Writing the Vida Loca -- Truth and Fantasy

All right, I said I would do it, so I am. A man of my word, here is the truth about the writing life. If I told you it was no life at all, I would be lying, but not by much.

In my younger days I was enamored of being the man of letters. I imagined a life of high adventure and interpersonal relationships marked by camaraderie and a code of honor shaped by bullfighting and deep sea fishing. You know what I'm talking about, that 1950s cultural icon that somehow survived into the seventies despite taking a beating at the hands of folk music and drugs and the sneaking suspicion that people cared more about the Mary Tyler Moore show than the latest tome from Norman Mailer. When it became apparent that the writer had been relegated by the culture to a sideshow, a carnival attraction, then for me writing became an underground war of attrition, a personal quest that kept me sane by clinging to a juvenile obsession that had not only marked me for life, but determined all the major choices I ever made: college, career, life partner,  etc. It was kind of like being a secret monk, scribbling away nights, typing up drafts of novels and stories from varied locales that all had in common a resolute distance from the centers of literary opinion.

And then last year came the breakthrough i'd been waiting for. A publisher willing to take a chance, put my name on their brand and launch me out into the world of legitimate writerhood, (authorship?). Despite the slap in the face of a contract that specified marketing and publicity would be up to me, I told myself that was just the state of play in the "industry" and I went all in, applying the marketing lessons gained from self-publishing previous titles, and when SAVIOR came out as a Kindle Ebook in April, I was like a proud parent, beaming with the new presence in the world of my book. The reviews were good, some were excellent, and sales have been solid, if not spectacular to date.

So how has my life changed and what have been the benefits and drawbacks of the experience? These are legitimate concerns and despite the fact that i know nobody cares, I'm going to try to spell it out anyway.

In most visible ways, nothing has changed. My kids still think I'm a doofus and remind me of it. My wife would rather I not spend as much time as I do on extraneous Twitter like marketing activity which she does not understand and does not want to understand. A couple of my Spanish students have asked me about my book and how it's doing and one even got excited when I told him it would be on sale in a couple of weeks. So I am that high school teacher guy with the mildly interesting hobby/sideline. (I remember my algebra teacher in 9th grade, Mr. Mucarzel, and his leather handbags.)

One of my neighbors won a free copy of SAVIOR in exchange for helping out with crowd funding, and another neighbor asked me at my daughter's soccer game how the book was doing.

My mother refuses to talk about my writing and changed the subject on Mother's Day when I brought it up in desperation. My father, who actually went out and bought a Kindle so he could buy a copy of SAVIOR, said I was improving but said he's not into dystopian fiction.

So that's it as far as the people around me and the impact the book has had.

Next week: Social media - Benefits vs. Pitfalls

SAVIOR is available as an Amazon Kindle Ebook.

A to Z: Z for Zeta

This is the end, my only friend, the end.
Of our elaborate plans the end, of everything that stands, the end.
Jim Morrison

Zeta is actually the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. If this were a Greek blog we would be doing Omega, which stands for the end of all things -- being the last letter of that more classic and hence weightier alphabet. Zeta is actually a sort of frilly letter which reminds me of a fraternity house on a treelined college campus oddly quiet after the keg party the night before, the party to end all parties, the beer blast, raided by the campus police, you now only dimly remember although your pounding head is proof of living large for the moment, a moment now gone.

Speaking of living large for the moment, you can now pick up a free copy of my book, an appropriate end to the A to Z Challenge Book Launch Series for the publication of the new dystopian thriller about the end of the world, SAVIOR.

Yes. It is being offered free today through Sunday on Amazon Kindle as a promotional feature by Harvard Square Editions, the publisher, who hopes, as I do, that in this way you will spread the word and perhaps even be compelled to offer your feedback and insightful and praising comments on the Amazon page for SAVIOR.

So this is really not the end. It is just a beginning, possibly, as you pick up your free copy and begin a new adventure. I will quote now from a reviewer, who said of SAVIOR:

"Savior is a quest, a story of survival, a thrill ride, an exploration of youth finding the kind of truths parents dread … the kind that transform boy to man when the template exists outside the realm of normal and everyday." Diane Nelson, Beach Bound Books

And a heads up is in order here also. There will be a sequel. I'm working on it now. So do something good for yourself, pick up a free Kindle of SAVIOR and prepare to be amazed as you share a father's  and son's journey to the end of time and back again.

