Come get your free book!

In the spirit of the holiday (and good ol' American self-promotion), I'm giving away free copies of my book for the next two weeks.  Sometime between today and January 6, if you head on over to the Smashwords page, you can enter the following code: JE53P and get a free digital copy in the format of your choice.  It's DRM free, so pass the word, enjoy and have a happy holiday.

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The Christmas Tree Story

The holidays have become a lot more complicated since I was a kid.  Maybe that’s the case for everyone, maybe it isn’t.  I know that it used to be about that perfect amalgam of excitement, anticipation and the warm safety of being home.  Even in the darkest parts of my childhood, when we weren’t sure if there was going to be a roof over our heads the next month or food on the table the next day, there was always that sense of magic and well-being. 

As I got older, things shifted.  I lost that sense of home, except in the part of it that I carried with me from those more innocent times.  Some of them were spent alone, some of them hungry, some of them in darker places than I, thankfully, had known back then.  Lately, it seems that we’ve forgotten that the holidays are meant to be a time to bring us closer together, to show us the best of humanity.  Instead, we seem to focus on the worst of it, the baser aspects of greed, envy and intolerance.

Even in these times, maybe more so now, I hold to the memories of better days to protect me from the cynicism that seems to have overtaken us.  I remember the goodness in people, in what my grandma used to call the Christmas spirit, though I’ve seen it in celebrants of all faiths, and in those of none.  This is one of the most valuable of those and it’s the only gift this humble wordsmith can give to you.

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A Thought: On Being Broken

Love isn't a matter of finding someone who isn't broken.  We're all broken, in one way or another.  It's just a matter of finding someone whose broken pieces fit ours. Read more!

A Thought: On Bookends

Bookends are for people who can't commit. Read more!

Old Words...

There's a story here, but since it isn't mine alone to tell, I'll leave it untold.

“You are my dream come true.”

Long ago words in long dead letters

Scrawled across the page, hastily,

On a Christmas Eve,

The last of a decade,

A century, a millennium,

A life.

Obscured a year in years

A voice across time

Mine speaking for his

One last time,

Like so many before,

Drawing tears from eyes

That cannot cease glancing back

Asking why.

I can’t answer,

Not this time.

I tell as much truth

As I gauge she can take

Leaving her shuddering but sated

With our shared ghost.

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Snow Patrol - Live from Rolling Stone

I've liked Snow Patrol since their first album, way back when, and their sound and depth has grown over time with me.  They did an acoustic set from their new album, Fallen Empires, yesterday down at the Rolling Stone studios.  From what I've heard, it'll probably be my new favorite album.  The themes of This Isn't Everything You Are and New York especially resonated with me.  Check it out here: Snow Patrol - Live at Rolling Stone

Afterwards, run on over and pre-order the new CD: Read more!

A Glaring Blind Spot

For Christmas, my parents both wanted MP3 players filled with music.  For my mom, that's not tough.  She's like me and, even if she isn't familiar with something, will listen to it anyway.  My stepfather, though, has pointed out that in my expansive, eclectic knowledge of music, I have a glaring blind spot with which I was okay until now.  He wants...disco. Help. Read more!

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

It’s a post-Twilight market.  Genre fiction these days, especially the books aimed at teens, is saturated with what amounts to little more than trashy romance in a fantastical setting, populated by one-dimensional characters who are often horrifying stereotypes playing out “plots” that serve no purpose except to put them in one sexually tense situation after another.  It’s always refreshing to find a new voice that is both willing and able to defy the market’s expectations of what sells in favor of fresh, compelling storytelling and well-developed characters.  What’s more, to find an author who speaks to teens without talking down to them.  Kendare Blake does just that in Anna Dressed in Blood.

The story follows the adventures of the uniquely named Theseus Cassio, or just Cas, for short.  Having inherited his deceased father’s athame and talent for being able to slay the non-living, he and his mother move from town to town where he seeks out and destroys those restless spirits which seek to do others harm.  Those who do not, which are the majority, are left alone.  When a source sends the pair to Thunder Bay, Ontario, he faces his greatest and most intriguing challenge yet in the form of a six-decade old ghost named Anna who is stronger, faster and vastly more powerful than anything he’s faced in the past.

