Know Jack #216 Making My Own Mistakes

 

When my oldest daughter was just old enough to begin feeding herself, a hint of her personality came immediately to light. She had a two-handled sippy cup. The cup was heavy enough that it really required both her tiny hands to hold it steady. However, she insisted on using one hand and could not be dissuaded by either admonition to use both hands or by placing both her hands on the cup.

She also loved tomatoes and would eat them until the acid in them produced violent diaper rash. Attempts to curve her appetite for them were all in vain short of tears and pleading for more. Where she got this behavior remains a mystery to me…though it persists to this day.

Sometimes we simply let her make her own mistakes. But mistakes is not the right word. These were learning experiences and she discovered how to work the cup one handed and eventually, back off on the tomatoes.

I admit that I learn slowly, however, I learn well. Needless to say, I have made plenty of mistakes on my way to learning. I still make them…remember, I learn slowly.

I think it is this insistence on making my own mistakes on the way to an education that infuriates me with modern society and its constant attempts of correct me.

Autocorrect drives me to madness and multiple mistakes in thinking what I have written is actually what appears on screen. My phone will automatically lower music levels to protect my hearing, long gone to the jet engines I work around for years. Dang it, Verizon, I need that music cranked up just to hear it.

A couple of years ago I made a mistake looking for the Medicare website, but thankfully, hundreds of Medigap companies picked up my error and flooded my email inbox with helpful offers to turn my money into insurance against illness.

Who can in “these trying times” doubt the extreme concern the CDC, governors and Congress have for my health? It is such a priority for them, they have issued mandates for the entire population to follow just so I will be well.

My Jeep requires be to “Accept” its safety features every time I start the engine. My bank provides triple layered security for anyone trying to deposit money of pay my bills. My news is filtered through corporate America and political parties to make sure it is safe for me to hear. And who among us has not experienced the great concern of companies offering extended warranties for everything we own?

Good writers know the rules of writing, then, break the rules as needed to spin an interesting tale much to the chagrin of computer writing programs. Sometimes I simply feel the need to scream, “Let me make my own mistakes!”

Maybe I should give my daughter and call and see how she’s doing.

Maranatha

 

Know Jack #214 Your Mask or Your Mind

 

I have never been happier that I work in a fantasy world of my own making. Though that world teems with rougarous, ghosts, demons, and paranormal menaces of all sorts, I much prefer it to the lunacy and fear-mongering of the real world.

I love to hear people tell me how they plan to vote for the petty tyrants who closed the world to keep us all safe. That people will buy the most ludicrous lies and reward the teller of them is a signal my fiction will never lack for readers.

I am inspired by mothers with five or six kids who wear a mask to Wal-Mart leaving the children unprotected. Such callous disregard for children, especially one’s own, means the market for torture, mayhem, and death is alive and well.

And the mysteries of intelligent selective, viruses…well, Captain Tripps has nothing on the possibilities opened by the hysteria virus pandemic, and the inhumane interpersonal treatment it may spawn.

I’m not sure if it’s my father’s oft-spoken admonitions to think for myself or my nursing background’s insistence that I think critically that makes me shake my head in anger and frustration at the blind followers of the blind who surround me.

Tell me if you can, how a virus (without a brain) differentiates between a ten-year-old and an octogenarian. How does it distinguish between eleven o’clock at night and midnight? How does this virus tell which businesses are family owned and which belong to those which contribute millions to political campaigns?

Then there’s the conundrum--if masks soundly defeat the virus, why do we need to stay six feet apart while wearing them? And, if there is magic in six feet why, wear a mask when the nearest person is a dozen feet away? 

As a writer, my editor would never let me get away with these inconsistencies and incongruent behaviors in my fiction. Happily, they are readily accepted in reality because, well, the governor says so. Maybe truth really is stranger than fiction.

That being the case, I will stick with fiction where things, though twisted and macabre, make sense and logic is the rule. Here in the land of fiction there is no call to choose between having a function mask and a functioning mind.

Know Jack #213 Bigfoot Festival

 

I’m back from a great weekend in the beautiful Ouachita National Forest where I joined fellow hairy hominid hunters at the first-ever Ouachita Bigfoot Festival and Conference. The guest of honor was a no-show though nightly calls were sent out into the surrounding woods.

