The Byproduct

Gaming the System

2012-01-27T12:41:00.004-05:00

Pretty interesting article here about the nature of online reviews. It's pretty amazing how much time and effort goes into the business of e-commerce.

I enjoy maintaining a web journal in part because I have a small forum to offer my views on books and movies I enjoy. It's a treat to scroll through old posts and see a tangible record of the creative works that have touched me over the years.

I don't have a lot of reviews on Amazon, but I'm making a concerted effort to offer more of them. And I'll be honest--I typically stick to the old adage that if you don't have anything nice to say, you should just keep your mouth shut.

But my reticence in offering negative criticism is kind of mitigated by practices like the one mentioned in that article. I mean, how legitimate can a product review be if there are businesses out there stuffing the ballot box?

I sometimes hear a radio advertisement about a company whose sole purpose is to bolster cyber reputations. Wow. I mean, there's a local advertising agency that offers 3,000 "likes" in the first month or clients get their money back.

Strange times, folks. Strange times indeed...

The Ultimate Anthology: "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss"

2012-01-25T11:05:00.002-05:00

Kij Johnson's award-winning tale "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" is one of the more heart-warming pieces I've encountered in recent years. The story has so much to recommend it: Johnson's rhythmic, succinct prose style; its beautiful treatment of the nature of companionship and personal healing; that final element of paying a life-saving favor forward.

I offered my students extra credit for writing on this story years ago in a literature class at the college. To this day, no story that I've taught has created such an emotional and positive response.

To date:

"26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" ~ Kij Johnson

"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" ~ Stephen King

"Voluntary Committal" ~ Joe Hill

"The Pear Shaped Man" ~ George R.R. Martin

"The Small Assassin" ~ Ray Bradbury

"Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" ~ Peter S. Beagle

Herein Do Not Fail

2012-01-24T09:05:00.004-05:00

Those words in the title of this post appeared on the jury summons I received in the mail two weeks ago. Pretty impressive phrase, and it certainly worked yesterday, as over two hundred citizens showed up for jury selection at Jacksonville's sizable courthouse.

They were selecting fifty-three juries for twenty-five judges. We were herded into a huge room and shown a video that stated that America is one of only a handful of countries in the world that allows for citizen-judged decisions in both criminal and civil trials. We've been conducting such trials for over two hundred years, and that's a pretty impressive legacy.

I learned a lot about the justice system yesterday. It was actually kind of strange, as a I felt like I'd hooked a left right into a Perry Mason episode. We had a folksy, Southern judge who regaled us with little anecdotes throughout his lengthy instructions and (I kid you not) nodded off occasionally during voir dire (speaking the truth).

We had a long-winded session with the plaintiff's attorneys. They were roundly ridiculed for taking too long by the judge. We had a short session with the defendant's attorneys. The arguments, even during jury selection, were taking shape right before us.

Eighteen citizens were selected for questioning, and from that pool, seven would form the jury. We provided our biographies, discussed our beliefs and backgrounds, and then we were dismissed while both sides made their challenges.

I was not selected for jury duty, and I'm actually thankful for that. This trial was going to be an emotional one, and there was a lot at stake. I have no problem doing my civic duty in the interest of fairness, but the subject of this particular trial was one that would be hard for me to wrestle with objectively. We were charged with using our "intellect and conscience" in our stewardship of the verdict. Those are fine standards to apply in a case like the one were being considered for, and I'm confident that the citizens that were selected to serve throughout the rest of the week will be fair in their deliberations.

One of the most shocking aspects of the experience was the infrequent parade of prisoners, shackled together, that walked through the halls of the courthouse. I think they were being arraigned in batches. The hallway in front of the jury waiting area would periodically fill up with folks, and the prisoners would march by, shouting curse words and other affectionate greetings at their loved ones. Some folks would hold up toddlers, presumably for a glimpse at their brothers or fathers (I saw only a total of three female prisoners the whole day, and only a single woman with tears in her eyes showed up for that group).

One vocal fellow f-bombed his fellow prisoners about a dozen times, and I watched the sixty-plus-year-old woman next to me look about ready to faint. She'd been reading her Bible at the time.

One thing that became glaringly apparent was the caste system (developed out of the social elements of a culture over time) at work in the courthouse. I can't imagine a more important social institution that could (based on my tiny sample size, admittedly--it was my first time as a potential juror) be more segregated.

Perhaps it's just Duval County, but it's eye opening to see so many black defendants being represented by so many white attorneys, in front of white judges, while being escorted by black jailers.

Jury duty, on the whole, was a big, long wait. Our group watched as, over and over, juries were dismissed as the parties settled. The jurors slapped five and laughed in the hallways, thankful to be free for the afternoon.

But there was a bit of a cloud that hung over our little group. Even when they dismissed eleven of us, those sent home were subdued in the hallway. We all just left, knowing that the hardest part for those selected was still ahead, and that they had a very important responsibility in front of them for the rest of the week...

The Forecast Calls for Pain

2012-01-20T12:30:00.004-05:00

Tragedy changes people.

It binds families closer together; sometimes, it drives them further apart. It can be a wake-up call for positive growth, or it can push a person down dark paths of anger and depression.

For Vivian Bowles, tragedy has created a sense of focus.

Bowles has never been the same since losing her daughter in a hit-and-run accident. Her marriage died, her business crumbled, and she tumbled into a deep well of sorrow and despair.

She sustained herself by channeling her grief into a singular mission: finding and punishing the person responsible for her daughter’s death.

Her quest for answers has taken her from Florida to Colorado, where she plans to teach Sheldon and Terri James a hard lesson in personal loss.

Things are about to get very cold in Colorado…

Frozen, a 20,000-word novella that explores the depths of human suffering and the power of a mother's love, will be available for purchase in February 0f 2012.

The Ultimate Anthology: "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut"

2012-01-19T10:25:00.003-05:00

Any solid speculative anthology should contain a tale or two by Stephen King. "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" takes one of those slots in my collection.

What's not to like about a sprite of a feisty woman whose obsession with shortcuts takes her into an age-reversing alternate dimension? That narrative voice, a first-person piece told through the eyes of an older caretaker, is just quintesessntially King. At times humorous and horrific, and always atmospheric and unsettling, this is one of his finest.

I think that description of the ghastly frog the size of a large dog is one of my favorites in weird fiction (saw a Colorado River Toad at the zoo this past weekend--that sucker was a monster!)...

To date:

"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" ~ Stephen King

"Voluntary Committal" ~ Joe Hill

"The Pear Shaped Man" ~ George R.R. Martin

"The Small Assassin" ~ Ray Bradbury

"Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" ~ Peter S. Beagle

You Snooze, You Lose!

2012-01-18T15:36:00.003-05:00

I posted an image of a draft of a cover for my second collection of short stories that will be released later this spring. The Silver Coast and Other Stories is a collection of reprints, along with a few newer stories, that were mostly written in 2010 and 2011.

Last night, I was looking at some reviews on BookReporter when, lo and behold, I saw this!

I was floored. I work with a very talented designer at the college. His business is called Canopy Studios. I'm not sure quite how many clients he works with, but he and I see each other all the time to talk about writing and design.

Zoe Sharp's title The Fifth Victim is being published in the United States by Pegasus. I asked my friend how it was possible that we'd both have the same image on the cover artwork.

"We've got access to similar resources, I suppose. What do you want to do?"

We can run that same cover. In fact, ours is actually a different image (it's a closer vantage point). We don't encounter any issues with legality if we just go with it (and the cover has changed some since I posted that link).

I felt kind of weird about it. I checked with my contacts at Distillations Press and they did, too. We're going back to the drawing board on the artwork. We'll take a fresh run at it.

But still, I was pretty stunned when I saw that cover. It's kind of cool seeing designers and publishers with limited resources (or at least I thought that was the case) playing with the big boys.

Oh, well. The key is to write good stories that can become entertaining books. I'll update the blog when I have a new draft and more information on a release for my second collection.

In the meantime, here's a look at the cover for a novella that will be released very soon. Distillations Press has novellas coming out from a number of different authors, in a number of different genres, with an eye toward publishing twelve of them in 2012. I've contributed the story Frozen and I'm working on the follow-up, whose title I'll write more about here when I get it approved.

Staying the Course

2012-01-17T14:44:00.002-05:00

I had an interesting discussion this past weekend. My buddy recently gave up running. It wasn't because of an injury or a lack of free time. He'd simply tired of it, and it didn't feel fresh to him anymore. The pleasure had gone out of it. He was at peace with his decision, and he mentioned he might play more tennis to keep his activity level up.

Still, I felt a little sad for him.

I just jogged out to the Round Marsh (that's local photographer Will Dickey's image above; he's a fine Jacksonville artist...) an hour ago and I was struck by how much I still enjoy running. I love the scenery, love the act of challenging myself, love the benefits that exercise has for my health and sanity.

And since my time off from teaching began in earnest on January 3rd, I've used my daily sojourn to work through some tricky plotting on a thriller novella called Frozen. I've written almost 20,000 words in thirteen days, and it's been an exhilarating couple of weeks.

I wake up and spend the morning with my daughter, get to the computer and write, take a jog, hang with wife and daughter, make dinner...rinse and repeat. Having my summer in the winter/spring has been a blessing, mostly because I'm able to enjoy that simple routine. It's a mental reset, and I'm a better educator (at least I hope I am) because I'm fortunate to have the cool months off to run outside.

Running is crucial to my creative process. I couldn't provide a perfect answer for my friend when he asked me why I still enjoyed knocking off some mileage every day, but I think that's about the closest I can get. Running forms the foundation of what I do at the word processor.

Here's to hoping that those of you reading this are enjoying the new year and drawing inspiration from your passions. If you're in Jacksonville and you want to tour some pristine running trails, drop me a line and we'll hit a good run!

Big Bag O' Headlines

2012-01-12T09:07:00.006-05:00

US will have world's strongest military despite cutbacks

According to the fine documentary Why We Fight, the United States spends more on defense than on all other areas of the line-item budget combined. I doubt that trend will continue as boomers continue to become eligible for entitlements, but I was happy to see that we'll see some decreases in spending in the near future. I've been a little disappointed in Obama's ability to follow through on his campaign promises in this first term. While he's not the author of the coming decrease in military spending, I do see it at least as a partial delivery on yet another of the things he promised back in 2008. Panetta is correct. We'll still have the world's finest military, with some outstanding men and women representing our country with great distinction. But as we see the long-awaited conclusion of one of our foreign military adventures, and the other is just over the horizon, I hope that whichever candidate wins this year will keep the focus on domestic defense, homeland security and intelligence. We need to focus on deficit reduction, following through on the promises made to millions of Americans (education, health care, social security), and shifting our priorities to focus on life here in America.

Why Are Smart People Usually Ugly?

Spoiler--false premise...turns out life simply isn't fair, folks!

Deadly bird flu suspected in hospitalized Chinese man

I notice these stories a little more since I looked at the fine movie Contagion. It doesn't mean anything other than I never paid much attention before to these pandemics, but still, it's scary stuff...

Reports of legendary 'Oily Man' monster terrorize Malaysia

Admit it--there's a heck of a yarn in this one. Maybe my "Oily Man" will lurch out of the Gulf of Mexico, hunting BP executives and snacking on their jowly facial fat...

"Is there any more troll stench?"

2012-01-09T09:32:00.003-05:00

That's one of the dozens of great lines from the Norwegian thriller TrollHunter (2010). TrollHunter is a film about complex commodities trading on the securities exchange in Oslo. Nah, it's actually about hunting trolls (who could have guessed that, am I right?).

It's a delightful film. The found footage storytelling technique works to great effect here, and I love the acting in this film. Glenn Tosterud's portrayal of Thomas, who goes from incredulous to euphoric as he understands the nature of troll hunting, is really good. The wide-eyed smirk is erased when he first encounters that Ringlefinch in the woods!

Otto Jesperson's portrayal of Hans the hunter is awesome as well. He plays it with such dogged determination and weariness that you have to admire his concentration. The dude never even cracks a smile the whole time! He brings some focused intensity to the piece, and pulls it off with style...

The story breathes life into details from the fairy tales. The trolls do smell the blood of Christian men. They do hang out beneath bridges, and the woodland trolls have a serious territory beef with the mountain trolls.

The film is packed with suspense. That jotnar above is no joke, and I loved the shots of their truck weaving in and out of his huge steps.

This was a joy to watch ('A' film). I told my wife what I'd picked out and she laughed at me. Ten minutes in, she was quietly engrossed in the film.

Score one for DP, and for director Andre Ovredal!

Coming Soon

2012-01-06T14:29:00.002-05:00

The artwork hasn't been finalized, and the TOC is a work in progress, but here's a first look at this year's collection of short stories (a mixture of reprints from 2010/11 and a couple of new gems I'm pretty happy with!).

Any tips or suggestions are much appreciated...

Congratulations, Oregon!

2012-01-03T10:14:00.003-05:00

I'll admit that I was disappointed when I heard we were leaving Colorado. I was in the fifth grade, and I had a lot of good friends. I loved living in Belmont, and my folks were really good about taking my sisters and me up into the Rocky Mountains. Pueblo, Colorado, was a fine place to be, and I wasn't thrilled when Ross and Mike came to the house to help us move to Oregon.

We moved into a house that was owned by the United States Forest Service. Our front yard was a motor pool for USFS vehicles--we're talking dozens of green machines parked out in the yard.

John Day was...different, for sure. It's a town of 2500 souls. The main industry there is logging, and that shut down when the Spotted Owl legislation crippled Oregon's timber harvesting.

But a funny thing happened during those years in John Day. Oregon got into my blood.

I made more friends in John Day. I played soccer and basketball and baseball. I swam for the JDST. I tried to catch every trout in the John Day River. I fell in love with the Portland Trailblazers.

We moved to Pendleton, and I made more friends--some that I still spend lots of time with. I began to follow college athletics, and the Ducks became my team. I was accepted at the UO, but I chose Linfield because I could play soccer and run track there.

Back when I was in high school, the team was run by guys like Bill Musgrave and Danny O'Neil. I loved watching Dino Philyaw and Saladin McCullough and Kenny Wheaton and Akili Smith and Maurice Morris and Herman Ho Ching and Keenan Howry and Jeremiah Masoli and Jeremiah Johnson and Joe Harrington and...and...and the list goes on and on.

I've spent a lot of days in Eugene. I've warmed a seat in Autzen many times. I've stood with my fellow Oregonians and roared for the Ducks time and time again--at Mac Court and the Pre Classic and in Autzen, where it never, ever rains!

And I'm so proud of this football team and so happy for the people of Oregon. The Ducks stuck to the plan last night and they were rewarded on so many levels. Tuinei, whose drops were pretty glaring in the LSU game earlier in the year, played a fantastic game. What a clutch performance by Darron Thomas! LaMichael was, as always, untouchable. Kenjon played really well and Kiko Alonso paid off Coach Kelly's faith in a big way. Mike Clay made plays, and DeAnthony Thomas is simply a transcendent player. Maldonado even made a clutch kick!

These guys stuck together and I couldn't be more excited about their achievement. If they would have lost, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. Coach Kelly is now 34-6, and that's a winning record that just speaks for itself.

But I won't lie--the air is a little sweeter today. The sun is a little brighter, the world a little more joyous. This is Oregon's first win at the Rose Bowl since 1917.

Congratulations, Oregon. Unbelievable...

Desert Places

2011-12-30T12:07:00.002-05:00

Blake Crouch's Desert Places was gripping. I read this story in an afternoon--the perfect way to spend a few hours during the long holiday break.

Crouch wastes no time in plunging the protagonist into a chilling, life-threatening scenario. There's a body on his property, covered in his own blood, and if he doesn't follow instructions, the evidence will be turned over to the Charlotte Police Department.

Crouch's plotting is meticulous. I found the details believable, and I was really impressed with how quickly things devolve for Andy Thomas.

Thomas is a likable, interesting character. His virtues are apparent. He has a fine-tuned sense of right and wrong, and his love for his mother seems genuine. He's a good guy. But he also has a dark side, and his flaws are abundantly apparent as well. He does some pretty deplorable things to stay alive, and Crouch's handling of a fundamental philosophical question (where is the line between the things we do for self preservation and true evil intent?) will probably shock a lot of readers.

Orson Thomas and Luther Kite? Jeez--those guys are sick. After reading this book, it makes me think twice about the true intentions of every interaction I have. I played golf with a stranger yesterday, and I'm glad he didn't drug my Gatorade and hack me to bits in a remote mountain cabin. That was nice. I mean, after reading this book I sure won't drink anything given to me by someone I'm not familiar with, and I see no good reason to stop and help others when their cars break down on the side of those deserted country roads...

It's a sprawling, fast-paced story that I enjoyed from start to finish. I'm very glad to have encountered Crouch's fiction, and I'm looking forward to reading more of his work in the near future.

Resolutions for 2012

2011-12-28T14:06:00.002-05:00

We've spent the day cleaning, and we'll spend the night painting. 2011 was a rough year for us financially, though a good one overall for our little family. Between medical testing for Lyla and Jeanne and a number of appliance replacements (the fridge and the dishwasher being the largest), we were hit harder than expected. We made some good moves, not the least of which was buying a Prius and paying it off quickly. Jeanne went from filling up that old Jetta once a week to gassing up the Prius once a month. She switched schools, going from a forty-mile daily commute to a six-mile round trip. For the sake of her sanity and her productivity, it was a very nice move with Duval County Public Schools.

I always hear folks claim that it's trite to make resolutions at the beginning of the year, but I don't subscribe to that. I like setting goals, and the start of the new year is as arbitrary as any other time to think about that sort of thing. With that in mind, I'd like to do the following:

Spend more time camping and fishing. We've had a very warm winter here in Northeast Florida. If that trend holds up through January, we're definitely taking Lyla tent camping at some of the local state parks. Florida does a great job in providing its citizens access to the great outdoors, and Lyla's big enough now to where we don't have to stay in a cabin.
Write more and sell more. I'm going to deliver a novel to my agent in a few weeks. We'll try the traditional route with that book. But I'm going to bring out another collection of short stories in 2012, as well as a collection of novellas and a number of stand-alone novellas. I do hope to more actively promote my writing, in addition to placing stories with magazines and journals that I admire. I've got five short stories currently under contract to be published in 2012, and I like that those stories funnel readers to my website and my offerings on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.
Run more road races. I ran the Jacksonville Last Gasp 5K (on a genuine XC course at Jacksonville University) race on Monday and had a blast. I'm running the Gate, and I might run the VyStar 5K this weekend. Lyla ran a half mile fun run on Monday and had a great time, so I think we'll be trying to do more of that. In addition to running more road races, I'm going to bump my weekly mileage as well.
Eat better. This is a big one for us. More grilled foods, and more vegetables. We do a fine job of eating well overall, but with a little one and busy lives in general, we cop out sometimes to processed foods. I'm off from the college until early May, and so I'll be cooking a lot at home. That means lots of prep. and lots of better eating.
Family hugs. We have about three a day. I'd like to see that number approach at least five...
More movies and dates with my wife. I see some matinees by myself, but I'd like to get back to having a sitter look after Lyla and going to the movies a few times a week with Jeanne. We used to see one each week, and I miss that time together.
More volunteering. When Lyla hits four, I'm going to be doing a lot of coaching, but until then I'd like to devote some hours to stuff we can do as a family to improve life here in Jacksonville.
More blogging. I'd like to get back to a fairly regular schedule with posting content here. I've read six books since December 16, so it's not like I don't at least have some opinions on books and stories that struck a chord with me!

