writing

Bowling for Jesus

zacharysteele Leave a comment

It’s probably a good thing I can write.

Not to say that I am, or have been, incapable of doing anything else.  I know how to make toast, after all.  That’s an accomplishment.  No, really, it is.  I mean, if the difference between starvation, and survival onward to tomorrow, is a slightly browned piece of bread with butter and jelly, I’ve got it covered.  Not that I’m about to break into a refrain from I Will Survive, or anything, but if you hear some crunching in the corner, that might be me.

Anyway, enough about toast.  We can all make toast, right?  Please say yes.

Good.

So, I don’t remember my sixth-grade math teacher’s name, and it’s been bugging me for an hour.  Come to it, I can’t even remember what he looks like, though I do quite clearly remember it being ahe.  Of course, I only remember one classmate–a boy by the name of Scott.  And I only remember him for that unfortunate vomiting incident that caused me to plead to my mother for new shoes, and forever altered how I respond to the smell of sawdust.  Sorry Scott.  Wherever you are, I hope you aren’t vomiting on someone’s shoes.  In an effort to actually move forward, I’ll call my teacher Mister Mister Sir, and get on with it.

Mister Mister Sir did a rather curious thing in class.  Each month he chose a Student Of The Month (the first letters were always in CAPS, lest the importance of the honor be diminished).  Now, being honored as Student Of The Month is, in almost every case, a worthy title bestowed upon the one student that either kissed enough tush, or cheated on enough tests to have the highest grade in the class.  It so happened I managed both with great skill.  But being  Student Of The Month wasn’t merely a title in Mister Mister Sir’s class.  No, it came with benefits, the most primary of which was that you got to sit at a teacher’s-sized desk near the door, and grade papers all day, after which you went into the Grade Book and entered to grades.

The awesome nature of this power cannot be overlooked.  However, it wasn’t the greatest of the honors bestowed upon the Loyal Brotherhood of the Student Of The Months.  That honor came by way of a Polaroid picture taped to a piece of construction paper (mine was red, as I recall–odd that I can remember that but not Mister Mister Sir’s real name), with a brief bio underneath.  It was a typical roll-call of information: Name, Age, Birth date, Favorite Food.  I remember looking over the list and happily making it known to the world how incredibly special I was.  They would know all the most important information about me and envy me each every one of those thirty days.  The kicker was the last question, the one that nearly defined my entire life, post-Sir’s class.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Oh, boy.  That was the question.  The Question.  But I knew the answer.  I didn’t need to hesitate.  Didn’t need to take even a second of time to contemplate exactly what I wanted to do with my life.

I wanted to bowl for Jesus.

Mister Mister Sir mistakenly translated this not-simply-a-tidbit of defining information, and noted for all to see that I wanted to be a Professional Bowler.  Much though I was honored to sit at the High Desk, and spend a month of my adolescence grading papers and not learning a damned thing, I felt it was quite necessary to help Mister Mister Sir–enlighten even–understand where he had erred.

“Mister Mister Sir, sir,” I had said to him, early one morning before class had begun.  “I believe you may have made a mistake on my biography.  I don’t want to be a professional bowler.  I want to bowl for Jesus.”

Mister Mister Sir seemed a little put off by that, or at least that’s how I perceived it.  I now know he just needed coffee.  I see that face every morning in my mirror.  “I don’t understand,” he said, which I found to be quite obvious.  Of course he didn’t understand.  I needed to clarify.

“I want to bowl for Jesus,” I repeated.  “You know, stand up with my ball of reckoning, keep my approach straight and balanced, steer clear of the gutters, and roll my way through the ten pins with a proper angel.”

“You mean, ‘angle’?”

“No, angel.”  He stared at me, which I saw as an invite to continue.  “The proper angel is important.  You can’t just take the ten pins lightly, straight on.  You have to have an angel to guide you through and help you to, you know, get a strike.”

“What?”

He wasn’t getting it, which nearly frustrated me into silence.  Months I had worked on this, trying to get every bit of it just right.  And now here was a teacher of whom I greatly respected for choosing me as Student Of The Month, understanding none of it.  “The Ten Pins?” I tried.

“What about them?”

“It’s a parallel, Mister Mister Sir.  Ten Pins, Ten Commandments.  Angels, and staying clear of the gutters–you know,” and here I whispered, “Satan?”