A to Z: V for Voice

Voice is the quality in writing that lends authenticity to the experience of reading and compels a reader to trust that what he is doing is worthwhile. Like singers, a writer's voice gets stronger with training. Almost all writers have a sense of what their voice is; it's that combination of story setting and characterization that fits the author's range of authority, knowledge and expertise. Although voice can be confused with character, because usually an author speaks through his characters, either through dialogue or interior monologue, voice is more than just finding the intonation, accent and authentic mood to fit a specific character. It is about having the competency to range above and beyond the character's diction and mental frame of reference. After all, an author is the creator of a world, and that world has to be seamless and apparently boundless in all directions in the reader's imagination. The trick is a type of illusion, a leading of the reader's attention with smoke and mirrors elsewhere while the stage is being set.

As citizens of a liberal culture in which we are urged towards self-actualization, we are all supposed to find our true voice in our actual lives. What does that really mean, when someone is said to have found his or her voice? It is a proxy for achieving a place in the world. Most adults need to feel useful and accomplished. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, acceptance and recognition come just below the apex of moral development. Acceptance and recognition from peers is usually reserved for people who have a voice, a say in what is being done and how it is being done. But as many people strive to have their voices heard, sometimes a cacophony results that leads nowhere. Look at Cliven Bundy in the news today as representative of a faction in adult America today that have lost their voice and never will find it again, seemingly.
In SAVIOR, I worked hard to get the voices of the characters right. I had the most fun with the villain, Samael Chagnon, whose voice is strong and compelling, and frightening in its lucidity. Al's voice is calm and sure and honest and therefore sometimes despairing. Ricky, Al's teenage boy, is hopeful, sometimes angry. For me, the greatest compliment so far in the reviews for Savior has come from a reviewer who had some difficulty with the book, but loved all the characters, even the minor ones, because they seemed alive and true. As a writer, that tells me I am on the right track.

SAVIOR is available as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and additional publication month details.

(Photo by Melissa Rose)

A to Z: Underground

Underground is the region below the Earth's surface. It is dark and therefore considered lifeless, although in truth the soil teems with microbes and insects, a community of living organisms with as many as 170,000 species. But generally underground is represented as the land of the dead, where human souls were once thought to reside and where the damned must spend their eternity. Not many people work underground, but miners still do, spending their days in cramped tunnels, and subway workers maintaining the underground transportation  system in cities such as New York must sometimes descend deep into the Earth to carry out their jobs. Sometimes they are attacked by rats in the subway tunnels. Other hazards of being underground include getting lost in caves, which sometimes happens to spelunkers exploring labyrinths deep underground.

It's one of my recurring fears, getting trapped underground, cut off from all possibility of rescue, and so when I wrote SAVIOR, it was the worst fate i could imagine in which to place my character, Al Lyons -- in a prison complex deep below the Canadian oil tar sands, where he could die and never be found. The pressure cooker of isolation is one of the worst feelings we know. People are social creatures by instinct, although sometimes we wall ourselves off intentionally or unintentionally from others out of our very anxiety to escape the ultimate fate and evil of death. We sometimes hope that some unknown power or destiny will ride in to our rescue, but in the end, most of the time we have to save ourselves by tunneling until we see the light of day. How do we keep going? Where do we find inspiration? That is a question I think I am always trying to answer.

SAVIOR is available as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and additional publication month details.

A to Z: S for Savior

(Abrahams Opfer, The Sacrifice of Isaac)

