Photos & Ponderings

Eeew

2011-09-19T14:30:00.001-04:00

I really, really don't like spiders.

I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of them, but I will admit to being a little creeped out by the bigger ones. The little ones don't bother me that much. They scamper away quickly when they see me coming for them. Except for Black Widows, which we have always had up here in abundance. They seem to know their little hourglass covered ass is badder than the rest of the little ones, so they'd don't run. They do, however, get smashed a little quicker for it.

No, the ones that get me are the bigger ones. You know what I'm talking about. The Brown Recluses and the Wolf Spiders. These are the eight-legged little monsters that grow up to be a spider of intimidating proportions. I bet J.R.R. Tolkien saw one of these and found his inspiration for Shelob. They're just nasty.

I think I prefer the quick movements of the smaller ones. Whenever I see one of those big spiders creeping oh-so-slowly along my baseboard or down a tree, I can tell the thing is figuring out how it's going to eat me. Oh it's already decided it's going to have me for dinner. I can see it in that slow stalking creep in my direction. The spider would be moving faster if only it had figured out how it was going to jump on me and eat me. Depending on the size of the monster, I either kill the thing before or figures it out or move out of attack range pretty quickly.

The one I smashed this morning was on the upper edge of the killing range. A few more inches and I would've put the house up for sale.

I really, really don't like spiders.

A Little Something

2011-09-15T23:17:00.002-04:00

So here's a little something from my jaunt up Roaring Run Monday morning. You might not be able to tell it from this post, but this is actually a composite of three images that are combined and meant to be a panorama. I've recently hit on the idea of producing panoramas, mostly just to see if I could do it, and I've ordered the Falling Springs Falls photo you see at the bottom of the blog for a test run. Truthfully, this is mostly a combination of frustrated boredom coupled with a desire to get out of the house and the happiness of finding my favorite lens again.

I seem to have hit a pretty solid wall that's turned into a bad case of writer's block. The key, as Tony has reminded me in the past, is to just put one word in front of the other. I have. I've even come up with some pretty good passages, but right now they're all disjointed and I don't know how they fit together. Heck, some of them aren't even in the same story.

And that is the crux of the problem, I believe. I haven't found my next story. I will, I'm sure of it. These things come with time. Patience is a virtue.

I can't always claim it's one of mine, however.

On a somewhat related note, I've found a pretty decent read in The Magicians by Lev Grossman. What's intriguing to me is that I haven't yet figured out where he's going with it all. The pacing of his story is an odd combination of meandering and driven and my nose has been buried in it for three days.

As autumn is quickly making its early presence known here in western Virginia, I find myself looking forward to cooler weather and the rustic, macabre feeling that October brings with it. It's appropriate, I think, that All Hallow's Eve takes place in the fall. Autumn is a special season where the air just seems ripe with frightening ancient possibilities. I've never been a great fan of horror flicks and, with the exception of the occasional Stephen King and episode of Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I generally stay away from the genre. Yet fall makes me think off the insane possibility that at least some of that stuff is rooted in ancient legends or stories buried so deep in our past that we retain only a basic, instinctual fear of what goes bump in the night.

Of course, it also inspires me to have a soup simmering in the Crock Pot all day long, so it's hard to tell, really, which urge is correct.

The Itch I Can't Scratch

2011-09-11T22:37:00.001-04:00

Ever have an itch you can't scratch?

I have one tonight.

Today is the opening day of the NFL football season, a day that typically finds me glued to a couch watching every possible game that's on cable. Yet today, I can't seem to make it through one.

The Pittsburgh-Baltimore game was less than exciting. It wasn't the hard hitting affair we all hoped for and turned out to be a blowout. The Jets and Cowboys are in a pretty good one right now, but it's not holding my interest at all.

I feel like I'm supposed to be creating something and I don't have the foggiest idea what I'm supposed to be doing. I'd pick up my pen (the nice new one I bought to go with my shiny and still blank new notebook) but I have no clue what to write. I'd work on The Sixth Sword but lately that hasn't been satisfying enough for me to really sink my teeth into. I picked a few chords on my electric guitar and that failed to hit the right note, just like The Hound of Rowan isn't keeping me glued to my Kindle.

So what, pray tell, am I supposed to be writing/playing/doing?

Tony, one my friends who often doubles as my editor and creative adviser, sent me a link to this site a while back. I like the message. "Talent is nothing without focus and endurance." Endurance isn't my problem tonight.

Focus is.

I'm having a bit of the same problem at work lately. I have a backlog of stories to be written that will be cleared out this week, come hell or high water. I've put them off long enough, some of them even too long. I have to chase down a couple of pieces of information this week or the one story I plan on writing is going to be pointless.

This happens to me on occasion. Nights like this one don't come very often, but they do happen, especially coming off of a fresh publication. Completing a major project like Blood & Steel leaves me with a complex jumble of feelings that is difficult to untangle. The major question that keeps the knot tied for the longest is what the hell am I going to write next? It's like staring into a deep, dark hole and hoping that somewhere down there is a man with a flashlight who's going to show me where my next idea is.

When I finished The Crownless King I spent weeks wondering if I'd ever be able to write something worth reading again. The same thing is happening since finishing Blood & Steel. I don't have the slightest idea what's going to happen next, especially since I don't intend to return to that world for a very long time, if ever.

I did have one stroke of good luck this week, however. Bethany found my favorite lens in an old camera bag that hasn't been used for so long that I barely even remember owning it. The lens was my 50mm, f/1.8 and I have looked everywhere for it over the past couple of years. I don't know how it ended up in that bag, but I'm thrilled to have it back. It's one of the most versatile lenses I've owned and I've more than made the $75 I paid for it back in the day.

A little camera tidbit for you: 50mm is the closest focal length to what your eye sees. There is very little difference in a 50mm lens and the human eye. That's what makes it such a great lens.

I have half a notion to go out tomorrow morning and find something to make a panorama out of.

See, right there, that's the problem. I started out blogging about what I'm going to write next and ended up writing about whether or not I'm going to take my first non-business related photo in years.

Focus.

I could sure use some tonight.

What A Week

2011-08-23T22:40:00.000-04:00

This week may be downright historic.

It started off with Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds Saturday night (sure, that was last week, but it was so much fun, I'm including it in this week. Writer's prerogative). It was, without a doubt, the most impressive concert I've been to. Dave & Tim came on stage at 7:45 and did not stop playing until the clock hit 11. At one point, Warren Haynes came out and jammed with them for about half an hour. They are the three greatest guitar players I've ever had the fortune to see in concert, especially acoustic. I hope that show comes around again someday, because I'd sure like to see it again.

Oh, lest I forget, I had a Five Guys hamburger and fries Saturday night. Best burger ever. If the opportunity arises, go to Five Guys and eat. They grind the hamburger when you order it, make your patty and throw it on the skillet. Best. Burger. Ever.

Did any of you feel the big 5.9 on the Richter scale earthquake today? The epicenter was about two and a half hours from my house. I was in the car at the time and missed it, but there are reports across the area of dishes rattling and pictures getting knocked off walls. The eastern part of Virginia was hit pretty hard, from what I understand, but I've yet to hear reports of many injuries. I spent the afternoon working the phones in the newsroom, tracking down local officials and fielding calls from citizens who wanted to know if we'd heard about the earthquake.

Thursday I'll be speaking at the Clifton Forge Public Library and signing copies of my latest work, Blood & Steel. These signings are always fun and I'm looking forward to it. I hope to see at least a few fans come out for it.

To top it off, there is a major hurricane lining up to hit the east coast of Virginia by the weekend.

Like I said, historic.

Is It Fall Yet?

2011-08-15T10:26:00.000-04:00

The first hint of fall was in the air this morning. Sure, it's still just mid-August and we can look forward to the better part of another month of hot weather in September, but this morning's weather was the first suggestion that summer is slowly departing us. The sky was overcast, the breeze was cool and the temperature was hovering right around that pleasant zone that makes me want to go lay in a hammock and read a book for a couple of hours. There was even a hint of that crispness in the air whenever the wind stirred up. Yes, give it time, my friends. Fall is coming.

Bethany and I were fortunate enough to find a new used vehicle Saturday, a 2005 Chevrolet Equinox, that we'll be picking up this afternoon if all goes according to plan. We found it at a dealership in Lewisburg and that means, after we sign the paper, we'll be making the inevitable trip to the West Virginia State Fair. I've never been much on the fair, though I've enjoyed many concerts in the grandstand. The food is good, however. The cattleman's association steak sandwiches are the best around.

News in the writing world has been a bit slow lately. I'm still plugging along at The Sixth Sword and the Clifton Forge Public Library has graciously agreed to host a signing for me on August 25 for Blood & Steel. Aside from that, I'm somewhat between projects. The Sixth Sword hasn't captured my full attention, mostly since it's a re-write, and I'm still wondering what project I will start that will fill that fresh, new notebook I purchased a couple of blog posts back.

I'm not really all that worried about it, however. I've learned that my most productive writing time is late winter into spring. September to January 1 is probably my favorite time of year and I much prefer to spend my time enjoying it. The long, dark months of the deep winter seem to provide the most time and best setting for putting pen to paper, so for now I'm somewhat content to mull over a few story ideas and see what happens later.

Speaking of looking forward to events, the big Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds acoustic benefit concert is Saturday evening and I can't wait. I'm hoping we'll get to go early and spend an hour or two enjoying the mall before we settle into the Pavilion for an amazing concert. I'll let you know how it goes.

Crossing One Off

2011-08-05T22:20:00.000-04:00

I have a really cool wife. Not only is she cool with the fact that she married a nerd, but she's also willing to indulge my nerd habits. She doesn't fuss about my subscriptions to The Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four. She doesn't even mind me buying the occasional Star Trek novel or put up much of a fight when I want to drag her along to see Thor.

This week she's helping my cross one off my Bucket List.

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds are playing nTelos Wireless Pavilion in Charlottesville. It's a two man acoustic concert to benefit the charity of your choice. This is a concert that I would have willingly crossed state lines and shelled out pretty big bucks to see. Having the opportunity to see them 90 minutes from the house was too good an opportunity to pass up. Tickets were steep for a concert, but Bethany didn't blink.

In two weeks I'll be in Charlottesville crossing a concert off my Bucket List.

I have the coolest wife ever.

A New Notebook

2011-08-01T12:12:00.000-04:00

I have a new notebook. Brand spankin' new. The rings are unbent, the paper is clean and unmolested and free of any irritating bends or tears. It has 200 clean sheets just waiting for me to put some ink down on them.

Perhaps that makes me sound a bit odd, but I'm OK with that. Having a new notebook is one of the finer pleasures of life for me. Anytime I'm looking to begin a new writing project, I get a new notebook. Sometimes it's a smaller one, one or two subject, and that's enough to satisfy the mood. Other times, like yesterday when I bought this one, I'm in the mood for something with plenty of breathing room and I pick up one of those massive Five Star five-subject notebooks. College ruled, of course. The Crownless King was written in one of those. So was Blood & Steel, as a matter of fact.

I've often wondered if there are any other writers out there who share that bit of nerdness with me. The potential of an unfilled notebook that's waiting for a fresh, new tale to be told within its pages is appealing. Maybe Hemingway felt the same way. He used those moleskin notebooks that the bookstores are so fond of selling. Maybe Tolkien felt the same, as well. I'd like to think so. If you've seen Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, then you've seen that leather-bound, handwritten edition of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings that Bilbo and Frodo both write. I drool over that edition every time that I see it. That would be the ultimate edition to my library.

If you're wondering about the publication schedule of Blood & Steel, then let me assure you that I met my goal of having it on the shelves by the first of August. I had some technical difficulties (is that phrase even still useable?) that prevented it from happening in the middle of July. This morning was the first morning that it appeared listed on Amazon. You can follow this link to it if you're interested in purchasing it. I have hopes of having some local signings and, if you can't make one of those, then look me up and I'll be happy to sign it for you.

Full Moon's Passage

2011-07-25T13:49:00.000-04:00

The full moon has come and gone and everything was quiet in the newsroom of the Virginian Review, leaving behind an oppressive heat wave that has us all counting down to the cooler days of autumn. If you've ever worked in a job that deals with the public on a day-to-day basis, you'll understand the trepidation that a full moon brings each month. Every time I see a full moon coming up on the calender I cringe at the thought of what will be coming our way.

There are some of you out there that will scoff at the idea that a full moon affects people's behavior, twisting them toward doing and saying things that they never would at other phases of the lunar cycle. I assure you, it's true. If enough people come in with odd requests that we investigate a parking conspiracy in downtown Covington or publish letters to the editor railing against the rising price of ice cream, we immediately begin looking at the calendar. Two such events in the same day is a coincidence. Three means a full moon, without fail.

It was early in my days at the paper when I first met Mr. Givens (not his real name). He staggered into the newsroom, drunk or just unbalanced, I'm not really sure which, and demanded that we do a news story on him because he was a "great American hero" who had just returned to his hometown. He omitted the fact that he was returning to his hometown after a hitch in a mental institution. We dealt with him as best we could and sent him on his way, somewhat unhappily. Before he left, Mr. Givens staggered through the advertising department and, spotting the candy dish, immediately upended the contents of the dish into his pocket.

The next day, the staff photographer and I were walking up Main Street to attend a press conference at the local post office. I don't remember what it was for, but I distinctly recall the man that stopped us. "You boys from the Virginian?" Gavin kept walking and I stopped. I should have kept going, but I was young and naive enough in those days not to have realized who it was that was so blatantly questioning our credentials. Mr. Givens was sitting on the bench, in the same dirty coveralls that he wore into the newsroom the day before, and unwrapping a piece of pilfered candy as he looked up at us.

I had stopped walking. I had to answer. There was no getting around it. "Yes sir," I said politely, taking a step further down the street.

"Then you tell that editor of yours he can kiss my ass," he said, popping the candy in is mouth. Having delivered his message, Mr. Givens got up and staggered down the street. It was the last time I'd ever see him. I think he passed away a few years later to little fanfare. Of course, I delivered the message to the boss as soon as I made it back from the press conference. After all, how often do you get to tell your boss that?

It wasn't too long ago that I experience another memorable full moon in the newsroom. It was a little after 9 o'clock and I had already made my morning phone calls to the four area funeral homes for the daily obituary count when this massive black dog came trotting through the newsroom. When I say massive, I mean this dog was big enough for me to ride like a horse and he had the kind of look about him that made you think he wanted to eat your face off and, if he did, there wasn't anything you were going to do about.

We all watched in confusion as the dog trotted through the newsroom, made the circle around the stations in the composing room, and reversed course and left the room and, we assume, the building. We have no idea what the dog was doing in there.

After a morning filled with random little nonsensical events just like that, I returned from lunch to a ringing phone. I picked up the phone and was immediately greeted by a woman's voice. "My obituary is not in today's paper." Immediately I pick up that day's edition off my desk and checked to see if I made a mistake. It would be so easy to leave an obituary out, but, fortunately, I hadn't, and I told the lady that it was in today's edition.

"I'm telling you it's not in there." It was at this point when I realized that it wasn't even 2 o'clock yet and the paper hadn't even made it to the box in front of the office.

"Ma'am, I'm holding today's paper in my hands. I'm looking at the obituary page and the obituary you sent us is in there. What paper are you looking at?"

"My paper isn't here yet," she said, as if it made all the sense in the world. "I'm looking at the Internet."

"Well, I can't speak for what you're reading now, but I can promise you that, when your paper gets there today, it will have the obituary you requested in it."

"Oh." A pause. "You sure about that?"

"Yes ma'am."

The sudden appearance of the dial tone in my ear told me she was finished with the conversation. She must have been satisfied, because I never heard back from her.

That's typical of a small town newspaper. The big headlines are rare in coming. In six years, I've only made the national wire once and have only covered three stories that merited more attention than our little community could give them. No, what's interesting about working for a small town paper is the odd stories that inevitably pile up over the years. Most of them are beyond belief, but I promise you, they're all true.

Murder In The Headlines

2011-07-19T23:51:00.001-04:00

Saturday was a much more hectic day than I prefer it to be. We only work half a day on Saturdays at the newspaper, and even then we're only in the office long enough to get the paper on the press and out the door and get a jump start on Monday's work. I do as much work ahead of time on Friday afternoon as I can and I hit the door on Saturday with as little work to do as possible.

That's not lazy. That's just efficient. I'd rather be ahead of the deadline than coming in right at it, particularly when getting the work done means I can go home for the weekend.

This past Saturday was an aberration.

If you live in my neck of the woods, or quite possibly Indiana or North Carolina, then you've heard the story of the murdered woman who was found in the trunk of a Mustang in Clifton Forge. I heard about this when I walked in the door Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and it prompted me to spend a very anxious 90 minutes tracking down and writing a story that would garner headlines in at least three states that we know of.

Without going in to any great detail, a young woman was murdered and her childhood friend is suspected of doing the deed. He allegedly drove from North Carolina with the body in the trunk and was discovered in downtown Clifton Forge late Friday evening after some nifty police work done on the spur of the moment.

The details of the manhunt, capture and suspected crime all made the top of the front page in Saturday's Virginian Review. I'm happy to say that we beat everyone with the pertinent details Saturday, simply by the fact that the story took place on our home turf and our earlier Saturday morning press deadline allowed us to get it on the streets.

But we missed it.

I can't help thinking that we've missed the real story. We'd never get it, of course. The only way to do that is to sit down with the suspect (which any lawyer worth his briefcase would never allow) get a confession (if he did it) and then ask him the burning question: Why? Why would anyone who isn't even old enough to legally drink throw his life away by killing another? What prompted it? How could you do it?

I've been stewing over those questions since Saturday morning. They're stirring in the back of my mind and I can't stand it. There are two human beings at the center of this, one whose life has ended and the other who may or may not have ended that life, and all I can do is sit and wonder what the story is.

The question of "why" is turning out to be more compelling to me than the question of "who done it."

Blogging When I Should Be Working

2011-07-15T09:41:00.000-04:00

I've spent the past couple of weeks working a couple of different jobs. We've had people out on vacation here at the paper and it's made for some hectic scheduling. I've barely done my own job recently, but, fortunately, that will all change next week when we're back to something approaching a full staff complement.

In between assignments I've been working on the cover of Blood & Steel. It's put together, but there seems to be minor technical issues that keep popping up. I'm on the third submission and I'm hoping to get it uploaded today or tomorrow. With any luck, that will be the last time I have to upload it.

I have polished off The Gathering Storm, which is the first book that Brandon Sanderson took over for Robert Jordan after his death. A few people have told me that they can't see a difference in the two writers, but I can. Sanderson is just a faster read, for one thing. Jordan wrote with a gravitas that few writers have. I can't imagine ever purchasing an audio version of these extraordinarily complex novels, but, if I did, I'd expect to hear James Earl Jones reading them to me. Sanderson doesn't have that weight.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed The Gathering Storm and I don't envy Sanderson the task of completing The Wheel of Time. Anything he does well will be attributed to Jordan and any weaknesses in the concluding three novels will be blamed on him. It's a difficult task, to be sure, but it's one that I'm glad he's taking up. I can't imagine never knowing how it all plays out.

A Cold Glass of Pepsi

2011-07-06T23:29:00.000-04:00

I sat down tonight and put the finishing touches on the manuscript of Blood & Steel. It's finished. Completely. Now it's just a matter of getting it formatted and shipping it off.

A former editor of mine once told me that these were the moments that red wine was made for. Personally, I'm happy with an ice cold glass of Pepsi, but I digress. The important thing is that the hard work is done. This novel has been through three editors, four drafts and a year of writing. I'm ready to move on to something else.

I don't yet know what that something else will be. I'm knee deep in heavy revisions to The Sixth Sword, but all the tough sledding on that project is about to be behind me. It has been challenging to return to that world and writing style after penning two simple, intimate tales that are minuscule in scope compared to The Sixth Sword, but I've found my sea legs, so to speak.

I guess I'm sitting here and wondering what my next big project will be. I had much the same feeling after finishing The Crownless King. I once told people that everyone had at least one good novel in them and that may well have been mine. Blood & Steel surprised me when it came around and I'm proud of how it turned out. I did something a little unexpected with it and I think it's a big step for me as a writer. Now that it's finished, I'm free to look toward another project.

Being at loose ends isn't as much of a difficulty as you might think, at least at first. True, I have no idea what I'm going to write next, but I'm sure it'll come to me. I've toyed with enough ideas in the past to know that something will pop up and want to be written. I'm as curious as you are to see what's coming next.

In the meantime, I'm working on reading the complete Wheel of Time. The last book is due out in the late fall and I'm halfway through the eleventh book in the fourteen book series. If you haven't read it, you should stop reading this blog immediately and start the series. Be warned, the series is long and incredibly complex, but it seems to be paying off in spades. I'm excited to see how it all plays out.

