Imaginary Friends

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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