Posts

Showing posts from 2011

Late at Night

It's ten thirty, and I'm still awake. Time was I could stay up past midnight, and often did. I used to work swing shift, for cryin' out loud. Worked until midnight, then came home and talked with my wife until two or three in the morning. That was before our first baby came along. I got used to writing in the early morning. I'd get up at five and write until seven or a little after. Made me late for work a few times when I got on a roll. But as the days gave way to long winter darkness, it wasn't working for me anymore. So I switched to nights this week. So far, it's working pretty well. Besides, my narrator is writing his letters late at night. This gets me in the same frame of mind. Everything feels different at night. Bleak and impatient. Sunsets always look different than sunrises, even though they're both the same basic phenomenon. Last time I tried writing at night, it didn't last long. We'll see if I can convert back into a night per

I'm Still Here, or An Update on The Freezer

I think I've got things figured out, again. Writing has gotten easier. Life is still busy. I don't have much else to say. I just thought I'd post something here to let my loyal fans know what I'm up to. Twenty-eight thousand words. That's what I'm up to on The Freezer . Some of them are really good. Most of them make sense. If you were to ask me what this story is about, I'd ask how many words you want the answer in. One word: Hope One sentence: It's about a father and daughter facing the end of the world by building a spaceship out of a freezer. More: It's the story of a man torn between his wife, who's on her way to another planet, and his six-year-old daughter, who wasn't allowed to make the trip. It's about parenting, futility, and the collapse of society. It's about religion, hypocrisy, and whether lying to your child is really ever a good thing. It's about hope in a hopeless situation and what it really takes to turn

Lamentations

What is it about this freezer story that makes it so hard to write? SOMEBODY TELL ME! Is it because I'm trying too hard? (That's what Ammii just suggested.) Is it because I don't know the characters well enough? Is it because there's not a lot of action? Is it the format, writing the whole thing in the form of letters? Is it paranoia? Do I just suck? Is it because I didn't spend enough time outlining? Is it because trying to do nanowrimo psyched me out? Is it because I took a wrong turn somewhere? WHAT'S GOING ON? Maybe I'm just spoiled after having such an easy time on the last book. Or maybe I remember it wrong, and it wasn't that easy. Gah. Any other ideas? Aliens stole my brain?

I Have No Idea

No idea what to write a blog post about. So I'll just share a bit of my current project, which is taking way too long and may be the hardest thing I've ever written. The hardest to get right, I mean. Oh, it's a glorious, wonderful story in my mind. On paper, so far, it's dark and hopeless and introspective. Getting it where I want it to end will be an adventure. Sometimes I wonder if it's possible. Passages like the one below are what give me hope. (But it's completely out of context, so if it doesn't sound as good to you as it does to me, that's no surprise.) “I know there’s little time left,” Will said, the quality of his voice melting my retort. “There will come a moment when she needs you more than air, when the world is falling apart around her. She’ll need to be able to look into your eyes, hear you say everything will be alright, and have absolute trust that it will be.” The first syllable of a laugh escaped my lungs. “But you just said

How I Invented Spam

Way back at the end of the last millenium, round about the time I was in middle school, my parents had a subscription to America Online. The company is called just AOL now, but back then they were the largest of two or maybe three major online services. (Bonus points if you can name the other two.) At first, they didn't even offer access through their service to the newborn world wide web. They had a self-contained ecosystem with different areas depending on what you wanted. And AOL had chat rooms. Lots of 'em, organized by the topics that were supposed to be discussed there. A room was just a whole bunch of people all talking at once, and got real confusing sometimes. And people said whatever the heck they wanted. Some of them tried to be annoying on purpose. Especially the spammers. Now this is where my story gets a little vague, because I frankly don't remember how we got started spamming. By "we" I mean my older sisters and myself. If you look up the ori

What Are We Really?