“Oh,” he said, rather dry and indifferent.  “This is a religious thing, isn’t it?”

I felt my shoulders drop somewhere below my knees.”Well, no.  I mean, yeah, kind of.  But not, if you know what I mean.  It’s kind of a religious sort of thing that I talked to my preacher about.  Of course, he didn’t understand either.  But I think that was just because the Idiot Gnomes got to him.”

“The Idiot Gnomes.  That’s what my father calls them, anyway.  They break into your room at night, on days when you’ve been particularly bad, and steal your brain cells.  They turn you into an idiot.  That’s why I try to be good and come up with good ideas all the time.  I don’t want to be an idiot.”

“But you want to Bowl for Jesus?”

“Yes!  I do!”

Mister Mister Sir smiled, laughed a little, then stood up and walked to the wall where my beaming visage sat in all its Polaroid-glory.  He removed the construction paper, walked back to his desk, made quite a scene of crossing out Professional Bowler with a marker, then quickly wrote something I couldn’t make out.  He walked back to the wall, and re-posted my shrine of glory.

He nodded, and returned to his desk, where he downed nearly a full cup of coffee in one gulp.  After a moment of hesitation, I walked to the wall and stared at my biography.  I stared at it for about two minutes, contemplating.

“You can bowl for Jesus all you want, kiddo,” said Mister Mister Sir, now standing behind me.  “But you damn well better write about it afterward.  Weirdness breeds entertainment, and I’m pretty sure you’re gonna breed just fine.”  After which he walked out of the room.

I’m not sure at what point in the month that Scott vomited on my shoes, but I know that it was about the same time that I decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.  If not for Mister Mister Sir, and his biographical misstep, then for me and my wardrobe.  I wanted to wear nice, clean, warm, slippers all day, somewhere free of random vomit, and the gag-inducing smell of sawdust,

It’s a good thing I can write.

The Immutable Lifing of Life

zacharysteele Leave a comment

Nine months, twenty-five days, and some hours I’m too lazy to count. That’s how long it’s been since I last wrote here. I guess that qualifies as an appropriate gestation period of silence. Oddly enough, birthed unto the world, that silence now screams, betraying the calm that was my earnest effort to ignore it forevermore.

It’s not my fault. I just didn’t want to do it.

In part, I admit, because life has been … well, it’s been lifing pretty hard. That’s not to say that its myriad pokes and prods have left but puncture wounds and headaches. No, it’s pushed, encouraged, picked me up in moments of stress and told me it would all be okay, then kicking my ass because I looked like I needed it. Still, the lingering lifieness of life has left my writing focused to work I wish to get published rather than words that summarize my current state of mind. The need for those words to be structured properly, for the story to be conveyed with ease, perfect flow, characters worth remembering, everything that makes a book what you hoped it would be, has far outweighed the need to blog. In essence, I mean to say that I want to be damn good at it.

So there’s that.

Ugh. I just saw this picture. The webbernuts seems to exist solely to see how many different ways it can make people cry.

SO MUCH LOVE.

SO MUCH LOVE.

What’s interesting, and eternally frustrating to me, is that much of the lifingness of life these past months has to do with matters of a personal nature. I won’t talk about that on social media, or certainly not here. Which sucks because I’ve always viewed my blog as a therapist of sorts. One that offers no feedback, true, but one that patiently waits out my rants and thoughts and worries and fears and more thoughts and more fears and more worries and sad. So, the few times I’ve wanted to write about it, I’ve arrived to find the door closed, the Inner-me offering a finger waggle then pointing me away. And so I trudge off, hands in my pockets, lip pouted, mumbling about something inane that Inner-me just ignores because it’s inane.

And there you go. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?

There’s no real point to this. If you’re reading, I apologize. Thanks for stopping by. Leave a quarter on the counter on your way out, if you would. I just wanted to write … something. This is certainly something. Pride. Beaming. Smiles everyone. Welcome to Fantasy Island.

