Sean Harris Books

A Halloween Short Story

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Remote Control

I awoke in total darkness. No light shone in the room through the window on the wall opposite my bed. The room was likewise shrouded in silence as if the lack of illumination had muffled even the slightest sound. Of course, that’s we went there. That’s why we bought the cabin in the woods. To leave the sights and sounds of the city behind us and “get back to our essential selves.” That was how Rhonda put it. She’d also recently signed up for a pilates class, started watching Desperate Housewives reruns and drinking in the afternoons. I wasn’t concerned until the exercise class thing. That’s the thing that got my attention. Rhonda and I had been married for nine years and, honestly, the heat had faded. My job takes me away from home for long stretches of time and I worried she hadn’t launched her new fitness kick with me in mind. Better safe than sorry.

The cabin had been her idea. She thought it would bring us closer together if we could spend large quantities of uninterrupted time together. So, on one of my few weekends home, we drove into the mountains, found one we liked and bought it. The place had two rooms and few amenities; no running water nor indoor plumbing. No electricity. The kitchen consisted of a propane stove, a sink and an icebox. Not a refrigerator, an actual ice box. For heat, there was a huge fireplace in the main room. And that was it. I thought it might be a little Spartan for Rhonda’s tastes, but she loved it as soon as she saw it. I think a lot of the appeal for her was the location. The closest neighbor was miles away. The glorified path masquerading as a driveway posed a challenge even for our Hummer. Drive-by traffic wouldn’t be a problem. The only hat-tip to civilization on which Rhonda insisted was a ceiling fan in the bedroom. No problem. On another free weekend, I wired and installed the fan, which got its power from a small diesel generator outside the window. I even included a three speed switch on the wall, so I wouldn’t have to climb onto the bed and tug on a string to change it. I was serious about my wife’s needs. Tranquility. At last.
All of this suited me just fine. I wasn’t much of an outdoorsman, but I wouldn’t turn down a chance to piss in the woods for three weeks every fall. So when I woke up in pitch-black silence, I wasn’t surprised.

My difficulty staying awake did surprise me, though. My eyelids felt heavy as if I’d been drugged. The two glasses of wine I’d had with dinner must have affected me more than I thought. I tried to roll over and light the candle on my bedside table, but found I could not. I tossed and turned so in my sleep that I’d wound myself up in the bedclothes. When I attempted to dislodge myself I came to a nasty realization. I wasn’t trapped beneath the sheets; I was strapped to the bed.

“Nice to see you’re finally awake.” Rhonda’s voice drifted through the darkness. “I suppose I shouldn’t have used as much sedative as I did. I might have killed you.”

“What’s going on, Ronnie?” I asked. I tried to sound calm and authoritative. Instead, my words came out panicked and frightened. “Why am I tied to the bed?”

“To keep you from running away, of course.”

I suppose I should have responded to her words, but I didn’t. Words failed me. Hell, thoughts failed me. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the situation enough to understand what a mess I’d landed in. I though the wine caused my mental malaise. On the other hand, there aren’t many experiences one can have that will prepare you for waking up and discovering the woman you love has gone insane.
I heard movement followed by the zip of a match striking against its box. The flame erupted in the darkness, illuminating the entire room. I watched Rhonda light the scented candle on the table next to her then blow out the match. After the prolonged black out, I squinted into the feeble light of Fresh-Baked Cookies.

“I don’t understand, Ronnie,” I said. “Why are you doing this? In fact, what exactly are you doing?”

“We’re finished,” she said. Simple. To the point.

“But I love you.”

“And I haven’t loved you in years.”

“I see. So what’s your plan? Tie me up and run away with your new lover? I would have expected more from you, Rhonda.”

She laughed. I wish I could say there was something cold and evil about the sound, but there wasn’t. It was joyous and full of life as always. She stood - candle in hand - and walked across the room to the ceiling fan switch. She flipped the switch and the blades started to move.

“Do you know how many nights I lay alone on our bed, waiting for you to come home but knowing that you wouldn’t? I used to lay there and watch the fan go round and round for hours on end. Sometimes, I’d dream about it, forever stuck in the same pattern, its momentum causing it to strain at its moorings, never going anywhere except around in the same circle one more time. And no one ever noticed it. Except for me.” Her eyes flicked to meet mine. “Did your mother ever tell you not to stick your fingers in the fan because it could cut them off? Mine did. Then it occurred to that you could sharpen the blades of a fan until they were like razors. Spinning razors. Right above your head.”

She turned the switch to medium and the blades moved faster. The candlelight flickered and I could feel the breeze on my brow. The blades reflected the dim light. They looked sharp.

“All you would have to do is loosen the screws at the base, tilt the fan ever so slightly and who knows what might happen?” She turned the switch again and the blades turned faster yet. “You could cut your fingers off. It could even be fa-“
She never finished her sentence. At full speed, the fan rocked and jolted its base against the ceiling, loosening the grasp of screw in wood. The fan rocked wildly. One of the blades struck the ceiling and snapped off. The broken piece of razor-sharp plastic caromed across the room, striking Rhonda. She fell to the floor, out of my line of vision.

“Ronnie? Ronnie, are you okay?” I craned my neck, trying to see her. All I saw was a dark river of blood slowly spreading across the floor. I flopped back on the bed in triumph as my neck muscles complained about their poor treatment. Ronnie had never been good with tools.

Whoosh!

Crap.

The bedspread caught fire. Above me, the fan still limped along, its deadly broken blades jerked back and forth unbalanced as they fanned the flames on the bed. Panicked, I jerked and tore at my bindings to no avail. Finally, I knew it would be one or the other. As I waited for my fate my only thought was this:

I should have gotten a fan with a remote.

The smell of demons in the morning

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Excerpt from Dead of Winter:

I took Father Joe’s face in my hands and smacked him once
to make sure he was listening. I wasn’t going to have time to repeat
myself.

“Pay attention,” I said. “We don’t have much time and I don’t
know how long I can hold off the demon. You have to get Drew.”
I pointed to my son. “Take him, then go across the hall and get
Harry. Do it as fast as you can then get out of the house. Don’t
wait for me. Understand?”

He nodded though his eyes were still glazed. He reached under
his jacket and pulled something out.

“Wait,” he said, pressing the thing into my hand. “Holy water.”

Sure. Why not?

“Thanks. Now go. Hurry!”

Father Joe got up just as Remiel unleashed his fury on both
of us. I tried to protect Father Joe but I knew I wouldn’t be able
to shield him entirely. He was going to take an awful hit and I
couldn’t stop it.

From out of nowhere, Hutch came running across the room.
He grinned from ear to ear and looked as determined as an incontinent
cat in the Sahara Desert. He let out a howl and leapt
onto Remiel’s back. Then he bit the demon on the neck, vampirestyle.
It was Remiel’s turn to howl. When he opened his mouth,
Hutch hooked his index finger inside the demon’s open mouth
and pulled. I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous, a ghost miner
pulling a grade school prank against a shape-shifting demon. It
was probably much like the first human in history to eat a chicken
egg. At first it was something you would only do on a dare, but
then it you realized it was a good idea. And it would go great with
bacon. Hutch fought dirty but I wasn’t going to complain about
it. His attack knocked the demon off balance just enough that
his metaphysical cannon blast missed Father Joe and slammed
into me instead.

