Book Status: MANUSCRIPT FINISHED!

 It's time to celebrate!!

A little less than an hour ago I finished the draft of the manuscript of my memoir.  So very thrilled!  I had wanted to have this done by Thanksgiving and I beat it be a week and a half.

The draft is a little less than 133,000 words.  Well within budget for a memoir or most other books.

It is packed.  Pretty much every moderate to major event of my life, from birth to where I am today: An artificial intelligence trainer, op-ed writer, and crisis line counselor.

The next to last chapter, I'm particularly fond of that one.  It's a "where are they now?" of most of the characters who appear.  And there are PLENTY.  I'm turning a lot of people who have been in my life into literary characters.

What happens now?  I take a break for a week or so.  And then I'll return to the manuscript with refreshed eyes, no doubt making edits and revisions (I made one earlier today, of the beginning of the chapter about my wedding, that is much nicer than it had been).

I'm also going to let a few friends, sworn to secrecy, read parts of it.  I've already shared some chapters with them.  They have each responded that these chapters are everything from "powerful" to "raw and visceral".

And then, maybe... maybe... if I'm feeling the time is right, I'll start searching for a literary agent after the holidays.  And no doubt there will be rejections of that.  It happens to all authors.  It famously did to J.K Rowling too.  Just need one agent to be hooked by what I'm offering, and then well... we'll see what happens then.

But in the meantime, it's really happening!  At long last I have written a book.  I've got a really positive feeling about this.

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Book status for week of November 11th

Five chapters written this past week.  And three of those were written on Thursday.  Also, a chapter that I wrote over ten years ago now has a home in the manuscript.

The draft has now reached the 100,000 words mark.  As things stand now it's looking like it will all fit within 150,000 words, which is the goal.

At the rate this is going the entire first draft will be done by Thanksgiving.

It's been a lot of effort, but it really is quite something to see this all come together.  I'm soon going to have "written a full length book" notched on my belt. Maybe if this gets published that will give me street cred enough to sell my children's book too :-) 

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"One, two, Freddy's coming for you..."

 Happy fortieth anniversary to Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street.

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Donald Trump: Greatest comeback in American history

 

Well, I'll be darned.

After months of believing that the election would go otherwise, Donald Trump has won indeed.

I've rarely been so glad to have been so wrong.  Harris would have been an unprecedented disaster for America.

Congratulations, Mr. Trump.  You and Melania are headed to the White House, again!  Just try to pick a better staff this time, 'kay? :-)

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My final election prediction

 

People will vote their appetites. They will vote for whoever scratches their itching ears. They will vote for the person who promises to protect their debaucheries.

 

I've lived long enough, have studied plenty of history, to know that our society is getting worse, not better. Because people will almost always choose what is convenient over what is right.

 

The candidate who I believe will win tomorrow, will cause more harm to be wrought upon the United States than any individual in her almost two and a half centuries of existence.

 

But that doesn't matter. Only that this candidate "wins". And that's what's most important, right?

 

I am almost tempted to say "damn the fools who would choose such evil." But as a Christian I am cautioned against calling anyone "fool".

 

Maybe, someday, if we survive what's coming, some people will remember that I and others warned about this. We saw it coming. We did our best to alert our neighbors. But it was all in vain.

 

"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it," indeed.

 

 

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Six new chapters to report this week

Since last time I did a status report on how my book is coming along there have been six chapters added to the manuscript.

It is also nearly 100,000 words in size.

I've been trying to write something since yesterday but I'm having difficulty.  Maybe I've been pushing myself too hard?  Perhaps I need to take a break.  Spend some time in nature, play with my dog, read a good book.

Well, what I composed in the past week is good stuff.  Some comedic material also.  There is an entire chapter devoted to the delusions I had about my hair: one of the rationales I had for going off the meds.  Which ended in disaster.  It's funny and also not funny, if you know what I mean.

As things look right now, I may have the draft of the entire book finished by Thanksgiving.

And then I'll go back over it and edit and revise and add and delete stuff.  After that, well... we will see what we shall see.

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Weekly book status: Wow!

