“It’s Like Riding a Bike”

“I think it would be nice,” my mom starts in while the girls are over this weekend, “if we could go on a family bike ride like we used to when you were little.”

I listen. I’m 31, and I’ve been doing this single dad thing for about four months now. I’ve gotten to be a pretty good listener.

The trouble is that Aurie and Kiera never really learned to ride their bikes. There never seemed to be any time to teach them. Aurie’s bike, which she has outgrown, still has the training wheels on. Kiera’s bike, also much too small for her, is sitting in my storage unit (my chateau, so to speak).

“Kiera ought to be able to use Aurie’s bike,” I wager.

So we pull around Aurie’s old steel horse from the side of the house. It’s still in pretty good shape. Schwinns are like that. A little air in the tires, a little adjustment to the seat, and it’s good as new.

My parents’ property sits on a cul de sac. This is fortuitous for children riding bikes or playing ball because there is seldom any traffic. Soon enough, Kiera is tearing around on her big sister’s bike. It takes my dad about five minutes to get outside with his camera and start taking pictures. There is something magical about watching a child learn this, after all. It’s a rite of passage without being a loss of innocence, and that’s a truly beautiful thing.

I take a few pictures and videos myself.

But the real rite of passage comes when we brave the local Walmart and pick up a new bike for Aurie. It’s 24” with no training wheels—too big for my daughter to sit on the seat with her feet planted on the ground.

“They grow like weeds,” my mom says. “You don’t want to go any smaller than this one.”

Again, I listen.

We fold back the seats on my Honda deathtrap and cram the bike inside. This is no small task with the girls, but we manage. My mom and I explain to Aurie that this is something of a special occasion. As far as either of us can remember, no one ever got a new bike outside of birthdays or Christmases.

Aurie is stoked to have a new bike, but scared because there are no training wheels. This is especially true because we bought helmets (one for each girl), knee pads, and elbow pads. Once we’re back and she suits up, though, she makes a Tron reference and is ready to try.

I have to laugh. My kids are cool.

My mom lets me try to teach Aurie to balance and peddle for about 45 minutes. She’s done this with four kids of her own, running up and down the block, holding onto seats and handle bars for dear life. In a way, this is becoming a rite of passage for me, too. I’m pretty fit from four months of hitting the gym and eating better, so the cardio isn’t that bad. On the other hand, Aurie is tall for her age and weighs about 92 pounds. When she leans the wrong way at 10 mph, I have to physically course correct her without planting my feet, or she’ll fall. I liken this to Conan redirecting charging stallions on foot by sheer brute force, but it really isn’t half that impressive.

Damn, I wish we had done this when she was five. I won’t make the same mistake with Kiera.

The neighbor comes out and offers his advice. My mom comes out and has a whole step-by-step system for what Aurie should do that involves starting at the curb.

Friggin’ mechanics and math majors. My daughter’s brain doesn’t work like that—maybe because neither my brain nor her mother’s brain works like that. This is a rite of passage. Aurie has to feel the balance. It’s not something I can do for her. It’s not something anyone can control with their steps or processes or methods.

This is the part where I stop listening.

Aurie has to experience the freedom for herself.

She also needs that seat lowered, I realize, so my dad and I take care of that while I pound a Vitamin Water.

After what seems like the umpteenth time running with her, even though the handle bars aren’t straight and her balance isn’t perfect, I let go. I’m ready to leap for that seat, but she doesn’t fall. I count to three and grab hold again.

She keeps peddling and doesn’t even notice.

I tell her to stop ahead at the stop sign, and I let go again. This time, I try to let her see that I’m running beside her. She doesn’t catch on, and I grab hold of the bike again when she hits the brakes because I’m afraid that she’s going to fall.

This goes on a few times before I announce to her:

“Aurie, look at your shadow.”

The afternoon light throws our silhouettes ahead of us, and my daughter can see herself riding and Daddy sprinting beside her without one finger on her bike.

“I’m doing it by myself?” she shrieks. “I’m doing it by myself!”

“You have been for a while!” I manage between pants.

I’m seriously pretty tired by this point.

We discuss turning and stopping and how to get out of trouble without dropping the bike. I use martial arts terms like “horse stance” because we’ve both studied karate.

What? This is a teacher thing. Connect to prior knowledge.

Then, elated and confident, my beaming daughter runs my ass ragged all over the neighborhood. My parents think this is hilarious.

Karma, they laugh.

The truth is I’m just happy to be healthy enough to do this for Aurie.

Before Aurie got on her new bike, my mom told her it would probably take a week to get it right, and not to be discouraged. She learned in about two hours. After about three hours, my butt was planted on the seat of a loaner bike, peddling beside her. We did go on that family bike ride—Aurie and I in the lead, Kiera and my parents following behind.