The countdown to the fall DVD releases is underway as well. Sure, we could get them off Netflix, but it's neat to have those discs tucked away for those long winter evenings when the sun sets at 5 p.m. and there's nothing for it except to huddle on the couch under a blanket thick enough to ward off the intense cold of Old Man Winter. Mid-September through Christmas Day is absolutely my favorite time of the year.

Enough with the heat already. Bring on the cool weather.

2011-07-04T22:34:00.000-04:00

It's been hot this past week. Painfully hot. Around about the time I thought that it wasn't going to get hotter, the thermometer started to flirt with the century mark.

I don't like heat. I much prefer to be snug in a house while a cool fall breeze is blowing or while a hard freeze sets in for weeks of winter. When it gets hot, I begin to understand why people get grumpy and why the crime rate begins to climb in bigger cities.

Amidst all the heat this week, I finally started putting together the cover for Blood & Steel. Next on the "To Do List" this week is to format the interior artwork, make the final touches to the manuscript and then get everything into novel size and convert it into pdf form. One day, when I make it big, they'll be a typesetter somewhere who does all this for me. All I'll have to do is right.

Speaking of writing, I've done a great deal of work on the director's cut of The Sixth Sword and I've worked in quite a few thousand words on a short novella. You see, I've decided I'm going to write my memoirs. I'll never understand why anyone would want to wait until their older to write them. I have 27 good years behind me and plenty of good stories to tell out them. You may argue that I might not have the appropriate distance yet to gain needed perspective, but that's ok. Life's too short for ifs and maybes. If I don't write some of this stuff down, it may never get written down. We all have stories to tell and we only get a few short decades to tell them. I'd rather get them told now. I've got a lot to say.

For now, though, I'm going to have to go find a wet rag with a little soap on it. Seems there's some sticky watermelon reside on my keyboard. I'd name names, but my lovely wife just purchased me a new iPod shuffle to replace the one I so foolishly ran through both the washer and dryer, so I think I'll stay on her good side.

Summertime

2011-06-12T16:17:00.000-04:00

I seriously miss having a summer vacation.

Remember what it was like to get out of school on that last day with nothing but hot weeks of freedom ahead of you? No job. No responsibilities. Nothing but free time to be filled with imagination. I had to take a picture for the last day of school in the county Friday afternoon and those kids were running toward the buses to get home and start enjoying their vacation.

I wanted to get on the buses and go with them.

Instead, I'll have to content myself with looking forward to the first big river trip we've taken in a couple of years. There will be six of us going down the Jackson in a couple of weeks. These trips always end up being and painfully sunburned, but it'll be worth it. I hope will follow it up with one of those epic trips down the Cowpasture that always end up with a great deal of yelling, blood loss and near death experiences.

Come to think of it, maybe summer isn't all that different...

Summer Reads

2011-06-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

These days, I don't lack for reading material.

I've knocked down twenty-six books so far in 2011 and some of them have actually had some weight to them. Sure, there's a couple Star Trek and Star Wars novels in the mix and I've spent a great deal of time continuing my studies of Jordan's Wheel of Time to prepare for the series finale this fall, but I've also nearly polished off the Aubrey-Marturin series and a couple of literary feasts served up by Pat Conroy, Stephen King and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

But now I've returned to the world of kids books. I know it sounds funny, but Artemis Fowl was one of the most fun reads I've turned my attention to lately. I found a "sunshine deal" on Amazon and downloaded the kids book along with a half dozens other titles for no more than $0.99 that will anchor my summer reading list for a while. But I can tell you that the Fowl books will be a big part of my summer reads. They're creative, somewhat lighthearted and just a lot of fun to read. I can knock one off in a day or so if I have the time to devote to it.

And I'm going to make time today, as a matter of fact...just after I take a nap on this lazy summer afternoon...

Hello Again

2011-06-08T18:01:00.000-04:00

So...yea...been a while, hasn't it?

I've been ridiculously busy with work up until now. I went from being laid off and not working at all to working five days a week and often somewhere between three and four nights a week. Lately city council and other governmental meetings have taken up tremendous chunks of my time as our city officials sorted out the budget for 2011-12.

I'm glad its over.

I've been writing (obviously not here). I've had edits to make on Blood & Steel and Heather's finished off the artwork. All that's setting between you, dear reader, and my latest work is me having the time to get it out there and in your hands. Here and now I'm going to set a goal to make that happen by the middle of July.

Devan and I are completely revamping the Chaos Chronicles. I know there's some of you out there who have been waiting since 2006 for a new tome and I promise, if you hang in there with us, we'll put something new and exciting (at least we hope it is) out there in the next year or so. I'd say more, but there's a slim chance for great things to happen in a year or so and I don't want to spoil that.

I've missed this blog, truth be told. If I didn't do anything else other than gripe about how busy my day was and how big my case of writer's block was at the time, it still felt good to do it. I can't blame anyone for not sticking around through an unintended hiatus that lasted for months. This blog has always been an outlet to get things off my mind and to hone my writing skills in a different format. I'm still going to use it for that. Perhaps it may not be as frequent as it once was, but we'll see.

I signed up for a Fundamentals of Storytelling class today at the Clifton Forge School of the Arts that will be held later this month. Biff Downey, who will be the instructor, was actually one of my students at a novel writing workshop I held at the school earlier this year. The man's a born storyteller and I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to impart.

Maybe he'll tell me how to make washing my iPod and USB jump drive not sound like the dumbest thing I've done in a while....

Coming Up For Air

2011-02-07T15:24:00.000-05:00

It's hard for me to believe than an entire month has passed without a post from me.

To be fair, it's been a busy month. Work has really been hopping and it seems like I can barely get one feature article in print before another is ringing my phone for an interview. Between those weekly features, I'm covering my usual beat in the city of Covington, all of which combines to a pretty decent workload.

But the real reason that I've disappeared from the blogging world is that I've finished Blood & Steel. Most of January was spent with a pen in hand and my focus was on writing, to the extent that I've let a lot of other things fall by the wayside, including chores around the house and even hanging out with friends.

Since the beginning of January I've typed two-thirds of the second draft, and it weighs in at just over 30,000 words. Last night I was up past midnight finishing the first draft, which totals 111 handwritten pages. Once I get the last third of it typed, I'll be able to announce a final word count.

It didn't end at all like I expected. But then again, this wasn't the novel that I had expected to sit down to write, either. It turned out to be a sequel instead of a prequel and it was a little heavier in content than I expected. And the ending...well, it even took me by surprise.

I had no idea it was going to end the way it that it does until Friday afternoon. I went to lunch, jamming to Nickelback's best album, Silver Side Up and the song Too Bad in particular when I saw the ending play out in front of my eyes as if I was watching a movie.

And I had no idea that it ended that way. Once I realized it did, I knew that it had to. There was no question that it conveyed my point much better than my original idea. I was blown away by it and, at the same time, put in a solidly bad mood for the rest of my working afternoon.

The final pages had a profound effect on me, not so much for what happens but for what it means for characters that I've come to be friends with, especially Sam. We've spent a lot of time together as he told me his story, both for The Crownless King and for Blood & Steel. I realized Friday afternoon that if I was going to do this the right way, there would be no more time spent with those characters.

It was a pretty heavy afternoon.

Satisfying Progress

2011-01-18T22:48:00.000-05:00

This past week has been a writing marathon (well, except for blogging, obviously).

Last Thursday afternoon I had three interviews for articles at work in one afternoon. I sat down at my computer that evening and was mentally scrambled from balancing the absorption of three completely different news articles. I snagged the top of Saturday's front page with the first article, took in another interview this morning and began cranking out the first of three articles I have left on assignment this week.

But that doesn't begin to touch what I've done on Blood & Steel. Since Thursday evening I'd laid down over 14,000 words (thank you, Word Count) on the second draft. It's been almost non-stop since Thursday, though the writing comes in chunks both big and small. Other than Saturday, which just didn't belong to me at all, I've yet to have a day pass without at least an hour spent in front of the keyboard. Monday was pretty epic. I'd be willing to bet I spent four solid hours writing after cleaning the house and making the grocery run.

Looks like I'm going to have this done by summer after all.

On a related front, the new Clifton Forge School of the Arts is opening up and will be holding its first classes in January. I've toured the new school and I have to say that it's pretty amazing. The space it has is unbelievable and the potential for expansion even more so. The first classes are photography related and a children's art class, but the future holds classes in sculpting, painting, quilting, blacksmithing, antique cars...pretty much anything goes. Including writing workshops. Taught by yours truly. It's not any kind of permanent position, but it will be an opportunity to teach a few workshops, to meet with up and coming writers and just to work on the craft with people who, like me, love to write. The first proposed workshop is going to focus on the short story and I'm trying to outline one geared more toward novel writing.

It's been an exciting week in my little literary world.

One Word After Another

2011-01-13T22:11:00.000-05:00

Writer's block is very much the bane of my existence. It is the Joker to my Batman, the Green Goblin to my Spider-Man, the Dr. Doom to my Mister Fantastic, the...well, you get the idea.

Any writer that tells you he's never had to deal with writer's block is simply, flat out, lying to you. That's about the same as a baseball player telling you he's never struck out. It happens, without warning or explanation and always when you least expect it.

I've been fighting it now for a couple of weeks. For whatever reason, the Muse left me as I picked up my pen or sat down my keyboard. I've been able to crank out the required articles for work, but even those haven't been my best work. Granted, I'm still knocking four years worth of rust off my journalism skills, but even still, I haven't quite been on my game.

The key to beating writer's block is almost laughingly simple. Just put one word after another. I've said it before when giving advice to another aspiring author and he was kind enough to repeat to me just the other day. I mulled it over for a while and then I sat down tonight with the serious intention of getting some ink down on paper, either digitally or the old fashioned way. I cranked up some hard rock, which is normally my writing groove, and sat to work on the Druid project. When that still failed to get me anywhere, I switched over to Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds and went work on my solo project.

Tonight I polished off the first one-third of the second draft of Blood & Steel.

Thanks, Tony. I owe you one.

Number 200

2011-01-06T13:49:00.000-05:00

The New Year is upon and I can't think of a better time to make my official 200th post. Actually, I can, but I'm sitting here in the newsroom waiting for other members of the staff to return from lunch to file the things I need for my page, so since I've nothing more pressing to do, I'll blog.

My resolutions for 2011 were pretty basic. I'm going to try to resolve to be a bit more frugal this year and learn to save money a little better. This resolution will come in handy as Bethany and I save to fly to France. I've also made a resolution not to purchase any new books (with the exception of two series that I'm following closely) until I clean off my to-read list.

I have a pretty good jump start on the second one. I polished off Pat Conroy's My Reading Life and Patrick O'Brian's The Yellow Admiral. Just today I started The Hundred Days by the same author. I have two more of O'Brian's series before I run out and I'm not looking forward to the end of that great read.

Work is going pretty well. Tonight I'll be attending a speech by a state senator at the local community college and I'm working on an online interview with the director of the Emeril Lagasse Foundation, which has potential to turn into a pretty neat story.

Speaking of work, I'd better be getting back to it.

The Aftermath

2010-12-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ah, Christmas. It's like a really good sneeze, isn't it? The holiday has such a tremendous build up and then it all passes by so quickly in a blur of 24 hours that you find yourself waiting for someone to say God Bless You as you recover from it.

And recovering is the trick. I'm fortunate that the front of the house is fairly clean. The kitchen's in good shape, and so is the dining room and the living room. The problem is the back rooms. Everything we were given for Christmas now has to find it's place. While the DVDs and games are easily put away, the books I was given will now have to be precariously balanced in my to-read pile for me to catch up to. They're great books, I can't wait to wade into them, particularly My Reading Life and Pat Conroy's Cookbook, both by one of my favorite authors, Pat Conroy.

I'm anticipating a slow week at work, something I haven't experienced since my return to the newspaper in November. The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is traditionally slow, and I hope this one follows tradition to a T.

The writing is progressing. I'm chipping away at projects and I'm looking forward to getting into a steady groove of it after we enter 2011. The months between January and May tend to be my most productive in the writing world and I'm anticipating finishing at least one novel in the coming months.

But I'm also going to take the time to study music just a little bit. And I'm going to figure out what to cook with this jar of really cool, homemade cayenne-infused olive oil given to me by Mr. Pie and The Student Knitter.

But first I have to clean up this house and do a little laundry. Those sneezes are rough.

I'm Ready For My Close Up

2010-12-21T23:31:00.000-05:00

One of the cool things about being a reporter is that you just never quite know what's going to happen next.

I met this regal looking little fella this afternoon just across the street from the newsroom. Word filtered into us that he collided with the movie theater doors and was sitting comfortably on the sidewalk as he recovered from his concussion.

Naturally, I grabbed the closest camera and went over to get up close and personal. I sat down on the sidewalk with him, but he wasn't happy with that. Instead he fluttered up to a higher perch on the ticket office and I gladly snapped a few close ups. I literally was inches away from this hawk. It was as close as I've ever been to one of these majestic creatures.

He'll grace the front page on Wednesday's edition (in a different photo). I'm happy to say I made his acquaintance.

An Interesting Week

2010-12-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

I've had an interesting week.

It started out on Monday when I put in an extra morning's work just to handle two Christmas parades. Naturally, one of the parade organizers didn't get around to sending their information to me until right at the deadline, so it was a frantic half hour of taking in data and getting press ready.

That evening I covered the Covington City School Board meeting, where the superintendent announced they had signed an agreement with the City Manager to put a resource officer in the local high school. The next night I covered the city council meeting when a council member and the city manager had a little debate over the issue, citing what I wrote in my article in that afternoon's paper.

Let me tell you that was an interesting moment. It was the first real bit of controversy that I'd ever stirred, even during my first hitch at the paper. See, the first time around I did mostly sports, a little hard news, and feature stories. This time I have a regular beat to cover and one that I've had very little experience at. In fact, before this week I'd never covered a school board meeting at all. So when the councilman pulled out the newspaper and started off with the words "I read in this afternoon's paper..." I had a brief moment of panic where I prayed that everything was correct in that article. Fortunately it was and the debate that followed had absolutely nothing to do with any error I might have made.

The rest of the week was spent deep in the Christmas spirit. And by deep in the Christmas spirit I mean typing hundreds of letters to Santa that the newspaper receives this time of year. We're one of the very few that runs those letters on Christmas Eve. It's a great tradition and that's why we do it. But behind that great tradition is countless hours of typing until your hand hurts from pounding keys for so long.

In the middle of all this, we had our first real snow of the year Thursday. It amounted to about six or seven inches. At the newspaper, when hell and high water happens, we don't call in. We go take a picture of it. So after getting Bethany to work I plowed my way to the office, where we faced a deadline that was an hour earlier so we could get the carriers off the roads at a decent hour. Everything was going smoothly and we were all just about finished with our assigned sections when a late breaking resignation of a prominent local government figure hit the company e-mail. So there went at least thirty minutes of reading, processing and tearing up Plan A so we could drop back to Plan B on the fly.

And today I'm sitting here, waiting patiently on the obituaries to filter in to my Inbox so I can get out the door and on my way to a very scenic Hot Springs where the Bath County Christmas parade will be taking place.

I'll grant you that this job has it's moments, but it's never quite the same thing from day to day. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it sometimes.

The Arctic Touch

2010-12-13T15:25:00.000-05:00

It's really, really cold out there. Don't believe me? Go open your door. Here we have have temperatures that are struggling to break into the 20s with wind gusts that are cracking on in the upper 40 mph range. I don't think that I really appreciated just how hard the wind was blowing until I went to the post office a few minutes ago.

I like post offices. They're the last buildings around here that were really built to show power. The two bigger ones around here are so large, so high-ceilinged that every little think you do in there echoes. Sometimes I think putting a stamp on an envelope echoes. But they're built to impress you with the authority and power of the United States Government and on the inside, particularly the older ones where I live, they pull it off.

After purchasing my book of Christmas evergreen stamps I went over to the table to affix them to the envelopes of the last bit of our Christmas cards to get into the mail. As I was working the envelopes, the wind started to howl. And I mean howl. Not just that little moan you sometimes hear in the winter. I mean a full on, screaming banshee wail that was enough to make you look up and take notice. The windows rattled and the doors of the post office actually creaked inward under the force of the wind.

That was the first thing that made me notice the ferocity of the wind. The second was the moment that I opened the door to step back onto the street and was hit with a blast of wind that made it hard to breath for a couple of seconds.

We didn't see hardly any precipitation off of the big storm that crashed through the area over the weekend, but we're sure feeling the arctic touch at the moment.

What You Choose To See

2010-12-10T20:55:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, something I've heard a hundred times over just strikes me in a different way.

I had that very experience this morning. I was driving to work (which is still something of a new notion for me after nine months of unemployment) and jamming to three or four different CDs as I drove. I'm driving Bethany's car for mechanical reasons and it has a working CD player. Since my Jeep doesn't at the moment, it's been months since I've been able to enjoy my collection.

I made it through The Band Perry, switched over to Dave Matthews and decided I wasn't in the mood for that, so I moved on to Clint Black and finished up at Edwin McCain as I was driving past the high school a few blocks from my office. I flipped through Scream & Whisper until I landed at track number 7, Farewell to Tinkerbell.

The song is exactly what it sounds like: Peter Pan writing a letter to Tinkerbell saying goodbye because he's fallen in love with Wendy and can never return to Neverland. I've always seen that song as bittersweet. I've always looked at it with eyes that were tinged with sadness because of the friendship that was parting ways.

But I never listened to it the other way around. I never thought about how Peter was so happy now that he was giving up his innocence, an immortal life of childhood, to fall in love with one woman and grow old with her.

I'll never be able to listen to that song the same way again. I don't think I can not hear the utter happiness that triumphs over the wistful bittersweetness. Sure, Peter revels in his victory over Captain Hook and you can hear the wistfulness in his voice when he says "Tink you know you'll always have my everlasting love," but wow, just for a moment, forget about what he's giving up and think about what he's found.

It's incredible.

Perspective, my friends. It's all in how you look at the world...

I'd Forgotten How Much It Hurts

2010-12-07T20:39:00.000-05:00

I'd forgotten how much guitar play hurts. Wow.

I'm not talking about my fingertips now. Though I haven't seriously attempted anything on the guitar in a long while the calluses on my fingertips are still there and up to snuff. No, what I'm talking about is my left forearm. It's been so long since I've played that it almost cramps up as I twist my fingers back into the different chord shapes. I feel like I usually do after I hit the gym after a couple of months of not being in there.

I'm making an effort to do this right and study the different notes and learn to read the music. I have the sheet music to Misguided Roses by Edwin McCain and I also have Before These Crowded Streets and Crash by Dave Matthews coming in the mail. All three of these albums are music that has inspired me and I want to learn to play them right.

The first thing I've had to do is start Guitar 101 all over again and practice my chord shapes and switching between them. Now I have to get my hand accustomed to bar chords again, which, as you might imagine, is a royal pain. But I'm getting there. Now that I have a steady job with steady income I can take my mind off my worries for a while and concentrate more on the things I enjoy.

Devan and I are tentatively planning on a work session Monday it things go our way. And if it doesn't, we'll reschedule for another day soon after. We're both excited because it's the first time we've been on the same side of the world in months and we have some pretty good ideas to get down on paper.

This weekend is Bethany's big Christmas concert with the Greenbrier Valley Chorale at Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg. If you're interested in coming, you'll have to call the ticket office at (304) 645-7917. I'll warn you that there's a chance they may already be sold out, but the good news is that Bethany found out today they'll be singing at The Greenbrier on December 23, which is the day before the night before Christmas. I don't think I've ever been in The Greenbrier and I can't wait for that evening.

Gathering 'Round The Bookshelves

2010-12-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

Boy, is it cold out there. And I don't mean just a little cold. I mean the kind of cold that makes me wonder why I'm not living at the beach where they shoot those Corona commercials. Actually, it's not that cold out there but the wind is brutal. We went to dinner at Devan's apartment over in Buchanan and on the way home it was all I could to do keep the Jeep on the road sometimes.

Getting the old crew together is a rare thing these days, though tonight we've decided to make it a little less rare. It's kind of cool how nothing ever really changes. We all more or less fall into the same roles that we always do. Patrick takes over the food and becomes Devan's favorite target, Devan tries to entertain everyone in the room (he sees the world as an audience) and generally sticks his foot in the mouth and I fall somewhere in between and generally just argue with whoever I decide to disagree with on any given night.

We've all mellowed a bit since we've been married. Actually, we've all married a bit since we've gotten older. I'd say we've become more mature, but, and let's be honest here, that just probably isn't the case. We don't stay up as late as we once did, nor do we eat as much or argue at the top of our lungs as much as we once did (though that last one is a near thing).

One of my favorite parts of any given evening with Devan and Patrick is the traditional gathering 'round the bookshelves to see what books we want to steal. I came away with two novels this evening, both completely unfamiliar and recommended by Devan. He's yet to steer me wrong on a literary recommendation, so I feel like these will be worth looking into. Patrick borrowed Fever Dream, the latest Pendergast novel.

