Archive for the ‘Reflections’ Category

Have We Gotten The Message Yet?

Posted: December 16, 2012 in Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
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I open up my computer and what do I find? Two more stories about shootings or attempted shootings in the United States! Yes, I know, it’s unbelievable, right? The first happened in California in the parking lot of a mall (yes, another mall). A man apparently opened fire into the air and ground 50 shots before local police took him down. Thankfully no one was hurt. The second was a teenager in Oklahoma who was conspiring to shoot up and blow up his high school and was trying to get other kids in his school to help him. Thankfully he was caught before anything could happen.

But guess what? This all happened on Friday, December 14th, 2012! The same day as the Newtown massacre. Three separate shootings and attempted shootings, all in one bloody day! Am I the only one who’s getting the picture here? We’ve got a problem with guns, with people having machine guns, with people with obvious pyschological problems getting machine guns, and with people refusing to admit we have a problem and refusing to take care of it.

Now, I don’t believe God is trying to send us a message like Mike Huckabee does. For one thing, God usually sends a bona fide prophet who performs a few cool miracles before He does any sort of punishing, and usually that’s with a plague. But if He were to send a message, it would probably be something along the lines of, “You’ve got a problem with people using weapons to destroy the lives I’ve put on this Earth! Go and fix it now!” I think that’s a message we can all take to heart, right?

So I call on everyone reading this blog and living in America to contact your representative, your senator, your governor, hell, contact the President, just tell them they need to stop all this gun-toting craziness! This isn’t Rambo or The Terminator, where everything’s make-believe! It’s real-life, and there’s no Bruce Willis going to come swinging in and save us all! We have to do this ourselves, maybe by banning assault weapons in private homes or by changing confidentiality laws so that if a doctor/therapist fears a patient may commit a crime, they are obligated to report it.

We could also have special presentations in school on healthy ways to relieve yourself of stress and other problems, or assemblies to talk about mental illness and how to recognize the signs of it. Either one of these would be great strides to stopping gun violence. And like I always believe, a better education makes one less likely to commit a deadly crime, so if we fund education more and the Army less, it’d be a real help.

Thanks for reading, let’s get to work!

Oh, Now It’s Gotten Worse!

Posted: December 15, 2012 in Politics and Leadership, Reflections
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Yesterday I was quiet and remorseful, not my usual abrasive, combative self when it comes to gun issues. I felt that was what was needed for this tragedy, where a majority of the victims were children. They didn’t need someone to be angry and yelling on the Internet. What we needed was quiet reflection and prayer.

Not today, folks. Because let me tell you, I am pissed. Why, you ask? Well, here’s why: first, Mike Huckabee of FOX News said that the shooting in Newtown, Conneticut was the result of “systematically removing God” from the school system and that it wasn’t a surprise to him that the shooting occurred. First off Mr. Huckabee, authorities are now saying the shooter Adam Lanza probably suffered from a personality disorder. Personality disorders are the result of biology and genetics along with environmental, cultural, and social factors. Pointing to a lack of God in the public school system as the sole cause is counterproductive and just shows you’re trying to advance your evangelical/political point of view while using the death of children as a political tool. Unless you’re saying that God put the personality disorder in Lanza and/or told him to shoot up the school his mother worked at? Then you’re just evil, sir.

Also, there was a shooting at an Alabama hospital today. Let me repeat that: there was a shooting at an Alabama hospital today. Three people died. I know this’ll probably be eclipsed by the Newtown shooting, but I think the fact that three shootings in a week signals that we’re actually having problems and that guns play a large factor in it.

I mean, look at all the shootings that have happened in the United States this year alone:

  1. Canton, Ohio
  2. Aurora, Colorado
  3. The Sikh temple in Wisconsin
  4. The Empire State Building
  5. Texas A&M
  6. Chicago suburbs
  7. The Oregon Mall
  8. Newtown, Conneticut
  9. The Alabama Hospital

Are we starting to get the picture here? That’s nine shootings, one of them in my state! I had a friend who comes from Canton, she knew the victims! Are we still going to say that there’s no gun problem here in the USA? Are we going to say that no new legislation should be put forth? Are we going to say these are isolated incidents?

