Dale Amidei's Blog, page 10

Characters in a Godless Universe

Before writing, one reads first, of course. After writing and further developing the skills needed to do it well, however, reading is never quite the same. That epiphany is a seed of thought especially relating to what I write, which is fiction from the perspective of a conservative and a Christian.

Characters I encounter in the writing of others���nearly universally now���seem to have little regard for��the spiritual aspects of their existence. Plot lines develop, conflict is engaged, and crescendos pass … often without any soul-searching, spark of enlightenment, or flashes of revelation in the minds of the people with whom we travel through their story. The result can be constructed as well as fiction can get, be presented in flawless elegance, and yet for me��is one notch away from truly satisfying����� because an element of completeness is missing.

When someone asks what my fiction is ���about,��� the short answer is: “people, and the perspectives that guide their decisions.��� Conflict, challenge, adventure and romance are all elements as well, but as my character Jon Anthony says, some questions are foundational. This��means we will all answer them in some fashion, whether or not the subject is ever intentionally addressed.

Whether one proceeds from a faith-based perspective is one of those attributes. We are all encouraged in polite company to avoid talking about the subject, along with politics, and that reserve spills into the world of literature as well. I cannot help but think it is as limiting there as it is elsewhere in life. In writing Political Fiction, I cannot avoid the latter. As a Christian, I have a Commission to engage in the former ��� come what may.

In Stephen King���s novel The Langoliers, the test of dimensional validity is the ���rightness��� in the taste of foods and vitality of materials for the passengers of an aircraft ���out of synch.��� So, in a way, is ��reading the works constructed out of��a secular��perspective.

Certainly, judging from the state of the world, too many and an increasing number of people are living their lives in that same, flat, unfulfilled state King described. Blaise Pascal, in his Pensees, wrote:

���What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.���

The results in fiction and in life are the same. Absent a foundational quickening, no recovery can be made without addressing one���s most fundamental deficit. As Christians, it remains our burden to watch and pray and counsel where we can. In fiction, I present the internal struggles and dialogues that steer a soul on a bearing toward Home. That likely is the primary distinction between my fiction and the majority of authors in my genre.

We need a nation and a world revived in Spirit through valid faith, and thus given to acts of love rather than self-indulgence. I believe that we need novels written just that way as well. Toward that end, we here at Single Candle Press will continue to do what we can.

*****

In��production news, May promises to see Novel6/Boone2 The Bonus Pool complete primary editing and the title move into pre-publication on a schedule for release next month (June 2015). Boone���s first, Absinthe and Chocolate, is an absolute prerequisite to her latest novel.

Doctor Rebecca Boone Hildebrandt returns in style. The Bonus Pool, as did the second novel of Jon���s Trilogy, brings together characters and set pieces established in the introductory volume into a storyline and presentation so energetic and excellent that we truly feel it shakes the blessed earth.

You will not want to put this one off, people. My advice is: get started now. Boone���s File Book One, Absinthe and Chocolate, is available now where your ebooks are sold and linked on the sidebar.

Choose to Love, -DA

Inadequate Theology This

If one choose to write substantively���and I do���one may encounter people who are not necessarily well equipped to absorb��a particular read produced. While that is a pity in itself, the inadequacy can also at times manifest itself in negative feedback. The opinions of the ignorant are always a burden, and more annoying when made available for propagation on the Internet.

My free title, The Anvil of the Craftsman, is also the most widespread of my work. That in itself is a joy. While I am currently working on my eleventh full-length title, had I been blessed to produce only one I would be quite happy to have it as Jon Anthony���s 2006 Iraq adventure.

���Anvil,” in the paperback edition, is at this writing customer-rated in the top one percent of 7,300+ Political Fiction titles. Some, of course, did not like it as much. There is a reason why people swear in my novels, and that reason is for the sake of realism. Likewise, sexual situations���not something I usually care to put on screen, by the way���are portrayed because sex is a reality also encountered in the living of life.