You never know, can’t truly appreciate, how good your parents were to you until you go through something like this.

For me, the hardest part, far more difficult than all the running and Conan course correcting, was letting go of my daughter for just three seconds.

The best part was riding beside her and seeing her smile.

Showing Vs. Telling

A word on this–or a few hundred.

“Show, don’t tell.”

This is often considered the most basic rule of storytelling: a word that apparently we’ve misconstrued–or have we? Most major publishers and writing seminar professors do their damnedest to beat this mantra into our heads until we begin to feel like very literate pinatas. The trouble is that, like most rules in basic English studies, this one doesn’t hold water 100% of the time.

Take, for example, a novel written in the first person. In order to capture the narrator’s distinct voice, the writer has no choice but to “tell” at times. Barring this, the realism of perspective is entirely lost. Speculative fiction novels written in the third person limited perspective also require at least some exposition to let the reader into the unique world that the author has imagined. True, it’s possible to cram all the back story and world building into dialogue and internal monologue, and the story will move faster this way, but you run the risk of leaving the reader with gaps in understanding. (This also must be done skillfully; if you are not a strong dialogue writer, this tactic becomes more laughable than laudable.)

From the perspective of a fan, I’d rather the mystery surrounding a new world I’m taking the time to explore be presented to me intentionally as opposed to me wondering when in the future (or in what reconfigured version of the past) the story takes place and why I should care. A little exposition grounds the reader in the text, allowing him or her to explore more fulfilling mysteries commensurate with the plot line and the potential themes/subtext of the story.

So when is it okay to tell? In my increasingly humble opinion, the writer can get away with exposition when he/she has earned the space to breathe and to let the story expand a bit. If you begin with a strong hook that tantalizes the reader and invests him/her in the story, it’s okay to peel back a layer of meaning through exposition supplemented with either thoughts or dialogue. The “telling” doesn’t have to go on for pages–it should be as concise as possible within the workings of the craft. However, giving the reader a chance to catch his/her breath and process the world will ultimately eliminate the build up of questions that makes it impossible to suspend disbelief.

This is basic psychology: the harder something is to grasp, the more difficult it is to believe because belief comes with understanding.

I’m not arguing that the amount of exposition in a story should ever come close to the amount of action, description, or dialogue. But those three very effective modes of storytelling fail when we, as readers, fail to invest ourselves in a story because we can’t find basic elements like setting and characterization.

So breathe, people. A brief history of a planet’s struggles is okay if it’s grounded in the perspective character’s thoughts. It’s perfectly fine for a first person narrator to be opinionated and tell the audience what he or she thinks, so long as the fourth wall remains intact.

Don’t believe me? Pick up your favorite novel–not the one that just came flying off the editor’s desk, your favorite one. Grab a highlighter and go to town in every spot where the author is telling as opposed to showing. You might be very surprised. (Especially if you’re reading Tolkien.)

 

My Match.com Experience

At the urging of various friends and family members who’ve insisted that I need to “get over it” and start dating again, I posted a profile to Match.com (since deleted, before you go looking). Doing this made sense on some level because most of my time is tied up with children and words, and most of the women I’m meeting these days are cropping up on social media sites.

Creating my profile took maybe a half an hour. Soon enough, I was tossed into a digital meat market of nearly identical profiles punctuated here and there by second hand problems. It seems like most women on Match are “looking for their partner in crime”, “strong and independent”, and pretending to like football a hell of a lot more than most men I know.

Online dating sites still carry the reputation of being populated by weirdos. I pretty much ignored this stigma because I met the mother of my children on the Internet back in the 90’s when this concept was new and even more frowned upon.

Things certainly have changed, but not necessarily for the better.

For starters, we have people in their 30’s and 40’s taking throwback MySpace pictures like this:

I can take pictures with mirrors! Whee! And no one will ever tell this is the staff bathroom!

Then, there’s the obligatory shot wherein one pretends (I hope!) to drive a car for no reason:

Rollin’ hard in mah Honda deathtrap… So GANGSTA!!

Let’s not forget the grotesque image of the potential dating candidate doing something random and weird to attempt to appear fun and interesting:

Check out my personal Carl’s Jr. fish sandwich commercial! Gave me worms…

In my week on Match, I was stalked by women in their late 40’s, “winked at” by people who disappear off the site in the next twenty-four hours, shunned like Hester friggin’ Prynne for having two children at age 30, approached by someone trying to run an international gold scam (I swear I’m not making this up!), and stalked by a wannabe Russian mail-order bride that still e-mails me in broken English and writes as if she has known me for years and is passionately in love with me.

Additionally, I went on one date. Prior to doing this, I texted one of my best friends, who has been through a divorce and remarried, and told him I was having second thoughts about going. I explained that I felt like a traitor to my family. He explained to me in no uncertain terms that it was just a date and that I was being a sissy la-la.