But what we actually take away from the shelves is not nearly as interesting as the conversations that happen around them. It doesn't take long for us to start batting titles around of the latest and greatest books we've read. If we're not rushed to get somewhere and eat something, our discussion eventually lands in one of those titles and we start picking apart the reasons why we liked it. Often times this happens as one of us is trying to pitch the book to the others, but the most interesting discussions happen when we're talking about a novel we've all read.

I tend to pick up on the broader themes and how the novel fits into the larger scheme of the series as a whole. Patrick tends to hit on one or two really insightful and emotional moments that really hit him hard and drove home the feelings of a particular character. Devan usually picks out the one minuscule little detail that we missed that changed the entire plot.

It's the type of literary discussion you'd never see taken seriously on any kind of talk show or podcast because it'd be next to impossible to follow it if you haven't been hanging out with us for as long as we have. Just ask my Dad. These discussions drive him nuts. In all honestly, though, these discussions are probably one of the big reasons that we've all been able to stay friends for all this time.

Now That Was A Christmas Parade

2010-12-05T17:20:00.000-05:00

I'm usually not a fan of Christmas parades, but Covington's parade was pretty cool Saturday night. Sure, it had the usual array of fire trucks and cement trucks and snow plows all festooned with Christmas lights, but it had more than it's usual share of floats and, most importantly, snow.

I like downtown Covington. Main Street looks like something out of the past with all it's streetlights and clocks and lit trees. Add in the kind of blowing snow that we had Saturday and it became the perfect backdrop for just about anything festive. There were even people handing out free hot chocolate and cookies. How it gets any better than that I just don't know.

Winter has officially settled in my neck of the woods. We had our first snowfall that only amounted to a couple of rapidly melting inches. It's interesting to note, however, that this year's first snowfall fell on the exact same date as last year's first snowfall, and we all know about the blizzard that happened soon after that.

Regardless of the snow, it's cold outside and the wind is much colder than the air temperature. It's the perfect time to be hunkered down on the couch with a roaring fire and a good book in hand. Which is exactly how I plan to spend the rest of my evening until the Ravens and Steelers kick off at 8:30.

I love winter.

Snug and Warm

2010-12-03T14:07:00.000-05:00

As I sit here in the newsroom awaiting the rush of work that's going to fill my afternoon, the first snowflakes of the year are drifting down from a uniformly gray sky that holds the promise of accumulation. It's perfect timing, really, when you consider that this is the first weekend of December.

I'm glad that I'm not out in it today, though I will be for an hour or two tonight. This is the kind of snowfall that puts me in mind of quieter, calmer times. Of fireplaces lit and overflowing with warmth, of stacks of books piled high beside my favorite chair.

I read an interesting post over at JM Tohline's blog about the most creative time of the year for writers. Not surprisingly, quite a few of those who chimed in chose fall and winter as their best times. My best writing time of the year begins December 26.

This dark and cold time of year is among my favorite times. It's a time of year that just begs to be enjoyed from inside a snug home with books both to be written and to be read and DVDs to be watched. All three of my novels, Chaos Reborn, The Crownless King and Blood and Steel were written between the months of December and May. With luck, I'll be putting the finishing touches on both Blood and Steel and the young adult book I'm working on with Devan by the time the winter breaks.

Yes, I'll be combatting the dark days of winter by studying the art of storytelling. Be it in a television show, a movie, or in writing, I'll spend these next months wrapped in a warm blanket of words. It's enough to make me wish I lived in a colder, darker and snowier climate.

Back To Work

2010-12-02T18:26:00.000-05:00

After a month of working at The Virginian Review I can tell you that very little has changed since my departure four years ago.

The faces are still the same, the people I'm dealing with are still the same and the job is even still the same. There are a few cosmetic changes, but it's more or less the same place I left a few years ago. The sweet times to be in the newsroom are between 12:30 and 1 o'clock in the afternoon and that final half hour of the day that begins at 4:30. Those are the two most peaceful times at The Virginian Review. At 12:30 the day's paper has been sent across the hall to the press and there are 30 minutes left, on an average day, to kick back, talk and wait for the clock to tell us to go to lunch. At 4:30 things tend to be more or less wrapped up for the day and there comes a point somewhere in there where you decide you've done all you're going to do for the day and you start browsing the AP news wire or the Internet until the clock says it's time to go home.

This job has its moments, though. Two of them are going to come around this weekend. Friday and Saturday evening you'll be able to find me on the streets of Clifton Forge and Covington watching the Christmas parades roll by. There isn't a thing I can do while the parade is going on, but I'm supposed to be there. True, it's overtime, but I could write the story without ever laying eyes on a single float. The boss man prefers that I be there, however, so I will be.

Among the employees of the paper there is a lot of goofing off and a great deal of an attitude that's too far away from doing the job right in the first place. Frankly, I don't care if I have to go spend extra time covering events that don't hold my interest. After nine months of unemployment, I'm happier than a bird with a french fry just having a job again.

What To Read?

2010-11-29T14:46:00.000-05:00

My To-Do List today is piled 16 items deep. Some of them are fairly simple and will be crossed off easily today (barring catastrophe or shiny distractions, and let's face it, there are a lot of shiny distractions). Others, like moving things into storage so we can set up the extra small bedroom for Christmas, will take all week.

The list at work is a fairly heavy one as well. I have three features to chase down this week in addition to covering the Clifton Forge and Covington Christmas parades. I also have a task at City Hall to complete, though that shouldn't take all that long to do.

And in the true spirit of Christmas the weatherman is calling for the first bit of snow to fall here this weekend. Since it's coupled with rain I doubt that it's going to amount to much, but I'm all happy about the return of winter weather (even if I have to cover a parade in it). It's just going to be a matter of time before I break out the soundtrack to Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, which just happens to be one of the bestselling jazz albums of all time.

Christmas is always a magical time for me. When I was a kid it was filled with toys and as I grew older the toys were gradually replaced by books. If I'm being honest, I still receive a few toys every year, but, then again, who doesn't? It was Christmas when I was first introduced to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. It was a snowy Christmas a long time ago when I first read The Return of Sherlock Holmes after checking out a 1942 illustrated hardcover edition from the Clifton Forge Public Library.

This year I'm debating, just a bit, about what to read over the holidays and I'm giving serious consideration to returning to some of my favorites. Seeing the amazing adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last weekend in the theater has me hankering a little bit of that series, but then again both Star Wars and Star Trek hold the promise of new and old goodness for me reading pleasure. Of course I can't forget about Sherlock Holmes. Those stories never get old, even if I've read them all about three times.

Any suggestions, anyone?

A Successful Day

2010-11-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

We finally finished processing the last of our October weddings. It was a chore to get it polished off today, but after a long session of both of us processing we've managed to get it knocked down. Bethany has a couple of sessions left to put through Photoshop but they're most definitely a lighter task than the weddings.

Saturday morning at work I finished reading The Lost Hero, the new Percy Jackson novel, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. By the end of the novel I had pieced together enough of the foreshadowing to be able to guess at what the big secret was, so I can't say that I was surprised at the conclusion. However, I can say I'm pretty happy with it and I can't wait to read the rest of the series (which hasn't been written yet). I was fortunate to not start the first series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians until after they were all published. It only took me about two weeks to plow through those five novels. Yes, they're written for a younger audience but they're also really well written and highly addicting.

There are two novels coming out Tuesday that I plan to purchase, Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex and the newest Star Trek: Typhon Pact novel. They'll both be released at midnight and will happily download to my Kindle while I'm sleeping. I really am surprised at how much I'm enjoying reading on my Kindle. True, it's not the same as having a book in my hands, but I really appreciate the ease and freedom that a Kindle brings to my life. I live in a semi-remote area and the closest book store is an hour away from my front door. We once had a local bookstore that I absolutely loved (I was officially named their best customer) but, sadly, it went under. Amazon.com wasn't a bad replacement, but there was the interminable delay caused by my books being shipped from their warehouse. The Kindle allows my to shop from my library, in my pajamas, and have the book downloaded in my hands within a minute. Pre-ordered books are delivered as I sleep. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Since it was Sunday I did a little light cooking this afternoon. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. All I did was marinate some sliced chicken breast in white wine and a little olive oil. I seasoned with basil, parsley, minced garlic with a touch of salt and pepper. I boiled some instant rice and a few broccoli sprouts (it takes about four minutes in boiling water to get broccoli tender with just enough crunch to be satisfying) and then mixed it all together. It was flavorful but it needed just a little more flair. At any rate, it's something to experiment with in the future.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

2010-11-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

The Christmas season has officially arrived. Sure, it's still November, but it's also two days after Thanksgiving. Our Christmas tree is up, there are lights on are house and there are even presents already wrapped under the tree.

At least I waited until the day after Thanksgiving instead of decorating in October like all the stores do.

Every year our outdoor light show expands just a bit. The first year I think we only had icicle lights on the house. Then we added lights to the porch and the maple out front (we had to wait for it to get tall enough). This year, since we had some spiffy new icicle lights that were slightly longer than we needed, we ran lights down the gutter and into the butterfly bush. There's some debate about running them from the bush into the two other trees on the far side of the yard, but that would require the purchase of more lights.

When I left the house this morning the interior still needed some work. There were boxes to put away and garland and other things to hang. We just ran out of time last night since the tradition is to not start hanging lights until after dark. It's just more fun if you can't see what you're doing.

The weather here is finally cooperating and dipping into the colder winter temperatures we all know and love. In fact, looking at the forecast here on my desk, the temperatures barely hit 50 degrees at all next week. It's cold and dark by the time that I get home and that's just fine with me. I have The Last Airbender to watch, John Adams to watch and a deep pile of books to get me through the winter.

Ah, if only it would snow...

'Tis The Night Before Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T00:44:00.000-05:00

'Tis the night before Thanksgiving and all through the house, the smell of fresh bread pervades the night air.

Thanksgiving is at our house this year and right now things are looking like fun. The turkey's been thawing in the refrigerator today. The two loaves of bread that Bethany and I made are in the oven. All the ingredients for the other dishes are laid out on the counter, all ready to be sliced, diced, chopped, stirred and cooked for the Thanksgiving feast.

Yes, life is good.

To top it off I've even collected a my second paycheck in nine months and this one was my first full one. I celebrated by taking Bethany to dinner, buying her flowers and then myself John Adams and The Last Airbender. I missed The Last Airbender when it was out in theaters and it looks like the kind of fantasy action movie that's right up my alley. John Adams is the seven part HBO miniseries that garnered 13 Emmys when it aired last year. I've been hankering to own it for a while and I'm looking forward to settling in to watching it next week. The Revolutionary War is probably one of my favorite periods of history and this docudrama looks to be entertaining.

In the meantime I'm reading The Lost Hero, the first book in the newest Percy Jackson series. It's true that Percy Jackson's adventures are intended for a younger audience, but they sure are a lot of fun. I'm enjoying the fun twists on the Greek myths that I was taught in elementary school and it's been something of an education reading the series. I don't know where my readings will take me next, but I do have quite a to-read pile to keep me happy.

The writing is going well this week. Tuesday evening I covered the Covington City Council meeting and then had the house to myself as Bethany was in Lewisburg practicing for the upcoming chorale concert. They're performing selections from Handel's Messiah on Dec. 12 and I'm looking forward to that concert. It's been a great part of my early Christmas season since she joined the Greenbrier Valley Chorale a couple years ago. But I digress. I spent the better part of two hours on the second draft of Blood and Steel Tuesday evening and added something in the neighborhood of 3,000 words. I'm about to really delve into the meat of the plot and I'm pleased so far with both my first draft and the smoothing over that's occurring in the second draft.

Since the bread now requires some attention, I believe I'm going to wrap this post up. I'd write a little more after dealing with the baking, but I just can't seem to put The Lost Hero down.

A Better Photograph

2010-11-22T18:14:00.000-05:00

Since the last photograph I uploaded wasn't my best work I thought I'd offer up this one tonight. After all, I couldn't let you think that the last photo was the best of my football work. If you're looking for the story in the photography, you'll have to know Covington football to understand it.

Covington doesn't throw the ball unless they're behind, and with a 6-6 final record, that happens more than the Cougars would like it to. When they do throw it, they tend to put in another quarterback, who you can see scrambling to get the ball out of his hand before he's sacked. There's not a lot of drama in the photo, but if you've watched enough Covington High School football you know what's going on.

It is the week of Thanksgiving and we're slowly getting ready for it. The turkey (all 22 pounds of it) is in the refrigerator happily thawing out for the big day. I went to Kroger today and bought the last of the things we need to have on hand when Thursday rolls around. I think we'll have a grand total of eight people, which should make for a nice dinner. It's a shame that the only football that's going to be on television is the Patriots at the Lions, which should be a complete massacre.

The Photo That Almost Happened

2010-11-20T17:07:00.000-05:00

This is the photo that almost happened.

You see, sports photography is about 5% knowledge of the camera and photo techniques, 5% knowledge of the game your game, 5% willingness to grit your teeth and hope that the guy doesn't hit you while you're shooting and about 85% luck. Anyone that tells you any different is just flat lying to you. You might be able to shave some of that percentage of luck with a little advance preparation, but there's only so much wiggle room to be had in that formula.

Friday night I was prowling the Covington sidelines as they traveled to East Montgomery High School on the other side of Salem. For their troubles Covington received an old fashioned butt-whooping by a team that's likely to be the state champions of the Single A division. I've shot plenty of high school football before, so I'm familiar with what I'm doing, even if I'm just a little rusty after a four year sabbatical from the work.

During half time, I set my camera to Automatic to take a couple of shots of a CHS helmet. I figured it would be a nice graphic to have somewhere down the line at the newspaper. When the second half started, I forgot to switch my camera back to the Manual setting where, combined with the flash, I had a high enough shutter speed to stop the motion of the game.

Covington was trailing by three scores by the time they had their first possession of the half, so it was time to air it out (note the knowledge of the game). I went down the sideline and set up, waiting for the deep pass that I knew was coming. My powers of prognostication didn't let me down and the quarterback uncorked a deep through to the sideline.

I saw the receiver and the cornerback coming closer and closer, but I stood still (note the willingness to grit my teeth and hope I didn't get hit) because the play was unfolding directly in front of me (note the healthy dose of luck that was actually in my favor for once). Sadly, the pass was incomplete and so was my photo because I had failed to switch back to the Manual setting. When the image popped up on my screen I knew what I'd done and why I'd blown the shot, so I was able to reset and move on with the shooting.

This photo was nowhere near good enough to make the paper, but I like it for some reason. The motion blur speaks a little to how I see the game of football: as a very fast paced game that has a great deal of violent and sudden stops. This would never show up in a black and white photo on the newsprint we use at The Virginian Review so I'm just going to add this one to my collection.

Back In The Saddle

2010-11-17T20:53:00.000-05:00

So having regained the ranks of the gainfully employed I find myself working on a daily basis. I'm making a living writing again, which is kind of cool. The duties are a little different this time around. I don't have so much of the jack of all trades label, but I am getting a crack at a high school football playoff game Friday night.

I'll be prowling the sidelines, bundled up against the cold with my camera in hand trying to catch the kind of stunning football photographs that Sports Illustrated would be lucky to have a shot at purchasing. Mostly I'll just be freezing my butt off.

Saturday will also be my new debut as Local News Editor with a front page story about neighborhood watch programs. It's a magnificent piece of journalism that will never win me a Pulitzer, but who keeps track of those things anyway?

In the meantime I'm continuing work on the second draft of Blood & Steel. I'm almost 10,000 words in, which is a pretty significant chunk of writing, actually. There are all the little rewrites happening along the way that usually accompany the creation of a second draft and I can happily report that progress is good.

On the photography front Bethany and I are still wading through some wedding photos and other sittings from October. We're pushing to have it all done by the first of December, an entirely feasible goal.

I have to say that it feels good to be employed again. Now if I could just get Bethany's car fixed...

Back From Vacation

2010-11-14T19:57:00.000-05:00

Life might actually be returning to some semblance of normal.

(Even as I type that I kind of duck and hunch over my keyboard, looking cautiously over my shoulders to see from what direction I'm going to be thrown the next curve.)

Tuesday morning I'll report to work at The Virginian Review and collect my first actual paycheck in nearly nine months. It won't be a full week's pay since Bethany and I went to Pigeon Forge for most of last week, but even still, it will be a paycheck.

Part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hits theaters Friday and I can't wait to see it. Well, I can, since obviously I'm going to have to, but I'm looking forward to it. This will be the first time I've seen a movie adaptation of a book actually go to the effort of splitting the film into two parts to cover it all. I hope they do a better job than they did with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I can't think of another time that I left a movie theater that angry.

Before I left last week I spent some time on the second draft of Blood & Steel. I made it through a good chunk of typing and I'm still getting into the opening act of the novel, but it felt good to be writing again. And it feels good to be earning a living with my pen again.

To make it even better, the holidays are coming up. Bethany and I did the first bit of Christmas shopping while we were on vacation and we even have the gifts wrapped and waiting to go under a tree the day after Thanksgiving. Since we're speaking of Thanksgiving, we also made it out to Kroger this morning where we purchased a handsome 21 pound turkey for the holiday feast. I'm figuring on having about eight people total at dinner for Thanksgiving and that works out to almost three pounds of turkey per person. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Oh, and I now have plenty to read. So much so that I doubt I'll be purchasing much in the way of fine literature until next year. I have one or two titles that I plan to add to the Kindle when they're released because I'm closely following those series, but I think I'm pretty well set for a while.

Yes, life is good.

It's Good To Be Me

2010-11-06T19:33:00.000-04:00

There are some days that are just meant for not doing anything.

Today's been one of those days. I wish I could regale you with an exciting tale of adventure and narrow escapes, but it's just not that kind of day.

No, today is the kind of day where it looks warmer than it really is. Even the thermometer deceives. It makes you think it's about 60 degrees outside, but what it doesn't take into account is the wind. This wind holds more than the whisper of winter that comes in early fall. This is a full blown promise of the bitter cold that's coming.

The answer to that promise is soup. And hot homemade bread and a cold glass of Pepsi. And falling asleep on the couch watching reruns of Castle. And a good book, which I haven't yet made it to, but I will. I have plenty to read.

You're also reading the words of a man who's two days away from a nice little vacation in Pigeon Forge that will celebrate our second anniversary. Before that, I have two days of fill in work at The Virginian Review. Apparently the person who took my job after I left three years ago left yesterday and the editor asked if I'd come in and lend a hand to get them through. Which is cool. It'll be neat to get back in the newsroom after taking some time off from it for a few years.

But before that is a Sunday of football.

Yes, it's good to be me.

Cold Pizza & Engine Grease

2010-11-03T10:47:00.000-04:00

I like it when things are going my way. Who doesn't? And it's a good week here on the hill. On Tuesday evening and it's nice and cold out (great sleeping weather). It's the first of the month and the bills are paid without any major financial legerdemain, I have a couple of shiny new books to read (including two new Robert Jordan novels I've been saving) and next week Bethany and I are going to Tennessee for a little three day get away. Everything is going nice and smoothly.

So where's the catch, you ask? I found it last night.

Bryan's been working for two weeks in the evenings to replace the motor in his '05 Explorer. It gave up the ghost after a little more than 70,000 miles. The project isn't simple, but it is possible. But it gets more complicated as it goes. We found sand all over the interior, especially in some places where the presence of sand is most definitely Not A Good Thing. In a moment of frustration last week, Bryan busted the radiator as he pried on something with a crow bar. (I've seen Bryan stick a crow bar in a motor twice now and neither time has been good. The last time he attempted to use a crow bar to take the tension off the belt on the Volvo we spent twenty minutes with a hammer trying to get it out.) That was a $200 moment of frustration that was fixable.

The catch in my week that's going just a little too smoothly is that we spent three hours trying to get the new motor mounted in place last night. We started at 5:30, called a pizza in with intentions of going up and grabbing it before we were heavy in the middle of it. But Bryan's friend Dave (who has done this before and was there to be extra muscle to get the motor in place) convinced him to start while there was daylight since it wouldn't take long.

Wouldn't take long. Famous last words.

At 8:30 we still haven't wrangled the beast in place, though we have two bolts in and have managed to lock the harmonic stabilizer in a bind so that we can't turn it, which means there's a good chance that we have to back up and start over. We took a break, shed the coveralls and went for the pizza, flashlights and some batteries.

It was Pizza Hut's new Big Italy pizza, which is too big to fit in their warmer, so they just set it aside 'till we made it there. The pizza was only slightly warmer than the night air we were working in, which was solidly in the 40s.

But by the time made it back to Dave's he had fixed the problem and all we had to do was add the bolts.

Fortunately I like cold pizza. It even tastes better with a touch of engine grease.

If It Wasn't For The Turkey

2010-11-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

If it wasn't for the turkey I'd almost skip Thanksgiving and move straight on to Christmas.

And why not? Christmas is a magical time of snow and trees and decorations and Christmas cookies and...well, this list could go on for pages.