For the foreseeable future, my days will look like this: mornings with Lyla. Writing and running in the afternoon. Evenings with Lyla and Jeanne. Occasional golf and fishing.

The college e-mail is down for maintenance, and when it comes back up, I'll likely check it sporadically. Drop a comment here if you need to contact me...

I hope 2011 was a good year for you. Here's to a great one in 2012!

Blake Crouch's RUN

2011-12-17T21:28:00.004-05:00

Run is the best new story I've read in 2011. I liked it so much that I immediately purchased Fully Loaded and bought some print copies of the novel for my homies for Christmas.

The Colcloughs are stuck. They have a hell of a proposition--get north or get dead. And they pull together in a way that I find simply redemptive.

Crouch is a fine writer. Those scenes in Wyoming in which the family has to deal with the mountain are both harrowing and well written. Take it from a guy that's questioned himself on the side of the Grand Canyon--those fears are real, and Crouch brings them to life in a way that makes your knuckles go white.

It's the protagonist's drive to keep his family in tact, and his ability to understand the situation in the minute and the second that it's happening, that makes this a believable narrative. I loved the observational detail in this story, and I thought that the framing technique worked out really well.

Crouch did a fine job with this story. Very highly reccommended...

Ania Ahlborn's Seed

2011-12-07T16:16:00.004-05:00

Ania Ahlborn is a very good writer. Seed takes off with a flash and the pace never lets up. Ahlborn draws round characters, which makes the third act all the more crushing when the story runs its course. Aimee and Abigail and Charlie represent a great little family--filled with innocence and hope and a genuine caring for one another that touches the reader.

Then there's Jack Winter. He knows things are wrong, and he knows things are happening, and he does nothing at all to change the course of his family's fate.

I don't get it.

I liked the writing and, in places, the story is quite unsettling. That's about the best compliment I can pay a writer of dark fiction, as it's so rare nowadays to feel uncomfortable while reading.

But I just didn't buy it in the case of Seed. Sure, the plot works for the novel. In that sense, Jack's decision to leave his home at the most inopportune time serves the story.

But it doesn't ring true for what a father would do to protect his family. In this case, I grew frustrated with the novel. I kept wondering why Jack was "trying to buy some more time" before he finally did something to protect his loved ones.

And, to her credit, Ahlborn pulls no punches in the final act. The horrific realization that takes place in those final pages is crushing. Part of what she is doing with this piece is writing about the nature of evil, and how it can corrupt even the most innocent among us (Am I right, chief?). And I'm no puritan--I don't need a happy ending to enjoy a text.

But the manner in which Jack allowed things to happen felt false to me. It just didn't feel like an authentic fatherly reaction.

As I said, Ahlborn is a very good writer, and I'm looking forward to her next work. Seed is well worth horror fans' time.

But it got under my skin at times (probably a sign of a good piece, really) because it didn't feel authentic.

Life, On the Other Side

2011-12-05T15:45:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, it takes a long time for a story to take a breath. Many years ago, I was driving into Pendleton with some friends after an evening of playing hoops out at Mission. It was cold and dark, and we were on one of those hundreds of winding country roads that cut through the wheat fields on their way into town.

I was with a couple of friends, and we were chatting and laughing and having a great old time until we came around a sharp curve and had to slam on the breaks.

There had been an accident--it looked like some un-fenced livestock had wandered into the road. There was an overturned truck and what looked like some ravaged carcasses there. An ambulance was just arriving, and a visibly shaken law enforcement officer held us distant from the accident site.

"You'll have to find another way into town," he told us. "This way's closed. You'll have to turn around and find another way in."

We did as we were told, covering the last few miles in somber quiet.

More years have passed since that winter day than I'd lived up to that point in my life. That's a strange reality for me, since I can still so clearly see the interaction in my mind.

Time is a thief, to be sure...

But something else happened that day, and it happened almost instantly. Even as we were heading back into town, I began mulling over the different postulates on why Pendleton might be cut off. I had already begun writing (although I didn't know it then, and wouldn't realize it until a good fifteen years later) "Life, On the Other Side."

I would like to thank the good people at Weber: The Contemporary West for publishing my story. The first readers and editors Michael Wutz and Kristin Jackson offered some great suggestions on making this piece stronger.

If you'd like to read it, scroll down on the PDF to page 52...

Welcome to Jacksonville, Mr. Kahn!

2011-12-01T20:32:00.002-05:00

Forty-eight hours after the most tumultuous day in the history of the Jacksonville Jaguars, I feel very good about the changes that took place on Tuesday.

My initial reactions were par for the course up here in Duval County: shock, sadness, confusion, fear and anger. Why would Wayne sell the team now? Why would he can Jack and extend Gene?

Who is our new owner, and what are his intentions for the big cats?

The new owner is Mr. Shahid Kahn. He's a self-made billionaire, a University of Illinois graduate who has a degree in engineering and a proven track record in philanthropic giving. He's a passionate sports fan, a huge Illini backer and a businessman that has eagerly pursued an NFL team for years.

I'm thrilled about the change. I say that now, better knowing his intentions for the team, his background in the world of business, and his impressive financial resources.

I'm thrilled to hear that he is purchasing a home in town, and that his statements to the press have been, to the letter, pro-Jacksonville. He sounds like a Northern Floridian already, and I'm excited to see what he has in store for the team.

It's on us now to fill the seats. We haven't had any games blacked out in years (in comparison, it's been years since Tampa Bay had one on television locally), but we need to really stuff that joint.

The Jags need to do their part also. They suck. They're terrible, and they need to get better quickly. Stop dropping passes. Stop allowing sacks. Stop throwing for eighty yards in a game.

The Jags need to play some football.

The staff needs to improve. I'm interested in seeing Coach Tucker's approach to game planning. He's already shuffled his staff and let a bunch of unproductive players go.

Change, in this case, was sorely needed. I'm invigorated by the possibilities of what could happen next (and yes, I'm an optimist).

I thank Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver for their immeasurable contributions to our community. Their vision in bringing the NFL to Jacksonville, to staging a Super Bowl in our town, and to making the Jags into one of the great success stories in professional sports will always mark them as true pioneers.

But I'm now thrilled to have Shahid Kahn running the team. I'm thrilled to have him and his wife, Ann Carlson Kahn, in our city--making a difference in a place that seems to improve on a monthly basis but also still has a long way to go in some areas.

Welcome to Jacksonville, Mr. and Mrs. Kahn. It's good to have you here!

Go Jags, baby!

What A Difference A Day Makes...

2011-11-29T11:49:00.002-05:00

Went to bed last night with Jack Del Rio coaching the team. Oh, and that team was owned by Mr. Wayne Weaver, a Jacksonville citizen.

I took our company to the airport and went to work. Lo and behold, I just discovered that Jack is out and Wayne sold the team.

Wow.

Just holy cow, wow!

Further updates as the picture grows clearer...

Happy Holidays!

2011-11-23T09:55:00.003-05:00

Sue Coe: "The Animals at Thanksgiving"

I hope everyone has a great holiday. Hug your loved ones and turn off your phones and computers and take a walk outside.

Monday Updates...

2011-11-21T12:37:00.002-05:00

Yes, Oregon lost on Saturday. Yes, we're very sad for the team. Time to regroup and unload on Oregon State, then get ready to play in the inaugural PAC-12 Championship Game. Next up, win the day...

I received the good news that a story of mine was selected for an anthology I'm really excited about joining. More on this placement shortly, but that's two stories that found good homes in the last two weeks.

Redstone Science Fiction did a nice job with the podcast of my story "Raising Tom Chambers." Thanks go to Michael Ray and Amanda Fitzwater for the fine job on the presentation!

REC 2

2011-11-17T11:32:00.003-05:00

REC 2 (2009) is a sequel (more of a continuation really, since the chronology aligns directly with that of its predecessor) that moves swiftly and brutally toward a terrifying conclusion. This Spanish horror film marries demonic possession with zombie-esque creatures and a viral contagion. It sounds like a crazy salad (and perhaps a bit too much), but directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza manage to tie it all together effectively.

Exposition is spare, as a SWAT team enters a contaminated Barcellona apartment complex to assist a "medical" official with his investigation of the strange outbreak that has afflicted the complex. We see the camaraderie of the team and learn the chain of command, and then they arrive at the scene and it's through a plastic barrier and straight into hell.

Jonathon Mellor plays Dr. Owen with aplomb. It's a one-note performance (he makes a grimace awfully well), but it's remarkably intense. His turn is really the focal point for characterization, and the rest of it is a claustrophobic search, going from room to room (which may or may not be inhabited by the demon-things) in search of a vial of blood.

There is a particularly frightening scene that unfolds in a heating duct, and a terrific sequence that pays the viewer's time off nicely in the final scenes.

It's not hard to recognize this film as the European penpal of the underrated Quarantine (2008). Both make good use of the perspective shots rendered with hand-held cameras. It's participatory filmmaking, and lends a level of authenticity to the proceedings. I give it a solid 'B' and recommend that horror fans give it a shot. It's better than 98% of the stuff that's been released in the last year...

Speaking of films that use that technique of visual narrative, I read a review of Trollhunter (2010) in my Fantasy & Science Fiction and I'm definitely intrigued...

Immortals (2011) was a bit of a letdown. Overlong and unnecessarily stylized (in places), this film lacked the mise-en-scene that made 300 (2006) such an unexpected success. 'C-'...

Gooooooooo....DUCKS!

2011-11-16T16:49:00.003-05:00

Wow, what a performance last weekend against Stanford. The defense looked fast and prepared. LaMichael chipped and chipped and chipped away at that big defensive line, then he made one quick cut and took it fifty-eight yards to the house!

Speed...speed...speed! From Kenjon and LaMichael to Darron and Dat! From Boseko and Mike Clay to Pleasant and Gildon, this team can move!

I know I'm biased, but I think Chip Kelly is the best coach in America. There's nobody I'd rather have coaching my Oregon Ducks. Earlier in the week, he talked to the Oregonian about that nifty two-point conversion. I'm paraphrasing here, but Coach said it was a big benefit to the team to steal points when they saw an advantage.

Let's go, fellas. This week at home, against the Men of Troy. Win the damned day!

I love it. Speed and aggression and unity and excitement! This is how football was meant to be played!

Go Ducks!

The Fall of Penn State

2011-11-10T12:09:00.003-05:00

In the fallout of one of the swiftest and deepest falls from grace I've seen (even more dramatic, I think, then the rape conviction of Mike Tyson or the Tiger Woods adultery scandal), I think the board of trustees at Penn State did the right thing in getting rid of Joe Paterno immediately. Given the timeline of events and the graphic nature of the crimes allegedly committed on campus (be warned: if you read the grand jury report, it's very unsettling; I had a hard time with it), he had to go.

Paterno is an octogenarian. He's relinquished more and more control over the last decade, and in some circles has been viewed as nothing more than a mascot in terms of his actual coaching responsibilities. It's wholly possible that his advanced age played a part in just how cognizant he was that all of this was taking place, but that's no excuse. In 2002, he was told that Jerry Sandusky was seen sodomizing a young boy in a public shower. ESPN reported yesterday that Sandusky, who has been under investigation by the attorney general for three years, was in the locker room at PSU as recently as last week!

These alleged abuses should have been dealt with over a decade ago. Mike McQueary should have done what he could to stop the sexual assault he witnessed at that point in time. Barring that, he should have, at the least, immediately informed the local police of what he saw.

This story was passed up the chain of command, and nothing was done. In 1999, when Sandusky was asked to resign after allegations of abuse mounted, Penn State should not have given him an office on campus as part of his resignation deal. They should not have given him access to the locker rooms and weight rooms, where more abuses allegedly took place.

Penn State did the wrong thing in this matter, time and time again, and I can only deduce that it was because they wanted to maintain the program and the university's image. These allegations are horrific--it's the most disgusting story I've seen in sports--and Penn State has dealt with the situation in a truly callous fashion.

I'm sad that Paterno won't coach out the schedule, but not because he deserves the opportunity. I'm sad that he won't be exposed to the ridicule, scorn and anger of the American populace that sees how truly heinous these alleged crimes, and their subsequent public suppression, really are.

Shame on you, Joe Paterno. Shame on you, President Spanier. Shame on all of the students that have rioted in the streets without considering the depths of moral depravity in this story.

Rot in jail, Sandusky. I hope your life there is very difficult.

Nobody is bigger than the program, right Joe? Well, I guess that really depends on the kind of program you are running...

A Fable for Today

2011-11-02T10:07:00.003-04:00

The governor stopped short when he arrived at the fork in the path. It wasn’t indecision that gave the tanned man with the carefully manicured fingernails pause, but rather the python coiled there, studying him with shining saffron eyes.

“Do you, uh…do you mean to block my way here, snake?” the governor said. There was a twang in his speech—an affectation he was trying to perfect in an attempt to echo his predecessors. Like the man himself, the accent was a work in progress.

“Why shouldn’t I?” the snake hissed. “I shouldn’t even be here at all.”

The governor put a hand on his hip; he used the other to scratch at a trickle of sweat in his flawless gray hair. “Well, I suppose that’s probably true. Python, ain’t ya?”

“Yes,” the snake said, stretching the ‘s’ menacingly. Its angular head swayed back and forth, its tongue tasting the air. “Do I frighten you?”

“Nope. Can’t say that you do.”

“Then you are a fool. I've corrupted your lands and I’ve grown fat on your stocks.”

The governor narrowed his eyes. “You mean down in the ‘Glades, don’t you python?”

“I have feasted in the great river. But now, I live in the cane fields as well; you can find me on the banks of Okeechobee. And I'm here, you fool—in the forests near your home.”

The governor chuckled. “So why don’t you just go away? Shoot, just leave us be.”

“It’s not that simple. This place—it was a paradise once…”

“I’m not sure I like your tone, snake. Florida is still first in the nation in tourism. Almost 500 people move here every day. I’d call that pretty damned good, if I don’t mind saying so mys…”

The python darted forward, quicker than the governor could dodge. Its head, a thick wedge of scale and bone, ducked under the old man’s thigh; it only took a moment for itl to impose itself upon the governor—like wild grape on a weathered fence post. The governor toppled and fell over.

“Now what’s this all about, python? I’m just trying to stay trim here—getting a little exercise is all.”

The python tightened up, the governor loosing an audible, “Oooof!”

“You don’t see,” the python responded. “You lack vision. The flood of people. The strange animals—they aren’t from here. They shouldn't be here! You’ve given away the land. You’ve choked the great river to grow poison. You’ve cut down the mangroves and replaced them with walkways. All of it…every last bit of it is an ending.”

“Now just you wait a minute,” the governor started, but the python flexed his muscular body, squeezing a sharp cry from the confused man.

“No time,” it hissed, “for waiting. No time for indecision.”

“What do you want?” the governor croaked. His face, already red from the exercise, was turning purple.

“Reverse it,” the snake said, drawing out the syllables. It sounded like air escaping from a tire.

“But how? You’re talking about undoing a century of policy here, python. Let's be reasonable, now.”

“Things can be undone,” the snake replied. As if to prove its point, it relinquished its hold on the old man and reclaimed its place on the trail.

The governor stood and brushed himself off, a little bit purple but none the worse for wear.

“So is that all?” he said. He made a move toward the left fork in the path, meaning to finish his jog.

The python cut him off, poised for another strike. “Go back,” it said, anger flashing in those saffron eyes. “Go back the way you came. Go back and undo your mistakes.”

The governor glared at the snake. Dang it, but now his afternoon was shot! He pulled a leaf from his tussled hair, frowned at the reptile and then turned and trotted back to where his security detail was waiting in the parking lot.

One of his men passed him a sweating bottle of cold water as they pulled out of the gravel lot. “We still going to the Governor’s Club this afternoon, boss?”

The governor gave it some thought. Probably best not to get on that snake’s bad side. “Naw,” he muttered. “Naw, damnit, let’s just head for home, Bo.”

He skipped his shower and angled straight for his office. It only took him a minute to get Allison Schiller, the state’s lead wildlife biologist, on the phone.

“Pythons, Allie!” he complained. “Dad-gummit, we got pythons! Right here in Leon County!”

There was silence on the line.

“Allie? You still there?”

“Governor, we’ve been trying to tell you that for the last three years,” she said. There was disbelief in her tone—disbelief and anger. “Pythons are just the start of it, sir. We’ve got angel fish in the port of Miami, iguanas in Key West, howler monkeys in Julington Creek…the list goes on and on. We’ve been trying to arrange a state-wide effort to deal with this since your first month in office.”

The governor used a toothpick on his capped teeth; her words made him wince. “Well, shoot. Maybe it’s time we called a meeting. Can you get up to Tallahassee tomorrow?”

More stunned silence. “Of course. Of course I can. I can be there before noon.”

“Okay, then. Thanks, Allie. Jeremy will make the appointment,” the governor replied, disconnecting the phone. He sighed, stood and walked to the window.

There were alligators floating in the lake behind his office; a few sunned themselves on the apron of sandy shoreline. An egret stalked minnows in the shallows. Dozens of turtles basked in the sun, necks stretched, balanced atop cypress boughs.

“Shit,” he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair. All at once, as if the man’s disdain for the work ahead was a fork of lightning from an afternoon thunderstorm, the birds and alligators and turtles turned their heads to appraise the man watching them from behind the glass in the great white house.

Boy's Life

2011-10-31T10:28:00.003-04:00

Robert McCammon's Boy's Life is probably my favorite novel of all time. I polished it off last night, and that's both a sad and a good thing. I've been excited every night over the last two weeks to return to the story. It's a text that's consistently great and memorable, from start to finish.

It's divided into parts, with titled sub-chapters in each. The text has a murder mystery at its core, but that thread only propels the narrative's greater purpose, which is to reveal the events of a year in the life of an American boy. In our case, Cory Mackenson is a great person with which to spend time.

McCammon's characterization is fantastic, and in particular I admire his treatment of the relationship between father and son. In the story's third act, nothing can quite crush the reader's heart as totally as their meeting on the front porch of the old house.

Death, mythology, magic, friendship, betrayal, mistrust, aging, maturation, storytelling--this novel touches on each of those topics, and it does so with insight and respect. McCammon is a master at work, and I think this is his best creation.

Boy's Life inspires introspection--or at least it did for me. But I find I'm also now looking to interpret what life must be like for my daughter. At two, she'll make her first foray into trick-or-treating tonight. For a week she's delighted in watching the weather forecast on the news, where they place a pumpkin graphic on the Monday marking Halloween.

"It's Monday, Dad! It's Halloween!" she shrieked this morning over her cereal. They are having a party at her daycare (pajamas and healthy fruits and veggies), and then it's on to the night's festivities. I'm dropping by the library to pick up a copy of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), and we'll be gearing up to have a ghastly good time giving out candy and touring the neighborhood.

I remember that whisper of promise that sticks in the back of your mind when you are a kid on Halloween. I remember watching the clock tick by, waiting and waiting and waiting for the day to end and the night to start. It was a thrill, and I'm excited that my daughter gets to feel that same spark tonight.

Happy Halloween to you, wherever you may be reading this! I hope you enjoy the evening...

Fiction is a Lens on the World

2011-10-21T14:51:00.003-04:00

"But I'll tell you a secret, Cory. Want to hear it?"

I nodded.

"No one," Mrs. Neville whispered, "ever grows up."

I frowned. What kind of secret was that? My dad and mom were grown-up, weren't they? So were Mr. Dollar, Chief Marchette, Dr. Parrish, Reverend Lovoy, the Lady, and everybody else over eighteen.