I actually do have something to announce. I just can’t do that now. Basically, I have the news, I just lack the trumpet. I mean, I don’t know how to play  a trumpet, per se, but I can make noise with one. Which is a lot like writing. Making noise. I can make noise. I’ve also been working on a new book, with additional side projects, while continuing to push The Storyteller and the Shadowheart of Ahriman (which has endured more blood cleansing than a dialysis patient, but is somehow better off for it). Maybe for the sake of having someone read something I’ve written or am writing–which is a more difficult task than I could have imagined–I’ll just start posting bits on here. Maybe you can read a whole book out of it. For free. Why not? I wrote it for it to be read. Sure, I’d like millions of people to be enjoying it, but the simpleton mathematician in my head seems to think one is greater than zero, so okay then. If for no other reason than to keep him from mathing, I’ll do that. I hate math.

This is the only certifiable math I’ve done in a good many years:

The Simpson are no longer funny, because math.

The Simpson are no longer funny, because math.

Chew on that. Just don’t expect it to make sense.

 

Because Writing About Writing is What Writers Do

zacharysteele 1 Comment

Somehow, it’s reached a point these days where you aren’t really considered a writer unless you’re writing about writing. I can’t really say whether that’s good or bad. Perhaps because I don’t know, but more likely because I avoid reading most of them. One might deem this tutorial littering of the internet a consequence of self-publication, in that everyone who wants to see their book in print (or on a Kindle or whatnot), can then take to their respective blog (or blob, if you’re my mother, bless her heart) and detail all the ways in which you can achieve whatever level of success they deem they have attained.

Again, good or bad, I don’t know. This is just a truth we all have to accept. Maybe there’s useful information out there that can help you. Maybe there isn’t. No idea. I mean, I can’t tell you what the Onion is writing about today because I haven’t read it. I know it’s funny though. I can guarantee that. And it’s there. There is far better than not.  Just like writing a book. It will always be better to you if it is there than if it is not.

There you go. Hallelujah, praise Timmy Christ, and may the force be with you. My writing lesson of the day. If you don’t write a book, you don’t have a book you have written. Genius. I have now joined the ranks of pseudo-professional writers who have blogged about writing. I am nearly complete as a human being. I’m one drunken tour of Scotland’s Pub of the Day Club away from ascension.

So, what do you do? How do you decide whether the advice you’re getting is advice you should be taking? Look, the truth is–the thing you need to know before taking this whole writing thing to the next level–there’s no such thing as a simplification of writing that any one person can offer. As with life, the process of learning about writing is an extensive and exhaustive process. One blog, one book, cannot cover what you need to know. Yet here you are, all engrossed in my words, or perhaps just hiking your way across the internet one click at a time, so allow me to illustrate my point in as simplified a way as I can so you only have to read one blog about it. Then you’ll know everything you need to know about writing. Ready?

Writing is hard.

Boom. You’re welcome.

Ok, so maybe that was too concise. But the truth remains. Are there varying levels of talent in which writing becomes less hard? Absolutely. Tom Robbins forged a career out of his brilliance, tapping one mind after another with a skilled hand that is not so much stratospheric as it is alien. Yet, he wrote every manuscript by hand, working on each individual sentence until it was exactly what it needed it to be. He didn’t use word counts. He just let the work tell him when he was done. Which is not “as easy as that.” That’s fucking hard. That insane-level genius. Sure, it comes easier to him than it does to most everyone else, but his easy isn’t easy for him. It’s grueling.

Writing will kick you to hell and back, then wait for you to stand so it can kick you around some more. It’s a giant sponge sucking all your time and energy, then squeezing it down the drain while letting you know it’ll be right back k thanks. It’s something that requires you to spend more time in a world that doesn’t exist than the one you’re supposed to be living in. It offers you an array of friends you can’t live without then scoffs at your genie-in-a-bottle wish that they were real. It tempts you with hope, then insists you proceed with squashing all level of hope anywhere and everywhere for everyone you create, and, shamed though you are to admit it, love. It coaxes you with the allure of wealth, readership by the millions, adoration and praise, then leaves you with a waste basket of rejection and the realization that you have yet to leave the workforce, and probably won’t anytime soon. Writing is your mistress, and it won’t be satisfied with an occasional text. It wants all of you, but it doesn’t want you to stay over, and it sure as hell doesn’t want to be anything else. It wants you to succeed, it needs you to succeed, but it doesn’t stop badgering you just because you don’t.

