Nick Shamhart's Blog, page 7

On the Horizon

It has been too long since I updated my readers on what I am working on. I apologize for that. So, here’s what’s on the horizon. In between speaking engagements I have been working on two new manuscripts. The plan is to have one of them available in early autumn ’14. I cannot tell you which one that will be though.

But.

I can tell you what they are about. The first is a stand-alone drama dealing with the psychological scars the bullying mentality our culture leaves when it comes to competitive sports. The second is a novel I am co-authoring with my father Michael Shamhart, dealing with the accumulation of past lives stored chemically.

And finally, I am working with the great, talented, charismatic, and all-around stand up guy, Doug Dearth, on writing the screenplay to The Fog Within  for his film studio One In A Row Films.

So, readers, that is what I have been up to and what you have to look forward to in ’14.

Cheers! ~Nick Shamhart

The Greatest Compliment

I cannot imagine where my career can go from here. Today, as I was walking into the library that was holding an authors’ expo, a woman grabbed my hand as I was barely in the door. I looked down at her and she was in tears. She leaned into me and I balanced hugging her and steering my pushcart dolly. I asked, “Can I help you, darlin’?”

Through the tears she said, “You saved my life.”

Uh, well, okay. So, I said, “Here let’s sit down and you can hopefully explain that a little better to me.”

She laughed and pulled out a tissue. We sat down and she said, “My ten year old son is severely autistic. I can’t even give him a hug without him screaming. I hate my life. How can I love someone that doesn’t show me any affection back, or freaks out when I touch him? My husband took off years ago. We don’t even know where he is. My parents help watch my son when he isn’t at school and I have to work, but it’s hard. It’s too hard.”

I sat on a bench, holding a stranger’s hand as she poured her heart out to me. I could see the lines around her eyes, the red-rimmed, discolored hanging bags that most women fret and fuss over covering. She didn’t care. Her life had pushed her beyond caring. I nodded my head to let her know I was listening. She continued, “I, we, my parents and me, we had the paperwork ready. We were going to give him up. Let the state have him, have my son, because he was too hard for us to take care of. I had the paperwork signed, Nick. It was ready to go. The part my parents didn’t know was that after I had given up my son, I planned to kill myself. I had failed and my life wasn’t worth living anymore. I was watching TV last week and I saw you on Fox 8. I was mad at first. I thought, ‘Why did this guy stick it out when my asshole husband couldn’t?’ I was so mad I bought your book, because I wanted you to be wrong. I wanted  to read it, let it fuel my fire to commit suicide and just end all the shit. But…”

And she started crying again. I won’t play the badass card. I was choking back the tears at that point myself. When she was able to she finished, “I could see the Fog in my son. I could see that he IS in there. I could see all the things you put Megan through in the book in my child. I couldn’t give up on him after reading your book. I couldn’t give up on myself. You saved my life.”

What the hell does a person say to that? I almost didn’t write the book because it hurt too much. But, if I hadn’t that woman would probably be dead right now. I hugged her again and she left so I could go to work, but I tell you readers and fans, I cannot imagine being able to look at my career the same. I still don’t know how to feel about it. I probably never will.

Dad Writes About His Autistic Daughter's World

Reblogged from FOX8.com:

Local author Nick Shamhart didn't want to write this book. He will be the first to tell you he is no autism expert, but he is the father of a daughter with Autism and he hopes this book will open people's eyes to what life is like for someone on the Autism spectrum. In honor of April being Autism Awareness Month, Nick is donating all book proceeds this month to the charity 'Autism Speaks'.

Read more… 52 more words

This morning's Fox 8 interview with Nick and Wayne Dawson.

Author for Autism

It seems counterproductive to direct website viewers instantly to another site, but with the second AfA about to start we want people who have arrived at Nick’s site looking for information on the fundraiser to be sure and go to the AfA blog once they’ve combed over all the information and entertaining extras here on Nickshamhart.com. So if you’ve checked out Nick’s appearance schedule and clicked on anything else that caught your eye, please head over to

http://authorforautism.wordpress.com/

The Selfishness of Charity

I know you’re thinking that title is an oxymoron, but give me a minute to explain. With April approaching and the launch of my second world-wide fundraiser for autism, I wanted to delve into the concepts of charity. I’d like to pull apart some of our cultural impressions. Ideas based on what? TV, the media, word of mouth, or simple greed? Who knows the origins, but the concepts are there none the less.