"They may look grown-up," she continued, "but it's a disguise. It's just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won't let them. They'd like to shake off every chain the world's put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day. They'd like to feel free, and know that there's a momma and daddy at home who'll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can't be hurt." She put aside the papers and folded her hands on the desk. "I have seen plenty of boys grow into men, Cory, and I want to say one word to you. Remember."

"Remember? Remember what?"

"Everything," she said. "And anything. Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure. Because it is. And memories are sweet doors, Cory. They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something, don't just look. See it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it, too. It's easy to walk through life deaf, dumb, and blind, Cory. Most everybody you know or ever meet will. They'll walk through a parade of wonders, and they'll never hear a peep of it. But you can live a thousand lifetimes if you want to. You can talk to people you'll never set eyes on, in lands you'll never visit." She nodded, watching my face. "And if you're good and you're lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have the chance to live on long after--" She paused, measuring her words. "Long after," she finished.

~ Robert McCammon, Boy's Life, 186-7

McCammon, in that passage, perfectly distills a central lesson I try to impart upon my students in our literature courses in the college: receive life.

Our days are filled with wonder and potential, but only if we accept those moments and analyze them. A critical theorist I admire calls those moments in literature, and in life, "reception moments." It's up to the reader, and to the individual, to throw off the limitations of the mundane and celebrate life beyond mere novelty.

It's that observational quality that makes good fiction work, and boy is McCammon's fiction filled with fantastic detail and taut writing...

Friday Roundup...

2011-10-14T12:08:00.002-04:00

Lyla's had the inevitable fall crud this week. Like clockwork, she's been up at 3:00 a.m. and clamoring to climb into bed with Jeanne and I. When I take her to school, it's a common sight to see ten or twelve green-boogered toddlers running around with what sounds like smoker's cough.

It's just part of being a toddler and spending a few hours in the petri dish of life that is a preschool.

I'm at the midterm here at the college, and up to my ears in grading. Still, with the change in the seasons and the cool weather, I spent the morning mowing the lawn for the last time. I put in a nice edge and raked up all the leaves. I overseeded last week and the rye grass looks nice. I fertilized and we've had loads of rain, so it's pretty green and lush and ready for winter.

I fixed the toilet and cleaned all the tile and hardwoods in the house. I cleaned out the garage and got the everything out for Halloween. This weekend we have an Oregon Ducks game and maybe we'll go see Sandalwood play some football tonight. We're going to wash the walls and the windows for fall cleaning.

I'm not sure about those of you reading this, but for me it's a truism. I'm more productive and, I sometimes like to think, a better writer when the house is neat and tidy.

On the writing front, I've had a pair of stories that have been published well in recent weeks, and some of my books and novelettes have been stirring interest on www.goodreads.com.

Here's to changes in the season! Here's to football and cool evenings and dark beer! Here's to well-crafted horror films and kids that get excited to put faces on orange gourds!

Hope things are well where you are...

Early Brushes with Cinematic Horror

2011-10-10T16:36:00.004-04:00

When I was ten years old, I stayed up late on Halloween night and watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers with my mom. We were living in Pueblo, Colorado. Bon Jovi was popular, the Patriots were the laughingstock of football, and pretty much the scariest thing a kid had to worry about was the insertion of a sewing needle in a Bit-o-Honey or a razor blade tucked into a Charleston Chew.

I remember sorting the loot, making the appropriate trades with my sisters, and settling down to watch Don Sigel's film on the couch.

And once that title flashed on the screen with all that melodramatic music and I saw old Uncle Ira out there mowing the lawn like a robot, I was hooked. I mean, I couldn't do anything but watch. Popcorn be damned, I had to remind myself to take a breath.

When it was finished, I was scared to go to bed. I was scared to be put to bed, suddenly scared that my parents had been replaced by pod people. It cut me to the core to think about my family members losing that fundamental spark of personality that made them the people I love so much. It's one of the most powerful horror tropes we have, that horror story on the dissolution of personal identity.

I'm reading Boy's Life again. There's no finer book for the month of October, by the way. This is my third time through, and I might just adopt it as a yearly personal writing workshop. When I read McCammon's prose, I'm inspired to consider phrasing, description, pacing and plot in different ways.

Last night, I finished Cory's embedded narrative about the first time he saw Invaders from Mars at The Lyric with his buddies.

Holy cow, that was me! I thought. It's a wonderfully staged resonant memory, and one I can certainly relate to.

Thanks, Mom, for spending time like that with me and, to the best of my knowledge, for never plotting to swap me out for an alien while I slept. Even though I've discontinued the morning Tales from the Darkside sessions with my daughter (bad dreams, Daddy!), I'm so looking forward to sharing moments like these with my girl when she's a little bit older...

Submitted for Your Approval: A List of Interesting Writings...

2011-10-06T11:58:00.002-04:00

Some of the stuff that I've been reading and enjoying out there:

David James Duncan, author of the excellent memoir The River Why, has written an interesting essay on the writing process;
Joe R. Lansdale's "Fish Night" is a story I never tire of. I've read it now about a dozen times, and it's a fine blend of authentic characterization and bizarro surrealism;
To my thinking, there's nothing not to like in the legend of the "Stranger in the Church." This one's most frightening aspect is the invasion of personal space;
Very interesting interview with the always-candid Greg Norman. The man is comfortable with himself, and that's admirable.

I recorded American Horror Story. If you've seen it, I'd love to hear any thoughts on the show in the comments section...

And finally, you know you all want to watch Oregon tonight at home against Cal! Grab a cold'un and get ready to watch those great gridders from Oregon as they defend Autzen against the Golden Bears!

Jags at the 1/4 point...

2011-10-03T16:08:00.002-04:00

After a 23-10 loss to the New Orleans Saints at home here in Jacksonville, this team is struggling to find an identity and, to be honest, beginning the countdown to the next high draft choice.

That's not at all to say the season is fruitless, or that this team won't be interesting. But I think, after Houston's play in the last two weeks, we can kiss the division goodbye and this team just isn't good enough to contend for a wild card in the AFC. Not with Buffalo and Tennessee starting to play some good football.

Blaine went 16-42 yesterday. It's the type of line that gets you booed off the field, especially after missing twelve throws in a row in the second half. But the thing is, Blaine looked really good in spots. My oh my, he looks the part! He's a big kid, and he stood in the pocket, didn't get rattled, and he made some excellent throws. That pass to Zach Miller on the touchdown was a freaking dart!

He had some bad misses, and his team didn't help him out (I counted at least three drops). He didn't play great, but he spun his head and went through the old progression tree. I love to see that, as those are the hallmarks of guys like Philip Rivers and Tom Brady.

The defense has been pretty good. Paul Posluzny was a great addition, and I think Dwight Lowery and Drew Coleman have been nice additions.

Maurice Jones-Drew is still running like a man possessed. Miller and Lewis, when healthy, are very good tight ends.

The cupboard is not bare, and this team is very competitive.

This team will be okay, and it needs to grow. I want to win a bunch more games this year, but if Blaine continues to make strides and we end up with a play like Justin Blackmon in the next NFL draft? Whooh! We could be getting back to the days of Brunell to Smith and McCardell around here...

Weekend Update...

2011-10-01T11:47:00.002-04:00

A pocket of cool, dry air finally slipped down from the north last night. We awoke to temperatures around fifty degrees, which is a welcome relief after a particularly hot and dry summer. We set a record with over twenty-nine days in a row (might be longer, but that was the last data point I can recall) over ninety degrees this summer.

We headed over to the Jacksonville Zoo to spend the morning. It's a very nice facility, with lots to see and do, especially if you're a two-year-old girl that's just bonkers for animals. I'll mow the yard for what will probably be the last time later today, then it's off to play some golf and watching the Florida Gators' game tonight against Alabama.

My story "Life, On the Other Side" is available in the current print issue of Weber: The Contemporary West. I'll compose a longer post on this tale at a later date. It's a special story for me, and the folks at Weber did a phenomenal job of publishing the piece. It's a nice journal--a great mix of fiction and poetry with some keen interviews.

I took a run on the beach yesterday, where we had an unusually high tide. The ocean had barfed up what had to be hundreds and hundreds of chipped and broken sand dollars. It was something to see, to be sure...

If I ever make it as a rapper, I might call myself Fishmaster Powell. These poor fish out here in Florida! They tremble when they hear me loading up the kayak. In all seriousness, the fishing has been great up here in recent weeks. There's a world-class tarpon and sailfish run happening right about now, as I've heard...

And lastly, I've reduced the price on the digital versions of the three texts I have out there in the various stores. I hope you folks out there reading this are ready to enjoy the October holidays! Man, I love Halloween!

Straw Dogs (2011)

2011-09-26T12:27:00.004-04:00

Rod Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs serves its purpose. It's an interesting look at the veneer of civility that exists among men, and the transformative powers of violence to create personal (and, in this case, physical/geographical) identity.

Here, the contrast is between rural and urban; between the American South and the Hollywood star system. I mention that it's a physical/geographical source of identity because, if we're to trust Lurie's film, we're led to believe that hunting is simply what you do in the American South. Hunting, in fact, serves as a kind of overt symbol for our protagonist's character transformation. It's not part of his make-up initially, but it surely becomes a part of it by film's end...

James Marsden offers a fine performance as David Sumner, a screenwriter thrust into a difficult situation when he and his new wife return to Mississippi to fix up the family homestead. It's a traditional "fish-out-of-water" trope, and Marsden delivers a nice turn here. He steps on the wrong toes (opting for a nap while church is in session--a big-time cultural faux pas) and manages to alienate just about everybody around him within a few days of pulling into town. We've seen it all before, but Marsden's transformation from mild-mannered writer to principled fighter is a redemptive journey for the audience. In the scene where he takes down the deer, we understand his conflicted feelings at the same time that we clear an important narrative hurdle: Sumner is willing to pull the trigger.

Good thing, too, because he'll need to in the third act.

There is an undercurrent of sexual antagonism that makes the film appropriately uncomfortable. The rape scene is very hard to take, more emotionally grueling than the brutal on-screen violence in the third act.

I read an interesting criticism of how the American South was depicted in this piece, and I had some of those same thoughts after leaving the theater. While Jacksonville, Florida, is far removed from rural Mississippi, so I could be guilty of provincial thinking here, I will say that the antagonists came off as caricatures. They fit into just about every nice little Southern stereotype you can think of, with Rhys Coiro's portrayal of Norman crossing the line most egregiously.

We had a discussion in our rhetoric session today on the artistic impact of violence and sex in contemporary cinema. In the case of Lurie's version of Straw Dogs, the violence absolutely creates the narrative tension that pushes the film forward. It's gory, to be sure, but never gratuitous.

Overall, I liked it better than many of the critical reviews I read (I'd say a 'B' grade about nails it, no pun intended) and I think it's a fine example of how violence distills some very honest human reactions to conflict...

Qualifying Hate

2011-09-21T23:05:00.003-04:00

He glanced at his parents watching through a nearby window, took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. A single tear hung on the edge of his right eye as he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., 10 minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing into his arms, both covered with intricate black tattoos.

That paragraph comes from a story about the execution of Lawrence Brewer. Brewer, a soldier in a race war that only he and his idiot friends were fighting, died tonight. He died young, and he created his own demise.

Brewer was charged and convicted for dragging James Byrd, Jr. to death on a rough Texas road. If you read the original reports of the crime, they are harrowing. Mr. Byrd was literally pulled apart on that road.

My thoughts on capital punishment are ongoing. I'm still wrestling with it.

But when I think about how Mr. Byrd's life ended and how Brewer's life ended, it really doesn't compute.

Peace be with you, Mr. Byrd...

The Gaping Maw

2011-09-20T16:06:00.002-04:00

It's been an extraordinarily frustrating and expensive year around the old homestead this year. Home ownership is great and all, but I often admire renters, too--particularly for the fact that they have mobility and that the burden of maintenance falls upon the landlord.

Our house is fourteen years old. It's a nice place, and we've been very happy here. No jaw-less Japanese corpse ghosts in the attic, which has always been a big plus for us. It's got a nice layout and we've done a good job with the yard, and Lyla knows it well and is comfortable here.

But the last year has seen a wave of appliance meltdowns. Since January, we've replaced the dryer and the dishwasher and did an $800 repair on the A/C unit. We paid a fellow to put in the dishwasher (we tried to do it ourselves, but after a short period of time we didn't find even an ounce of joy in it) and it took us forever to re-wire the danged dryer cord.

Then, a month ago, we had to do a repair on the Prius. $500 more bucks that just flew away...

So that brings me to Monday morning, and a note by the coffee machine that Jeanne left before heading to work. She said the freezer was leaking, and told me to replace the towels (that's how we fix things--soak it up with towels! Quick! More towels!). I did and I went to work. I came home and looked at it more closely and, lo and behold, that ol' side-by-side refrigerator bit the dust in the middle of Sunday night. I didn't even know it was sick!

Last night we ordered another one.

A cool grand later, our new fridge will be here tomorrow and we're eating at Subway tonight.

I came home from work today (I left it plugged in over night, as it was still marginally cool, just not either freezing or cold) and the house stank like moldy cheese. The culprit, I soon found, was a brick of moldy cheese.

I vented the house, tossed out more than one hundred pounds of frozen and fresh foods, and spent an hour hosing out enough condiment bottles to fill a hefty garbage bag. Now, only the gaping maw (my least favorite horror cliche, by the way) of the old bleached-out fridge remains in the kitchen, waiting for haul away.

She gave us five good years of service, and likely did a good job for many years prior to that. We had planned to maybe fly home for Christmas this year, but now it's looking like spring break. I'll hum jingle bells every time I open the door for a cold drink, I suppose...

These things happen and that's just a part of life, but I sure hope that water heater out there isn't getting any ideas...

Jones Creek...

2011-09-16T13:58:00.003-04:00

Very Thankful...

2011-09-16T13:42:00.004-04:00

My wife is my best friend.

That is the sincere truth, and after our fourteen years together, I still marvel at how much goofy fun we have together every single day.

Over the last six months, we've been a little antsy with medical concerns. I never reached defcon-five in terms of my own worry status, but I found that, fairly often, I would catch Jeanne in a private moment of anxiety. We had some tests done, and then we had to wait and go through the tests again. After six months of waiting, very fortunately, we have a clean bill of health and everything looks fine.

It's turned out to be an immense relief.

Last night we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. We will probably have a date pretty soon just to actually mark the date, but I think that, while the ninth anniversary holds no traditional mark of distinction, this one will always be very special to me.

I'm very thankful to Jeanne for all that she does for our family. Lyla and I are extremely fortunate to have her.

And another reason that I'm thankful: I live 2.8 miles from Jones Creek. I can throw the boat in the truck, pick up five fresh Key West pink shrimp, cut them into fifteen baits, and have four big reds within the space of an hour. I released the fish, but they would have been some jim-dandy mouth candy on the ol' grill!

Geoff Ryman's "What We Found"

2011-09-14T12:23:00.003-04:00

Geoff Ryman's story "What We Found," which can be read in the SEPT/OCT issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, is one of those redeeming tales that keep me interested in the digest. I really had some trepidation about extending my subscription a few months ago. The publication has some decent books columns, and there are occasionally brilliant tales found in these pages, but I found there was more of the hard science fiction than I like, and also a bit more of the whimsical fantastic than suited my tastes. I'm a fan of the mundane speculative tale, the stories where small artifacts and encounters take on greater meaning as a result of their speculative influences, whatever they may be.

So it's been nice to see some of the stories that carry that out well published recently in F & SF. Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" is just that type of story, and so is "What We Found." I would expect that this story, a treatise on familial love and betrayal, the ties that bind us to our genetic inheritances, and the uncertainty of madness, will make many lists of best fiction when those things come back into fashion during the holidays.

It deserves its critical praise. Our first-person narrator is simultaneously detached and intimate. It makes for a very compelling character study. The narrative heart of the story is the narrator's love for his mercurial brother, Raphael. Their connection is based on genuine love and mutual respect, and the time that Ryman takes in illustrating their bond makes the final act all the more heart breaking for the reader.

In many ways, "What We Found" strikes me as a companion to Louise Erdrich's fine tale of sibling dissolution, "The Red Convertible." Raphael and Junior share a number of the same character traits and, ultimately and unfortunately, a similar fate.

I won't delve too far into the plot of Ryman's story here because it's such a treat to read, but if you're familiar with the Erdrich story, you'll find the tale packs an emotional wallop. Ryman's writing is excellent. The fluidity and clarity of the prose I discovered here have compelled me to seek out and read his novels...

Crucified Dreams

2011-09-13T08:14:00.003-04:00

Despite the odd title of this anthology of urban fiction, Crucified Dreams represents a solid collection of interesting storytelling. I've said it before here on this blog that Joe Lansdale is, for my money, one of the most consistent writers in the business for my tastes. I've never put one of his books down after starting it, and I find most of his offerings to trend toward the high limits of the quality scale.

He proves he's no slouch here as an editor as well.

Most of these are dark, dark tales. As he states in the introduction, the only thing these tales really share is a climate of originality, and there is that in spades here. There's a little fantastic whimsy in stories like Ellen Klages's "Singing on a Star" (makes one wonder about the family down the street--and the ominous record or toy your son or daughter might bring home after a play date).

There's brutal, no-hold-barred stories like "The Pit," by the editor, and "Quitters, Inc.," by Stephen King. Tom Piccirilli's "Loss" reminds me of the surreal, dark output that I've been reading by Laird Barron.

My favorite story in this fine collection is "Coffins on the River," by Jeffrey Ford. Ford's ability to nail the protagonists' character and flesh them out with real pathos is enviable. I also really enjoyed the subtleties exhibited by the nuanced storyteller. Ford, in one passage, mentions the tale's central redeeming plot conflict in such a cursory manner that, when we re-encounter it in the story's third act, the redemption is all the sweeter for the reader. It's masterful narrative.

Lucius Shepard's "Beast of the Heartland" is a startling tale--the writing is crisp and beautiful, the characters three-dimensional and round.

There are fine stories here by Octavia E. Butler, Joe Haldeman and Michael Bishop. Very good anthology, and highly recommended.

Now off to class...

Contagion

2011-09-12T09:59:00.004-04:00

Steven Soderbergh's latest is a very strong film. It unfolds with narrative urgency (the running timeline of the epidemic's progress is quite compelling) and some startling intimacy that provides some very uncomfortable moments. Soderbergh's tight close-ups on the blotchy, feverish victims--on their credit cards, their hands in public bowls of peanuts, their frequent touching of their faces and their uncovered coughs--are unsettling. You'll turn and look at the others in the theater. I dare you not to...

There was a guy in the theater that was absolutely hacking up a lung throughout the whole picture. It certainly added a level of diegetic authenticity to the film, and it drove me up the wall! My two-year-old daughter knows well enough to cover her mouth when she coughs, but this guy was doing that at a movie called Contagion!

It's a sprawling story. A very good cast carries out the piece with aplomb and pathos. My two favorite turns were given by Kate Winslet and Jennifer Ehle. These are the doctors that address the epidemic at its outset, and that test the vaccines as the disease mutates. Both bring a sense of exhaustion and perseverance to their roles, and they hit their notes perfectly.

It covers a lot of territory in such a short time. From the shortages of medicine to the looting and profiteering by scumbags like Jude Law's toothy Alan Krumweide, we see the worst that humanity has to offer in times of crisis. Civility breaks down, as does our national infrastructure. The detached news reports are all too authentic, and there is a chilling shot of the vaccine being archived next to the SARS and H1N1 vaccines. At one juncture in the film, a reporter discusses absenteeism by law enforcement reaching 25%, and that's a pretty scary glimpse behind the veil.