Special thanks go out to the owners of The Blue Zip Line and Farm on Mena, Arkansas, for being such kind and attentive hosts. Great job, Shelly in putting the event together!

Of course, my focus at the event was selling books and sales exceeded my expectations, but I took away so much more. I made new friends and got an opportunity to meet some Facebook friends in person. The fellowship among this community is not always evident in their bantering on social media. What resembles cannibalism in the cloud, becomes a friendly sharing of experiences in person.

The festival offered nightly community campfires for that sharing experience and I was amazed by the photos and recording presented both at the campfire and the conference. The fellowship among the brave souls that camped for the three days was beyond price. I owe a great debt to Teresa and Jennifer for the lifesaving supply of coffee, dinner, and an evening around their fire with the guys from Rock Squatch Designs.

I must admit to a little trepidation about how my “based on actual events” Bigfoot stories would be received. Reports of Bigfoot encounters are generally of short duration and while far from boring, tend to be a little cut and dry for a writer who wants to draw his audience into the story.

My goal was to keep the integrity of the encounters while weaving the backdrop into a web that captures the reader and pulls them in. Admittedly it lacks the emotional impact of a personal sighting, but it does inform and entertain in a way a monologue does not.

I think I may have had success. One brave young man had bought Tracks on Saturday, returned to the scene of the crime on Sunday to have his picture taken with me. Given my resistance to CoVid restrictions when it comes to getting my haircut, I may resemble Bigfoot.

It was encouragement enough to see me through the project to get the full version of Tracks ready for publication. I’m hoping to take that book, and perhaps a second, to the International Bigfoot Conference next year.

The setting for the event, the Ouachita National Forest and the Ouachita River area was awe inspiring. The finale of God’s tapestry spread out for the event came for me in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Away from city lights, the clouds rolled back on an ink-black night resplendent to with millions of bright stars. I believe it was God’s way of smiling on us all.

I plan to go back next year for a second helping…and add the zip line. I hope y’all enjoyed the pictures I posted on Facebook of the festival.

Maranatha.

 

 

 

Know Jack #212 Update

 

 

Preparations are underway for my trip to the Ouachita Bigfoot Festival and Conference this weekend in Mena, Arkansas. All the books are boxed up ready for the trip. We will be selling Bigfoot shirts too and I still have to pick those up.

Reports came in today on Bayou Moon sales and I was very happy and a little surprised by the results. It did well, no surprise there, but for the first time ever eBooks outsold paperbacks.

I will be taking that one to Arkansas and hope it does as well there. Tiwaz Press put out Yuletide Chills early so I could take it to the festival and offer my Christmas Bigfoot story, Frost.

The first draft of all four, based on a true story Bigfoot encounters to be included in Tracks are completed. It’s on to editing for them and launch next year. As a sneak peek at the larger book, the first story The Haunted Warrior is being offered as a signed author’s proof at the conference.

I love this story of a World War I vet home from the war France. His wounds go deeper than his empty sleeve. However, they are forgotten in a search for a missing girl and an elusive pursuit of the Seeahtik (a Salish version of Bigfoot).

Plans are also underway for a partnership with a new publisher, House of Honor. The relationship will open with my book, Mann of God, early next year.  This Christian themed tale of redemption and liberation is set in Wyoming circa 1875. Kit Mann, a preacher in the tiny town of Zion is called to a showdown with his former outlaw gang, his parishioners, his girl, and himself. Romance, action, and faith meet in the thrilling conclusion.

Still to come from Tiwaz Press are my young adult fantasy Trails of Trouble and The Chanteuse. Both are in the editing process with Tiwaz and should see print next year.

Meanwhile, as November approaches, I must make a final decision to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a challenge to complete a 50,000 word novel in the thirty-one days of November. I wrote The Chanteuse last year for this challenge and I am debating on trying to do the same this year with the yet to be named follow-up novel.

Ed Landry fans don’t despair the ex-sheriff is coming back soon in pursuit of another werewolf in Blood Moon.

Maranatha

 

 

The Colonel #33 First Name Basis

 

 

Centuries ago, when I was just a private, it was a sign of favor and friendship to be on a first name basis with someone. The twenty-somethings of today have no idea what I’m talking about. There are two reasons for their ignorance. The first is that they call everyone by their first name as if it were their God given right.

The second reason is identities have changed. People are no longer Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty. They are tagged with markers of race, gender, religion, national origin, or sexual preference.