I regret that I may have introduced these things into the puritanical fortress of solitude that some readers have raised around their carefully ordered literary world, but that���s the way it is, boys and girls. Possibly, there is a better way for you to deal with realism than capping on my novel for content I warn about on the book���s retail description page.

Regardless of the preceding mini-rant, those minor quibbles do not bother me ��� much. More frustrating are the opinions of the readers whom the FAQs on my website (linked below)��designate ���pontificating self-righteous jerks.��� You know who you are, or should. The next time you are speaking, ask Jesus what He would think of underrating a five-star novel you downloaded for free.

I���m not sure what some of you people expected of Jon Anthony in Al Anbar Province, addressing an assembly of Muslims, tribal elders and opinion leaders. That, gentle reader, was not the time anyone with Jon���s level of intelligence would have launched into his rendition of a Southern Baptist tent revival. Instead, he focused on commonalities, which is an attribute of civilized men and women and the orientation of anyone, as Anthony puts forth in his tripartite choice, who chooses to love.

Per the Greatest Commandment of Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV):

36 ���Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?���

37 Jesus replied: ������Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.���[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ���Love your neighbor as yourself.���[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.���

Well, that seems pretty clear cut, does it not? It was also��the foundational premise Jon was attempting to propagate.

In reaction, my novel has been called heresy, unChristian, and theologically inadequate by the sort of reader I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post. Allow me to retort.

When Christ died on the Cross, that centering point of history served not only as a historical reference going forward, but backward as well. The moment was the act of a loving God, accommodating in the only way possible the differential nature between Creation and Divinity. It is as accommodating of the righteous person who, for whatever cultural reason, has never grasped the significance of the mission of Christ as it is to those who can recite the story chapter and verse without realizing its universal applicability.

The Cross was inclusive act. It allows for the imperfect to become perfect in the sight of a perfect Creator, and enables our undeserved life through the counterweight of an undeserved death. Regardless of the empowering dogma of any theological hierarchy, I do not believe in and cannot accept the sacrifice of Jesus as a point of excluding legalism. As such, otherwise loving humanity would be cast into the flames of hell on a technicality.

Should you be a Christian? Dear God, yes! To do otherwise makes you ignorant of a wonderful act of love at best, an ingrate otherwise, and a contemptible reprobate at the worst. Will I consign any of you to hell for your current stage of development? No, I do not, because your Craftsman has not yet finished His long work of your life.

Somewhere along our��way, the Spirit whispers His guidelines: first, that He Is ��� afterward, that life is better than death, that love overcomes hate, and that our essential orientation to either is our responsibility. There arrives a time when the heavens declare the Glory of God, and we see, and in seeing are changed from our essentially inadequate state to a viable child soul of a loving Creator. Everything we need to know in the work of our Craftsman follows to His ends.

Such happens in billions of places, with billions of souls, and in an unimaginable number of ways. This is so because the Spirit has no point of overload, no bandwidth restrictions, and a limitless capacity for concurrent projects. He is very good at what He does, and His work is life. Those hours of agony Jesus endured on our behalf���and, in a metaphysical sense, always did and always will, though that point is another topic. This actuality is what takes His work to the best end imaginable.

Readers are, of course, free to rate my work at whatever level they wish. That is their right. Regardless, realize first that I do not write haphazardly and am well able to defend any point I hold dear. If one thinks otherwise, perhaps he or she should read my novel again, more slowly. Rest assured that I am��well capable of��doing this all … day … long.

*****

As far as news of production: Boone���s second, The Bonus Pool���my sixth full-length title���is on schedule for June, 2015. Her third and my seventh, One Last Scent of Jasmine will follow, God willing, sometimes around the end and beginning of the year. Next year, if we are so graced, Sean���s third, King of a Lesser Hill, and Boone���s fourth, Meat for the Lion, will appear. I hope to see you there. As always, more information is available at www.daleamidei.com.