The film delves into the international reaction to the disease, with an unresolved narrative thread concerning a hostage negotiation for vaccine doses. It's the only fault, this unresolved story line, in an otherwise great film (A-).

It feels all too real, and the story is one that begs for audience introspection. How would you react to such a pandemic wildfire? What would you do to keep your loved ones safe? What is "normal," and to what extent are we our brothers' keepers?

There is a bouncy, digital score that feels like it was ripped from the best thrillers of the late 1980s. The film itself, gritty and fast-paced, would have been at home in that era as well. It's a throwback--an adult film with a downer plot that moves well based on strong acting and solid filmmaking craft.

And it'll make you think twice when you're in the back room, folding laundry, and the newscaster on the television in the other room, in typical exuberant nonchalance, offers a tiny report about the latest flu virus ripping out of the interior of Mexico or the streets of Hong Kong. Tough stuff, indeed.

Now go see the movie, and don't wipe your eyes. Hey you! Stop touching your face!

Plushdamentals

2011-09-02T18:23:00.001-04:00

Thanks, Freddy T!

2011-09-02T16:23:00.002-04:00

The greatest Jaguar of all time retired today. He was in Jacksonville today to hold an emotional press conference. Fred deserves to go into the hall of fame. He had eight seasons in which he averaged more than 4.5 yards per carry (only Barry Sanders and Jim Brown can also say that). He ran for more than 10,000 yards, developed as a pass catcher, had longevity after overcoming some early injuries, and he has the longest playoff run in NFL history.

Even more remarkable is the kind of person he is. Fred is a community stalwart. His foundation does a lot for the city of Jacksonville, and he is a good father and husband. He said some great things today about his wife and grandmother, and he is a perfect example of a humble superstar.

Thanks for all the great memories, Fred. It'll be good to have you working with the organization as the Jaguars move into a great future...

Picture This, Jacksonville

2011-09-01T10:26:00.006-04:00

Imagine a major metropolitan area in Florida that took full advantage of its greatest resources: its diversity of human capital and its rich natural resources.

Imagine a place where people had a genuine mutual respect for one another--where they operated under the golden rule in their daily interactions, regardless of age, race, economic status, religious background or ethnicity.

Imagine a place carved from an ecosystem teeming with wildlife and with some of the greatest access to the natural world in all of the United States of America. Imagine a place with some of the finest fishing on the planet, with some of the best golf courses in North America, with miles and miles of pristine beach.

Imagine a place filled with colorful history. Imagine a place that is home to first-rate museums, a wonderful zoo, beautiful botanical gardens, dozens of state and national parks, and the largest municipal parks system in the United States.

Imagine a place where the community supported education. Imagine a place where our teachers were given autonomy to teach a curriculum unbound, at least partially, to standardized testing. Imagine a place that respected its public servants, and where parents instilled in their children a desire to strive for a station in life that surpasses their own.

Imagine a safe place for everyone. Imagine a place where folks could make a living wage without the need for a college education, where the citizens could work for companies that were successful enough to give their employees access to dentists and doctors.

That place could be Jacksonville, but it's not.

This community is blessed with some of the greatest fundamental assets of any place I've ever been, and I lived in Colorado and Oregon prior to moving here in 2005. Those are two places that have recognized the wealth of opportunity they have, and they've capitalized on it. We have many wonderful advantages here, but will we ever harness the community will to capitalize on them?

Fifteen people have been shot in Jacksonville in the last four days. Four have died as a result of the shootings, including an unborn child, and a toddler is now fighting for his life in the hospital. A witches' brew of circumstances has certainly contributed to the sorrowful place in which our city now finds itself: unemployment, a lack of education, a diffusion of weapons among young people, a lack of viable opportunities for our new college graduates.

It's a real shame, this sense of community nihilism.

My wife works as a counselor at Forrest High School, where she puts in long hours helping students achieve success and move toward college. There are many like her, and yet the dropout rate in Duval County is a staggering 30% (and that number takes into account some generous accounting). Many of the kids lack parental involvement and stable home lives.

I encourage our school board, our educational leaders and our public safety community to work hard to hold parents accountable for truant children. We have viable after-school programs for our kids, but we need more. Many of the sports we no longer fund (because our tax basis faltered, and the decreased revenues led to cuts in education and extracurricular activities) kept kids occupied and working toward concrete goals.

I hope, as the federal government works to re-think the "No Child Left Behind" legislation, that our educational leaders will devise a plan that recognizes testing as the important tool it is, but doesn't make it the greatest measure of a person's ability to learn and execute fundamental skills. In Oregon, the educational system had specific testing benchmarks, but the emphasis for students was on developing critical thinking skills, using technology effectively and focusing on effective communication skills.

I work with around one hundred students every term here at Florida State College. These are intelligent people with strong fundamental academic skills. They are hungry to learn, and they are taking advantage of the great opportunities that our state has to offer in higher education.

But my students are in the extreme minority. We have one of the least expensive higher education systems in America (I believe we rank #49 in total cost for in-state tuition). We also have one of the best, in terms of value and practicality. The problem here is the disconnection between high school preparation and ascension to college. Our students, for various reasons, are dropping out of school at such an alarming rate that they never even see this great opportunity as a realistic option. Our city and educational leaders must work with families in disadvantaged communities to stress the value of education and push for lifelong learning. We need to take advantage of VPK in these areas and re-think our approach to siphoning the best students from our struggling schools and sending them to our best magnet schools. This practice only exacerbates the problems of the haves and the have-nots.

Jacksonville is beautiful. I'm thankful that our community doesn't subscribe to the saccharine, insincere cultural make-up of Disneyfied Orlando, or the pumped-up, cosmetic nature of South Florida. The people here are sincere and refreshingly unpretentious. And we should use that cultural ethos as part of our pitch to capitalize on tourism.

If I'm Mayor Brown, whom I admire and voted for, then I work with my economic development team to apply for every federal dollar available to develop Jacksonville as a destination spot for folks looking to revel in "Old Florida."

I'm working to first find federal money, and then work with community leaders to venture into places like Brooklyn, where folks are out of work; I'm taking that money and giving them jobs working on our finest natural assets. I get the Palms Fish Camp up and running and I work with the St. Johns Riverkeeper to keep our waters clean and I identify other city properties for tourist development.

I put my butt on the plane and I pitch Jacksonville to every major community in America. Come here for our history, our climate, our cuisine, our friendly people, our beaches, our fishing and our sporting activities! I get businesses to locate on the waterfront in downtown, taking tourists out on the St. Johns and into the creeks for birding and shrimping and fishing.

We live in a paradox. This place has such great advantages, and such a staggering disregard for those very things. I experienced a perfect metaphor for this earlier today. I was headed out to the St. Johns to do a little kayaking and fishing. There I was, enjoying the view of the brackish marshes, when a tricked-out Monte Carlo cuts me off, rolls down the window and empties an ash tray at forty miles an hour. It looks like a comet tail, all that foul garbage. Then, at 9:30 in the morning, the passenger throws three empty cans of Busch into the grass on the side of Merrill Road. Those cans will likely end up in the river.

Why? Because some people simply don't care.

This is the greatest task that we who care about this place face. How do we get others to buy in? How do we overcome this cultural nihilism that seems to pervade our city?

The stakes are too great not to try, but when I read about the things that happened this week in Brooklyn and I see egrets stalking minnows in shallows filled with floating garbage, I become discouraged, and that's no way to live...

Updated: I received a few e-mails on where I put in. The cul-de-sac on Ginhouse Creek...

2011-08-30T16:39:00.003-04:00

I enjoyed Occultation just a bit more than I did The Imago Sequence. I think the former had a sparer, leaner prose style and a stronger sense of atmosphere. Both collections, through, were thoroughly enjoyable books.

These were stories that I couldn't wait to get home to read. The writing, dark and gritty straight down the line, stays with you throughout the day. Barron is certainly one of the stronger voices I've encountered in dark fiction in recent years. "Proboscis" "The Royal Zoo is Closed" and "Parallax" were among my favorites.

These are stories rife with witchcraft, secret societies, wild eccentrics, and ordinary objects that hold horrible properties. It's a great read for fans of the esoteric and literary horror fans alike. Highly recommended...

New Term Begins...

2011-08-29T10:03:00.001-04:00

Love to start the new term off with a little music...

The Jaguars Make Me Cry

2011-08-27T19:52:00.003-04:00

I love this time of the year. Even though we set a new record for high temperatures today (98) in Jacksonville, the weather is about five weeks from cooling down a bit. The baseball pennant races are heating up. College football starts on Thursday, with my Oregon Ducks playing in the national spotlight next Saturday.

But not all is right in Jagland. It's pretty far from it, actually.

I adore these Jaguars. I stick up for that guy you see in the picture there quite a bit; maybe I should stop doing it. David is seriously erratic, and he seems so far removed from his best play (2007). He just threw a sweet deep ball and Jason Hill whiffed on it, but he takes far too many sacks and he misses (usually high) a lot of open throws. I watched the Jags beat Atlanta last week and I saw Matt Ryan throw the ball away at least three times.

Just do that, David! Sheesh!

Our offensive line is bad in pass protection. The team can block the run okay, but they struggle with pressure, and it doesn't help that our first and second round picks from two years ago are pretty much either turnstiles or they're injured.

Our secondary is bad. I'm watching Ryan Fitzpatrick look like John Elway in his prime right now. He hasn't missed a throw. 10/11 and two touchdowns, and most of it isn't even close. He's making our secondary look terrible, which I think it is (when we lost to New England in 2007, Brady only missed two throws the whole night!).

Our wideout core is probably the worst in the league. Poor Mike Thomas. He's a stud, but he is facing a serious deficit when the teams double him all the time because nobody else can catch it.

Marcedes Lewis is a great player. Rashad Jennings is a great player. Maurice Jones-Drew is a great player. I think Tyson Alualu is good, and Daryl Smith can really play.

The Jaguars have a ticket-selling campaign. They keep airing these commercials with the players chirping, "It's go time."

If this team continues to play like this, it'll be "go time" for Jack Del Rio and David Garrard, among others...

To further piss in the corn flakes, I was terribly saddened to hear that Mike Flanagan committed suicide a few days ago. I watched Flanny pitch, probably, thirty games for my beloved Baltimore Orioles when I was a kid. It was strange--we were living in tiny John Day, Oregon, and our cable provider had a station called Home Team Sports. They carried all the Orioles games! Watched that team every night (my parents met and married in Baltimore, and we still have family up there), and Flanny was a fixture.

I won't deny that I got a little misty when I read that he took his own life with a firearm. I wish you well, Flanny, and I'm sorry that things had become tough for you in recent years. I hope you find some rest...

The O's, whose box score I still study every morning (yes, I get a real newspaper in my driveway), have won five in a row. I hope Flanny is enjoying the win they had last night over the Yanks (the O's will wear a patch with his number '46' on it for the rest of the season).

And, as I type this list of complaints out, David goes all David on me and has a monstrous, mannish run for a touchdown. Probably a top-10 play tonight on Sports Center. And that's why it's so damned tough to be a Garrard backer in this town! He keeps pulling me back in...

We'll be in section 405 for you on opening day, David. It's 9/11, and there will be a huge amount of emotion and passion in that stadium. I got your back. Not sure how Jeanne feels about you. But let's get this thing cranked up, Brother! Let's get this offense working!

Some Film Reviews...

2011-08-24T12:50:00.002-04:00

Stone (2011) presents an interesting examination of morality and ethics. I took a look at the film to watch Norton and DeNiro, and came away only impressed with the former. Norton's performance as Stoney, a criminal who killed his grandparents in a drug-addled haze, is compelling. Norton mumbles his way through a performance in which his character undergoes what appears to be an authentic transformation. Seeking parole, and needing DeNiro's Jack Mabry to rubber stamp it, Stoney turns to pseudo-religion.

Only for him, it seems to take. He becomes docile and subservient, ultimately gaining a measure of peace with himself.

The early give-and-take between these two is good, vulgar fun. They can both cuss with the best of them.

Mabry is a church-going, bourbon-swilling sinner with a golf fixation. He's about to retire, and he seems at a moral crossroads of his own. You see, this guy is a turd--a jerk who threatened to kill his own child when his wife attempts to leave him. He is a controlling right-wing gun nut that listens to talk radio all day while judging others, only to become a drunken lecher when propositioned by Stoney's wife.

Stoney's marriage to Milla Jovovich's Lucetta is an odd one. Jovovic is okay in her turn here--bouncing around with flirtatious angst while trying to expedite her husband's release from prison.

It's a simple story that becomes convoluted in the third act. The resolution isn't satisfying, and the only one I felt sorry for was Mabry's poor wife. She gets a little revenge late in the film, and more power to her, but it's too little and too late for my liking. There are too many Jack Mabry's in the world, and most of them never experience anything like a real form of punishment.

Worth a look (B-)...

Source Code (2011) has a few good moments as an interesting little "time replacement" sci-fi thriller. My wife liked it a bit more than I did (I'd say a C+). Jake Gyllenhall is okay, and I liked his chemistry with Michelle Monaghan's Christina Warren. Unfortunately, that chemistry is also the thing that kind of sinks the film for me.

Gyllenhall's Colter Stevens is able to transport his consciousness back into the body of a school teacher named Sean Fentress. He's doing it to stop a terror attack on a Chicago train, and he gets a dozen shots at it. It does, in the first act, feel a bit like Groundhog Day, and that's a shame for the pacing.

My problem, though, is with the storyline. Stevens saves the day, of course, but decides to take over Fentress's body! What happened to the poor school teacher? He's just collateral damage? Pish tosh!

Interesting movie that kind of ticked me off...

The Eagle (2011) is better than watching that infomercial for the shark vacuum. Channing Tatum runs around with Jamie Bell. They fight those seal people above. They have some adventures. Tatum makes one face for the whole film. He gets hurt and has a miraculous recovery. He gets the eagle back--because everyone knows that imperialists need to celebrate their victories with important ornaments. I'd give it a C and advise you to instead watch Master Chef if you have it on DVR...

When is a Six-Iron like a Story?

2011-08-16T20:06:00.005-04:00

That golf course there is where I've spent just about every Thursday afternoon over the course of the last year. Mill Cove is a wonderful neighborhood institution. From the club manager to the head golf pro and the superintendent, the people there are tremendously kind.

The course has a challenging layout--an Arnold Palmer design that, when played from the rear tees, can offer a stiff test for the seasoned player. It's out here, sitting beneath canopies while Florida gully washers blow lukewarm sideways raindrops the size of red plums, that I've figured out a lot of stuff.

Last week I was on fourteen. Playing from the back tees, I hit a long slice just to the edge of the first cut. The pin was set at the back of the green. I had to fly a pond and a couple of large spruce trees to hit it. 185 yards or so.

I grabbed a six, visualized the shot, cleared my mind, addressed the ball and hit it perfectly. It feathered up there, floating, hit the pitch, bounced once and checked up. I made a birdie.

More than anything, it just felt good to execute the thing that I was hoping to execute.

I'm finding that to be the case more and more with my fiction. I'm not writing here in the web journal as often because I've been writing much more fiction--actively creating, and not just polishing--over the last few weeks. I put down just shy of 5,000 new words last week, which is a lot for me. I expect I'll have a similar output by the end of this week.

I write short fiction more sparingly than I used to, but I'm better at it. Five years ago, I wrote a story and submitted it twenty-five times before retiring it. I'd do that twenty times a year.

Now, I'm writing longer stories. The subjects are more selective, and a bit more complex.

I've received good news on two recent stories in just the last week, with one success representing the culmination of a goal I set for myself years ago. It feels very good to have made this happen, but it just signifies a new place for me in my fiction.

When I hit that golf shot last week, I had every intention of it finding it's mark. After years of practice, that's a realistic expectation for me, and my scores reflect it.

I feel the same is now true for the stories I've been writing. I'm confident, every time I fully invest in a piece, that it will find a worthy home.

Time...it's all about time and repetition and practice and bringing a level of serious intention to the table. I hope that, for those dropping by here for a read from time to time, each of you is making the time to pursue your passions, and that you're occasionally (or, better yet, often) delighted in the little markers along the way that foster that love...

Side Effects Not Typical

2011-08-10T08:47:00.000-04:00

February 12, 2010

Fox Broadcasting Company

P.O. Box 900

Attn: The Super Big Banana!

Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900

Dear Mr. Calemczuk,

Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to withdraw my name as a candidate for employment with Fox. I only get to send one letter a week, but I wanted to let you know that I won’t be able to join the show, at least for this season.

I’m in the Nassau County Detention Center. They say I attacked my mother, but I don’t know why they’d say such things! The accusations! So cruel. So so so so so so so so so so CRUEL!

I could never do what they say I did. It’s not in my nature, not at all.

You know the worst part of all this? They took away my meds. In a week, I’ll be back to square one. I can already feel the change, and I just missed one day! My legs, my bladder, my eyes, my muscles—all of it is going to shit, Emiliano!

I can still watch the show in here. They let us have two hours of television privileges each night. Just enough to keep my streak alive!

It’ll be hard watching all those ads, knowing how I’m falling apart in here. Oh, well. Mother’s holding on in the ICU, so maybe it won’t be long until I get out of here after all.

I thought you deserved prompt notice, Mr. Calemczuk. I know Ellen has done a fantastic job, but if you need a replacement in the future, I encourage you to look to your fan base.

Believe me, Mr. Calemczuk, there are thousands of girls out there just like me.

Maybe even millions!

Sincerely,

Abbey Tinsdale, Yulee, Florida

Side Effects Not Typical

2011-08-09T10:00:00.001-04:00

February 03, 2010

Fox Broadcasting Company

P.O. Box 900

Attn: The Super Big Banana!

Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900

Dear Mr. Calemczuk,

Well, I won’t lie to you sir.

I’m a little nervous.

I was watching one of your news shows and Sarah Palin leaned out of the television and spoke to me!

“God’s chosen ones will assume leadership over the race of men, and the Earth will be ruled by the strong willed, you betcha!” she said. Mr. Calemczuk, she was staring right at me! “And you will know God’s chosen ones by the color of their eyes!”

“Oh Sarah!” I shouted at the television set. “What color are they?”

She leaned forward, pointed to her own eyes, winked at me, and said “Brown! The chosen ones will have brown eyes!”

Well, I almost fainted, Mr. Calemczuk. You see, I have blue eyes! My legs got to twitching and I felt all kinds of muscle pains (my fibromyalgia gets particularly bad in the winter) and I could barely get myself to the bathroom without having an accident (thank you, Vesicare!). I looked in the mirror and, lo and behold, my eyes are brown!

It’s an honest to goodness miracle!

I’m in! Please thank Sarah for me, and keep up the good work over there.

Sincerely,

Abbey Tinsdale,

P.S. I don’t mean to be pushy, but do you have any news about the job?

Side Effects Not Typical

2011-08-07T18:06:00.001-04:00

January 27, 2010

Fox Broadcasting Company

P.O. Box 900

Attn: The Top Dog

Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900

Dear Mr. Calemczuk,

Thanks so much for the autographed picture of Randy! He’s really slimming down, isn’t he? Wowee, what a cutie-pie!

