So here we go: My blog hasn’t been updated in a few months so that is as good of place as any to start. I get nervous when I dive back in to writing full on; but I know that is more due to insecurities on my part then any lack of talent. I have to tell myself that I know what I”m doing: Doing anything for 20 years will make you somewhat competent at it.

The number 20 echoes through my mind. It is a number that seems to be cropping up over and over again in my life. I realized the other day that I have actually been writing for 20 years; I think it is about time I continue to work on my career. As many of you know, I started last year but Life derailed me for a month two… However I never stopped.

My goal is to get one short story out a week while working on my screenplays and my novel. I get a tad nervous when I set goals, so many of them have fallen by the wayside. Yet I still preserver. I guess I’m to stubborn to give up, heh.

On another note: I’m not sure I’ll ever be someone that has a tattoo. Yet I find it fascinating the stories that often are paired with the tattoo’s that people have. It isn’t always about rebellion or having a “bad a” picture on you: Often they are used as a way of remembering or a monument to the life lived. I love stories and tattoo’s are often a visual history of the people that wear them.

Maybe I could find a way to incorporate that idea in to fiction…

Yet I still do not have a flying car. Color me disappointed…ah well.

It is time for me to think and plan out my goals for the year.

I realized today that I have been “writing” for 20 years. Though I have very rarely been published (Professionally at least,) I know that 20 years packs in a lot of experience. Often the movement of plot and dialog become almost instinctual; a gut feeling that something isn’t going right should be listened to and not ignored. Maybe it is because of this that I feel good about the coming year, I think more so then any other year I can remember. There is confidence I have that I don’t think I’ve felt before. Though I have had trouble reaching my ‘goal list’ in the past, I don’t think I will have an issue with it this year.

I am going to be focusing on my comic and my writing for the first half of the year.

I want to finish 2 novels…at least. Though I interrupted myself late last year, I do have quite a bit finished on one. I will continue writing that this year. Then after that? I am a bit torn between a vampire novel and a hard core noire sci fi novel. If I finish the second one, I will go forward with another fantasy novel.

Finish and sale 2 movie scripts.

Publish a few short stories.

Finish the redesign on my website while starting to draw Random Encounters on my own.

Start two podcasts: One for Random Encounters and one for Real Man 101.

I want to earn a living off my own writing. It might be through freelance work, selling a script, selling short stories, making money off my comic website, whatever. I just want to be able to say I am a professional writer by this time next year. Actually I want to be doing this by May of this year…I feel like I can if i don’t mess around and dwaddle. I want to leave my current job by May, if I can. God willing.

I would like to be at least 100 pounds lighter by Jan of 2011.

Well there you go; my goal list. I believe I can do it all and it is within reach. With my current job I have a lot of time on my hands at work. I just need to *use* it for something other then sleeping and/or watching marathons of Burn Notice. (Though Burn Notice *is* awesome.)

–

The metal felt cold against my forehead. I tried to lick my lips, but they were suddenly dry.

“Santa…you don’t want to do this.” I heard the high pitched voice of a near by…person?

“I’m Not Santa! My name is Jim. Jim Devree! I never wanted thisposition…” His voice carried the cadence of a New Yorker from the 50’s. At least how the movies presented a New Yorker from the
fifties.

“Jim,” I said very carefully. I could barely talk, I had to force my tongue to work. Santa…Jim…had proved the gun worked earlier when he blew a hole in one of those little people. “Jim. I don’t know what
is going on, but I don’t think you want to kill an innocent man, do you?”

“INNOCENT?” He almost yelled. “I know about those…Magazines you used to read.” He looked down at my now white skin. “Oh yah..I know.”

Jim brought his face close to mine, I could smell the stale alcohol on his breath mixed with something even more foul.

“Cal…I know those nights you snuck in to watch voyeur theater on Cinemax. And the phone calls.. you WERE ONLY 10 YEARS OLD!” He slapped me across the head with the pistol and my whole world exploded
in pain, stars, and a momentary twirling. I could hear something going on, the sound of high pitched voices and gun fire.

Then…nothing.

I came to with the wind in my face. I lay in a seat of some sort, the red and green glow of lights sparkling in the darkness. I was warm. Looking down I saw that I had on the red and white fur lined suit
that…Jim was wearing.

“Good morning Santa.” A gruff, yet still high pitched, voice said behind me. I glanced back and a tiny man chomping on a cigar was securing his load. It had a distinct body shape to it.

“Santa?” I said, still reeling from the blow to my head. “I’m Cal.”

“Not any more you’re not.” The little guy pointed forward. Nine tiny reindeer flew against the moon in front of me, another little man holding the reigns. Below me the ground sped by in a blur.

I fell back, my body hitting the soft seat.