Everything went dark. The next time I opened my eyes, Father
Joe and Drew were gone and Hutch rode Remiel around the
room like a demonic bucking bronco. He still had the demon
hooked and was sort of steering him around the room. It was
the funniest damn thing I’d seen in a long time and I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.

Hutch looked up at the sound and grinned. “I got a tiger by
the tail here, Allysen. I got him but I can’t let go. What should
I do?”

“Hang on,” I yelled to him. “I’ve got an idea.”

He nodded. “I told you this would be excitin’, didn’t I?” Then
he frowned and smacked Remiel on top of the head. “Dammit,
bitch, I told you to quit bitin’ me.”

I pulled the top off of the bottle of holy water Father Joe gave
me and motioned for Hutch to bring the demon closer. When he
did, I tossed the water at the creature. Remiel shrieked and hissed
giving Hutch time to jump off. He rolled on his shoulder, stood
and brushed himself off while the demon continued to scream.
“Are you okay?” I asked Hutch.

“Am I okay? Damn, girl, I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

Dead of Winter available now from Amazon in paperback and for Kindle. Also available in other ebook formats from Fictionwise.com

A New Short Story

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:03:00 +0000

I have a story to tell you.

I know that seems like an odd way to begin a story, by telling you that I’m going to tell you one. Honestly, I hardly ever do things like that. I tend to be very straightforward and direct in getting to my point and I hardly ever drift off topic. It’s just how I am. I remember one time when I was talking to this guy and he just completely changed the subject right in the middle of the …

Wait. I’m doing it, aren’t I? Getting distracted, I mean.

Okay, you caught me. I lied before when I said I always got to my point. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I get distracted. That can happen when you are omniscient. You just pick up so many interesting stories that you want to tell. Sometimes they all just want to come pouring out of your brain at once. Hey, I bet you want to know how I came to be omniscient. I wasn’t always this way, you know. I was just an ordinary person doing ordinary things. However, one of those ordinary things turned out to be quite extraordinary and … I did it again, didn’t I? I suppose that particular story can wait for another time. Until then, let’s just say something happened and here we all are.

Did you realize that was the way it all happened? All of this, I mean? That something very ordinary happened and here we all are. I just happened to see it as it unfolded. Being omniscient is not without its perks.

It began in the year 2250 in the bedroom of a young man named Charlie Lane. Charlie was twenty-six years old and lived in the basement of his mother’s house. He’d flunked out of college as a nineteen-year-old freshman, moved back home and stayed there. Although he was an intelligent man, school wasn’t for him. Charlie preferred to sit in his room at night, poring through old books and tinkering with whatever mechanical device might strike his fancy.

Most days, Charlie rode the train home from his job and had dinner with his mother before retiring to his room to read his book. It wasn’t really a book, of course. It was an electronic screen that looked like a book. Long before Charlie was born, it had been decided that the resources required to make paper were more valuable as an energy source. Every industry that used paper was required to find another medium. Books had been on the way out for some time, anyway, so it was easy enough to convert those that were left to digital files which could be downloaded to any sort of personal information device. Nostalgia, however, has always been fashionable and there were those who wanted the look of an actual book. Charlie was one of those.

His latest obsession was time travel. For Charlie, the idea was more than a mere schoolboy crush on the unattainable. Time travel no longer existed only in cheap science fiction paperbacks, bought in a corner drugstore and left discarded in some motel room like the byproduct of some tawdry literary affair. It was real. For hundreds of years, people dreamed of ways to achieve it and finally someone did. In the early twenty-first century, the first traveler went forward in time. His name was Richard Duncan and he made history on September 17, 2032. Of course, no one knew it had happened until 2063, when he arrived poof! in the middle of a community theater performance of Macbeth in Newton, Kansas. His appearance caused quite a commotion because he landed in the middle of the stage during Lady Macbeth’s dagger soliloquy. Did I mention that he was also completely naked? After the wardrobe people found him a pair of pants and the police finally left, Richard Duncan was the talk of the entire planet. Originally, he’d planned to surprise his wife the next morning at breakfast but arithmetic was never his strong suit and he’d forgotten to carry a one. Amazing how one tiny mistake can set back the progress of human discovery by thirty-one years, isn’t it?

Duncan’s discovery set the scientific community atwitter. Everyone was suddenly interested in this new discovery (especially his wife who had wondered why he was thirty-one years late to breakfast). There was, however, one catch. Time travel was a one-way street. It only went forward and there was no way back. Once you left, you disappeared from history until you showed up again. This problem meant that time travel was not the boon to the tourism industry many hoped it would be. Only a few people dared to do it.

But the human drive to question and explore remained undaunted. Many continued to explore the possibility that people could travel backward in time as well. This was the concept that captured the imagination of Charlie Lane. He read voraciously on the subject, devouring everything from textbooks and academic articles to conspiracy theories and journal entries by people who were most surely raving lunatics.

One evening Charlie lay on his bed, sifting through his daily readings when one peculiar article caught his attention. It was an old story. The date on his reader said 1986. The story came from a newspaper article about an automobile accident. The accident occurred in the middle of a clear, sunny summer day on a long, straight stretch of highway. On this meager stretch of freeway, a pickup truck collided with a pedestrian. There were several witnesses to the accident and they all agreed the pedestrian had appeared out of nowhere. In the old days, vehicles didn’t travel as quickly as they do now. Why, it was not uncommon for a trip to take hours, despite how ludicrous and time-wasting such a journey would seem now. Not only were those vehicles slow, they were also large and heavy, particularly the truck in question. The result, of course, was that there was very little left of the pedestrian to scoop off the pavement, let alone to question about the purpose and origin of his trip. The only artifact discovered (other than the mess of flesh and bone that makes up the average human) was a small silver bracelet engraved with the initials CJL. More than anything, this drew Charlie’s attention to the story for his initials were also CJL. Almost. In reality, Charlie’s middle name was Lawrence, so his initials were actually CLL, but sometimes the imagination holds more sway with the brain than logic and the small matter of a different middle name meant little to Charlie. For a few days, Charlie even imagined that he was the man in the story. The fact that the man was dead was academic to him. It was the man’s journey - not its end - that mattered to Charlie.

For days, the dead man’s story took center stage in Charlie’s daydreams, but eventually logic once again intervened in his thoughts. The question that kept intruding on his thoughts was this: From where had the mysterious pedestrian come? People rarely materialize out of thin air and those who do tend to take care not to do so in the path of an oncoming truck. Finally, Charlie concluded, that the man arrived at his final destination by accident. Like Richard Duncan, the man must have forgotten to carry the one.

That realization led to another flash of insight for Charlie Lane. If the man had forgotten to carry the one, there must be some set of numbers that led him to that nearly deserted stretch of highway. A smart man could surely intuit those missing numbers, fix the dead man’s mistake and, thusly, correct his fatal error. And so began the turning of various combinations of numbers round and round in Charlie Lane’s head until his mother asked him to fix her dishwasher, which had stopped cleaning cups and plates and taken to destroying them instead. Because he was good with his hands as well as his mind, Charlie obliged and forgot about time travel for a while.

