Out of Touch

I’m often amazed, but not unpleased, at how out of touch I am with modern popular culture. A lot of that is due to my age, of course, but I often seem very much unaware of things that other folks of my generation do know about. Let’s see.

A guy named James Gandolfini (I think that’s the spelling) died recently. I had no idea who he was. Even after I’d seen his photo I could only recognize him as being in a recent movie I saw with Brad Pitt about assassins. When I expressed my confusion, quite a few folks explained to me that he was on “The Sopranos.”  Ah, of course. The problem is that I’ve never seen an episode of that show.

Nor have I seen an episode of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Castle, Sons of Anarchy, or any of those Law and Order type CSI shows. I believe those are two different shows but I couldn’t tell which is which. I’ve never seen Game of Thrones, other than watching about ten minutes with Lana the other week. All I know about Fawlty Towers is that it’s British. I believe. Now, I might well like all of these shows; I’ve just never felt the urge to sit down and watch them.

I do know who Justin Beiber is because I see him being made fun of on facebook all the time. However, I couldn’t pick Lady Gaga out of a line up, unless she was wearing a meat dress perhaps. Nor would I recognize Honey Boo Boo. I believe she is a rather large child but that’s as much as I could tell you. I think there are three Kardashian sisters and they have dark hair. I wouldn’t recognize them. They may or may not be the daughters of Bruce Jenner. One of them was dating Reggie Bush for a while. I know because he played for the Saints at that time and I pay attention to football. I used to think Eva Longoria was a Kardashian until someone explained to me that she wasn’t.

There are a bunch of Jersey Shore/Big Brother type shows. At least I believe there are, although I’ve never seen an episode of any of them. I know there was a guy on Jersey Shore who called himself the Situation. I know because he was on a roast one night and was amazingly stupid in a non-funny way. Also on that show was a short, dark haired woman named Snooki. I only know because of the Jersey Shore episode of South Park, and because I heard a snippet of her one time admitting that she’d never read a book until she was in her twenties but she was going to write one now.

Not long ago I was told I’d mistaken Kanye West for Puff  Daddy. Only, his name isn’t Puff Daddy anymore but I’m not sure what it is now. It used to be Puff Daddy when he did a pretty bad remake of a Led Zeppelin song for the Godzilla 2000 movie. I only know the name Kanye West because of the South Park episode making fun of him. He apparently interrupted some famous female singer at one of the award shows. I don’t know who she was or what show it was on. The Grammeys maybe. By the way, how do you spell Grammeys?  I’ve never watched an episode. I still can’t tell Kanye from Puff something. I also confuse Fifty Cent with Mike Tyson. They’re both big guys ain’t they?

There are about half a dozen or more blonde actors who appear as the female leads in horror movies that I’ve watched. I can’t tell any of them apart or give you their names. Worse than that, I can’t name the directors of 98 percent of the movies I see. I know Spielberg, Sergio Leone, David Lynch, and George Romero, and that’s about it. Oh, and John Carpenter, because his name was on my favorite horror movie of all time, John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”  I believe he may have directed the first Terminator and Alien too, but I’m not sure. There’s also a del Toro guy, I think. He may or may not have directed Pacific Rim but he recently had a big blockbuster. I didn’t know until last night that the Actor’s Studio is a school for actors. I just thought it was a celebrity interview show.

I could go on and on but I think you get my point. How about you? Are you as out of touch as I am?

My next post will be about what I do know about popular culture. That might be a shorter post.

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If I had it do over

I was thinking of a story idea about a guy who gets a chance to live his life over, maintaining all the knowledge he accumulated during his first life. I put myself in the protagonist’s shoes to see how I felt about it myself. I think a lot of times people find this an attractive idea. I have myself at times. But when you really start to analyze it, as you would need to do if you were going to do a story about it, things don’t seem quite so simple. Every decision we make has multiple and complicated repercussions. There’s no way to change one thing without changing multiple others and one would risk losing the good things in order to get rid of the bad.  

I think, for example, of what I might do differently knowing the exact day my father would die and what I might have been able to do to prevent it. But I can’t even imagine the repercussions in my future had it not happened. I imagine relationships that I spent a lot of time and effort on that went nowhere, and what time and pain I might have saved myself by ending them earlier. But how would my memories and my personality be different if I had done so. Would I be a better man now? Or a worse one?

What about the motorcycle accidents I had! Changing my timing by a bare moment in any of those cases would have saved me a lot of pain. It would have saved me some of the permanent stuff I’m living with. Or would it? Had I not had any of those accidents, perhaps I would have had another that was far worse.

I think about my writing, about what might have happened had I produced the stuff I’ve produced earlier in my life, or what might be if I had decided to pursue a career in writing rather than making the choice that I did, which was to find a good career and job and write on the side. Would I be further along as a writer now? Would I have sold more? Would I be making a living at it?  The thing is, I almost certainly wouldn’t be making as good a living as I have with the choice I did make. Of course, there is no telling. I might have hit the market at just the right time and broken out. Or maybe there wasn’t a market for my work until I found it in later years.

I often wish for a reset button on life. Like you get with video games. You die in a video game and you just reload from the last save. But we don’t have those. And even if we did, would we reload after every “wrong” decision without knowing that, in fact, it was a right decision for what greater things came later. 

Ultimately, I know two things. My first marriage didn’t work our in the end but I have a wonderful son from it. I could not and would not give him up. Two, it was things going wrong in my life that led me to finding Lana. And I could not and would not give her up either.

Guess it’s a good thing we don’t get to live our life over. I wouldn’t want the fear of some pain to make me miss out on what I have now.

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Losing Time and the Giveaway Results

How does the time get away? It feels like I just posted the Star Trek post but that's already six days in the rear view mirror.

Patti Abbott won my giveaway for a copy of "Cut Short," by Leigh Russell. This is the first in her Geraldine Steel series. Patti, if you will send me your snail mail address to kainja at hotmail dot com, I'll get it in the mail to you pretty quickly.

Going into the dentist today to get my permanent crown put in to replace the temporary one. I sure hope that's the last dental stuff I need to do for a few years.

I finished my last read through of Wraith of Talera, then decided it wasn't the 'last' read through. I'm letting it sit a few days and will give it one more going over. I want it done and sent off so I can get into the next one, Gods of Talera. I've got a couple of short stories to do first, and an article on C. L. Moore.

The last couple of days I've been taking a needed break and just playing Skyrim and reading.