Want to know a secret?  I haven't showered in thirteen days!  I've been that determined to work on this project.  If I haven't been sleeping or job or eating or taking care of and playing with Tammy, I've been writing.

I look terrible.  I've dry-shaved every few days.  That and brushing my teeth have for the most part been my only hygiene.

But what has come out of that has been amazing.

Twelve chapters written this past week!  But it must be emphasized that these were smaller chapters than most of what have been composed so far.  Still, I'm very happy with the progress made.

I'm still writing this book out of sequence.  But as of yesterday my life from birth up to winter of 2002 has been chronicled as thoroughly as is feasible for a project like this.  And I've also got 2016 on through the present day written about.

Also, the book is split into eight parts.  Other than a few chapters still needed for the one about my college years, and the very last chapters, there's only one part left to be written.  All the others are complete.

I'm striving to keep the manuscript within 150,000 words.  As of last night it's at 90,000 written.  Sixty thousand remaining to use on one part sounds like a lot, but this part, titled "Years of Heaven, Years of Hell" is absolutely the biggest of them.  Sooooo much happened in this period.  It's going to be tough to pack it all in.  I think the episode involving the newspaper may be two chapters.

I'm not making myself out to be a saint in writing this.  I'm already coming across as a very horrible person.  But that's just the truth of it all.  I'm only writing about what happened, and trying to be as honest and forthcoming as I can be.

No writing today.  I'm taking a break.  And there is my "real life job" that must be tended to also.  But I think I've earned a day's rest, after writing most during most of my free time for the past two weeks.

Okay, me go shower now.  And play with the dog.  She's earned a new toy for putting up with me as she has.

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My thoughts a week and a half before the election

 

I'm beginning to believe that the presidential election is going to go to Donald Trump.  After stating for several months that I believe Harris will be the one who gets sworn in come January.

Harris right now is doing her damndest to appeal to the hard left.  That's ALL she really has that she's been consistently running on.  Especially about the abortion issue.  One would easily believe that abortion is her biggest concern.  But those voters were already a lock for her anyway.

Trump meanwhile is doing a very good job getting his message out to the unaffiliated and undecided voters.  The ones who have long been neglected too much by both the Democratic and Republican parties.  They also tend to be the ones in the middle class who have been worst affected by the Biden and Harris administration.

 

The number of American voters disaffected by either major party is a considerable one.  Trump has a lot of allure for them and after more than three years of disastrous leftist policies they are screaming for relief from that.

 

I am now prepared to say that the chances of Trump winning a week and a half from now are pretty substantial.

 Perhaps if Harris campaigns more on issues of relevance to most Americans, she would begin to pick up wider support.  This is not happening.

 

What does concern me however is election rigging.  It happened in 2020 and we all know it even if we won't admit to it.  What happened in the wee hours of the morning in Wisconsin proved that there was pro-Biden chicanery afoot.  The fix was in four years ago.  The "deep state" of the bureaucrats and the lifetime politicians have even more reason to tip the scales toward the Democrats than they had then.  So I'm expecting cheating that may dwarf what happened in 2020.

If so and "they" get away with it again, we will be saddled with Kamala Harris: the worst presidential candidate in American history.

 

That being said, right now things look very good for Donald Trump.

I really hope and pray that the legitimate voting will be in such enormous volume that election rigging will be rendered inconsequential.

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Fortieth anniversary of The Terminator

It was forty years ago today, October 26th 1984, that James Cameron's science-fiction thriller (I'd also consider it horror) The Terminator was released.

Cameron was sick with food poisoning in Rome.  While convulsing in agony he had a fevered dream of a robot assassin with glowing red eyes hunting him down.  And that was the genesis of the Terminator.

This is a movie that has aged very well.  Including the design of the Terminator and the then-relatively distant future of the SkyNet-dominated 2029.  Ask a conceptual artist on a modern film to create an endoskeleton for a cyborg killing machine and it would be difficult not to envision something along the lines of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Hunter-Killer.

I first saw The Terminator in 1986.  My best friend Chad had seen it on cable TV and was really raving about how good it was.  So I was able to rent it not long after.  I thought it was amazing.  It was definitely nightmare fuel for a twelve-year-old.  Especially that shot of the metal skeleton rising out of the wreckage to continue chasing down Sarah Connor.  I was like "Can't ANYTHING stop this guy?!?"