This brief interlude in Charlie’s mental aerobics allows you and I to take a brief time out as well. The funny thing about time is that it exists all around us and happens all at once. That is to say, what happened yesterday is in the past but is still happening. It’s just that instead of happening right now, it’s now happening yesterday. Confused? Don’t worry. I used to be confused about it, too, but then I became omniscient. Since I am and you are not, you’ll just have to take my word for it that that’s the way things are, have always been and still continue to be. Time happens. Always. And if you think about it too much, you’ll give yourself a terrific headache.

Let us return instead to 1986, when a mysterious man appeared in the middle of a highway only to make a high speed union with a half-ton pickup truck. Let’s not focus on the event itself because that would be too gruesome to revisit. Let us go, rather, to the day after the accident and a journey of a different kind that ended (though some might say, with a wink and a nod, it began) in exactly the same location.

Young boys always look for things in their environment to provide their minds with the most stimulation or, at least, to afford them with the most entertaining form of destruction they can find. In 1986, most young boys were limited to television or 24-bit graphic video games for such trivialities. Imagine if you will, the sort of excitement the possibility of actual carnage engendered in the minds of two twelve-year old boys named Johnny and C.R. (and by that, I mean one was named Johnny and the other was named C.R.).

Johnny lived only a few miles from the site of the accident and his father had been one of the witnesses interviewed by the police and the local newspaper. When the man arrived home that evening, he was also interviewed by his wife, which was how young Johnny came to know of the story. Early the next morning, not long after his father left for work, Johnny pulled his worn backpack onto his narrow shoulders and pedaled his pink Huffy (an embarrassing hand-me-down from his older sister) the three-quarters of a mile to C.R.’s house.

Instead of knocking on the front door and waiting impatiently for C.R.’s mother to fetch him, Johnny went directly to his friend’s bedroom window, opened it and climbed in. From the window, he fell directly on top of a sleeping C.R. After some commotion and a little explaining as to why he’d sneaked in through the window like a common burglar, Johnny told C.R. about the accident. No sooner had the details poured forth from Johnny’s mouth than the two of them devised a plan spend the day on an expedition to view the aftermath. In a mere thirty minutes, the two boys had packed lunches of peanut butter sandwiches and Country Time lemonade, packed them in their metal lunch boxes (Star Trek for Johnny, Star Wars for C.R.) and began pedaling their bikes down the long, dusty dirt road toward the main highway.

After biking for five miles, the boys stashed their bikes in the underbrush beside the road and climbed through the barbed wire fence around Mr. McIntyre’s pasture. Then they sprinted the quarter mile across the meadow to avoid the deranged Shetland pony that lived there. On the other side of the meadow, they climbed quickly and breathlessly through another barbed wire fence and ended up standing in the deep drainage ditch that ran alongside the main highway. A short walk later, they stood on the shoulder next to the scene of the accident.

Johnny emerged from the ditch first. He knelt in the tall, thin weeds as they swayed gently in the summer breeze and gazed at the scene. Johnny felt the heat rising from the dark asphalt and screwed up his face in disgust for the shimmering warmth brought the smell of death to his nostrils. The country clean-up crew had done their best to remove the victim’s remains from the roadway, but the porous asphalt still held enough residue in its crooks and crannies to rot and stink under the blazing sun. The worn and faded highway still wore a long, pink streak that stretched some twenty-five feet along its length and ran parallel to the dull, tired center stripe.

As Johnny let his eyes run the length of the stain, he imagined the impact. Steel slammed against flesh and bones, where the latter knew no chance of survival. He wondered what that poor man had thought in his final moments. Had he known the totality of his life has come to this? Had he thought of his friends and family in his final seconds? How much pain did he feel? Did he think anything at all or was it no more than a quick flash of pain followed by nothingness? He wondered what the man’s life had been like and, if he’d had any final thoughts, the man felt he’d affected the world in some way. He wondered if he’d left his mark on the universe. Or if his life had been reduced to the same level as his death: Nothing more than a brief, faded streak on the black asphalt of time.

Johnny was a bright lad, but he was still a child and such thoughts were foreign to him. Even under the blistering midday sun, they chilled him.

C.R. appeared next to him in the grass and surveyed what remained of the carnage. His eyes grew wide and his jaw fell open. Then he uttered a single word:

“Cool.”

That solitary syllable broke the spell and the pair of boys bounded out of the weeds. They examined the asphalt in excruciating detail (at least as excruciating as two twelve-year-old boys can muster) and when they grew bored with that, retired to the shade of a large oak tree that grew alongside the road. As they burrowed into their homemade lunches, a flash of light in the distance caught C.R.’s eye.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the bottom of the deep ditch.

Their food forgotten, the boys ran to investigate the light. When they reached its source, they were both excited to discover it had been caused by the reflection of sunlight off of the glass face of a wristwatch. As Johnny picked it up to examine it, he noticed an ominous brown stain on the leather strap. He shivered again as he realized it must have belonged to the dead man. He couldn’t help but feel a little relieved when C.R. snatched it from his hands.

“It don’t look like no watch I ever saw,” said C.R. as he turned it over in his hands. “There aren’t any hands on it, but it’s not digital, either. It looks like it’s a counter of some kind. Look. I can turn the dial all the way to zero.”

Johnny leaned over his friend’s shoulder and watched him tinker with the “watch.” C.R. set the counter to zero and then pushed a large button on the side. Then they waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

“It’s probably broken,” Johnny sniffed with disdain. “Let’s take it home and smash it with a hammer.”

Off the two boys went, racing back across the pasture and pedaling back to their homes, out of our narrative forever. They went on to lead modest lives with modest spouses and modest children. If only they’d known what had really happened that day in the ditch. If only they’d known what they’d done, for indeed it was not nothing that happened when C.R. pushed the button on the watch. In fact, it was just the opposite.

What the boys had found was not a watch but a rudimentary time machine. I won’t bore you with the technical specifics, so let’s simply suffice it to say that the machine was capable of focusing a great deal of energy on a specific point. Think of the way a flashlight beam works, only in reverse. At the point of the device, energy is dispersed normally in widely scattered pattern. But, on the other end, the beam grows narrower, more focused, more powerful. At that point, it opens a hole in the fabric of time. All the wearer had to do was step through it and Bam! they’d be hit by a large truck in the middle of a highway. At least, that’s what happened to its original owner.

In the case of Johnny and C.R., however, the beam went much further than just a few centuries or even a few millennia. It went back all the way, all the way to zero. All the way back to the beginning, ending in a point of energy so intense and so powerful that it caused an infinitely small, infinitely dense pinpoint of matter to explode. If you were to witness such an event, you might describe it as a really big bang.

And here we are.

Funny how the universe works, isn’t it? Remember what I told you about doing too much thinking about the way time works. It just does. And, for Johnny and C.R., it just did.

I suppose you’re wondering about what happened to Charlie. You’ll be pleased to learn he achieved his goal. Charlie finally managed to travel backwards in time. Oh, yes, he did it. The unfortunate part of his success is that no one ever knew about it.

History is full of failure. As someone once pointed out, before you can succeed, you generally have to find lots of ways to fail. But, history is also full of success stories that will never be known because they culminated in such dramatic fashion. Dramatic, amazing and often fiery fashion. Such is the case with the first human to figure out how to travel into the past. His name was Charlie Lane.

Charlie put all the numbers together, turned them into silicon and circuits small enough to wear on his wrist and was ready to give his invention its first test. He would be the test pilot and launch his grand adventure from the basement of his mother’s house. Just as he readied himself to walk literally (figuratively, too) into history, he heard his mother knock softly on the basement door.

