not screwed tight in a pique or playing coy, but like the daguerreotype had caught her sleeping, charmed like some princess in a fairy tale. All that beauty frozen still as the grave.
“Fook me, if she ain’t the queen of somewhere,” Paddy whispered.
All I could do was nod.
Winds kicked up, heavy with the iron scent of a brewing storm. The day went dusky and hunched. I shivered, snapped the face of the locket shut.
“Come on,” Paddy said. “Let’s go.”
***
We left the woods and cut across the fields straight for town. Neither of us spoke much. I slipped the locket in my jacket pocket. It was heavy for such a small thing, tugging down almost like it needed burying again. I actually shifted the shovel on my other shoulder to balance it out. My mind was churning like a mill, ruminating whos and hows and whys. All I got was froth for my trouble.
County Crae had a rugged beauty, but it was too poor, too north, with too many boulders and brambles for the titled to fancy our hills for their halls. And there’d been no tell of reivers or brigands for half a century. Pondering the sleeping queen’s pedigree was like wrestling a sainted mystery.
Paddy might have been brooding the same, but most likely he was arithmeticing coins with tankards, adding a good tuck, and maybe a tart for ‘dessert’. Vicar Duffy always says mortals can only carry so much; when the Lords gives thither, He has to take yon. Paddy had the touch, sure as sure, but his idea of history was a fortnight past. Like a duck, he wasn’t the type to perplex over much.
Unlike me, the weather made up its mind. A wall of thunderheads had piled up and were scudding our way like a giant, dark castle, rumbleous with lightning. I spied rain curtains looming across the fields, so Paddy and I jogged through the barley and made the crossroad just as the first fat drops pelted down. Fades’ establishment was in sight.
Hollering, we bounded through the door and paused under the lintel to drip off a bit and let our eyes adjust.
The place was like a root cellar. Or a badger’s den. What I imagine a badger’s den to be like, anyway. Low ceilings, dim light, crammed with vaguely felonious articles stored against an impending lean season. It had a distinct blend of smells: old wood, damp soil, and pipe tobacco. An avalanche of chairs was froze in one corner, a buttress of cupboards and canning shelves lined one wall. A thicket of unlit lamps bristled along the other. A dozen clocks told a dozen times. Cairns of books were raised on every flat surface, monumenting the demise of some poor sod’s literacy. Some reached to the rafters, their gilded titles glistened like pyrite veins in granite.
And at the back, past all the various and sundry, in a pool of oily yellow light, sat Meechum Fade.
He barely glanced up when were entered. “Shut it tight,” he barked.
Paddy nudged me. Three words was a good sign. Fade was downright hearty today.
Paddy took the lead, navigating through the mess like a dancer across a crowded floor. “You’re gonna be keen on this one, Mr. Fade.”
I set my shovel down and followed in his wake. “Genuine heirloom, this is.”
Meechum Fade waved us back, grunting disbelief and consent in the same breath. You have to admire eloquence like that.
There was some debate in town as to whether Fade had feet: no one could remember ever seeing him walk. Resulting from a torturous parenthesis during his alleged pilfering and flight, the footless crowd went so far as to assert Fade weren’t on a stool at all, but a fancy privy chair on wheels. That way, they said, he could make mud without stopping his coin fondling. Someone always knew someone who swore they’d seen him rolling about his place after dark, poling the floorboards with his ankle stubbies.
Not that anyone could corroborate that bit of tosh, but it was a captivating controversy once you got a few drinks in you.
Paddy was at the counter antsy as a puppy, grinning like a fool. He could taste his share already. I fished the locket out and pressed it into Fade’s outstretched palm careful as a communion wafer.
Fade harumphed, shifted his bulk and bent over our finding.
The storm was in full swing; lightning flickering, thunder booming like cannon, hoofbeats of gusty rain tearing across the slate roof. Maybe the sky did shiver, maybe I just blinked, but the second Fade spotted the locket, I swore he went still as a field mouse in front of a snake.
He sniffed a heartbeat later. “Could be cleaner, but it’s not bad.”
“It’s gold, right?” I asked.
Fade nodded, staring at it.
Paddy practically giggled. “So what’s the ‘Praisal?”
Fade tore his gaze away, the sheeny loupe and bright blue eye glued on me instead. “Where’d ya find this?” A hard question with a light touch.
“What? You think there’s more?” Paddy asked. “I felt the place brimming with something.”
“East. In the woods over the creek,” I answered.
Fade’s bald head bobbed once.
Paddy leaned over. “Open it,” he said helpfully. “Catch is on the edge. The lass innit is pretty as May.”
The big man ran a hesitant finger around the rim. Twice. Nothing happened.
“Here,” Paddy grabbed for it. “Let Dec try. He did it afore –”
“I believe you,” Fade said quickly, and the locket disappeared into the folds of his apron like a magic trick.