Choose to Love, -DA

Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life

Generally, I am in the business of writing books, not reviewing them. Now and again, however, one encounters an opportunity that must be seized. This occasion was one such.

I was privileged to receive a copy of ���Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL���s Way of Life��� for the purpose of this review. Essential bordering on vital, the title fulfills its promise of providing insight into the process of cultivating a mental state that allows building up some of our most effective special operators.

I have known a number of such men, and more who earned their stripes in the arena of law enforcement. They are, to a man, preternaturally capable specimens. Their capability results in a level of confidence not normally encountered in day-to-day life, because such a life does not raise up an outlier. That level of confidence is sometimes taken for arrogance by the unfamiliar. In some cases, the presumption may be correct, but for most I sense only a spirit of command and control whose unshakable nature is unsettling in those used to uncertainty, trepidation, and the usual overarching desire to avoid conflict.

The aura serves as a warning as well; these men���and in many cases, women���are dangerous. It is a benevolent danger: a sword that is sheathed unless it is called to draw the blood of the unrighteous. It is a danger that an enemy of gentle people must bring with him. It is a conviction acknowledging that he who would set aside his humanity loses the consideration of civilized folk.

Highly decorated Naval Special Warfare veteran Thom Shea, in assembling a set of motivational lessons and memoirs for his children, has produced a handbook for the mastery of what he terms Internal Dialogue. He richly illustrates applicability of each precept through relating portions of his own war story.

His writing style reflects its source. In the no-nonsense cadence of a seasoned instructor, Senior Master Chief Shea lays out the framework of an Unbreakable mind and sets each component with enough validating mortar to grant his theories a universal relevance.

Anyone with more life experience behind them than before them will recognize and appreciate the wisdom herein; anyone on the upslope of a life will find applying Chief Shea���s adamantine philosophy worthwhile, interconnecting, and even transformative.

I am glad I encountered ���Unbreakable.��� It is a philosophy of excellence, self-control, and commitment to individual responsibility. If only it were adopted without fail, the result in each adherent would be a quality of character in whom tares of social exploitation���the soft bigotry of low expectations, dependence, and fearmongering���would find no place to sink their barbs.

I highly recommend this title, and rate it five stars on merit. It is the writing of a warrior and a teacher, not a wordsmith. Necessarily, it is a book about Thom Shea: his story, and how he got there and back again. Regardless, everyone, especially those responsible for producing the generation that will follow our own, should absorb and apply the treasure of deliberate thinking that is the bounty of this book.

Get it through Amazon��as a Kindle Book or trade paperback, or at Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

Choose to love. -DA

Romeo Down Goes Free!

���If anything happens, you deal with it,��� she interrupted. ���You are to come back to me, Joseph Henry Romaniello. Whatever it takes, whoever is in your way, whatever you need to overcome. You can consider that a standing order.���

My short story, Romeo Down���the second title of Sean’s File���is now a free download at all major retailers. RD is approximately 8,000 words or 30 pages in print length. Featured in Amazon’s Kindle Short��Reads (One Hour), it fills a gap in the history of Daniel Sean Ritter, who some consider my most engaging character. Enjoy! As always, if you��have already, I love to hear from you.

Here is the blurb:

“Where does a man’s strength originate? In 1991, during the short, brutal air war above Iraq, two men unknowingly discover the same answer during an intense CSAR (Combat Search And Rescue) operation.

A short story, “Romeo Down” is an account of the action resulting in the award of Daniel Sean Ritter’s first Silver Star. Alluded to in dialogue within the first novel of Sean’s File: ��Operation Naji, this episode stands alone as a spoiler-free companion volume to that title.”

Romeo Down: A Short Story

Kindle��iTunes��Nook��Kobo��Smashwords��Scribd

Choose to love, -DA

 

Writing

If you’re wondering what exactly it is I do, let me break it down:

First, I experience something that has happened, without bidding, for my entire life. I see sequences: movies, almost, playing in my head. Slowly, the characters acquire names, and the names become people, and those become real though I am the only person to know of them.