Savior is the book I just published. It took me a year or so to write, and it's been getting some good reviews in its first couple of days out.  One of the early reviewers, well not really a reviewer, a reader on a website called Library Thing, didn't get why it was called Savior. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain here and defend the book against what are some early misconceptions that I think are a sign of lazy reading. First of all let me say this is not a Christian book. What I mean by a Christian book is an act of apologetica for the Christian religion, a defense of the institutional structure of the faith. I am a practicing Catholic, and today being Easter I am happy with the coincidence that this gives me to defend my work. Because, despite not being an overt and formal exposition of Christian beliefs in a story setting, there are Christian elements that are an important part of the story. Except they are not obvious, which to me is one of the hallmarks of true religion, to fight against the obvious, tired, trite ideas that become a prison for the soul instead of a liberation. Jesus fought against the stereotypes of his day, that the faithful could not work to heal on the Sabbath, that the son of Man could in no way consort with the lowly and the rejects of society, that worldly success meant to be blessed by God. The new ideas he brought forth were hard to understand, and some of them have never been accepted. The idea of non-violence, for instance, continues to be a struggle for Christians as we speak.
In my book Savior, Ricky takes on a mission, to find his father who has been kidnapped by Los Santos Muertos, a criminal cult that wishes to replace Western civilization with the practices and devotion to a death goddess called Mixtecacihuatl. All right, so there is a Christian idea, a defense of life against the death wish and evil in the world, which by the way does exist. Also, Ricky's mission is a difficult one, and it does not come easily. He is waylaid by the world and its temptations on his journey, and some reviewers have complained that the plot loses steam when we see through Ricky's eyes.  For me this is a defense of truth and the main point of storytelling against the stereotypes and conventions which dictate that the eye can never be taken off the ball of the main plot, good guys vs. bad guys. But what about the internal struggle that goes on in the soul of a fifteen year old boy. Doesn't that make the story more interesting? Apparently not for everybody. But again, these are the lazy readers, in my opinion, who want their reading to push the buttons that always get pushed. A book doesn't have to be for everyone, and Savior is no exception. Ricky is a hero, but he is a human, a boy with flaws and doubts, like all of us. He is not your typical hunk of a guy who conquers through brute force and comes through in the end unscathed. And if you like your reading like that, to be brought through to the end through the brute force of conventions and stereotypes, so you end up unscathed, then Savior is probably not for you. If on the other hand you like to challenge yourself to a rare pleasure, a book that crosses genres and defies convention for the sake of a truer sort of story, then you might want to check Savior out.

SAVIOR is available as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and additional publication month details.

A to Z: R for Rejoice

Rejoice, for the day of deliverance has arrived. SAVIOR is here at last. Get on your Kindles, folks, and go get yourselves a copy. In honor of the day, I am releasing a video trailer as promised and here it is:

Say no more. R for rejoice, rejoice. we have no choice but to carry on.

SAVIOR is published Friday April 18th as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and additional publication month details.

A to Z: Q for Quest

Quest comes from question. Is there a question you need answered? All of us share the basic questions that are answered in the course of our lives. What kind of person are we? Is there a purpose to our lives? Who do we love? What's the point? Everybody has a story because every life is a quest. It's the most basic of human experiences and if you don't have a quest, you probably don't have a pulse.
Heroes always have a quest, a journey they must accomplish, an object such as Lancelot's Holy Grail in the Arthurian tale that he/she must find in order to fulfill the mission. But even anti-heroes have quests; for example Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye could be seen to be questing for a purpose in his life. A quest without danger, or obstacles, is a meaningless exercise since it is always the lessons learned along the way that prove the most valuable, not the object or mission that seems to be driving us.

In Savior, Ricky's quest is to find his father, but in the process he is attempting to heal himself and his father from the wound represented by the death of Mary, mother and wife. And then there's the fate of world civilization hanging in the balance. Is this trite? I don't think so. We are all interconnected, and every individual's quest, every choice we make on the journey, decides the fate of the Universe.

(The Knight at the Crossroads by Viktor Vasnetsov)

SAVIOR is published Friday April 18th as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: P for Power

Power has two basic dimensions among humans, physical power and social power. Physical power is measured as the ability to do work and feeds off energy. Energy to me is the key to both dimensions of power. Socially powerful people influence people and control behavior through their energy, either implicit or explicit. Explicit energy is exerted physically or coercively -- think of a police force or military might under the rule of a dictator as one extreme form of explicit energy yielding power, while implicit energy runs the gamut from the ability to hand out material rewards in a parent or a boss to the spiritual energy or ideas of a guru or historical religious figure.
I'm interested in weighing the various forms of energy involved in power to see which is stronger. My  hunch is that implicit energy is stronger than explicit energy. The story of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11/2001 is a good example to illustrate the greater power of implicit energy. The knife-wielding Al-Qaeda terrorists were literally overpowered once the passengers, learning of the other hijacked planes that morning in cell phone conversations with loved ones, united and overcame their fear and rushed the cockpit. Overcoming a fear of death is a motif in many stories about power and perhaps is the key underlying theme in the Passion of Christ which Christians celebrate this week. Death of course wields the ultimate explicit expression of energy, which is to master all matter through entropy.