And you know what? You love it. You revel in it. You slosh around in your misery like a pig in filth. You devour the entire helping of writing for the pure gluttony of it, then dive into the fridge with an appetite for more. Writing is that friend you can’t live without, and it both is and isn’t there with you at every waking moment. It is the single greatest love-hate, abusive relationship you will ever know, and it will inspire you to journey into the greatest, most wonderful, corners of your mind, where mystery and fantasy burn like wildfire, where romance and seduction beat like a heart, and where the entire universe is willing to bow to the supreme truth of 42.

This is what you want. This is why you believe you exist. This is why most of your earth-based friends and family have difficulty understanding you. This is why you creep people out in crowded spaces as you stare off into alternate realities, completely unaware of your surrounding, or of the uneasiness you leave those in your path. This … this insanely hard, difficult, maddening, bitch of an art, is why everything matters, and why every struggle is survived, every fear faced, every trace of indignity of self ignored.

If not, you can stop looking for advice on writing. You can stop worrying about improving. Just write. Do your blog thing, keep a journal, write whatever your kids or family seem to want to hear, but leave the advice on the shelf, leave the expectations be.

Because writing is hard.

And quitting it is impossible.

Charles in Charge and Writing Do Not Mix

zacharysteele Leave a comment

Sometimes I’ll do anything I can to avoid writing. I’ll run from the computer like it’s a Charles in Charge reunion special. Reading, destroying brain cells on Facebook, over-managing my fantasy baseball teams, catching up on baseball news I already knew, Words With Friends, walks, shopping, driving, sitting on the patio like a grown man in time-out, harassing the cat … name it. It runs contrary to the idea writing is my passion, my life, I know, but I do it regardless. Not because I’m afraid to write. Rather, because I’m afraid to write badly.

On the surface it’s an absurd statement. It reeks of a failure in confidence. If you’re afraid to write, avoiding it for any reason, then perhaps writing isn’t for you, right? However, I don’t lack confidence in my writing. Though I’m no savant and have a great deal yet to learn, I’ve worked hard on my craft. Besides, Publisher’s Weekly thought well of me. Shouldn’t I? My issue, though, isn’t with my talent, or my ability to weave a compelling tale, or whether or not what I’m about to type will be pure crap. The ‘delete’ key takes care of that. If not, editing exists for a reason. What I’m afraid of is producing work that floats off into the ether like space debris: forgotten and forever to orbit in the dark vacuum of nothingness. Perhaps that means it was bad, perhaps it doesn’t. Sometimes you can feel so damned positive you’ve written something great–or at the least good–only to watch it wander into an uncaring world that as much notices it as avoids it altogether.

Maybe that doesn’t qualify it as bad, exactly, but as a writer it becomes difficult to separate good from bad when feedback is non-existent.  Sure, you get some words of encouragement from those who know you, or from other writers, or beta-readers, or even your Publisher/Editor/Agent. They like it. They praise you in widely generic ways. They might even specifically site an instance in your work they particularly liked. Which makes you smile. It makes you proud. It gives you that momentary feeling of heroic wonder. Then it becomes print, you talk about it through various social media portals, maybe you have some events, and you wait for the accolades and reader reviews. And wait. And wait. Ultimately, the silence invades your mind, leaving a gap in your defenses wide enough for an F5 tornado of doubt to plow a destructive path through your pristine landscape of ignorant bliss.

No matter how much you talk it up, nobody’s talking back. Your book sucks. It must. It has to. You re-read it. It doesn’t feel as sublime as the last time you looked it through. Are you no longer blind to the truth, or have you allowed silence and doubt to insert their impression in your head? What does that mean for your current manuscript? Should you suspend writing in order to review what you’ve written? Will this unedited piece of unfinished potential crap offer you insight as to why your recent work is failing? Or are you over-thinking it? Of course, you can go to your Publisher/Editor/Agent for advice, but they’ll tell you to cool your jets, this kind of thing happens all the time. But no, you think, this is happening to me. It wasn’t supposed to. My book was good.

Or was it?

It’s troubling to think all this can cross through the mind in a fraction of a second. Even more troubling, however, is the anticipation it can and might likely happen to your work-in-progress–before you’ve even finished it. You have constructed a fully viable, fully entrenched, vision of your manuscript’s future while it still doesn’t even know how it will end. The characters are gathering for an intervention and you’re in the corner wallowing about how nobody will ever care about anything you write. Ever. I suppose if I were a parent, I might better understand this, or how to cope with it. My cat doesn’t inspire worry. Her naps will always be quality naps.