While Blake’s novel pays loving, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, homage to shows like Buffy and Supernatural, it by no means rehashes old territory without adding to the mix a bit of its own flavor.  From the beginning, it’s apparent that she’s come up with a rich mythology and cosmology for her world, the kind of groundwork necessary to give any fantasy a breath of reality.  As well, she doesn’t pander to her audience.  Life isn’t easy, but it isn’t chockfull of needless angst.  Cas is exactly the kind of kid you’d expect him to be, having lived the life he has, for better and worse.  The side characters, even the ghost, Anna, are all given the same loving treatment.

The story itself is paced perfectly.  While it does contain the kind of romance you’d expect in any novel dealing with a teenage protagonist, it does so in a realistic manner and never for a moment sacrifices plot for pander.  Blake pulls no punches, either, when it comes to violence.  It has real consequences.  People get hurt.  When they get knocked around, they don’t just spring back up and keep going.  The reality of it enhances the experience.

All in all, it’s a fantastic read.  And while it does have a fair bit of the kind of violence and gore you’d expect from the genre, it’s handled in a mature fashion and would still be a good choice for older teens and adults alike.  

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New Skill #2 - Origami

Turns out that paper folding isn't the easiest thing in the world.  There's an entire nomenclature to be learned (which I'm picking up) and it takes a delicacy of touch that I'm slowly developing.  It's incredibly meditative and it has the advantage of constantly reinforcing learning, as you're left with a neat thing at the end and you can see the growth of skill in fairly quick increments. These are my works, starting with my first attempt at a swan (yeah, yeah), then a penguin, a bunny, a whale, a frog (who actually hops!) and ending with my most recent, a duck.
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A Thought: On Guilt

Guilt is the strongest-forged chain, when built by our own hand.  It ties us to the darkest parts of ourselves, binds us as justification for hurts inflicted upon us, large and small, and holds us tight for more.

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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

All writers have rituals, things they do to get the juices flowing, to let their minds know that it’s okay to start drifting into the ephemeral.  For many of them, myself included, music is a big part of it.  As I sat down to write this morning, I queued up every 80s track I had on random rotation, because nothing else would have felt right.  As the first song started, a slow smile crept across my face.  It was Poison’s Something to Believe In.  Incredibly appropriate.

My nostalgic trip was due in large part to the book I just finished, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.  Cline was the screenwriter on 2008’s homage to friendship and Star Wars, Fanboys.  For those of you who’ve seen the movie, you’re familiar with Cline’s deft hand at walking that thin line between well-developed characters and an entertaining plot.  Ready Player One takes that to the next level.

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A Thought: On Writing

These days, it seems that everyone thinks themselves a writer, that it's only a matter of living and putting pen to paper.  It isn't.  While there is something to be said for experience and inspiration, and the tenuous, inextricable relationship between the two, there is also the matter of ability.  All the talent in the world means nothing without technique and the only way to learn to write is, simply, to read. 

No matter the natural aptitude, we must begin by basking in that which has come before, to learn what works and, as important, what doesn't.  To figure out what in the ephemeral world of words calls to us and what shies away.  No musician ever picks up an instrument and plays a sonata, never having heard a note.  No athlete can throw, having never seen a game.  As such, if you've ever used the phrase, "I'm not a reader," it is, like as not, you are not, regardless of what you think, much of a writer.

As well, if you avoid ever pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, literarily-speaking, you'll never grow.  I love a well-written mystery or a compelling fantasy, but if it were all I ever read, I wouldn't be able to follow the muse down many a path toward which I'm drawn.  So read, read, read, all you can, as often as you can, else, please, write only for yourself. Read more!

Saving America

It’s isn’t about Republican or Democrat.  It isn’t about liberal or conservative.  It isn’t about big business, terrorists, taxes, abortion, religion, gun control or gay marriage.  It isn’t about whose fault it is that we are where we are.  What it is about, at its deepest, most frightening level, what it must be about, is humanity.

This thriving of industry is not what made this country great, nor was it a rigorous adherence to any particular ideology.  We were not built on rigidity, but on compromise.  Bounty was once merely an incentive for innovation, for creativity and ideas that bettered the world.  Then, it was not the sole destination but a benefit which was gathered as we pressed onward into a bright and unknown future.  