All right, enough. I promise a more substantial post in a couple of days.

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Influences: Star Trek?

It’s no secret that I’m a big Star Trek fan, particularly of the original series. I’ve seen every episode multiple times, every movie, and have read almost 60 Star Trek novels and 8 or so nonfiction books about the show.  I’ve watched all of The Next Generation episodes as well, although not as many of the other series. And yet, as far as I can tell, Star Trek has had virtually no influence on my writing.  Most recently, in Wraith of Talera, I have a chapter title that is a take-off on “The World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky.” That’s about the only influence I can think of, and it’s just a title.

In contrast, the eleven books of the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs have been a major influence on all kinds of writing I’ve done, not just the Talera series. The works of Leigh Brackett and C. L. Moore I’ve read can be numbered on the fingers of my two hands, but they also have been big influences.

I thought at one point that it was because I didn’t really write Science Fiction that the Star Trek influence never showed up in my work. But even when I turned my hand to SF with Under the Ember Star, it was Brackett and Moore type space adventure/space opera, not Star Trek. I have other SF ideas that I want to write at some point too, but none of them are Star Trekesque.

It’s not just the overall story setting of Star Trek either. I’ve never created any characters that smack of Spock, or Kirk, or Bones. I do have a character ‘arch an eyebrow’ on occasion and that might be influenced by Spock’s famous gesture of surprise.

I wonder why this is, and without much promise of an answer coming to me anytime soon. Any of you other writers out there, has there been something you’ve read or watched a lot of that hasn’t influenced your writing? If so, do you have any idea why not?

Speaking of showing one’s influences. If you’re a writer, you’ve got to read this poem by Ty Johnston. Sheer genius!

http://tyjohnston.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-write-alone-with-nobody-else.html

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A Resting WIP

I took a few days off to let Wraith of Talera rest and have been playing a lot of my video game Skyrim. It's such a wide open world and beckons one to explore. I think I've been playing too much, though, because I've started dreaming about it as of last night, and when I close my eyes I can see various kinds of screen images from the game. I think I'll take most of the day off Skyrim and get back to writing. In fact, ideas are occurring fast and furious but before I start anything new I'm going to give Wraith of Talera its final read through and send it on its merry way.

As I'm writing this, we have six baby coons in the back yard, with two different mommas. They come out early in the morning to graze around the yard for bird seed that has spilled out of the trays. Many birds flutter around in the trays and knock out seed. The doves scratch it out. When the coons first came they climbed up our poles and knocked the seed out themselves, and at one point completely dragged off one hanging feeder. We got Raccoon baffles and they didn't work. So we had to put two baffles back to back and that finally stopped them.

At any rate, the little ones are great fun to watch because they wrestle and play around all over the place. Sometimes 2, sometimes 3, sometimes all four of the one family. Lana is watching through binoculars and laughing uproariously at their antics. The young everywhere have energy. It's good to see someone does.
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When a Manuscript is "Done."

I guess I’ll tag this post under writing techniques because it might not be of interest to anyone else. It’s about what happens when a manuscript is “essentially” done.

For example, Wraith of Talera is finished except for one last reread. I’ll do that next week. Gonna let it sit a few days. I just finished some pretty much mechanical stuff on the manuscript this weekend and week. When a book is done I always do a “search” for particular words that I often overuse. In doing so this time I ended up taking out over 900 words that were basically useless out of almost 70,000. The words I search for in particular are, “that,” “my,” “though,” “still,” and “I.”  It’s first person. I also search for “And,” “But,” and “Yet” at the beginning of sentences, which I overdo at times. I also search for “said,” and “asked” and take out excess ones And I search for words that need to be used sparingly, such as “suddenly” and “finally.”

Although I believe this is a good thing for writers to do, there is a risk. Searching through a whole novel this way for a single word can give the impression that the word is far overused when in fact it isn’t if you consider it spread out over the entire book. For example, I use “my” a fair amount in the Talera books, but this is, in part, because they are first person books and I need to cut out some of the “I”s that can really overwhelm the reader otherwise.

Someone told me not to worry about “said” because it becomes invisible to the reader. I’ve always heard that and I think it is generally true for me. However, I’ve noticed it does not become “inaudible” to those who listen to audio books. Since the Taleran books have been produced in Audio, I also wanted to remove excess “saids” for that reason.

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Recent Goodreads during Jury Duty

Those of you who visit here regularly know I recently had jury duty. I spent most of four days sitting in a room, and while I didn’t particularly enjoy it, I took my kindle along and did get a lot of reading done. I thought today I’d run some capsule reviews of some of the items I finished or at least started during those days. I also reviewed all of these on Goodreads as well, if I could find them listed there at least. I got all but one of these from Amazon.

 

Commando: Operation Arrowhead, by Jack Badelaire:

I used to read a lot of historical fiction but have gotten away from it in recent years. When I read a book like Commando: Operation Arrowhead, by Jack Badelaire, I wonder why I slowed down in reading the genre. Commando takes place in World War II, certainly one of my favorite historical periods to read about, and probably my very favorite judging from the number of WWII books I have around the house, both fiction and nonfiction. The story is set after the Blitzkrieg has overrun France. A small British Commando team is sent in to make contact with local partisan groups and they have to deal with a brutal local Nazi commandant and his zealous troops. Although a fellow named Lynch is probably the main character, we get familiar with several major commando figures and these characters are a lot of fun. I can see lots of room for backstory to be expanded on these characters as the series continues. An afterword to the novel gives some historical backstory on the British Commando units of WWII. 

Badelaire’s work fits in nicely with the books I already have on my shelf, reminding me somewhat of the grittiness of Willi Heinrich’s WWII books, but with considerably more action. That action, which is quite graphic and which I like very much, reminds me a bit of some of the stuff we saw in the movie Inglourious Basterds, but told with the greater depth and background that a novel can achieve over a movie. Any movie reference will be somewhat misleading because this book should really be compared against other WWII adventure series, of which there used to be quite a few. I think it compares very well and really enjoyed it. I know there is a second in the series out, Operation Bedlam, and I imagine more are planned. The series is definitely off to a great start.

Hard Case II: The Lure of Hell, by Bernard Lee DeLeo

John Harding is back in new adventures with his band of merry “righteous” killers. They’re a group who take the safety of America seriously and aren’t afraid to get down in the dirt with those who would endanger her. In fact, they’ll get lower in the dirt. They often refer to themselves as psychopaths but in reality they are willing to do what it takes to protect the people and country they love. Among themselves and the decent folks around them, they know loyalty and love aplenty. 