So, Krista sent a draft of a blog post to me and Amy because she talks about us in it. That was nice. Thoughtful. Maybe I'll return the favor. See, I couldn't help but notice that Krista hardly mentioned herself. The post is about writing what you are, and she used me and Amy because we've written books that only we could have written. I mean, I wrote a book combining suicide with unmanned vehicles and photography. In a lot of ways, it was the book I've always wanted to write. When it finally fell together and I came up with a plot, it was exciting. Writing was fun—if also depressing because of the subject matter and my own past. But Krista's right. It's definitely a book that only I could have written. Here's the thing: Krista's novel (nicknamed Steve) is just as unique and personal. It's Frankenstein meets To Kill a Mockingbird and quietly powerful. The voice is wonderful and likable. It's a book that only Krista could write. But...w

Pure Genius

I got the word today, of all days, on Mandy’s birthday. It sucked the air right out of my lungs and clamped my brain in a spinning vise right before the party started. Daniel called. “The Esperanza’s gone silent,” was all he said. That's it. The opening lines of The Freezer . I'm eager to write this one. Starting tomorrow. In other news, my kids are up way past their bedtime and one of them is bawling because she can't find her panda. Happy Halloween!

What I'm Up To

So, work. I spent two years on reduced hours with barely enough work to do. I took over the jobs of three other people who were laid off, and still had barely enough to do. Well, now we've got as much work as the company has ever had AND I'M STILL SUPPOSED TO DO FOUR JOBS! AAAAAA! (Those jobs, in case you're curious, are Technical Writer (my real job), graphic designer, and two quality assurance jobs.) Aside from that, I've suddenly got tons of scouting- and church-related meetings. The upshot of all this is that I sent out eight queries about Drivers more than three weeks ago and haven't gotten around to sending out any more. At all. (Because it takes me half an hour to send out a query, and who has time for that? I have to check and double-check each agent's email address. Visit their website and double-check submission guidelines. Read their bios, search Google for interviews, see if they're on twitter, write a personalized message, rewrite if five

A Blog Post

We've been together for ten years. And we have a lot of fun, but that's not what's important. Fun is so ephemeral and easily spoiled. Joy is what she brings me and what I strive to give her. I don't know what it's like for other couples, as I've never really been in another couple. They look happy enough. As happy as we are. We don't understand some of the things they do, particularly anything that takes them away from each other when they don't need to be. The way we see it, nine hours a day five days a week is too long to be apart. Why would I want to go hunting? Why would she want to go shopping? I spent a week at Scout camp this summer. That was the longest we've ever been apart. I missed her. I called every night. I climbed a ridge every night to get cell reception because I missed her. This wasn't supposed to be about me, but somehow it always is. I guess it's either that or I start bragging about how amazing she is. I've done

Ben & Ammii: The Rematch

Image
So, that last review ended up sounding a lot like "Ben is a crybaby," so I thought we'd review something completely different this time. Something manly. Something tough. Something that has never made me cry: Power tools. Once again, I have my lovely and talented wife Ann Marie (aka Ammii) here with me. Let's start off with my personal favorite power tool, (that I own, because it would be silly to review tools I have no experience with,) the Dremel. Ammii: *ahem* That's mine. Ben: No it's not. I got it for--was it my birthday? Ammii:  Oh yeah. 'Kay it's yours. Ben: The thing I like best about the Dremel is you can use it for almost anything. Ammii: As long as I'm not using it. Ben: *ahem* As long as what you want to do involves cutting things that aren't too big. I once used it to cut the big chainring off a cottered crankset. I've also used it to remove the rust from a bicycle frame. Ammii: That Dremel tool really is mine