“Just promise me something, Jack. Don’t let the naughty list get to ya’. Not everyone grows up to be bad.” The little guy said, the front of his cigar matching with the lights around the sleigh.

I shook my head in agreement and realized my life had suddenly took a 90 degree turn of the edge of no where. As the wind ripped past my fast growing beard, I wondered the oddest thing. Was there already a
Mrs. Claus?

Here are a couple of articles on the history of Science Fiction Fandom:

Click here for one from Tor.com

Click here to read a memoir from one of the original SciFi club members. The article is about the early days of fandom and written in 1961.

As for me? I’ve been reading Science Fiction and Fantasy for as far back as I can remember. I don’t know of a time when I wasn’t a fan… It helps that my brother is 3 or 4 years older then I am, so I used to read his hand-me-down books. As soon as he read a book, I’d pick it up and start reading it. I made it through many classic adventures that way…

The first “real” science fiction book I remember reading is “Have Space Suit, Will Travel” by Robert Heinlein. I don’t know what age that was, but I know I had to be in first or second grade. By the
time I entered fourth grade, I started to make my way through the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. I quickly adopted a stable of authors I adored, populated by such authors as Asimov and Clarke as well as Niven, Lewis, Tolkien, Bujold, and many others. My mom let me have an ‘adult’ library card when I was but a lad of 11, when I started complaining that the children’s section of the library contained no new scifi or fantasy. In fact it came to pass that I ran out of books to read in the adult section as well.

At that time my friend and I begged our mothers to let us have our own, joint, Post Office box. We didn’t use this PO Box for regular mail, mind you, but instead we ended up subscribing to the science fiction book club. In fact we subscribed under our own names…then under about 10 other different made up names. Pretty soon I had a science fiction and fantasy book collection that rivaled the local library.

This lead to me starting to write SciFi and Fantasy. I can still remember my first attempt as a writer, a story for my freshman english class. (High School Freshman, fyi.) It was a story that had more to do with fantasy then science fiction, about a boy seeking revenge for the murder of his family and seeking the ethereal will’o'wisp.

Since then I have been delighted, frustrated, angered, excited, in love, and many different other emtions with both my own fiction and the fiction of others. In all that I tend to keep to the genre that fascinated me so long ago and helped propel me in to writing. (Not yet professional writing…but soon.) No matter what happens, I will always been a fan at heart. Those that are a fan of our genre tend to be a unique lot and I am glad to be part of that multi-hued and motley mass of humanity.

I hope you have a good Dec. 11 and remember: All professional sci fi and fantasy writers started out as fans first. I am sure there are those that didn’t, but you can usually tell them from the ones that hold the genre near and dear to their hearts.

When I was but a lad we had this kitten. This kitten liked to hide in dark areas around the house and in the yard. I guess I can understand that, since I grew up in the desert. You’d find any place you could to stay cool, even in winter. Unknown to me, however, the kitten had decided to hide underneath our electric lawn-mower that we had parked in the back yard. We didn’t have to mow our lawn that much, so I assume the kitten had been using it as a place of refuge for some time before I was told to mow the yard. Now I didn’t really think to check under the lawn mower, since I was but a lad, so I tried starting the machine. The blades started and the cat shot out the grass chute and hit a wall. It lay there still and I was sure I killed it.

My older brother check the cat and found out it was still breathing with her heart beating. We took the kitten in the house and placed it on a soft towel. The cat didn’t move for two days, it just sat there. We were sure it would die. You see the head was a little softer then it had been previously. However…

On the third day the cat got up and shook her head and went to eat. After that the cat would chase invisible animals, running head first in to immovable things like walls and furniture. The cat survived for a few years after that, but she was never the same. You could press on her head too, though we didn’t ever do that to hard. The cat didn’t try to kill us, though I still feel bad about it, heh. I shall always remember our mentally unstable cat and her invisible prey…

Our cat, by the way, was named Tequila. In honor of another cat we knew on a farm in Kansas. RIP Tequila, may your exploits in kitty heaven be more satisfying then they were on earth!

I motion at the bartender and ask for a Rum in Coke, ice cold. He makes it and I put down the money for the overly priced concoction.

I drink it and I can feel everyone in the room and I know they can feel me, even if they don’t realize it.

The beat of the music entrances me; I can almost see the other side. The spiritual, the part of the world that is both bound to the physical yet a part from it. I see ghosts of those that inhabit such a place wonder through the crowd. Some are evil, some are good, and all eye each other warily.

Not that the good are exactly worried…

“Why do you do this?” I felt the whisper of a shout touch my mind as I jerk around. There stands a good one, looking me up and down. A friend and someone I’ve known…for eons.

“I have been tasked to live a life among the mortals.” I say, my voice becoming a tad dry as I drink the rest of my mixture.

