The Adventures of Heracles Mendoza: The Golden Lion, Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The feeling of liquid running over his teeth, around his tongue, and down his throat brought Les back to consciousness. His mouth grew warm and began to tingle, touched by a certain sweetness, something like honey, but deeper, richer. The way whipped cream is deeper and richer than air, he thought, still very groggy. A feeling of warmth trailed in the liquid’s wake, moving down his throat and into his stomach. Once there, the tingling fire began spreading through his body. His heart responded with a quickening, strengthening beat.

There had been pain in his head, though he had only been dimly aware of it till just then. Now it was lifting, dissolved by some effortless power. Relief flooded through him, sweeping away all the pain and discomfort like so much floating debris. The effect was so powerful that he thought he was going to melt, and slide off the table into a grateful puddle on the floor.

When the surge finally receded, it left him empty and cavernous and hollow inside. The sensation was brief, reminding him of that hanging moment he always felt just before an elevator would stop. It was supplanted by a growing sense of renewed energy and strength. Expanding rapidly, his entire body was soon alive with fresh vitality and a raw, wild sensation of power. He reacted by jumping up from the table on which he lay, even before he opened his eyes. Only a hand restrained him. A very large hand.

“Do not try to stand quite yet,” a reassuring voice said. “Allow the initial effects to run their course. It won’t be long.”

Les blinked, trying to focus. The giant was standing beside him. His name was Polydeuces, Les remembered with a clarity that surprised him. Pol, he had said. Something was different, though. His overwhelming fear of the man was missing. “Where am I?”

“The Portalhouse, young master.” Pol replied, smiling down at him.

Les blinked and stretched his eyes until the room around him came into dazzling focus. It was large and open, and lined with a dozen long, gleaming silver tables, arranged like a dining hall with a wide aisle down the center. The walls were made of seamless panels, silvery-steel, laden with beautifully inscribed patterns. A large landscape picture hung on the opposite side, the green of its meadows, and the blue of its sky ridiculously bright against the metal wall. To his right, a high counter ran the breadth of the room. Behind the counter, extending all the way to the softly glowing ceiling, were shelves crowded with bottles, jars, and bowls of various sizes and shapes. At the opposite end of the room stood a pair of very solid-looking metal doors.

“Young master,” Pol said, “I would like to introduce you to ’Dora. It is she who prepared the elixir which restored you to health.” Les looked around in confusion. He didn’t see anyone else in the room.

The Adventures of Heracles Mendoza - Sneak peak!

After months of revising and rewriting and polishing, I finally have a chunk of the novel ready to read that stands a decent chance of not embarrassing me. Just to be clear, I said a decent chance. I have written a prologue, which I am currently undecided about using, mostly because the tone and style of it is so very different from the book itself. Still, I'm posting it here because it does introduce the character in what I hope is a charming manner, plus it serves the additional purpose of raising the question as to who exactly the narrator of this story really is, and that, it seems to me, is a very fair question.

After the prologue, there are links to a PDF version of Chapters 1-4 as well as a link to a Word document that readers can complete and return to me if they wish to send me feedback. Or feel free to comment directly on the blog. Thanks for reading!

PROLOGUE

Where to begin?

Many writers like to start their stories with a bang, jumping right into the middle of some hot mess, trying to hook the reader with a shocking dose of tense, dizzying commotion. Others take the slow, methodical approach, carefully setting the scene, and then zooming in slowly like a camera until the main character is front and center.

But, really, a story can start any old way. I suspect that deciding just where to begin a story is a problem that drives writers crazy. Or maybe it’s just me. I wish I knew for sure. I don’t know too many writers.

Take this story, for example. This one begins on a sunny morning in the city of El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego, which is a large metropolis in the state of California, in the country of The United States, in the Year of Our Lord 2009. It begins with a fourteen-year-old (almost fifteen) boy by the name of Les Mendoza, as he plays basketball with a couple of friends on Monday, June 10^th, the first real day of summer break (because everyone knows that weekends don’t count…).

But is that the best place for the story to start?

So, you’ve written a book…

What does it mean to have written a book?

That’s the question I’m asking myself now, a week after finishing the first draft manuscript of my first novel.  I’m wondering what is it that I’ve done.

I’m supposed to feel really good, and I did, for nearly the entire day.