So I went.

Being a paragon of chivalry in this postmodern world, I allowed my date to pick the time and place. I, of course, would pay for everything. I had to borrow a car because my Honda deathtrap is even less dateable than I am at present, and when I arrived at the scene, it was practically rained out. I ended up meeting my date in a cramped, smoky bar that was so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves talk.

In retrospect, this was the best part of the evening. Hands down.

So she and I get into my (my mom’s) chariot to get out of the rain. In the space between pulling out of the pub scene and finding a place to eat, I ask her some basic questions that weren’t addressed on her profile.

Like, for example, what she does for a living.

She refuses to answer this question, stating that this information is normally reserved for the third or fourth date. She’s a college graduate too, so I figured this would be small talk.

Weird, right?

At about this point, I notice that she is more nervous than I am. This seems odd to me as well, as this is the first time I’ve been on a date with anyone but my ex in nearly a decade, and my date has candidly told me that I am her 22^nd Match.com guy. No, not 22 dates, she explains. Many more dates than that. 22 guys.

This is pretty much the only thing she’s willing to talk about other than a mutual teacher we had in high school (we went to different schools, but apparently he gets around) who she thought was hot. This same teacher, who I once looked up to, had an affair with a 17-year-old student despite being married and having two beautiful children.

My date thinks it’s strange that I, as a teacher, am bothered by this. She also thinks my profile is “unappealing” because I was honest about my personality and didn’t take pictures in a nice suit.

The coup de grace, of course, is when she pulls out a journal (manifesto?) of handwritten notes taken over every e-mail she’s received via Match.com in the past two years. She proudly shows me the number of views she’s had daily since creating her profile, which are scrawled in the margins.

“Check, please!”

So yeah, I lasted about a week on Match. It would have been nice to get a refund for the two+ months I paid for in advance, but the experience was invaluable. In addition to confirming for the umpteenth time that women are crazy, I learned that I’m just not ready to do this again.

Review: Psycho-Submersible

After getting my hands on the paper version of the RealLies anthology, I naturally began reading it. Sure, I’d had the galley proof for about a year and the Kindle version for over a month, but as one of my friends put it recently, there’s something about having a dead tree in yours hands that has been sacrificed so that you might gain knowledge. Maybe there’s a kind of ritual here. Maybe it’s just because print copies are what we grew up with. I don’t know.

Hyperaware of this mental juxtaposition between ebook and print, I opened RealLies gingerly, as if it were a comic book or graphic novel. I tried not to bend back the cover too roughly and to handle every page with care. I’d obviously checked out my story when the book first came, which is featured last, but reading through Descarta first seemed like egotism. (Besides, I know everything that happens to Reese anyway.) Instead, I thumbed over to page 1 to check out Oscar Francesco’s story, “Psycho-Submersible”.

Despite what you see on the front cover of almost every bestseller, writers are actually lousy at reviewing each other’s stories. One reason for this is the constant comparison. I’ve been criticized as being “negative” when traipsing through other people’s worlds and showing where reality’s edges have frayed, where the seams don’t quite come together. I know the rules. No work is every really finished, just abandoned.

Given my skepticism and “negative” attitude, I’d have to say that Francesco’s work, given a fair shake, will probably impress most readers. Because by the time I turned the last page and my eyes bugged out of my head, I was impressed. No easy feat.

Francesco and I seem to share the idea that Sci-fi should be accessible to a general audience. I’m not against hard Sci-fi, but I do feel that it limits the audience to geeks like me that will do the mental work to understand your quantum mechanics. Francesco writes Sci-fi the way that Bradbury wrote Sci-fi—he focuses on a single, (in this case literally) mind boggling conceit and builds a story around it. The difference is that he’s willing to take the necessary risks to make the reader believe that this isn’t his formula at all. What precisely he was doing wasn’t apparent to me until about three pages from the story’s ending. Then, at the end, he ties the story, which got pretty wild in places, up in a nice, neat knot.

I’m serious. Pretty much everything I questioned made sense at the end.

Damn, I wish I could do that.

Without spoiling too much of “Psycho –Submersible”, the Sci-fi conceit involves a form of telepathy that can be generated with a machine and then honed with practice. Francesco explores the potential consequences of unbalancing minds through the use of scientific meddling. Like many Sci-fi conceits, this might be a cautionary metaphor, in this case potentially representing a number of different forms of mental abuse, stimulation, and simulation—a terribly relevant theme right now.