“You can come back. You know this.” She says. A she, even in the ’spiritual plane’ there is male and female.

I wave at the crowd, the uninformed and ignorant. Some probably think I’m drunk and talking to myself…

“They need someone to help them.” I said. “I both love and hate humanity. Yet I cannot get over the love and much help… Not all are bad you know.”

She looks me in the eye, her silver eyes glinting in the darkness of the club.

“You know they have someone standing up for them?”

I nod. Of course I knew… “But I am doing his work, though some would disagree.”

She motions at the cup in my hand and the place I am at.

“you sure you aren’t being unduly influenced? It has happened before.”

I shrug. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know…

I turn to say something, but she is gone, along with the rest of them. My peak in to the spiritual brief; a look in to a place that I used to inhabit.

I can’t take this place anymore and turn to go. I run in to a pretty blonde woman who seems to have the same idea I do, she is heading toward the door.

I pick her up and introduce myself; soon we are gone and in a small 24 hour diner speaking over coffee. Maybe I do miss my home sometimes, but this world has it perks… And I know I’m here by design and not by revolt.

Now I actually have my computer on a small computer desk (complete with slide out Keyboard shelf!) instead of the rickity old table I’ve had it on. I am now more comfortable with the monitor, I am typing below me, and I just feel more comfortable. Plus I have it where the sun doesn’t it the monitor directly any longer… (which reminds me: I really need to put the dark blinds up.)

I have also been trying to walk a little… When I get to that point where I Feel so exhausted and tuckered out I have been trying to get out of the house and take a stroll. I believe it helps your mind relax… You are no longer focusing on one thing and are free to let your mind wonder.

Plus I really, really need to loose weight. And stop eating so much junk food. I don’t understand it, but I start to crave the stuff when I am not eating it. Gad, I want to get *past* that. I want to crave leafy stuff, veggies, home cooked meals that I cook myself. I need to reformat my body and wipe the hard drive of my senses.

Anyway…hopefully all this will lead to me writing more. I notice that when I let things get cluttered and piled up, my desire to write and be creative goes down. This means that I need to actually clean, dust, straighten up more then I usually do. (Unfortunately I am a dyed in the wool messy.) What I hate is the fact that sometimes I just don’t know where to start: This happens in my writing too. I’ll sit and look around and just… I can’t say panic but… I have to actually grit my teeth and start on one area; usually after doing that for awhile I get in the groove of things. I do not think it is laziness; I know what lazy is. It is something completely different - a sort of paralysis. It is easy for me to distract myself whlie I’m like this and start playing games, reading, staring at the wall… This gets my mind off of what I am feeling. I’ve known I go through this for awhile, but it has only been recently that I’ve recognized it is something more then… I dunno..Laziness like I said, or “being a creative person.” All these labels that have been heaped on me and that I’ve beat myself up with over the years.

At least I recognize it… Now I can figure out how to use it and go on with my life.

To get back to what I was originally writing about: It helps me to have a place that is straightened up and organized. It is kind of odd because I am not an organized person; It almost feels like I fight myself sometimes.

Ah well. I’m learning and that is what counts…right?

However I will give one goal: I am going to try to get to this blog every day from now on. Even if it is a One Line Comment post. We’ll see.

It is almost Wed, so I am going to just put this as a Wed post…since by the time I get finished it will be that day.

What to talk about? My writing? It isn’t going the greatest… However I never let that stop me and will get back to that point I was a few weeks ago. I love being like that… Having a passion for writing and doing it every day. At the same time I know that it isn’t something that is easy for me to do: I force myself to write. Often it is only after I am done that I Realize I have done a good thing. It almost feels like a wrasslin’ match: Where I wrestle with myself to get the words to come out, or to even sit down and type. There are so many other things I could be doing, both needing to be done and stuff that is pure fluff. But I can’t let that sway me can I? I have to do this. If not I cannot say I am a writer. A writer writes…always. A person that says they write but doesn’t? That is a lame duck. And no one likes a lame duck…

I don’t know…I think it is mostly that I just need to do my own thing. Often being on gather feels to much like….a chore? I don’t feel right when I have all these other people that are writing and I have neither the time or the inclination to help them like I have been helped. When I have the inclination, I don’t have the time. When I have the time…? You know how it goes.

Then I realized that I have this perfectly nice writing blog that has been laying dormant for awhile.

I think I’ll continue the freewrite thing I’ve been doing at gather, but have it here. Plus I can at least dream I have a bit more control over my own content. I also made this blog for a reason and I need to use it for such: I was doing really well and then *bam* I wasn’t. I plan to change that.

I also want to start a writing podcast…we’ll see.

So here is the first post of the new(ish) Random Thoughts. Next week I’ll get a new goal post out… After only a month? Wow.