“You didn’t forget what day it was, did you, Charlie?” she asked when he let her into his quarters. “You did, didn’t you? You forgot your own birthday.”

Charlie admitted he had and accepted a kiss on the cheek and a gentle admonishment from his mother to stop working so hard. Then she presented him with his gift: a shining, silver bracelet, which she clasped around his wrist.

“I’ll need to take it back because the jeweler made a mistake on the engraving, but I wanted you to have it today,” she said. “It’s much better than that ugly wrist watch you’re wearing.”

Charlie didn’t want to hurt his mother’s feelings since he knew she was only trying to make him feel special, but he had other things to do and he wasn’t really listening to what she said as he hustled her out the door.

“Dinner will be ready in an hour,” she said as Charlie closed the basement door behind her. “I made something special for you, so don’t be late.”

“I won’t, Mom. I promise.” He meant it. Then he set the dial on his watch, took a deep breath and pushed the button.

And here we are.

Sean has poor reading skills at 6am

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:10:00 +0000

I've been burning my candle at both ends this week and not for any really good reason. Okay, maybe it is a good reason. My husband has been working long hours all week (leaving at 6:30am and not getting home until 9 or 10 at night) and if we want to talk to each other at all, we both have to stay up really late. Neither of us has had more than four or five hours of sleep per night all week. Normally, I can deal with sleep deprivation but, man, have I been dragging all week long. I've also had a terrible, pounding headache, too. I was beginning to think I might be coming down with something.

This morning, I staggered into the kitchen at a quarter of six to make coffee. I dumped the water in the coffee maker, put the coffee in the filter then just sort of stood there for a minute, staring at the bag of coffee I started using on Monday. It was then I noticed an unfamiliar word on the bag: D-E-C-A-F.

Sort of explains it all, doesn't it?

Trying. So hard. To. Stay awake.

'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Fly

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:50:00 +0000

It was August 28th, 1992. My first semester of college. I and some of my newly found best friends headed out from the dorms at Wichita State University for some college hijinks. There were six of us in the car (a 1978 Cadillac Deville), listening to the city’s classic rock station at an obscene volume and singing along at an equally obscene volume. The song “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band came on. We belted out the lyrics.

Then it happened.

We came to the line “Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.” I loudly sang what I thought was the line. Everyone stopped singing. The driver turned down the radio.

“What did you just say?”

I repeated the line. The car erupted in laughter. And that was the day I learned the song doesn’t go “Wrapped up like a douche, another roller in the fight.”

Go ahead. Laugh. It is kinda funny. I always wondered what they meant by that line anyway.

On a related note, I was once sitting in a radio station with another DJ. We’d been talking but lapsed into silence while the No Doubt song “Spiderwebs” was playing. At the end of the song is the line “Leave a message and I’ll call you back.” As soon as it played, the other DJ commented in an offhand manner “Why do you think she wants to leave a message for Carl Eubanks?”

Any embarrassingly misheard lyrics in your past?

Geology, Geograhy and Me

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:46:00 +0000

I have something embarrassing to admit. It requires a bit of background so bear with me.

I was 6 years old in 1980 when Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington (the state. This distinction will be important later). It was all over the news and I was way into because … I was 6 and volcanoes are waaay cool to six-year-olds. Especially when they live in the middle of the country, far, far, away from the eruption. For some reason still unclear to me, my great-aunt in Washington D.C. (yet another important distinction) sent my grandmother a bit of ash from the eruption. So, if you’ll follow my six-year-old logic. Mt. St. Helens + Washington + Aunt Gladys + Washington = Mount St. Helens is in Washington D.C.

See? That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college and my Geology 101 (aka Geology for Liberal Arts majors) class. My professor was talking about the eruption when, like a lightning bolt from the sky, it struck me: MOUNT ST. HELENS IS IN WASHINGTON STATE!!!

Truly, I felt as though I’d been living a lie. And I also felt like a complete dumbass because I’d never corrected my faulty, six-year-old reasoning. This was the most complete and absolute “blonde” moment of my life. And I made the mistake of telling my husband about it. Being an engineer, he NEVER lets me forget it.

The point of my story: We were watching a program about what would happen if the seething caldera that is Yellowstone National Park were to ever explode. My seven-year-old son asked where Mount St. Helens was located and my husband replied “Washington.” My son thought about that for a moment.

Then he asked: “Washington state or Washington D.C.?”

A Death in the Fictional Family

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:34:00 +0000

I was reading another writer's (who shall remain nameless) blog the other day in which this person was despondent over the death of a character. It made me curious as to how others handle eliminating characters. Sure, I've shed a few tears over the deaths of characters written by others, (I STILL bawl like a baby when the little girl dies in Bridge to Terabithia.) but never over my own characters. In fact, I take a fiendish pleasure in devising good ways to remove characters (I have a particularly good death ready for one of my Seals characters. Bwahahaha.). I was discussing this with my stepdaughter Shekey last night and she told me, "It's a good thing you aren't a criminal, because you'd probably be a serial killer." Shekey has a wry sense of humor.

Writers: How do you feel about killing off your characters?

Everyone: Any particular fictional death scenes that really make you turn on the waterworks?

Religion versus Belief

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 23:47:00 +0000

I was doing some demon research online today and I came across a message board about the new A&E show Paranormal State. It's a reality show that chronicles the adventures of a group of Penn State students who investigate the paranormal. On last week's episode, the team encountered what they believed to be a demonic entity and they made a big deal of not saying its name (though the show later revealed it).

The interesting thing I discovered when I browsed through the thread about this particular episode was this: People who watched the show and have what seems to be a belief in the existence of the paranormal were angry because the investigators turned to Christianity for the solution. There was an inexplicable amount of comments like "I can't believe people believe this bullsh!t (referring to religion)." Bear in mind this was from people WHO BELIEVE IN GHOSTS! Few people took issue with the question of whether or not the person might be demonically possessed. That seemed to be a given. What bothered them was that the Catholic Church might have the solution.

Yeah, I had a hard time understanding that myself.

Personally, I don't care about what others believe. I think faith is a personal journey and if you look for God, you'll find Him. That's up to you. I also tend to think that there's more than one way to find Him. This leads to the fine line that I walk when I write. If you've read the First Seal, then you know that. I'm not preachy about religion but I think it's important. I am a bit concerned though, because my current WIP features a lot of paranormal activity and I am trying to find the right balance of that and religion. I know that's vague but I don't want to give out any plot spoilers. (Subliminal advertising: BUY MY BOOK!). I'm looking for some sort of balance that won't raise the ire of my target market and also won't get me kicked out of The Christian Writers Guild (though I'm pretty sure they should never, ever read my work. I get the feeling they wouldn't like it.)

I've had discussions with friends of all religious stripes including atheists (and if you think I might be talking about you, then I probably am) regarding the basis of belief or the lack of it. I'm more interested in what people believe and why they believe it than I am in winning some sort of argument.

So, let's hear it. What are your thoughts?

The Moral of the Story is "Don't Give Up."

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:10:00 +0000

(I grabbed this from The World in Grey's blog. 'Tis the season for encouragement. Ho, ho, ho.)

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck was returned fourteen times, but it went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead was rejected twelve times.