To keep the story accessible, Francesco provides us with a focus character of average intelligence who is, by his own admission, an underachiever in life. This enables the reader to learn and experience each new trope with the character as opposed to being blasted with exposition. Many writers (I’ve been here too) feel they must lay all their proverbial cards on the table early in the story because editors pass over so many manuscripts without reading them thoroughly. Francesco, on the other hand, uses this perspective character tactic to bluff the reader till the end, when he lays down the winning hand.

There were a few moments when reading that made me sit back and think, Really? You’ve got this idea, and this is where you’re going with it? And why is he … if … happened? Other critical readers might experience this same issue. But to make readers question reality is part of the Francesco’s plan. There’s risk and reward here. At the end, he practically punishes you for ever doubting him.

In many ways, his story and mine are polar opposites. Perhaps my editor knows a thing or two because he polarized them by placing Francesco’s work at the beginning of Curiosity (Part I) and mine at the end of Control (Part II). I was originally just stoked to make it into print. Now, I can’t wait to see how all the stories fit together.

As my bias as a contributor prevents me from jumping on Amazon or Goodreads and dropping reviews like this, I think I’m going to post them here. If time permits, maybe I’ll say a little something about all the works in the anthology.

Kudos, Oscar. I’ll have to check out more of your work!

Sci-Fi and Sushi: Blast from the Past

Cloud is all grown up…

Joe Erickson (@SweetJoesus) and I dug up our most notorious Final Fantasy VII fanfic from our high school days and, against the better judgment of the universe, decided to record the two of us doing the voices, musical numbers, and commentary. Joe plans to release it in a three-part podcast on Scifiandsushi.com, and the first piece hit the Web last night.

This presentation is free on the Web and can be downloaded on most podcast apps. I was listening to it on my iPhone this morning, and I almost drove off the side of the road. Joe and I have been friends for a very long time, and I don’t mind bragging that we are absolutely hysterical together. We should have done this a long time ago.

I would like to caution my readers, however, that this podcast is not for the faint of heart, nor is it politically correct in any way, shape, or form. The script we discovered and comedically reenacted is about 15 years old, so the views and themes expressed therein in no way coincide with our current sympathies. In a nutshell, Mel Brooks would be proud, and due to its foul language alone, this podcast would probably garner an R rating. If you follow this blog for my musings about the beauty of symbolism or my family oriented anecdotes, this podcast is probably not for you. Moreover, if you’re not a fan of Sci-fi/Fantasy and the Final Fantasy series, you probably won’t get all of the jokes (though we go into great detail explaining some of them).

Anyone still with me? Feel free to geek out with FFVII: Roadtrip (Part I) on Scifiandsushi.com. I promise that–at the very least–you’ll laugh your head off at our reactions to our adolescent stupidity. The voices are ridiculous as well. I play Cloud, Sephiroth, Tifa, Cid, Vincent, Rude, Elena, Leonardo DiCaprio (this was written around the time Titanic came out), a white rapper, and the Midgar Zolom, amongst many others. If you ever wanted to hear me make an ass out of myself, this is your opportunity. -.-

Reviews for RealLies Challenge!

Now that RealLies has hit Kindle, I’ve begun to see reviews of “The Wolf of Descarta” filter through to my e-mail and Twitter. While these reviews are positive and very encouraging, the biggest complaint I’ve received is that the story can’t possibly end where it does. One blogger described it as having a “Joe Abercrombie ending”. (I find this flattering.)

That Max Avalon chose to end the anthology with “The Wolf of Descarta” gives the collection a distinct theme that speaks to the concept of subjective reality and the potential consequences of living in a fish bowl universe.

But my readers are right. The story doesn’t end there.

“The Wolf of Descarta” is the first part of my novel, The Dream Box, which my publisher has optioned under what’s called a “right of first refusal” contract. If the anthology does well, there’s a real possibility of the rest of the story seeing the light of day. (Not to mention an additional chapter focusing on Renton Hayes that is absent from “The Wolf of Descarta”.)

Do you want to hear the rest of the story, dear readers? There’s a way you can help.

While I truly appreciate the positive responses I’ve received via e-mail and social media, Amazon.com is the proper forum for both praise and criticism. Therefore, I propose the following challenge:

If RealLies manages to accrue 25 reviews on Amazon.com that directly reference “The Wolf of Descarta”, I will post the next five chapters (plus Hayes’ chapter) to the Excerpt of the Week section of this blog, where they will remain until I sell the rights to the book.

Copies in various e-book formats other than Kindle are available if you order directly from TZPP. Just follow this link or click the tab at the top of this blog, and you can be reading in minutes!

For those of you who ordered the physical book, my understanding is that they are on the way. I’m still waiting for my author copies as well. Once we have some dead trees in hand, I plan to schedule a few signings/readings in Arizona. I attended the Tucson Festival of Books last weekend (as a fan), and after the phenomonal experience I had there, I’m considering looking at the venues near U of A. The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale also has my eye, but these are considerations for later.