Also, I didn’t see an application in the packet you sent. Do you need me to fill anything out? I’m asking because I could really use this job, Mr. Calemczuk. Unfortunately (ha, ha!), I’ve lost a little bit of money. I’ve been betting on the NBA lately. Don’t ask me why, though, because I’m not a huge sports fan. But still, I thought the Nets had cool uniforms so I put a nickel on them. Honestly, who knew the Lakers had the league’s best record?

And talk about your meltdown! Dad hasn’t spoken to me in days. I used some of the money he and my mom had been putting aside for a trip to Barbados. But I can get it back. I know I can. The Hawks are playing in Miami tonight, and their road uniforms are just adorable!

Who picks the drug commercials you guys have been showing on your show? I only ask because I’ve never felt this good! The Xanax helps me calm down, the Lunesta puts me to sleep and the Mirapex controls those pesky crazy legs.

I’ve also taken your recommendation and started a regimen of Latanoprost to help with my glaucoma. I didn’t realize things were getting so blurry with my vision, but this stuff has really sharpened it all up for me.

Thanks again for the picture of Randy. Tell him I can’t wait to meet him in person!

Sincerely,

Abbey Tinsdale, Yulee, Florida

P.S. You really need to do more of the production numbers! You can just tell how much the contestants love each other when they get to sing together like that!

Side Effects Not Typical

2011-08-05T12:50:00.000-04:00

January 20, 2010

Fox Broadcasting Company

P.O. Box 900

Attn: El Grande Enchilada

Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900

Dear Mr. Calemczuk,

Well, I lost my job. One of the twins choked a little bit on a Lego block and I missed it because I was asleep. The funny thing is, I was dreaming about little Dory (that’s her name; her brother’s name is Cory—cool, huh?) choking on a Lego block when it happened! Really strange coincidence. Anyway, outside of turning a little blue, Dory is just fine, but they don’t want me working there anymore. It’s unfair, I think, because I paid such close attention to those kids that it made me really tired and everything, but oh well, right?

I was watching Idol last night and it occurred to me: I actually have restless leg syndrome! I wasn’t sure about it until I saw those commercials, which explains a lot, by the way. Before I dropped out of school, I’d just sit there in class and look out the window at the trees and the birds and the squirrels and things, and my legs would just be bouncing around like they were putting out a fire down there under my desk! I swear, I thought the devil was in me. It was like I was one of those crazy Russian dancers that can almost sit down before they kick their legs out like a New York City Rockette!

I made an appointment to see Doctor Collins this afternoon. I hope I can get a prescription for Mirapex. I’d hate to be under the lights when auditions are over and we’re back in Hollywood and then—BAM!—out of nowhere I start doing the Charleston underneath the table because I wasn’t properly medicated.

How embarrassing!

Well, I still haven’t heard from you sir, and I think my parents are getting a little nervous about having me in the house. If you could let me know how to meet up with Simon and Randy and the rest of them as soon as possible, I’ll tell the wolf that’s been staying in my closet to just go away. I’ll tell him I have a job and responsibilities and that he should go bother someone else.

I can’t believe they put that Kendra chick through to Hollywood! You can tell that she tans in the salon, and everyone knows that’s just not healthy.

Respectfully Yours,

Abbey Tinsdale, Yulee, Florida

Side Effects Not Typical

2011-08-04T13:14:00.002-04:00

January 16, 2010

Fox Broadcasting Company

P.O. Box 900

Attn: The Head Honcho

Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900

Dear Mr. Calemczuk,

Well, it’s been a few days and I haven’t heard from you, so I thought I’d try another letter. Can you believe how mean Simon was on Wednesday? I mean really, that girl was trying very hard and he made her cry on national t.v.! It’s not her fault she has to live in South Dakota!

I love Simon to death, but I think he really needs someone like me up there on stage who can shoulder some of that responsibility. I read an article in US Weekly that said that he has a hard time falling asleep at night.

Has Simon tried using that Lunesta stuff that you guys have been advertising (that butterfly is SO cute!)? A lot of the girls in my support group take it and I’ve been on it for a little while. It’s really great—I go out like a light every night.

Mom’s trying to get me to quit the stuff, ever since she found me in the yard raking leaves at 3:30 in the morning. I actually don’t remember it happening, if you can believe that! Dad, thank God, told her to get off my case. He thinks it’s awesome that I’m “pitching in” around here.

And believe me, Mr. Calemczuk, if you give me a chance to work with Randy and Simon and even that icky Kara (what a total bi-yotch!), you’ll see that I’m a hard worker. I’m totally dedicated!

I’ve been making some extra money babysitting our neighbor’s twins, so I don’t need a decision like right away. But soon would be nice, because my parents have been really critical lately and I’d like to show them that I can take care of myself.

Thanks again for your time.

Sincerely,

Abbey Tinsdale, Yulee, Florida

P.S. Is there any chance you guys will be doing a swing through Florida again? If you can just send someone to pick me up in Yulee I can join the team before our next stop!

Side Effects Not Typical

2011-08-03T11:59:00.001-04:00

January 13, 2010

Fox Broadcasting Company

P.O. Box 900

Attn: The Big Cheese

Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900

Dear Mr. Calemczuk,

Before you think I’m just another weirdo with too much time on her hands, I just want you to know that I have never missed an episode of American Idol. Not a single one!

Even when I had surgery on my deviated septum, I made sure that the nurses taped the show for me at the hospital. It’s a good thing, too—it was the first time Sanjaya changed his hair!

At any rate, I’m writing to you because my mom says I need to get a job and move out of the house. I know you have a lot of smart people that work for you at Fox, so I want you to know that I did get my G.E.D.! I took the test the summer after season two was over, but I didn’t pass because I didn’t study that much and I was having a little trouble with my weight, which was kind of bad for my confidence. But then I buckled down and I started taking hydroxycut and I lost a lot of weight and I took the test again when season three was finished.

Guess what? I passed!

And I know that Paula Abdul left the show, and I heard that Ellen was taking her place, but then I had a thought: who knows more about Idol than I do? Nobody does, that’s who!

So I thought that I’d write to you about a job as one of the judges, and I appreciate your time in considering my request.

Sincerely,

Abbey Tinsdale, Yulee, Florida

P.S. I’m so glad that you guys started running those Xanax commercials during the show! I’ve been on the stuff for over a month now and the “flip-outs” (that’s what my mom calls them) are almost totally gone!

On the Debt Ceiling...

2011-08-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

When I turned in for bed last night, I was a little disgusted. $2.8 trillion on a debt projected to be over $20 trillion by 2020 is like putting a band-aid on an arterial wound.

After weeks of political turmoil, I thought that meaningful change would take place. I thought this might be the catalyst that would change our course (Ah, the "Grand Bargain"!) for the better--some legislation that would signal the positive reform in spending and the tax codes that would plot the course for a more prosperous future.

Entitlement reform. A decrease in defense spending. Re-thinking our approach to foreign aid.

I was excited to see how we might rethink a few of these issues.

Instead, we get a quick salve that gives us a rubber stamp in the eyes of our foreign debt holders. The deal allows us to pay our bills (last night, NBC Nightly News showed hundreds of our military service personnel wondering out loud whether they would be paid--I mean, sheesh!) and honor our obligations.

That said, and as the pundits have opined here, I feel like this was a squandered opportunity by our leaders. If President Obama doesn't have the political capital to roll back the $1.6 trillion in tax breaks that President Bush gave our wealthiest citizens and corporations, then things don't look good for a second term.

And I'm sad to see that.

But last year's midterm elections showed the American public's sentiment toward his first two years in office. He stepped into a politically loaded situation. Like George H.W. Bush, he'll likely be a martyr (when Bush's dad raised taxes to pay our debts, he was roundly thumped by Bill Clinton).

That's if this thing gets passed. As our local political writer Ronald Littlepage likes to say, stay tuned, folks...

Strange Days!

2011-07-30T21:18:00.002-04:00

I like to hit the golf course on Thursdays. When I turn fifty years old one day, I'd like to be a scratch golfer with a chance of playing on the Champions Tour.

Super pipe dream, but I shot a low score today on the back nine at Mill Cove...

Anyway, I went to my usual nineteenth hole (Mudville Grille) and I had to hit the can. I'm handling things when the fellow next to me says, "I read your book on vacation. I loved the stories. You have a lot of talent!"

He was talking about These Strange Worlds. He went on, while we were both using the urinals, to highlight his favorite stories ("Picture This," "The Graduate Student" and "Brinn's Mural").

I was flattered, for sure. And thankful. I offered to buy him a beer, but he said he'd get me one the next time he saw me.

I opened up my e-mail the other day to find some fan mail. From Maine! "Dust Country" and "The Graduate Student" scored big, and it was nice to get the feedback.

These are the reasons I hit the word processor. These are the reasons that I really enjoy the creative process.

It's just nice to tell stories that people enjoy...

I have 60,000 words!

2011-07-27T12:51:00.001-04:00

I'm just a little unsure about which order I should put them in...

Living in a Zoo...

2011-07-20T11:35:00.001-04:00

One of the many reasons that I enjoy living in Jacksonville is its proximity to wildlife. I left the office yesterday and stepped into a beautiful afternoon. The temperature was in the low 90s, and the humidity was almost non-existent. That's a rarity in the South in late July, as most of our days here are just as hot and steamy as an afternoon at the dry cleaners.

I came home and found my girls, both of them enjoying their summer vacation, just home from the pool. They seem to live in swimming suits this time of the year, and they always smell like sunscreen. It's nice.

I wanted to take advantage of the day, so I had an early dinner and lit out for Blue Cypress, a local golf club that is just so typically Old Florida. Blue Cypress is a fairly easy track. The clubhouse is a double-wide trailer with a big screen television and a bunch of card tables. Thursday night is steak night, when they grill up New York strips on a huge outdoor grill for about forty golfers that know each other by name.

They always have a kind word for their patrons.

It's a nice little place. I picked up a couple of Pabst tallboys ($1.50) and went out for nine holes. During my round, I saw a gopher tortoise, a number of jumping bass and warmouths, a big ol' Florida hare, a couple of wood storks, a flock of cattle egrets, a few herons and, possibly, the fleeting immersion of an alligator in the pond off of the sixth green.

In recent years, we've had opportunities to leave Florida, but it's places like Blue Cypress that make me feel such a strong connection to this place. The truth is, whether its armadillos and bobcats and alligators or just the garden-variety reptile menagerie that lives on my back porch and in amongst the tomato bushes, living here is kind of like living in a nature preserve.

I remember a few years ago, Jeanne and I were hiking the Willow Pond trail at Fort Clinch.

"There have to be alligators all around here," I told her. "They're watching us. I know it."

"But where are they?" she replied.

I crouched, Steve Zissou-style, and waded into the brush. There, not four feet away, was a maneater (probably eight feet long) hiding in the brush. He had duckweed all over his snout and he watched us with those cold, unblinking eyes.

Jeez, I got out of there quick.

It's a neat thing, finding places that are still so primal. I know that a golf course, of all places, doesn't fit that bill, but it makes for interesting days nevertheless...

Ah, Shoot...

2011-07-18T19:44:00.002-04:00

Borders, which declared bankruptcy back in January, will now liquidate assets in its last 400 stores. Layoffs will total in the thousands. Adding 10,000 workers back into our struggling economy is bad.

Shutting down another of the viable avenues for writers and readers to connect is also bad.

This paragraph really stands out in the article:

Publishers said with Borders gone, they would plan for smaller print runs and shipments. Employees at major publishing houses worried that layoffs could be imminent, as many companies have dedicated staff members that work only with Borders.

One of my friends back in Oregon used to work for Borders. At one time, the climate there in the store was pretty good: staff had some autonomy and control, and they worked hard to encourage writers to drop by and give readings and sign books. They did a lot of community outreach in Portland, a place that's crazy about books anyway, and the people there were receptive.

But the tides turned and Borders suffered from the same corporate malaise that seems typical of many floundering companies. My friend went on to greener pastures at a different bookstore.

It's a sad day for the world of letters. Here's to hoping Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble step up to fill the void left by the chains, and that our great independent shops see some business funneled their way as a result of this news.

Probably need to go hit the Bookmark, in Atlantic Beach tomorrow, just to pick up a title. If anyone has a suggestion for a quick beach read (dark speculative fiction, preferably), I'd love some tips...

Hide and Seek

2011-07-13T13:10:00.000-04:00

Time Management

2011-07-13T09:21:00.001-04:00

I admire a writer who sticks to a plan and doesn't make excuses.

I admire a writer whose unproductive months still generate 12,000 words.

I admire a writer who encourages others to get in, get on with it, get the work finished up and sent out for consideration.

In short, I admire those who do.

Too often, we justify away our reasons to be creative. We rationalize our decisions to do everything and anything but the thing we know in our hearts will be the most satisfying. I'm writing this for myself, more than for anyone that might read it, as a reminder to remain true to those activities, whether it's a long run in the heat of the day or a marathon session at the word processor.

And so for you, whether you're planting a garden or making a key lime pie or writing a poem or sitting at your desk, working out the best way to sell flood insurance to coastal farmers in Tillamook County, there is no time like the present...

What I've Been Watching...

2011-07-11T19:41:00.004-04:00

Some thoughts on some stuff that's been clogging up the DVR, the DVD player and those darned synapses...

Battle Los Angeles (2011) let me down. A decent bit of good early exposition for Aaron Eckhart's Sgt. Nantz was squandered when paired with a series of brief, sterile glimpses at the rest of his platoon. It felt like Jonathon Liebesman might have wanted to tell a human story, but was pushed by his producers into more of the shooting and the explosions. The trailer showed some compelling footage of surfers on the swell, watching in awe as the mysterious meteors morphed into human-killing annihilation squads.

Unfortunately, that shot never made the final cut.

Instead, we are left with a series of inconsequential fighting scenes. No tension. No pathos. No real reason to care. A decent cast tries to spice things up, but even the normally good Michael Pena and Michelle Rodriguez can't breath life into their characters. They show up on screen and they run and say stuff.

The special effects were silly, the aliens themselves far less than menacing. This film was a D+ for poor execution, poor storytelling, and a lack of any compelling reason to care.

The special effects in Doghouse (2009), on the other hand, were pretty darned good for what must have been a scant budget. Just get a look at that grand dame below and tell me they cheated us on the good stuff!

This film left me entertained, despite a series of early stumbles. The set-up is good. A bunch of buddies convene in the creepy British town of Moodly (great name for the place, by the way) to help their friend get over a nasty divorce. The six (!) of them arrive after a long trip from London and the madness ensues from the get-go.

It turns out that a military experiment gone awry has turned every woman in the village into a murdering, man-hating cannibal. The gender bashing goes both ways, and it just drips off the screen, but never in a bad way. The film keeps its tongue firmly in cheek, and it makes for a fun viewing experience (B). Thank goodness for the IFC!

Director Jake West creates a highly stylized series of character introductions, complete with stop-action, lens filter, and text graphic, that seems out of place. It also, like many British films in recent years, seems to lean on the requisite jangly British score a little much early on, and then not at all in the second and third acts. That kind of imbalance just struck me as odd, but was a minor deal once the action started and the comedy kicked in.

These femmes are part zombie, part Tarantino gonzo character. The main cannibals all have a gimmick--the hair dresser and her scissors, the butcher and her cleaver, the newlywed and her bloody wedding dress. It's a fun take on the zombie/military trope, to be sure.

Get a sixer of Harps and give this one a look.

Falling Skies (2011) is a B-, thus far. The skitters aren't terrifically rendered, and the commercial breaks are awkwardly spaced. They stop any momentum this earnest series has dead in its tracks. Noah Wylie is good as Tom Mason. He does a fine job as the father trying to keep his family in tact in the aftermath of an alien invasion.

The threat of real danger in this show, that sense of dread or tension, is what's missing. It would definitely benefit from less running and more conflict. Still, it's been a fun summer diversion and I'll try to keep up with it...

On The Little Mermaid...

2011-07-08T12:24:00.002-04:00

My two-year-old daughter is crazy about mermaids (she calls them merdades, and it's been established around here that they are not to be eaten!), and we've been watching a lot of The Little Mermaid and The Little Mermaid II. I think, because I can't get the damned songs out of my head and I know every aspect of both storyboards, I'm qualified to offer the following observations:

King Triton has a sea witch problem. Over and over again, these sea witches are messing with the man. If I'm in his kingdom, I consider the idea of doing a recall on his position of leadership. The man simply can't control these sea witches!
Sebastian is no kind of a reliable caretaker. After he completely lost control of Ariel in the first movie, how could that same lady trust her daughter in the sequel to the care of a six-ounce crab?
Scuttle kicks ass.
That deleted scene where the fishermen roast a merperson on the beach while dancing to the sounds of a deejay and drinking Corona is inappropriate for toddlers.

Tron Legacy

2011-07-07T13:08:00.002-04:00

I had low expectations for Tron: Legacy (2010), so I was very happily surprised when I found the film to be both a strong bit of visual storytelling and a wholly engaging entertainment. It's a darker film, both in mise-en-scene and in plot, with its muted blacks and blues and its central saw of Clu building a mindless army of cyber drones to take over the world. Kudos to Disney for doing a good job with a sequel that, twenty-eight years down the road, did justice to a 1982 original that was so much fun when it was first released.

Jeff Bridges is so danged good in just about everything he does. The same holds true in this story. He plays a few roles here, with the help of digital enhancements to show age differences, and he does a fine job in carrying them out.

Garrett Hedlund was really good as Sam Flynn. He shows passion when he needs to and he always comes across as believable. He also makes the fight scenes fun, bringing athleticism to his performance.

I was wondering when Olivia Wilde would break into films in a major way, and her portrayal of Quorra here certainly shows she can do it with style. Her IMDB profile shows a lot of work coming down the pipeline, which is good. She's been excellent on FOX's House series, and I'm excited to see where this second career takes her.

The score, done by Daft Punk, was nominated for an Oscar. It deserved it, fitting the digital universe of this film really well. I loved the ambush sequence in Castor's nightclub, and the faceless deejays spinning (what else?) electronica up there in the booth.

The visuals are stunning, the stadium of "GAMES" really nicely rendered. I give this film a B+. I know it hung around theaters for only about a month last year and most mainstream critics panned it, but it's fun and it's true to the original film in style and substance (which is to say that both are unabashedly far-fetched sci-fi yarns; Roger Ebert really struggled with the logistics of the film, but I think he was looking too far into it).

The original was a cult classic that failed to attract a large audience. The same holds true for this film, although it's well worth your time and attention. Recommended...

What Will Become of the Oregon Ducks?

2011-07-02T13:12:00.004-04:00

LaMichael James is fast, but he and the Oregon Ducks are going to find it difficult to run away from the NCAA after this damning interview given by "recruiting guru" and all-around slimy character Willie Lyles.

Friday's revelations fly directly in the face of comments he made as recently as two months ago here.

The anti-Oregon sentiment has been ratcheted up, full throttle, back home and throughout PAC-12 country. The Ducks have had a great degree of success since the early 1990s. That, coupled with their lavish facilities and uber-booster financial backing by Phil Knight, have created some sore feelings by rivals in the conference.

After Coach Chip Kelly's amazing success in years one and two, many of these critics are elated to see Oregon's current misfortunes playing out in the national spotlight.

For what it's worth, I think Oregon will receive some minor penalties in this whole situation. The NCAA has some loopholes in its current guidelines, and the Lyles case above will come down to assessing whether or not he is a booster. Andy Staples outlines his thoughts here and, even in light of yesterday's Yahoo interview, I think this still holds true:

Because while the NCAA may have a mountain of circumstantial evidence that the payment had something to do with the recruitment of Temple, Texas, tailback Lache Seastrunk, investigators will have a difficult time proving Oregon's staff is guilty of anything other than being a lousy bunch of consumers. At best, the NCAA could ding Oregon with a ticky-tack violation of one of the January 2010 additions to the bylaw governing scouting services that requires services to provide information quarterly.