Patrick Dennis said of his autobiographical novel Auntie Mame, "It circulated for five years through the halls of fifteen publishers and finally ended up with Vanguard Press, which, as you can see, is rather deep into the alphabet." This illustrates why using the alphabet may be a logical but ineffective way to find the best agent or editor.

Twenty publishers felt that Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull was for the birds.

The first title of Catch-22 was Catch-18, but Simon and Schuster planned to publish it during the same season that Doubleday was bringing out Mila 18 by Leon Uris. When Doubleday complained, Joseph Heller changed the title. Why 22? Because Simon and Schuster was the 22nd publisher to read it. Catch-22 has become part of the language and has sold more than 10 million copies.

Mary Higgins Clark was rejected forty times before selling her first story. One editor wrote: "Your story is light, slight, and trite." More than 30 million copies of her books are now in print.

Before he wrote Roots, Alex Haley had received 200 rejections.

Robert Persig's classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, couldn't get started at 121 houses.

John Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, was declined by fifteen publishers and some thirty agents. His novels have more than 60 million copies in print.

Thirty-three publishers couldn't digest Chicken Soup for the Soul, compiled by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, before it became a huge best-seller and spawned a series.

The Baltimore Sun hailed Naked in Deccan as "a classic" after it had been rejected over seven years by 375 publishers.

Dr. Seuss's first book was rejected twenty-four times. The sales of his children's books have soared to 100 million.

Louis L'Amour received 200 rejections before he sold his first novel. During the last forty years, Bantam has shipped nearly 200 million of his 112 books, making him their biggest selling author.

If you visit the House of Happy Walls, Jack London's beautiful estate in Sonoma County, north San Francisco, you will see some of the 600 rejection slips that London received before selling his first story.

British writer John Creasy received 774 rejections before selling his first story. He went on to write 564 books, using fourteen names.

Eight years after his novel Steps won the National Book Award, Jerzy Kosinski permitted a writer to change his name and the title and send a manuscript of the novel to thirteen agents and fourteen publishers to test the plight of new writers. They all rejected it, including Random House, which had published it.

Decisions, Decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:01:00 +0000

I have reluctantly taken a break from writing this week because I needed to finish up edits on The Second Seal. I've got a couple more things to fix and it will be finished. Finally.

There is one thing about it that I'm not sure how I want to fix it. That's where you, my audience of experts, come in. I want your opinion on it.

Here's the situation: I have a character that uses two names. One is his real name and the other is an alias. The protagonist learns his real name, but not his alias. On the first edit, I thought it might be a little confusing to keep referring to the one character by two different names, so after revealing his real name, I referred to him only by his alias. I did this even when writing from the protagonist's POV (though he never refers to him by name in dialogue).

On this edit, however, a trusted friend suggested that I change it back.

Which way should I go on this?

I can provide examples if asked.

Does reading matter?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:58:00 +0000

I'm in something of a thoughtful mood today and most of it is because of an op-ed I read to day in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Does Reading Matter?" For those of you not interested in investing that much time in reading a blog post, allow me to summarize:

The main gist of the piece concerns a new study from the National Endowment for the Arts which concludes that people are reading less and less. At the end of the piece the writer suggests that, in the future, those who do not read will find themselves at a noticeable disadvantage.

Around 1439, Johannes Gutenberg got tired of getting hand cramps from the all the writing he had to do and invented moveable type. It changed the world, not only because it made information more accessible but because moving from a culture that was either oral or written to one that was printed changed the way humans think. If you don't agree with me, go argue with Marshall McLuhan. Wait, he's dead. Never mind. However, McLuhan did say this: "Until more than two centuries after printing nobody discovered how to maintain and single tone or attitude throughout a prose composition." One of McLuhan's students Walter Ong, claimed television had a similar effect in that it was returning us to what he called a "secondary orality."

If you have kids, you've probably gotten the generalized lecture from some do0gooder about how you should limit the amount of time your kid spends watching TV, playing video games and surfing the web. This often makes me wonder why the schools beg for money to spend on technology and computers on the one hand and then trash them on the other. Several years ago one of my step-daughters breathlessly informed me that they got to use laptops in the computer lab at school. I asked where she sat to use the laptop. She replied, "Oh, in our same seats. We just pushed the keyboard out of the way and sat it in front of the monitor."

I mentioned this story to my brother, who is an elementary school teacher and also the unofficial media tech guru guy, he laughed. "Public schools know they need new technology," he told me, "but they aren't really sure why they need it or what they should use it for. That's why you sometimes end up with goofy stuff like that."

Because I like to play devil's advocate from time to time, I've often been curious about our love/hate relationship with technology. We don't want to ignore it, lest we turn into some technophobic hermit living in a shack in the backwoods of Montana, but we never fully embrace it either. If we did, we'd throw out all of books and revel in a 24 hour American Idol marathon. I think the reason we don't fling ourselves into the abyss is that we worry our mothers will turn out to be right. Television really will turn our brains to mush. By the time we've realized it's happened, it'll be too late to fix it and nobody would be smart enough to anyway.

Does reading matter? For most of us around here (who aspire to be on the other end of that relationship), it does. Books are still very important to many of us, even as technology does its best to render them obsolete. We cling to them almost as if they have a mystical quality about them. Perhaps they do. Perhaps , like technology, we know we need them if we aren't sure why. Too bad more people don't feel that way.

The Agony of Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:52:00 +0000

There are days when technology nearly kills me. Today was one of those days. I was up very late last night, slogging my through a most difficult chapter. I finally finished at around 2am, happy with the four thousand words I needed to get my characters where they were going. I got up to do some more work on it this morning.

And the file wouldn't open.

Word informed me in all its smug, Microsofty goodness, that the file was corrupt. I tried all the recommended recovery efforts and nothing worked. It appeared that my entire 20,000+ word work in progress was gone, just beyond my reach into the Land of Lost 0's and 1's.

I won't kid you. I sat down and cried.

I am not the most tech savvy person in the world. Keyboard, mouse and monitor are about the extent of my repertoire. Most anything beyond that I turn over to my hubby so he can put those two engineering degrees he has to work. But, I thought I had one more trick up my sleeve, so I thought I'd try it before I gave up completely.

It worked.

There was my entire document in all its beauty. Even the formatting was still intact. I was and still am so overjoyed I decided to blog about it.

And, now, I gonna go burn the damn thing to disc.

More Criticism of Criticism

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:49:00 +0000

My big time-waster today was heading over to Amazon where I got sucked into reading a thread in the Romance Forum. The thread was "What books have you hated but that everyone else adored?"

I was captivated by the title, so in I went.

My favorite thing about this thread was the way posters would say things like It's nice to see no one is being slammed for their opinions and them reel off a couple paragraphs about how much they hate Nora Roberts. I guess that's because it's easier (not to mention much more fun) to talk smack about something than to praise it.

I grew up in a town that is really in the middle of nowhere. There was one radio station you could pick up and they played atrocious music. I had a really cool teacher in Junior High who used to let us listen to the radio while we did math problems. We were doing this one day, when one of the other students piped up: "You know what the sad thing about this is? That someone worked really hard on this song. They put hours into it until it was just what they wanted. They were proud of it. And, after all that work, it sounds like this."