So, I’ll stare at the computer screen, eyeing the open Internet tabs, finger ready to open Scrivener. I might read what I have to that point, if I haven’t wandered off already. Maybe pack the laptop and head out for coffee, read it there. Maybe take a drive to hunt for inspiration. It doesn’t happen all the time, and generally by the time I’ve begun typing, my fears have waned. My characters are at the forefront. I’m a God, moving pieces, orchestrating fates, divining obstacles. All is good. My work is good. My story is good. My book, so far, is good.

I’m a writer. I don’t write simply because I can. I write to entertain, to bring something to someone’s life they will enjoy and share. It’s narcissistic, cathartic, inspiring, and humbling. I like to imagine a God, creating a Universe, filling worlds with living creatures, molding paths, futures, destinies, holding arms to Heavens when the job is done, with a notable “Huh? Awesome, right?” expression. That God would be bummed if even the crickets went silent. I guess it’s okay for me to be as well.

I just need to keep writing.

Maybe a drive first, though.

The Peaceful Madness

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A writer breeds madness.

Truthfully, this could be said of any artist. Any Creator. We are gods, after all, desperate to create worlds in which we’d much rather be, sculpting rules and destinies from the jagged peaks of our imagination, reforming the memories of our past and the hopes of our future into triumphant tales of heroic adventure. We write the code for the program, doing so with a reckless arrogance, ignoring reality in favor of the most favorable path to redemption. Not simply for our heroes, but for ourselves. And when we step away from our narcissistic free-for-all, we find bills, hunger, war, political mudslinging, and for many–loneliness beyond repair.

Something happens in the process that alters us forever. We begin to long for the worlds we created.  We begin to hunger to complete the stories, to enhance the landscapes, to better realize this fantastic scope through which we peer. Reality becomes less real. Fantasy more believable. Either word seems insufficient and life gets twisted somewhere in between. We find more time to stare through windows on scenes so far removed we appear to be catatonic, or angry, or one Sugar Snap away from inviting Dig ’em for a lengthy stay.

Our worlds live and breathe in our minds, taking on a life of their own; and though we see the world as perfect, the characters as family, we find the words lacking. Not simply because we doubt their ability to convey, or because they are insufficient or weak, but because they don’t breech the boundaries of space and time. They don’t open a portal to our worlds. They don’t allow us to escape. So we keep writing, we keep creating, we keep building, hoping to find something of our fantasy within the reality we are trapped.

We never do. Yet, the desperation is a madness we crave, the only place in which we truly find peace.

There are times I find this idea unsettling, depressing, an incurable infectious disease in which small pieces of my brain melt helplessly away by the day. Then I find things like this in my work:

“It is apparent to me now there is less between imagination and reality than I dared dream. I wonder at times if closing my eyes will be the end of me, or if I can never truly begin until the world fades to black. Therein lies the deceit of lightness and dark: They serve your need, or leave you mired in blindness, unable to distinguish truth from lie.”

And I realize my madness can manifest in beautiful ways. My characters can trumpet my words in ways I will never be able. My stories can bring civility to the war between the lightness and dark; and though I may never step foot in the worlds I create, I can give them life, hope, and a path to fulfillment. I can give them–with due struggle and pain–all that I want for myself. I will give them a life that pushes what they can handle, but allows them a heroic end. A Happily Ever After. I know their path through and through. I don’t know mine.

I can only hope, when my final second ticks and the clock draws into silence, I have left words that resonate. Words that, beyond belief, beyond the bounds of reality, have given life to worlds that will always be visited by eager minds. Perhaps then I will truly know peace.

So I write and I dream, and I hope that somewhere, in some world, there is someone writing my story, smiling at my ways, counting the days until I can be the hero I was created to be.