People are first Afro-American, Woman, Muslim, or an alphabet prefix. We are these things first…before we are people, before we are American, before we are Jack.

Our new first names convey a worth and expertise in all things human conferred by the randomness of birth or the verbal sewing of a label to our clothes.

I saw the President on the news the other night. He asked the crowd if they wanted a woman to be nominated as a Supreme Court Justice to cheers. When asked if they wanted a man…boos. I don’t really care one way or the other, but I prefer the first name of Sharp Legal Mind to Woman, Man, or any other moniker.

I know, insanity, right? Wanting a qualified person over a label. What was I thinking?

I don’t know. I just figure if the nominee knows the Constitution, supports and defends it as the oath requires, and loves justice, it doesn’t matter what they look like. Moreover, We the People should not approach such a decision based on race, gender, or any of the other new first names we love.

My first name is still Colonel, my last name still, Sir.

At Ease.

Know Jack #211 Above All

 

“Write Honestly. Write Fearlessly. Write True. But above all…Write.

The Writing Manifesto

In a very real sense, like Hamlet, we are given to ponder each day the question of the continued wisdom of being or not. Should we decide in favor of life, what kind of life? And at what price?

The question might be easier to answer if we could truly compartmentalize life and cut away the diseased parts. I here there are those capable of doing this…I am not one of them. This strikes me as strange for one given to abstract ideas as I am.

The good in my past is inexorably linked to the bad in a single whole so that it is impossible to “just remember the good times.” Perhaps this is the part of me people think holds a grudge forever. It certainly is the part of me that colors every story I have to tell.  

I am a good writer. On occasion, I can take you where I go and let you see what I see in that maze that is in my head. As a good writer, I write what I honestly feel. No wonder my characters are confused.

I would like to say I write fearlessly, but that’s not true. I am mindful of my readers, their opinions, and expectations when it comes to reading my work. It is never easy to think you might offend the ones you love. Mind you, I write what I feel anyway.  

Writing true is only tangentially the same as writing the truth. I deal in lies fabricated in an overactive imagination and told to myself and my readers by a fickle muse. I can attest to the fact that the voices in my head do come up with some good ideas now and then.

So, I write. Writing is my life, and in various ways, it always has been.  So, I try to live by the same credo. I strive for honesty, fearlessness, and truth in life, but above all is to live. If I please no one else, I hope when all is said and done to have pleased both my self and God. I am certain this is done solely by the simple act of living every day.

Daily I grow more convinced that I know nothing of life, except that it is meant for living. We pass this way but once… live the life you love and you will have the best stories to tell.

Maranatha

The Colonel #32 Shaking My Head

 

 

I am going to preface this post by saying that I was at Wal-Mart when it took place. While some strange stuff (and folks) happen at Wal-Mart, today’s excursion was the most shaking my head moment for me in a long time.

It was a typical busy afternoon at America’s safest place to be. The guards were off the gate, but thoroughly condition at this point everyone filed in wearing a mask. We had not gotten far along the traffic designated aisles when we were confronted by a sign announcing, “Flu Vaccines This Way.”

I didn’t believe it at first, but further investigation revealed that flu vaccines were indeed being offered in the store. I was thunderstruck. America’s largest retailer, the champions of mask protocol, had the audacity to tacitly admit to anyone with a modicum of reason that masks are BS.

If as you were told, masks are your salvation, why would you be afraid of the flu? Isn’t that mandatory mask working anymore? Surely the mask that slew the CoVid19 dragon can protect you from the petty ass flu.

More incredible than that vaccinations were being offered were the fools lined up to get them. But then, remember, this is Wal-Mart we’re talking about.

There are three possible explanations. First, we really are a nation of mindless idiots. I refuse to believe that, but my resistance is crumbling due to repeated attempts to prove it so by my neighbors.

The second, and a favorite of mine, is that wearing masks was bull biscuits from Day 1 and meant for mind control rather than virus control.

The third awaits the media blitz explaining how CoVid19 mated with the flu and the twain have become one and are bent on the destruction of lower- and middle-income people. Masks will continue to save us, but we cannot go anywhere, do anything or attempt to reason about any of this.

My money is on Number 3 and total compliance with a fresh round of safety measures executed “for the good of all” and free merchandise from city businesses using the Brick One card.

Bless y'all's pea-pickin' little hearts.