If someone's story changes, however, then that person could be veering into Bruce Pearl/Jim Tressel territory. That is Oregon's greatest challenge right now. The athletic department must explain this transaction in a plausible way, and everyone's stories must match up.

Expect John Canzano and a number of others critical of the Ducks' football operations to call for Kelly's resignation. I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that Oregon can clean this mess up and get on with preparing for the season because, sanctions or not, we just have about two months until it's time to play LSU in Dallas. I like and respect Coach Kelly, and I take him at his word when he calls this a "bad business deal."

But c'mon, Oregon!

Run a clean program. Play hard. Go to school. Respect others. Play with class.

That's what I ask of you. That's what I used to think Oregon was doing. That's what I hope we'll be sure to do moving forward.

But in the meantime? Man, it sure is hard to defend our football program right now with all of the things being written...

The Timucuan Portal

2011-06-28T19:31:00.002-04:00

My story "The Timucuan Portal," a piece whose genesis first began on a boardwalk running trail through a dark canopy of mangroves and cypress trees, is now available in Dead But Dreaming 2. I wrote this story in a white-hot blaze. I put it down on paper after having a supremely unsettling encounter out there in the woods (not the first I've had, and very likely not the last, given the amount of time I spend off trail).

I've been fortunate that, in my short and unremarkable writing career, I've had the honor of working with some of the best editors in the speculative field. Working with Kevin Ross has been just another of those great experiences. This is a handsome book, and I'm honored to have a story in it, right next to a number of mythos writers I've been reading for years.

It's nice to be published, but to have the story treated really well is always a blessing.

Book Review: Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 1

2011-06-27T19:49:00.005-04:00

James Roy Daley did a great job in collecting this first volume of zombie fiction. It's a large book (110,000 words and nineteen stories) that's filled with all sorts of narratives: shocking humor rubs elbows with more mundane existentialism in these pages. It's a nice break from the "run, scavenge, fight" school of zombie fiction (although fans of that type of thing won't be turned off by this book, either).

Best New Zombie Tales, Vol 1 was in the first batch of books that I purchased for the Kindle, and it has some formatting issues. Many of the paragraph indents didn't make translate for a few stories. It's a minor deal and wasn't a distraction. There were some pretty glaring typos, strangely enough, in just one of the stories (which is a little strange).

Still, minor stuff...

I enjoyed all of the stories to some extent, though a few clearly stood out. Ray Garton's "Zombie Love," a chilling story of the occult and the sorrow of lost love, was a fantastic way to begin the anthology. Mrs. Kobylka is the star here, a finely drawn character with veiled intentions. Keith, our protagonist, is a sympathetic character; the scenes in the third act, when the horror of just how far his love for Natalie has pushed him over the edge, are chilling. I think I honestly flinched while reading them.

Oh, and then there's Baltazar. Balty is a trip and, even though we see it coming, nothing quite pulls at the heartstrings like the thing Balty says to Keith in the third act.

Scary and compelling, this was a great tale among a bunch of fine work.

"Feeding Frenzy," by Matt Hults, was an interesting, frightening story. It felt like a mix between some Lovecraftian dimensional horror with a little bit of Serlingesque Twilight Zone on the side. Oh yeah, and it takes place in one of my favorite horror locales--the bizarre country diner. Scary and well written, this one will stick with you...

"The Man Who Breaks The Bad News" and "On The Usefulness Of Old Books" were really strong, polished tales that excelled in world building and delivered the chills with a dose of caution and morality.

My favorite tale, and one that was echoing through my mind a few days after I read it, was Simon McCaffery's "Connections." The relationship between father and son was very nicely rendered, which made the heartbreaking final act all the more difficult to take. McCaffery writes well--clear, concise prose that slowly ratchets the tension up until our characters' lives are literally crashing down all around them.

It's a nice collection--one a zombie lover will enjoy, but also an anthology that fans who like a little bit of attention and care in their narratives can appreciate. Exposition is accentuated in many of these stories, to good effect, and the authors took their care with plot. And a majority of the stories shared, at their core, some interesting discussions on the nature of human experience in the face of harsh conflict.

Very satisfying collection--I'll be taking a look at volume two down the road...

These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales

2011-06-24T13:00:00.003-04:00

Supernatural narratives represent an important component of our storytelling heritage.

These stories—including fairy tales, urban legends, penny dreadfuls and modern pulps, among many others—leave a resonant echo throughout popular culture. In These Strange Worlds, Daniel Powell’s first collection of dark short fiction, these influences collide in fourteen startling and entertaining stories.

The lone survivor of a worldwide flu epidemic grows strangely attached to her parasitic partner…

A malevolent London rental has a voracious appetite for rock stars, and it’s building one hell of a band…

A wealthy oil trader is offered a glimpse into another dimension, but is the cost more than he can possibly bear?

From Satanic salesmen to zombie Ponzi schemes; from murdering murals to alien invasions, and other curious encounters along the way, These Strange Worlds takes readers on fourteen excursions into the realm of the uncanny. A mixture of new and previously published short stories, Powell’s first collection embodies the spectrum of imaginative possibility that is the hallmark of compelling speculative fiction.

Available for purchase in the following formats:

Friday Roundup...

2011-06-24T09:17:00.004-04:00

I shot a 43 on the back nine at Mill Cove yesterday before a serious maelstrom rolled onto the course and I had to retreat inside. I had a couple of pops at the nineteenth hole and emerged none the better, shooting a danged 51(!) to complete the round. Suck...ass...

Still, only one three-putt on the whole day. I'll take that any time.

I became bombastic at the bar last week and I now find myself embroiled in a barbecue cook-off with a pair of restaurant chefs. I think those boys are in for it. I'm going to pick up my specially trimmed spareribs in about an hour, and then begins the process. 6:00 p.m. tomorrow evening, it's on! Pop by Mudville if you want to try a bone. I'm bringing loads for everyone...

Lyla has been enjoying the summer, and reveling in her mom's relaxed hours with work. Jeanne is just putting in about five per day, registering students for next year. She'll work next week, then have six weeks off, during which my girls will basically live at the beach! It's going to be a sandy house this summer.

I've been enjoying Master Chef on FOX. I'm pretty impressed by these amateur chefs and their abilities. The other day they had to prepare French cuisine. It occurred to me that I have no clue, whatsoever, what that entails. So I'm using my birthday gift certificate (thanks, Kathy and Dennis!) to purchase a French cookbook.

J.K. Rowling is self publishing her back list. Good for her. It's a wise choice.

Had some alligator tail with citrus dressing last night. Dang, we like that tasty reptile around here!

The hope today is to go see Super 8 with Jeanne and then bring Lyla to the zoo tomorrow. These wildfires have been crazy, though, so I'm not sure if the air quality will be conducive to seeing the "draffs." Still, we'll give it a shot!

The Kindle Reading Experience

2011-06-15T13:12:00.003-04:00

I like it.

Okay, I'll elaborate. I really like it. When I received one for my birthday (mmm....banana cream pie!), I was excited. There's much to like about going digital, not the least of which is the impact on the environment.

That said, I felt a little anxious too. I thought about books, and the fact that reading is one of my favorite things to do. Books have been such a large part of my life. From the time that I was able to read, I have always had one going. I love the TBR pile, and the stack of stories waiting on my nightstand.

Heck, I love the smell. You know you do to!

I love bookstores and libraries and browsing for gems at sales.

But I was shocked at how much I enjoyed the experience of reading on that little baby. I picked up a copy of Stephen King's "UR" (not very good; a solid Amazon ad, though) and dove right in. I found the ink highly readable and the formatting nicely suited to the 6" screen. It's essentially a lighter paperback in my hands, with some really neat scrolling features.

I can see myself becoming pretty attached to it.

I was happy to see the formatting on These Strange Worlds made the transition well (though I need to fix a spot here or there and make the table of contents searchable).

Overall, it's light years removed from the sterile reading experience I had suspiciously conjured in my mind. I'm going to grab a little cover for that sucker and load him up with books. And, even though I have the Kindle, I'm not turning away from print. In fact, I'm taking Lyla to the library tomorrow.

Happy co-existence, folks. It's all about the happy co-existence (although that's a bit of a far cry from this article)...

Kind Words on These Strange Worlds

2011-06-13T11:55:00.002-04:00

It's been a humbling month.

I'm very fortunate to have a support system of family and friends that encourage me often in my writing. Staring at the blinking cursor can sometimes be a daunting proposition, but the positive regard I've had from those who have read These Strange Worlds has been overwhelming.

I sincerely appreciate the support.

The collection has had a strong month, and reviews are starting to come in. I'm particularly thankful for the opinions of others in the speculative writing community, so I was very excited to read this review penned by writer and illustrator Lavanya Karthik.

Thanks, Lavanya, for looking at the stories. I'm glad there were a few that struck a chord with you!

My Daughter the Naturalist

2011-06-10T14:53:00.003-04:00

Lyla and I were driving down Merrill Road the other day after visiting the YMCA. We're bopping down the road in the truck, a little Bruce Hornsby on the stereo, having a fine old time.

"Look, Daddy! Piggies!"

"Yeah, sure Lyla. Piggies."

"Daaaddd-eeeee! Look--piggies!"

Sure enough, I looked over and there were two enormous, hairy hogs trotting along the side of the road.

We've seen bunnies, geese, armadillos, gators, turtles, horses, bass and snakes in the last few weeks. Most of those are just in our neighborhood.

The other day we were headed out to the beach and Lyla shouted, "Big monkey, Daddy! BIG MONKEY!"

"She's always saying that," Jeanne remarked. "I have no idea what she's talking about."

I looked over and saw a huge inflatable gorilla at the car dealership.

Big monkey indeed, Lyla. Big monkey indeed!

That girl's got a good set of peepers on her. Jeanne's celebrating graduation tonight, so the kid and I are thinking about going out for ribs. You should see that thirty-pound sucker attack a rack of babybacks!

Exceptional Fiction

2011-06-09T11:38:00.002-04:00

There have been some tremendous works of fiction published recently in great online magazines. "In Search Of," by Will Ludwigsen has been reprinted at Apex Magazine. It's a fantastic story, a collection of haunting answers that blend the big stuff with the personal stuff to arrive at the human core of a character. It's a fine achievement, and one I'm going to chat with the author about over a couple of pops next week.

Chris Miller's story "An Infallible System of Roulette," published in Redstone Science Fiction, is another skillfully rendered look at the complexities of what it means to simply "be." The writing is fluid and accessible, and I appreciate the scope of the story's subject.

Heck, I really appreciate that both of these writers tangled with the subjects of reality and truth. That they both brought some narrative clarity to such confusing topics is a testament to good storytelling.

If there was ever any stigma out there in the greater creative writing community about publishing stories on the Internet, it surely has to have been erased by now, hasn't it? There are many markets out there that pay well, that respect the material, that present stories professionally, that publish frequently, and that keep the material accessible for readers almost in perpetuity.

What's not to love about that?

Oh, and if you're interested in a great speculative read on your Kindle, take a look at this story...

The Great Balancing Act

2011-06-08T11:30:00.002-04:00

Just typed "The End" on only my second short story of 2011. It feels good, but I have to say that I'm not encouraged by my output at the word processor this year.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

The pair of stories I've written this year are long. At least there's that.

One checks in near 8,000 words, the other at 6,000. In addition to these tales, which both feel like some of my strongest writing (though not my sharpest storytelling, which is a post for a different day) to date, I've put down roughly 13,000 words on a novel.

If my last three years have been any kind of reliable guide, I'm at about 50% of where I should be. In most years, I compose between fifteen and twenty short stories. I'll be happy to write five of them this year (in addition to getting that novel delivered to Bernadette).

So where does the time go? Well, Lyla was up this morning at 4:30 with nightmares (no more Tales from the Darkside with breakfast for us). The three of us still tried to get some rest, but that was pretty much the start of our day. Logging the daily word count on five hours of sleep is hard. Call me a pansy, a wuss--whatever--but it is.

I've also been teaching myself the principles of book design. It's an ongoing process that is enjoyable for those with a DIY ethos, but it definitely gobbles the hours.

I like to cook and exercise and spend time with my wife and daughter, and that's the lion's share of the rest of the day. Also, I don't want to let my students down or suck at my job, so there's loads of hours there.

I read at night and try to turn in at a reasonable hour (I've only watched the first quarter of two of the NBA finals games--THE FIRST QUARTER!), so there you have it.

But it's a good schedule for me. This is fine, and I don't feel like I'm rationalizing here. Being with Jeanne and Lyla, maintaining my health, and learning things like book design (teach a man to fish and all that) are foundational to the writing. Skimping in these other aspects of life would only make the writing process more difficult.

The one thing that every publishing "expert" seems to crow about that I really haven't made much time to dabble in is social networking. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, and I only write sporadically in this web journal. My presence on Goodreads or Kindleboards is scant. I just don't have the time to do it, and I doubt that will change in the near future.

Alas, it's all a balancing act, and one I'm happily reconciled to. Now, off to revisions and submissions.

Have a good day, those reading this, regardless of what you're doing (hell, watch some Price is Right and think kindly of me, if you will...)!

Survival

2011-06-04T09:12:00.006-04:00

The year is 2209, and the hour has grown late for the human race.

Famine and disease have drastically compounded the misery of a warming planet.

With many billions scrambling after the Earth’s depleted resources, a multinational agency known as The Authority has instituted a population-control policy known simply as Labor.

In an effort to stem the tides of procreation and instill a measure of gender equality in the birthing process, men must survive a deadly twenty-four-hour gauntlet of chaos and destruction in order to earn the privilege to become fathers.

The Authority regulates every aspect of the birthing process, from ensuring that male subjects abstain from alcohol and prescription drugs to delivering each man a quota of sleepless nights.

Such is the case for Bryan Norton, whose wife’s due date has just fallen into testing range. Very soon, they will experience the joy of the birth of their son.

Norton has endured the year-long process of qualifying for Labor. He has sacrificed his health and comfort for the chance to become a father.

But the greatest test still lies ahead, and the chances are slim that he’ll ever hold his son in his arms.

Daniel Powell’s new dystopic novelette “Survival” poses an enduring human question: How far would you go to be with your family?

Drawing upon influences as diverse as Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” and Stephen King’s The Running Man, “Survival” is a chilling narrative on the nature of parenthood in turbulent times.

The Vagaries of Capitalization

2011-06-03T08:34:00.003-04:00

In sorting through some revisions on a novelette I've been working on the other day, I encountered a tricky editing conundrum.

How should one treat capitalization for titles in the case of replacing proper nouns.

In accordance with the excellent handbook Rules for Writers, Sixth Edition, I always follow the rule as it adheres to family members and high-ranking officials. The text indicates we should capitalize in any instance other than possessive relationships.

For example:

I enjoyed my afternoon at the beach with my dad and mom.

We spent the afternoon at the beach, and Dad caught a nice fish in the surf.

Seems simple enough, right? I had an exchange between a father and his son, and that stuff was pretty easy to correct. It gets tricky, though, when we substitute other terms (often nicknames or personal endearments) for proper nouns.

In this case, I opted to leave the terms in the lower case (there was no conclusive discussion of treatment in Rules).

For example:

You tried, kid. That's all we could ask.

Thanks for thinking of us, sweetie. That's very kind of you.

An exception would be a nickname that replaces a proper noun through long usage (The Sundance Kid).

It's confusing, to be sure, and one of those nebulous areas of English mechanics that often boils down to house rules. As I read, I pay attention to how publishers deal with these variations, and they certainly lack uniformity.

Just as The New York Times and the Oregonian have their own style sheets, so too do various publishers. It makes it difficult, on occasion, to teach these lessons. That said, the best advice is to adopt a position on the usage and stay consistent.

And I'm one to talk. My novel An Autumn Harvest has been out there in the world for a while (awhile is nonstandard, though not corrected by spell checkers) and I know it needs a brush-up in a few of these areas.

For further discussion of the subject, try this link and this link...

Something Wicked Magazine's Digital Relaunch

2011-05-31T09:33:00.002-04:00

I couldn't be happier to post that Something Wicked is back from hiatus. This is an excellent magazine worthy of your support. I'm not sure if John Connolly will reprise his excellent columns in the digital version, but from his work to the frightening fiction and eye-popping art, Something Wicked is an important piece of the speculative fiction landscape.

I read "The Depths" last night and really liked it. Carol Hone's piece is nicely paced and downright scary. That third act will get beneath your skin and just stick with you all day long...

Should Teachers Assign Their Own Books?

2011-05-26T10:20:00.003-04:00

This is an older Galleycat post, but it's one I find pretty interesting. Textbooks are so expensive these days (I've had students mention they paid more than $200 for thick biology and chemistry tomes), but there are still ways to help students out. One of those is to package course materials through campus printing outfits. I've done this before with handouts, essays and writing theory that I've generated for the course. The students pay a nominal fee and end up with a spiral-bound collection of materials.

I used to use a bloated text (Steps to Writing Well) that was strong on theory but was filled with what were, for my tastes, antiquated and dull essays. I went to Bedford/St. Martin's and reviewed their essay/story banks for quality content. I was impressed, so I compiled readers for both my composition and literature sections. I teach the course theory from my own notes and PowerPoints, and I'm able to teach stories and essays I'm passionate about and that I know well.

Because I'm listed as the editor on the front of the text, students invariably assume that I'm enriching myself somehow through using these texts (they both cost the students less than $20.00, by the way).

Of course, I don't see one thin dime from their use.

So, is assigning personal texts a bad idea? Not in my view. So much of higher education is steeped in esoteric knowledge, and many of my colleagues are specialists in their fields. A great many of them have also proved to be excellent writers. I don't see it as a conflict of interest if a professor can use a particularly clear text that he or she has written that sheds light on an area of personal expertise.

Of course, it's a case-by-case deal, and the price and utlitity of the text in question should be thoroughly assessed prior to adding it to the adoption sheet...

Insert Foot Here...

2011-05-25T10:43:00.002-04:00

Rachelle Gardner's blog post espousing the idea that self publishing will, in some perverse approach to logic, harm readers(!) smacks of desperation and fear. Aaron Polson's blog post pretty well captured my feelings on the subject, but it warrants further analysis that a well-respected agent would make such asinine comments.

She titled the post "What About the Readers?"--as though the publishing industry is somehow sacrosanct and that the poor idiot consumers would somehow be overwhelmed by the self-publishing trend.

Thank God that agents, publishers and editors have been funnelling me content all these years! I would have been lost in the woods without them--probably reading rubbish from the small presses.

Hey, wait a minute...that's exactly what I've been doing anyway.

No Koontz, Steele, Patterson or Brown for me. I've never read a word of the story of a chick who kicked a hornet's nest, but I've read loads of work from Subterranean Press, PM Press, Cemetery Dance, and Night Shade Books.

But back to her post. Honestly, how will readers make choices?

How will readers sleep at night knowing that there are writers out there whose stories were written for personal (gasp!) commercial benefit?

How will readers soldier through their days knowing that writers are (gasp!) developing audiences outside of traditional channels?