As well, the Constitution was framed not for a people with a blind adherence to a single, unwavering philosophy, but rather with the thought that by listening to one another, with minds open and hearts willing to accept that another can be right without making all others wrong, that the best of us could be brought forth. 

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The Thing for Which I Am Most Thankful

The world being what it is, these days, it’s easy to forget not to begin these kinds of posts with overdone clichés.  I’ll spare you that much, at least, though I would like to spend a little bit of time talking about life, the universe and everything.  Some of it may seem a bit contrived, but bear with me as though I were sitting in the room, watching you expectantly as you read.

For those readers not here in the U.S. (and there are a startling number of you guys), today is a day we here in the States call Thanksgiving, where we typically gather with family and/or friends to have a giant meal, watch a parade, maybe a football game, with the idea that we’re meant to be thinking of the things for which we’re most thankful.  The funny thing is, today isn’t really my Thanksgiving.  But I’ll get to that.

I woke up this morning with the ghost of a headache that must’ve come and gone in the night, which was the first thought for which I was thankful.  I had a dream this morning of some people that I miss very much and likely won’t see again for a long time, so there was a touch of sadness in my heart to match the phantom ache in my head.  All the same, I was, as always, just thankful to have woken up at least one more time.

When I came out of the bedroom, there was the lingering smell of the pumpkin pie baked last night in the hallway.  Pre-baking, and cooking, as a whole, of various components of the feast is a bit of a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, you get a house filled with delicious smells for days.  On the other, you have to find the will to resist partaking in a personal feast or the cunning to make up an effective, believable lie as to why there is, in fact, no pie when you were supposed to be the one to bring the pie.  It’s terrible.

Today, there’ll be the usual gathering of relatives at my parents’ place, where I’ll most likely spend the majority of my time playing with my nephews, aged 3 and 5, because they’re the closest thing to contemporaries of mine.  We’ll eat some food then most likely head home.  I know my mom would like us to spend more time there, but it’s a small place and not a terribly comfortable atmosphere, for a lot of reasons I won’t go into.

For all that I love my parents and step-siblings, though, my real Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  Normally, on Friday afternoons, I have a few friends over for our weekly gaming session.  The last few weeks, with my training early on Saturday morning and some pretty heavy stuff with one of them, we’ve had to miss it.  One friend, in particular, has been going through some very tough stuff which, unfortunately, has made it so that he’s been all but unable to leave the house for weeks.  The emotional stress of it has been pretty terrible and, what’s worse, I knew that, his family being what it is, he’d most likely be all but alone today.  So I hatched a plan.

Tomorrow, we’re all going to get together and have what promises to be a huge and fantastically prepared meal, in no small part due to my culinarily gifted friend David, who can make from seemingly random ingredients an incredible meal and, given more a week to plan and prepare, can do what amounts to magic.  He’s my oldest living friend (we’ve known each other since we were six) and one of the most generous souls I know, have ever known, and it humbles me often that he’s chosen to stay my friend all these years.

Johnny and Daniel, the other two members of my gaming group and my friends for well over a decade now, were there for me in the darkest parts of my life.  There have been falling outs and disagreements, but it has never occurred to me that they wouldn’t always be around, and I hope that it’s been the same for them. 

This’ll be my one trite bit, but I use it here because it’s true.  These three guys, all my friends, really, are my family as much, maybe more, sometimes, than the one I was born into.  They chose me and I chose them.  I’ve always said that it’s foolish to call a place home, because time changes where you live, and where you live changes where you’re from.  The safest place to put home is in the people you love and my friends are my home.  While we may fall behind on the housekeeping now and then, it’ll always be there, waiting, when I need them, and vice versa.

So I’m thankful for that, for them, for the people who have granted me their presence in my life, now and in the past, and a bit of space in their hearts.  Without them, in some ways as literal as figurative, I wouldn’t be here today and I know that.  So, even if the world gets in the way, know that I love you all.  Thanks.

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A Thought...

If you're only halfway gone, you've got a ways to go before you sleep.  Mixing up the allusions, bitches. Read more!