Hurt my neck...

Got a cramp in my neck and pulled a muscle.

I'd love to say I did it while setting a PR lifting weights or something. But instead it happened while I was sitting down reading and I yawned too hard.

Getting old is bullshit.

The death of my father (a different perspective)

In sending a condolence message to a rather old friend regarding the loss of her father, I had an epiphany.

My dad is half of my genetic makeup. He is also half of my brother Jon's.

My father died Dec 16, 2014 but between the two of us, he still lives, very nearly entirely, through my brother and I. Nearly all of his DNA lives on in us.

I wish I could use it to talk to him.

If my math is right, he's still 2/3 alive and therefore he's bawling his eyes out with me right now.

My books... available on Amazon and the Kindle.

They're available on the Kindle App as well. :-)


"Black's Voyage"

"A Pair of Black"

"Red in Tooth and Claw"

"Black and Blue"

Coming soon:

   "Isis Rising"

   "Blackest Revenge"

An unrelated book to the series but the longest I've ever written:

   "Vintage Wrath" a book of revenge and justice in the rarefied world of the Port wine industry.

The death of a character...

I've been editing a scene that involves the death of someone who deeply loved his wife.
The man had to bury her before the plague finished with him. He left a note asking whoever came after him to bury his remains next to his wife's.

So they could be together forever.

I've been dehydrating myself via my eyes for over an hour.

I don't remember it being this sad when I wrote it but I've become a master at writing sad scenes with my eyes closed.

You don't need to see to write.

I have no way of knowing if it'll affect anyone else like this but it's tearing me to pieces.

The book is called, "Blackest Revenge" and is book 6 in the series. It'll be published around Labor Day.

How to write a novel.

I start at the last line of the book.

You have to tear your heart out, every inch of the way, back to the beginning.

When you can't take any more... Not another moment...

You're halfway there.

I don't know how I feel about who I am sometimes. What kind of person poisons three people and kills an old, honorable, hard-working man before he goes to work in the morning?

How do I look myself in the eye, knowing I am planning the deaths of several characters who are wonderful people? They don't deserve to die but they must in order for the story to move forward.

I can write with my eyes closed so I don't need to be able to see through the tears in order to kill a beloved person. I can kill them with my eyes closed.

I can tell you. If my story makes you cry... I promise I cried harder as I broke my spine and removed my heart to let you feel some of what I felt as that person died. I felt it more than the reader and for the reader it was brutal.

I hope it was anyway because that's how I meant to write it.

My abusive relationship...

It's time to confess my shame, swallow my pride and come clean... for many years I've been in a long-term abusive relationship.

With spicy food.

I love it so much but it hates me with a vengeance which seems to know no bounds. I burn my mouth with the heat of a thousand suns and even while sweating and gasping... come back for more.

I step away for a moment and almost immediately my co-dependent need for the pain, only she can provide, pulls me back for additional abuse.

I beg for mercy and plead for deliverance while in my heart I know... neither of us wants it to stop.

Although my tongue feels as though it's rejecting my electrocuted taste buds as though they were a badly transplanted organ out of some Southeast Asian innard-market, my fork returns to the bowl of Creole-seasoning-with-red-curry-over-steak-and-chicken-with-mushrooms-and-onions.

Again and again I chew the painful but succulently prepared meat and my mouth burns away my hours of torture, without end.

Why do I do this to myself? Endorphins? Some solo-macho need to prove myself to... myself? I'm home alone so that's probably not it.

Alcohol brings bravery and a tiny respite from the searing agony in my mouth as my sweaty breathing begins to sound like I'm coaching a La Maze class.

I know I'll sleep well since the pain will fade by nightfall, leaving me tired and exhilarated from my ordeal.

Sometimes the pain launches a counter-attack the next morning but it is a mere echo of the previous night's marathon of feverish discomfort.

The pain doesn't forget. The pain remembers! It wants me to pay for my peaceful night's slumber and suffer anew while I welcome its fresh embrace.

What does it feel like to get kicked in the balls?

An age-old, unasked question which I am certain any number of women would like to know the answer to.

Women think men are just big, snotty babies when the guy is clutching his junk and displaying terrible posture while she's saying, "I barely tapped them!"

Correct. Now, to understand precisely how that felt, let your boyfriend flick your eyeball. The same way you would flick a fly off of a table.