“So you’ll take it?” Paddy queried.
“Six silver,” Fade pronounced.
My mouth dropped open. Paddy yipped with glee.
Two stacks of tarnished copper slid our way.”Three in pennies now. The rest tomorrow.”
Paddy’s hand swept in like a hawk, scooped up the coins. “Done.”
The blue eye fixed me again, the merchant’s words soft as sand over gravel. “And you won’t be noising this about.” Old Fade wasn’t requesting; it was a condition of the sale.
“So you do think there’s more…” Paddy said. “We’ll head back–”
“I think you needs keep your cheese pipe shut,” Fade bit off each word.
I stared. The dumpy man had turned sharp around the edges. I had a sudden worry how deep it went.
Paddy didn’t notice. He was clinking coins one hand into the other like drops off a spigot, already down the road in Teagans. “Don’t you worry about us, Mr. Fade. We’ll be otherwise occupied.”
Our audience concluded, Meechum Fade waved us off with a stare that held me responsible.
October 3, 2013
The Desolation of Smaug
pure, uncut awesome.
One of the few times a year I go to a theater.
October 1, 2013
The Tortoise and the Hare
When it comes to the Internet, Marketing, and Social Media, I confess I just can’t keep up. Facebook, Forums, fan-clubs, other authors’ sites, cross-linking, reblogging all take time and energy… and there’s only so much of them in a day.
Even more, I’m not sure I want to keep up. I’d hate to end up one of those people who thinks they have to fill every empty space with their opinion. Or view everyone I meet through the lens of my agenda.
I know I need to market and advertise. There are internet friends I actually like and want to be connected to, but day-to-day is always in my face and there is stuff to do, constantly. So I have to prioritize. Discriminate. More to the point here, writing is work, and learning to do it well is a lifetime endeavor. My question to myself is – which is it going to be?
Some dead white guy ( I think it was an American President, in fact) once said “Take your work seriously, not yourself” and it has always resonated with me. I’ve always wanted my glass work and my stories to stand on their own. You don’t need to know me to appreciate them; they’re a product, sure, but they’re separate entities. (arguable point, but that’s the way I see it)
That Tortoise and Hare fable is another reference for me. (a disabled guy) I realized long ago I’ll never letter on the Varsity team or throw down suave smooth and sexy out on the dance floor. Hell, stairs are a challenge. Instead, I’ve got to focus on what I can do – not what I can’t. At the end of the day, if I have to choose between the frenzied pace of Internet Marketing or the long-haul, labor-intensive task of writing, I’ll choose writing.
After all, my work will be here after I’m gone.
September 29, 2013
surrogates, saints, and sinners…
FYI, this is a faith-based post.
***
Watched the Brice Willis flick Surrogates the other night and got one of those deja-vu vibes. The movie’s plot builds on a near-future where everyone stays at home in a dark room, plugged into a VR couch while their android surrogates – smarter, sexier, stronger versions of themselves – go out into the world and live smart, sexy, strong lives for them. The movie was fair if predictable. Worth a rental, IMO.
The deja-vu was the realization I feel this way at church lately. The absence of genuine conversation offset by bucket loads of conversational chaff like ‘Praise God, brother!’ and “This is the day the Lord has made, amen?” has me feeling like I’m encountering spiritual surrogates, these showroom shiny, model Christians fashioned after some Divinely-Approved Evangelical template. It leaves me feeling hollow. 
In fact, the phrase ‘I only feel alone around other people’ comes to mind.
Now I’m not demanding every conversation be laced with gut-wrenching honesty. I get public personas, levels of relationship, restraint and maintaining a testimony. Who likes awkward, TMI moments? I don’t recommend vulnerability to total strangers. As Annie Leibowitz said – “Spilling your guts is about as attractive as it sounds.”
I just have this sense there’s a lot of pretending going on. Spiritual smokescreen hiding real people. I mean, if it’s my soul God is really after, (or my ‘heart’ i.e. the seat of my being) then my faith is inherently to be more than skin deep. I guess I’m thirsting for authenticity rather than acting.
The verse that keeps ringing in my head is 1 Jn. 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. Seems to me God isn’t after perfection as honesty. It’s transparency with Him, ourselves and each other that brings genuine relationship, forgiveness, and transformation. It’s foundational to redemption. In fact, repentance being the first step to salvation, I don’t think redemption is possible without it.
This I am Second video testimony is an extreme example of what I’m talking about. It’s a tough watch, but worth your time, IMO.
http://www.iamsecond.com/seconds/nate-larkin/
End of the day, I’m encouraged to know God doesn’t expect perfection but honesty. That grace is given to the humble, and the promise of genuine relationship is given not on my ability to act spiritual, but by granting God’s Spirit access to my inmost being. Like the Publican in the Temple in Luke 18:9-14, God honors and responds to genuineness.
Thank God.