Hard Case II, however, adds some new folks into the mix, Clint Dostiene, a somewhat reluctant agent of the “Company,” and Lynn Montoya, who enjoys killing, but only of serial killers and lowlifes. There’s the usual adrenalized action and the sometimes wry, sometimes dark humor that mark most of DeLeo’s work. I’m an action junkie so this is right down my line.

Outlaw, by Matthew Pizzolato

When I started with this book I was afraid it was going to be a bit cliche. The writing was good but the adventures befalling our hero seemed a bit pat. As the book continued, though, the twists started to happen and I really enjoyed the ending, which I did not suspect until very near the end.

The Toughest Mile, by William Meikle

This is a fantasy short story and is the first work I've read by this author. It won't be the last though. It begins with a pit fighter seeking his freedom, which is not anything new in the genre. But Meikle makes it his own and delivers a solid story with plenty of action, excitement, and some good emotional impact. The prose is also quite good, raising the level of the tale even further.

Boggy Creek: The Legend is True, by Eric S. Brown and Jennifer Minar-Jaynes

A fast, action horror read. It's about what you expect from knowing about the movie of Boggy Creek, but it delivers well. I enjoyed it.

NOTE: the following works were not available on Goodreads for me to review, but here’s what I would have said about them.

Madam Chang’s Red Dragon Saloon, by Angeline Hawkes (reviewed on Amazon)

This is an excellent tale, a long short story or a short novella. A young Chinese woman in the American West is born with a strange tattoo on her arm. Her family knows what it represents but keep that from her. Only after her family is brutally murdered and she is shown the horrors of the real world does she discover what the tattoo means. Blood and gore are the result, but there's a lot more to this tale, which could easily lead to some sequels. Highly recommended.

The Unexplained, by Christopher Fulbright (reviewed on Amazon)

This is a collection of short horror stories. It's very well written and creepy as hell. I've read other material by Fulbright and he can write. This is a fairly short collection so it's a quick read. There is still quite a lot of variety among the stories, though. Much enjoyed.

Polysyllabic, by Mark Durfee

This is the only one I didn’t get originally from Amazon. It is a collection of poetry by the fellow we know in the blogosphere as the Walking Man. If you’ve visited his blog you know the kind of hard hitting, intense, poetry he writes about life and politics. This is more of the same, made even more powerful by the accumulated imagery that you get off the pages. Searing is a good word to describe Mark’s work.

The Adventures of Black Jack Pepper, by M. L. Madison (reviewed on Amazon)

A charming children's book. Black Jack Pepper is a six-year-old girl who decides on that name herself. She and her younger brother and father have many cute and hilarious adventures. I bet many children would love to have it read to them. Now I'm going to have a doughnut.

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Swords of Talera Author Notes

Those of you who have read my short story collections know I always include a section “about the stories.” These are snippets that tell about when the idea came to me, how it was developed, and when it was published. Although I know many readers don’t give a hoot about such things, I’ve always enjoyed reading about stories in this way. My novels, however, don’t have this sort of thing so I thought I’d put some of this up on my blog. Perhaps I’ll have no readers for it, but what the hey, that’s why they call it a personal blog, I guess. Anyway, here’s a bit about the way Swords of Talera came about.

Swords of Talera was my second novel. The first was a western written when I was 17 and it will never see print. Because of events that happened around the time I finished that western, which I wrote about in Write With Fire, I decided writing was not in my future and just gave it up. I couldn’t stay away, though. Seven years after the western, I was in graduate school. Sometimes late at night when I’d finished my research work but couldn’t sleep I would type out sentences and paragraphs of fiction on the computer. By this time I’d read a lot of fantasy fiction, in particular a lot of ERB and REH. The John Carter stories of ERB particularly resonated with me. I’d been making up Sword and Planet type stories for my own amusement for years, and then just said, what the heck, why not write one of them down. I figured it would probably just be for myself, although the thought that it might get published was always in the back of my mind.

I didn’t start the writing immediately, though. First I spent quite a bit of time in the University of Arkansas library doing research. I already had the idea for the world of Talera, but I needed a character. I decided he would be a descendent of a Maclang, the characters from my western. I looked through a bunch of Irish and Scottish names and found the name Ruane. That didn’t sound quite perfect to me, though, so I modified it to Ruenn. I also did a lot of research on sailing vessels, on gas giant planets, and on all manner of creatures and plants that might be twisted around to form the basis of Talera’s biosphere. Only then did I sit down to write.

In fiction, ERB’s Barsoom books were certainly the biggest and earliest influence on Talera, but another major influence was the Dray Prescot books of Alan Burt Akers, who I didn’t know at the time was really a British author named Ken Bulmer. Still other influences included the Llarn books of Gardner Fox, and the early books in the Gor series by John Norman. Although I never liked the slavery aspects of the Gor books, that didn’t figure at all prominently in the first few books and Norman had a dramatic writing style that I did like.

“Swords,” which was originally entitled “Taleran Genesis,” is a linear book full of all the things I loved to read, and still would love if anyone was publishing them. It had alien characters, lots of action, sword fights and desperate rescues. I wrote “Swords” in about 4 months in 1984, although it wasn't submitted for years and was heavily polished in 1988 before I submitted it. Eventually I sent it to Tom and Ginger Johnson in Texas and it was serialized in their magazine. It was very well received by the readers and was voted best piece of original fiction for the year in which it ran. Below are the notes I kept during the initial process of writing the book:

Taleran Genesis? (Book One)  [begun June 15, 84] [1st draft fin [Christmas, 1984]

(Retitled, 6-7-85 Swords of Talera  [3rd draft fin, 6-11-85]

[4th draft started 5-29-88; finished 6-20-88]

Final draft start 7-12-88, fin 7-29-88;  printed 8-1-88:

final polish 9-29-88  Did a minor rewrite 6-30-96 and reformat

starting 3-3-02, doing a final rewrite to bring it up a notch

Went through it one more time in 2004, again trying to bring it up a notch.

The book was finally published as a paperback from Borgo press in summer 2007. It was mildly revised one last time before it was submitted for publication.

And there you have it. If you should have a hankering for such a book, it’s available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Wildside Press. It’s in print, ebook, and audiobook, along with the sequels, Wings Over Talera and Witch of Talera. There are clickable links to Amazon for the books along my right side border of the blog.