Why are you holding your eye and walking all hunched over like that? "I barely flicked it!"

That is PRECISELY what it feels like. That ache? How it lingers and feels like it goes all the way to the back of your head?

Only now imagine what it would be like to take a "line drive up the middle"? A ninety mile-an-hour baseball smashing into your eyeballs. Both of them. And they're hanging outside your body protected only by a little bag of elbow skin. Right? That'll keep them safe.

Now, from the moment you felt your pelvis be protected from injury, by your soft, squishy eyeballs? You've got about twenty seconds to get it together before the game re-starts and you are expected to perform flawlessly. No one will cut you any slack for still being in agony. Not even in half an hour when your head still feels like it's going to make you throw up.

But at least now you know exactly what it feels like to get kicked in the balls.

Knowledge is power.

*************
Find my books on Amazon.com!

Prologue to Vintage Wrath

Prologue.

Philip Johnson could no longer scream. 

He could no longer beg or plead. The poison had spread too far. Although it wasn’t too late to save him, the list of those who might was now vanishingly small.

He could no longer swallow since the poison had washed down his throat, melting the dendrites at the end of his nerves which allowed such luxuries. But he also couldn't prevent himself from swallowing. 

When Catherine’s bodyguard tipped his head back, the man seemed almost gentle as he poured the remaining poison down his throat.

Vintage Wrath

Vintage Wrath:


I'm not sure if it's like this for other writers but I was very sad when it was time to stop writing. 
 
It took 16 weeks of work to get this thing ready for editing.

It was harder to write than the Establishment series for many reasons. The MC (main character) is an orphan girl, everyone is unfathomably rich and they are all gifted in one narrow field.

There was a *lot* more research to be done but every bit was fascinating!

I love you

I was in my third year of college the first time one of my parents said, "I love you."

Imagine going your whole life, never hearing those words. Never even realizing that you were not hearing them because you had never heard them.

My family was not the kind to be openly amorous with one another and I did my part to perpetuate it, like a good little Buschhorn.

We said goodbye when I left for college on the other side of the continent and I hugged my mom at the airport when she flew back home after driving with me (a hellish experience if there ever was one) across the country.

When my father said, "I love you," on the phone that first time, I was not prepared.

I said, "Okay, goodbye," or something equally inappropriate. Then I stood there, looking at the phone and wondering where the hell that had come from. I was touched but it felt strange.

I didn't know what to do. I needed to be prepared for it next time. So when I called them the next Sunday, I was ready.

At the end of the conversation, Dad again said, "I love you."

I said, "I love you too."

Mom said, "Goodbye."

Apparently she was not yet on board with all of these steaming piles of mushy crap which Dad I and were now slinging, willy-nilly, everywhere.

It got to where I would really enjoy telling Mom I loved her when it came time to end the conversation, just so I could hear her squirm and writhe in discomfort.

"Oh. Well yes... you too," she'd writhe.

At some point in my childhood I had closed up. In my baby pictures, I can be seen lovingly hugging my little brother. Gently comforting my cousin as we both sport some really unflattering diapers and generally being very attentive to the pet dog and cat.

Somewhere between those photos and elementary school, I became a jerk. I know that by high school, I had zero interest in any sort of affection from either of my parents and withdrew to my room or began spending time with my friends. As some teens are practically famous for doing.

My friends, however, hugged their parents and treated them respectfully while I lied to mine and snuck around as much as possible while seeing what I could get away with. I seemed to be deliberately being as much of a dick as possible to my parents, just to irritate them.

I'm sure it worked because  I was persistent and unrelenting. I had a strong jerk-ethic!

In my entire life, I have seen my parents kiss once.

One time.

I was about seven years old and mom was taking my brother and I somewhere. We were at the airport and dad kissed mom goodbye.

I have never seen them hold hands or heard them say "I love you" to each other although they clearly did. And deeply. When my father was in a nursing home, with Parkinson's, my mother had taken care of him up to and beyond the point where she could care for him. She visited him every day and even on his bad days, when he had no idea who she was, he just lit up with happiness at seeing her near him. He would tell her how pretty she was (she was seventy two years old... so not pretty. Besides, she's my mom so... eww) and flirt with her. He never did that with the other women or the nurses. Some of whom were persistently and unrelentingly hot. There were Russian nurses.