But that euphoria didn’t last, and coming down was like a caffeine crash.  It was, in fact, a caffeine crash, because immediately after finishing the book I swore off coffee and the like, at least for a month.  By the next day I was in a completely explicable funk, tired and cranky.  I was mentally exhausted, having written the last six chapters in the last two weeks of the year.  Around, under, over and through the holidays.  When I complained of this to Elizabeth, she told me I was just tired and needed to rest. 

But I knew there was more to it than that.  I had a new question to answer, and no suspects.

What does it mean to have written a book?

For the next week, I did no writing at all, and stayed away from the computer as much as possible.  I felt lost.  Withdrawal symptoms.  Following Stephen King’s advice, I decided to put aside the manuscript for a month, use the time to gain some distance and some clarity.  I started thinking about the next book, and also about the future role and function of thunderstrokes.  But the question loomed over me the entire time, still hangs over me, and so now I’m trying to sort it out, the only way I seem to be able to sort things out anymore, in writing. 

What does it mean to have written a book?

Where do you even start to answer that question?  Elizabeth tells me it’s a great accomplishment.  But in my mind, the answer comes back quick:  it’s only a first draft of a manuscript.  One massive revision is needed just to make coherent and readable enough to critique, and then at least another to make it publishable.  And that’s only if I perform magnificently.  From where I stand, it doesn’t feel like a book yet.

The sober, rational side of me looks at how I’ve spent my time and wonders what the hell I was ever thinking.  Two-and-a-half years spent finding my voice, finding a way forward, and then dreaming up this crazy story about a kid who has to go to a strange land and accomplish the Twelve Labors of Hercules, and then turning that dream into a rickety reality, held together, it mostly seems, with equal parts duct tape and pixie dust. Two-and-a-half years of lost income and retirement savings, of trying to dress up a dream in work-clothes, of feeling like a bystander while Elizabeth bears the entire financial load for our family, of struggling with fears and doubts and uncertainties about myself as a writer in an endless procession of constantly changing mutations, each one as ferocious and as deadly as any monster Hercules ever faced, or will. 

I know that sounds dramatic, but I believe it.  The harshest battles most of us will ever face is with ourselves.  Our inner monsters cannot be seen, and for that we should be grateful.  I sincerely believe that if they were given a tangible form, they would fill us with such terror and paralyzing fear it would put Hollywood’s horror-meisters and their paltry creations to shame.

So that, at least, is something. I have learned that I can live with the doubts and uncertainties, and find my way through.

Adventures of Hercules Mendoza: Tease #1

So, everybody who reads thunderstrokes knows that I’m working on a novel based on Greek mythology.  The Adventures of Hercules Mendoza is a reimagining of the classic story of Hercules and the Twelve Labors.   Except in this version, Hercules is a fourteen-year-old (almost fifteen) Mexican-American boy who lives in the rather nondescript Southern California town of El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego.  His father has recently remarried, some three years after the death of Les’ mother (by the way, he prefers that you call him Les and not Hercules; you’ll understand why when you meet him), and the arrival of this strange new woman changes everything for the worse.  His father seems different, and their relationship is growing more difficult and confrontational day by day.  Furthermore, Les is convinced that this new woman does not like him, even though she pretends artfully enough whenever his father is around.  He has the distinct feeling that she would prefer he were somewhere – anywhere – else.  Naturally, he can’t stand her. 

El Cajon, if you don’t mind me deviating briefly, is Spanish for ‘the box.’ If you’ve ever been in El Cajon (perhaps passing through on the way to San Diego, like most of us half-baked Arizonans), you may have noticed that the town is hemmed in by hills and mountains on three sides, thus the name El Cajon.  However, the idea of boxes, and being boxed in, and how to break out of the boxes we occasionally find ourselves in, or put ourselves in, happens to be a central theme in the novel.  Purely serendipitous choice of location, as it turns out.    

By now you may be beginning to wonder where the Greek mythology comes in, as the story seems to concern itself primarily with the adolescent angst of young Les Mendoza.  Well, hang on now; don’t get your chiton in a twist.  Even though the story is set in contemporary, post-9/11 America, Greek mythology does play a powerful role in the book, exerting an undeterred influence on everything that happens to our pobrecito protagonist.  As if he didn’t have enough worries to keep him going, Les finds himself transported one day to a bizarre and barren realm, where he subsequently learns he has been given the opportunity (read:  he has no choice at all in the matter) to attempt the same daunting feats once accomplished by the great Greek hero himself.   