Check back soon for a post chronicling my experiences at the aforementioned festival, where I was fortunate enough to pick the brains of authors like Patrick Rothfuss, Kevin Hearne, and Charles de Lint.

As always, I will share what I’ve learned.

Life Unplugged

Two months ago, I quit playing video games cold turkey.

Someone near and dear to me let me know that my escapism habits had become unhealthy. I was constantly stressed about not having enough time for the things I wanted to do–writing fiction, keeping up with the blog, taking my girls hiking or to the movies–and the things I needed to do–teaching, grading, running a theatre program, and sundry household duties. So in order to “balance” all this and keep up with my gaming habits, which I’ve always viewed as a gateway to inspiration (look at Descarta, for example), I began getting up early in the morning to play games. I then stayed up late gaming after I had accomplished whatever I had managed to that day, which in retrospect, was probably not much.

This would have been different, mind you, if I had actually been playing new and exciting games instead of replaying Dark Souls for the umpteenth time (my goal was hitting level 712 without cheating!) and trying to stay ahead of teenagers in the Urr Dragon battle in Dragon’s Dogma. Prior to the new DLC, I had done everything there was to do in Skyrim as well.

Hey, I was murdering evil, right? True. But I was also murdering time, my health, and personal relationships. In the meantime, I was writing virtually nothing. My weight was back up to the pregnancy sympathy pounds stage, and I was junking up on energy drinks just to function. I had zero motivation–and this depressed me to no end.

This surprised me. I mean, you’d think with the anthology’s release date nearing and me sitting on Winter Break at the time, I would have been bouncing off the walls. Instead, I was a wreck. Success doth not ensure happiness, especially in the mind of an English major.

This is why I maintain the axiom that all artists–real artists–are either drug addicts or insane. Just like Nicolas Cage.

This should keep me safe from the bees!

I remember following a much more successful (no hyperbole) blogger/web comic years ago who managed to land a book deal with Harper Collins. After everything seemed like it was going her way, she lapsed into depression. Her last post was about how this had unexpectedly happened to her, and as of this writing, she hasn’t released any new material (other than an interview on reddit explaining her situation to her many fans). I remember being extremely disappointed in her for just falling off the world like that.

Now, to some extent, I understand.

So the games, and indeed my entire outlook, had to go. The trouble is that you can take the gamer out of the game, but you can’t take the game out of the gamer. I’ve been gaming since the Atari 2600, after all. Two of my three books are about gaming in a Sci-Fi sense (the other, perhaps paradoxically, is about technology destroying everything that was once sacred in the world). It took me a few weeks just to stop seeing facets of reality in terms of video game analogies, which I’d found to be comforting in times past. I mean, I was the great knight errant on a quest to redeem the kingdom. An overweight English teacher with a penchant for the dramatic can fall on his face and fail miserably at life, but a knight? Never.

It’s not that I don’t know the different between reality and fantasy; it’s merely that fantasy–stories, ideas, even romance–help us cope with a reality where things seldom make sense.

What happens when you try to take the game out of the gamer? The gamer will inevitably apply what gaming has taught him/her to reality. Take grinding, for example. Grinding is the practice of leveling up your character before a boss fight to ensure that you survive the encounter. I’ve still been grinding. I’ve just been doing it in a gym. Now that I’ve beaten off the sinus infection that was holding me back, I plan to grind a lot more. I’ve also eliminated my dependency on energy drinks. Taken together, these two changes have helped me cut about 20 pounds so far.

Instead of tailoring a fictional character to my tastes, I’ve been working on myself. After all, this is my story, and I have to deal with all these “cut scenes” of me now. I might as well be a protagonist I can be proud of, right?

I’ve also noticed in the past few weeks that I haven’t been camping my iPhone as much. For awhile, it had become like the One Ring. There was a moment about a month ago when I deliberately tried to walk out the door without it, and the damn thing was already in my coat pocket.

My Own! My Apps! My Precious!!!

I believe that, at least in my case, fixating on my spiffy little handheld computer with all its apps and checking my blog stats and Facebook every few minutes is linked to my gamer mentality. I might be more out of touch with the world than I was two months ago, but maybe that’s a good thing for my own sanity. I don’t need to become Gollum to write speculative fiction, after all.

New stories will happen because they must. My old Royal typewriter was recently repaired, and that shall be the mechanism of delivery for the time being. I’m sure I’ll be keeping all kinds of people up at night with its sweet cacophony of keys and bells, but to hell with it. Enough is enough.

What does my current cynical attitude regarding technology mean for this blog? Honestly, I wouldn’t worry too much, dear reader. Sans the video games and with all this energy from running on the treadmill, I’ve realized that I have much, much more of one thing than I had previously thought–and that is time.