It's the first day of November and I'm already looking forward to the 26th. You see, the day after Thanksgiving is the day that we invite people up to ~~decorate our house~~ celebrate the day after Thanksgiving. There are usually cookies, leftovers and much laughter coupled with frustration as we try to figure out how to get all the lights connected and shining.

After running a couple errands today in Covington I was in the mood to walk through Wal-Mart. I wasn't necessarily looking to purchase anything, but I did walk away with a pair of much needed rip-stop cargo pants that look incredibly comfortable. Anyway, I noticed that Wal-Mart was gearing up for Christmas on the day after Halloween. So I drifted over the the Lawn & Garden/Christmas section. It smelled like cinnamon and candle wax. There were Christmas trees up and lit and three empty aisles in the process of being filled with Christmas paraphernalia (I really just wanted to use a bigger word there instead of stuff). And they had Christmas lights on sale. I picked up two boxes of icicle lights for $6 that I needed to replace what the blizzard ruined last year.

Since I was feeling the spirit and had some more time on my hands I meandered over to Hallmark to peruse the ornaments. They have some really cool new ornaments that light up, but they were on the expensive end of the price range. So I settled for a nice, carved-looking Santa and one A Christmas Story ornament for Bethany.

So, yea, if it wasn't for the turkey I'd be ready to put up a Christmas tree. I really love Christmas. But then again, I also like to eat...

Amy's Leaf

2010-10-31T00:20:00.000-04:00

This photograph adequately sums of the frustration of my fall.

I've been waiting and waiting for the explosion of color that we typically have this time of year and I've been disappointed. That's not to say that it hasn't been beautiful, because it has in its own way, but from a photographic standpoint the colors just weren't very vivid. It's almost as if most of the foliage just fell off while it was still green.

Instead of a landscape teeming with bright oranges, reds and yellows I've found myself shooting at a world that only has splashes of color. During a bridal portrait shoot this afternoon that Bethany conducted I was walking along the lake trail at Douthat and noticed that most of the leaves had fallen. Then I noticed that most of the leaves were brown or very dully colored. We stopped at a bench in front of the water fall at the lake and I noticed that of all the leaves at my feet, there was only one that had any real color to it. I stared at it for a long moment and then took the photo without disturbing anything.

Last year we had an abundance of color amid a wet and almost constantly raining autumn. It was great and it eventually led to a heavier than usual winter. This year the colors have been as sparse as the rain and I've found myself searching in different places for the splashes of color that I've been wanting to add to my collection.

But then again, I should be thankful for what color we have in the world. After everything that's happened this week I've gained a little more perspective on life than I once had. I know a girl who would have loved to have been able to see another autumn, but this one was her last. It was the message her mom imparted to me at the family visitation.

"If there's something you want to do in life, Josh, then do it. Don't make excuses not to. Don't put it off. Just do it. That was the only thing Amy regretted, the things she didn't do and won't get to do."

Heavy words that were driven home by the poignancy of the moment. Amy's life was cut short by disease that she fought with everything she had but couldn't beat. She'll never get to finish her degree, have children and do a thousand other things that I'm sure she wanted to do. Perhaps most heartbreakingly, she won't get to grow old with her husband.

When I die I hope that I can do so after a long life lived to its fullest. So as much as I wanted as vivid a fall as last year's, I think I'm just going to appreciate this one and the fact that, most likely and God willing, I'll be able to get up in the morning to enjoy another day with my wife.

So today (I'm writing this as Saturday turns to Sunday) when Bethany has another shoot and I walk along the same trail and see this leaf, I'm going to remember Amy, tell my wife I love her and be thankful for what I have.

I'd like to think that Amy would be happy knowing that I took that away from visiting with her family in the days after her passing.

I still wish the outcome could have been different...

A Little Pick Me Up

2010-10-29T14:08:00.000-04:00

I had an interesting, if somewhat vain experience today.

During the trek back down from Roaring Run falls last week I lost a foot off my tripod. It has a screw missing that tightens the clamp that holds the foot and I just keep forgetting to replace the screw. On the other hand, I usually remember to keep up with the feet of my tripod. Last week I didn't, but by fortunate happenstance a member of the camera club went back on the trail just the other day looking for his lost cell phone and came away with my foot.

So I went by the Fire & Light Gallery to retrieve it (where I also picked up a set of nice handmade coat hangers) and decided that I'd stop by the Clifton Forge Public Library on my way home to peruse the shelves. I have a Kindle, as I'm sure I've mentioned on this blog in the past, so going to the library has become a little like shopping in a bookstore for me now. Most stores don't care for the Kindle because it's an Amazon only product. Barnes & Noble has their own e-reader, the Nook, but I like the Kindle better and therefore I can't take the Kindle into a B&N and download books from Amazon and not the B&N online store.

So I go to the store and take notes on what books I want to buy. Or I just go to the library and look around. I was walking down a general fiction aisle at the library and I stumbled across my own two novels setting on the shelf. My novels. My name was on them. And they were on the shelf that was one of my favorites when I was kid, where I found Star Trek and Star Wars novels and later fantasy novels that introduced me to entire new worlds.

And my books were on those same shelves.

It's been a hard week and a long and busy month. I needed that little pick me up and didn't even realize it. I needed to see those books on that shelf and remember why I started writing in the first place.

I'd better be getting back to it.

Blowing My Own Horn

2010-10-27T23:08:00.000-04:00

This may be something of a record week for me. Three blog posts and three photographs. Not a bad bit of work if I do say so myself. (And I do. In the words of one Chiefie O'Rourke, if you don't blow your own horn, who will?)

This is the third keeper from my Roaring Run trip and, unlike the others, not something I've shot before. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see that this is the bottom of the cascade in yesterday's blog post. I really enjoy the shape of the water sliding down the rocks. I've never seen a stream move quite like that before. Notice how it sort of swings out, back in and then curves back out again? I think that's pretty neat. I'm also a fan of how the water almost (but not quite) seems to be an afterthought in the photograph. I wish that the sun had made a bigger impression in the photograph, but I think that having it there is a nice touch. Oh, an if you'll look closely in the foliage on the right, I'm fairly certain that's Gavin Dressler standing in my photograph.

In looking at everything I've shot recently I'm discovering that I much prefer to take a vertical photograph as opposed to a horizontal one. I'm not sure why, particularly since most of my photojournalism training involved shooting horizontally as a pretty standard practice and then cropping vertical later in post processing if I wanted to. It definitely lends itself well to shooting streams and waterfalls, so I think I'll keep the habit for now.

I may yet pull out one or two others from Sunday's trip, but these three were definitely the highlights for me. I only took about 20 photographs and I've culled the three I've shown you as the best. The photograph below was taken by Jeff Bartley (who has an aversion to being in these photographs) who volunteered to take the group photo of everyone that went on the outing. This isn't all the members of the Alleghany Camera Club by far and there were even a couple more people who showed up after the photograph was taken. Chuck Almarez passed this along to everyone after the outing, so I thought I'd post it here.

Then & Now

2010-10-25T23:43:00.000-04:00

I've shot quite a bit up at Roaring Run, particularly in autumn, and I always seem to come up with something new. Sometimes I'll even revisit an old favorite and see it in a different light.

This is another one of my keepers from Sunday's Roaring Run trip. I took a photo last year from almost the same position but at a completely different angle. The water was higher last year, taking away a lot of the gentle rolling you see in this image. There was also a great deal more color in the forest then as opposed to now.

The assignment for Sunday was capturing motion and light. Usually I use a really dark Neutral Density filter (about 9 stops worth) and take a three minute or so exposure. I was traveling in a pack Sunday and didn't have a great deal of time to spend on each photo like I normally would. So instead I shot with my 28mm wide angle lens and 50mm macro and closed the lens all the way down, lowered my ISO and used a polarizer to bring out the colors and give me another couple of stops of darkness.

Using the polarizer instead of the other filter gave me an entirely different image of the water. Sure, it wasn't as silky smooth as the others, but look at the image above. The water has a nice blue tint to it (mostly due to the fading light) and a great deal of flowing motion that may have been smoothed over in a longer exposure. I especially love the fact that the water fills up the entire bottom portion of the photograph before flowing to the left and then away from the camera.

Oh, and just for comparison, below you'll find the image I shot around the same time last year. See the difference?

Camera Club Outing

2010-10-24T20:13:00.000-04:00

Sunday afternoon was the inaugural outing of the Alleghany Camera Club. Since Saturday saw Bethany, Sarah and I shooting what should be the last wedding of the fall season, it was a great opportunity to go out and take a few nature photographs (which is the type of photography I love to do anyway).

About a dozen people, give or take a couple, showed up and hiked the 0.6 mile trail up to the top of Roaring Run. I came away with three really good shots that I'm pleased with and a fourth that I'm still mulling over. The assignment was Capturing Light & Motion, so the challenge was to show the motion of the water without leaving out the fall colors (fading as they are).

This photo was taken about halfway up the creek at the third bridge that spans Roaring Run Creek. I took a similar picture last fall and the only fall color I had then was a vivid yellow. This year the colors aren't quite as vibrant but they are still very pretty.

What I like most about this photograph is the stump that's laying in the creek. I'm shooting from a low angle, so the tree stump looks much more massive than it really is. The stump was full of character, so much so that I actually stopped on the way back down the creek and spent another five minutes just looking at it and wondering how I could capture it's character. It really was a pretty big stump, I'd say every bit of three to four feet across the bottom.

I looked at that stump in the fading light of day for a long moment as I made my way back down. It made me think of an older time, almost prehistoric, when trees and animals were much greater in size than they are today. Ever seen The Land Before Time cartoon where the leaf falls down and lands on the head of the Apatosaurus and covers his entire head? Or see the fossils of the dragonflies that had a wingspan of six feet? This tree stump laying calmly in the creek reminded me of those this, as if this once mighty giant tree belonged to an older time.

I didn't realize it figured so prominently into this shot until I made it back home and put it up on the monitor for processing. I'm glad that I took it now, because I think I captured the character of that old stump as it appeared to me then. That may be one of the more successful images I've ever made.

First Meetings

2010-10-21T13:33:00.000-04:00

If ever there was a fall day, it's this one. The sun is shining and it's a little warm, but there's a stiff breeze blowing that holds the first whispers of winter. Every couple of minutes I hear it whistle outside my window, accompanied by the skittering of leaves as they're strewn haphazardly across the world.

It was on a day like this when I first met Drizzt Do'Urden.

Those of you who read fantasy are no doubt familiar with the dark elf who turned his back on a life of evil and instead dedicated himself to the light. R.A. Salvatore created him back in the late 80s, I believe, and gave us one of fantasy's most popular heroes.

I discovered Drizzt during my freshman year of college. Over the summer Devan had introduced me to epic fantasy in the form of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Coupled with Tolkien's masterpieces, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it was enough to spark my interest in a world of reading that I hadn't really explored.

I remember buying my first Drizzt book, The Legacy of the Drow at Waldenbooks in Tanglewood Mall. It was an omnibus edition that held four books and it seemed like a bargain at $20. The illustration on the cover was badly done, but I looked past that long enough to try it out. Salvatore's world was unlike anything I'd ever read before and a bit confusing at first, but I found myself hooked inside of a dozen pages.

I don't usually find a great deal of depth in Salvatore's novels. They tend to deliver hard hitting, rollicking fantasy adventures laced with heavier themes that may or may not be picked up at the reader's leisure. His characters are vibrant and fun, particularly his dwarves. And let me tell you that no one writes dwarves like Salvatore.

His dwarves are hard drinking, hard living, hard fighting heroes that are comic just because they're so over the top. These guys are the friends you want to have because there is no doubting where you stand with them. They are what they are and they revel in it.

Bethany and I had our first date after Christmas that year. There was a movie out that I wanted to see, The Last Samurai and it was playing only in one theater in Roanoke. We made it over there in time to take a detour by the mall to stop at Waldenbooks to pick up The Cleric Quintet, another omnibus of five books set in Drizzt's world. I had a little money saved, enough to take her out to the movies and to purchase a new book. I'm willing to bet that Bethany doesn't remember buying that book, but I do. (And before you chime in about the lack of romance inherent in taking a date to the bookstore, I can also tell you what she wore, what theater we were in and where we sat. So there.)

Salvatore has been a heavy part of my fall reading since that year. It seems almost a tradition now that he publishes a new novel, somehow related to Drizzt, ever October. It was the next year that The Hunter's Blades trilogy came out and I found myself once more traveling down an autumn road with Drizzt with the wind at our backs, scimitar in hand, daring any enemy that had the nerve to challenge us.

It was great to see that Salvatore published another Drizzt tale again this fall. It was even better to realize that my forays into The Wheel of Time, and A Song Of Ice and Fire had caused me to miss a Drizzt novel. So now I have to play a little catch up and see if I can make it to the newest novel before October ends.

And a day like today is perfect for reading.

The Story In The Choice

2010-10-20T18:57:00.000-04:00

In my quest to be come a successful novelist (and by successful I mean at a level where penning works of fiction is all that I do for a living) I've devoted a great deal of time and effort over the years to studying the works of others. Mostly I've been looking at how good authors build story lines and deal with character development. Sometimes I also look at the root of a story, at what the author's trying to say and how that message has affected his writing.

The great thing about the written word, and novels in particular, is that every now and then you come across a gem of a line that really strikes to the core of what the tale is about. I found one such line in my reading last night. The joy of reading on my Kindle is that I can now mark these gems and come back to them later. This one goes a little something like this:

"You know as well as I, Jean-Luc, that in times of crisis, difficult choices have to be made by good people willing to take on the burden, even if means damning themselves in the process."

You may guess that it comes from a Star Trek novel and while those novels tend to be written strictly for entertainment purposes there does tend to be a great deal of philosophical meandering hidden in them. Regardless of the source, I believe that this statement is meandering in the direction of attempting to define the role of heroes in literature from a writer's perspective.

Over the course of the past two years I've really been making an effort to look at my own writing and compare it truthfully and honestly with others that I've studied. One thing I've learned, and that this quotation brings to mind, is that it's not so much the act that makes the character heroic, but the choice.

After all, isn't the choice to serve one side or the other all that separates the heroes from the villains? There is no drama in knowing that your hero is going to save the day. Sure, we all suspect that he will. Who out there really thinks that, when presented the choice, that the main character is going to choose the darkness over the light and turn out to be a bad guy anyway?

I believe that the drama in every hero and heroic action is in the sacrifice the hero chooses to make. The decision to act heroically shouldn't be easily made, I think. It should be something that comes with a heavy price, with obvious and hidden consequences that the character should have to deal with.

In my career I've written epic fantasy and literary fiction and now I'm trying my hand at young adult fantasy and a mystery novel. To me, there is just something appealing about the fate of the world coming down to a choice that one man doesn't want to make. There's also something appealing about one man changing the fate of nations just because he's trying follow the demands of his conscience and for no other reason but the fact that he can sleep at night.

But in all the novels I've read, I've learned that the heroes I most admire and whose stories I'm interested in face choices like this. They don't want to be heroes. They don't ask to be heroes, but for whatever reason they choose to be heroes

In that choice, and in whatever sacrifice it demands, lies the story.

The Best Soup I've Made Yet

2010-10-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

Last night I made the best homemade chicken noodle soup I've made yet.

The recipe came from my sister in law, Heather, though I can't confess to know where she picked it up from. I've put it on here in the past, but last night I decided to do something just a shade different. Ever see how those chefs on The Food Network take a healthy pinch of kosher salt and sprinkle it in their dishes? Well I did that before I boiled the chicken. Oh...it was perfection in a pot. The salt really sharpened the flavor of the chicken broth and had a great influence on the noodles.

I spent most of the day running errands in Roanoke. I was flying solo, which is a pretty rare event, so I spent a couple of quality hours in the bookstores perusing the shelves. I came home with a wedding photography book for Bethany as an early anniversary present that looks pretty interesting (which means I'll probably be reading it too).

Speaking of wedding photography, we're on the last week of our October wedding crush. We've successfully shot three weddings so far this month and we have a wedding in Vinton that promises to be very photogenic. So much so that we're bringing in a friend to add to the shoot and so we can train someone as a back up in case one of us ever gets sick or just wants to take a break from it.

Sunday I'll be leading the first outing of the Alleghany Camera Club at Roaring Run beginning at 4 p.m. The weather looks promising and I'm hoping we'll have a little more color to enjoy by then. I'm hoping to be able to snag a few outdoor photographs to place in the "Needs Processed" pile to shake things up a bit.

Judging by our shooting schedule we'll be polishing off the last of the fall portrait sessions by the sixth of November. Bethany and I are planning to take a little vacation the following week (to where exactly we haven't decided) and after than I'm hoping that I'll be able to settle back in and spend some quality time on my writing projects and perhaps even pick up another tune or two on the guitar.

I'm definitely hoping to get some more reading done as well. I've stumbled into a pretty rich vein of fall books. My current read is a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel called Hollow Men that is so intense that it almost feels like watching an episode. After that I'm thinking I'll get to James Patterson's Kiss The Girls, his second Alex Cross mystery novel, and then Dragons of the Hourglass Mage by long time favorites Weis & Hickman to round out the fall.

And by then it'll be time for all the holiday food....

A Loss For Words

2010-10-15T00:34:00.000-04:00

I'm a writer. That means a lot of things, but it means I have a pretty heavy relationship with the written word. Sometimes it's long term and serious. Sometimes it's just flirty and fun and sometimes it's not something you ever admit to in public. At any level, the written word is a pretty solid part of the foundation of my life. I can't imagine my world without it.

So you can imagine my surprise when the written word fails.

The best writers look at the world and try to make sense out of it. You may not believe it, but at heart that's what any writer worth his ink is doing. Every hero is somehow a self portrait, every plot rooted somewhere in the rich soil of life. I guarantee you everyone, at some point in their lives, has written something that moved someone to tears or made someone's heart explode from happiness. The written word is a powerful, moving force in our lives, no matter how far past paper and ink technology takes us.

But sometimes the words just don't work. Sometimes there's just not any words that really mean a damn thing because life is just too large to condense into syllables. Sometimes you just can't make sense of it because there is no sense to be found.

I can hear my Mom fussing at me now, telling me that you just have to accept that that's the way it is sometimes. Where's your faith? Life isn't fair and not everyone gets a good deal, so don't worry so much about what you can't understand and treasure the good that you've enjoyed.

It's a good thought, one I can appreciate and even learn from. I still wish I could find the words that make sense of it all, the words that comfort and bring peace.

A Two-Nighter & Pork Chops

2010-10-13T20:45:00.000-04:00

The Green Mile was a two-nighter. In all honesty, it probably would have been an epic one night stand had I felt up to it. If you haven't read The Green Mile yet, go find a copy. I polished it off in basically two really long sittings. The story is excellent, the narration perfect and the premise is enough to provoke some pretty heavy heavy thoughts, all of which is a requirement to meet my "Must Read Standards."

I felt like Stephen King explained himself just enough to satisfy the reader and yet managed to leave enough mystery to leave the reader with a few tantalizing unanswered questions. I've only read three of his novels to date, but there's no doubt in my mind that he is a master storyteller. He may not crank out something at this level with every novel, but The Green Mile certainly stands out above the rest of his works in my mind.

I mentioned in a previous post that we were planning to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving last Sunday at The Student Knitter's house. We did and dinner was excellent (not that I expected any less. They really know how to cook). And, like any cool host, they sent us home with gifts: green peppers and jalapeños out of their garden. They have a problem that most people would like to have. Their garden just won't stop growing, even this late in the year.

Not one to allow good, garden fresh produce go to waste I tried out a new recipe tonight. Paula Deen had an episode about grilling last week and one of the things she grilled was pork chops topped with green peppers and pineapples. It looked delicious and I stored that away in my head to give it a try. Since I had some fresh peppers I served it up tonight.

I don't have a link for the recipe, but it's really pretty simple. Take whatever pork chops you want to use, place a thick slice of pepper and pineapple on each chop and wrap them individually in aluminum foil. I left mine on the grill for 20 minutes and they were cooked to perfection. You should salt and pepper the pork before cooking, something that I forgot to do. The pineapple flavor is pretty subtle and the peppers taste great. Granted, it wasn't the best thing I've ever grilled, but it's worth making a second time around.

It's about time to wrap this up since Ghost Hunters is about to come on SyFy. I have a few hundred wedding photos left to get through and I'm hoping to knock off a few of them right now. Tomorrow I'll be visiting my grandparents for their 71st wedding anniversary and then getting back the grind on Friday.

A Premature Review & An Invitation

2010-10-12T22:54:00.001-04:00

I found my fall read.

Monday morning I blogged about how I hadn't yet found that exciting fall read to fill my free hours. I went to work, put in a few hours and started rereading a Star Trek novel. I sat that aside and on a whim picked up Stephen King's The Green Mile.

Incredible.