I've got this movie on DVD.  It's been awhile since I've seen it though.  Think I'll pop it in tonight.

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Book Progress Report: Five new chapters and a home for the very first

A little over two years ago I wrote the first chapter of what was going to be the book I had always intended to write.  It's not one that the reader is supposed to find early on in the tome.  It's actually a chapter that comes in quite late into the book.

For various reasons I needed to write that one first.  It more or less establishes the tone of the work still to come.

As of a few days ago that first chapter written now has its place in the manuscript as a whole.  I didn't have to change a thing to it.  It just slid right into place without any mess at all.

It joins five chapters that I've been able to finish the first drafts of since a week ago today.

So far, it's gone well. I've consistently been composing chapters, around five a week. There have been three significant events in my life that I've been able to reach down deep and write about. I dare not say I'm feeling proud of myself but there is a sense of some accomplishment.

But this, all of this, is still just tip-toeing across the minefield.

 

There is something massive that I haven't come close to beginning to address, in this book. It's about the very worst place that I found myself in because of manic depression. All the grief and pain and worst, that *I* was causing even more horrible things to the people I cared most about.

 

I feel like a coward. How I've been able to work on a little of everything else so far. Except for that.

 

For the past few months I've been doing the best work on this project that I've been able to have since Dad first told me he wanted me to write a book. I'm grateful to have found myself in such a groove. After a very long period of being stuck, there has been a LOT of movement forward.

 

But really, so far I've been doing nothing but pulling rabbits out of my hat.

 

Now it's well past time that I be able to pull out an alligator.

 

 

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A very good week for the book project!

Five chapters written in the past seven days.  And a strong start of another that I was able to compose on Saturday afternoon, the day before yesterday.

It can be noted that one of the chapters was written start to finish while I was suffering from conjunctivitis (also known as pink eye).

The drafts of the first five chapters I wrote are from the start of part three, which covers the years I spent studying at Elon.  A lot happened in that time and to be honest I hadn't been exactly sure what tact to bring to bear upon it goes.

But so far it's almost wound up writing itself.  I'm just pouring my memory out upon the page (or the keyboards at either my desk or my iPad Pro).  Those are five chapters that build up to something and when it finally came to that... well.  I needed to step away from writing for awhile.  It took a lot out of me.  I haven't gone back to finishing that part of the tale but I did move forward to another section of the book and began writing that.

(Lots of authors do this with their own books. Tolkien wrote parts of The Lord of the Rings at various times in the period before, during and following World War II.  You write what comes to you, whatever interests you most right then.  And then you piece it all together.  I figure that I'm in good company :-)

So much has been done yet a lot of work still remains.  But I'm feeling really confident about this.  I've shared a few of the drafts with a select number of trusted friends.  I insisted that I need their most brutally honest thoughts.  All of them have come back with nothing but good about what they've read.  I'm taking that as a good sign.  If I can keep that kind of vibe going, I'll be quite pleased and thankful.

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First Helene, now Milton

Got lots of friends in the path of this monster.  On either side of the Florida peninsula.

I'm praying that this might yet sputter out before it makes landfall.  Hurricanes have been known to be crazy like that.  Not often, but it does happen.

Please y'all, be safe.

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One new chapter this past week, and a medical emergency

I am both proud of myself and a little let down.  I only wrote one new chapter for my book this past week.  

Maybe I should forgive myself?

For my own account of things, my life is still being impacted by Hurricane Helene, an hour or so south of the true devastation.  A few days ago on Friday I saw my psychiatrist and got refill prescriptions for my medication.  I assumed the scripts were sent over to the pharmacy as usual.  When I went to pick up the refills early that evening however, the pharmacy was closed and there was a note on the door saying that their Internet was down and they couldn't fill prescriptions at all.  I had gotten an automated text from the pharmacy several days earlier, saying the hurricane had knocked out their computers.  I just assumed they would have been back in business already.

That was a wrong assumption on my part.

There was one med in particular that I was all out of.  I was counting on getting the refill.  And I needed that med.