1. (Photo by Stefan Krause)

In Savior, the leader of the Santos Muertos, Samael Chagnon, seeks power over men by both means, implicit and explicit energy. He's trying to build the Resonator, which will terrorize world leaders into capitulation, and he leads his own followers, the members of the LSM, through the cultish devotion to Lady Death, the Santa Muerte, (see my third post in the A to Z series - C for Cult). He's holding Al Lyons as a prisoner against his will in his facility beneath the Canadian oil tar sand belt in northern Alberta, while Al tries to resist defeat and death using the power of his memories of his family and faith in God.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: N for North

North, true north, is the direction of dreams. The land of the midnight sun is the land of the subconscious from which flow the primal images of the Jungian icons. The celestial night sky rotates around the star sign of the Ursa Major, which gave North its status as the prime direction around which all maps of the ancient world were oriented, at least in Western tradition. Still today, convention dictates that North is up on maps. The idea of North as the cardinal orientation for migratory man is as old as mankind itself.

Ricky's journey in SAVIOR winds northward towards Canada once he learns from the American military where his father is being held. It is a journey also towards self-knowledge and independence. Meanwhile, Al, in solitary confinement and sensorily deprived in the blackness of his underground cell, intuits somehow in which direction lies north. It is a comfort to him to be able to orient himself in space as he paces back and forth and tries to figure out where he is in between sessions with Samael Chagnon, leader of Los Santos Muertos, LSM, the former drug cartel that has morphed into an insurgent force bent on toppling Western civilization and establishing the theocracy that is the cult of Santa Muerte. North and south, life and death - the LSM is all about turning the world on its head.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: M is for Maya

Mayan rulers built pyramids and large urban centers in the Central American jungle, discovered astronomical and mathematical truths that would elude Europeans for several centuries, and enjoyed a flourishing society topped by royal kings and queens until they mysteriously disappeared. The Mayan people still are a force to be reckoned with in Guatemala and southern Mexico, however, and were only finally subdued by the Spanish in their strongholds in about 1690, more than 150 years after the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Nobody knows why the Mayan kings who built the world class cities at Copan and Chichen Itza disappeared, and it is only in the last ten or twenty years that archaeologists have finally unlocked the secrets of Mayan hieroglyphs that tell the story of their history and religious views. Misunderstandings about Mayan astronomy led to fears about the prophecy of the end of time in 2012, but there is still much to learn about their culture.

In Savior, Ricky comes across a Mayan tablet hidden in a back room of a Guatemalan surf shop in the town of Monterico. His father Al thinks it's a forgery but it turns out to be the Chocomal, a legendary artifact that contains a code that many believe holds the key to the creation of matter at the beginning of the Universe. Ricky wants to keep the Chocomal despite Al's misgivings, because it reminds him of his deceased mother, who loved all things having to do with Mayan culture. In fact, he thinks he hears her voice at times when he holds the tablet up close. Oddly, Al too has feelings of his former wife's presence when the tablet is near him. Until he is kidnapped by Los Santos Muertos, the LSM,  and taken off to their underground laboratory and tortured for the secrets of the tablet still in Ricky's possession.

Will Ricky find him and rescue him? It's his only hope besides death to escape the clutches of the LSM.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

Photo by Chixoy - Mensaje Poptí en defensa de la cultura maya del maíz en Victoria 20 de Enero, Ixcán, Guatemala ("Florezca la palabra de los hombres y mujeres de maiz" - Let the words of the men and women of maize flourish) Que asi sea.