Unconventional

I wrote Drivers  in present tense. That's not as unconventional as it used to be, and it was also in first-person. (Present tense third person still sounds really weird to me. First person feels as natural as thinking.) The Freezer  is going to be past tense, first person. But I'm doing something else unconventional. Yeah, it's generally not such a good idea to be different when you're still trying to find an agent, much less get published. (Or it is a good idea, depending.) What can I say? I follow my heart. Meet Thane Ryder. His wife Dawn left for outer space as the pilot of an interstellar ship carrying infrastructure for a new colony on an Earth-like world. She did it to get Thane and their daughter Amanda seats on a ship that will follow. Meanwhile, Thane is raising Amanda in a dying society on a doomed world. Then Thane finds out Dawn's ship has disappeared. No one knows what happened. Maybe its out there, maybe not. Then he finds out that if he leav

The Next Door Boys

Image
Today, I am doing a book review of a real book. This is a first for me. Sort of. AND my lovely wife Ann Marie (Ammii for fun) will also be doing the review. First, the book is The Next Door Boys , by Jolene Perry . It's an LDS romancy sort of book about a college girl. Why am I reviewing it? Because I wanted to finally read one of Jolene's books, and...well, you'll see. Ammii and I had a conversation about this review the other day. It went something like this: Ben:  Would you like to do the review on video? Ammii:  Why? Ben:  It would be funny. You could make fun of me. Ammii:  Like "Ben likes chick books and romance?" Ben:  Or when I admit that it made me cry. Ammii:   *looks at Ben like he's crazy* It made you cry? *laughs* Ben:  See? Now I've wasted that reaction. It would have been hilarious on video. Ammii:  Oh, I could do it again. It really made you cry? Ben:   *talking with his hands, as usual* Not really cry. Just, you kno

Raindrops on Roses

I could have titled this post "My Favorite Posts," but that wouldn't have been nearly obscure enough. This is a flashback episode. You know how some TV shows have episodes where the main character is hooked up to a neural-whatever or stuck in a coma and forced to relive ten-second snippets of past episodes? That's what I'm doing here. Except I'm not going to quote old blog posts, I'm simply going to link to them. That way, you can avoid the pain of rereading stuff you've already read. Ready set read. (Read is a weird word.) My favorite things I've written on this here blog in no particular order: The Hunger Games and King David :  What do those have to do with each other? Thou art the audience. Why I will never see the movie. Author Interview: Myself : In which I interview myself. Funny, if I do say so myself. The Old Gray Goose :  The sad story of our widowed goose. Writing it made me cry. The LDS Writer Blogfest: The Atonement Covers Al

The Freezer

Yes, I've been missing for a week. Or more? But I have something good to share today. It's a new story idea. Except that it's not new. I first started developing it several years ago with the intention of writing and filming a little movie. We were going to use our house and grounds as the set, so the setting of this book will always look exactly like my house in my mind. A little weird, but it makes description easier. I might have to relocate it closer to a city, though. Man, I love writing. The world is about to die a violent death at the hands of a rogue planet. The last escape ships have gone, leaving billions of people knowing the exact date and time of their demise. Society is coming apart at the seams. Violence is spreading; food is disappearing. There's one month left. One father turned down a seat on a spaceship to stay with his five-year-old girl, and he intends to make her final days happy. He'll stay in his home and refuse protection. He'll fe

Lookin' Out My Backdoor

Image
(Doo doo doo. Anyone else hearing CCR?) I love the sky. Whenever you step outside, it's half the world, and it's never the same from one day to the next, one hour to the next. And when it is, everyone gets depressed because it's usually due to fog, smog, or living someplace where it's constantly overcast. Why would anyone do that? Here in beautiful Cache Valley, if you don't like the sky, wait five minutes. (Okay, that's what they say about weather. It's sort of a joke. It's actually true about the sky.) Even on days when there's not a cloud in sight, you still get to watch night descending like a curtain in the west or rising in the east. I didn't notice this until I was in Australia and away from my mountains. The flat land and clear air made it easy to see the shadow of the horizon on the sky, but it happens here as well. The sky is a canvas on which God paints an ever-changing mural to reach through our eyes and into our hearts. Do you