Once that goes on long enough, a one line description emerges, and that is the core concept of a novel. It evolves through one paragraph, then one to four pages of outline. Then it becomes a full-blown detailed synopsis, which is where the blinding plot development headaches occur. You must steer true to your characters and your message, and each successive title in a series becomes more difficult in that way.

The characters are real enough that I know everything about them: when and where they were born, were they went to school, where and how they served. I know their quirks, their personality types, whether they are strong or weak, good or bad, smart or stupid. I feel every bit of their pain.

When their story starts to flow, I sit at a keyboard for hours at a stretch, being dragged along behind the story that it’s my task to write, come what may. Characters, at times, do completely unexpected things. In many ways, I truly feel I am the conduit of something completely beyond my control. When it’s over, and again when it publishes, there is a crash … a postpartum depression that one does not expect from an event one loves so much.

My work is torn apart in editing and reassembled until everything is as it should be. The four hundred hours of writing that produce a novel are matched in editing until the work reaches final form. The next in line and Boone’s second, The Bonus Pool, is undergoing that process now. It was written two years ago. The long process of��perfecting��each��novel that came before is the reason for this��nearly intolerable delay.

I endure the sideways looks and the expressions of contempt from people who tell others that “he only writes” and “he publishes them himself.” My titles go out into a world of undervalued fiction and readers who are happy to read them for free or pay as much as 99�� for a bundle of ten novels. They ask when the sequel will be available free as well. They rate your best work three stars for profanity you warned them about in the description. Three hundred others will read the same work before another review���one you request in the end matter���appears.

Writing is a labor of love, a craft, a mission, and a privilege. I would never tell someone to undertake the effort, but rather to spend the time it would consume enjoying perishable��moments with the ones they love. We are all moving quickly through a fleeting life, and each of our fires will burn down to embers, and then to ash. Write if you must. If it is so, nothing will stop it. Writers know this very well already.

So, friends, if you download one of my novels, please read it. If you read it, please tell me, and do the same for any other author you know. We need to hear most of all that someone set our story free by��the turning of a page.

Choose to love. -DA

Advent, revisited

I am re-posting this piece from two years ago, since in the intervening time I’ve not been able to do better. From everyone at Single Candle Press: have a Merry Christmas and a blessed 2015. -DA

*****

Bethlehem, Judea

The Census of Quinirius in the years of Augustus

Two men, clad in white, walked a hill overlooking the town. The night, as always outside a camp or the confines of a town, was quiet and cold. Only the moon and stars provided what light broke the darkness. One of those this night shone brightly enough that the shadows, however, held little dominion.

The praise that had taken place was over, and the only witnesses had been the shepherds and their flocks bedded down in these hills. There was time for reflection now, and for walking, and to learn.

One of the two was very old, though his steps were not heavy with age. The other was less so. He had been apprenticed only shortly before the blessed event, and there was still so much that he did not understand. They stepped, but the sandy ground did not show their tracks. They seemed to shine with a light from within, but the luminance cast no shadow. They were here in the land of David, but the lesser of the two felt as if they were also not here. It was not the first such feeling that had come in his new time.

���Friend,��� he asked, hesitant to disturb the moment that was upon the land. ���What has happened here? Is something new between them and us?���

The old one smiled and shook his head. They paused in their walk, looking down on the edge of the small town, where lights, even in the outbuildings, could still be seen to shine. He leaned on his staff of white as the newcomer attended him. This one seldom spoke, but his words were worth hearing whenever they came.