It might have been a long shot but I drove to the emergency room of the nearby hospital and explained my situation to them.  It was a very good idea, because a little less than an hour later they gave me an Rx for a "bridge" of the med I needed to get me through the next week.  A quick visit to the CVS practically next door to the hospital later and I had my medication.

That emergency averted, I went home and plopped down and tried to write something, anything.  Before I knew it I was working on a new chapter.  It's the final one of part two, which covers a nine-years span of my life.  I completed it last night.  And there are going to be some edits and revisions but the basic endoskeleton is in place at least.  I'm happy with it.

I'm going to try to write some more today, before my week begins in earnest and the opportunity to write before Saturday becomes diminished.  I'm supplementing my typical work with a part-time job, it lets me engage with more personal projects on weeknights and long weekends.  Maybe I'll get to knock something else out before returning to that job tomorrow.

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Helene: After the storm

The past few days will go down in history.  The comparison I keep hearing is that "this is our Katrina" and that's not inaccurate at all.

If God saw fit to humble us, He certainly did with Hurricane Helene.

As I write this it's almost 7:30 pm EST on October 1st, 2024.  I was away from the house for much of the day so I don't know when exactly the juice came back on but when I returned an hour ago the power was restored.  It had been out since a little before 8 on Friday morning, four and a half days ago.  So that's about a hundred hours that we were without electricity.

I drove around the area on Friday night.   Didn't get too far.  There were big trees fallen all over the place, across the roadways.  I've never seen so many power lines down.

I had to conserve battery power on the various devices, like my phone and iPad.  Yesterday morning I ventured out and got to the library in downtown Spartanburg, found a spot on the floor next to a wall outlet and recharged the phone.  I've been limiting its use, employing it only when absolutely necessary.  Because there was no telling when power would come back to our homes.

My dog and I are in upstate South Carolina.  And it could have been much worse.

Asheville, North Carolina is a little less than an hour to our north.  As of this evening I-40 going east out of the city is open but nothing else.  The town is pretty much unreachable except by helicopter (Asheville Regional Airport is starting to get supply flights coming in but that's a bit far from the city limits).  At last count more than 60 people are dead from the storm in Buncombe County.

Half an hour to our west, we have friends in Greenville.  They have been without power since Friday.

The town of Chimney Rock has been wiped off the map.

Sections of highways in the western part of North Carolina have been destroyed.

Local schools are out until Monday next week.  Remote learning via Internet is also out.

The power crews are working around the clock to restore electricity.  They have come in from all up and down the country and some have arrived from Canada.  They can't possibly be appreciated enough.

As for my own account...

Restricting the use of devices meant that it would be unwise to write, no matter how creative I was feeling.  And the only flashlight I have is on my iPhone.  So  I spent the daylight hours doing lots of reading.  I try to read George Orwell's 1984 every few years and I was behind on that so Sunday afternoon I was engorged in that novel.  And yesterday, for whatever reason, I started re-reading Helter Skelter.  I did write a bit for my book, the old-fashioned way: with a pen and notebook.  So I guess it can be said that my attempt to contribute to the world's literature is sort of a multimedia effort.

It's been a wild past few days.  And I was expecting the power to be restored sometime late Friday.  So I'm very thankful that it's back.

I've been through hurricanes a number of times in my life.  Helene topped them all.  For it to come this far inland and still packing a punch is almost a freak occurrence.  It's being called a one-in-a-thousand-year catastrophe.

And that's pretty much my report.  Going to spend the rest of the evening getting my bearings back, take a LONG hot shower, give my dog Tammy some love and treats, maybe watch a movie.

Helene has certainly made me thankful for things that we too often take for granted.  And like I said, it could have been worse here.

Thoughts and prayers going up and out for everyone who's been affected by this storm.

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Weekly book report for September 30th 2024

 Well, this turned into something interesting.  My home is in the upstate of South Carolina.  Three days ago the entire western Carolinas region got slammed hard by Hurricane Helene.  I lost power on Friday morning about 7:30 and 77 hours later it still hasn't been restored.  Based on what I saw on the way to the library in downtown Spartanburg this morning, it may be days if not weeks before power is turned back on 100%.