Almost There

Image
I printed out a copy of my manuscript and marked it up while reading it aloud. This morning I moved most of those changes to the computer. I'll finish up tonight or tomorrow, and then there's another change I'm thinking about making. And then I'll be done. And then I start looking for someone who can sell it to a publisher for me. I am both eager and reluctant to begin this process. Someone should invent a machine for it. Writers could slide their pretty manuscripts into a slot, and in three seconds the machine would spit it back out along with a slip of paper like an ATM receipt. It would have the name of the very best agent for you or it would say, "Sorry, please try again." No waiting. No wondering. No shadowy doubts lurking backstage. But that's impossible, soforgetIevenmentionedit. I love waiting! It's the wondering I don't like.

Torn Sky

Image
Today, I give you another photograph! Hooray! This particular photo, you may notice, is the background of this very blog! Why? Because it reminds me of DRIVERS. It looks like the sky was torn wide open and is bleeding. There's a distant clear like freedom, but you don't know if the clouds are withdrawing or moving in. There's darkness everywhere but that narrow strip, and that's where you want to be. (And the mountains nicely complement the clouds.) I shot this one from my back porch with a 5 megapixel Nikon Coolpix. That camera's really showing its age, but has always taken good photos. My wife has grabbed lots of amazing pictures of the kids with it even though the shutter lag is terrible. For awhile, I had a logo that I threw together in Illustrator on top of it. Anyone remember this? I wanted it to look like flames, kind of. And the font is meant to look like old machine-readable type, appropriate for a book with robots in it. And the crosshairs,

Interview: Jolene Perry

Image
Occasionally, we here at the Imaginary Friends blog get the chance to interview an author. Some of you may remember the previous interviews. Both of them. If so, please be assured that this interview is NOTHING LIKE the previous interviews. Okay, so it's actually pretty similar, but there's one big difference:  This time, we have a REAL AUTHOR! Jolene's Book Jolene B. Perry is the author of uncounted millions of books, one of which will be available in PRINT on October 8th. It's called The Next Door Boys .  Jolene also has a fabulous blog . (But don't go there yet! You might not come back!) She lives in Wasilla, ALASKA, which pretty much proves that she's crazy. And if that's not proof enough, on to the interview! First, Jolene, what would you like me to call you in the interview to mark where your answers start? I could use your initials, JP or JBP; your name, Jolene or Jo or even Joe, just to confuse people; or something completely arbitra

An Unusual Weekend

I had an unusual weekend. Heck, it wasn't just unusual, it was unique. Completely. Ohhhh, and it would take too long to tell about it and I'm not sure I should, so I won't. Okay, so I will. Sort of. Skipping the details. I helped take the Boy Scouts on a fifty mile bike ride. (They made it, which is really impressive for twelve and thirteen-year-olds on mountain bikes.) Along the way, we were asked to help in the search for a missing person. And then we found her. Cool, eh? Yeah, I left out most of the story. I'm responsible, at least partly, for the spiritual education of those boys. Two weeks ago, I taught them a lesson in church about showing respect for women and girls. I didn't mince words. I told them the girls they knew at school were more likely than them to deal with eating disorders and depression and that they could have a huge impact for positive or negative on those girls. I even told them girls were more likely to attempt suicide. That wasn&#

Toto Deserved It

Image
I had a life-changing realization early this morning. The exact moment of my paradigm shift is hard to pin down exactly. It gradually came to light as I drifted from sleep into consciousness, and the more alert I became, the more urgent and important this thought seemed to me. You know how in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz , Elmira Gulch comes to Dorothy's house to collect Toto and take him away to be put down. And Dorothy's all freaking out and everyone's mad at Ms. Gulch. A Victim of Animal Cruelty Well, the dumb mutt deserved it for biting a cyclist! That's my life-changing realization, and I'm going to make it my mission to vindicate Elmira Gulch. All these years, we've all been on Dorothy and Toto's side. In reality, Ms. Gulch was the good guy. She was the victim, standing up for her right to live in safety, and we've vilified her for it! Put Toto down! That's what I say. Of course, by the time I got in the shower it did