HELL NO!

And pardon my French, but I’m angry right now. So now, more than ever, we need to sit down and talk about this ongoing problem and fix what’s wrong with our nation without the usual political bull and NRA grandstanding! As much as you may hate to admit it, there’s something wrong with this nation, and it needs fixing.

So get to work Congress! Do something about this!

Nothing Can Be Done For Them

Posted: December 14, 2012 in Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
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Nothing can be done for the 20 children at Sandy Hook Elemeentary School in Newtown, Conneticut.

They are dead, taken from this world too early by senseless violence. As President Obama said, “They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own”, and now they’ll never have them. We cannot imagine how their parents must feel, or how friends and loved ones must feel. This day, the flags are at half-staff for a damn good reason. These children are now lost, and their parents will never hold them in their arms again. Just thinking about it, I want to tear up and cry. Up until this point, I thought nothing could hurt me more than Aurora and Wisconsin, but I was so wrong, and I wish I didn’t have to find that out the hard way.

I wish there was something I could say that could make this all better. I wish I could erase the pain we all are feeling now because we lost these, bright, innocent young lives. I wish I could cast a spell and bring them back to us like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the only worry about bringing back the dead may come from some odd side effects. I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.

I only hope now people stop bitching about second amendment rights vs. gun control and see we really do have a serious problem with gun violence in our country. I don’t know if that problem stems from just overabundance of firearms or from damaged psyches or both. I do know that what happened is horrible, and I don’t want anything like it to happen again in my lifetime, in my country.

Aren’t we tired of arguing while families bury loved ones that won’t grow up? Can’t we just sit down and talk and work something out? Is that too much to ask for? Is it too much.

Nothing can be done for those kids. Plenty can be done for those still alive. Let’s remember that as we proceed this week, and keeps these poor children in our thoughts and prayers. Thank you.

Snake: A Diagnosis

Posted: December 11, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Writing
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Or lack of one, to be more precise.

I’ve mentioned it a couple times before, but I’ve been working with a forensic psychologist who’s been helping me with the police reports in Snake. I send him a description of the Snake’s latest murder, he takes a look at it and based on the information I give him uses it to try and guess things about the Snake, such as motive and who he might be. I use that information he gives me so that my FBI profiler character can give an accurate assessment of the Snake.

Now, I promisedmy friend/consultant that when the profiler character figured out the Snake’s identity, so would he. Granted, the profiler character figured it out using evidence that can’t be used in a warrant, much less a courtroom, but she figured it out, so I sent the identity of the Snake to my consultant, giving him a detailed history of the Snake, his personality, and why he became a killer. I also asked what sort of diagnosis the Snake would be given. This is the reply I got:

“He doesn’t have a diagnosis.   Certainly, he has some psychiatric traits – like psychopathy, etc. – but nothing diagnosable.   A diagnosis signifies that either some impairment is occurring, or there is clinically significant distress present.   I don’t see either in his case.   It’s clear that he’s not truly a psychopath, and it’s evident that he’s done what he’s done in order to seek revenge and ***********.   While extreme in his methods, he’s quite noble in his cause.   I wouldn’t burden him with a diagnosis.”
By the way, the ************ means there’s something in that paragraph I don’t want revealed yet, so I had to cut it out and replace it with something else.
Bottom line though is that I set out to create a unique serial killer the literary world had never seen before, and it looks like it worked, becuase I’ve never heard of a serial killer without a psychological diagnosis. Psychopaths, schizophrenics, mood disorders, paranoids, even a few conditions that cause mental retardation and facial dysmorphia, I’ve seen them all used with serial killers in movies and books. This is a first for me though, so I’m kind of happy that my own work is where I’m introduced to it.
Anyway, thought I’d share that with you. Have a good evening, I’m off to dinner.