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Cooners

Lana and I have been throwing our food scraps into the back yard since we moved to our home outside Abita Springs. Why throw biodegradables in a landfill when they can at the least make mulch in your back yard, or perhaps feed local critters. Besides the birds, we soon began to attract possums, raccoons, and a fox at times. The raccoons have become our number one customers and for the past three years we’ve been seeing moms in the summer coming with babies in toe. This year, for the first time, we’ve got two mommas, one with two kits and the other with four.

Today, for the first time, we had both mommas and their families at the same time. We’re pretty sure the moms are from among the groups of babies from the last couple of years, which most likely makes them sisters. They are used to seeing each other in the yard and don’t fight among themselves, but I thought there might be fireworks today with the kits in tow. No problem, however. When the second set of kits came out of the woods, several members of the first set went tearing off to investigate and soon they were all playing together. It was fun to see.

Lana and I were both wondering why we find the little raccoons so adorable. Both kittens and puppies exhibit the characteristic big eyes and flat faces of human babies, thus making them resemble us a little bit more. Young raccoons look like miniature versions of the adults, without the flat faces. I think, though, it’s partly the playfulness and kind of goofiness of the young coons that Lana and I respond to. And they have so much energy. They never walk anywhere. They run, and in running they almost hop. They wrestle each other and explore every nook and cranny around them. In that way they’re more like human children.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with a few pics of our cooners for your enjoyment.

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Sales Report, and Contest

I see authors doing this once in a while, reporting on sales for some of their independently published books. Usually the numbers look a lot better than what I see for mine. Gotta admit that bothers me some. But it’s good to do such evaluations and to read them from others. How do we know if anything is working if we don’t see some numbers.

Here’s the numbers on my noir collection “Harmland,” which I published on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble in April of 2012. It sold 14 copies right off the bat, then sold between 2 and 3 copies a month until August of 2012. At that point it flatlined and there’s not been a sale since. Total sales equaled 30 copies, with 6 of those coming from B & N and the rest from Amazon.

As for getting the word out, I posted on my blog and on facebook initially about the book. I’ve increased my posting on facebook in the last few months in hopes of reminding people of the collection. It hasn’t generated any action. I featured “Harmland” prominently in my first author newsletter, which I emailed out to several hundred folks at the end of October, 2012. I even came up with a “Harmland” chili recipe to include with the newsletter. Since I’ve had no sales since October the newsletter would seem, if anything, to have had the opposite effect to the one desired. I’m definitely gonna have to reconsider the effort involved in putting out a newsletter.

On Tuesday, June 15, I lowered the price of the collection from $2.99 to $1.99. This is for over 21,000 words of material. I announced the sale on facebook and sold 3 copies in the first few hours. None since then.

Today I’m posting about it here, of course. If you’re looking to pick up “Harmland” at its new $1.99 price, the link is here:

AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Harmland-ebook/dp/B008CT92ZA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372340612&sr=8-1&keywords=harmland

I haven't yet changed the price at Barnes and Noble but that link is below: 

BARNES and; NOBLE: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/harmland-charles-gramlich/1111664242?ean=2940014697026

As a further initiative to get folks to come read this blog, I’m holding a giveaway. If you comment on this blog, your name will be put into a hat for a drawing of a brand new, unopened copy of “Cut Short,” the first in the popular Geraldine Steel detective series by British author Leigh Russell. Back when this came out, I ended up buying two copies of the book and have had the extra copy sitting around for quite some time. I’m only going to be able to mail the copy to the US and Canada, though.

Hope your day is fun and productive!

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Progress on Wraith of Talera, and Other Things

Sunday night I wrote the ending line to Wraith of Talera. Felt good. The book is certainly not done. This is a completed draft but it will need at least one more complete going over from start to finish. After that will come the final editing checks. I'll check to make sure all Taleran terms are used consistently throughout. I'll search for certain words that tend to get overused and make sure I fix any problems up. That actually takes quite a while. Then I will set up the word processing file for the sequel, Gods of Talera, and will write the first scene, which is already in my head. I'll probably let Wraith sit for about a week, though, and work on other things before I start the revision.

I took yesterday off, visited with my niece and her family in the French Quarter. They are traveling through the area on a trip. Then I watched the movie Serenity, the move that closes off the Firefly TV series. Finally, I restarted my game of Rage since I beat it over the weekend and now I'm replaying to see if I can find stuff I missed the first time.

As for Serenity, I liked it very much. Both Lana and I teared up a bit at one particular place, and it's because we have developed genuine affection for these characters. Firefly was really well done and I'm sorry it lasted only one season. The movie was good but it didn't really tie everything up. I liked it somewhat better than Lana did. 

I'm still using google reader, by the way, although I have downloaded feedly. Google reader will disappear July 1 so I may have an adjustment period and miss some stuff for a few days. I suppose we'll see.

In sad news, I learned that Richard Matheson died yesterday. He was a writer I much enjoyed, especially his short stories, and he wrote some of the great Twilight Zone tales. It was sad to hear of his death.

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A Problem of Pastiche

Jury duty is over. Thankfully. I didn’t get called for a jury. In fact, I did nothing for three days but sit around on my butt and read. I love reading but even I was getting a little stir-crazy by the end. I’m free today, though, so time to catch up on a little blogging.

I read quite a few good pieces while sitting around and will review some of them here in time. I’ve reviewed most on Goodreads already. But I read one yesterday that was not so good. I’m going to talk about it a bit here because of the writing lessons it provides, but not give the name because I know who the author is, though it’s not someone I correspond with or anything. I also believe the author genuinely loves the Conan character and is enthusiastic, even if he didn’t get down on the page what he was probably hoping for.

Anyway, so here I am reading a Conan pastiche that I got free from Amazon for the kindle. It picks up where the original Arnold movie left off, which is OK. The first pages aren’t too bad. I’m starting to settle in, when the problems begin. First, Conan and his companion stumble upon the tale’s evildoers. They are cave dwellers mostly, degenerate, etc. That would be fine but they are described as “gnomes.”  I know that “gnomes” have undergone a lot of changes over time but I’m afraid I had a problem seeing them as anything more than garden gnomes from then on. Although the description of them was of something pretty nasty, it was a bit of a problem for me. I could have handled that.