Dat accent.

That led me to believe that my mother and father had fallen in love with each other on a deeper level than just attractiveness or financial suitability. There was something chemical between them which made them happy to be together or even near one another.

After my father's death, my mother began to not only say, "I love you", when we got off the phone, but to say it first.

Now I think of it as a kind of contest to see who can say it first.

Persistence pays off.

Is this your bull?

When I first came out to the University of Idaho, I arrived several months early in order to check out the school. No one was around and I pretty much had the place to myself. The school buildings were open and the administration was there but all of the students were home having a summer.

I drove around the town checking out the cool movie theater and the local bars. You know. The important stuff. At one point I was at an intersection, on campus. I stopped dutifully at the stop sign, looked left and then right. To the right it seemed some traffic was coming. Said traffic consisted of a pair of cowboys on horses, being towed by a rather large bull. I assume it was large because it was the biggest one I had ever seen. So I guess, using that logic, it was both the largest and the smallest bull I had ever seen.

It did not even stop at the stop sign so being the city boy that I was, I rolled down the window, honked and shouted "NICE STOP ASSHOLE!" One cowboy waved.

Perhaps the bull was on his way to get a coffee. We all get a little grumpy without it and I can empathize with his probable headache. 

But before he trotted off to get his cowpuccino, the bull had escaped from the Kibbie dome where they were getting ready for a rodeo. It had loafed through the law school parking lot hitting nothing. It avoided the BMWs and Jaguars, carefully skirted each Mercedes and Lexus. The cowboys however, were not quite so gentle. There was some regrettable, collateral damage as the bull dragged their steel-shod horses across the paved surface.

Since I was from the east coast, I was still on EST time so I woke up at 4AM every day. I've been out here almost thirty years and I still get up at 4:30AM. Longest case of jet lag ever.

When the bull stormed the intersection I thought "I would never have seen anything like that back home". And that was how I knew I had found the right place to live.

Sore muscles.

I keep hoping that sore muscles are the sensation of fat cells dying. Dying painfully.

I don't think of sweating as anything other than the tears of my fat cells as they are wept from sad adipose eyes. I want to know that my fat is in agony as it perishes while I run.

I hate running. But the thing is, I hate being out of shape a lot more than I hate running. I have never been one of those bastards who, after a few miles, suddenly feel like they could go forever. Or that the pain just goes away.

Holy hell. After a few miles my pain has only gotten worse. And it keeps getting worse until I stop. Which I want to do more with every step, following the moment I start.

My sister in law can just go forever. Therefore I hate her. And also my brother who just seems to loaf along with his mile-eating gait as though running were not the single most awful thing ever invented. their two kids will probably grow up thinking running is a normal and natural thing.

It is possible that my decision to lift weights was a bad one. When I graduated high school I was 6' 2" and weighed 155 pounds. That was the low end of normal.

In normal speak, I was emaciated.

After a year of college and discovering the wonders of the weight room and a class in weight lifting, I gained thirty pounds. At that point, it was very difficult to gain even one extra pound. I was still emaciated, only my bones were now covered in a layer of muscle.

Then I hurt my back and couldn't lift for over two years. I got married and running still hurt a lot. Every step hurt.

Once the pain finally became manageable I was able to get on the road a bit more often but by now I weighed 210 pounds :-(

Again, I switched to weights and added another 35 pounds to my frame. It is easy to imagine how, at 245 pounds, running five miles takes a lot more effort when you are carrying ninety pounds more than you were in high school.

P90x is "easier" than running but also much harder! I would very much like to strangle Tony Horton and his chipper enthusiasm.

I am still ready to quit during the "warm up" phase of the work out, but as my fitness increases, my attitude improves and my feelings get better. I would still gleefully choke Tony to death but now am confident that I can do it much more easily! Although he must be pretty tough since I can't be the only one who hates him like this. People probably either go right for his jugular or fall to their knees and thank him.

One of the coolest things about many forms of exercise is that it is inexpensive. Sure you can get expensive gym memberships or equipment, but running and lifting weights only have a small initial investment. You do have to replace your running shoes occasionally but a weight set can sit there on the floor mocking you forever, without costing you a cent. Same goes for exercise bikes. They hold your sweaters and towels really well, while they dry.