RealLies Contest and Updates from the Writing Universe

I swear it exists!

RealLies launched on February 1st–officially. Today is Valentine’s Day, and I still don’t have a copy! I do have author copies on the way, but as I am impatient, I’ve tried the Amazon.com route. Temporarily unavailable. Barnes & Noble’s website was the same story. Out of stock. I was expecting (dreading) reviews by now. Instead, I’ve been watching sales numbers bounce around, but nary a comment to be had. Wondering if anyone has gotten their hands on this book, I checked Zharmae’s Facebook and found the above image. I’m grateful that Descarta made the back cover–I just wish I had a physical copy!

What? I’m old-fashioned. Didn’t notice all the references to the Middle Ages on this blog?

My publisher has also tweeted a Valentine’s Day, 1,000-word flash fiction contest with the prize being a free eARC copy of RealLies. (I assume this means they’re working on the electronic edition now.) Stories must be Sci-Fi themed and address the question, “Who’s your Valentine?” Entries must be e-mailed directly to travis @ zharmae. com (no spaces) by the end of the day Pacific Time, so fire up your word processors and get moving if you want free stuff!

For those of you camping this blog for Harper Voyager unagented submissions news, Harper gave a press release February 1st stating that the editors have rejected about half of the submissions already. If you’ve yet to receive a rejection, this means you’re either one of the 543 set aside for further reading or one of the 1,800 that still need to be read. Only one new author, Katherine Harbour, has been announced so far.

I received a rejection for one of the two books I sent to Harper. The trouble is that all the rejections are coming as form e-mails (typical) without the title of the book (not typical). At this point, I don’t know for certain which of my novels is still in the running and which one got the ugly ax. (I can guess, though.) Good luck to everyone who’s still in this with me.

Warrior: The Most Biased Film Review Ever

Reviewing movies isn’t normally something I do on this blog. After watching Warrior about 15 times in the last month, however, I’m willing to make an exception. One of my friends from Sci Fi and Sushi recommended it to me back in January, and I figured I’m give it a shot because I’m shaping up to be a Tom Hardy fan. Why? Besides his solid acting, he’s a celebrity that actually looks like a guy–he’s a throwback to the 80′s action heroes I grew up with, a modern monument to the entire decrepit cast of The Expendables.

I’m sorry, but we need more guys like Tom Hardy in cinema after this two-decade parade of Depps and Blooms if only to make mainstream women interested in men again.

…yeah. I don’t even have to say anything here.

So I got into this movie expecting it to be like Never Back Down–somewhat shotty writing, but with the kind of martial arts action that makes you want to pump iron and turn off your brain. I was okay with that. I hadn’t heard about Nick Nolte’s Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor, which I feel was entirely deserved. I also didn’t know a thing about Joel Edgerton despite his portrayal of Uncle Owen in Revenge of the Sith.

When you have kids, these things slip by you. I haven’t gotten out to see a “grown up” movie since Prometheus, and before that, I think it was Avatar. Seriously.

To say that Warrior exceeded my expectations would be a gross understatement, but as the title of this post states, I’m extremely biased. Let’s look at why.

While Warrior does contain the kind of hype one would expect from a movie about MMA fighting, it has a solid script that centers around a very believeable broken family. Paddy Conlon (Nolte), a retired Vietnam war vet and recovering alcoholic, comes home to find his estranged son, Tommy (Hardy), sitting on the steps. The acting and dialogue in these first scenes between Hardy and Nolte sucked me in. I was no longer concerned about the MMA backdrop for the script; I wanted to know exactly what had happened to make Tommy and his mother leave and what had happened since that time. I wanted to know what remained between Tommy and his older brother, Brendan, who Paddy goes on to explain is a high school teacher with a wife and two “beautiful little girls”.

Then it hit me:

I have a younger brother named Tommy who, without getting into details, has been troubled most of his adult life. I also happen to be a high school teacher with two little girls. And just like the brothers in this film, and I assume all brothers since the beginning of time, we once fought a bitter war for our father’s love.

After that dawned on me, I was hooked. Viewing my brother and I as allegories for these characters (whatever, we all do this) now made it difficult for me to root for Tom Hardy, but I still wanted to see his side of the story unfold as well.

Cut to the scene of Brendan having his face painted by his two girls and his wife, Tess (Jennifer Morrison) bantering with him about their financial situation. At this point, I was on Brendan’s side. The similarities kept pouring in. Here was a suspended teacher (been there) trying to stave off bankruptcy and keep a roof over his family’s head. I could relate. It’s no secret how defunct the education system is here in Arizona, and as I’ve griped about before, I haven’t had a raise in five years. In fact, I recently went through two horrible garnishments and a half a dozen settlements to avoid bankruptcy.