Are the One Million Moms Really Making A Fuss Over This?

Posted: December 9, 2012 in Reflections, Social Activism
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I was reading an article on HuffPost, and it said that One Million Moms, a conservative media watchdog that takes a very hard anti-gay stance, now says it is “moving on” from its protests of Ellen DeGeneres as the spokesperson for JC Penny.  Apparently back in February, they had a hissy fit when Ellen was selected as the store’s spokesperson, but of course they didn’t base it over the fact that Ellen is a lesbian and a married one too; no, they said it was because JCP was a “family store” and having Ellen as spokesperson was promoting values that went against the traditional form of family. Now they say they are moving on, and will now boycott the store.

First off, I’m not so sure they have a million mothers in that organization. It’s a stupid point, but it’s a point nonetheless; how do we know there’s a million mothers in that organization? Second, what’s wrong with the non-traditional family? I grew up in a very nontraditional family, and even though I write scary stories, I turned out decent. In fact, my parents should be given medals because I got this far! Third, why are you protesting Ellen? OMM, there are worse things out there than a lesbian comedian with a wife and a talk show being the spokesperson for a major retail store.

But then again, not much of what the conservative right has problems with makes much sense to me. For example, I think children growing up in poverty and with substandard education is horrible. But organizations like OMM will complain that if we give those children more food stamps and educational funding, we will be fostering a culture of dependence and making these kids moochers for life. I think that sending jobs overseas and not giving them to hardworking Americans is cruel and that the jobs should stay in the United States, even if it costs the rich a little more to keep them here. What does OMM say? Probably that the people who lose these jobs will find jobs soon enough that are just as good as the old jobs, and it makes no sense to “punish” job creators.

So go ahead, OMM. Protest something that’s becoming more acceptable everyday. When you’re ready to tackle real problems in our country, let me know.

Writing A Sex Scene

Posted: December 4, 2012 in Novel, Reflections, Writing
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Please use this photo to show people you are not up to anything salacious.

The following blog post may or may not contain sexual elements that are not suitable for younger readers. If you are a younger reader, please consult your parents before reading this blog post. If someone walks in on you reading this, please scroll up to the picture above to make it seem like you’re not some pervert. If you are ready to read this post, please make sure to look left and right with your eyes so as to make sure nobody is watching you read this post. Thank you, and have a nice day.

*      *     *

I just finished writing Chapter 76 of Snake. And as you can guess from the title, it has a sex scene in it.

A long, graphic sex scene. Which takes up about ten pages total and 2775 words, making this chapter the longest (pun totally intended) and most uncomfortable chapter I’ve written for this novel yet.

But you know what the worst part of it was? Not the fact that I’d written a sex scene and wondered what people would think of me once they read it, though that did cross my mind as a close second. No, it was the fear that what I’d written wasn’t well-written. You see, I’m no E.L. James, though I’d learned a thing or two about sex scenes from reading the works of some of those who’d come before her, namely Anne Rice and Jean Auel. Even with this sort of training, it’s not easy: men are visual thinkers who are stimulated by pictures, which is why Hugh Hefner is one of the richest guys in this nation and worldwide. However, women are more stimulated by the written word, which is why E.L. James and those torrid romance novels you see in the supermarkets sell so well. (And if you don’t believe me on this, ask any psychologist, they’ll tell you it’s true.) So with all that in mind, could I write a decent sex scene?

Well, I’m not sure. I wrote one for practice years ago, which I’ve now misplaced, and I wrote one for Reborn City‘s initial draft, but I cut it out during the edits of the second draft because it didn’t fit with the rest of the story (though when I get to the sequel, there will be sex scenes that do fit with the story). With both of those, I never had anyone look at them, never had anyone to critique them or to tell me that I didn’t know how to write erotic scenes or that something in the story was unrealistic. The only time I ever even told anyone I’d written a sex scene was when my mother was passing by while I was writng the RC sex scene and she asked how the writing was going (“Great Mom, but this sex scene is so awkward to write.” “Doesn’t surprise me at all.” I swear the conversation went something like that)!