If only Les had been paying attention to all those stories about heroic Hercules that his aunt Lucinda liked to tell, and that he despised so much.

Well, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

Torn Between Two Lovers...

The Forward Path – March 2013

Torn between two lovers

Feelin’ like a fool

Lovin’ both of you

Is breakin’ all the rules…

So it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an update on The Forward Path (August 2012, to be specific).

Much change has come to my little writing perch since last summer.  The changes are necessary, and good for me and my larger goal of becoming a novelist, but I have to confess they are also bringing the lyrics of the sappy 70’s Mary MacGregor song, Torn Between Two Lovers, frequently to my mind.   

For the first eighteen months of thunderstrokes, my focus was almost exclusively on the blog.  Envisioning the blog.  Creating the blog.  Writing stuff for the blog.  Expanding the blog.  Blog, blog, blog.   All of which was great, because I was teaching myself how to start a piece of writing (always a struggle for me), and then finish it (a much bigger struggle), and then throw it out there into the wild blue yonder (by far, the biggest struggle of all).  It was great practice, and great fun.  But it got to the point where the blog consumed about 90% of my writing time.  That left precious little time for the book I wanted to write.  And writing a book had been my brass ring, my reason for taking a left turn in life.

Somewhere around October of last year, I felt like the time had come to make a transition, a switch in emphasis away from writing for the blog, and towards the book.  That meant devoting my most creative and productive time (my 4 a.m. mornings) to writing the novel.  The effect was immediate and transformative.  I wrote about 50 pages of a first draft in those first three months.  My writing time ratio reversed itself, going from a 90/10 blog advantage to a 90/10 book advantage.  And I have fallen in love with the story I’ve been given to tell, the story of a boy named Les Mendoza.  Now I feel like I have to tell this story, because I’m the only one who can tell it.  And there’s a whole lot of story to tell, let me tell you. 

That’s a lot of tells, isn’t it? 

Anyway, the price of all that telling is that the blog is now consigned, as it must necessarily be, to playing second fiddle.  What’s that old saying?  ‘You can’t serve two masters?’  Or is it ‘You can’t master your serve?’ For me, both are equally true.  Whichever of those means you can’t devote yourself to two things at the same time is the one I mean. 

Are you Serious? Real Genius and me.

Sometimes, a movie just happens to come along at the right time in a person’s life.  It may not be a great movie per se, one that is received with critical acclaim or crowned by popular sovereignty.  It just happens to be the right movie for you, seen at the right time in your life for its message to hit you where you live, and change you in some perhaps small, yet substantial way.

Films like this are somehow able to tell you things about yourself that your family and friends don’t see, or can’t see, or don’t want to say, or can’t say.  These films help you recognize or realize something that you yourself may have been blind to, or unwilling to acknowledge before. 

I think that ability art has to communicate with our secret selves is one of its great functions, and the beauty of it is that it doesn’t have to be great art to have a great impact on the right person.  For a movie, maybe it’s just one in every showing, or every other showing, or every ten showings.  But for the person who is impacted, what difference does that make?

We tend to embrace the movies that help us see things in a different way, help us change and grow.  We invite these special films in amongst the collected assortment of relics that constitute our most private selves, and that’s where they tend to abide.  They become our friends.  We still laugh at all their jokes, long after they have lost their spontaneity and their ability to surprise.  Their well-worn gags still delight us, not in spite of, but because of their familiarity.  We overlook their flaws, and overemphasize their strengths, at least in contrast to the opinions of others.  Just as with true friends, we cannot be purely objective when it comes to them.  We have too much history together, and there is too much emotional attachment.  It doesn’t matter that critics trashed it (none of them to your face, mind you), or that it didn’t get a great meta-score on RottenTomatoes.com, or that your other friends look at you like you’re completely nuts when you tell them you love this film.  None of that matters.  Just as with a true friend, you don’t expect the rest of the world to see what you see, as much as you might wish they did.  The fact is you are bonded, friends for life, blood brothers. 

Real Genius is that kind of film for me.

For a long time growing up, I didn’t take life seriously at all.  I didn’t work hard.  I saw the essential folly, or thought I did, of any one individual who tried to do anything more than laugh at the fundamental absurdity of life.  I was a natural existentialist, long before Camus and Sartre meant anything to me beyond being simply funny-sounding words.