(Insert Non-Snarky Humorless Title About Self-Publishing Here)

zacharysteele Leave a comment

I try to be serious. Really, I do. I’m just not very good at it. My mind wanders, and I start thinking about all the things I could fit in a can of peanuts. Minus the peanuts, of course. I’m not stupid, after all. Then, my once proud, informative, title about a forthcoming Self-Publishing seminar turns into The Devil is in the Peanuts, or 100 Ways to Freak Out Your Cat With an Empty Peanut Can, or the more functional There is No Peanut, Only Zuhl. None of those have anything to do with Self-Publishing. I can see no amount of philisophical twisting that will bind my peanut to the topic. Yet, I persist, and now I have a full paragraph about nothing but my wandering mind’s affixation with an empty peanut can. So…

Riiiiiiggght

 

Yeah.

Anyway, my point was to talk up an upcoming event that is useful to all you local writery type people in the area. Saturday, June 7th, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the Decatur Library Auditorium, The Georgia Center for the Book will be hosting a seminar on Self-Publishing, moderated by my inconsistently focused brain and whatever function of my physical self I can pull together on that day. We’ve assembled a panel of four gifted and knowledgable minds to discuss the various points of the Self-Publication process, and whether or not it’s the right course for you to take. Whether you’re waffling over Self-Publication vs. the Commercial Industry, wondering about the pros and cons of staying digital via the ebook, starting your own Indie Press, or simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Self-Publication possibilities and in need of some clarity, you’re going to want to join us.  The Publishing Industry is in flux, after all, and having the chance to further your understanding of where you should take that manuscript you’ve worked so hard on is essential. Maybe you find that you’d rather stick to the grind of finding an agent, seeking that Big Publisher Contract, and letting the process carry you forward. Excellent! Our panel is well-versed in that process too! Ask all the questions you want! After all, there’s a great deal of benefit in staying the course, and having the opportunity to explore your options will only bring you greater confidence in that decision. However, even notable authors, such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), have explored the Self-Publishing route.  Wallace has found a great following for his latest work, pitched through the crowdfunding website InkShares. The Hybrid Author has the choice, from manuscript-to-manuscript: Commercial or Indie?

What you need are options. To better understand those options, you need information. That’s what this seminar aims to offer. Now’s the time to chase your dream, in whatever form you wish it to take. With knowledge comes great power. Or more peanuts in your can. HEY! I just tied it together!

Good job, brain.

So, short of yammering on about all-the-things-not-topical, I present you with the four esteemed guests who wish to fill your head with peanuts (Get it? The Empty Can is now your head! Because … just … never mind.).

S.R. Johannes

  S.R. Johannes

 

S.R JOHANNES is the award-winning author of the Amazon bestselling thriller series, the Nature of Grace, featuring the titles Untraceable, Uncontrollable, and Unstoppable. She is the winner of the 2012 IndieReader Discovery Awards (Young Adult category) as well as a Silver medalist in the IPPY awards for YA Fiction. She was nominated for 2012 Georgia Author of the Year (Young Adult category), a Finalist in The Kindle Book Review’s Best Young Adult of 2012, and a YA Finalist in the US Book News Best Book of 2012. 

 

 

Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley

 

COLLIN KELLEY is the author of the novels Conquering Venus and Remain in Light, which have just been re-issued in new editions by Sibling Rivalry Press. His poetry collections include Better to Travel, Slow to Burn, After the Poison and Render, chosen by the American Library Association for its 2014 Over the Rainbow Book List. A short story collection, Kiss Shot, is available exclusively for the Amazon Kindle. A recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award, Deep South Festival of Writers Award and Goodreads Poetry Award, Kelley’s poetry, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world. He is currently writing his third novel, Leaving Paris.

 

Bill Bridges

Bill Bridges

 

BILL BRIDGES is an award-winning writer and narrative designer of numerous games. He was one of the original developers of White Wolf’s World of Darkness and is the co-creator and developer of the Fading Suns science-fiction universe. He is a Fellow at Atlanta’s Mythic Imagination Institute.

 

 

 

 

Barbara Friend Ish

Barbara Friend Ish

 

BARBARA FRIEND ISH is the author of the Compton Crook Award Finalist novel The Shadow of the Sun and the 2015 novel The Heart of Darkness. She moonlights as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief for Mercury Retrograde Press. Books edited by Barbara have been covered by Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, and electronic and print outlets worldwide. Her cats run her life.