More Photos

Image
This is supposed to be a writing blog, so why am I posting photos? Because sometimes they just fit with what I'm writing. My novel In Memory has an ensemble cast of characters. (Its reincarnation will split them up into smaller groups, giving each their own entire novel, but that's another story. Pun intended.) Awhile ago, I got an urge to give my blog an In Memory- themed background and pasted silhouettes representing each character onto a photo I had. (Some of you will remember that background.)  Here's the original photo, which I took from the roof of the Doncaster Shopping Centre in suburban Melbourne, Australia in late 2000. It was shot on 35mm film, 200 or 400 ISO. The camera was a compact Pentax with auto focus and exposure. The scan was made from the negative. It's a pretty typical Australian sunset. And here's the wallpapered version made with stock-photo silhouettes: The feel of the sunset was exactly right for the book. The suburb

My Readers are in Boxes

Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, normal people get locked in a box called depression. The reasons vary. Maybe it's a negative pattern of thinking, stumbled onto or learned from someone else. Unrealistic expectations is a common one. There are physiological reasons, too. Illness. Grief. Things that should go away but don't. Frequently, there doesn't appear to be any reason at all, even to the person in the box. All they know is that they're in their own private hell and there's no way out. Some other people get mugged and stuffed into the box. Once inside, they can easily forget how they got there. They frequently blame themselves, even when it's obvious to everyone on the outside that it was the muggers' fault. It's a personal hell decorated with memories. The boxes are about the same for both groups. Once a person has spent enough time isolated in the dark box, their eyes adjust. Not completely, just enough to read the sign over the most visi

The Worth of a Word

Image
I'm a writer. My medium is words. But I've had other artistic interests, namely photography. To excel at either takes so much practice I had to pick one, and writing won. But in this, my hundredth blog post, I'm going back to photography. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? I now give you a three thousand word story about myself: Get it? Probably not. Don't even try. Because when it really comes down to it, there's a reason books are full of words. Words can convey more information, emotion, sensation, and meaning simultaneously than any other single medium. A picture might be worth a thousand words of visual description, but it has no other senses. Looking at those photos, you might feel the breeze at your back on a mountain top, but will you hear the eagles just out of the frame? You won't smell the liquid pouring from the bottle and know what it is. You won't feel what I felt or have any idea what would make an environmentally-

Ten Years

Sunday marked our tenth wedding anniversary. What can I say about that? My siblings and their spouses were all impressed that we'd been married for so long. Only my oldest sister has been married longer. (I'm the third of seven children.) My younger brother got married earlier in the year. He and his wife are about ten years younger than us. They're so young. What does that make me? Wise, I'm sure. It's funny, but Ammii and I went to the same high school and never met. I was a senior when she was a sophomore. I was in band, and spent a lot of time hanging around the band room. She was in orchestra and spent a lot of time right next door in the orchestra room. I think I remember seeing her in the halls or at her locker, but I never knew her name, never said a word that I recall. For her part, Ammii remembers being annoyed by a group of saxophonists practicing Sabre Dance in the hall before school. Like we thought we were so cool. I was part of that group. Sh

I call it "The Unlimiter"

I'm still alive and have returned from an epic two-week road trip with my family. I have also replaced the starter in my other car, but I only mention that because I'm so proud I actually did it. So, I'm starting work on a new novel. Except that it's not really new. I've gone back to the original concept for my second novel (called at various times Charism , The Qualia of Magic , The Sense , and In Memory ) and am working on constructing a new story around the same characters and premise. This stirs up a lot of mixed feelings for me. Mostly, what makes me think I can pull something better from my original idea? I know what to ask. I know whose story it is. I got the other story I wanted to tell out of my system in a different novel, Drivers . And now everyone has clear and compelling motivations. Let's see if I can sum them up: Brian makes superheroes. Occasionally a supervillain. He removes the natural limits from the talents that people already have.