Damn Passion

Walter Isaacson, the biographer whose book on Steve Jobs was such a sensation last year, made an interesting comment the other day that got me really cranked up at first.  He was recalling a conversation he once had with Jobs about passion.  “We talked about the fact that it isn’t just about your damn passion,” Isaacson reportedly said, “it’s about doing something larger than yourself.  It’s about serving this world, helping others.  So if you have a whole generation of people [who’ve been] told, ‘Oh, just follow your passion,’ they’re going to forget that there’s some purpose in life.”  

Of course, when the story was released, it went out under the somewhat misleading and certainly manipulative headline, “Isaacson:  It’s not just about your damn passion.”  When I first saw that headline, I was instantly incensed and had to know more.  Which goes a long way towards explaining why the media likes to be somewhat misleading and certainly manipulative. 

I haven’t read Isaacson’s biography of Jobs yet, although Elizabeth bought me a copy for Christmas last year (curse you, Dark Tower!), but I did read an earlier biography he wrote about Benjamin Franklin, which I thought was absolutely terrific.  In fact, based on that biography, I wrote an essay in which I compared Franklin to the game of baseball.  I know that probably sounds weird, especially seeing how Franklin predated the game by fifty or sixty years, but trust me, it was a good essay, and it made a valid point somehow about the balance between individual and community.  If anyone’s interested, I’ll clean it up and post it sometime.  I should do it anyway, if only because I find the visual image of Franklin in a Phillies uniform holding a bat irresistibly entertaining. 

Anyway, for the record, I agree completely with Isaacson when he basically equates serving others as being a person’s highest purpose in life.  I actually believe that.  But I also believe that passion has a place, an absolutely necessary and integral place, in how to best serve others.  Let me give you an example from my own experience.  I spent four years as a teacher.  I changed careers at thirty-eight because I thought I was finally ready to respond to my highest calling, which I believed was to teach teenagers how to improve their reading and writing.  For those four years, I served those high school students as best I could.  I loved and cared about the students that I taught, and I loved and cared about the people that I worked with.

Yet, by the end of those four years, I was more miserable than I had ever been in my life.   It took a lot of soul-searching, but I finally figured out that, without passion, serving others can still lead to unhappiness – profound, existential unhappiness.  Even though I loved almost everyone I was around, I was miserable being a teacher.  I had no passion for teaching.  Not in a classroom.  Not that way.

My passion lay elsewhere.

Now, maybe there’s just something wrong with me.  Trust me, I’ve considered that possibility often.  But from that experience I learned that you can’t force yourself to serve a higher purpose; it has to be done willingly.  In fact, pure passion is about the only thing that will get me to willingly do more than I absolutely have to. 

During an interview I did with Dorina Groves a few months back, she showed me a tattoo on her arm which says, “Purpose produces passion.”  I think many of us, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Isaacson included, would agree with that basic premise, if not perhaps the idea of stitching it into your skin for all eternity.  But I also think the opposite is just as true, that passion produces purpose.  I think the two are inextricable.  I think that passion exists to lead us to our purpose, to lead us to a greater awareness of our unique reason for being here, and to lead us to discover the work that is ours to do.  Whether you start with passion or start with purpose isn’t anywhere near as important as just starting. 

The Forward Path - 28 August 2012

It’s been about eight months now since I’ve posted an update on The Forward Path.  The goal I set in January was to do one every month.  And that tells you everything you need to know about me and New Year’s resolutions.

So, where do things stand, one year and one month after starting my writing career?

Well, I am now back at work on the Hercules revisited novel. I posted one brief chunk of my rough draft under the name Let the Adventure Begin!, and then abruptly took a four-month hiatus from working on the book over the summer.   Our schedules since May just haven’t allowed me the time to continue writing for the blog and work on the book.   But I’ve resumed work on it now that school’s back in session (more on that in a bit).  You may remember I set a goal to have a rough draft done by the end of this year, and that’s still my goal, so it’s time to get cracking on that.  Should I be worried that my track record with goals is no better than my track record with New Year’s resolutions?

The blog remains the overwhelming focus of my writing output.  This is as it should be, because remember, the purpose of the blog is to force me to get used to the feeling of writing publicly, and to create some accountability in the sense of continuing to produce new writing, and writing to somewhat of a schedule (even if it is completely of my own making).  Plus, I am starting to see patterns in what I choose to write about that have me thinking that eventually some of the posts could be combined into a themed collection of essays.  In short, the blog is an absolute key to my development as a writer, and I love doing it.