���Something new? Hardly.��� His elder���s eyes���still bright���turned from the town to look at his companion. ���Something that has always been, rather, has passed for a time into the realm of men and the line of time.��� He smiled, as his gaze returned to the scene below. ���It is how they understand things, you see. One moment leads to the next while they live.���

���I understand that, at least, now,��� the elder���s apprentice replied. ���But why the passing?���

���To show love in the time of men! It will be a blessing to them all, as was the Praising, so that they can hear in its telling and retelling. The Spirit moves in such times, you see, and communes with whom it will.��� He straightened, and his staff moved forward as their walk began once more.

���To them all?���

���Yes���all. Every one,��� the old one asserted. ���Some will not take it up, of course, but that is their choice. Those that love will see in their hearts, even if they do not hear the stories ��� or know the names.���

The apprentice looked back toward the lights of the town. ���And what then will they see?���

The old one paused once more, and bent down to the sandy ground. He pressed his finger into the soil. This time, it yielded, and unlike on any other of their journeys, a few flecks of the dust adhered. The grains came up with him as a display. His companion watched as his fingers flicked them away. The grit dissipated until only a single speck remained. The elder regarded the smallest bit of Judea that he could obtain.

���They will see someone in themselves,��� he mused. ���Someone less than Who created them, and wonder to their own purpose. Then the Spirit comes, you see, and fear retreats before Him. Love is left behind, and another part of the Whole is set in place, each tended as carefully as any other ��� each in his own time.��� The old one paused, and together they looked back toward the lights of the town. ���Or in hers,��� he intoned.

A final flick of his fingers returned even the last speck of soil to the ground from whence it had risen, and the lesser of the two perceived his lesson. That ground was made of many of the same. So was the land, as was this Earth ��� and that remained only a part of the many attentions of Heaven.

���So long an effort, is this whole of parts,��� the lesser of the two whispered.

���He is a Craftsman ��� one who works slowly and well, until His results are achieved. How else would it happen, outside the line of time?���

The young one nodded, his head lowering in respect as they moved on. As they walked, the Judea landscape seemed to absorb them, and after a short time, they too were gone. The moment had passed, and yet remained. As with all His servants, it was eternal.

Choose to Love, -DA

Giving back: “Romeo Down: A Short Story” Free launch!

I’m giving back on ���#���VeteransDay���. Thank you, ���#���Veterans���!

Daniel Sean Ritter’s second, “Romeo Down: A Short Story” ��� is having a #���FREE��� launch November 11 and 12!

Here is the blurb:

“Where does a man’s strength originate? In 1991, during the short, brutal air war above Iraq, two men unknowingly discover the same answer during an intense CSAR (Combat Search And Rescue) operation.

A short story, “Romeo Down” is an account of the action resulting in the award of Daniel Sean Ritter’s first Silver Star. Alluded to in dialogue within the first novel of “Sean’s File,” “Operation Naji,” this episode stands alone as a spoiler-free companion volume to that title.

Approximately 8000 words / 30 pp. print length”

For now, “Romeo Down” is a Kindle exclusive. You can read for free anytime with Kindle Unlimited! If you’d like a review copy in EPUB, please ask ….

Gving back: “Romeo Down: A Short Story” Free launch!

I’m giving back on ‪#‎VeteransDay‬. Thank you, ‪#‎Veterans‬!

Daniel Sean Ritter’s second, “Romeo Down: A Short Story” ‪ is having a #‎FREE‬ launch November 11 and 12!

Here is the blurb:

“Where does a man’s strength originate? In 1991, during the short, brutal air war above Iraq, two men unknowingly discover the same answer during an intense CSAR (Combat Search And Rescue) operation.

A short story, “Romeo Down” is an account of the action resulting in the award of Daniel Sean Ritter’s first Silver Star. Alluded to in dialogue within the first novel of “Sean’s File,” “Operation Naji,” this episode stands alone as a spoiler-free companion volume to that title.

Approximately 8000 words / 30 pp. print length”

For now, “Romeo Down” is a Kindle exclusive. You can read for free anytime with Kindle Unlimited! If you’d like a review copy in EPUB, please ask ….