This was a catastrophe on the same level as Hurricane Katrina.  Our kids will be telling their grandchildren about this one.

So I wasn't able to work most of the weekend, because power is out.  Until yesterday when I started writing in a notebook with a pen, jotting some thoughts down that will go into further chapters.  It will honestly be able to be said that I worked on this book through a hurricane.

Anyhoo, since last week I have been able to fully write one chapter, along with editing the previous one and the aforementioned bits and pieces that have been jotted down.

And that's pretty much it, for now.

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First weekly book update

Almost a month ago I posted about the status of my book, something that had been on the back burner of my life for ten years now.  Work on it has taken various forms, there had been progress made only for that to be tossed aside... well, it's been a mess, not to put TOO fine a point on it.

Things are very, very different now and have been for much of this past year.  A few months ago I had a breakthrough moment and was able to crank out the first few chapters of the story of my life.  That has led to more, and more.

Maybe it will help to keep me on track to post a status of this memoir's progress, say each week on Sunday.  Perhaps that will encourage me to stay committed.

Here it is as of September 22nd, 22024: so far, not counting the preface, there are fifteen chapters that have been written.  I spent most of this past week working on one, that had really been making me struggle.  It's still considered a VERY rough draft but early word that a dear friend I shared it with is that it's good.

There are going to be at least six parts.  Part one is complete.  There are five chapters done so far for part five, which is currently titled "Three Months and Three Ladies".  I'm not writing this book in sequential order.  Just working on it as the Muse leads me.

There is still a lot of work to be done.  Ideally I would be producing two to three chapters a week, but I'll be happy if it's even just one.  This book is finally getting the attention I needed to lavish upon it.  It's not going to be rushed.  But when it's finished, I will have written my life story, as well as such things are possible.

And that's how things stand now.

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Lost turns twenty

4 8 15 16 23 42

 

It was twenty years ago tonight - September 22, 2004 - that arguably the greatest television series of the new millennium premiered.

Lost was an instant sensation and for six seasons its tale of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 gripped the world's consciousness.  ABC's hit broke all the rules, subverted expectations, and cooked long-held tropes like so many White Castle hamburgers.  Lost was television of the highest order of storytelling.  Yes, its story ended without every mystery getting a solid answer... and many maddeningly unresolved.  But some things should be left to the imagination and Lost certainly provided viewers with fresh new enigmas seemingly every week to ruminate upon.

I think that Lost wasn't so much about the riddles as it was about the characters.  That was the greatest ensemble cast assembled in the modern history of the medium and they brought to life some incredibly deep and multi-layered personas.  My most favorite character was John Locke: the crippled "man of faith" who inexplicably regained the ability to walk after Oceanic 815 crashed on the island.  There was so much about him that resonated with me.  And I also came to have some sympathy for Benjamin Linus, perhaps the most flawed of the show's characters.  I like to think that Ben found redemption in the end, and truly repented of his ways.  It was as good an end to his arc as there could probably be had.

I'm not going to post about Lost without mentioning my personal favorite theory, something that I've never seen anyone else posit.  I think that David, Jack's son from the flash-sideways world, was the child who came about when Jack and Kate made love before taking off on the Ajira flight.  Eloise had told the people who came to the Lamp Post that they had to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of the original flight. What she told Kate was that she had to conceive a child so that Kate could be a proxy for Claire, who had been pregnant on the Oceanic 815 flight.  Well, David had to come from somewhere.  And he even looks like he could be a child of Kate and Jack, too.  He was very well cast.

I also think that the Man in Black wasn't Jacob's brother at all.  As evidenced by the hieroglypics that Ben found, the Smoke Monster had existed on the island long before Jacob's mother came.  The Monster simply assumed the appearance of Jacob's brother.  Jacob found his brother's body, it hadn't been transformed at all.  Again, just a theory.

Well, I could go on.  This show left us with so much that we're still discussing and debating fourteen years after its final episode.  That says something about any series's timeless quality.  And I doubt that in another twenty years we'll be too exhausted to still be talking about it.

So, let's raise our glasses of Dharma Initiative cola and toast Lost on its twentieth anniversary!  Just as amazing today as it was in 2004.

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