Community of Writers

Hey, y'all. I'm glad I found you. See, for the longest time, I wrote all on my own. Yeah, I had a couple of college classes on creative writing. They were okay, but that was a long time ago and no one was really writing novels. Only short stories. And that's what they taught us about, as if short stories are the first step along the road to novels, which is debatable. And yeah, there's a local writing group. They meet every other week to read and critique, and that's really good because there are vastly different people. Some write stories, some poetry, many are working on a novel or two. That group helped immensely. But the meetings were long, and at one chapter every two weeks, it's not a great way to get a novel reviewed. They helped me clean up my writing, mostly, as there were a few, ah, fearless critics in the group. And then I started blogging. And it's fun. I enjoy it. I don't blog on a schedule, just whenever I feel like it and about whateve

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Up is down, black is white, and short is long. Stole that from Weird Al. That's my song of the day. Why? Because it's probably true. About me, I mean. Not you. Necessarily.  It turns out that it was true last week, before I realized the following things: No, I can't please everyone.  I shouldn't even try. I mean, we've all heard that. But good writing is good writing, isn't it? (Of course this is about writing. Do I blog about anything else?) Part of me still holds to that notion, that nagging feeling that the first sentence of this paragraph is just something that crappy writers tell themselves when people don't like their books. Just look at Harry Potter! Everyone loves Harry Potter. But more and more, it's sinking in that no matter how well I write, how amazing a story teller I am, some characters and stories won't get along with some readers. Some characters and stories won't get along with most readers. Because... Voice really is imp

It's All There

In Drivers , said drivers are recruited via the internet. I didn't go into specifics, and I didn't ever do the "research" to find out exactly how this could be done—until this morning. A few people wanted to know more about how the company found suicidal people. I didn't think it was important, and frankly, I was a little uncomfortable with searching for actual people. As it turns out, it's easier than I thought. A Google search, a result on the first page, and there they are. Some of them  want  to be contacted, and for various reasons—advice of both kinds, help of both kinds. I added a few sentences to my book to clarify this, and that's enough. Rest assured that whatever you're looking for online, it's there.

What's Going On

There are now five people who've read Drivers —besides me. I've gotten some good feedback, and version 3 is coming along well, I think. Sometimes it's hard to implement a suggestion, like adding emotional impact to the beginning of a scene. No ideas yet. If none come, I'll just leave it. With this manuscript, I'm much more wary about making major changes. Everything seems to be working so well in a broad sense. Drivers is dark. When people started telling me this it kind of took me by surprise. It's dark? It's sad? It's really depressing? And I smile, because that's what I was going for. It doesn't seem that dark to me, though. Maybe because my eyes have adjusted to the dim light after five months. But it ends well. I love it, anyway, and no one's complained yet—except about what does or doesn't happen to the bad guy. To be honest, I'm leaving him available for a sequel. Drivers stands alone, but it doesn't have to. There are

Time Travel or I Can't Believe I Did That

Have you ever wondered why time is so one-way and restrictive? Like, why am I here right now instead of yesterday before that big mistake I made or tomorrow after that horrible thing I dread? A Brief Story: When I was but a lad—and also a Mormon missionary—I once borrowed a television from the local church meetinghouse. Some other missionaries were coming to visit for the night, and one of them wanted to show us some videos he'd shot. As I lifted it out of the car, the cord fell down far enough to drag on the ground. "I should pick that up so I don't trip on it," I thought. Then I thought, "Nyah, I'll just be careful." I would have had to set the TV down, and it was an old boxy one, partly made of wood, and quite heavy. You can see what's coming can't you? I carried the TV with the screen against my chest and my arms around the sides far enough to grab the bottom. It was pretty well balanced. When I stepped on the cord—like you knew I w