Second, the anachronisms began, and this was quite a bit more of a problem. Conan is supposed to live in the Hyborian Age, far in the past before recorded history. Yet, the author used terms like “mania,” “electrified,” “bronco,” and, worst of all, “cop-out.”  At one point Conan yells “Happy Holidays” to his foes. Sarcastically, I think. These terms really destroyed any sense of realism for me in the tale. The writer is supposed to strive to become invisible behind the flow of the prose, but when you throw in phrases like “cop-out” in a story like this, you are putting the writer front and center.

Fiction is a very carefully crafted lie. As soon as you see through the veil, anything else that is remotely a problem starts to jump out at you. The whole “house of cards” rapidly comes tumbling down. If it hadn’t been for the anachronisms, I might not have noticed other issues with the prose so clearly, most notably the overuse of alliteration, particularly with “G’s,” and the weird use of terms. The author obviously had a pretty large vocabulary but frequently seemed to slightly misuse terms. One example I remember is the phrase “relentless tunnels.”  Endless tunnels maybe. But I couldn’t follow “relentless tunnels.”

Another issue for me was that the character was not anywhere close to the Robert E. Howard character. This Conan was a pure selfless hero, with none of the nuances that Howard brought to the character. In this way, the character didn’t even match the Arnold-portrayed Conan from the movies. This was not a particular problem with the writing. Had the character been called something else it might have worked just fine.

How about you? Do anachronisms bother you? Do you notice phrases like “relentless tunnels?” How do you feel about alliteration?

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Jury Duty and Father's Day

Josh came up for Father's Day and we had a good lunch at Outback with Lana, then came home and did little other than talk and play some of my video game, Rage. Josh showed me some of the drawings from his architecture classes. Great stuff. He's working hard and enjoying himself. It was good to see him.

In the evening, after he headed home, I even got 1000 words done on Wraith of Talera. I've been averaging about a 1000 a day over the last few weeks and that is very good for me. This is the longest stretch I've ever kept up that pace, and several days I've done over 1500. I'm over 62,000 words total now and should be writing the last two scenes this week. Then it will be time to go back over the whole thing and put on the final touches. I'll probably put it up for a few days to get some editorial distance.

Unfortunately, starting to day I've been called for Jury Duty so I don't know how much I'm going to get done this week, and whether I'll do any blogging. Typically here, Jury Duty is a five day commitment, unless you're chosen for a trial and then it might be longer.

So, if you don't see me around the blogs, this is why.

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The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard:  Del Rey. 2008.

This is a massive, 500+ pages compilation of pretty much every horror tale Robert E. Howard wrote. If you’re a fan of REH you’ll surely love it. If all you know is his fantasy, his Conan stories, then it will enlighten you on the man’s tremendous range. I actually started reading this a couple of years ago and chose to read it slowly and savor it, just a story here and there. Many of these stories I’d read before but they were all worth a reread.

I read one review of this collection that said it wasn’t “horror.” Well, not if your idea of horror has been defined by Stephen King. There are vampires, ghosts, and werewolves here, but the bulk of the stories either have Lovecraftian elements, or are of a type I might call southern campfire tales. By that, I mean the kind of tales rural southerners tell each other on dark nights when panthers are screaming in the woods and the fireflies flash like dead souls haunting the piney woods. Tell one of these around a campfire and no one will want to leave the light to go gather more firewood. The only thing worse would be to let the fire…die down.

Another thing about Howard’s stories is that, as a writer, REH found it basically impossible not to include a high level of physical action in his tales. Some people think that moves a piece away from horror. I don’t. Action and horror are a great mix. There’s plenty of it here.

Among my favorite pieces in this collection are “Dig Me No Grave,” “Old Garfield’s Heart,” “The Black Stone,” and “The Thing on the Roof.” I think the masterpiece of the collection is “Pigeons from Hell,” which creeped me out pretty badly.

This collection strove for completeness and that means not every piece in here is a masterpiece. There are also some fragments at the end that I wish Howard would have finished. Generally, though, I really liked this work and gave it five stars on Goodreads. I wish I'd written a bunch of these.

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Books in the House

Although I buy quite a few Kindle books on a weekly basis, it’s been a while since I put in a big order for print works. One thing of interest came in last week and a bunch more today. So here’s where I spent some money:

1. Warbirds of Mars, edited by Vaughn and Gilmour. This is a collection of connected short stories about the human resistance to conquerors from Mars.  I love the concept but haven’t started reading it yet.

2. This is Gonna Hurt, a book about music, photography and life by Nikki Sixx. I’ve already read this. Not a lot of new stuff if you’ve read his Heroin Diaries, but it certainly held my interest. He has apparently really gotten into photography and has sprinkled quite a few odd shots throughout . It also has quite a bit of his philosophy of life in it, things he’s learned from his experiences. I’m not much of a fan of such things; they generally appear pretty self-evident. I learned a little more about his childhood and his music, which is what I was most interested in. Most of the music stuff had to do with Sixx A.M rather than Motley, which is not particularly what I care about.

3. Proactive Contrition: A Meta-Memoir, by Wayne Allen Sallee. Wayne is an extraordinary short story writer. I’m not quite sure what to expect from this “meta-memoir,” though, but I know it’ll be surprising, entertaining, and will make me think.

4. The Saga of Dray Prescot: The Lohvian Cycle books 1 and 2, by Kenneth Bulmer.  This is a two volume set, each of which collects three of the Dray Prescot books that were not originally published in English during the original run of the series. They were published only in German. They have since been brought out in English in ebooks, which I bought already, but I wanted the print copies. Each volume has three books in it. I’ve read the first two from book one but still have four more complete novels to go. Looking forward to getting into these.  The cover below is for volume 1 but 2 is the same cover with II on it. Interestingly, the second volume includes a “compendium” much like I was thinking of adding to Wraith of Talera.

Speaking of Wraith of Talera, sitting on my desk right now is the contract from Borgo Press, as an imprint of Wildside Press, for the book.  I wrote a lot of rough draft and outlined the last few chapters yesterday so I expect to have the book finished and turned in by August. Since this one will be part of a duology, I am considering starting the next one immediately after Wraith is done. That one will be called Gods of Talera. 