When faced with foreclosure, Brendan Conlon’s response to the possibility of bankruptcy was the same as mine: “That’s not how I do things.”

We also meet Brendan’s students, who are almost as awesome and supportive as mine.

While Brendan’s situation was tugging on my heart strings, Tommy’s story satisfied my need for good ol’ manly kick-ass-ness. I mean, here’s a guy who wipes the floor with seasoned MMA fighters in practice and rips the doors off tanks. If my brother, who is physically much more imposing than I am at this point, ever became an MMA fighter, his style would be this brutal. I, on the other hand, have been in martial arts since I was knee high to a grasshopper (pun intended), and would probably sport Brendan’s more tactical approach.

Truth be told, I’m more of a puncher, though. Now my older brother, who is a black belt in jiu jitsu…

Both brothers need trainers for the mega-tournament at the end of the flick, of course. Tommy bunks up with his estranged father, who was his trainer when he was a junior Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. Brendan, after a tear-jerking scene in which his father tries to reconcile with him, instead reconnects with his former trainer (with whom he had a rad bromance?), Frank Campana (Frank Grillo).

Now, the character of Frank Campana is about 99% like one of my best friends and former martial arts trainer, who I have recently begun to associate with again as well. He has the same philosophies, unorthodox training methods, and love of good music.

At this point, watching this movie was getting kind of eerie. Seriously strange.

Cut to a training montage with a manly version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. I wasn’t a fan of this part the first time I watched it, but it’s grown on me after multiple viewings. At least this montage was different from your typical Rocky ripoff.

Of course, both brothers end up qualifying for the mega-tournament. While naming the tournament ”Sparta” and writing in a massive, undefeated Russian combatant (Rocky IV much?) seemed easy, I was okay with both of these choices. I’m hooked at this point, remember? And I’m the target audience.

Bring on the martial arts action and commentary from two men who have never been in a fight in their life! The brawls were satisfyingly brutal, and the choreographer managed to make jiu jitsu look like more than two Neanderthals humping on the ground. Unlike most real MMA fighting (my opinion), these bouts were actually exciting to watch.

At the same time, the family redemption story supercedes all this. Brendan and Tommy meeting in Atlantic City after not seeing each other for a decade and blaming each other for the loss of their mother was heart breaking. Learning exactly what happened to Tommy during his tour of duty in Iraq was both believeable and disturbing. The crowning performance, of course, was Nick Nolte’s drunken Captain Ahab scene, which quite honestly makes me bawl no matter how many times I see it.

No wonder they nominated him for an Oscar.

Of course, the two brothers end up fighting at the end. Brutality vs. technique. Rage vs. strategy. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any more epic and hauntingly familiar, Brendan dislocates Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy refuses to tap and goes the last two rounds with one arm. Standing between Brendan and saving his family–not just his house at this point, but his family–is his honor.

Damn.

Ever wonder if a movie or a book was written specifically with you in mind? It’s narcissistic, I suppose, but that doesn’t really change how I feel.

The prevailing theme in Warrior is not some shallow, macho message, but that family will always find a way to reconcile. Maybe that’s the thing I find the most comforting about it. That I even can apply adjectives like “comforting” to a brutal MMA flick probably demonstrates better than my biased musings just how different and underrated this movie is.

That said, I sincerely hope they don’t ruin it with a sequel.

My Interview with Zharmae

I’m probably jumping the gun by blogging this before TZPP has the opportunity to post it to their website, but I think it’ll slip under the radar… okay, probably not. Anyway, here goes nothing. By the way, RealLies is now available through most major booksellers. Click here for more information.

Things We’d All like to Know

We would like to understand what makes you tick…your character, what, why, and how you write. We’d like our readers to get to know you. With that in mind, we’d like you to please answer the following questions as thoroughly, and as humanly, as possible. Go ahead, be yourself!

You, the Author

•  Why do you write?

It’s not really a choice. Runners run. Politicians lie. Writers write. I suppose if I had to “squeeze the universe into a ball” and provide just one sane answer, I would say that writing enables me to better understand myself as an individual. It’s cathartic. There’s also the impulse to play God and reshape the world through storytelling, and the same sense of escapism we hope our readers enjoy.

• What do you write?

Anything, really. I’ve been a ghostwriter, editor, and English teacher. When I have a choice, it’s either Sci-Fi/Fantasy or Postmodern Satire. I try to write stories that take genre fiction in a different direction or make a (sometimes difficult to accept) statement about the world in which we live.

• Who inspires you?

It’s not really a “who” so much as a “what”. Much of my writing is reactionary. I see something odd or out of place, and I feel the need to treat the issue in fiction.