For this reason, I rarely put a book down without finishing it. I figure that the author put a lot of effort into writing it, I at least have the obligation to finish the story.

Now allow me to pile on.

In my life there have only been a couple of books I couldn't finish. The first was The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I got ¾ of the way through the second book and thought "This book is about walking." I made it just as far in the movies. The other book was Traveling with the Dead by Barbara Hambly. I love vampire novels which was why I picked this one up, but it put me to sleep. I just could not get into it.

For the record (and so I don't sound like a total hypocrite), I am currently waiting with baited breath for the next installments in series by Patricia Briggs and Karen Chance (because I loves me the werewolves and the vampires).

Your turn. Dog pile on the writers!

Bits and Pieces

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:28:00 +0000

I will be the first to admit that I have been a little remiss in the blogging department of late. However, I refuse to accept responsibility for my laziness. It's the Boy Scouts' fault. Really.

So allow me to just address some bits and pieces …

I am happy to say that I finally managed to get a bunch of books mailed out. So, if you won one last weekend, it's on the way.

I have been completely stressed out of late over The Second Seal. My plan was to have it ready for purchase by Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm even going to manage to get it out by Christmas. L I blame my husband and his lack of editing help for this (he NEVER reads my blog, so he'll never see this.). I am convinced that all of my goofing off during the month of June had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever. And I'm stickin' by that.

On a more positive note, I am quite pleased with my current WIP. I thought it was going to be a ghost story, but it has morphed into a supernatural detective story. I really like the main character and the story is evolving nicely. It may even turn into a series. We'll see …

Finally, I must sing the praises of one of my favorite new authors and mySpace friends, Justine Musk. I just finished her book Bloodangel and it's one of the best books I've read this year. Really, really good. If you enjoy supernatural apocalyptic stories, I'd say you oughta pick it up.

Horror Movies Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:16:00 +0000

Okay, time to get back to what I was working on when I got sidetracked by horror movies earlier this week. My husband recently brought home on DVD “The Devil’s Rejects,” Rob Zombie’s latest foray into cinematic horror. I watched his first movie with my hubby. It’s called “House of 1000 Corpses.” After that one, I decided I didn’t want to see any more Rob Zombie horror films.

No more for me, thanks!

I love horror movies, but I hated “House of 1000 Corpses.” Everyone dies in the end and the bad guys walk off into the sunset. It was as if mass murderers documented their crimes and cast themselves as the heroes. Totally unsatisfying as far as endings go since it puts the viewer in the very uncomfortable situation of having to identify with the killers. It simply did not follow my expectations of how a horror movie should end.

This raises the question, when you read (or watch movies, which ever you’d like to talk about), do you expect the story to end a certain way? Do you find it satisfying or not when it does? Ever read or watched something that ended in a completely different manner than you thought it would?

Horror Movies Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:50:00 +0000

Okay, I have been a little remiss in posting here, but I PROMISE to do better from now on. So, Let's get down to business, shall we?

It’s almost October and I can’t wait. It’s my favorite month. I love Halloween. I love things that are creepy and crawly. I love scary movies and you can’t swing a dead cat (figuratively, of course) without hitting a bunch of those in the month of October.

You know, I was going to blog about actual writing stuff tonight, but … screw it! Let’s talk about horror movies instead! I’ll save the writing stuff for a “Part Two” later this week.

Like I said, I love horror movies. I really love bad horror movies, so much that there are too many to name. So I will settle on a major release film that often gets overlooked: The Prince of Darkness. It’s a John Carpenter movie that stars Donald Pleasance and the blond guy from that TV show “Simon and Simon.” And his gigantic, porn-star mustache. Plus, there’s a cameo by Alice Cooper. And it’s about the Devil. If you haven’t seen this movie, put it on your To Watch list.

Your turn. What’s your favorite horror movie?

Editing Progress and Summertime Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 02:08:00 +0000

I am finally starting to see the end of the tunnel as far as the rewrite on the Second Seal goes. I am currently reworking the climax and when I am finished with that, it’s just editing. It’s a good feeling to finally, finally have this thing looking and reading like a real novel. Hopefully the end is near.

Summer is nearly over and my oldest son heads back to school on Monday. He’s ready. I’m ready. The baby will be despondent because he’ll lose his buddy. The dog may also be a little blue because she’ll lose her buddy, too.

The dog of which I speak (Rommy) is a half-husky, half-cocker goof ball that we rescued from the dog pound in Fairbanks. She weighed 17 pounds when we got her and has since ballooned to 40. We’ve had to start feeding her diet dog food and she has slimmed down a bit. Texas has been an interesting experience in adaptation for her because she is a dog that loves to run and romp at -20. She also, without a doubt, belongs to my oldest son. They have a love/hate relationship. When we lived in Alaska and the two of the m played outside in the snow, she would wait stealthily until he was paying her no mind. Then she would blindside him, knocking him face-first into the snow. As a final insult, she’d steal his hat. It was great fun to watch.

The boy was outside today, squeezing the last few precious drops of freedom from his summer vacation. It was not long before he came bouncing into the house with a great smile on his face.

“What have you been up to?” I asked.

“Oh, I was swinging,” he replied. “Then I stopped and Rommy came over and pushed me down.”

I pretended to be shocked. “Why did she do that? You didn’t pull her tail, did you?”

“No, I didn’t pull her tail,” he said, playing along.

“Did you tweak her nose?”

“No, I didn’t tweak her nose.”

“Did you tug on her ears?”

“No, I didn’t tug on her ears,” he laughs.

“Oh, honey,” I said, really hamming it up. “You didn’t tell her she was fat, did you?”

“No, I didn’t do any of those things! She just did it because she felt like it.”

Scamps. Both of ‘em.

Just another day amidst the chaos

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:57:00 +0000

Today:

The boys and I are stuck at home today because we are waiting on a very important delivery. Approximate delivery time: sometime between 8am and 5pm. We aren’t going anywhere. Nor can we play in the backyard because we would not be able to hear the doorbell. Plus, it’s really freaking hot. So we are resigned to being indoors.

It starts when the doorbell rings.

I answer it and find a salesperson. Not just any salesperson, either. It’s one of those people who is selling magazines supposedly to earn points to win some damn thing or another. The problem is, their patter is rapid-fire and non-stop, giving me no opportune moment to slam the door in their face.

As I stand waiting politely to turn them down, my oldest son comes running to the door.

“Mooooooooommmmmmm!!!!! The baby poured water all over your computer!!!!”

I tell the still-yakking salesperson to hang on an slam the door on them. On to my computer. The baby has, in fact, poured water all over it. I shake my finger at him and scold: “Bad, Baby! No!” His lower lip trembles. His brow furrows. Tears brew at the corners of his eyes and then …

“Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” He collapses on the floor in a heap.

My oldest son, who has keen powers of observation and a stunning grasp of the obvious, shouts at me: “Mom! The baby’s crying!”

“I can hear that!” I shout back. “Go get the paper towels! They’re on the counter!”

He darts off while I try to stop the flow of water that is running off the desk and onto the floor. He returns. No paper towels.

“I can’t find them!”

I head to the kitchen and grab the paper towels. They are sitting alone on the empty counter top. My son meets me in the halfway.

“Mooooooooommmmm!! The baby has gum!!!!”