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The Need for Cognition

A friend and colleague of mine at Xavier and I often get onto the topic of “need for cognition” in our discussions. What “need for cognition” means is that some people, and academics are often among them, have a chronic and near constant need to “think” about things.  He and I both have this quality, but neither of us believes that this need is present in everyone.  Many people, it seems, are rather happy to let their brains idle.  It’s not that these folks are stupid by any means; it’s just that they don’t exert themselves with thoughts when those thoughts are not directly related to the task at hand.  In quiet moments, their thoughts are also relatively quiet.  For me, it is often in the “quiet” moments that my thoughts race and twist the most.      

I’m reminded of a time in graduate school when a friend of mine and I were at a local drinking establishment partaking of more than a few alcoholic beverages.  My friend’s girlfriend came in, somewhat miffed that he had blown off plans with her to, instead, go drinking with me.  She asked, in a rather exasperated voice, why we felt the need to occasionally drink too much.  And both of us said at the same time, without any prior rehearsal or even discussion of the topic: “to stop our heads from thinking.”  What we meant, or at least what I meant, was that sometimes I wanted my thoughts to shut the hell up, and once I’d gotten enough alcohol in me those thoughts would obey. 

As an adult, I’ve found that playing a video game or chess has much the same effect as alcohol.  When I’m caught up in the game my thoughts are all focused.  They’re not wandering around yammering at me about this or that topic, and this can be a great relief after a day of cogitating.  I wonder whether writers in general are more likely to come from the folks who have a “need for cognition.”  Does part of the drive to write come from the very fact that writers’ thoughts are constantly yammering at them?  Or am I projecting my own mental state onto others.  What do you think?

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Of Ant and Humankind

A few days ago I noticed a dead snake on the dirt road around the corner from our house. I expected it to be gone the next day but it’s still there several days later. I noticed this morning that an entire ant hill has been built up around it. It made me think of human boom towns, when a vein of silver or gold was discovered, or when oil was found, and how a town might spring up almost overnight with everything dedicated to mining that vein or drilling for that oil.

I wonder what will happen to the ant town when the snake is gone. Human boom towns often died out when the ore was depleted. The people moved on to the next strike. I’ll have to keep an eye on the ants to see if the same thing happens.

It made me think of a fantasy story idea, of boom towns built up around the death site of a dragon perhaps. Ants and humans ain’t that different it would seem.

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To Appendix or not to Appendix

I’ve passed 47,000 words now on Wraith of Talera, the fourth Taleran book. This will mark the start of a new duology. By now, as is probably common with Sword and Planet kinds of series, I’ve built up a tremendous amount of information about the planet Talera. I keep what I call a “Taleran Encyclopedia,” which has details on characters, races, plants and animals, language, cities and countries, games, religions etc. I need it to keep everything straight.

At some point in many fantasy series, the author includes an appendix or two at the end of a volume providing at least some of this kind of information to the readers. It’s in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Alan Burt Akers did it for Kregen. There’s something like it for the Barsoom series by ERB. I personally like it when such things are included and was thinking about adding such an appendix to this fourth book. Here’s  an example of a potential entry, as it exists in my current “encyclopedia.”

Curse words and phrases:  There are many more:

    Dahh – Generally translated as Damn.

    Dihmus vishka – Possible translation is “god in heaven.”

    Krutt – Used as a curse because the habits of the insect are so disgusting to many.   

    Lart – Rodent (You Rat).  Generally considered a mild curse.

    Ruck (Ruckers) – Worthless ones.  

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Est Yaal shei = go to hell.

Ivid Yaal shei = What the hell?

Sae Yaal shei = Oh hell, or, by hell.

What do you think? Would you enjoy such a thing? Does it seem superfluous, or like an interesting element that increases the believability factor for the stories.

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Poetry and Jack

Sitting around after finishing the day’s writing, I had a little Jack Daniels and listened to some Black Label Society, particularly a song called “Funereal Bell.” The aggression of the music triggered a few poetical thoughts about the days when I used to ride. I jotted them down.

CHROME AND WHISKEY

Chrome flash

When moonlight comes down

And the whiskey runs

Like gasoline

Bang the night

Rubber frictions into smoke  

A V-Four screams

Motor dreams

Flat out

Black pave glitters with light

Heart shifting gears

Into acceleration

White lines

Blur into the empty distance

As my engine burns

Gin and mescal

Learn fast

When the curve comes

Highway and dirt always beat

Flesh and blood

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Summer Reading: Capsule Reviews

Finally, with school behind me for the summer, I’ve been able to get to some reading. First up was catching up on some of the friend/colleague books that I had piled up on my Kindle. I realized I have some talented friends. Here are some capsule reviews, in reverse order to the time frame in which I read them.

The Drifter Detective, by Garnett Elliott:  This is from Beat to a Pulp, a small press publishing juggernaut.

Jack Laramie is a descendant of Cash Laramie, known as the Outlaw Marshall. Cash was a lawman and Jack is in a similar business, working as a private eye. He limps into a small Texas town with a truck that's falling apart under him and gets a job working for the local sheriff. Everything is not as it seems, though, and those who try to use a Laramie soon find they've got a tiger by the tail. Note, in length, this is between a long short story and a novella.

Link is Here: http://www.amazon.com/Drifter-Detective-Jack-Laramie-ebook/dp/B00BVRQWMQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369599023&sr=1-1&keywords=The+drifter+detective

Hard Case, by Bernard Lee DeLeo:

This is the kind of book they mean when someone says a book is "action packed." Seldom does the main character, John Harding, sit still. Whether fighting brutal bouts in ultimate fighting style arenas, or fighting terrorists or modern day pirates, Harding moves quick and hits harder. He'd be a good friend to have, and a terrible enemy. Of course, he wouldn't be your enemy for long. You'd pretty quickly be dead.  Note: This is a full length novel. Link is Here: http://www.amazon.com/HARD-CASE-Book-Harding-ebook/dp/B0083NUPY2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369599755&sr=1-1&keywords=hard+case

Deadlock, by James Reasoner: A Judge Earl Stark tale. (Nuff Said, but I’ll say a little more.):

I'm a huge fan of the Judge Earl Stark series by James Reasoner. This current entry is top notch. In length, it's a long short story, and a quick and entertaining read. Reasoner knows how to get the action going instantly as Stark arrives in a town where a lynching is threatened. As usual, he's instantly in the middle of the drama. Highly recommended.