Writers should have a foot in both worlds, in my view. Literary agents offer access to markets and possibilities that just don't exist in the same quantities for self-published writers. I firmly believe that. Hell, I swapped e-mails with my literary agent just last night. Bernadette and I are going to get some good work out there soon, and I value her input in everything I write. I have a couple of irons in various fires with traditional NYC publishers; if something comes through, she's the person that will maximize our opportunities.

But in the long term (and most rational agents and editors agree with this; they are already adapting their own business models to adjust to the marketplace), the internet is a viable publishing channel that puts the most valuable commodity of a free market--choice--directly into the hands of the consumer.

In our field, we call those consumers readers. And there is no reason for the hand-wringing about them, to be honest, because they know what they want!

Look, I'm not a fan of that silly phony krab meat, but I'm not offended that it's there in the seafood department. I just don't buy it...

But somebody sure as hell does, because it's always there.

I'm not a huge fan of that cheap yellow mustard.

But somebody sure as hell is, because there are gallons of the stuff on the shelves.

Oh, and good for you, Neal Pollack. I'm buying your book...

Sheesh.

These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales

2011-05-24T11:24:00.009-04:00

Introduction to my debut collection of speculative short stories, These Strange Worlds:

I was a fortunate child.

In our home, there was odd in abundance. We had a wealth of weird, a plenitude of peculiar and a storeroom of strange.

My parents, bless their hearts, were such great Star Trek fans that we had “WARP 5” on the license plates of our old Dodge minivan for a lot of years. I doubt we ever hit warp factor five in that burly space cruiser, but that’s beside the point.

The point was that our folks were into fantasy and science fiction, and it trickled down to Beth and Emily and me. For that gift (among many others), I’ll always be thankful.

My mom read a lot of Anne McCaffrey back then and, while I didn’t share her enthusiasm for those books, I did read a couple of them. They were pretty neat—interesting and fun, and unlike the other stuff I was into back then. Those books encouraged me to explore the world of speculative fiction. I made quick work of Tolkien’s catalogue before plunging into Madeleine L’Engle and John Bellairs and Roald Dahl and Ray Bradbury and C.S. Lewis.

Then, one year for Christmas, I received a couple of paperback novels from my Aunt Kelley: Stephen King’s The Shining and Salem’s Lot. I was nine or ten years old.

Sheesh, those books left a bruise!

The Shining frightened me far beyond anything I’d read up to that point. King’s influence on my tastes in fiction (and, eventually, my writing) was immediate and intense. I developed an appreciation for mundane horror that informs my narrative leanings to this day.

I have vivid memories of watching Don Siegel’s 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers with my mom on Halloween night. I think I was about eight years old. Shortly after that one, I developed some pretty healthy misgivings about adults.

Huh…

I remember all of us gathering in the living room to watch the 1980s rendition of The Twilight Zone. They were so good we sought out the original series and I had my first exposure to the great Rod Serling. “To Serve Man” still gets me every time (“It’s…it’s a cookbook!”).

I remember watching Monsters and Tales from the Darkside on Sunday evenings on WGN. Emily and I never missed them. They’re running the old Darkside episodes on Chiller now, and my daughter and I enjoy one almost every morning together while we have our cereal.

Our whole family gathered for the underrated Steven Spielberg series Amazing Stories. It’s a shame that one didn’t have better traction.

E.T.. Gremlins. Jaws. It was a great time to be both a kid and a fan of weird stories. I’ll never forget going to the drive-in back in Pueblo, Colorado, and feeling a sense of deep and pervasive dread when Superman trapped those villains in the glass and sent them whisking off to another dimension.

What happened to them, anyway? Poor bastards.

At any rate, I’m thankful to my folks for making room for speculative storytelling in our home. They encouraged us to read widely. They took us to the movies. They even paid us for our writing.

These early influences are why I wrote these stories. The fourteen tales collected here are culled primarily from my first forays into writing fiction (I began to write with an eye toward publication in the fall of 2006). I understand if the efforts are viewed as uneven.

That’s fair.

But I wanted to collect them because they represent the efforts of an important time in my development as a storyteller. A few are melancholy. Some of them are humorous. All of them are dark.

Thank you for taking the time to read them. I hope they provide an entertaining escape.

~ Jacksonville, Florida, April 2011

Water for Elephants (2011)

2011-05-23T13:56:00.002-04:00

Jeanne and I took in Francis Lawrence's Water for Elephants on Friday evening and came away entertained. The director of the almost-great I Am Legend (2007), Lawrence has created an actors' showcase here, albeit one in which the male lead is a little out of his element.

It's a vibrant film. The lighting was strong throughout, giving the film the right feel of nostalgia in some places with hints of the surreal in others. I particularly liked the interiors of the boxcars at night--very nice job in establishing the rollicking confinement of a travelling entertainment.

It's a nice embedded narrative, a story told in flashback by the likable Hal Holbrook (who has given a one-man show at FSCJ's South Campus a few times in recent years)--the aged version of Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson), our story's protagonist. Jankowski loses his family and his fortune in a short period of time. He sets out to find his way in life and becomes a veterinarian for the Benzini Brothers Circus.

He quickly ingratiates himself to the circus's owner, August (played wonderfully by Cristolph Waltz), and very shortly thereafter to the owner's lovely wife Marlene (a nice turn by Reece Witherspoon).

August is an interesting character. He teeters back and forth between living a life of extravagance and being able to pay his debts. He is both cruel and generous, a general and a confidante. I loved the scene in which he took Jacob on the roof of the train.

Waltz plays the eccentric villain very well, and his performance here is at least the equal of his Oscar-winning turn in Inglorius Basterds. He leaches what seems a very sincere appreciation for the history of the circus onto the screen, which makes it so much more difficult to watch him menacing his wife and the company's animals.

Witherspoon intrigues me. After watching her here, I can't picture another player in the role. She is sincere and alluring and she plays it with grace. It's so hard for me, as a fan of movies, to reconcile her work here with some of the silly choices in her past.

Pattinson is borderline creepy in his portrayal of Jacob. The scenes in which he watches August and Marlena dancing and being affectionate were uncomfortable, and he makes a strange face--a look of drug-addled constipation--time and time again. But when he's not making the face, he is believable and engaging as Jacob. It's a mixed bag for our vampish lead, but not an altogether poor outing.

The story is heart warming and nicely shot. I like the pacing, and Witherspoon and Waltz, in particular, really did a nice job with the piece. I like it at a 'B' grade and would recommend fans of the circus, of strong visual narratives, and of romance to see it in the theaters...

A New Purpose

2011-05-21T11:30:00.003-04:00

When I left Portland State nine years ago, I had little inkling that almost a decade later I would be reading so many devastating student essays about loss, conflict and injury. Very few among us are certain of the paths we'll follow in our professional lives and, as a Portlander, I couldn't foresee that I would sink roots in one of the country's largest military towns.

U.S. Representative Ander Crenshaw recently estimated that there are 250,000 military personnel stationed on Florida's First Coast. When I moved here in 2005, I expected to read essays about military service, and I did. Most of those essays came from wives and parents--people whose transient military lives and financial health were impacted by frequent deployments and relocations.

The essays were sad, but they don't hold a candle to the stuff I've been reading in the last eighteen months. I've read essays by marines who have killed in close quarters, and have been debilitated by the guilt. I've read essays about the loss of limbs, diminished cognitive ability, problems with social acclimation and the loss of basic human dignity. I've worked with students from the Wounded Warrior project who have suffered immensely--both physically and mentally. The Director of Deerwood Center, Dr. Patty Adeeb, has been instrumental in helping many of these young men and women find a home at our college.

I've read essays filled with the most heinous of acronyms: IEDs and PTSD and the like. I've read about students having breakdowns in parking lots at the sound of car backfires, and of former soldiers menacing their neighbors because they struggle with the transition back to civilian life.

And the more of these essays I read, and the greater the number of these students I encounter, the more it makes me a firm believer in the idea that our military must change its focus. We should keep troop levels at their current states, but we need to bring home our overseas military (our combat troops, at least) and begin training these soldiers in skilled labor positions so that they can assist on the homefront.

Soldiers should still be given the necessary skills to succeed in their military commitments, but augmenting their skills in the trades would be a boon to our country. These soldiers could work in industry when not deployed. The military could develop training facilities, partnering with the civilian community to educate soldiers in skilled labor.

Imagine the benefits to New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Katrina had the military been able to dispatch welders, builders, medical personnel and first responders in greater numbers.

Mike Rowe recently testified in Washington about the need for additional skilled labor in this country. While not every American is interested in higher education (nor are there enough jobs to support such a lofty aspiration), we could make our military an even stronger proving ground for equipping our citizens with life skills.

Some soldiers enjoy these benefits already, but that group is in the minority. By mandating an ancillary approach to skills development for all soldiers, we can improve our response in times of trouble. Think about what we've seen with the flooding in Louisiana and the tornadoes in the Midwest and you get my point.

We're just two weeks away from hurricane season.

Some have predicted that this will be a century of destruction. Whether it is or not, it just makes sense to repurpose our military to not only defend our nation's security, but also improve our labor foundation in the interim.

I'm adamantly against the idea of erecting a wall between our country and one of our greatest allies, Mexico (didn't we recently ask a certain country in Europe to tear down theirs?). How about using American troops to patrol the border in greater numbers? Give them the training in law enforcement to succeed, and they can begin to make a positive impact on the negative aspects of illegal immigration.

Things are bad in Afghanistan. According to recent U.S. military reports, morale is at an all-time low. And the number of soldiers that have been injured, seen a colleague killed, or been in the direct vicinity of an explosion is staggering. I probably wouldn't believe it if I didn't read so many essays confirming those findings, or see so many students making their way around the college with prosthetic limbs.

Defend the country. Earn a living wage. But also build the individual soldier as a whole, so we can respond with experience and agility in times of crisis on our own soil...

Wednesday Evening Potpourri

2011-05-18T20:13:00.003-04:00

I'll admit that I never liked the idea of owning a cellular phone. I purchased my first in the winter of 2009, just prior to my daughter's birth, because I wanted to be on my toes if Jeanne needed me. It also became pretty evident that, once Lyla was actually with us and spending time in her old man's truck, a cell phone might be useful in case of emergencies.

But I stubbornly held onto my landline for years. I liked that I had a number and a voicemail inbox; if someone needed me, they could call it. But when I was away from the house, my time was my own. Sure, it occassionally became annoying when pay phones went the way of the Chinook Salmon (maybe those phones will make a comeback too--that would be neat) and began to disappear, but my life was no more inconvenienced, on the whole.

Unless you count the various cell-phone morons whose moronic behavior tends to encroach upon my life and, in some cases, my personal space.

Last week I went to the dentist. It was unpleasant, not as much for the service (which was appalling; I left forty-five minutes after my scheduled appointment without seeing the dentist when they told me I'd be seen in an additional thirty minutes) as for the rude woman in the waiting room talking boisterously about her weekend plans. Her daughter sat on her lap (the room was full, compounding the communal misery) and looked so embarrassed by her mom's actions. Loud phone lady almost seemed to relish the sideways glances she was attracting. I eventually went to the hallway so I could read my book in peace.

Then there's the person whose identity is tied to his or her phone. These folks spend wads of cash on new phones and accessories, and I have no problem with that, but I honestly don't care about any of it, so stop talking to me about it. Get what you can get with your money. Spend it on whatever you want to spend it on. But unless I ask, I don't want a product demo.

I don't care.

Great, it's a freaking remote control that runs the space shuttle. I don't care. Casual acquaintances talk to me about their phones. People I don't know from Adam want to tell me about them (seriously, someone at The Players had to tell me about his i-phone while we waited in line for concessions). Some of my friends can launch into long soliloquies about how great the danged phone is.

It's still just a phone, for heaven's sake!

I used to listen to the Jim Rome Show to hear sports personalities interviewed. Now I can't, because all he does is play radio grab-ass with his "crew" and talk for twenty minutes about his Blackberry. It's a shame, too, because he used to be one of the best interviewers in the sports media.

When I managed Videoland you almost couldn't hear yourself think while the witless dolts read the cover copy to the decision makers on the other end of their lines. What a sweet relationship that must be (I've sent my witless dolt of a boyfriend to bird-dog a video for me; pass me another bon bon while I cut a deeper ass groove in this couch)...

And so it eventually comes to a story like this one, about an Oregon woman booted from the Amtrak for gabbing on her cell phone for sixteen hours on an Amtrak train. Seriously. Sixteen hours, and she said she was the victim.

This type of thing, as you can see, tends to burn my bacon.

On another note, Theodora Goss has a really nice blog post on the difference between accepting rejection and embracing failure. I liked the sentiment here, and it just so happens that plans are in the works for a fall symposia on creative narratives at the college. We're going to work with local artists, scholars and fans to conduct a series of discussions and readings covering graphic novels and comics, films (Spaghetti westerns!), short fiction (I'll be giving a talk on identity and horror), poetry (okay, okay--probably not narrative poetry, but the name for the series is still in the works) and a few other delightful fields of creativity.

Watch this space for details as we move through the summer.

And finally, I'd like to thank Dean John Wall for shooting me a great article on grammar and punctuation. You know, old habits die hard and all that (and I like the period/comma inside quotation marks), but punctuation and usage are kind of fluid as is. Just look at the current rules for spelling numbers if you need evidence of that. I don't think it would be the end of the world if some of these rules became a little more standard (and, in some cases, logical).

But for the time being (and if you are taking my composition courses at the college this summer!), placing periods and commas inside of quotations marks is the way to go...

P.S. If you work with me in writing workshops or read this blog, you'll also notice that I'm not a fan of the Oxford comma (it feels like a redundancy to me). So there you have it--contradictions all over the place.

Not Before Bed

2011-05-18T10:32:00.002-04:00

I first encountered Craig Hallam's writing in Murky Depths*, an enjoyable blend of art and fiction that is produced in the United Kingdom. I was intrigued by his writing--there's a very confident approach to voice and pacing in the work--so I was happy to dive into Not Before Bed. I've been reading these stories in sips and swallows over the last few busy weeks, and I'm happy to say they've provided many moments of entertainment.

The collection runs from the atmospheric to the darkly visceral, with some nice injections of humor in the prose along the way (there is a Robocop reference I couldn't help but chuckle at). The influences and subjects were diverse: some supernatural, others of the creature-feature variety; some Lovecraftian, others of the shambling undead category. In short, there is a little something for all tastes.

What really made the collection go for me is the afore-mentioned voice/pacing combination. Hallam uses fragments really well--I like the fluidity of the prose as he underscores action with simple, succinct phrases. I also liked the dialogue. It wasn't tag-heavy and it felt very authentic. I like the use of italics for emphasis, and the descriptions. Consider this snippet from "Laughter on the Landing":

Then a sound from inside my own apartment. If it hadn't been for the silence, I would
never have heard it.

Poit.

I leant to see around my feet which were up on the coffee table.

A drip. A splotch of dark crimson on the oak surface. For a second, I watched it as if
waiting for something to happen. It did. Another droplet fell in the same spot.

Plit.

Drawn upward, my eyes widened.

On the ceiling, a line of the same fluid had trickled before dripping. It was leaking
through the floorboards in Jenny's apartment...

The tension in most of these stories is a creepy, slow build, and they deliver the goods in the third act.

There were a few minor typos and some of the font types and sizes were inconsistent (I read the Smashwords edition), but there was nothing that detracted from what is an otherwise strong collection. "Laughter on the Landing" and "Sarah and the Monster" were two of my favorites; they also best communicate the notion espoused in the collection's title.

Still (and if you're like me), you'll want to give these tales a look just before bed. Read them when the lights are down, when the sounds of the house settling add that wonderful little kick that makes good dark fiction so fun to read.

*Craig and I correspond from time to time on writing fiction. Please don't confuse our friendship for a lack of objectivity in looking at these stories...

Patience

2011-05-17T09:46:00.003-04:00

My mornings with Lyla have counted among the most rewarding moments I've had in life. We've enjoyed learning from each other over the last two years. The lessons have been many, but none has been greater for us than patience.

We had a good chance to practice that one this morning.

I try to give Lyla some ownership in her decisions by giving her choices. Today, I asked her if she wanted to wear shorts, pants or a dress. As is usual, she opted for a dress. Which color did she want? She chose purple. That's fine--we have a nice purple dress. I opened the closet and tried to get it out for her, but she saw a purple raincoat in the corner.

Dang that coat!

She had to have it, and nothing else would do. She wanted to rock a purple raincoat to school and that was it. Her face turned six shades of red and she kicked her feet and crossed her arms across her chest.

It was raincoat or bust.

I put her back in bed a few times. I tried to reason with her. I tried to give her some different options.

She's two, though. It was raincoat or bust.

Eventually I got her dressed and we made a late go of it. We had a talk about that struggle just before going into her school, and I think we have a better understanding. I hope we have a better understanding.

We're learning to be patient with each other, and that's a good thing.

But I'm getting home first this afternoon, and I can tell you one thing for sure: that raincoat is going in a cardboard box somewhere in the back of the closet until fall...

Refilling the Cup

2011-05-16T20:26:00.004-04:00

We had folks in town from Oregon in the last week, and I don't think I realized how much I needed to be away from writing, surfing the Internet, dealing with technical issues with Blackboard and, generally, sitting in front of a computer.

It was great to meet some new students (I'm teaching three face-to-face sessions this term) and get back into the swing of things at school. And it was also very nice to go out and break bread and spend some time in the sunshine with some of our support group from Oregon.

We walked miles and miles and saw some amazing golf at The Players Championship. I was sad to see David Toms lose the championship, but I was happy that K.J. Choi took home the hardware. It sounds like a contradiction, but both are such good guys that it works for me. Toms was humble and sincere in losing the playoff, and Choi was kind and supportive in victory.

I followed Paul Goydos, Alvaro Quiros and Sean O'Hair for eighteen holes yesterday and saw some of the most amazing ball striking I've ever seen. Goydos is a great golfer and a really interesting guy. He interacted with the gallery and was very personable. A former substitute teacher, he won a Nationwide event in 1992 and never looked back. It's gratifying to see good people get to the places they want in life, and his story is a good example of that.

We cooked out almost every night. We hit the beach, played some golf and had a lot of laughs. The computer stayed off, for the most part, and now I feel pretty excited to get back to the writing. I think these are the weeks that keep things fresh.

I love books and I love writing and I enjoy all of the hard work that goes with writing fiction. But sometimes it adds up and it's good to periodically remind myself that life is the stuff that happens in the physical world.

In other good news, I've got a story coming out soon in an anthology of Lovecraftian fiction called Dead But Dreaming 2. I'm excited for the book, because of the talent of the writers in the TOC and the passion and energy that the publisher and editor have put into things behind the scenes.

And I'd like to conclude by congratulating Jennifer P. on placing her poem. She's a student and a talented poet, and this is just the start of really good things to come...

Internet Silence...

2011-05-11T15:22:00.004-04:00

Thanks very much to everyone who has purchased a copy of These Strange Worlds, and to all the folks who have requested review copies. Those are going into the mail tomorrow.

Will return to regular posting soon--I've got family in town from Oregon, and we're pretty much off the internet and out of the house...

A Tale of Two Conno(e)llys

2011-05-05T08:56:00.003-04:00

I left the novel I was reading in my office on Monday (The Reapers, John Connolly) and I needed something to help me off into sleep, so I cracked open The Scarecrow, by Michael Connelly. The books share some eerie similarities: both have crows on the front; both boast New York Times bestsellers status; both feature full-page author photographs on the back covers.

Both have intricate, engaging plots and strong prose styling.

But now that I've got them both working simultaneously, it's a pretty interesting case study in personal taste. I have to admit that I prefer John Connolly's stories to Micheal Connelly's, which is certainly no slam on the latter.