Homeless

Okay, this a huge freaking deal to me, and my biggest complaint about the publishing industry:  They split my favorite kind of books between the young adult and adult sections of bookstores, and it makes them rather hard to find. Of course, the real reason it bothers me is that I write books like the ones I love—and I have no idea where to categorize them! You know what I wish? That there was no Young Adult section of bookstores. They should just lump them all together from Junie B. Jones through Tolstoy and let us pick the ones we like from actual genres:  science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror, pointless, etc. Or, if they really feel like there needs to be an arbitrary division, they should group them by length:  short, medium, long, extra long, extra extra long, and Robert Jordan. Oh, I know there are plenty of books that fit squarely into teenager land. They're not usually my favorites. There are some books that are sold as YA that I really, really love! And some book

Nothing.

Just nothing. That's what I've had to say on my blog this week. I tried to write a post about metaphors, similes, analogies, symbolism, and other similar things. But finding the right analogy is like. . .it's like. . .uh. . . On the bright side, I do know what to write in my book. That's what's important, isn't it? I spend all day writing things that I have to write. I just can't make myself do it in my free time. So I write what I want  to write. And that's all I want to write. How do people blog on a schedule? p.s. You can tell when I'm not actively working on a draft because I blog more frequently.

Lovin' the Language

I'm not here right now, but I've prepared this lovely post for your enjoyment. It's part of the Lovin' the Language Blogfest instigated by Jolene Perry . Go here to get links to the others. And what is it? I've picked five lines (passages, actually) from my work-in-progress, Drivers . (It's about a suicide-mission driver who falls in love and changes his mind about dying.) They make me laugh, smile, or cry each time I read them. (I hope they don't make y'all cry.) So, uh, here they are, out of context and without any introduction: ONE “Ash.” Zephyr’s breath touches my chin, she’s that close. “Thanks for saving my life today.”  “Do you mean that?”  “I—” Her voice chokes off. Her head doesn’t move, but I feel it pulling, straining against a spider-silk strand of something between us, so fragile. Don’t break it, Zephyr.  “I mean it.” TWO Time stops in the middle of a heartbeat. In the air between Zephyr’s hands and my feet, a perfect universe has

Note to Self: Relax

What makes me do what I do and think what I think and feel what I feel? Every time I try to figure one of those things out, it spins up a lovely frustration in my mind. Does anyone really know? Early Monday morning, I'll be leaving for a Boy Scout camp. Twelve and thirteen year old boys are deceptively simple. A primary motivation for them is impressing each other, usually by making the others laugh, frequently at their leaders' expense. It's a simple motivation. The deceptive part is that there are so many other things going on in their heads that I'll never know or understand. So how do you deal with kids like that? I'll let you know when I figure it out. I guess what I'm thinking is that if I don't even know what makes me tick, I've no hope of deciphering the early adolescent mind. Especially since each one is unique. There are no formulas and no hard rules. You've just got to take things as they come, correct yourself when you're wrong,

(screams) READ ME!

Ash is a suicide bomber. Not the kind you think. He drives an expendable armed robotic vehicle—from the inside. No one even knows he’s there. But it’s an important job and it pays well. Sure, it’s literally a dead end job, but that’s what he wanted when he took it.  Ash turns out to be better at staying alive than anyone expected. And since meeting Zephyr—since falling in love with her—he has a lot more to lose. They don’t want to die, anymore.  The problem now is the unwritten fine print of their employee agreement. They can’t quit. They know too much. A corporate security team, two armies, and their own inner demons will try to stop them.  What do they have? Zephyr’s brains, Ash’s photography skills, and a couple of armed vehicles everyone thinks are unmanned and will be told are out of control. DRIVERS is a psychological thriller for young adults, 77,000 words after the second draft.  I told Ammii this morning that it needs to make you want to read more. Also, it needs to answer mor