Link is Here: http://www.amazon.com/Deadlock-Judge-Stark-Western-ebook/dp/B00B0JLIW4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369599858&sr=1-1&keywords=deadlock%2C+reasoner

Mistik, by O’Neil de Noux:

I'm not quite sure how to categorize this one. A young man in New Orleans begins to discover that he has superpowers and becomes a masked crime fighter. Then he meets a girl with similar powers. They fall in love. Or do they? There's a pretty big mystery behind it all, which is revealed in the end. Good stuff.  Note: This is novella in length. Link is Here: http://www.amazon.com/Mistik-Superhero-ebook/dp/B00AAIKVW4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369599996&sr=1-1&keywords=mistik%2C+de+noux

Blood and Skin, by Steve Malley:

An exciting thriller with some nice twists and turns at the end. I particularly didn't see coming the identity of the primary villain, although after the reveal it made perfect sense. The hero of the story is a tattoo artist with an interesting back story. I also know the author is a tattoo artist as well, so there is some really interesting insider information in the work. How much of the rest of the protagonist's back story is based on the writer's own life is open to question, I suppose. Note: This is a full length novel. Link is Here: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-and-Skin-ebook/dp/B009FUA434/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369600108&sr=1-1&keywords=blood+and+skin%2C+malley

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Characterization and Stereotypes

A few years ago I read a western tale involving the basic trope of settlers versus Indians. Afterward, I checked out the reviews and the writer had gotten grief from some reviewers because a Native American character who was treated decently by a white woman turned around and brutalized her. One particular reviewer clearly considered this a racist characterization. I didn’t see anything racist in it, particularly not when I looked at all the characterizations in the story.

In fact, I think some of the negative reviewers were the ones being racist, although in a very subtle and convoluted way. I think that many of the negative reviews came from folks who, not only carried a healthy dose of disgust at the way European settlers so often treated Native Americans, but also accepted the “noble savage" myth. With that viewpoint, any Native American character has to have an innate decency to match against and call attention to the brutality of the “civilized” white men.  One problem with this viewpoint is that the noble savage myth is indeed a myth, whether you're talking about American Apaches, African Bushmen, Australian Aborigines, or European Cro-magnons. None of these peoples, or a thousand other tribal societies, lived by some idealized civilized code of conduct.  Not only would it have been foolish for them to do so, but each was a completely realized and fully developed culture of its own, which did not necessarily value the same things as other cultures.

The worst part about this approach is that it actually diminishes those it seeks to promote. It turns them into less than full humans, draws them more as stereotypes (although a positive stereotype) than as living, breathing people.  The fact is, as I've argued before, the Native American tribes were completely and fully human in every way. That means they were capable of great bravery and great treachery, of innocence and evil, and of kindness and savagery.  They loved and they hated.  Their culture taught them different ways of dealing with the world than my culture has taught me.  And some of them, like with any group of humans, were just plain nasty sons of bitches.

It is not racist to have a Native American character who is a villain, no more than it’s racist to have a black character who is a criminal. Of course it is a problem if “all” of your Native Americans are villains, or all your black characters criminals. It’s also completely unrealistic.  It’s also unrealistic, however, if all your Native Americans are depicted as noble savages. It diminishes a people if you turn them into stereotypes, even if the stereotype is generally positive.

In the story I’m talking about at the top, the “kind” white woman was a Christian woman who had good intentions but who was treating the “Indian” character more like a wayward child than a complete and complex human being. What the story really showed was that a mixture of naivety and a holier-than-thou attitude can get you hurt.

This whole issue raises another point. You can’t judge a writer’s attitudes from the depiction of one character.  In a realistic world, any single character, of any ethnic type or any gender, could be a villain or a hero. Realistically, they’ll probably have some aspects of both. They’d show the traits that belong to all of humanity by virtue of our common biological origin. 

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Journey to Atlanta

Lana and I left Friday morning for a drive to Atlanta to visit some good friends of hers. It was about seven hours. Lana drove down while I read, and I drove back while she tried to nap and didn’t succeed very well. We stayed with Doug and Katherine, whom I’d never met, and they were very kind in treating us to a great time and great eats. Saturday night they even treated us to Star Trek: Into Darkness. Although there were clearly some plot twists of convenience rather than logic, I enjoyed the show quite a lot and would recommend it for Trek fans. The actors nailed the characters very well, particularly the Spock, Bones and Checkov characters. I don’t want to say much more to avoid spoilers

Saturday during the day we went to see Stone Mountain, which Lana said was on her bucket list. This is the largest “carving” in North America apparently. It consists of images of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson cut into a massive granite dome that is awesome in size. Lana and I were more interested in the rock formation itself than the carving, and we took the sky tram to the top of the dome of rock and explored it. Simply amazing.

Saturday evening, after Star Trek, our hosts queued up some episodes of the SF series Firefly for us. I had heard good things about it but had never seen it. I got hooked pretty quickly and will have to watch the remaining episodes when Lana brings them home from the library. There’s very nice chemistry between the characters and good acting all around.

Sunday, Lana and had brunch at a very nice German restaurant in the area. The pork fritters and sausages were delicious. In the evening we visited a used bookstore, and I bought quite a few books that I’ll have to report on some time. Then we had a grilled supper and watched more Firefly. Monday was our trip home. Although I wanted to get back to writing on Tuesday, I’m not feeling very well. I went to the dentist this morning and found out I have a cracked tooth that will have to be crowned. In the meantime, they set to cleaning half my teeth and my teeth and jaws are aching horribly at the moment, too much even to get my hoped for nap. The numbness finally wore off by 3:00 and I was able to get a few bites to eat. I get to look forward next Wednesday to having the other half of my mouth feel this way.

Anyway, off to visit blogs now.

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A Good Writing Day: Gramlich Style

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 was the best pure writing day I’ve had since the late summer of 2011 when I was working on Under the Ember Star. Word count was about 1500 polished words and another 5 to 6 hundred rough draft. Most of the polished stuff came on Wraith of Talera, and I was able to fix a plot hole that had been troubling me and push forward to the end of a very tough chapter. That ending also gave me a jump start in ideas for where I’ll begin today’s writing.

I also did some polishing on a new Ginn Hollis story that I’ve started. It’s going to be a short story instead of a novella, and the working title is “Once Upon a Time Beneath the Ember Star.” It will be a prequel to Under the Ember Star. This is where I also did most of the rough draft stuff. After finishing up four straight days of final work for school last week, and taking a day to rest, I had a hard time getting started back on “Wraith” but this idea excited me and I let myself roll with it. I’m going to try and keep my writing time at about 85% “Wraith” and 15% “Ginn.” Unfortunately, this weekend is going to be full of a different kind of commitment, so after today I won’t be able to work on either story much until next week.