Statistically, as of August 28^th, 2012, thunderstrokes has seen 13,283 pageviews since it began in July of 2011.   Thanks to everyone, my great friend Rick and my sister Kari especially, but including any and all lurkers, who have taken time to read my writing.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as someone who has been plagued by self-doubt about his abilities for most of his life, I can’t tell you how important, and how gratifying it is, to know that you’re out there, and that roughly 1,000 times a month, somebody is clicking on a page of thunderstrokes (and hopefully reading a little of it). 

Phoenix Comicon 2012

Phoenix hosted the annual Comicon convention downtown over Memorial Day weekend.  Comicon, for the uninitiated, is far more than a celebration of comic books and comic book characters.  It is a weekend-long, wide-ranging paean to pop culture:  movies and television, games and books; anything with an emphasis on the futuristic and/or the fantastic.       

Conventions of any kind aren’t really my thing, just like parades, or high school rallies, or really anything where large masses of people tend to concentrate into a relatively small area.  Generally, people make me anxious, so it only follows that more people = more anxious.   I have this fear that everyone I’ve ever wronged will somehow be in the same place at the same time, and that one person will recognize me, which will start an ugly chain reaction that ends with me at the bottom of a very large dogpile, helplessly suffering an endless combination of noogies, atomic wedgies, and worst of all, angry tickling. 

But this year I learned that the actor who played the role of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Jeremy Bulloch, would be attending.  Mr. Bulloch was the man inside the armor.  Yes, another actor supplied Fett’s voice; but as any true fan of Star Wars knows, the real acting, and the ultimate effectiveness of the character, came from Bulloch’s physical performance (besides, the character didn’t have more than five lines of dialogue between the two films combined!). 

Anyway, his presence at the convention, combined with the fact that I coincidentally had written a popular blog post tribute to the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter, was enough to convince me to brave this peculiar gauntlet for the first time.  I made up a hundred copies of “The Ballad of Boba Fett” on some nice paper stock to take with me.  Wouldn’t it be awesome, I thought, to have Boba Fett himself sign a copy of my poem, and maybe the three of us (me, Mr. Bulloch, and my poem) take a picture together that I could place triumphantly on the blog as a symbol of my success.  Exactly what the success was supposed to be, I’m not too sure; let’s say it was working up the courage to go to comicon, the nerve to find Mr. Bulloch and get his autograph and picture, and then the perseverance to survive whatever might happen after that.  At the same time, I also figured I could pass out copies of the poem to anyone who seemed they might be receptive (minimally that would include anyone dressed up in Mandalorian armor, and I was surprised at how many of those there were).

Mandalorian armor represent!  This photo comes from
the blog Lightning Octopus.  If you want to see some great
photos from Phx Comicon 2012 (far better than mine),
check it out! 

We went on Sunday afternoon, the last day of the show.  I took my older daughter Jessica with me for a certain measure of protection, and moral support, and possibly because I thought she might enjoy the spectacle.  Four blocks from the convention center, we began to see individuals with green and blue hair, wings, silver body paint, and/or horns, as well as a small delegation of the living dead.  Once inside, it was as if we had been transported to an alternative universe ruled by extreme genre confusion.  Sci-fi meets horror meets fantasy meets anime.  Sometimes literally, as when a stormtrooper, a gore-dripping zombie, a mechanical-faced cowboy, and a masked, purple-haired butterfly all collided because none of them could see where they were going. 

100th Post Spectacular!

Well, the title gave it away:  we've reached the 100^th post on thunderstrokes!

 Many of you who knew me before I started the blog weren’t even aware that I liked to write.  Many of you who had pinned me down on that point had never seen any actual examples of my writing.  People whom I consider to be close friends had read little, knew little about my ardent desire to be a writer.  They didn’t know that since the age of ten, I defined myself to myself always first as a writer.  That definition never truly left me, but it was modified:  writer-in-training; then, later, writer-in-waiting.  A theoretical writer. 

What an extraordinary waste of time! 

The only way to be a writer is to write.  Duh, right?  Write crap, and then write some more crap.  Then learn from the crap you wrote, and write more crap, and more crap, and more crap until it stops being crap. 

That’s what thunderstrokes is:  the place where I go to write my crap.