 

 

The seminar will begin at 11, running for an hour as I lead the panel through a section of questions. We’ll break for 30 minutes, come back and devote the final hour and a half to your questions. Each of the panelists will be available after the seminar, should you have any further questions, or wish to purchase any of thier books. If you have any questions about the seminar, you can email me at steelez@dekalblibrary.org.

Hope to see you there!

The Living Story

zacharysteele Leave a comment

I haven’t been writing for the entirety of the limited experience that I call, “life”. I mean, well, obviously I wasn’t writing in the womb, nor did I pop out with pen and paper and get to scribing my experiences in utero. I suppose that would have been quite the story, if not, an altogether painful experience for my poor mother. So, what I mean to say is, though I may have spent the majority of my capable time on this earth writing, I have some lingering years remaining that offer no insight whatsoever into my life as a writer.

What is that supposed to mean? I take it to mean that I need more coffee.

The thing about life, see, is life, in and of itself, is a story. Not the words you put on paper (or screen in this modern age), or in the ideas floating about the nether regions of your mind, plucking you awake at the most obscene hours of the night, but in every aspect of every person in every day that you live. Writing is, more or less, the centrifuge to the swath of stories we swim through on a daily basis. Perhaps because of this daily exposure, the anti-originality escape clause of “there is no story that has yet to be written,” gets bandied about with regularity. Eh. Maybe. It is a rather unoriginal thought, so, sure, the stories that are written are nothing more than variances of stories that have been around for centuries, experiences we have, personally or by degrees of separation, experienced. Stories your grandfather told you on cold nights by the fire, stories you heard while eavesdropping on that squabbling couple in the cafe, stories chipped in tablets and handed down (or succinctly dropped on the floor and cracked into pieces by that snarky caveman-esque editor with no appreciation for the man-mammoth-woman love triangle). But in each story, in each tale that rings of familiarity, there is a unique perspective, a unique slant, something that only happened that one time.

Oddly, it took me a while to see this. I had to actually look up from the page, so to speak, and take a nice long look at the world. I had to see how, in its persistent way, life prodded the art of storytelling. Let’s face it: Writers can become a touch insulated. A tad protected from reality whilst we delve into the preferred insanity that is our chosen world of fantasy. It’s safer there. We can do what we want. We can kill those who have wronged (or, sadly, been nothing more than model citizens), feel remorse, and move on without consequence. We can encourage affairs, destroy relationships, leave the winning lottery ticket on a bench, force someone who needs it desperately to toss it in the trash because, well, they’re just that responsible, then stick our tongue out at them when they realize what they’ve done a few hours later.  We can rule the moon, take the fragile psyche of a beaten soul and thrash it upon the ground like a small child who is curious to see what happens to the turtle inside the shell once it is broken. But we’re always safe, because it isn’t real. It’s just a story, and they’re just characters bent to the will of our perverse madness.

Some time ago I heard it stated that every writer has within them a musician wishing to break out (and likewise, it seems, many musicians have an insane loon within them wishing to break out), which makes sense, albeit in a slanted twist of logic.  After all, art in any form tends to illicit rhythm, flow, a pace to move to. A musician is to a writer is to a sculptor, is to a painter, and so on. But while each is an aspect of the fabric of life, life is the true art. Life is the song. Every life is a story, and in turn, every story is alive.

It’s so easy to forget that your little experiences, your seemingly insurmountable trials, your possessed frustrations are shared by all of those around you. We all feel a bit like Truman, trapped on the stage, the world as our audience…ever so alone in our experiences. But the world is replete in repetition, and in shared experience. No, the mind of that person next to you is not yours, and their similarities are not as yours, but their story is like your story, only in variation, in tempo, and it’s enough to make it unique. We are bound by what we are: living creatures who wander like mobile trumpets, blaring our stories for the world to hear. You only have to listen.

Life is everywhere. So are the stories.

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My God, I Believe

zacharysteele Leave a comment

The God I believe in laughs. A lot.

He’s a 12-year old boy contemplating the universe as he stares into a bowl of Lucky Charms. Tell him a joke after a spoonful and milk shoots from his nose, the debris of marshmallows departed coating the table in a fine spray.  He gets bored at times with the reality TV program that is Humanity, and wanders outside to fly a kite, or chase squirrels, or simply stare at clouds as he delves into blatant forgetfulness. He jumps on soda cans he filled with water just because, uses extra ketchup on everything, is the one that put the firecrackers in your mailbox, believes a dessert can only truly be appreciated when eaten first, never turns down a cartoon, sings songs despite the fact he doesn’t know the words and can’t carry a tune, is impressed by everything, and finds the idea of cleanliness much better next to him than on him.