So how does my sex scene compare with James, Rice, or Auel? Probably doesn’t compare at all.

But is it well-written? I’m probably not the best judge of that, which is why I hope that when I edit Snake, not only will I be a better writer, but I’ll also have someone very knowledgeable about thrillers looking over the chapters with me and giving me feedback. Until then, I’ve got what I’ve got and I’ll leave it at that.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go take a cold shower and then sit down and watch The Dark Knight Rises, which I couldn’t watch after I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight the other day because TDKR hadn’t been released to DVD yet and because it has hardly any sexual elements whatsoever.

Is Going From Indie to Traditional Good or Bad?

Posted: December 3, 2012 in Reflections, Writing
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Yesterday I wrote how I’d read a TIME magazine article and it had given me hope. After I’d posted that and started getting ready for bed, I thought about how some self-publishing writers made enough sales that they were noticed by the traditional publishing houses in New York and signed lucrative contracts for their books. It made me wonder, is starting independent and then signing up with a traditional publishing house once one presents an offer a smart move?

Well, let’s weigh the pros and cons. Some former indie authors  have said that they’re happy they don’t have to manage marketing their books or paying for illustrators/copy editors/advertisers/possible print orders if you make enough money for it. There’s also the security and old prestige that still comes with being associated with a publishing house, and with a publishing house backing you, they can get your books into stores, help negotiate movie/audiobook deals, and the occasional lawsuit where someone says something absolutely ridiculous about your book and what it’s doing to young people or how a single character is a slanderous caricature of them. Your books can read a wider audience, and who like a publishing house can garner you a good review or get you on Ellen?

However, there are some negatives: You have to submit to the publishing house’s rules, aka write what will sell, and the publisher ends up taking a large amount of the royalties from print sales. You lose a lot of control over what you have, and if you decide to break your contract with the compnay over creative differences, not only will the company retain control over most, if not all, of the work you published with them, they’ll badmouth you throughout the industry for being a sore loser. Also, if you’re name’s not J.K. Rowling and you don’t continue to give them amazing work, they can ask for your advance from your previous work back or impose other such penalties or even drop you (or so I’ve heard).

I guess it depends on the writer, his/her circumstances, and how s/he feels about traditional vs. independent publishing. For me, I’d only sign up with a publisher if they gave me a lot of rights and incentives over my work. But of course, I first have to get the work out. Let’s hope that’s soon.

I Can’t Wait To Self-Publish

Posted: December 2, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Writing
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My dad called me last night and told me to get my hands on a copy of the latest issue of TIME magazine, saying there was an article that ran 5-6 pages on the ever-growing industry of self-publishing. I asked a friend of mine in my dorm if I could borrow his copy, and this evening I sat down to read it. What I saw encouraged me; there were so many stories of authors who had found success in the self-publishing industry, and even those who’d sold only a few hundred copies or less were finding ways to increase sales. It made me think: I hope that when Reborn City comes out, it’s a success.

Of course, I’m a bit far away from that at this point. I’ve only gotten three chapters finalized, and I’m waiting for the next one. At this rate I’ll probably be finished sometime between March and June. But I’m already gedtting ready, spreading the word as much as I can. Soon I’ll start up my own Facebook page as a writer, and see about creating a fan page for RC. I’m also getting a lot of work on Snake done and I hope to have that done by the end of the year, God-willing, and then I’ll start planning publishing that (and seeing if there’s someone who can look at it and give me an opinion before I put it out). And if I have the energy, I may just put out a small collection of horror short stories. With the power of e-publishing and the author as the marketer, the possibilites are endless.

So let’s hope I can get RC soon. If I can sell 1000 copies of RC, I’ll consider this all a success.

By the way, question for the other self-publishers who read this blog: how are your books doing? And what’re you doing to increase your sales and exposure (besides blogging a lot, of course).