It's been quite a while since I've read a book that's kept me up all night and The Green Mile came pretty close to succeeding. I'm not really a Stephen King fan, though I've said all along that he's one of the best essayists around. If you don't believe me, check out this essay on the finale of Harry Potter and the series as a whole.

But I digress.

I have a close group of friends that read and I value their literary opinions highly. To a man, they've recommended The Green Mile. I put it off for a long time and I'm regretting having put it off for so long. I don't know what it is about this tale that's pulled me in. It's almost...homespun in a way. I get the feeling that I'm dipping in to something slightly surreal, something otherworldly when I read The Green Mile. The narration is down home simple, told from the first person perspective of the chief prison guard of the Depression Era death row known as the Green Mile.

Paul (the narrator) reminds me just a little of the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Remember how in the beginning the Mariner reaches out and grabs the wedding party and holds them spellbound as he relates his tale? I've been under his spell since late Monday evening. I've reeled off nearly 300 pages since then. It's gripping, at times gruesome as it unabashedly wallows in the macabre...yet there's something more here that I haven't seen yet.

I haven't finished, so if you comment, please don't spoil anything for me just yet. I've been carrying the book around with me everywhere I've went today, trying to sneak in a few pages when no one was looking between tasks. With any luck I'll be blogging about the end within a day.

Switching Gears

How's that for a smooth transition? Hey, at least I warned you.

The photo above is from one of my absolute favorite shooting locations: Roaring Run. It was one of the last I took last year and I though it fitting to post tonight since my thoughts have been taking me back along that stream these past few days.

On October 24th I'll be leading a photo outing for the Alleghany Camera Club to that very site. I've been asked to make some notes and a very brief, but helpful (I hope) presentation on capturing motion and light. We're going to meet at Fire & Light Gallery at 3 p.m., leave by 3:15 and be on the trail by 4 p.m. If the weather cooperates we should have some pretty sweet diffuse light coupled with an array of fall colors, a perfect recipe for great photographs if there ever was one.

This photo comes from about the halfway point of the hike. The stream takes a hard bend to the left (as you're walking upstream) and the trail breaks away to a higher vantage point for a hundred feet or so. To get this photo I actually jumped off the trail and crawled down the edge of the river. I put the feet of the tripod in the water by the bank and took about a 3 minute exposure to capture this image. There are a thousand different ways to shoot a moving stream, but one of my go to methods is to get right down in the water and shoot upstream.

If you're interested in attending, please do. You can comment here on this blog or e-mail me at SportsWriter2303@aol.com. I'll be happy to reply with directions or an e-mailed copy of the notes once I work them up.

Looking For The Next Read

2010-10-11T07:00:00.001-04:00

I love fall. Just thinking about it brings about the scent of crisp, cool air laden with the rich aroma of falling leaves and the first chill, pure hint of winter. Leaves crunch under food. The days become shorter and grayer. Publishers start cranking out new reads.

Ok. Admittedly that last part may be something that only I notice. It is true, however. There is usually a big push push before summer that's highly publicized. Publishers try to capitalize on the idea of the summer reading list and the perfect beach read. The same thing happens in the fall of the year, only to less fanfare.

My reading tends to move in cycles. Usually in the summer time I have a fairly long series to see me through the dog days. I spent one summer in the world of the Sword of Truth. Another summer in the core of the DragonLance world and my most recent summer aboard the HMS Surprise with Captain Jack Aubrey.

In the fall I tend to look toward the new releases to satisfy my fall reads. Last year David Liss kept me entertained while Paolini didn't quite deliver the action packed sequel I was looking for. The pickings were slim last fall, though I'm not sure why. Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson did offer up the first of the final three books of The Wheel of Time, but I've been holding back a bit on those so I can savor the ending of a series I've been following since I was a freshman at college.

I've mentioned my latest trend of reading mystery novels, but frankly I'm at a loss in this genre. I've picked up a few and have been let down so far. They're so over the top dramatic that it's hard to take for long stretches at a time. The detectives all come off has too hard boiled, or as if they're trying to be. The suspense and the drama is done with a heavy hand that bludgeons the reader instead of a soft hand that gently allows the elements to build without notice until they've reached the boiling point. I've read the Castle novels, which are a lot of fun, and I've dipped back in to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot again (let's face it, the Brits know how to spin a darn good mystery yarn).

What it all boils down to is I'm looking for my next good read. My to read shelf has certainly dwindled and I'm just not in the mood for what's left. Perhaps it is a case of familiarity breeding contempt since most of what is left are the second and third books in a various series. I want something solid, something satisfying and thought provoking. Length isn't an issue. In fact, the longer the better. Any suggestions?

Some Of My Best Thinking

2010-10-09T23:35:00.001-04:00

I do some of my best thinking when I'm not thinking. It's true. That may sound a little counter intuitive, but let's face it...I lead a rugged life of adventure and non stop hilarity that would entertain millions of people if anyone ever wanted to make a sitcom of my life.

But I digress.

As I was saying, I do some of my best thinking when I'm not really thinking about what I need to be thinking about. Take yesterday for example. I was all over the place, from Covington to Lewisburg chasing down some drafting work while putting in some part time hours at the old job. Somewhere along the line, when I wasn't completely paying attention to what I should have been paying attention to, I figured out my character.

You see, I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted to write a murder mystery. I really did write them when I was a kid. I didn't understand near enough about the genre or life in general to pull it off with any degree of realism, but I did try to model my would be detectives on the classics...Sam Spade, Sherlock Holmes, the guy that Bill Cosby played on The Cosby Mysteries...

I've learned in my writing that to really write a character well, you have to understand that character. That's why Sam in The Crownless King is more or less a fictional me. That's also why Crownless is some of my best work to date. In revisiting the idea of creating a fictional detective I've been considering his back story as a way to really get inside his head without making him another fictional me. (By the way, is that something authors do a great deal of? I wonder how many famous characters are just fictionalized versions of their creator, who's living vicariously through them.)

And out of the blue it hit me. I've already written the back story. I just had to apply it. You see, when I was in high school I had this idea for the ending of a novel. I could see it all in my head. When I was a freshman at DSLCC, I put it down on paper (in John Barnes' World History class. I do my best work when I'm not supposed to be doing it.) I took it home, typed it up, edited a half a dozen times, and created a dozen pages of something that I've been proud to have written for six or seven years now.

But it was the ending to a novel that I had no idea where it started. There have been some vague rumblings, but nothing definite ever came to life. Now, however, it has become the back story of fiction's newest detective. I'm going to apply it and then see where writing new adventures with this detective takes the old story. If I can ever hash out the beginning of that novel, it will be a prequel to the new stuff I write. Who knows? Maybe I'll strike gold and write a bestseller that gets turned into a movie.

Then I can play the main character in the movie.

An Allergic Refraction

2010-10-06T23:05:00.001-04:00

I have found these days that the only real writing I'm accomplishing is this blog. It surprises me, because not only have I been attempting to write every day I've been attempting to work on the Druid project with Devan.

But you know what? I'm pragmatic, I'll roll with it. Photography is taking on a pretty big role in my life at the moment and I'm just going to take the time to deal with that so that it settles back in to the routine of my creative life. I've mentioned that we have a full October, but to give you a glimpse into that I will tell you know that I've already processed approximately 1,100 photographs this week. I have just about as many more to hopefully get finished before Saturday.

In my last post I mentioned the first meeting of the Alleghany Camera Club. It was a success and there's another meeting set for October 28. Not only that, but there is an outing scheduled for one of my favorite shooting locations, Roaring Run, and it's my job to see to the organization of it. I don't know just what's involved yet, but I think I'll have the opportunity to find out tomorrow when I meet with Chuck Almarez. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

I should mention that on the list of things I'm looking forward to is Canadian Thanksgiving. We have a good friend, Sarah, (The Student Knitter) who just happens to be Canadian. So of course she celebrates Canadian Thanksgiving, which is earlier than the American version of the holiday. Which is cool because, in effect, we get to attend two Thanksgiving dinners. It was a pretty relaxed dinner party and we're looking forward to more of the same on Sunday.

Last year I was introduced to cribbage, a pretty cool card game that took me a couple of hands to figure out and that I've probably forgotten how to play in the year that followed. I was also introduced to Bubbles & Squeak, a dish that I doubt I would've tried otherwise. This year I've heard there is going to be a Butternut Squash Risotto. I've never had that and it sounds pretty good. The cooking at Sarah's house tends toward the excellent and varied and I'm looking forward to trying something new.

In the past week I've managed to gain a better understanding of my job situation. That's been a weight off my shoulders that I didn't realize was as heavy as it was. Dealing with that has made me feel much better about a lot of things, including life in general. I've a lot to look forward to in the days ahead.

Since it's fall and I haven't shot anything new outdoors, I'm offering up the above photo as a place holder. I shot it in the months before my marriage nearly two years ago. It's rag weed pinned up against a wall by a sheet of glass that's reflecting the image of the woods behind my grandpa's house. I've named it Allergic Refraction and I even entered it in the Fall Festival Art Show the year that I took it. It didn't place (I've never placed in any photo competition) but it did receive a great deal of positive feedback. It's one of the few prints of my own work that I have up in our house.

Dreaming of Sleep

2010-10-04T01:52:00.000-04:00

I have never really been an insomniac, but every now and then I just can't make myself drift off to sleep the way I'd like to. When I was employed full time I could be asleep nearly as soon as my head hit the pillow. It was a skill developed over the years by cramming all the activities that I actually wanted to do into the late evening hours before resting up to spend the better part of my day doing all the work related activities that I had to do.

Having not been employed on any regular basis since February, my sleep schedule has become pretty varied. I've been able to spend long nights reading, playing video games or scratching away at a notebook by a dim light as Bethany slept soundly beside me. Tonight is one of those nights that I just can't make myself get to sleep.

I finally rolled out of bed just before 1 a.m. and decided I would do a little writing. Nothing too serious, just a little meandering on a murder mystery idea I've had bouncing around in various forms since high school. I've tapping away at it for the last 35 minutes (and by the way, we finally broke down and purchased a new Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. Not one of the fancy ones that has the keyboard broken into two segments, but one of the comfortable, gently curbed black ones that are an absolute joy to type on.) and I just realized that everything I've written is bad. Painfully bad. So bad that I hit the close button immediately and declined to save any of the few hundred words I'd cranked out.

So...it's not a night for writing. Except I'm going to blog. About nothing in general, really. It's almost quiet enough in the house at 1:30 in the morning to hear the gentle pitter-patter of the drizzling rain outside. Tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy and even though the rest of the week is supposed to be dry I'm hoping that these cool temperatures will shock the leaves into turning colors.

After a busy week and weekend of shooting, Bethany and I easily have a couple thousand photos to sort through and process with another wedding looming on the horizon for Saturday. I've set myself the goal of finishing the three portrait sessions and at least my half of the wedding by Friday. If we don't stay ahead of this we'll be buried under a digital mountain by the end of the month.

Speaking of endings, I finished Patrick O'Brian's The Wine Dark Sea almost two hours ago, book #17 in his Aubrey-Marturin series. I really am going to miss this series when I've read it all. There are 20 full novels and one that was left incomplete upon O'Brian's death a few years ago. There are some books that I wish I could read for the first time again and without exception every book in that series has been like that. The next two books, The Commodore and The Yellow Admiral are in the mail at the cost of a penny a piece, thanks to the wonders of Amazon.

Until they get here I'm going to delve in to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's The Wheel of Darkness. It's had resoundingly bad review from my trust literary circle so far, but it's the next in the Pendergast series and I'm bound to read it if I want to get any further along. The good news is that Preston and Child have just the right touch of the macabre to make for the perfect October read.

And since it's October I may pull Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree off the shelf. It's a classic kid's book that my seventh grade teacher read to us in the fall of that year. It stuck with me for so long that I finally chased down a copy of it last year after Halloween and it deserves another appreciative read, much like The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, a perennial favorite. I don't know how many times I've read that little yellow paged novel, but that Newbury Award winning puzzle mystery has never gotten old.

And it's now almost 2 a.m. Think I'm going to give this sleep thing another try.

The First Meeting of the Alleghany Camera Club

2010-10-01T20:08:00.000-04:00

Last night was the second meeting, but first official, of the Alleghany Camera Club. It was a very enjoyable experience. Everyone was supposed to bring in their favorite picture and tell why and how they took it. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed hearing everyone's stories.

Since I've already posted the photo I used at the meeting last night I'm posting this one. This photo is the first bird picture that I took with my 75-300mm lens about seven years ago. It was taken in Patrick's backyard before I even really knew what I was doing and I ended up with a photo that I've kept for this long. I was digging through some old files to find some sports photos for a portfolio for a job interview when I found the digital file for this one. I thought I'd lost the file and was very happy to add that to my collection of processed work.

The meeting was held at Chuck Almarez's Fire & Light Gallery in downtown Clifton Forge, a gallery that I'm happy to say I've worked at a bit. Chuck has let me freelance shoot a lot over the past few years and I'm looking forward to helping him again next week. His KidPix Photography business has been shooting area sports teams for years and it's pretty cool to get to help out with that on occasion.

It looks like our next meeting is going to be October 28 and we'll also have the opportunity to participate in a tour of The Roanoke Times and hear a presentation from the head of the paper's photography department a week before that. It all sounds pretty interesting.

It's the first weekend in October and the beginning of our crush of weddings. We'll be shooting the Persinger-Walton wedding tomorrow. It's an outdoor wedding, so that takes some of the stress of lighting away. The reception looks like it's going to be fun and it's going to have my favorite ham rolls from the A&B Bakery, so I'm good to go.

A Very Happy Friday

2010-09-24T15:11:00.000-04:00

It was almost Christmas for me today. I've been working on cleaning the house today and doing some other odds and ends. While I was seeing to those chores I kept an anxious eye on the window for the UPS truck and the mail. I kept a pretty solid watch until I went to the bathroom and I came back out to realize I'd missed them both.

The UPS truck delivered a box from Amazon, which is always a delight. I now have in my possession the second seasons of both Castle and Psych, two of my favorite mystery shows. Castle will be viewed with Bethany but Psych will be my own little treasure to sit and view as I process photos all month.

My order from Mpix came in today. I love the quality of the work at Mpix and they've never let me down once. I've been told their prices could be lower, but I don't mind paying for such high quality at the exceptional speed at which they work. I ordered three prints and I thought I ordered them matted. Turns out I ordered them flush mounted on matting material and while it wasn't what I thought I was ordering (my mistake, not theirs) the end result is very, very nice.

I ordered three prints, two of which will be shown at the next meeting of the Alleghany Camera Club Thursday evening and the third that was a test to see how the image looked printed. One of the two for the ACC was a photo of Bethany's and I have to admit that her shot is the best of the three. The other one for the club is one my favorite motion blurs. The assignment was bring in your favorite photo and explain why you took it and I think we've both accomplished that.

Speaking of my favorite photos, the photo included on this post is going to be added to this list. I really enjoy how clear and pure the water looks and I especially like the sharpness of the ripples. We were up there early in the day last Sunday and just happened to catch the light at the perfect angle for this kind of shot. I took it last weekend during a photo shoot of a young boy with his mom and grandma. As usual, it seems that I do some of my best work when I'm doing something other than what I'm supposed to be doing. I can't explain this phenomena, I just roll with it.

A Change Of Perspective

2010-09-22T14:28:00.000-04:00

I must admit to being something of a nerd. I'm not the painfully nerdy type you see on The Big Bang Theory or anything like that, but I do geek out on occasion. I can't wait for the next Star Trek novel to come out. I'm drooling over Firefly on Blu-Ray. I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are two television series that were fine examples of drama, action and comedy.

That list could go on for a long time so let's just end it there.

The point is that among the things that I "geek out" about is good writing. I watch television shows and wonder what goes into making them. I read books and wonder how the author knew to take his characters in that direction. I want to know how it's done. I want to know the gritty, messy details that are covered up by the scenes. So I often watch the writer/director commentary on DVDs. (Yes, go on. Add that to the list of nerdiness in the first paragraph. It's OK.)

I've spent the week trying to get caught up on processing photos before the October rush. When I'm processing I usually flip on a disc or two of a television series that I have on DVD and just let it roll as I get into the groove of processing. Today I started out with Two and a Half Men and quickly realized I was bored with it. I didn't make it through the first 22 minute episode before pulling the plug. Instead I put in my Blu-Ray copy of Serenity, scrolled through the extras and put on the writer/director commentary.

I have a knack for being able to do one thing and listen to another. It's how I made it through school without ever studying. So as I processed I listened to what Joss Whedon talked about on the show. Some of it was interesting without being useful. I found the commentary on lenses he used during the shooting fascinating, though I doubt it will translate into photography usefulness. What I really focused on instead was the commentary on the characters themselves and I learned a few surprising things.

The first thing I didn't realize, though in hindsight I should have, is that the movie is Mal's story as told by River. The entire movie is wrapped around getting Mal from the dark place he starts at to the better place he ends at because of River's plight. Fascinating.

The second thing I keyed on was how the story itself was told, what little tricks of the trade were used to pull the viewer in and give him all the back story he needed without beating him over the head with it. Again, some of that I noticed, some of it I didn't.

What really struck me the hardest, however, was listening to Joss Whedon speak about the vision he had for the movie and the characters he'd created. Everything he did, every scene, every bit of dialog was aimed at bringing that vision to life. There wasn't a single bit of extraneous material.

But more importantly, Whedon had a vision. He knew what he was sitting down to create. He may not have known all the stops the story would take along the way, but he knew what he was creating. It was analyzed and thought through before the pen hit the page.

It made me realize that I rarely, if ever, have asked myself an important question when starting a project, namely this one: What is it I'm trying to do? What is it I'm trying to create? Why am I doing this?

Looking back I can see where that's hurt my creative efforts. I think I've only satisfactorily answered that question once, with The Crownless King. The Sixth Sword may very well come in a close second at that. Yet for the most part weak answers to those questions have made the quality of my work less than in could be, I believe, and have caused me to lack focus lately.

I'm not saying the past six months have been wasted, but I see now how answering those questions could have made me put the time to a better creative use. I can see now that I must readjust my perspective if I'm going to have a shot at a successful writing career at all.

A Declaration Of Autumn

2010-09-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

I'm officially declaring it to be fall. It's decided. I don't care how hot it is. I don't care that the leaves have just started to change around here. It's fall. Deal with it.

I'm declaring it fall because Bethany and I picked up a soup recipe book at Kroger and I'll be breaking out the Crock Pot to slow roast a pork loin for dinner, kind of a warm up for the slow cooker work that will be done as the weather cools. It looks like the first fall like temperatures will be in for next week, so I'm going to get ready.

My first two days of this week are going to be spent at home. I'm going to change the lock on the front door. Then I'm going to strip all the Morning Glories off the porch (they're dying anyway) and get them properly disposed of. I may or may not break out the lawn mower for what I hope will be a final time this season. The deciding factor will be the shape of the yard after a close examination. I'm going to start my search for a good coat rack to place by the door and a welcome mat to match for those rainy days and weeks of wet snow like we had last year. Bethany's going to pull out the fall decorations and start spreading them festively throughout the house.

Bring on the cold weather, the awesome football and the seasonal foods. I'm ready for corn mazes and Halloween costumes and even to start thinking about a Christmas wish list and Hallmark ornaments. This is my favorite time of year and I'm declaring that it has arrived.

The Great Pumpkin should soon follow suit.

A Fun Friday

2010-09-17T14:14:00.000-04:00

One thing I really enjoy about Fridays is the anticipation of the weekend and this one is going to be a good one. We have pictures to take and process, of course, but we're going to spend some time with a good friend playing the Wii and hopefully have some space to relax in there somewhere.

On the work front I just got off the phone with Heather Gladden and she's on board and sounds excited to get started on some stuff for our Druid project. I met with Devan yesterday and he left me with a better idea of where the story is going and some research materials to delve into Celtic history. All I need now is a new keyboard because this one just isn't making me happy when it comes down to spending quality writing hours at it.

The Druid project is going to be something a little different for Devan and I. We're setting out with the idea of writing a young adult novel and we're going to take the time to really hammer at this and use it as a benchmark to see where our writing skills are at. It will be a true collaborative effort and may even be something we take to an agent and see about making a career out of this writing hobby.

But before I can do any of that, the house needs to be cleaned before we leave for a very good home cooked dinner. Better get moving.

Looking Foward To Fall

2010-09-15T10:04:00.000-04:00

We're back from vacation and while it was a good trip, I'm glad to be home. I'm not going to lie. I really like sleeping in my own bed and being in my own home. Family togetherness is great and all that, but there's nothing quite like home.

As I mentioned in the last post the writing is getting back on track. In fact, Devan and I are having our first meeting tomorrow about The Hunter and I'm looking forward to really discussing the vision of the novel and the series. I think it will go a long way toward speeding work along, particularly since it'll be the first time we've been able to speak in person about the project since he came up with the idea while he was in Iraq.