That fact that some folks seem to be enjoying the crap I’m writing tells me that you people must be surrounded by such a high level of quality in your day-to-day lives that you like coming here because you miss the unique odor, or like to reminisce about your own days of crap, writing or otherwise.

In my more doubtful moments, this is the kind of thing I tell myself.

Considering where I came from, the fact that I still have doubts after 100 posts shouldn’t be too surprising.  The good news (for me and my crap, at least) is that they are no longer crippling doubts. 

Instead, they are doubts about whether I’m not being honest enough, or too honest.  Whether I’m being funny enough, or too funny; or smart enough, or too smart; whether I’m simply stating things which are so obvious that nobody even thinks to bring them up, or writing things so far out there that no one will have a clue what I’m talking about.  Whether I’m taking short cuts and being lazy, or boring the bejeezus out of my readers.  Often, they are doubts about very mundane things; for instance, right now I’m having doubts about using the word ‘crap’ so many times, and doubting whether I should have even written that part.  Who wants to hear someone talk so much crap? 

After 100 posts, I’ve learned that doubts do not go away; they just change shape, and come at you from new angles.  But even that is something I only could learn by writing.

So I’ve learned a lot after 100 posts.  Here are some of the other things I’ve learned:

Let the adventure begin!

Those of you who read The Forward Path section of the blog may recall that I mentioned that I have begun work on a novel. 

This is true.

I also mentioned there that I would probably be posting tidbits of this work in progress every now and then for your reading pleasure and/or ridicule.  

This is also true. At least starting today it is.

Having just checked to see if I spilled the beans on what the novel is supposed to be about, I can confirm that my first novel is a twist on the Greek myth of Hercules and the Twelve Labors.

I love Greek mythology, and it seems that it's enjoying something of a resurgence recently, what with Percy Jackson, and Clash of the Titans, and God of War, and all that.  I passionately want to write a story that really does justice to those great tales of old.  

I spent the first few months of this year struggling with how to tell the story, or more accurately, nailing down the voice with which I wanted to tell the story.  I tried several different ways:  first person from the protagonist's point of view, first person from the antogonist's point of view, and some strange hybrid of first and third person.  In the end, I think I was guilty of being too clever, of trying to do too much, when what I should be focusing on is simply writing my first novel.  I'm not saying that those weren't valid ways of telling this story, maybe they are potentially even superior ways of telling this story, but the point is, I've never written a novel, and maybe, just maybe, there are enough challenges in that process to keep me busy.  

So tonight I sat down and began the story over, this time in straight third person limited (which means a narrator tells you the story, and can give you the thoughts and feelings of one character, in this case the main protagonist, whose name is Les).  When I did that, I felt like things started to click in a way they hadn't yet.  I got very excited about what I wrote, and in my excitement I have decided to forego, wisely or unwisely, my most cardinal rule:  never post anything the same day that you write it.  

I won't go into all the reasons why it's not a good idea to post something without allowing the heat of creation to dissipate first.  I could, but I don't want to talk myself out of it.  Getting into a writing groove is kind of like getting drunk: in the moment everything you say and do feels golden, it sounds and feels like the best thing you've ever done, and the golden afterglow tends to linger for awhile.  It's only the next day, when cold, painful reality is back in control of your life, that you realize that half of what you said was utter garbage, and the other half only has the potential to be decent, if you're willing to invest the sweat-equity to make it so, that is.  Being drunk has the added advantage of blurring your memories, allowing you to half-believe in the greatness you achieved in your inebriation; writing has the distinct disadvantage of providing you with a complete and accurate transcript of your inebriation. 

Regardless, I've decided to post this without review and while still under the influence (creatively, not alcoholically).  I trust that readers will compensate generously for this fact, as well as for the fact that what you are about to read is a first draft, and as such, is subject to all the flaws and shortcomings that make them first drafts to begin with.    

All you need to know in order to understand what happens is that the main character, Les, is a boy of roughly fourteen years of age, who has a strong mistrust, and perhaps even, downright dislike for, his stepmom Julia, whom his father married a short six months before.   The father is temporarily out of the picture, and in this scene, stepmom Julia is driving stepson Les to an unknown destination...