Psyched out

You know what's hard to write about? Death. I can't write convincingly without first finding a connection from my own life. Meaning, I have to literally feel what I'm writing. I don't know, maybe this is a crippling limitation. But it's my art, right? I've gotta find what works for me, and the climax I've written doesn't yet. The thing is, I've never lost anyone that close to me. I'm grateful for that. I don't want to. But I still have to find some way to feel like I have, some time in my life where maybe I thought I had, and then let my imagination take it from there. One of those times was recently, when my youngest daughter kept vomiting for no apparent reason. The doctor ordered a CT scan of her brain—just in case. Wait a minute. Just in case what? She has a tumor that's increasing her intracranial pressure? Faced with that possibility, it was easy to imagine how it would feel to lose her. I was in tears just rolling through pos

Random Sunday Thoughts

Look at that picture of me. Over there. I really do sit like that, with one hand against my chin, jaw or some other part of my head. Frequently it's just a couple fingers. Sometimes I cover my mouth. But I do it all the time. Weird. Yet another reason I don't like to watch video of myself. Everyone talks about how getting critiques back from people is scary. Or any sort of feedback about their writing. Personally, it's doing the critiquing that terrifies me. I mean, I've got this precious thing, someone's baby, in my arms. I'm supposed to look it over quick, sometimes one piece at a time, and tell them how to raise it. Like, what if I give bad advice and the thing dies an untimely death? Even if it's good advice, is it really my place to contribute? I try really hard not to make stuff up just for the sake of saying something. If there's nothing wrong with it, there's nothing wrong with it. At the same time, if I don't see anything wrong with it

Shameful Books part II

Many moons ago I wrote that I couldn't think of a single book I'm ashamed to love. Allow me to quote myself: The reason is simple, I think:  if I love it, I really think it's good and am therefore not ashamed to love it. It doesn't matter who it was written for, written by, or how it was written. If I like it, it's good. You see that? Doesn't matter who wrote it. If I love it, I love it. End of story. EXCEPT, my list of favorite books now includes one that I'd be ashamed to say "Oh, I LOVE this novel. It's compelling, exciting, emotional, and the writing is fantastic!" What's different about this book? I wrote it. I've been trying to edit my own novel. I say "trying" because I think I'm missing a lot. Oh sure, some scenes I change quite a lot. And I did a bit of patching up while I was writing. But I find myself getting so engrossed that I can pore through scene after scene without changing anything but punctuation

The Unlimiter

I woke up with this crazy desire to go back to the manuscript I put down four months ago. I thought about it all day, piecing it together like a puzzle, and I think I've settled on something good. The thing is, it's completely different. Well, not completely, but enough that I don't know if I'll be able to reuse a single chapter. I have the characters and the setting, though. I know them. I won't need to go through that process again. Most importantly, I'm excited about it again. And I know it takes me about three months to turn out a decent rough draft from this point. I've developed a habit of writing queryesque blurbs about books before  starting on them. (Just to make sure I have an actual plot.) It's kind of fun. So, here's Brian explaining his problem. If you want to see how it looked before, click the In Memory  tab near the top of the page, just under the blog title. I’m not particularly talented. I do well in school, make friends e

The Best Bookends in the World

Image
I'm not exaggerating. Ever since we moved into our house five years ago, I've needed a set of bookends for my dresser. That's where I keep a bunch of books that I'm reading, intend to read, or think I should read. I've been getting by with one plain metal bookend and a picture-frame/old-trophy combination that sometimes lets the whole line fall over. My wife, who is not only beautiful but also unbelievably multitalented and infinitely creative, (it's okay for you to feel a little jealous—of either of us,) asked what I wanted for my birthday. This was, like, six months ago because she also plans waaay ahead. One of the things I mentioned was a set of bookends. A couple weeks before my birthday, she asked what I like. Not the same question, you'll notice. I really had to think about that, and she had to ask follow up questions to get the answer she wanted. But I settled on three things:  books, stars, and bikes. Forgive me some bragging, but my wife has