But once you are finished pretending you don't have time to exercise (because your shows aren't going to watch themselves!) all of that equipment will still be there, ready for use in a blink.

I don't judge. I have had dust and dead moths blow out of my exercise bike, when I first started pedaling after a workout "hiatus". Hiatus is a good word. If you look it up it means something like "you quit doing something that you intended to go back to... eventually." So really, your hiatus can be as long as you want but you need an indicator for when it has gotten long enough. Like when you sit down; does your belly rest on your thighs? Maybe it's been a little too long. Do you have "Mirror Disease"? Where you can't see your junk without a mirror?

But we all know the cure for Mirror Disease... exercise.

If you want to feel extra bad, watch Saturday morning television and pick an exercise/weight-loss infomercial and look at the women who lost sixty or eighty pounds. They did that without the benefits of the hormones us guys have. They did it without the huge, fat-burning engines we have, called 'muscles'.

You can feel as bad as you want but you won't start to feel better until you start exercising.

Go make your fat cry. :-)

More tetanus? What is it with me and this topic?

My girlfriend was supposed to get a tetanus booster when she went for her check up.  Since she is a nurse, she is the Queen of Non-compliance. They are all like that.

I've been harping on her and she tells me she will get it during whatever the next follow up is, but she won't. She has an OB/GYN appointment today and I am pushing her to get it then.

Imagine that conversation? How many patients have ever needed a tetanus shot at their lady doctor's? Not many, I'd wager. But I would LOVE to hear the story behind why they might have come across a circumstance requiring a shot for bacteria that live in the dirt. While discussing vaginas and stuff.

Is this a thing mud-bogger girls need more often?

Nobody wants Vagina Tetanus, ladies. So I guess, no matter how tough you are; if *that* gets hurt DO NOT RUB DIRT ON IT!

Five books

I don't think any trilogy should have more than nine books so I am probably okay.

I only intended to have a handful of books in this series but like having children, a fun hobby kind of got out of hand. Every morning I wake up at 4:30 and shower, make breakfast and lunch and then hit the computer.

Once I am satisfied that all of my Facebook updates and comments are funny enough I can finally get to work.

After I have checked my YouTube subscriptions.

And Googled the list I wrote on my hand yesterday.

My daily writing goal is only 1000 words and mostly it gets done in under an hour. Four paperback pages in an hour. Usually however... by the time two hours have passed I am really into the writing. I am excited about what the characters are doing and laughing at their conversations as though I am some weird voyeur. On weekends I write until I hit 5,000 words a day (20 pages) but if it is really flowing well, I just keep going. One weekend, I wrote 27,000 words.  It was amazing and I was so wrung out, I could not keep my eyes open.

On weekday mornings, my alarm goes off warning me that it is about time to go to work and a little piece of me dies. Every day I am at lunch, wishing I was a full-time writer. I sometimes feel so disconnected from my job that it feels foreign to even consider going in every day. I am working for someone else instead of working on making my writing better. It feels like I am wasting my time on a 50 hour a week job and only getting to spend 30 a week on writing.

It kills me.

More than one kind of tears?

Well this gal thinks so.

That chick cries a fucking LOT! I have like four reasons for crying/making-tears-to-keep-my-eyeballs-from-turning-into-ocular-raisins but she has reasons I have to look up in a dictionary! Lineal tears?

Is that like how many board feet of tears she cried this 28-day mentrual cycle or something?

What a friend she would be. She sees someone she hasn't seen in years, makes that weird, girl-squeal noise, hugs the startled and alarmed chick (who is, by then, thinking, "God, it's that fucking psycho-chick from that community college, adult ed class on mushroom identification! Why does she know my name?!?!") and then says "Wait! I need a phial to collect these tears of reunion!"

Which is not weird at all!

I would be her friend though. I like crazy people. "This is my friend Sally. If she wants to collect any of your body fluids, it's okay. It's for sciencey reasons. Not like perverted or voodoo reasons. I mean she's not going to, like, brine her chicken in your tears or anything." And my friends would give her that smile where they raise their eyebrows up really high.

Sometimes I don't think my explanations  necessarily make people feel less weirded out by whatever just happened.

Plague

I was cleaning out the little shop truck the other day. We've only had it for a few years but it has already started to sag on its springs as a result of all the crap everyone is throwing in it. McDonald's bags, coffee cups, breakfast and lunch trays and loads of receipts and spare change.