My current read is The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. It's fun, but it's almost an homage to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I think that all the epic fantasy written in the 70s and early 80s has a strong influence of Tolkien, be it in the story itself or the style of the writing. Next up on the To-Read List is probably going to be Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings. It has a pretty interesting premise and I'm excited to see what he does with it. It will also give me a feel for his writing before I plunge into the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time finale, which Sanderson co-wrote after Jordan's death.

I don't know how the weather is where you are, but here in western Virginia fall is starting to creep in. The nights are getting cool and the morning temperatures are barely in the 50s. I've been told that the leaves are starting to turn in Bath County, which is north of where I live and a lot higher in elevation. I went with Bethany and her mom to chorale practice last night in Lewisburg and I could already see some fall colors in that particular westerly direction.

Looking at the calendar I see that September is half over. I love October. Bethany's filled this one with weddings, but even still I'm looking forward to it. Cooler weather, better football, great food and awesome books. Fall is also publishing season and a lot of great reads are published this time of year. Of particular interest to me is The Towers of Midnight by Jordan and Sanderson on November 2.

I'm also counting down to the time when I make my annual attempt at jambalaya. I've made it twice, both times on a cool autumn Saturday when I could smell it cooking in the Crock Pot all day. Last year was a fiasco wherein I learned that there is a difference between instant rice and regular rice. The year before was better, though it came out mushy. This year will be my third attempt at making it and I have hopes of getting it right this time.

Fall puts me in mind of soups and stews and other warm foods. We have a great recipe for homemade chicken noodle soup, which will no doubt be made one weekend, and Bethany loves experimenting with the soups. The cooling weather just seems to demand that more attention be paid to cooking and eating fine foods and I, for one, plan to answer that demand.

Back On The Wagon

2010-09-07T20:55:00.000-04:00

I have to plead distraction over the past week and a half as my excuse for not getting any real writing done. Remodeling the bathroom has taken up so much of my time that it was all I could do to get a decent night's sleep before getting up and going at the day again. We finished that up last Friday and Friday melted into a weekend filled with family and friends.

Since it was a holiday weekend I didn't really accomplish anything written. Monday was an off day and so today, Tuesday, has become my Monday. And still, I'm not getting much of anything accomplished.

Part of the reason for it today is Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Xbox 360. That game is insanely good. It's Batman as he was meant to be: dark, brooding and squaring off against the Joker with the lives of countless innocents hanging in the balance. It doesn't really get any better than that.

I also finished reading The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins over the weekend. Without really spoiling anything, it was a great young adult series that I found to be very entertaining. Devan was the first to recommend it, and then Dick, and when I have a recommendation from two literary opinions that I highly respect I have no choice but to dive into it. I was hooked quick and never wiggled free until I finished the series. I hope that Collins writes more. It will be interesting to see if her success will continue.

I'd like to say that I'll be making great literary strides myself this week, but that's just not going to happen. We're leaving Thursday morning for Tennessee to spend a few days in Pigeon Forge on a family vacation. I'll be doing some cooking and a lot of reading if my plans hold up. There's also a pool table and a Pac-Man game at this cabin we're staying at. I'm amazing at both, so I feel like they'll occupy my attention a good bit.

For a moment here I've questioned my dedication to writing. I went a few solid weeks of writing every day until the bathroom renovation broke my cycle. Even still, I've been making notes in my head and on paper as I've worked. I'm always writing in my head (I know it sounds like a cheat) and go through a few drafts before it makes it to paper. I don't think my dedication's wavered, but I think that it was slammed by a project that just consumed my every day for a week.

I got back on the wagon this morning in the weight room with Bryan. It's time for me to get back on the wagon with the writing too.

Why, Georgia, Why?

2010-09-05T21:36:00.000-04:00

We finished up the bathroom Friday night at about 8:30. I still have about fifteen minutes worth of finishing touches to lay down, but for now, it's finished. I know I promised pictures and I'll provide 'em, but at this point that almost seems like work so I think I'll let it be.

The bathroom took a toll on us both. We both were up 'till 2 a.m. every night since Monday trying to finish it off. All the dust we stirred up, combined with the lack of rest and decent food along with the first stirrings of fall have been enough to kick me in the butt and tweak my allergies. Thankfully, after a lazy day of Sunday rest, I'm feeling better than I have in almost four days.

So I've picked up my guitar for the first time in a few weeks. I set it aside a while back to focus on my writing and had some favorable results. Now that Devan is back from Iraq things should start moving in a better direction there at a quicker pace. In the meantime, music has been tugging at me and I'm back to practicing my guitar.

This is part of the reason why I so rarely master a talent: I can't focus on just one thing that I'm interested in long enough to become amazing at it. There's just so much out there that's fun and I really do want to be able to play just about anything on the guitar.

I stumbled on a lesson for John Mayer's Why, Georgia? off of his first album, Room for Squares. I love that song. It has an amazing intro that goes from intermediate to expert in the face of a few measures. It's been difficult since I haven't kept up my practicing, but I'll get there.

Saturday was a great day filled with good food and good friends. Patrick and Amber came up, as did Chris and Sarah and Bethany's sister, Heather, was in and we all spent the day playing games, cooking and swapping stories. It was the kind of good times that we need to have more often and I'm going to try to make a point to experience more frequently. In the past two year's of life it's been too easy to get caught up in the big events that I've almost forgotten that it's the little things that make life worth living. It may be too late for a New Year's resolution, but I'm making it nonetheless.

The Stuff Of Legends

2010-09-01T23:39:00.000-04:00

When last I left you breathlessly awaiting updates in blog land I was about to tear in to the bathroom. The tearing started Monday morning and it ended up being much more involved than I thought it was going to be.

But that's OK. My Plan A usually leaves a little something to be desired. My Plan B is usually the stuff of legends.

Bethany and I have been hard at it for the past three days. Monday was the stripping and prep work. Tuesday saw the painting of the paneling, the removal of the old sink and the discovery that the vinyl floor would have to be replaced and that the paneling didn't quite cover on one side of the wall since the new sink was shorter. The new vanity, naturally, doesn't quite jive with the old plumbing. With Bryan's assistance (and without it there'd be no new sink installed) the required piece will be in hand and installed tomorrow. The light installed nicely, which was about the only thing that went right yesterday.

Which brings me to today. The painting is done inside the bathroom. There's still a little bit of the trim work left to be dipped in white, but 98% of the painting is finished. I took a quick trip to Lexington today and picked up the new floor and the new panel, which doesn't quite match but it's the best I can do and it's going to work. Tomorrow I plan to unhook the vanity, lay the new floor, slide the vanity back into place, have Bryan secure the plumbing, and then reassemble the bathroom, all in plenty of time for Saturday's epic gathering.

So if everything goes according to my plan, and there's absolutely no reason it should because nothing has so far, by this time tomorrow night I'll be soaking in my tub in my newly finished bathroom. I promise to post pictures when I'm finished.

But it's 11:40 p.m. and time for a late dinner.

It's Gonna Be A Monkey

2010-08-29T22:44:00.001-04:00

I could entitle this blog post "Why You Should Never Take Your Wife To Lowe's When There's A Sale On," but if I'm being honest, it was at least partly my fault.

We've been wanting to redo the bathroom into something a little brighter. White wood paneling, a nice green up top, some more modern fixtures...you know, the usual. We were just getting started on the project when I was laid off from work. So naturally we cut back on our expenditures and the bathroom remodeling was set aside.

Well, months later we've come to a better financial point even though I'm still laid off. The future is still pretty uncertain, but things are looking up for a decently long while. Thanks to Bethany's sister, Heather, we have a short little family vacation coming up and then my unemployment extension came through, retroactively, which helped out a lot.

I mentioned last week that we've cleaned up the library, moved the computer and recreated the closet space in the bedroom. We went to Lowe's last night to get a closet organizer that Bethany's had her eye on. We like Lowe's now that we're homeowners and it's fun to walk around and dream about how we'd like to change our house. As we walked, we noticed the vanities had new low prices. Then we noticed the bathroom mirrors were on really, really good sale and then we stumbled on to the good sale on the faucets for the sink.

It was too good to pass up. We had intended to paint this week anyway if the schedule worked out. Now we have our sights set on something a little more ambitious: a complete overhaul of the bathroom. But it should be relatively simple. I have people that can help me with the sink. The painting should go like painting always does, painful to do but simple at the same time. The worst part will be stripping the wallpaper, which I'll be spending all day on today after Patrick and I pick up the new vanity with the built in sink.

The best part of all of this is that the entire remodeling will take less than $210, including vanity, paint and fixtures. I was pretty proud of that. I figured the sink alone would run a lot more than that.

Here's the catch.

We have a big Saturday planned. We're having a D&D session with some good friends that will take most of Saturday. The food will be excellent, the company even better and the game a lot of fun. We also have a bridal portrait session set for Friday evening after Bethany get's off work. We'd hoped to make it to Roanoke Friday evening to lay in some supplies for the pantry at Sam's. Oh, and take away Bethany's help Tuesday as she goes with her mom to Lewisburg to try out for the Greenbrier Valley Chorale (Bethany's already a member. It's her mom that's joining).

That's a lot of work on a short deadline. In the words of Bucky Katt, "It's gonna be a monkey."

Coming Home

2010-08-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

Today was a pretty busy day. Patrick and I got up early and headed west to split wood at my grandparents' house. It was a successful day, even if Patrick has no concept of time and made us 40 minutes late leaving this morning.

But more importantly, perhaps, today was the day that Devan made it back from Iraq. His plan landed around 8 p.m. this evening in Lynchburg, thereby completing his tour of duty in Iraq. I haven't seen him yet, nor have I heard from him and I figure I won't for a few days. After all, he hasn't seen his family since the first of the year and they deserve a happy, long and uninterrupted reunion.

Patrick summed it up pretty well on the ride home this evening. "I'm glad we didn't have to carry him."

Sadly, there are many friends and families who had to carry their loved one to their grave. I'm very happy that Devan made it home safely and we didn't have to. I still can't fight that twinge of sadness I feel when I think about those who didn't make it home. I have no concept of being in the military and I have no idea what war and combat are like. I have good friends who do. I have family members that do.

Grandpa (Mom's Dad) fought in World War II. He was a combat engineer and from what he's told me (and what he hasn't) I know he's seen his share of combat. He also told me about what it was like seeing all those soldiers that were nothing more than boys stretched out in rows under tarps as they waited for burial overseas or for transport to the home they would never see again.

I've never forgotten the look on his face when he told about seeing that. I doubt I ever will. The image of that in my head reminds me to shut up when I think about disagreeing with the reasons behind the war and open my mouth to support those fighting it instead. It's a free country and we have a right to disagree about what's going on. But before we do, I believe we should take a moment and think about what it's doing to the soldiers who are actually fighting the war and think instead about how we can support them.

The war is winding down. The last combat units left Iraq last week and there are only about 45,000 troops left overseas in a "peacekeeping" capacity that is considered a non-combat role. The time to debate whether or not we should have been there has arrived, though we are still a few years removed from the overall judgement of history on the subject.

But before that debate begins, we should all take a moment and thank the people who went to war and say a prayer for the families of those that didn't make it back. We can't all fight, but we all can, and should, respect those who have.

Looking For Artwork

2010-08-23T22:52:00.000-04:00

I really want an Amazing Spider-Man poster for my library. And I mean a good one. Not one of the new contemporary art styles. No, I want a really badass, 90s Todd McFarlane Spider-Man piece of art. That was the Spider-Man I grew up with and those really big eyes on the mask were awesome.

The first comic book that I ever purchased with my own money was Spider-Man Megazine #1. 92 pages of classic Spidey stories. It had Daredevil and the Vulture and the Human Torch and I was hooked for there after on Spider-Man. He was just a teenager, a kid really, who like books and science and was a photographer who just happened to have super powers and therefore had to save the world while trying to have a normal life. No matter how big the opponent or how bad a beating he took, he came back for more and never stopped mouthing off about it.

I admired that.

Now this poster is from the McFarlane era and pretty cool, though it's a little large. Or this one, which is the cover for Issue #122 that was an extremely major turning point in the series waaay back in the day. Now this poster is pretty vintage McFarlane, but there's no way I'd ever shell out that much for it, even if it was never displayed.

I hear all you people out there in blog land laughing at my penchant for comics books. But let me show something. When I'm rich and famous (notice I said when and not if) I'll be buying comic books like this one right here.

Yes, that's right. That comic is selling for over a grand. How cool is that?

I Am The Man Of The House

2010-08-22T22:02:00.000-04:00

I am the man of the house and I take on manly construction projects.

Ok, so all I really did was clean out the desk nook in the bedroom, break down the desk, move the shelves to more useful positions and hang the closet rod, but still. It was manly.

If you're wondering, I still have no idea why the lawnmower won't start. I began taking the thing apart and pieces started falling out so I just put it off until wiser heads could prevail. If they don't prevail by Tuesday I'm going to borrow a mower.

My next big project will be to clean the guest bedroom and really put it to rights, which Bethany will be taking a pretty big hand in. There's not much that needs to be done there, but we needed the closet space to get things moved out of that room and moving things out of that room will make space to move some stuff out of storage and get our small storage room converted into a temporary third bedroom.

On an unrelated food note, I tried out a new potato snack. I found the recipe on the Food Network web site and you can find it here: Garlic Roasted Potatoes. The recipe is just as easy as it sounds and really pretty tasty. We didn't have any small potatoes so I quartered three jumbo russet potatoes and put 'em in the oven for an hour and it worked just fine. Simple, quick prep time and a perfect snack. You just can't ask for better than that.

Cleaning The Room Of Deep Thinking

2010-08-21T17:29:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last five hours of my Saturday cleaning The Room of Deep Thinking.

My library, not the bathroom.

It worked out pretty well. I was able to free up some shelf space for magazines and a few books by tossing some old back issues of photo magazines I have no real interest in keeping. I've narrowed the collection down to three years worth of Outdoor Photographer and the six issues of Rangefinder that I somehow snagged for free. The computer has been moved into the library, which fits nicely on my old desk. I've even stored my acoustic guitar in its case under the desk, where it can be easily accessed, and my electric is in the stand in the corner where my fantasy section is shelved.

I took stock of what I have read and haven't read in my library as I cleaned. I moved two volumes to the To Read Shelf in the bedroom. Other than those, there are only half a dozen books in here I haven't read and I plan on donating some of those to the library. My comic book collection is put away a little better now. I'm hoping I'll find a couple extra binders as I'm cleaning the rest of the house so that I can get my entire Spider-Man collection protected.

Now that the computer has been moved, space has been freed up in the bedroom for the closet that we both could make use of. Once that gets put in place, then we'll have more room in the spare bedroom to actually have a spare bedroom free of clutter. And once that happens we'll be able to clean up the smaller storage room, shift what needs to into storage into our main storage room and then perhaps redecorate and have a small but serviceable small bedroom just off the room with the television.

I should have had all of this done by now since I've been off work for six months. I guess I just wasn't in the mood 'till today, when I finally had a free Saturday and Bethany was tied up with processing wedding photos.

Maybe since I've cleaned she'll take me out to dinner if I ask real nicely...

The Sad Happiness Of Peter Pan

2010-08-20T23:08:00.000-04:00

I've come to the irrefutable conclusion that Peter Pan may be the saddest happy character I've ever met.

Take a moment to wrap your brain around that statement. I know it's a contradiction in terms, but it's true nonetheless.

The original Peter Pan, written by J.M. Barrie, was a play turned into a novel that became an instant classic. It told a story about Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow up, who would forever be a kid living a life filled with adventure in a place called Neverland. Complete and total bliss, right? No responsibilities. No bills. No job. Just constant wandering adventure. It's everyone's dream.

But then there comes this moment at the end when Wendy chooses to leave for London and Peter can't bring himself to go with her. He feels the stirrings of an emotion he'll forever be too young to understand, yet he lets Wendy return to London without him. He's forever attached to her, however, and he returns to see her and even takes her daughter back to Neverland with him.

It's sad because Peter Pan will never be able to love. It's forever lost to him because he chooses to remain a Lost Boy in Neverland.

I read Peter Pan a couple years ago and this all hit me hard then. Yesterday I finished Peter and the Starcatchers, which is the unauthorized prequel to Peter Pan written by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. In it we meet the orphan Peter who will become Peter Pan. They show us when he first meets Molly (Wendy's future mother) and the rest of the Lost Boys. It was a great read. A kid's book that's just a lot of fun right up to the end.

At the end, Peter had to make a choice. The experiences of the book had changed him so deeply that he realized he could never be happy anywhere other than Neverland. Again it was the heavy realization that Peter could never experience more than those first stirrings of love.

How big a choice is that? To be a worry free kid that never grows up or to be the boy who grows up to experience love. The authors never come right out and say it, but that's funamentally the choice he had to make.

Heavy stuff for a child's tale, don't you think?

The Small Engine Mechanic

2010-08-19T12:24:00.000-04:00

So I'm just a little slow in getting this day started. Don't ask me why because I'm probably not going to give much of an explanation. I'm a writer. Sometimes we keep odd hours. That's the best that I can do.

Today I'm going to see if I can be a small engine mechanic. My Dad lives in West Virginia and I can hear him laughing now as he reads, but nonetheless I'm going to try my hand at it. My lawnmower is refusing to start yet again. I ran into this problem earlier this summer and fixed it by taking the top off and adjusting something until it started running. I had no idea what I adjusted then and I still don't know today. All I do know is that the same fix isn't working this time.

Plan B is to take the lawnmower apart, see what it looks like on the inside, fix whatever is obviously wrong with it and then see if I can put it back together. Sounds like fun, right?

Yesterday turned out to be an excellent writing day. Despite some scoffing at my drink preferences by The Student Knitter I cranked out an entire chapter to the tune of four glasses of Kool-Aide. I thought it was a pretty successful stretch at the keyboard and it proved that you can never be too old for Kool-Aide.

Since it's 12:30 already today it's time to load up my iPod and see what kind of damage I can do with the mower.

The Never Ending Cycle Of Kool-Aide

2010-08-18T17:26:00.000-04:00

Every Wednesday should start out this way.

I checked my e-mail this morning before leaving the house and discovered that Amazon was offering me a free copy of the latest New York Times Book Review for download on my Kindle. Naturally, I took them up on the offer and then discovered another link to a free sci-fi novel that looked to be of interest. Yes, every Wednesday should start out this way.

I'm finding that keeping my promise to write something every day is more difficult than I first imagined. Simply put, life just gets in the way. Take this weekend, for example. I was busy at a wedding Saturday, at my Grandma's birthday party on Sunday...Monday I blogged, fulfilling the promise, Tuesday I was away from the house the entire day, and today I've been pretty busy running errands and catching up on house work.

Now it's five o'clock and I'm finally ready to sit down and see about getting some serious ink on the page. Well, almost ready. I need a tall glass of cherry Kool-Aide. Oh, and I need to look up Ridley Pearson's first Lou Boldt detective novel and see if I can get it for a penny...which makes me think that I need to go to the library and get my card renewed so I can enjoy the mystery section there...which reminds me that I applied for a job at the library in Goshen, which makes me think that I should get a hair cut on the off chance that get an interview, which reminds me that I should go change the laundry over, which brings me back to the Kool-Aide...

You see, it's a never ending cycle.

But since it's now 5:25 and I've taken a phone call that completely interrupted my train of thought I'm going to wrap this up and actually do the writing I've been blogging about.

I still need a glass of Kool-Aide though.

Beating The Deadline

2010-08-16T22:55:00.000-04:00

Now this was a busy Monday. But it's all good, because there's a nice bit of rain falling outside, dinner's on the stove and smelling wonderful and I have some free time to sit down tonight and look through some more of what Devan's sent me on the latest project.

I should probably tell you what it is, to begin with. I've mentioned our current work in progress a few times on the blog now without going into any details. Tentatively, it's called The Hunter, though I have to stress that it is very much a working title. Having read and enjoyed a good many young adult and children's books lately we've decided to focus our writing efforts and talents in that direction.

And since Devan and I have always been given to flights of fancy, this series of books is going to be about Druids. The old school kind of Druids that belong in the forests and are very wise and powerful. Katezerine is our main character and she'll be learning what it means to become a Druid and what impact that will have on her life. I'd tell you more of the plot but we're still fleshing out the details.

One aspect of this project that I'm enjoying is the chance to do a little actual research. Druids really existed. The legends that built up around them are somewhat far fetched, but there is a great deal of history to sift through and play with.

The writing has been fun and a little different. Since it's aimed toward younger adults, Devan and I both have had to make the effort to tone down the use of the big words that are so much fun to use. The writing also takes on a lighter tone as well.

So this should be an interesting read. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Looking Up To Falling Stars

2010-08-13T10:51:00.000-04:00

I broke my own rule yesterday and didn't get anything at all written. In my defense, however, I was feeling pretty rough and there was a celestial light show that required my immediate and undivided attention beginning at about 9 p.m. last night.

Didn't see it, did you?