I hand him the paper towels and tell him to get mopping. I chase the baby down the other hallway, into his room and corner him behind his dresser. Then I fish a wad of gum and paper (soaked in baby spit) out of his mouth. Once again, he collapses in a heap and wails. I leave him to his woe and go check on the progress of the clean-up. My oldest son in trying to mop up the water with half a paper towel and is really only succeeding in moving the water from the desk to the floor.

“Honey, you can use more than one,” I say and rip off a hunk of towels.

“Oh,” he says. Then he starts unrolling. The doorbell rings. I had forgotten about the salesperson.

Somehow, the dog has mysteriously entered the house from the backyard and charges for the front door, barking furiously. The doorbell is his invisible nemesis. The baby also hears the doorbell and (still crying) comes running as well. I open the door while trying to keep either of them from squirting past me and into the front yard. I slip out the front door, making sure I hang onto the handle. The baby (still crying) is pulling on it from the inside.

“Go ahead,” I tell the salesperson. He opens his mouth to begin his patter when I hear the telltale sound of the deadbolt. The baby has locked the door. Inside, I can hear the phone ringing. I ring the doorbell to get my oldest’s attention and the dog barks furiously. My oldest comes to the door, phone to his ear. He presses his face against the glass.

“Who is it?”

“You look busy,” says the salesperson, backing away from the house. “I’ll come back later.”

“You know who it is. Open the door. NOW!”

He lets me in just in time for me to see the baby, laughing and covered in flour, racing across the living room. As I turn to chase him, my son holds up the phone.

“It’s Dad,” he says. I take the phone.

“Hi, honey. How’s your day?”

A Little Teaser

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:09:00 +0000

Here is an excerpt from The Second Seal: Bernard's Prophecy (note the nifty new title)

As Marji lay in the ditch with a gun pressed against her head, she'd been certain she was going to die. Those had been the longest minutes of her life, just laying there helpless, in silence. He knelt beside her with one knee in the middle of her back and the barrel of his gun against her head. She tried to keep her face out of the slime in the ditch but figured since she was going to die, it didn't really matter. Her only thought was please, God, don't let me die like this. She was nearly hyperventilating but she didn't speak, didn't beg for her life. Marji feared that whatever it was that stayed his hand, that kept him frozen next to her with his gun against her head, wanted the silence. If she spoke, he would kill her. The seconds ticked by and she braced herself for the bullet. She hoped at the very least, it wouldn't hurt for long.

Then his cell phone rang. Marji twitched before she realized he hadn't shot her. It was just his phone.

Kane took several steps away from her. "Hello?"

Relief flooded through her. When he answered the phone he'd lowered his gun.

"Hello? Hello? Goddamn cheap phone," he muttered and jammed it back into his pocket. Then he gave Marji a cold, hard stare.

Run, she thought. Run, idiot.

She scrambled to her feet quickly but he was quicker. He tackled her at the knees, knocking her to the ground. Marji put her hand out to catch herself, but there was some sort of muck in the bottom of the ditch and she slipped. Face first, she fell into the muck with Kane on top of her. He wasn't a big guy but he was strong. Pinning her with his body, he hit her on the side of her head. The blow was hard enough to make her ear ring. Then he hit her again, And again. Then everything went black.

When she awoke, everything was still shrouded in darkness. Marji's throat burned and it hurt to breathe. Her head ached horribly and she was nauseous. But she was alive. From what little she could see and hear, she guessed she was in the trunk of Kane's car. Her hands and feet were bound and there was tape across her mouth. Unfortunately, the revolting taste of the ditch muck was still in her mouth. Marji felt her gorge rise but knew if she vomited with a gag over her mouth there'd no place for it to go except back the way it had come. She knew she didn't want to deal with that, so she took deep breaths and tried to mentally force her stomach to behave. Thankfully, it worked.

That wasn't the last of it, however. Most of her nausea was caused by the slight concussion she'd gotten when Kane knocked her out. It wasn't going away. The bad taste in her mouth wasn't going away, either. Then there was the whole experience of riding in a trunk. The exhaust fumes burned her throat , her eyes and her nose. It also didn't help the nausea. She could feel every bump in the road. Occasionally, they'd hit a big one and she'd bounce enough to hit the lid of the trunk. The lid didn't fit very tightly, either. It bounced and rattled with every bump and she was certain it would eventually pop open. Then she'd bounce out and hit the pavement at sixty miles per hour.

I'd rather have a bullet to the head than that, she thought. Then they hit another bump and her stomach lurched once more.

It seemed like an eternity, but finally, thankfully, the car slowed. Marji thought they might stop soon. She was wrong. The car moved more slowly, but it was stop-and-go. There were also turns. Marji wished miserably that they would stop or at least get back on the highway. Where the roads were straighter.

Finally, they stopped. Marji heard the engine die and breathed a sigh of relief. The sudden silence was deafening. Then the trunk opened and daylight flooded in. She squinted at Kane's silhouette. He said nothing as he reached in and cut her bindings.

He yanked the tape off her face. "Get out."

She sat up quickly and the nausea hit her once more. It was stronger this time and, before she knew it, she threw up. It went all over the trunk and all over her.

"Shit," Kane exclaimed. He jumped back and glared at her. "You're fucking lucky you didn't get any of that on me, bitch. Fuck. Come on. Get out before someone notices. People don't usually ride in trunks, you know."

She climbed out slowly. She was still woozy and clutched weakly at his arm for support. He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling and another wave of nausea washed over her.

"You gonna hurl again?" he asked. She nodded. He managed to jump away just before she did so. Marji stood bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to calm her stomach and trying not to fall over.

Kane grimaced. "Warn me if you're gonna do that again. Now, move."

You have to play this game with fear and arrogance.

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:08:00 +0000

That is perhaps my favorite line from what may well be my favorite movie, Bull Durham. When Kevin Costner said it in the movie, he was talking about baseball. I, however, have often found it applies equally well to other areas of my life.

For example, my first career choice: Radio. I can clearly remember the day I decided I wanted to try it. I was getting ready for school, listening to the local morning show and I thought, “Pfft! How hard can that be?” I started working at the local radio station when I was 16 and still in high school (We broadcast at a whopping 1500 watts on the FM side. Oh, and it was FM mono with this hellacious buzz caused by the fact that the owner piggybacked the FM signal off of the AM transmitter. We were a force to be reckoned with). I started off running Royals games on the weekend and moved to the afternoon music show for the kids, which I did during my senior year of high school. The funny thing about it was that the guy who owned and ran the station showed me how to run the sound board one afternoon, then said, “Play whatever you want. I’m going in the back to take a nap.”

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. So, I just sort of winged it. I took things I’d heard other DJs do, and did them in my own way (Little did I know that this is the age old way in which all radio people discover new bits and features for their shows. They steal them from jocks in other markets.)

I eventually moved on to a large market where I learned a lot of the mistakes I’d made in my first job. The hindsight was sort embarrassing and I guarantee that no tapes of my first radio job still exist (though I do have a few from when I was still just a pup). When I left my last radio job in Fairbanks, my Program Director told me: “I knew this was too good to be true. People with your talent and your experience don’t often end up in Fairbanks.” That was probably the nicest thing any of my many radio supervisors has ever said to me. But I won’t let it go to my head. Like many things in life, radio is a fickle mistress. Unless your name is Howard Stern or Ryan Seacrest, it doesn’t matter what you did yesterday. It’s what you do today that matters.