As I dug around and excavated the under-side of the passenger's seat, I was finding more and more loose change all glued to the floor with milky coffee residue and sticky... for want of a better word... dog-hair-covered soda jerky.

I'm also unearthing screws, nails, tools, tie-downs, zip-ties and broken brake light bulbs.

I sent a text to the owner's son-in-law saying "I am keeping the money I find, to help defray the cost of my inevitable tetanus shot."

I was thinking This is probably where typhoid comes from. I am about to start the zombie apocalypse from touching this old wad of gum, combined with whatever this black goop is on the underside of the seat. What is that?!?! Why is it all over my arms now? It's like I can't feel it but I can see it. Oh God, now it's on my pants. I sure hope this comes off in the wash.

And on it goes. Cleaning is not my forte anyway. I mean it's not like I have ever really found out what my forte was or even what one is... but I have found out a LOAD of things that are not it.

Restaurant review (as written by my colon)

Dear Stir Chinese Restaurant in Seattle,

I ate dinner there today. You probably remember me. I was the only person in the entire restaurant, which, at the time, seemed strange. Now it feels more like a kind of foreboding, which I missed.

I am writing this while perched uncomfortably on my toilet. I am remembering your delicious General Tso's Chicken with steamed rice and egg flower soup, with each contraction of my bowels.

I would enjoy sending you the bill for the two rolls of toilet paper I am using, per hour, and the reduction of my pride. But on what scale does one measure dignity? I have also lost a lot of weight on your "Chinese Cleanse" but all you will receive is a Single Finger Thank You from me.

At first, I was excited to have "beat the dinner rush" in your restaurant. But now the only rush I feel, is coming from your food, exiting my body. My stinging anus would like to point out that although people pay a lot of money to go on diets like this one, I doubt that they can sense parasites building little red-roofed pagodas in their small intestine.

I am certain I can imagine the result, were I to mistakenly laugh. Or cough. Or sneeze.

I will endeavor to refrain from partaking in any of those activities. I would be much like a filling water balloon were you to remove its rubbery sphincter from the spigot and then release your finger grip on the balloon's neck.

Have you ever seen a shuttle launch?

Thank you for the excellent service though. My meal of intestinal parasites was delivered quickly and with a smile. Although I have never had cholera, I now understand how people die of it. Thank you for letting me see what it is like to live in other countries! It has been an exciting ride.

Coffee maker died.

There is no longer any reason to carry on.

Yes. Lack of coffee has driven me over the edge. I'll be like a cartoon man, dragging himself across the desert. The mirage of a Starbucks, always just out of reach. This morning, I'll crawl myself over the threshold of K-Mart, on my hands and knees as the old, greeter lady walks over, hears my piteous moaning, bends down and says,

"Coffee makers are right this way, hon."

I will groan at her, my unintelligible gratitude, as I clutch my aching, thought-free head and whine my way to the various coffee makers on display. Obviously I will not be capable of making anything like a sensible decision, in my un-caffeinated state. I will jostle on the floor, with the other poor wretches who awoke to no coffee.

I will need to rely on bold print and small-word statements that appear on the box, along the lines of: "THIS MAKES COFFEE FOR YOU!"

In this morning's coffee maker competition finals, any coffee maker that says words like that ^ on the box, wins!

Even the Russian judge will award it a 10/10 for sheer brilliance and grasp of the fundamentals of what this competition is all about. That coffee maker understands the true meaning of this advertising battle and transcends the petty "bitterness" between rivals.

Will I clean the new coffee maker before making this morning's pot of nectar? Perhaps. Or possibly I will be drinking my first cup, with bits of shredded cardboard and Styrofoam packing peanuts, still in.

When I say "Nothing tastes like that first cup of coffee." I will not necessarily be expounding on it's level of deliciousness.

Oh God, my head.

Baby names

So a relative was cleaning his place and found a list his wife had made.

The names of their next 10 children.

"Honeeeeeey!"  I can only imagine the conversation after that.  Did we talk about having 13 kids?  Was I asleep for that conversation?

He owns his business so I suppose it will someday be called "David & Sons & Daughters & More Sons & More Daughters Landscaping."

Marrying Steph must have been like hitting the baby-lottery.