Ten Questions from Tara: Interview with Dale Amidei

It’s Saturday, and I’m discussing “Absinthe and Chocolate” in an excellent with Tara Chevrestt. Please give the Book Babe blog a visit to help me thank a gracious host!

Ten Questions from Tara: Interview with Dale Amidei

Plus Forty

Very nearly four decades ago, a cousin and I were roughhousing in the kitchen of our South Dakota farmhouse. In the early evening, Mom and my uncle and aunt returned from another of what had been frequent visits to my father at the hospital. Mother was clearly upset, and all his brother could manage was “He left us.” At that time, prevailing thought decreed that one could not prepare children for such an event, so almost no one, professional or otherwise, tried.

Dad had tried. My cousin, who lived as a sister raised with us, got a hug during that last visit. I got a handshake, as a peer would, and my father told me that I would be the man of the family. I had no idea why anyone would expect a ten-year-old to do such a thing. I can still hear the accompanying words from Mother to this day. “He doesn’t know what’s happening.”

Later that week, the cattle sold, and with his last concerns resolved, my father died—seemingly of his own will—from a burst aortic aneurysm. He kept track of the clock throughout the day, not needing the eyeglasses that used to be so necessary. When the time came, he had his brother help him to the restroom in preparation, returned to his bed, and faded out. He was pronounced dead too early, and his eyes opened and closed one last time to the sound of my mother’s voice. Afterward, he was gone.

My father was raised by in an unremarkable environment by a family of farmers who, as far as I can tell and with only a few notable exceptions, have always been just that. His service record says that he worked as an auto mechanic on induction. He served with the same Engineering battalion all through the second World War, first building the ALCAN highway across Canada and Alaska, then participating in the Normandy invasion and pushing on into occupied Belgium.

He rode what was probably a deuce-and-a-half down a mountainside after a mishap on a treacherous piece of road in Canada. He stood as a sergeant on a bridge under construction in Belgium and kept his men working as fellow soldiers dealt with the German snipers targeting them. For that action, his officers recommended he receive the Bronze Star. He returned home rather than wait for the commendation to be processed, but the paperwork is one of my most treasured heirlooms.

He raised a family, and tried to tolerate carpentry work in the Black Hills, but returned to the farm that was his home and built, from the basement and foundation work up, the first house I knew. Less than twenty years later, he was gone at the age of 54. My mother said often that he could accomplish anything that needed doing.

My memories of him are so sparse. The lessons of his life have had to be uncovered year by year. They are eclipsed by the lessons of his death. The lesson remains that we are obligated to live so our inevitable doorway does not intimidate us when it opens. The lesson endures that we may have to die, but we do not have to be afraid. The lesson embeds that faith and character are the basis of our last dignity.

I had a lot of questions left unanswered in 1974. I addressed those one by one through the writing of my chosen surrogates: the authors of the Bible, Tolkien, Cooper, Keith, Roosevelt, Capstick, Hemingway, Homer, Asimov, Heinlein, and many others. They were all archetypes to be sure, but only shadows of the one I knew too briefly.

Because he expected me to learn the gun, I became a prodigy. Because he was a dedicated husband, I have been with the same woman for more than three decades. I read because I had to seek out the voices of men who wrote, and because I admired them, now I write also.

Since then, I have ranged farther than some do where I originate. As a result, life for me has been more than snowscapes in the winter and tended fields with contented animals in the summer with spring’s work and harvest on either side. Life found me where I was, and made me what I am. One can only view the purpose of it all through the lens of faith and hope that I am being used … as I often pray.

So, Dad, here I remain, more than half an allotted lifetime later. The times and my circumstances may well never let me achieve your category of manhood. Still, I have the intention, and those unreachable goals will take me as far as I can travel. What others said, I repeat: well done, sir. We remember you. You stand tall, just as you did in life, now with Mother again at your side. I would not be surprised to find that there, you have built another house.

Choose to Love. -DA