So, without further ado, and before I chicken out, let the adventure begin:

Aiming with Accuracy

I’m watching the local ten o’clock news the other night, and somewhere in the middle of the broadcast they run a story about a man by the name of Jeff Fabry.  Jeff Fabry is a world champion archer who happens to have only one leg and one arm.  He shoots from a wheelchair, holding the bow with the one arm.  To pull the string back, he bites a piece of dog collar material that’s been wrapped around the bowstring.  He is astonishingly accurate.  In the interview, he explains that he lost his right arm and leg as the result of a motorcycle accident at the age of 15.  He talked about how, after the accident, he didn’t like having to stay home while his friends went hunting, so he “figured out a way to shoot. I didn’t let anything get in my way.  And I think having that state of mind is what led me where I am today, because I don’t give up.”

Those words resonated deeply with me, because I had just been pondering the same thought.  Not learning to shoot a bow and arrow, despite the influence of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games; no, I’m talking about the ‘figuring out a way’ part.

The Forward Path - 28 Jan 2012

Every great journey begins with a trip

– me

The Forward Path - 28 January 2012


If you’ve been following my jaunt down the Forward Path, you probably already know that a year ago I was teaching high school English.  What I haven’t said much about, however, is the trip that triggered my decision to give up teaching. 

For several months leading up to the holidays a year ago, I had been in a very dark place within myself, and I was visibly taking on enough water that Elizabeth knew something had to be done.  So, as a Christmas gift, she sent me to Carlsbad, New Mexico, for three days prior to the beginning of the spring semester.  


You may think that an odd choice for a Christmas gift from someone who claims to love another person, but it turned out to be the perfect thing to do.  It was ostensibly a trip to visit Carlsbad Caverns, but we both knew its true purpose: a soul-searching mission, a solitary retreat.  She hooked me up with a place to stay, some awesome music to listen to on the way, reservations for a tour of the caverns, and cleared her schedule so that she could take care of the girls while I was gone.

This One's for You

I’m 43 years old, and 2011 is the year my life as a writer began.  It really started in June, with thunderstrokes.  I started blogging for a definite purpose, to establish a showcase, or maybe portfolio is a better word, of my work as a writer. 

The underlying intention was that by starting a blog, I might be able to get over the fear of putting my work, and myself, out there.  That fear had always been my biggest enemy and had stymied my progress not just for years, but for decades.  I always knew I could write well, but I also knew that didn’t automatically translate into writing that anyone else would want to read.  I was also afraid of being rejected.  My writing is the product of me, and if my writing is rejected, it’s really me that’s rejected.  The best way to avoid rejection, according to this way of thinking, was to not do anything.  Fear, that irrational, pervasive beast, kept me motionless.   

So the blog was a big step forward for me, because it meant that anyone could see what I was writing.  Of course, that meant the possibility of rejection existed for the first time.  Theoretically everyone could read me now, and potentially hate what I’m doing.  But the reality is that, due to the infinite vastness of the internet and Google’s mysterious ways, you can be available to everyone, but only exist for a few.  And the further reality is, people who don’t like what you do just don’t come back. What you end up with are pretty much people who respond positively to something in your writing.

And that’s where you come in.  You may not realize this, but you, the reader, are an essential part of this blog, and an essential part of what I’m doing.  You probably aren’t clear as to the significance of your contribution, so allow me to enlighten you.

The Perch Revisited

The following is a sequel of sorts to the post that started my blog.  Although the new one stands just fine on its own, you might find it interesting to read (or reread) the original for the contrast and background it provides.  It can be found here. Both are relatively short posts, for me.    

I wrote this post in one sitting, in just over an hour.  I normally don't publish things without editing and revising them to a high polish, but in this case I'm leaving the post pretty much in its rough-hewn state, with the exception of a few revisions of clarity, and completing a few thoughts that, upon review, were hastily left incomplete at first.  

I feel like this is the best description I have come up with so far of what happens when I sit down to write each morning.

Six months ago, on one of the longest days of the year, I started thunderstrokes with a post called “Perch.”  The Perch is my name for the place where I do the vast majority of my writing, especially my early-morning writing.  It consists of a computer on a wooden Ikea desk in the living room of our house right up against the window that looks out over the front yard and our little eddy of a neighborhood.

Now, in early January, we’re in amongst the shortest days of the year.  Today, right now it’s 7:30, and the sun is still somewhere below the trees and roofs of the homes southeast of ours.   