Speaking of this weekend, I’ll be off the internet most of that time so I won’t be visiting blogs or commenting. I’ll probably be checking email on occasion. I know everyone will survive without my input for a few days!

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a little snippet of the new Ginn Hollis tale. This is the first paragraph.

1: Burning Sky

Across the wasteland of sand came a hum, rising rapidly in pitch, building toward a whine. Then a hoverbike burst into view over a dune, fine grit scattering behind it from its fans. Ginn Hollis crouched low over the cycle’s power pack, her head down between the handlebars as she tried to will every last erg of energy from her engines.

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Mom in 2013

A little over three years ago now, on March 21, 2010, my mom died. Even though I was in my fifties and had raised a son of my own, it was devastating at that moment to lose someone who had been my bulwark so many times in my life.  My mom and I had our moments, but I never doubted I was loved and appreciated. She had always been a hard worker, both as a mother and in her job outside, which was at a chicken processing plant, but after my father’s death when I was thirteen she redoubled her efforts. I never went hungry or without clean clothes. I always had a bed to come home to. I don’t know how she found the energy and discipline to keep it up year after year after year, especially since she was what we call a “worrier,” and often put herself under a lot of extra stress from worrying about things she didn’t need to worry about.

Although I am still saddened when I think that I cannot just call her on the phone, or go home and see her, I am happy for the wonderful person she was and that toward the end of her life she was able to take things a little easier, even if she didn’t often avail herself of those opportunities. I also look at the family she raised, and the families they have raised in turn, and I think she has an amazing legacy. She was a force of nature and we’re still living in the climate she created for us.

Mom, you’re still remembered and loved!

Branding Failure!

I read a blog post by another successful independent author today and once more he touted the importance of writing “one” type of story per name. The reasoning makes sense for those readers who primarily read in one genre. It makes sense for the idea of “branding” one’s name in the memories of those readers who like your stuff. It doesn’t make sense to me as a reader because I’ve never limited myself to one, or a dozen, genres. I guess it makes sense for authors who write almost entirely for business related reasons. Although I’d certainly like to sell more than what I do, I’m not one of those kinds of authors. I like to write just as widely as I like to read. That made me start thinking about the kind of stuff I’ve written and how it might be classified.

1. Swords of Talera, Wings Over Talera, Witch of Talera:  A series, primarily sword and planet fiction with some elements of sword and sorcery mixed in. Edgar Rice Burroughs and Alan Burt Akers wrote similar kinds of things.  

2. Cold in the Light: A standalone thriller with a lot of horror elements. Similar in some ways to Dean Koontz’s early thrillers like Midnight and Watchers.

3. Under the Ember Star: A space opera in the vein of Leigh Brackett and C. L. Moore.

4. Bitter Steel: A collection of sword and sorcery short stories, with the main emphasis on swords and less emphasis on sorcery. Most similar probably to Robert E. Howard’s work.

5. In the Language of Scorpions: A collection of  horror stories, ranging from splatter punk type tales like “Razor White,” to twist endings like “I Can Spend You,” to flash fiction like “Roadkill.” 

6. Midnight in Rosary: A collection of vampire and werewolf tales, with a ghost story thrown in. It’s got brutal vamps, romantic vamps, and lots of sex. That last is a bit strange on its own because most of my other fiction has no sex in it at all.

7. Killing Trail: A collection of traditional western short stories. Definitely most similar to Louis L’Amour’s work.

8. Harmland: A collection of noir/horror stories, with the emphasis on the noir.

9. Days of Beer: A memoir containing humorous anecdotes and tales about my life growing up as a beer drinker and a hell raiser.

10. Harvest of War: A standalone fantasy short story involving Orcs.

11. Micro Weird: A collection of flash fiction running the gamut from SF, to horror, to humor, to just plain strange.

12: Write With Fire: A nonfiction collection of articles and tips about writing.

13: Writing in Psychology: A textbook on writing for psychology majors.

And all with some variation of the name Charles Gramlich on it. Guess I’m not doing well at following the advice of one genre, one name. 

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Coaching: Old School

I told a story here quite a while back about a night when we played Pocola, Oklahoma in football and I made an accidental interception that made a big difference in the game. Another year when we played Pocola it didn’t work out so well. We played them on their field in the cold mud and they beat us soundly. It was almost a two hour ride home in the bus, a long, quiet ride home. Coach sat in the front and never said a word. No one else said much either. We were all pretty miserable.

Charleston didn’t have a big sports budget. The cheerleaders and managers rode on the same bus with us. It was close to midnight when we pulled into the parking lot at the school. Coach stood up and opened the bus door.

“Anyone who isn’t a player can get off,” he said quietly. That wasn’t a good sign.

After the cheerleaders and managers disappeared into the gym building, Coach closed the bus door and looked around at us. Coach was a big man, well over six feet. He seemed larger in the shadowy light, and he seemed awfully close to where I was sitting. For the first time that night I wished I hadn’t ended up in an aisle seat.

Coach studied us for a moment. His fists clenched suddenly. I’d never seen him look so angry.

“If that had been a pile of shit out there,” he shouted, “you would have drowned in it. With your mouths open!”

He stalked down the aisle, then back up it. We all leaned away from him. He shouted and raved some more. I only remember those first words, however. They are engraved on my memory.

It seemed to go on forever; I doubt it lasted longer than five minutes. Then Coach opened the door again and told everyone to get off but the seniors. I wasn’t a senior and was very glad of that fact at the moment.  To this day I don’t know what he said to the seniors. No one ever talked about it. I didn’t even ask.

The next day we ran wind sprints until the first person vomited. Then we crabbed up and down the field. Crabbing consisted of getting down onto your hands and feet and going back and forth down the field as fast as you can. I had blisters the size of quarters the next day. I remember poking them with a needle to let the water out. I remember the dead flap of skin peeling away over time to reveal the nice pink new flesh underneath.

Someone told his parents about what Coach said on the bus that night. It wasn’t me. He got into a bit of trouble for a while, although I never knew the inside story on that. I didn’t even get mad at Coach. I was more angry at some of my team mates. There were those who didn’t give a crap whether we won or lost.

I’d like to say the team rallied after what we went through. We didn’t. We lost the next week too. Coach never said a word to us about it.

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