I have seen rich politicians rant and rave about “forced charity.” I’m sorry, brother, but there is no such thing. If you see charity as forced then you have lost so much of your soul that human concepts are now beyond you.

People complain, “I don’t know where my money is going? Why should I give?”

That is where the problem surfaces its ugly head. Why? Why, Why!

Okay readers, here is where the selfishness of charity comes into play. Forget the media, forget your wallet, forget what your friends say, just forget it. Charity is not about crusading a cause. It is not about funding some change to the world around you. It is not about the cheap money-making word awareness. It is about the change charity has in You!

You give of your time and money because charity gives you the opportunity to  grow in mind and spirit. It frees you of  a burden. The burden will be something different for each of us, that’s the beauty of charity. It doesn’t matter where the money you give goes. Once it leaves your possession it is no longer your burden. If the charity you choose misspends it then it is their burden, not yours.

Charity is about personal growth. It is about letting go of  your burdens and seeing the world with fresh eyes.

Give, no matter to who or what cause…give

Anorexic Artists and Obese Businessmen

The title is the sad, tragic truth friends. It always has been that way and it always will be. It does not matter what the art medium may be: music, painting, writing, acting, and etcetera. That is simply the result of mixing creativity, self-expression, and passion with financial gain. The business world is the world, sociologically speaking of course. The world is more than that, but, our daily hamster-like participation that makes society spin? That most assuredly is the world.

There are a few who have succeeded in showing the world their craft, their heart and soul as it where in its purest form, and still managed to turn a profit. But, those businessmen behind that artist made a hundred times more, never doubt it, fact is fact. That’s the system. That’s the economic hamster wheel for art, for every one of the unwashed masses really.

I just feel that the loss is more poignant in the art world. The generations all have names that echo through history: Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Mozart, Van Gogh, Beethoven, Dickens, and on and on. The thing is creativity requires such of level of sensitivity, such a level of devotion if it is to remain at its peak, that those names were probably not the truly greatest of their time. The Masters of any craft were only those that waded through, fighting, and persevering over rejection to have their works known. The artists form of winning the lottery. The others, the names we don’t know, but were most likely superior in talent simply gave up. The rejection that any artist must face can be cruel and harsh (most often needlessly so), but the very creative, the very sensitive cannot suffer the onslaught of rejection all artists must face, so they fold, quit, bury their dream … and the world is deprived of another genius because the men with money didn’t find that creative soul in time, or that soul didn’t want to sell. The result is the same either way.

Think for a second. It has only been the last century or so that we have started to add some women’s names to that echoing list, isn’t it? Does that not seem odd? Does that not scream my point to you? For the entire history of mankind’s creativity, only in the last hundred years have women become artists worth taking notice of?

It is about the sale. It is about money. And those of us who don’t cave to business corruption in our crafts suffer. We starve, but, here is the point to stress my good artists, my many brothers and sisters in creative arms, if you are starving because you refuse to pander your work to the masses, to change it, to pervert it, so someone with more money than some African countries can make another billion? Well then, you aren’t a starving artist. No, you have your honor. Your empty belly rumbling is your choice. That makes you an anorexic artist, a small comfort when you watch what the populace is told by the rich men is quality work in whatever craft you express yourself through, but a comfort none the less.

 

I do not know the title or the artist of this wonderful caricature, but if they come across this post I will be glad to give them full credit and endorse their work!

 

 

Apocalypse … Tomorrow?

I do not believe in precognition. I do believe in mathematics. But would I credit mathematicians with the ability to predict humanity’s demise? Of course not…

…But, just for the sake argument I’ll pretend that this is it – that tonight at Midnight the world will end.

Hmm, humanity is a fascinating thing, isn’t it? We as a culture, as a bunch of hairless monkeys, have truly accomplished much in our time here. On both sides of the meter – the virtues and the sins. It may seem like things have darkened a bit in recent years, and on an individual level that is unquestionably true, but look further, look at some of the progress. Ideas of sexual preference and race are becoming not only more accepted, but to some they have become just a matter of life, no doubts or prejudices involved, as we should have been eons ago. The violence and apathy on the other hand are increasing. There is no one answer to this, there is no one scapegoat to point to and blame, though we may want it.