Last night was a rare conjunction of the Moon and four planets, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Mercury. A conjunction occurs when two or more heavenly bodies are in the same patch of sky. Last night it was five. Since we couldn't see it from our house because of the trees Bethany and I drove through Clifton. Turns out that the drive through town is mostly west and had a near perfect view. The Moon was a thin crescent and there two faint pinpoints of light (Saturn & Mars) above it and one very bright (Venus) dot of light. It was really beautiful. If you missed it, you missed a great show.

Last night, well last night and early this morning, was also the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. About this time every year the Earth moves through a band of debris left behind by the Swift Tuttle asteroid (I believe it was an asteroid) that broke up a long time ago. The belt of debris is pretty wide and the Earth careens through it every year, resulting in a pretty spectacular meteor shower. It's called the Perseid shower because the meteors appear to come from the constellation Perseus. No matter which direction that they streak across the sky, the tails of the meteors always point back to the radiant point, which is located in the Perseus constellation.

Bethany and I drug the hammock around to the darkest spot we could find in the yard and laid back and looked up at the night sky for nearly two hours. We had no sooner pulled the hammock into position than we saw one of the best meteors I've ever seen streak across our entire field of vision. It was followed up by dozens more in probably the best shower I've seen to date.

So, no, I didn't get any writing in at all yesterday. But it was worth missing.

The Science Of The Art

2010-08-11T09:00:00.003-04:00

Last night I stared at a blank page on my computer screen for thirty minutes before I typed something I liked. Thirty minutes. That's an eternity for writer's block. And it's all Devan's fault.

People often ask me he we work together. Sometimes they're asking because they're honestly interested in the writing process. Sometimes they ask because they know the two of us and know how loud and pointless our arguments often get. Either way, it's an adventure.

Most of the final copy you see in just about anything Devan and I write is mine. A lot of the ideas are Devan's. The way it's worked so far is that Devan comes up with an idea and wraps a story around it. He tells me the story, writes some of it down and changes it a million times in midstream. I add in my ideas, throw in a few promising subplots and work at fleshing out the characters. Once we have an idea where we're going, he starts a draft and then I follow along behind him on another draft, adding in my characters in plots. The initial inspiration may be Devan's and the polished writing may be mine, but it very much takes to of us to tell the stories we tell. Devan goes for the big sweeping stories that take an entire series to tell. I go for the stories within the story that drive the characters toward where they're going.

I don't know if I've over simplified the process or not. It involves a lot of Pizza Hut pizza, occasionally some ribs and usually a great deal of debate, some of it loud. The differences don't always get worked out before the writing is done and sometimes it takes writing it out and seeing how it works to settle the debate. Yet the story always comes out.

But there are times when Devan just leaves me completely and totally blocked. His first drafts are more outlines than anything else, usually a lot of dialog with only a few important details thrown in. Unless it's a vital part of the story he usually leaves the scenery for me.

Take tonight for example. I have two characters going out for an evening run through the forest behind one girl's house that turns into something monumental. I have no details on any of the surroundings, no idea where I'm at except for England and absolutely no notion of what the girl's parents names are, what they're like or any idea how much of a future role they're going to have.

So I stared at a blank page and made four false starts in thirty minutes trying to bridge this gap. If Devan wasn't in Iraq right now I would've called him and yelled loudly. I'm still thinking about writing an e-mail with the Caps lock on so he gets the message anyway.

At least I made it past the writer's block in time to get a few hundred words down before calling it a night.

The Actual To Read List

2010-08-10T15:07:00.000-04:00

I thought that since I've blogged a bit about my To Read List that my own readers might be interested in what's actually on the list. So I'll oblige.

In no particular order:

1. Peter & The Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson.
2. Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson.
3. Peter and the Secret of Rundoon by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson
4. Dance of Death by Preston & Child (currently reading)
5. Book of the Dead by Preston & Child
6. Wheel of Darkness by Preston & Child
7. The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander
8. The Wine Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian
9. The Green Mile by Stephen King
10. The Host by Stephanie Meyer
11. Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
12. Happy To Be Here by Garrison Keillor
13. Lake Wobegon Summer 1966 by Garrison Keillor
14. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
15. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
16. A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card
17. First Meetings by Orson Scott Card
18. Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor
19. The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie
20. Don Quixote by Cervantes
21. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
22. Shadow of the Giant Orson Scott Card
23. Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
24. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
25. Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
26. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
27. South of Broad by Pat Conroy
28. The Sword of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks

So there you have it, a 28-title deep reading list. Some of these titles are on my Kindle, though not nearly as many are as stacked up on my nightstand. And I'm saving the Shannara trilogy for the trip I hope to get to take to Tennessee.

Any comments, additions?

How Much Wine? The Whole Bottle

2010-08-09T11:50:00.000-04:00

Monday morning finds me at home polishing off the last of Brimstone, which had a cliffhanger ending that is going to completely disrupt my reading schedule. But that's another story for another blog.

At any rate, the week looks promising and open. I'll spend today processing Bethany's wedding pics and cleaning the house. There's a load of laundry spinning 'round the washing machine as write. Later, if all goes as planned, I'll hit the gym with Bryan and then cook pork chops for dinner.

Oh, speaking of dinner, we were invited down to Patrick and Amber's apartment last night for our first dinner with them since they were married. We made a pretty interesting chicken dish out of a Food &Wine cookbook. I'd tell you what it was called, but I can't remember and it doesn't matter anyway since we completely changed the recipe. Admittedly, the first mistake was mine. I misread the amount of wine that was supposed to be added to this dish. Instead of the six tablespoons that was listed, I read off six cups. So we upended the whole bottle into an eight-cup measuring cup and realized we were going to come up two cups short. We dumped it in anyway brought it to a simmer with an extra three-quarters of a cup of crushed tomatoes.

It was then that Amber read the recipe and realized that we'd blown it completely. Being the fearless souls in the kitchen that we are, Patrick and I started improvising. We threw in the entire can of tomatoes, parsley (which apparently should have went in with the wine) and tossed in some sliced and baked zucchini and squash. Forty minutes later it was an excellent dish, nameless but very tasty when coupled with the nice loaf of bread from the Food Lion bakery. I'd link you to the recipe as I've done on previous posts, but it's impossible since it came out of a book at their house and since we more or less just made it up as we went along anyway.

One of the highlights of the week will be the book sale at the C.P. Jones Memorial Library in Covington Saturday morning. I'm planning on taking some books over to donate to the sale on Wednesday when I go into town. I don't really need any extra books to read since my To Read Stack is pretty deep at the moment, but I'll at least see a few people I know and will probably take Bethany's grandma with me.

Thanks to the estimable Special Agent Pendergast, I'm rediscovering my love of detective novels. Bethany even bought me a used copy of Agatha Christie's The Labours of Hercules, a novel I started to read so long ago that I've forgotten how it goes.

I'm also pretty happy to say that the writing seems to be going well. The resolution to write every day is starting to pay off as I'm finding the tone for The Hunter, the first volume in mine and Devan's new series.

So it's Monday. There are plenty of jobs in the paper to apply for, I have a baked potato to eat for lunch, a television to watch and enough books to keep me happily reading through the month (I think). Life's pretty good.

Time, Space & Oreos

2010-08-06T18:05:00.000-04:00

So today has turned out to be a productive day for a Friday.

I took the time to crank out some wedding photos that, admittedly, should have been processed by now. I had no sooner finished over 400 of them before Bryan called and we hit the gym for a workout on the basketball court. My game started off pretty sweet when I hit two threes and six free throws before I missed my first shot. After winning the first round of 21 my game went downhill from there and I lost the next two.

Now I'm back at the house and the first thing I notice when I walk in is how much extra space the new refrigerator takes up. It's not a lot, but it is noticeable. The refrigerator has, I guess darkened the kitchen, but in a good way. I like that we replaced a white appliance with a black sided refrigerator with stainless doors. I also like that it has plenty of space in the freezer. It's a bit taller, though, so I have to stretch more to reach the Oreos on the top of the 'fridge.

I have about an hour now before Bethany should be getting off from work. I'm going to see what I can get done on some of my writing projects.

If It Ain't Rainin', It Must Be Snowin'

2010-08-05T23:37:00.000-04:00

Chalk this one up to the notion of "It's always something."

We woke up this morning to find that our refrigerator wasn't cold and that our freezer was on the way to thawing out, neither of which is a Good Thing. Apparently our recent string of luck with household appliances and motor vehicles is holding true and I'm fairly certain there's a hole in the muffler of my Jeep.

But I digress.

So after rushing a lot of meat to Covington to a friendly freezer, I spent the day looking for, purchasing, accepting delivery and installation and then restocking the freezer with our still frozen meat. Oh, I almost forgot the best part. We were fortunate enough to find a slightly larger side-by-side refrigerator and freezer combo than our old one. The added width wasn't a problem but the extra height sure was. Fortunately the cabinet above the refrigerator had up to an inch and a half that I could cut away without fear of getting into the actual cabinet space itself. I borrowed a reciprocating saw and went to work.

Have you ever used a reciprocating saw? 'Cause if you haven't, you should. I highly recommend it. It's fun. I now want one for Christmas. That saw will cut most anything any time and anywhere. There's no limit to the damage you can cause with one of those. Fortunately, Bethany hasn't looked at the cabinets above the refrigerator yet...

Looking For A Way Around The Block

2010-08-04T23:24:00.000-04:00

It was a busy Wednesday for me, so much so that I didn't get to set down to blogging like I'd planned to earlier today. But there's still 50 minutes to go before midnight and therefore my resolution is still intact.

I've been thrown for a loop by Brimstone, the Pendergast novel that I've started reading tonight. Pendergast has tea with a character that was supposedly from The Cabinet of Curiosities, two books prior to Brimstone. I don't remember her at all and I have a very, very good memory when it comes to things I read. I've been completely thrown for a loop and I've appealed to Patrick for help. Maybe I just missed her.

A good deal of my thought this past week has gone toward my writing career. Since I'm unemployed, I do have some time to focus on it. I'm caught at an awkward point between novels. With The Crownless King I wrote something very intensely personal and with a character that had a great build toward becoming a hero. I want to write something like that again. But everything can't be like that, can it?

Blood & Steel is about 75% completed (first draft, that is). However, I feel like I kind of lost the thread of the story somewhere, as if I stopped listening to Sam tell me his story and started filling it in with my own. I haven't been able to recapture the feel that I had for it.

I guess this is what you would call Writer's Block. Any thoughts on how to get around it?

A Resolution

2010-08-02T15:04:00.000-04:00

Welcome to August.

I heard something interesting on Barnes & Noble's Meet the Writer podcast. It was an older podcast and it featured an interview with Ridley Pearson. It seems to me that I've read something of Ridley's in the distant past, though I'd have to look it up to tell you. His most recent claim to fame is his collaboration with Dave Barry on Peter and the Starcatchers and the series that follows.

He talked briefly about his writing process and his advice to writers was pretty simple: Take a set time, every day, and write. Make it happen.

I realized I don't do that. This blog is a prime example. I blog when I feel like it, when some random adventure comes my way or, sin of all sins, when I have time. I realized today that if I'm going to be a successful writer I need to write every day. Without exception. So I'm going to start doing that. This blog will turn into a Monday-Wednesday-Friday publication and my August resolution is to have a minimum of 12 regularly scheduled posts by the end of the month. That's not to say I won't write more, but there will be at least three a week.

I'm at an interesting point in my life where my future can go just about anywhere I want it to go if I choose to make it happen. I think it's high time I made something happen.

Out And About

2010-07-22T10:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a mix between work and fun. After spending the morning bound to a computer I went photo hunting with my sister, Elisha, who was looking to practice her outdoor photography. We made a quick trip up North Mountain to see what we could photograph and I came away with this image you see before you. It's a Swallowtail butterfly, a pretty common butterfly around here. There were dozens of them along the road and it was a simple matter to stop the Jeep and take a photo without ever leaving the air conditioning.

Last night for dinner we tried something a little different. I made chicken rolls. You simply pound out chicken breasts until they're decently flat, cut them into strips, place whatever seasoning or stuffing you want in them and then roll them up and secure them with a toothpick. Fifteen to twenty minutes on the grill in low heat and you have yourself dinner.

I made my classic Italian Hagy chicken just to keep it simple so I could try out the method. I cut the breasts along their length, which made the rolls bigger. The seasoning definitely seems to clump together at times and, while the flavor was excellent, I believe that the "less is more" approach will make it better next time. Next time I might even add goat cheese. I've been told that would be excellent.

Back To Basics

2010-07-20T21:25:00.000-04:00

In my continuing quest for culinary exploration and education I turned to pork chops last night.

I was reading through my cook book, Master the Grill and found a recipe for basic chops. The idea of basic appealed to me so I went with it. All it took was a pinch of coarse kosher salt, fresh cracked black pepper and some quality time on a hot grill. Those chops were some of the best pork chops I've ever made. I couldn't believe how far a little salt and pepper went. I guess that just goes to show how well the basics really work in the kitchen.

Now that I've touched on the basics, I think that I'll skip ahead to something more complicated. I saw Rachael Ray flatten some chicken breasts, stuff them with tasty things and roll them up for cooking. It's probably one of those things that looked a lot simpler than it really is, but I'm hoping to find out in the next day or two. I don't think I'll like the recipe for them in the grilling book (and I don't have any goat cheese anyway) so I'm going to just see what I can come up with. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

The To Read Shelf

2010-07-19T11:52:00.000-04:00

Those of you who know me, or have been reading this blog, know that I read a lot of books. And by a lot I mean upward of 60 per year, on average. So my "To Read Shelf" is usually fairly well stocked.

This morning it's 15 titles deep, ranging from Don Quixote by Cervantes to The Host by Stephanie Meyer. In between there are three Garrison Keillor titles for a little moderation and the always classic The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas that I've been reading for the better part of a year. Why a year, you ask? I'm over five hundred pages into that novel and I'm only a third of the way through. It's not light reading.

In the digital realm I have about eight titles on my Kindle waiting for my perusal. The great thing about the Kindle is that all of these cost less than I could get them in the store and some of them even come free. Just last night I downloaded Agatha Christie's Secret Adversary free of charge. It's been a long time since I read anything by the Dame of Mysteries, but I'll be looking forward to that one.

So all told, my To Read Shelf is about 23 deep. With the exception of a couple of fluff fantasy pieces that I'm debating over whether or not I'll even keep them, this is all that I haven't read in my personal library. Not that the To Read Shelf is in my library. No, it's the night stand beside my bed, piled high with adventures I haven't had yet. I'm not sure Bethany's thrilled about having them piled there, but that's OK. It's on my side of the bed.

Just last night, when I couldn't sleep, I picked up The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. These are the authors who combined to write Relic, which was the first book that ever deeply creeped my out. The movie they made from the book was awful, but the book is chilling. I didn't go outside after dark for weeks. And I read it when I was a senior in high school.

This novel has set on my shelf for some time. I picked it up for a paltry few cents at a library book sale somewhere. My interests changed from mysteries to other adventure so its gathered dust on my shelf for a while. Last year when I trimmed the library down a bit I debated on getting rid of it, but I decided against it. You see, this book comes to my attention with two very solid recommendations from Devan and Patrick.

I don't know a great deal of people who read like I do. Devan, Patrick and Dick do and we constantly are in search of new authors and new titles. We know each other well enough to take the recommendations we pass out seriously. Dick was who first got me reading the works of David Liss. I've only doubted Patrick and Devan once apiece and both times I was proven wrong.

Patrick introduced Devan and I both to the Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The first book, The Eye of The World isn't an easy read the first time through. However, it is the gateway to an amazing series and if you can survive the first 400 pages or so, the last 150-200 pay off in a major way. I read part of that book and set it aside, scoffing. When I finally finished it, I had to admit Patrick's review was pretty dead on and 13 books later I'm glad that I did.

I doubted Devan when he handed me a copy of John Steakley's Armor and told me, at that time, it was one of the best books he'd read. His copy was old, something from the '70s or early '80s and looked like a literary knock off of Robert Heinlen's amazing Starship Troopers. I read the first 20 pages and didn't think it was anything more than fluff. He bet me that if I could read it and honestly tell him that I didn't like it, he'd buy me another book. If I liked it, I owed him one. Turned out that it was a bet I didn't mind losing at all. It is definitely one of my favorite books.

So when Patrick called from the beach last week and wanted to know what order to read the Pendergast novels in, I looked it up for him and discovered that I'd read the first two, Relic and Reliquary and had the third, Cabinet, sitting on my shelf. I mentioned in passing that I hadn't read it yet.

"Oooh, that one's good. I can't believe you haven't read it yet," he said. And then I remembered that Devan had said much the same the last evening he was at the house before he left for duty in Iraq.

So as I finished the last two Patrick O'Brian novels in my possession, I picked up Cabinet of Curiosities on the strong recommendation of two close friends whose literary opinions I hold in pretty high regard. So far, it hasn't disappointed and it looks like their record will remain untarnished.

Back In The Day

2010-07-15T13:24:00.000-04:00

So here's something from back in my reporter days. I've been staring at wedding photographs all afternoon and as I'm uploading the next 300 to the flash drive so that I can work on the laptop, I thought I'd take a break, dig up an old photo and blog about.

Baseball is, of course, our national past time. My absolute favorite sport is basketball, followed closely by football. But there's something about baseball in the summer time...I don't even like to watch it on television until the playoffs roll around. Yet I can go to the ball park, smell the hot dogs cooking and hear the crack of a bat and suddenly all is right with the world.

Obviously, the bat didn't crack on this picture, but it's still one of my favorite sports photos I've ever taken.

Cookies & Chicken

2010-07-12T22:37:00.000-04:00

We took advantage of a cancelled meeting and tried out a new rub for chicken tonight. It was a Tuscan Rosemary rub, which is pretty simple. All you need is two cloves of garlic, minced, two tablespoons of crushed rosemary, a teaspoon of kosher salt, a teaspoon of fresh ground pepper and a quarter cup of parsley. Stir it all together and you've got yourself a pretty tasty and simple rub for chicken.

For dessert, and mostly 'cause I had a hankering for cookies, Bethany made the classic preacher cookies using a recipe that you can find here. The chicken, of course, was a healthy meal. The cookies not so much. But I worked out today. It'll be ok.

Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall

2010-07-12T13:52:00.000-04:00

Now this is my kind of day.

It's been so long since we've had any rain that I've nearly forgotten what it looks like. But today is a perfect rainy day. It was after 9 a.m. when I pulled myself out of bed. I got myself together, grabbed my keys and headed to Covington to return the tuxedos from Patrick's wedding.

I stepped outside into a light drizzle that turned into a raging downpour the moment I put the Jeep in park half a block away from Rooklin's Department store. I returned the tuxedos at a dead sprint that still left me soaked. After seeing to a couple of things in town I came back home to do a little housework, process some photos and continue the job search.

Now it's a perfect rainy day. The sky is completely overcast and the rain is falling straight down with just enough breeze to bring the cool summer air through the open windows. All the splashing and pitter-patter of the rain is a perfect counterpoint to the all instrumental, all jazz radio station that I've found on one of the upper digital music channels on the television.

After Bethany comes home from lunch I'm going to hit the gym and spend a couple of hours on the free weights and the basketball court. Then I'm going to settle in to processing wedding photos. We're two weddings behind and one of them absolutely has to go out this week.

But on a day like this, I can handle it...

Meanderings After The Wedding

2010-07-11T00:02:00.000-04:00

Patrick McNown got married today.

Those of you who know Patrick will know how momentous that sentence is. His passing from the freedoms of the bachelor life into the bonds of Holy Matrimony marks the last of our group of four close friends to tie the knot. He did hold out the longest, whether that was his intention or not.

And it was a pretty cool and elegant ceremony. They were married in the same church Bethany and I were, though it was much hotter today. Everything went just about as smoothly as it could have gone. I found myself enjoying being on the other side of the camera for this one. Sure, the tuxedo was hot, but I looked good in it and it was an honor to be a groomsman. I'm pretty happy to say that of the three close friends I've grown up with, I've been in (or was supposed to be in if life hadn't exploded that week) all of their weddings. I count that among the things in my life that I'm proud of.

I enjoy weddings. The ceremonies are always something pretty to watch. You don't quite get the best view when you're taking part, though. Since the groomsmen were lined up by height today and I'm naturally the shortest of the six groomsmen, I had to stand at the end of the line. So I just stepped to the side so I could see what was happening. And before that there was the incident with the acolyte stick.

See, I'm a baptist (I think. I don't know. The idea of denominations is irritating. Christian is good enough for me.) and we don't have acolyte sticks. They're nice though. They're the long, golden candle lighters that have two curves, one ending in a bell to snuff the candles and the other ending in a wick to light the candles. At rehearsal Friday I was told that I wouldn't have to light anything. I showed up today and was handed a shiny stick with flames and told to go light the candles on either side of the altar, six total.