He’s the first to point out a hilarious sign, the one giggling during a call for silence, and the last to go to bed because he can’t stop reading.  He loves to finger paint, gets Play-Doh everywhere, runs into walls, trips over toys, chews with his mouth open, stares sullenly out the window when it rains, isn’t to be trusted around a garden hose and an ant hill, and always sings the alphabet to remember the V does, in fact, come before the W.

Without him there would be no roller coaster. Knock-Knock jokes would not exist. People would fart and nobody would care. Everybody would not poop. There would be no snickers when someone proclaimed “it was their duty.” Nobody would count the stars.

This is the God I believe in.  He doesn’t want me to be religious. He wants me to be silly. To laugh along. To enjoy my life. And though I struggle mightily with the latter, I feel I do pretty good with the first two. And I think he’s okay with that, even if a little disappointed.

Have a sense of humor about life while you can, folks. Be silly. Tell Jokes. Relax and remember why you play. Doesn’t matter who your God is. He didn’t promise you a tomorrow.

The Storyteller: The Heart of Darkness–First Chapter Preview

zacharysteele 2 Comments

There’s still some road left to walk in getting The Storyteller: The Heart of Darkness into your hands, but in the meantime I thought I would offer a glimpse into the project. It’s a story I’ve been developing/writing for more than seven years and I have a mountain of notes to prove it. All told, it will be five books in length, with the adventure and mystery deepening and darkening as you journey forward with our protagonist, Oliver Miles. It isn’t simply a story, though. It’s not just a collection of words on a page, guiding you forward. As The Storyteller himself will tell you, this story is alive. And it’s been waiting for you.

Here’s the briefest of brief rundowns of what awaits you:

Sixteen-year-old Oliver Miles is not just a fan of The Damon Grell Chronicles, he is also about to become the last hero of the world in which the series of books takes place.  Drawn into Elysium, Oliver must navigate through a world both familiar and unfamiliar—where magic is hidden in books, where life is born one word at a time, where the secret of his birth and the path to his future rest in a powerful darkness that threatens the world, and where he must find the answer to the one question that might save them all: Who is the Storyteller?

The Storyteller is watching you...

This links to a Word document, so if you don’t have that, it won’t download.

Click here to read the first chapter.

 

 

The Not Way to the Bye Way

zacharysteele Leave a comment

Here’s a little note to all the writers out there who are attempting to get their books–self-published or otherwise–into independent bookstores: While social media may indeed be a useful tool in which to market/promote yourself/your work, it’s also a trap that prohibits you from making real, honest, contact with the booksellers who will sell your work.  Don’t allow yourself to believe that it has usurped the more professional form of contact that bookstores for years have relied upon.  Phones still ring in the store, and if they don’t, well, then you don’t need to worry about that store.  The mail, despite rising costs, is still delivered, and stores also receive a type of mail known as “electronic mail”.  You might even want to utilize the non-social media aspects of the internet, and find that store’s web page.  Even Google would suggest that route, and if it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for you.

Now, this all may sound straightforward and obvious, but the volume of writers who abstain from protocol in favor of the easier, less research heavy–and let’s face it–lazier route is staggering.  It’s as if the advent of social media has awakened schools of sleeping bats in caves that have been isolated from the whole of history and time.  They just fly out, screaming their little bat heads off, and drop their query poop all over you.  Case in point:

Don't Let This Happen to You

Usually, snark is to be expected from booksellers who find themselves annoyed by this type of query.  Close the bookstore, and the snark level will rise like the tide before a hurricane.  Combine the above with a “note” that looks as though it were written by a texting high-school student and you may as well curl up in a ball and wait out the assault.  The one thing you can expect is that any bookstore you contact through Facebook in this manner can be crossed off your list.  You will never be taken seriously.  You will never get your book in that store.  Much like agents and editors, a bookseller is swamped by requests on a daily basis.  The crap will be sifted and tossed aside without a second glance.  Take your queries to booksellers every bit as serious as you do to agents and editors.