What I learned from all of that is that radio, like baseball, is a game of fear and arrogance. You live your life knowing that no one is better than you and that six months after you leave, no one will remember your name.

Though I’ve said this before in my life, I think I’ve finally left radio for good. Primarily because I have faith in myself and I think I can make this writing thing work. Yet as I embark on this, I feel once again like I am 16, sitting in a control room surrounded by equipment that I have just the vaguest idea how to use. But I have some ideas about what I wanted to do and a burning desire to do it. I still feel that I am feeling my way along in the darkness, knowing my goal is at the end. I know I’ve already made a few mistakes.

I recently read a piece in which another author was complaining about authors who … complain about other authors (no irony there) when they themselves have accomplished nothing. The author was very negative about those who did this, but I can understand the mindset. If you don’t think you work is worth being published then why should anyone else?

I think I can do this.

Fear and arrogance.

Things my mother taught me

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:33:00 +0000

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

My mom's biggest pet peeve -- when my brother and I wrestled on the couch.

2. My mother taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

Reminds me of the time I was messing with our satellite dish (one of the big ones) and knocked it off its stand. I did a lot of praying that day!

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

You could run from my mom because she wasn't fast. But she had great endurance!

4. My mother taught me LOGIC.
" Because I said so, that's why."

I'm convinced this is a parent's best friend. I knew I was an adult the day this phrase came out of my mouth.

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

I never broke a bone as a child. It was probably so I would always be able to go to the store.

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

This particular pearl of wisdom comes not from my mother but from my friend's mom. It is something we should all live by: "Always drive the speed limit because you never know when someone will throw a bag of nails out the window."

That woman was a genius! Funny thing was that it worked on my friend!

7. My mother taught me IRONY
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

What does this even mean?

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

I remember reading Little Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder) as a kid and coming across the scene where Almanzo gets in trouble for talking at the table. I always thought that rule alone would have doomed me as a pioneer child. I could never keep my mouth shut.

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

I don't know about this, but I am certain my mom had eyes on the back of her head and spies all over town!

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA.
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

I still hate spinach.

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER.
"This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

And still kind of a slob.

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

Seriuosly. A million times. She counted.

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

I always liked the Bill Cosby addendum to this: "And I can make another that looks just like you."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"

In my case, the bad example was my grandmother. It worked, though.

15. My mother taught me about ENVY.
"There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

The older I get, the more I discover that this one is actually true!

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
"Just wait until we get home."

And I would hit the ground running. See 3 for the result.

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING.
"You are going to get it when you get home!"

I refer you to the above.

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way."

I think the very act of having a kid embues one with some sort of medical knowledge. Mom kisses always make boo-boos better.

19. My mother taught me ESP.
"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

I am convinced my mom either had ESP or a vast intelligence network. MY husband once interviewed for a job and discovered his interviewer was from my hometown. Turns out he was the older brother of one of my brother's friends. I never even knew the guy had a brother. The next time I talked to my mom, I mentioned this to her. She said, "Oh, right. How is Jeff?" How the hell did she know that?

20. My mother taught me HUMOR.
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

I have often thought my brother and I got some of my parents' best personality traits. My mom has absolutely no sense of humor, but loves to read fiction and loves sci-fi. My dad is very funny, reads only non-fiction but hates sci-fi. We kids have all those things (except the hate for sci-fi).

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

My mom turned me from a picky eater into the exact opposite. I am very easy to split a pizza with.

22. My mother taught me GENETICS.
"You're just like your father."

Again, it was Granny. My grandfather's pet name for her? Toad. I kid you not.

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

My most common retort to this: "Weren't you there?" Again, my mom has NO sense of humor.

24. My mother taught me WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

The price of wisdom is old age. And $1.67 . Exact change only.

25. And my favorite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!"

I'd be good with that. :-)

This is news, but is it good or bad?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 03:37:00 +0000

I got this message from a friend:

I don't know if you have a Hastings Book store there but ours here buy books back, and guess what I saw on the shelf.. yep you guessed it YOUR BOOK. That means someone bought it and then resold it to Hastings but still your book is in a major store.. I thought it was good news.

This just goes to prove that I will go to ANY lengths to get my book in a major chain!

Wanna go to Vegas and get married? 'Kay, sure.

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 21:32:00 +0000

August 3, 1997 -- A historic day in the annals of Western Civilization. It was the day that the Hubby and I, after dating for only five months and being engaged for two, threw caution to the wind, flew to Las Vegas and began our lifelong committment to sitting on the couch and getting fat together.

Break out the booze! We've made a decade! Free elephant rides and pantyhose for everyone! Huzzah!

New York, New York -- We stayed next door at the MGM Grand and got married someplace in between. Despite my intense fear of heights, I actually rode that damn rollercoaster because I promised my husband I would. I hyperventilated and cried the entire ride. When it was over, I flung myself on the 100 degree sidewalk and hugged the ground. That sooooo sucked. But the rest of it has been pretty good.

I Hate Dieting. And Editing. Passionately.

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:51:00 +0000

I may be the slowest editor on the planet. I am STILL working on the first edit of the Second Seal. I started this epic journey in February. It is almost August. I just keep digging myself in deeper. Things are progressing slowly because I am not only adding new stuff, I keep needing to rewrite the old stuff. Okay. I promise not to whine about that anymore (in this post, anyway). I am now less than 100 pages from the end. I did ten today and, if I can keep up that pace, I’ll be done soon. Then I can start again. :-/

This weekend, I started dieting once again. All was going well until I was thwarted by my husband. He brought home a bottle of wine. We all know it’s not a good idea to drink on an empty stomach. That can only lead to dancing in you underwear on the kitchen table, sending drunken emails to your entire address book, and buying Captain Kirk’s chair off of e-Bay.

This isn’t the first time he’s thwarted my efforts. The following is a true story:

My husband and I were at the grocery store one evening and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy toward him.
“I have a confession to make,” I said.
“What?”
“Whenever you diet, I sabotage you so that you will remain unattractive to other women and I won’t have to worry about competition.”
He laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“I do the same thing to you.”

So I probably should have expected it.

Now, back to work.

More Summertime Blahs

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:58:00 +0000

My summertime blahs may have disappeared but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m being productive. I’m trying, but it’s just not happening. I am currently working on a little short story about time travel. Sci-fi isn’t usually my thing, but this one was my hubby’s idea. It was a story idea he came up with years ago, but every time he tried to write it, it came out “sounding like it had been written by an engineer.” His words, not mine. I think that means it was as about as riveting as a computer manual. So, he asked me to give it a go and I told him I would.

It goes but not all that well.

The first problem I have with this story is sitting behind me right now. Directly behind me. In fact it is sitting on my back, playing with my hair as I type. It’s my oldest son. Summer is almost over and he is bored. Now the baby is playing with my mouse and deleting part of this post. I just keep telling myself that distractions make me stronger.

The second problem is my computer. It is currently nothing more than a large paper weight. Some time in the past few months, a nasty little Trojan sneaked past my firewall and made itself at home. I have switched to our other computer, but I don’t like the keyboard and my files are still on the paper weight. Fortunately, I backup my writing constantly and had a good version of everything saved. But, my music is all gone. All my Tori Amos (sob!) is gone.

Sad panda. :(