These are fancy candles with wicks that are recessed inside a plastic cap so that the candles melt evenly all round. I've never used one of these acolyte sticks and I was too short for the job anyway. The first two candles on the left I could reach. The third I had to stand on my tip toes and try to lengthen the wick and even then I still couldn't get it lit. So I stood up on the little red velvet cushioned step that was there. I really hope it wasn't something sacred that I wasn't supposed to step on. I'm not an episcopalian. I don't know these things. I'm just a guy with a shiny gold stick that has a flame on it and who's trying not to look like an idiot who can't light a candle in front of a church full of people.

I lit the three candles on the left and repeated the process with the three on the right, including stepping on the little cushioned step on the other side. Everything else came off without a hitch.

At the reception, Dick, who works at an accounting firm, made the discovery that each of his has been with our wives for nearly 25% of our lives, if not a little more in some cases. That, of course, made me thing. If I consider that a quarter of my life has been spent getting me to this point, what have I to show for it?

The answer, of course, is a wonderful wife, a great home, family and friends who are a great part of my life, a couple of novels...

But what have I seen of the world? I've never been outside the country, nor I have I been to many of these United States (or been old enough to remember than I've been to them). I am a home body and there's no denying that. But when I set down to write my memoirs in my golden years I want them to be worth reading. So maybe it's time to wander a bit.

I don't think I could be like Patrick's brothers, Andrew and Robert, who wander the world at a whim pursuing various projects. Andrew just returned from teaching in South Korea. Robert leaves Thursday to return to his graduate work in the Alaskan tundra. But with Bethany, I think I could wander comfortably and enjoy having her to share my adventures with. Europe...the Northern Lights...Seattle...

Maybe we'll start with the French Riviera next summer...

After The Holiday

2010-07-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

I hope everyone out there in blog land had a great Fourth of July weekend because we certainly did. We even shot a wedding Saturday that had some of the best reception food ever...barbecued chicken, pork barbecue, ears of corn roasted in the husk and just about any side you could want.

On the even better side, I purchased a copy of Lake Wobegon: Summer 1956 for just a penny. That's beautiful stuff right there.

Bethany had yesterday off so we headed to Roanoke to check out Eclipse. While Dick and I disagree a bit over the quality of the acting, I thought it was a pretty good movie overall and a definite improvement over the last one. The Twilight Saga films have been very well done and have stayed true to the original novels better than any other film I've seen yet. It's hard to be disappointed with them when they stay so true to the author's original vision. I'll grant you that these actors won't be taking home any Academy Awards for these roles, but I still think they handle to roles fairly well for the most part.

I can't say that I have much to report on any of the current projects I have waiting and being two weddings behind in the photo processing probably means I won't get much else done this week.

In the meantime, however, I am really enjoying Imager's Challenge, the latest in L.E. Modesitt's new fantasy series. I highly recommend the Modesitt's Saga of Recluse and Imager's Portfolio. Recluse is over a dozen books long and full of great characters and plots. Imager's Portfolio is only two books long at the moment, but so far they've been great reads.

Cooling Off

2010-06-30T11:22:00.000-04:00

So just as I've settled in to my summer reading, we're finally getting a break from the heat. All that really means is that I now need to mow the weeds out of the front yard that are towering over the dead grass, but since it's cooler that won't be a problem.

I've had a pretty good few days lately in the creative world. I typically have a series that gets me through the summer and this year I think Orson Scott Card's Ender novels are going to carry me through a good part of it. Ender's Game is a science fiction classic and the surrounding novels are almost as good. He's great a developing characters that really draw the reader in and that's something I can appreciate.

Bethany and I went out to the movies Sunday and saw Knight & Day. It's getting panned and was a box office flop, but I think that's a bit unfair. The movie was good and yes, I think it could have been better. However, it was a solid action film with a healthy dose of comedy thrown in. The writers could have made a more complex plot, but it really felt like they held back to keep from turning the movie into something they didn't want it to be. I'd say don't miss this movie. It's cool if you don't want to rush out to the theatre to see it, but I'd definitely purchase the DVD. It's one I want to see again.

I spent yesterday helping Patrick go through his bookshelves, organize and pack up the second and most cherished half of his collection to move to their new townhouse. In doing so I found some of my stuff and borrowed the sheet music folio for The Goo Goo Dolls' smash album, Dizzy Up The Girl. One beautiful thing about this folio is that every song has the proper tuning listed and for an album that only has a couple of songs in standard tuning, that's a big help. I sat down last night, tuned properly for Iris, and was making some serious headway into the intro and first verse.

Since I'm laid off, this is the first real summer break I've had since the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. It's almost enough to make me want to go back to school so I can have the summers off.

Almost...

So I Didn't Catch Anything On Fire

2010-06-28T20:23:00.000-04:00

I blogged yesterday about how I was going to attempt some new foods. Well, I did and my first effort was about a 75% success.

My main course was a new marinade for chicken breast. It was a pretty simple buttermilk marinade. For those of you interested, it came out of Master The Grill. Simply take 3/4 cup of buttermilk, add a tablespoon of olive oil, two teaspoons of kosher salt, black pepper to taste, and then your choice of herb. I used rosemary today, specifically because I took some fresh rosemary out of the beginnings of the herb garden just outside our bedroom window. Place chicken breasts in the marinade for an hour and toss 'em on the grill.

A tasty main course indeed. That dish accounted for 50% of my success this evening.

The other 25% comes from Tyler's Florence's Stirring the Pot. The recipe is too complicated to reproduce from memory, so I'll include this link to a Onion Ring Recipe by Florence that's pretty close to what I used. The main difference is that he dredges in a seasoned flour first before dipping the rings into the batter and that he uses club soda instead of beer in my recipe. (By the way, I've discovered the club soda has a tendency to explode out of a freshly opened bottle just for the sheer hell of it. Don't believe me? Well, you will.)

Now, when I mentioned to Dad that I was going to fry onion rings earlier, he asked the age old question of "Do you know what you're doing?" I'd vehemently object to him doubting me on the subject if it wasn't for the fact that the last time I tried frying anything in vegetable oil on the stove I caught the pot on fire. (It was an interesting few seconds. And when I say I caught the pot on fire, I mean I caught the pot on fire. They don't teach you skills like that in culinary school.)

This time I didn't catch anything on fire. The onion rings turned out just fine, but they could've been a lot better. I don't think that I pulled the batter off just right. It lacked a lot of flavor that I think would've been there had it worked like the recipe said it would (and I figure it was something I did or didn't do and not the fault of the recipe). It's like playing baseball and reaching first on a walk instead of a base hit. Either way, you're on base, but the base hit would be a much better way to get there.

So we've survived the first evening of something new without anything burning down. Since I'll be helping Patrick move all day tomorrow, I figure that the next evening I'll try something new will be Wednesday. Perhaps I'll try some ribs...

Something New To Eat

2010-06-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

I've just about decided we're in a food rut. Now I like to eat. That should come as no surprise to those of you out there in blog land who know me. While some people regard eating as just something they do for fuel to get through the day, I personally thing eating is one of the highlights of my day.

I'm not the greatest chef in the world by any stretch of the imagination and I have a lot to learn. And while I'm not a bad cook either, I think I tend to get caught up in cooking the same old things over and over and over and over and...

You get the idea.

Since the unfortunate cessation of my work related activities way back in February has lasted a lot longer than anticipated, I've spent a lot of time around the house slowly working on various projects. Most of it has been writing. Some of it has been cleaning, reorganizing and things of that nature. In the back of my mind I'm always interested in new foods and cooking methods to try and I've become pretty familiar with the ol' grill on the back porch.

Now I think I'm going to turn my attention back to cooking for a while. I've been given some great culinary books (they're a little more in depth than just cook books) as gifts and three of these are going to be what I focus on in the next few weeks (or until something shiny diverts my attention again).

The first of these is Mastering the Grill, which my parents gave to me two Christmases ago (being the Christmas I can barely remember for everything that happened the day after). The second two books were gifts from Bethany, Stirring the Pot by Tyler Florence (my favorite celebrity chef) and The Bread Bible. Though I've used Stirring the Pot just a bit, all three of these culinary books have languished on the end of the island in the kitchen for far too long. So don't be surprised to read a little bit more about my culinary explorations in the next few weeks.

On an unrelated note, the bird feeder continues to draw a pretty big crowd of hungry song birds and an even bigger crowd of Starlings. The smaller birds adjusted to my presence fairly well, so much so that I could walk within ten feet or so of the feeder without spooking them. The first day that I took my camera out with me was the day that the flock of starlings appeared. They've been there ever since and they just will not adjust to me getting close to them. At all. The first squeak of the door sends them flying for safety, which in turn sends to the smaller birds darting for cover.

So that's why there haven't been any bird pictures up here yet. I'm still working on it though.

Looking Up

2010-06-25T22:46:00.000-04:00

I watched the International Space Station fly overhead tonight.

It was really bright, with a -3.7 magnitude flying out of the WSW and made a transit of just over five minutes before dipping over the tree line and out of sight. The station's orbit has taken it out of the shadow of the Earth for the next day or so.

That's really cool.

I remember reading October Sky a few years ago before it became a major motion picture. Homer Hickam wrote about seeing Sputnik cross his little piece of West Virginia sky and how it changed the course of his life. Watching the station fly over tonight, I can understand that.

Without any kind of magnification, it really is just a really bright dot of light that doesn't blink. It moves silently, no droning engine noise, and it moves faster than any Earth-bound plane I've ever seen. It's the definition of smooth motion, gleaming poetry against the night sky.

Yes, I'm a geek. My true be all and end all wild career wish? To be an astronaut.

There's also a partial lunar eclipse tonight. You'll have to get up early to see it, beginning at 3:17 a.m. with the moment of greatest coverage at 4:30 a.m. It's only a partial eclipse, but 54% of the Moon will be covered.

Interesting goings on in the heavens tonight if you care to look up.

From The Inside Looking Out

2010-06-15T14:08:00.001-04:00

I was looking out the window of my house today and found this little fella looking back in at me. I just couldn't pass up a photo opportunity like that.

Quickly I grabbed my macro lens and slapped a fresh memory card into my camera. For those of you who don't know, a macro is a special type of zoom lens designed to make really little things look really big. The macro lens has the ability to allow the camera to capture what it sees at a 1:1 ratio. When I print something off as a 4x6 photo, the subject is then nine times life size.

It works out great for wasps, as you can see here. I've never seen that little honeycomb in their eyes before. That was pretty neat. And despite having this photo I still can't tell you how he hangs on to the smooth glass of a window.

A Pattern I Can't Picture

2010-06-14T16:53:00.000-04:00

The waterfall at Douthat State Park puzzles me.

It's a man-made cascade of the overflow of the lake. I don't know how high it is, but forty to sixty feet shouldn't miss the mark by much. It's just a cascade across stones that sometimes dries up during the summer.

But photographically, it puzzles me.

There's a path that walks right along beside it. I can't get down to the base of the cascade but I can get along side it pretty easily. The water flowing over the stones is beautiful. There's a pattern to it that I just can't quite seem to catch with my camera.

I took an hour in the blazing heat of this afternoon to see what I could so with some motion blurs. I left my cable release at home (it's next to impossible to do without it) but I was able to improvise with a longer lens and my ND400 filter. This is a vertical panorama of four photos (though I cropped most of the fourth one out since I blew the exposure badly). It comes close, but what I'm trying to get just isn't quite there. I can't put my finger on it....Every time I pass by the falls I think about it. Maybe one of these days I'll capture it.

Looking For Love In The Shoe Department

2010-06-14T12:09:00.001-04:00

The great thing about photography is that there really are no rules, merely suggestions. There are the basics of how the camera works, but beyond that, anything goes. Like taking pictures of shoes and feet.

Believe it or not, the photo above came from an engagement shoot Bethany and I did a couple of weeks back. We traveled two and a half hours to the family farm and spent the afternoon roaming around looking for photo opportunities, of which there were plenty.

I believe that feet can be just as expressive as faces. I first took a shot of someone's shoes at a wedding a few years ago before Bethany and I struck out on our own. I liked it, though it was completely by chance that I came across the idea and had the perfect black and white set up. Bethany laughed at me then, and so did Lesley, who I was working for, but the "feet shot" is becoming more and more popular and requested more often.

This couple did, in fact, request that I take a picture of their boots. Naturally, I was happy to oblige them since I was going to do it anyway. Can you see the personalities in the boots? I can, especially now that I've spent more time getting to know the couple.

Now that I've blogged for the day I'm going to hit the laptop and start processing through the weekend shoots, which seemed to pretty well. I haven't looked at the results from either yet, but I'm feeling pretty good about them. I've thought about going out to Roaring Run or somewhere closer for some photos, but it's way too hot and humid out there to inspire me to do much in the way of that. Instead, I think I'll just stick close to home, work on photos and maybe even start cataloging the birds at my feeder.

I've started to make them accustomed to my presence. By moving slowly, a little more each day, I've managed to make it within 10 feet of the feeder before they fly off. This week I'll start taking the camera out and seeing what I can photograph if all goes well.

Deep Thoughts For A Video Game

2010-06-13T13:06:00.000-04:00

It's summertime and I like flowers. This was one of the shots I snuck into a bridal portrait sitting a couple weeks ago. I thought I'd share it today to see how the photos worked in the new format now that I've reshaped and resized the blog to allow for extra large photos. I think I like how the format works.

Last night Patrick and I finally beat Gears of War 2. An epic game of combat and hard choices made in a difficult situations that no one could truly understand. Video games are, to my mind, pretty much one of the biggest wastes of time known to man. There really isn't anything to gain by them other than some small improvements in hand eye coordination that could be achieved through the world of sports as well.

However, as Patrick and I were defending the world against the onslaught of vicious aliens determined to rule or destroy the world, an interesting discussion evolved.

Video games have developed more and more complex graphics as technology advances. Along with the graphics, the story telling has evolved as well. Gears of War 2 forces its characters to make some pretty hard choices and we both realized we couldn't fully understand the choices they made and what motivated them to do so.

As we played, we then turned into discussing other characters we've known and whether or not we could understand what motivated them to make the choices that they did. We decided that neither of us could understand the choices that Gaeta made at the end of Battlestar Galactica even if we could glimpse at least some of his motivation. Baltar was somewhat easier to figure out, though it was interesting how much of his own motivation (which was driven by self preservation) became twisted around so that he was in part motivated to help the greater good.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is full of characters whose motivation is easy to figure and others that are nearly impossible. The Sword of Truth is populated by characters who generally are pretty blatant about what motivates them toward the choices they make. The character that fascinates us both, however, is Raistlin from the Dragonlance Chronicles & Legends. You can make the debate that he gained power and tried to challenge the gods to better the world and not serve his own ends. You can also point out that magic was his own "drug" so to speak and everything he did was to further that. His motivations simply aren't clear.

And I wonder how clear they are to the people who created him and who write him. It seems to me, that as a writer, I should understand what drives my characters to make choices and act in a certain way. Yet I freely admit that my own characters surprise me when I'm writing and I'm not always sure why. Perhaps if I plumb the depths of their character, I'd be a better writer?

Deep thoughts from a video game.

New Design And Other Various And Sundry Items

2010-06-11T16:24:00.000-04:00

Well, how about this neatness. I logged on this afternoon to write a little something while jamming to a Dave Matthews live album and found out that Blogger is hooking us up with some fun new templates and backgrounds. So I played around until I found something I liked. What do you think?

Progress is somewhat slow on my new project with Devan, partly because I'm still mulling over my approach in my own head and party because the days have been busy here lately. However, I'm still pretty excited and optimistic about where this is all going.

I did polish off Imager: The First Book of the Imager Portfolio by L.E. Modesitt Jr.. I think with this series Modesitt has created something that I'm going to enjoy just about as much as his Saga of Recluse. I believe I'll wait until the price drops a bit on book two before taking that plunge. In the mean time, I have four more voyages awaiting my reading pleasure with Captain Jack Aubrey. Birds with french fries aren't as happy as I am about that.

Modesitt, again, made me reconsider my approach to writing. What he does with his characters and the way he builds the worlds he creates just leaves me sitting in awe of that talent. I really admire the approach he takes in making his character human first and giving the reader every opportunity to identify with him before the hero of the tale really becomes the hero. It just makes for a slower, much more satisfying and solid read as opposed to jumping all over the place to different perspectives. I believe I'm just about decided that his style is about to have a major impact on my own writing.

In related news, Imager was only the third book that I've actually paid for on my Kindle (the other 30 were free) and the second time that I've polished off an entire novel on that handy little gadget. There's no doubt that it has changed the way I shop for books. These days I just go into a book store to see what titles I'm interested in downloading. I know it is a pretty broad departure from having a library stocked full of actual hard copies of books, but carrying my library around in my hand somehow appeals to me too. I'm hoping that it'll be much more appreciated if I get to go on any kind of vacation later this year.

I did come to appreciate the fact that I could take notes on what I read, without damaging the book, and store those notes in my Kindle for access later. That feature is great for those times when something strikes me and I find myself staring at the same page for minutes on end as I follow the thought down the rabbit hole.

And speaking of all this writing, I'd better go get something on paper...

Whoops

2010-06-08T14:54:00.001-04:00

Whoops. Apparently I didn't play by the rules with the Beautiful Blogger. I'm supposed to tell you ten things about me that you may not know. Hmmm. Let me fix this....

1. Once I wanted my career to be Tigger at Disneyland. In all honesty, if that would pay the bills I might still give it a shot.

2. I have a personal library of nearly 1,000 volumes, even after some trimming down and gifting of duplicates.

3. I really hate doing yard work, but I have enough experience at it to make your lawn look really good.

4. The best concert I've ever attended was in Orkney Springs, at the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival, in an open air barn on a summer's evening.

5. When I was in elementary school I had a 63 mile per hour fast ball and it was a miracle if I threw a strike.

6. The Harry Potter movies make me sad and angry.

7. If I were a character in a fantasy novel, I would most definitely be a hobbit.

8. I think it's incredibly cool that the word "hobbit" is actually in the spell check.

9. I do have a bucket list and one of the things I'm most determined to check off on it is to go sailing in the ocean, perhaps all the way to Europe. And I mean sail.

10. I really hate running. With a deep and abiding passion. If I'm running, it's only because: 1. I'm going toward food; 2. I'm chasing someone who stole my food; 3. There's a ball of some kind involved.

Now, to nominate ten more people...I don't even think I read that many blogs on here, though I do have to say I appreciate Jeff Mallet's blog (the illustrator and author of one of my favorite strips, Frazz) over at Jeff Mallet and justf8inaround tends to have some interesting photos. The Writer Unboxed is a great blog for authors and I have to give a nomination shout out to my illustrator, Heather Gladden, at both Deviant Art and heathergladden.com.

That's five if you count Heather twice....

Oh. Right. One more thing you probably didn't know.

11. I don't follow direction well. (Then again, most of you probably know that).

The Wake Up Call

2010-06-08T11:16:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, well not that many really, my parents owned the house that Bethany and I now own and live in. Mom always had these great flower gardens and hummingbird feeders and bird feeders full of seed. They were a photographer's delight.

When she moved out, I quickly discovered that I just don't have my Mom's green thumb, or quite the interest in working outside that she did. The past two summers have been very hectic and, while this summer is going to be busy once July rolls around, I have a bit of a slower pace to run this year.

So I've decided to get some of that green thumb back. Just last week I purchased (OK, so Bethany purchased it, but give me a break. I'm still temporarily unemployed ;) a 50 pound bag of bird seed. I cleaned off the bird feeder that my Grandpa made and my parents installed at the end of the porch. I filled it up with seed and a day later I started having birds return to my feeder.

I do have birdhouses up in the yard and I plan on hopefully adding some more this summer. The old clothesline (that we rarely use) supports two houses, one single and one three bedroom condo. Both of these are full. And as I was coming back in the house from cleaning my feeder, I looked to my left and saw two little heads poking out of the single bird house.

This morning I woke up to the sounds of a dozen or so birds chirping and flying around my feeder. I managed to make it to the window and peep through the blinds without scaring them. I think that maybe this week I'll fill up the feeder for finches and hang it off the post as well. Hopefully I'll be able to make the birds accustomed to my presence long enough for me to take a few photos to share here. When I first purchased my camera, I would sneak over to the fence and photograph the birds off my neighbor's feeder. As cool as birds sound, they're even cooler when you can capture them in mid-flight.

Now as I'm blogging this morning, I happened to look over at the "Blogs I'm Following List" and see where my buddy Sarah was given the Beautiful Blogger Award for her blog, The Student Knitter . In reading her post, I see that she nominated me for the same award, so naturally I have to say thank you and congratulations on your own award!

Bethany and I met Sarah and her husband (whom I'll call Mr. Pie on the Web because she does) when we photographed their wedding almost two years ago. We became pretty good friends and we're even having dinner together Sunday. They introduced us to the world of playing Dungeons and Dragons, which, yes, can be just as nerdy as it sounds, but it sure is a whole lot of fun.