A Discussion on Disney

Posted: November 29, 2012 in Living and Life, Reflections
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This evening at my dorm, we had a program about how Disney might’ve affected our worldviews in a number of ways when we were children. The discussion wasn’t so much to bash Disney as an evil organization that brainwashes children (though that might actually be the case, for all I know), but so much to sit back and tak as educated adults about how Disney may have incorporated certain things into their works, willingly or unwillingly, that changed our outlooks on life. The discussion went through all sorts of topics, from the princess mentality (you saw that coming), sexuality, the villains all are ugly and wearing black, the good looks of the main characters and the sometimes stereotypical ugliness of the villains and minor characters, the differences between men with power and women with power, and it encompassed all sorts of works, from the early Disney films that were obviously about women in traditional roles and love at first sight, to Disney’s current attempts to be more modern and accepting at the expense of the princess of Brave being called a lesbian and the popular TV show Once Upon a Time, which is owned by Disney but takes it old classics and turns them upside down in an interesting fashion.

What we discussed was really interesting and I learned a lot more than I thought I would, and I think everyone else feels the same. Heck, we brought up major criticisms of Aladdin involving stereotypes and mishmashed cultures, and that’s something I haven’t thought about. If you go back and look at some of these old films, you may find yourself seeing things you didn’t see as a kid (I went to Youtube to look at some songs brought up at the discussion, and Good Lord, there were lyrics with more significance than I remember).

Oh, and for those of you wondering how much Disney may have affected me (and consequently my writing), you don’t have to worry; when I first saw those films, I was at an age where I had pretty pictures and sounds to occupy me. I didn’t absorb much beyond that. It wasn’t until I was older that I started absorbing stuff from what I watched, and by then I’d moved onto animes like Sailor Moon and Ronin Warriors. Trust me, it showed in my early writing: when I was ten I tried writing a pirate novel, and a princess ended up joining the crew after they boarded her ship (why she was on the ship or what happened to the crew of said ship or why she joined the pirate crew as an alternative to a dungeon on a magic island or why she was automatically made first mate, I never explained, but I was 10, so go figure), and for a while she was only interested in being a good first mate. Romance didn’t develop till later (or it would have; I never finished that story to tell you the truth).

What about you? Has Disney films affected you in any way?

That includes wondering if your kids should be watching this sort of stuff with all the themes you’re noticing in the storyline and animation, by the way.

Oh, and who in the discussion group said that in the Aladdin song “Arabian nights” there was a lyric about getting ears cut off for ugly faces? I looked, but it’s not in the official movie. It’s in another version though. Look:

Doing A Little Work With John Milton

Posted: November 28, 2012 in Living and Life, Poetry, Reflections
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This picture look familiar?

I’m a huge fan of Paradise Lost, ever since we read some of it for class last spring. I enjoyed it so much, I asked my mom to buy me my own personal copy for my birthday, and she did, one with essays and critiques on Paradise Lost and its author John Milton. And this semseter, my documentary teacher gave us two assignments: the first assignment being we had to do a Powerpoint slideshow based on research we did concerning a particular work of literary fiction, and then afterwards create our own book based on pages taken from the book we used for our Powerpoint project (yeah, wierd for a doucmentary course, I know). Since the book we used had to be something that’s a great piece of literature, something that has been looked over by many scholars over the years, I ended up doing PL just because I wanted to break it out again (though thankfully the second assignment hasn’t involved me ripping out pages from my personal copy of PL).

And now I have some free time on my hands, so I’m going to do some editing, and then if there’s time after that before my next class, I’ll work a little bit on Snake just to relax. And guess what? I got Paradise Lost on audiobook, so I’ll be able to test whether audiobooks make great background noise for writing like political debates, hypnosis tracks, and spirituality lectures do. Here’s hoping it works, and that I don’t absorb some of the poetry subconsciously when I thought I hadn’t been paying attention and start to act too proud and pompous.

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