Micheal Connelly's writing is concise. He builds short chapters with short, active sentences. He alternates perspective, switching back and forth between first and third as he sets up an admittedly telegraphed plot. There are few similies and metaphors, and it reads very much like the work of an accomplished former crime reporter (which Connelly, and the story's protagonist, both were/are).

John Connolly's writing is far more complex in terms of sentence structure. His paragraphs are much longer, and he uses loads of compound sentences. There is a lilt to the phrasing--partly, I would suppose, due to the type of English spoken in his native Dublin, Ireland. His chapters are much longer, and he spends much more time with exposition. While most of his novels star P.I. Charlie Parker, a couple focus on hardened badasses Angel and Louis, and The Reapers is one of those. He writes some startlingly creative comparisons--similes and metaphors that are perfectly apt (and some fall flat, too--none of us is immune, it would appear). He uses italics for flashback, a stylistic hallmark of Stephen King's work, and one I enjoy very much (matter of preference, of course; my agent really doesn't like it)...

Both of the stories are strong, and I'm enjoying them. If anything, this exercise in reading just emphasizes two effective approaches to narrative.

But, if pressed, I suppose I prefer Connolly. I'm a sucker for thorough exposition, and his use of flashback really makes the characters come to life. I also like that he laces his stories with supernatural plot devices. This one is pretty straight forward, but much of his fiction is flavored with fantastic influences.

Style and tone and structure and voice and plotting and organization and character and setting and, above all, story--that's what it takes...

Glitter, glitter and crayon nubbins!

2011-05-03T21:29:00.003-04:00

In the morning I clean the house. Usually, that process concludes with a dustpan filled with glitter and crayon nubbins.

Jeanne and I go to work and Lyla goes to school. Then, at the end of the night I clean up again, and the danged dustpan is filled with glitter and crayon nubbins again.

I wouldn't have it any other way...

In unrelated news, I received the most bizarre rejection letter today. I'll have to write a post on it when I have a little more time (finals week, then back to the fulltime grind next week)...

Interesting News

2011-05-01T23:15:00.002-04:00

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

An evil, hateful figure in history is gone and I only hope that the families of his victims, both here and overseas, have felt a measure of relief that he is no longer breathing.

I also hope that he is suffering someplace. I hope he showed up to the afterlife and his notions of 130 submissive women were replaced by...well, nothing. I'd like to think that he's stuck in a perfect void--a place of absolute solitude and isolation and boredom.

Fuck Osama Bin Laden. What a backward, hateful policy shifter. His influence was staggering, and I'm just glad he's gone. Despite what some would have you believe, his was never a war of class and/or privilege. It's called extremism and terrorism, and he was the worst of the worst.

I pray for peace for the hearts and minds of those who lost loved ones in the attacks of 9/11.

I watched 60 Minutes tonight, and I'm just stunned by how courageous Lara Logan was in discussing the terrible sexual assault she suffered. I'm seriously impressed with her candor, and I'm just blown away by her depiction of how things are in Egypt in terms of tolerating sexual assault. It's a pretty horrifying video--be warned, you need to understand it's graphic--but it's remarkably honest.

Well, shoot...

2011-04-30T13:31:00.002-04:00

It's looking more and more like I won't get drafted by any team in the NFL again this year. Starting to wonder if it'll ever happen at all at this point...

I took Lyla to the grocery store an hour ago. When we were loading up the truck, she said, "Music, Daddy?"

"What would you like?" I replied.

"Jimmy Buffet, please."

Man, that's a good kid! We grooved to "Cheeseburger in Paradise" the whole way home!

News on "Raising Tom Chambers"

2011-04-29T12:45:00.002-04:00

My story "Raising Tom Chambers" was listed as a notable story with the Million Writers Awards. Thanks very much to G.E. Mullins for the nomination, and to Jason Sanford for facilitating the exposure for stories published on the internet.

Additionally, I came across a nice review of the story at Tangent Online. I appreciate the kind words on the story, Mr. Schmidt. I'm glad it struck a chord with you.

"Raising Tom Chambers," along with thirteen other dark speculative stories, will be available in all digital formats and in trade paperback in late May in the forthcoming collection These Strange Worlds.

Daily Life...

2011-04-28T09:53:00.003-04:00

The funny:

I was cleaning the kitchen the other day when Jeanne brought her dinner dishes into the kitchen and tried to stuff them in the dishwasher. I had that puppy packed (what can I say? I was a huge Tetris fan growing up...), and I hit her with a dose of healthy righteous indignation.

"What?" she said.

"It's like you get to put the last brick in the Great Wall of China! I do all the work, and then you just put your plate in there."

She just laughed at me and handed me her plate. "You realize that the top dishes don't get cleaned because of that pot you put there, right?"

I studied it. "Yeah, but there are other pots beneath it to redirect the jets. We've got our bases covered."

The sad:

I was awoken this morning by cries of "Daddy! Mommy! What's happening?" Lyla had suffered a bloody nose, and it was just heartbreaking to see her agitation while her body betrayed her a little.

I think someone is learning there's a limit to how far a finger goes into a nostril...

Fotolia

2011-04-27T11:18:00.004-04:00

When I was a kid, I used to create books and sell them throughout my neighborhood. We had a computer program called The Children's Writing and Publishing Center, and I used to publish The Powell Family News on that sucker and write story collections. I bound them with staples or loops of yarn and slogged them up and down the street, and patient folks gave me a buck for them. My mom still has a collection of Christmas stories that I wrote; she puts it out every year!

I would drop clipart into those stories, trying to make them as multidimensional as possible.

So I've always really enjoyed the DIY ethos, and I'm pretty fascinated by the field of graphic design. One of those sticky points on graphic design, though, is how to generate content to create striking products. I've shot hundreds of photos, but I'm no good behind the lens. I've tried my hand at other artistic mediums, and those efforts were less than successful. I'm no thief, so simply raiding the internet for content without permission is out of the question.

So where does the content come from? How do you bring your blog to life, adding a secondary layer of professionalism and context through images and video? How do you find images for your book covers, professional posters, brochures and newsletters?

Try Fotolia! I think you'll be thankful that you did.

About a month ago, I received an e-mail from Jenna Levy. Ms. Levy offered me a one-month trial membership to the service, and I was simply blown away by it.

It starts with the service's size (over thirteen million images and video clips) and ease of use. A simple search of the database sent me, in some cases, into galleries of hundreds of images. Much of the work comes from independent artists, and there is some excellent artwork in there. A number of my searches hit the nail on the head, yielding just a page or two of perfect results. Either way is fun: I enjoyed clicking through hundreds in search of the diamond in the rough, and I was impressed by the focused search results when I tried some very specific queries.

I really enjoyed the shopping process as I added items to my cart.

The service is also very affordable. Users can purchase content a la carte (for as low as fourteen cents an image!); designers can take out monthly subscriptions for greater access. The service is available in multiple languages, and I found the quality and breadth of variety to be excellent.

I have downloaded about fifty images. I'm excited to dork around with them in my design process. A great many of them feature my home state of Oregon, so I'm thinking of writing a series of essays that will only be enhanced with the crisp, clear images of the places I'm discussing.

Fotolia definitely exceeded my expectations as a content service. I'll be happy to use them moving forward as I contemplate digitizing some of my individual short stories. Another nice aspect of this is funding the artists that use the service. When I buy an image, a portion goes to the artist, which is just the way it should be...

The frontier of publishing is an exciting place to be right now. It promises access and timeliness. But another aspect of getting the most from this new era of publishing is marketing. If you don't have the financial resources to hire an artist, but you have an idea and some determination to make it happen, give Fotolia's database a chance and start dorking around with cover design.

Before you know it, you might be making some pretty fine book covers!

Why Do Writers Abandon Novels?

2011-04-22T12:48:00.005-04:00

I've written three novels, and I'm almost finished with the first draft of another. Two of those novels are out on submission, while the other is available at the right side of the screen here. I've also got the remains of three novels resting in their various urns, reduced to ashes in their digital crypt.

Why did those books whither and die? Why are they mere ashes, and not at least piles of dessicated bones?

Because they never had any blood in them to begin with.

I wrote an interpretation of the Stick Indian Mythos (20,000 words), a post-apocalyptic punk story (26,000) words and one of those clumsy, oafish middle-aged man has a crisis stories (18,000 words); not a one of them ever took so much as a breath in the world.

Even as I was writing them, I felt they were lifeless things. But have you ever found yourself lost, fumbling around on unfamiliar streets? You look for something that feels like a road mark, but you just push further into your predicament? You get that obstinate air about you, and then you bargain with yourself (it's really not that bad...) and then comes that moment of cold realization: I'm in a pickle--better stop for directions.

It can feel like that, writing a novel. And sometimes, the best directions are just to move on.

Here's an interesting article on the topic. That stuff in there about Chabon, a writer whose stuff I really enjoy, is interesting. Five and a half years before he pulled the plug! I know there are numerous stories of novels never getting finished, after decades and decades of revision and work.

On Sunday night, I'm going to go through and read the work I'm drafting. I'm not going to make any marks, I'm just going to read it and see how the two of us are doing. Are we still making eyes at each other, me and that manuscript? I hope so, because if we are, come Monday I'm buying it flowers and taking it out for dinner...

Random Weirdness...

2011-04-20T11:19:00.002-04:00

I had a vivid post-apocalyptic zombie dream (I know, I know...I'm violating my own code of conduct about discussing dreams) early this morning. Jeanne and Lyla and I had holed up with the rest of the survivors in an enormous two-story warehouse. The normals had the top floor, with the old offices, and we moved around on catwalks above the wall-to-wall herd of the undead beneath our feet.

It had been discovered that the only way to placate the mob was to capture mourning doves. For whatever reason, the zombies became calm only when listening to their calls. So we had all these complex cages wired up, filled with mourning doves, and the job of keeping them was some sort of tribal honor.

And then the dream became strange. We'd managed to scrounge $10,000 from the bank before everything went to hell, and regular U.S. currency was still trading in our little contained environment. Only nobody had change for our big bills. So I went to meet with the banker to try to work out a currency exchange.

It was Tiger Woods!

Apparently, he had squirreled away all this cash in briefcases. I gave him my bundle and asked for $9500 back in small bills. Instead, that sucker gave me $8000 in looted pharmaceutical supplies and costume jewelry and bandages and stuff and the rest in change.

And so we became apothecaries. We operated a little pharmacy and Lyla rode around among all the medical stuff Tiger Woods had traded us on a trike.

Then I heard my daughter on the monitor and it was time to start the day, but darn if I don't hope that little beauty picks right back up tonight!

In unrelated news, America's Team, your Jacksonville Jaguars (!!) actually have two games on Monday nights this fall. With the roster we have now, I see another 8-8 year. Maybe 9-7 if we sweep the Titans.

And finally, out here in Jacksonville, we have an annual Opening of the Beaches. It's a big community festival (the official start of the beach season), with lifeguards and music and all that stuff. Well, I have an official closing of the Round Marsh Trails that I like to run four times a week in the winter/spring. The time has come, as that is once again a very snaky trail and I was chewed to death by yellow flies. See you in November...

Herman Wouk Is Still Alive

2011-04-19T15:11:00.002-04:00

Stephen King's latest short story, "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive," is kind of a nasty little piece of classist vitriol.

I've made no apologies for my love of Stephen King's work. Ultimately, I think time will prove the critical appraisal of his writing to be quite positive. I love his conversational writing style, his hugely ambitious plots, and his ability to twist the trivial aspects of life into perfect little snippets of mundane horror.

I also tend to agree with many of his political views. However, in the case of this story, I just feel sorry for the man in the big house with the iron fence that he built to protect the writerly folks from the dangers of mixing with the rest of us plebes.

This tale features every paper-thin cliche and classist sketch of those without resources; it becomes tiresome. Jasmine and Brenda are broke; they have seven children among them and no positive males in their lives; there has been sexual abuse; they both drink rotgut hooch; they call the library the "li-berry"; they give their children names like Glory and Freedom and they are both outright bigots.

They want to load a rental van with their children and some booze and go stay in "The Red Roof" so they can eat takeout from "downstreet" and swim in the pool.

Road trip!

The first third of the story is painted with such wide brushstrokes that it's insulting to anyone who has ever had to struggle. Look, even when I was dirt poor and living with Jeanne over on Whitaker in South Portland, my sense of educational and cultural class distinction wasn't defined by my lack of wealth. I'd like to be charitable to King and just hope that he was trying for satire with this piece.

We then see the other side of the coin in the second vignette: ivory tower academics en route to a poetry reading in Maine. They are equally offensive character renderings., and they're stuck on a collision course with Brenda and Jasmine and the VAN OF DOOM!

The story travels well-worn King Country: aging, politics, sex, and that afore-mentioned VAN OF DOOM!

His knack for perceptively hammering the details is there (the MADE IN PARAGUAY tag on the stretch pants from K-MART, for instance), and I understand the emotion he's trying to expose. It's a story about perception and opportunity and lives of quiet desperation.

It's a story about resignation, too. And damn it, those kids don't deserve the thing that happens to them. You make your own luck, that is if your parents have the decency to give you half a chance.

Like I said, I see what he's trying to do with the tale, but it's just too danged hackneyed to drive the job home. I've got a copy of Just After Sunset on the nightstand. There are some excellent stories in that collection, and I'll look at a few of them tonight to reacquaint myself with one of the finest contemporary storytellers...

Another Reason Why Portland, Oregon, Will Always Be Home

2011-04-16T18:18:00.003-04:00

When the Timbers played their first game ever in downtown Portland, they didn't bring out any heavy hitters from the celebrity world to belt out the national anthem. The fans did it themselves. That town has an undeniable vibe. Man, I miss Portland...

What Kind of State Does Florida Want to Be?

2011-04-13T09:18:00.007-04:00

Bob Graham, a former United States senator and governor of Florida, wrote what seems a very prescient op/ed piece about assessing the past to better guide the future of our state. Over the last year or so, it's become pretty clear to me that Florida is an undesirable place to live for at least four groups of people: children, the elderly, the disabled and workers who lack a college education.

Florida's economy--service, agriculture, tourism--has lagged far behind many other states in the region (North Carolina and Virginia being the two most visible examples) in transforming in a way that is positioned to excel in the information age. There was a spike in investment in the hi-tech industry, most commonly focused on Central Florida and the Orlando area, in the late '80s and early '90s, but that momentum has fizzled.

From 1960-2000, the population grew by around three million in each decade. Those new taxpayers fed the construction and infrastructure segments of the economy while contributing to the tax foundation. But that growth also fed urban sprawl and put extreme pressure on our natural resources. That growth levelled out in the past decade; since 2006, we've actually been going in reverse and that, coupled with the real estate collapse, has left Florida in a tough economic bind.

So why are folks leaving this Garden of Eden?

Well, as Graham points out, the deregulation of industry has negatively impacted our environment. We see that pretty clearly here in Jacksonville, where Georgia Pacific continually releases discharge into the St. Johns River. There was a two-month fish kill last year in the waters of our city's greatest resource. You can't swim in it, you can't eat the seafood that comes from certain portions of it, and it stinks to the high heavens in August and September with the algae blooms. There was serious discussion by the Rick Scott administration earlier in the year of shuttering almost fifty of our state parks (Florida has one of the finest systems in America). A study done by the state found that the parks have a direct economic impact of 1.9 billion on the economy. The savings gained by shuttering these parks was minuscule (some estimates pegged the savings at just a few million dollars) in comparison with the loss of access to natural Florida.

Under new guidelines proposed by the Scott administration, seniors will be paying more for health care; he has proposed cuts on the state's disabilities services funds (although he has indicated that he'll sign an emergency order to restore those funds as of yesterday) that will leave our most vulnerable citizens in a hard place.

And our education system is in shambles. We rank near the bottom in K-12 per-student spending. We have one of the lowest percentages of college-educated adults in the nation. In Jacksonville, where Scott's proposed budget cuts will be felt very deeply, there is talk of abolishing all extracurricular activities to square up a $97 million dollar shortfall for the next school year.

No sports mean even fewer opportunities to attend college for many of Duval County's most vulnerable students (that's not to mention all the other benefits organized after-school activities have on our youth).

All of this while Scott is trying to slash four billion in taxes (the majority of tax relief will be realized by affluent individuals and corporations). His will be the third consecutive administration that has sought to reduce or hold steady the tax burden to pay for programs and services. How, with every other aspect of the economy experiencing inflation, are we to pay for things? Health care and education will take the largest hits, of course, but so will investment in infrastructure and preservation of natural resources.

The past three administrations have sold tax cuts on the idea that they stimulate job growth. As Graham opines in his piece, the job creation credited to these policies has been far slower than in previous decades, and the quality of jobs has been degraded.

All of this comes to light at the outset of the tourism season in Florida, which suffered a terrible blow last year as a result of the BP oil spill. Now we see that gas prices are nearing $4.00 per gallon, and I doubt that will make it attractive for many folks up north to pack up the wagon and strike out for the beaches or Disney.

Graham's piece is a wake-up call. Do we want to be a state that invests in attracting research and hi-tech firms? Do we want to educate our children so that we have a workforce that can, with agility and competency, move into those positions in the coming decades? Do we want to look out for the elderly, who flock to Florida for its climate and cost of living? Do we want to be known as a state that lacks resources for the disabled?

Or do we just want to do everything on the cheap? Do we want to let our children fall through the cracks? Do we want to encourage a service economy filled with McJobs and stake our fortunes to an industry that can be seasonally destroyed by things like storms or environmental disasters?

There are opportunities here; there are far more strengths than weaknesses. But, I fear, our state's recent voting habits and the national political tide are making it expedient for our leaders to ignore the things that we did well in the past to push forward with policies that will make things more difficult for our future.

Inventory = Longevity

2011-04-12T16:13:00.005-04:00

Thanks to those who drop by the blog for stepping up and requesting copies of my forthcoming collection, These Strange Worlds! The response was overwhelming and immediate, and I'm looking forward to getting copies into the mail (and dropping some by the college)...

This post is very interesting. Bob Mayer, a writer whose work has appeared on numerous bestsellers lists, turned down a lucrative publishing offer to publish Duty, Honor, Country: West Point to Shiloh, as an e-book.

Here's my favorite portion of the post: Two weeks ago at the Whidbey Island Writers Conference I suddenly realized something: as quickly as a writer can publish their book, is also as quickly as they can quit. It seems many think this is an easy path to great sales and wealth and fortune—a yellow brick road. But success will go to those who first and always, have a well-written book with a great story. Then there is the need for persistence and consistency. While the digital age has made all this possible, I think it has the potential to make quitting much easier since we live in a time of instant gratification. Writers are checking their Kindle numbers daily and bemoaning lack of sales within a week of upload. I think one trait those of us coming from traditional publishing have had is knowing it’s the long haul that counts. Also, in digital, it’s not the spike for the bestseller list, but the long tail of sales that is the key.

Publishing is changing quickly, but writers still need to focus on the long haul.
I think it's important to try to find those niche markets (often cultivated by submitting to anthologies, zines, magazines--the traditional avenues). They still need to, as the great Todd Shaw once said, get in where they fit in. It's important to both remain dedicated to writing good stories while also learning about promotion, emerging publication platforms and design (among other things). Mayer's post, like the ones that have preceded it on Joe's blog, is just filled with food for thought. Kudos to some of these writers for doing for themselves what wasn't necessarily done well for them in prior relationships with the publishing industry...