A to Z: L is for Light

Lux et veritas. The association between light and truth is an old one. In the Judeo Christian tradition, God creates light and therefore brings truth and guidance to his people. Jesus says he is the "light of the world" that will heal old sins and triumph over death itself. In the Zoroastrian tradition, the struggle between good and evil is also a struggle between the forces of light against the forces of darkness. In biology, the light of the sun is the source of plant energy through photosynthesis that is the foundation of the food chain and of all life. To me, there seems to be a dance between light and dark that implies a mutual dependence. But we definitely seem biased towards the light. Just think of the joy of seeing a sunrise. And the stars and moon at night that provide solace and direction.

In SAVIOR, Al is trapped in an underground prison where there is no light. He can only feel the walls that form his cell and intuit in which direction is north. The sensory deprivation that comes with  not being able to see and orient himself in space forces him inwards. It also unbalances him to the point where he is in danger of losing his mind. The forces of darkness that are the LSM also rely on water torture to extract the secrets of Mayan mathematics they believe Al has learned from the Chocomal. (See my previous posts and also watch for M is for Maya). This struggle of Al's between life and death, light and darkness, is literally a struggle for the future of mankind.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: K for Knowledge

Knowledge is power. We live in the information age where even our personal information is valuable. Governments scoop up this knowledge about our private lives off the Internet like gigantic vacuum cleaners, sweeping it into computers. The computers churn out patterns, connections made in the oceans of information. By deciphering these patterns, our governments gain knowledge that provides vast power and an access to the lives of individuals undreamed of in past ages. The gain in security may pale in comparison to the corrupting influence of such absolute knowledge and power.

(Photo Courtesy of Walters Art Museum)

Megalomaniacs like Samael Chagnon, the leader of Los Santos Muertos, or LSM, in my book SAVIOR, know that the path to power runs through the world of knowledge, in this case, ancient knowledge that has lied buried in secret for millennia -- the hard won mathematical knowledge of the Mayan empire that carries the code of creation. With it, Chagnon will build a doomsday machine and  render world governments helpless before him. He believes Ricky's father knows the code, and tortures him to get him to reveal it. Al doesn't know the code. The only knowledge that matters to him now is information about his son, but as a prisoner of the LSM in an underground facility beneath the Alberta oil tar sands, that knowledge is inaccessible to him. Ironically, in the absence of such information, and using only his memories, senses and intuitions, Al gains knowledge and power that helps him survive until the final confrontation with evil itself.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: I for Indigenous

Indigenous refers to any thing or person native to a place. In the popular imagination, it can also mean authentic, a thing or person untainted or uncorrupted by external influences. In SAVIOR, Al seeks out answers not only to his personal or family issues, but answers as to what is happening in the larger world that he sees falling into violence and chaos. His search leads him to an old man of the mountains, Evelio, a native of the Guatemalan highlands, or descendant of the ancient Mayan people.

Evelio has answers, but before Al can learn more, the LSM, Los Santos Muertos, stage an ambush with some of their advanced aerial weaponry. It is up to Al's son Ricky to find Al and rescue him from the LSM. In the end, Ricky also gets help from his friends in Canada, some of them Native Americans. I like the idea that ancient wisdom can trump evil armed with advanced technological wizardry. It is an old idea in our popular imagination, and I hope that I have infused it not abused it with this new story.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: H is for Home

Home where my thought's escaping. Where my love lies waiting silently for me. These are the emotional longings that sustain Al Lyons, the main character of SAVIOR, as he lies underground in the secret prison of the Santos Muertos, not knowing where he is, whether he'll ever see daylight or his son or his home in Plymouth Beach, Florida again. He hallucinates apocalyptic visions and contemplates the release of breathing in the water while being water-boarded, but memories of home, and his son Ricky keep him from taking the easy route. Not that home is ever wholly there to get back to. His wife Mary is dead, and Ricky is on the verge of adulthood, ready to move on to the next phase of his life, finding a home, a place for himself.

(photo by Russell Lee)

The idea of home sustains us in the worst of times, but also every day. Getting home from work for me in the evenings is like shedding the false consciousness of the workplace and becoming again the person I can choose to be. It must be that way for most people, although there are the lucky few for whom the work world is a release into the desired persona. For me, getting home is that desired release. So to write about a man who longs to escape the torture chamber and get home again is a natural thought process to conceive of. Don't get me wrong, I do love my job, and appreciate the ability to get up every day and do it again, but home, that's where my thought's are escaping and my love lies waiting. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not in my book.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.