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kay, so it’s been a hard couple of months. It started with something at work resembling a North Korean prison, working 140 hours of overtime in five weeks. This was while we were making organizational changes and a toxic person was stirring things up behind my back. Then there was the strange thing with my hand, the little null-spot, which doctors took three weeks to casually examine before announcing that, no, it wasn’t a degenerative disease. We also had a national train convention in town and our club was high on the host list. I had to run ops sessions, […]

Scared Shitless (DOG EAR) p until the 50s, heroes were never scared. When faced with a wave a Zulus or an airship unraveling beneath their boots, heroes would clench their lantern jaws (whatever that means), tighten their fingers around their bold-action rifles and think of England. But never, never ever were they scared. In the 60s, Louis L’Amour would occasionally mention fear in his stories, but it was usually the secondary character chattering his teeth while the blunt hero would tell him it was natural to be frightened. Not that we’d witness the hero’s own fears, just that he would […]

s a writer, you run a big risk if you are going to make a political statement in your book. Since politics tend to come down to one side or another and they usually break down 50/50 (as the sides grab up all the undeclared that they can (and cantankerous people such as myself naturally gravitate to the underdogs)), you’ll pretty much piss off half your potential market. Of course, you could come off as the darling of your side but you’ll also be cast as a dickhead by everyone else. I got this the other night – I was […]

f you are talking fictional motivation, nothing works better, plot- and story-wise, than being evil. Two sea-faring examples: First, Ahab. A white whale he was attacking to drain it’s blubber and oil scars him and chomps a leg off. And now he’s angry at it in typical blame-the-victim fashion. And that’s well enough – it’s a great story that he is so driven that he sails the Pequod beyond both known waters and profit margins in his pursuit of a fish. Of course, we know how well his little rage works out, with the sole survivor floating on a coffin. […]