All the issues of humanity as a whole, though beautiful and ugly do not concern me. No, if this be the end, if we have come to it at last. It’s the individual that is of concern to me. Your dreams. What are  they? Have you accomplished any of them? Do you wish there was more time? Even if there isn’t, even if we have come to the end of days, I would encourage you to take a minute out of this last day, just one, and wonder at what you have and haven’t done. Do not worry about the grand sweeping dreams of changing the world. If we survive until the next dawn then perhaps those visions should be gazed upon, but for today, for the last few man made minutes do what you would if it were the end: hug someone, tell a stranger to have a happy holiday, have an extra beer, call someone you haven’t in years, make amends over silly arguments, tell someone you love them, watch the wind blow through a pine tree, in essence do all the simple things you take for granted and would miss if tomorrow never comes.

And when tomorrow does? Be sure to do them all over again, and this time try not to forget how simple it is to be happy.

Warning Label in “The Knight’s Wife”

Readers have actually said that the Warning Label I included in the beginning of The Knight’s Wife was a better description than the story synopsis, so I thought I’d share the Warning Label here for those who are curious.

WARNING LABEL

      This is a romance, but, not like other romance novels you may have read. I feel the need to warn you, the reader, to leave all expectations at the door when you read The Knight’s Wife. I believe there is a strong power to the concept of love. I wanted to write you a love story, but I didn’t want to go the route of the swinging single city gal who is just looking for love in all the wrong places with her wacky best friend. I don’t think I have anything new to add to that storyline. I also didn’t want to write the rekindled love story of the, yes, he’s a grumpy old fart, but he’s my grumpy old fart type of love story (I’m kind of living that one as it is). No, this story is about a woman placed in a precarious and exhausting situation of her own devising, where she is forced to ask herself, “What the fuck? Is this love, really? Am I putting up with all this shit for love?”

Love. I’m one of those zany heterosexual men that can type and even say the word love and not feel the need to hit or hump the object I have just said the word to. It’s only four letters and one small syllable that can do so many things. Love can be the truth, or a lie. It can be a salve, a compress, a guide, a reason, a desire, a motive, a manipulation, a balm, a knife, a weapon, a decision, a goal, a dream, a nightmare…the list is endless, for just that word – love.

Love always plays a large part in my stories. The Balance books are full of the various forms of love. But, please, do not expect The Knight’s Wife to be a Balance book. It is something else entirely. It is a romance; it is even a romantic comedy at times, but it is about romance, of which one of the many definitions is: Ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people. Romance comes in odd places, shapes, sizes, and not always as we expect it. Now that you have been warned, please join me in my telling of a romance. A love story of a woman who may or may not know what that word means any longer….

 

Time Travel Via Unicycle

It’s a little known fact that I can travel through time. I recently decided that I wanted to know what the internet had really been created for. I felt compelled to either validate or debunk the idea that the internet was created for the betterment of mankind, as a repository for all our knowledge, to allow problems to be solved at a rapid pace and to share information with those who otherwise would have dwelt in ignorance.

So, I climbed up on my unicycle (Sorry I can’t afford a DeLorean) and started to ride in repeated figure eights while singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” backwards, which is, of course the only way to time travel.

I ventured back to the days when the World Wide Web was a daydream to a few technological geniuses. I am proud to report to you all that we are wrong! Yet at the same time we have instinctualy done what those geniuses hoped. They said, “If only there was a way for people to bitch incessantly about their daily minutia, criticize and obsess over movies, television, and music. Someplace where they could worship actors, athletes, and pretty people – almost hanging on their every uninformed word.”

We have done it world! We have fulfilled that dream!

But I must leave you now because I just have to go see what Justin Bieber tweeted about…..

You Suck! No, You Suck! No, You Suck!

I love the music scores to grand-sweeping, epic cinema. I don’t think moviegoers realize how much of the key emotion in a given scene is provided by the soundtrack. I do believe that some of our modern composers rival anything the greats wrote and deserve their credit.

That said, I have the soundtrack to “The Hobbit” bookmarked on youtube. I let it play while I work. I feel Howard Shore is a very talented composer; his scores are artfully etched in my mind. But, and I never do this, it was pure reflex when I scrolled down, I read a few of the comments. I have never been more embarrassed and simultaneously enthralled by the lack of respect and criticism of our times. One comment was, “I’d like to see the great Hans Zimmer do better!” And this started a tangent argument on who is the better composer – Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore?

I didn’t, and don’t know how to react to that. Why can’t people appreciate the different skills of both men and be grateful for the art they have given us? Must the internet always resort into childish snide comments that boil down to, “My imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend”?

Enjoy art people and be grateful that you have  the capacity to marvel at  it on demand. Constructive criticism is good for any artist, but it shocks me to see composers like Shore and Zimmer reduced to something so immature. It was like they were arguing over comic book heroes or professional athletes, not talented artists.