I call it the perch, because I feel like a bird when I’m sitting here, looking out over the corner of our street, but just as much over the lands and unexplored places in my mind and imagination.  From this place, I swoop down each day to one little spot and light there, pecking around and almost always discovering something unusual or interesting to bring back with me.  Most mornings I know where I’m going; I am returning to a specific location to continue working at something I already started, but didn’t have time to finish yesterday. I love these days, because I have a direction, an immediate purpose, something concrete to focus on. 

the butterfly hole

There are many connections between this and the last post, "a funny thing happened on the way to a life."  They are companions in a way, but I imagine the differences between them will stand out more than the similarities.  

If Shel Silverstein wrote about the topic of discovering yourself (and it's entirely possible he did), it might have sounded something like this... 

the butterfly hole

For years I would watch the butterflies

that randomly flitted by

never really knowing what they were

bits of magic in the sky.

Where do butterflies come from?

As a question I thought it quite fair

until I discovered a hole in my head

hiding right beneath my own hair!

Now a hole, people say, is a bad thing,

something that ought to be fixed.

Walking 'round town

with a hole in your crown

is just no way to go

(this we all know)

unless you’re a whale

or an ‘o.’

The Forward Path - 14 October 2011

I had another guest column published in the West Valley editions of the Arizona Republic on Wednesday.  This one focuses on the centennial of Glendale High School, which is the school where I spent my short-lived teaching career.  I wanted to do something to bring some attention to the school’s historical importance and vital role in the community, and so this seemed like a natural fit. 

This piece marks the first time I’ve actually written something expressly for the purpose of publication in a newspaper, and not for the blog.  As a result, you may notice that the voice is a little more restrained, and my naturally sarcastic tone is muted.  But I feel the tone suits the article, which really is a kind of letter of appreciation, as I find myself, more and more, admiring and celebrating the old, the weatherbeaten, the survivors.  Since I’m heading in that direction myself, I suppose you could look at it as an act of self-defense. 

Anyway, what follows is the original version of the column.  There’s a link after that to the version which appeared in the paper on Wednesday.  If you read them both, you will see that they are very similar.  The paper’s editors trimmed a few things here and there, either for space or because they figured out that I don’t always know what I’m talking about.  Either way, the paper’s version reads a little tighter, which apparently makes me sound better. 

By the way, the festivities continue today with the homecoming parade at 1 p.m., the time capsule deployment at four, tailgate party after that, and the homecoming game (vs. Flagstaff) at 6:30.  If you have the opportunity, come check it out.  Tell ‘em thunderstrokes sent you.  Go Cardinals!

The Forward Path 11 September 2011

Just a notation here to let readers know that an extremely brief commentary I wrote about the Flight 93 Memorial was published by the Arizona Republic today.  It appears in the Letters to the Editor under the title "A ray of sunshine in the dark."   It can be seen online here.


It is noteworthy primarily because it marks the second time anything I've written has been published in print, and the first time something I've written appears in the full circulation of the newspaper.    


Have a great day, and a reflective 9/11.

The Forward Path - 24 August 2011

Where things stand

Well, the blog is almost two months old, which means my life as a writer is almost two months old.  Everything I’ve written in that time has been strictly for the blog, as I’ve been focused on developing and maintaining a fairly regular posting schedule.  Some of the advice I’ve read about blogging (and I’ve been reading a lot) insists that you should post on a daily basis. The fact that I don’t doesn’t bother me too much, because my posts tend to be lengthy, and I put everything I’ve got into everything I write.  In effect, I’m placing my bets on quality over quantity, which, it turns out, is the other experts’ advice on blogging.  What I’ve discovered about blogging advice is that experts often have conflicting or even contradictory perspectives, and so, for the tenderfoot who’s just arrived on the frontier, it’s mostly a matter of choosing which experts you listen to.  It also tells me that there is more than one path to success, so it’s probably not smart to spend too much time worrying about it.

The Forward Path - 7 August 2011

Accepting the Challenge

“When you feel the noose around your neck begin to choke, it’s time to stop pulling on the rope.” – me

This is the first of a trilogy of posts that traces the sequence of events that brought me to the forward path.  Six years ago, I was about as far away from it as anyone can be.  By that I mean not moving at all; I was completely stopped, cemented in place.  You might think that going backwards would be worse than not going anywhere; but going backwards at least involves movement, and of course sometimes it’s necessary to go back in order to go forward.  I think being stationary is worse, because there is no movement at all, and what follows is slow suffocation.  When all is said and done, stationary is what the guy hanging at the end of the rope is.