There are plenty of people in my life that inspire me to create characters, however, and most of them are blissfully unaware that I plan to profit from their idiosyncrasies, and will probably not even recognize themselves in fictionalized form.

• Who are your influences?

A short list includes Chuck Palahniuk, T.S. Eliot, Ray Bradbury, China Mieville, Tetsuya Nomura, the Wachowski brothers, Stan Lee, Kevin Smith, Gene Roddenberry, and, at one time, George Lucas (original trilogy).

• What are your three most favorite books and why?

Fight Club and Heart of Darkness: because both protagonists struggle with many of the same issues I have in reconciling with the disparity between our patriarchal legends and reality.

The Name of the Wind: because it is a celebration of words, love, learning, and music and renders each one as its own brand of magic.

The Mechanics

• How do you write?

The process is a bit strange. I wrote the first two-thirds of my last novel on an old Royal typewriter just to get a feel for what that would be like. Sometimes I use journals for a first draft and then type up the text a chapter at a time. Occasionally, when the Muse is hovering over my shoulder with pompoms (or has a bullwhip slung over his shoulder), I just sit down and bang out 5,000 words, but this is not typical. Most writing days, I just begin with editing the last chapter I wrote before diving into the next scene. Many of these practices are just ways I’ve learned to trick myself into editing.

In the end, everything I write, good or bad, goes through its final draft on an old 2001 Sony Vaio desktop computer that I stubbornly refuse to part with—the inspiration for the AI Victoria in “The Wolf of Descarta”.

• Where do you like to write?

Any cool, quiet space will do when my mind is in the right place. I used to have an office (man cave) filled with Final Fantasy action figures, anime wall scrolls, replica swords, and the like. I later realized that this location helped to set the initial mood, but was unimportant once I began working on a scene. I believe that writers don’t exist in the same space as their bodies during the task of writing. Right now, I am just words chasing a blinking cursor, hoping to one day catch it.

• Do you set a goal of so many pages per day, or something else?

A kindly old writing professor once brought to my attention this quote from Hemingway: “I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

I keep Hemingway’s advice in mind when I consider my daily page count. If writing ten pages will dry out this proverbial well, I write eight. Better to write less than to write dry.

• What program(s) or tool(s) do you use to write?

Microsoft Word 2000 is still my favorite. I like the way the fonts look on my old fishbowl monitor. I even have a favorite page layout that emboldens me to write—this, of course, is always destroyed when I get ready to submit a piece to a publisher.

•  What do you do when you get stuck on a problem which blocks the writing process?

First, I get away from the computer before I can do any damage to the story. Then I think about what actions I’m having my characters take—and why. Writer’s block is usually a bi-product of a plot-driven story in which the characters are being forced along a path they would not naturally take. It’s also a necessary part of the writing process that will ultimately add depth or subtext to the work, so it’s nothing to be afraid of.

• Do you envision the entire story at once and just fill in as you go, or do you just see where the writing takes you and troubleshoot as necessary?

Tough question. I like my writing to have spontaneity, but marketable writing must also have clear direction. I usually have a broad vision before I start and key scenes in my head that will serve as milestones for the plot. Then, when I sit down to write, the story takes over and shatters most, if not all, of my grandiose designs. Regardless, I think it’s still better to have a starting point than to write in a vacuum.

• What do you have the most fun with during the creative process?

Reading drafts to Emily, who has (God help her) been my captive audience for ten years, and watching the reactions on her face.

• Do you have any special rituals or superstitious behaviors you must follow while writing?

When I get to the phase where I’m working on my desktop, my area becomes my own little private bomb shelter, and must contain glutinous snacks, caffeine, more caffeine, and a device which plays heavy metal music.

Human You

•  What is a cherished memory from your life you’d like to share?

Nothing really ever trumps the birth of your children. I have two daughters, Aurie and Kiera, and they are my greatest creations (one might say I co-authored them).

Both were at one point under the impression that my real occupation was “fighting bad guys”, and were devastated to learn that I’m just a high school English teacher with a penchant for the dramatic and a deep bag of props.

Aurie, still skeptical at age five, asked me, “What kind of English teacher goes to work in a suit of armor?”

I replied, “A good one.”

Hey, we were studying Le Mort d’Arthur that week. Made sense to me.

• Do you prefer coffee, tea, or something else entirely?

Java Monster is my poison of choice.

• What comes first, the chicken or the alien egg?

I take them at the same time with a side of bacon. I believe bacon adds the proper context to any theological discussion.

• What is your favorite line from a movie?

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

This Particular Story

•  Who do you most identify with in this work?

All of these characters are me in some way or another—this is the limitation of any writer. Reese’s Quixotic sense of the hopelessly romantic is undoubtedly me, but so is Hayes’ intelligence (and arrogance), Brea’s stigmas and insecurities, and even Brimmer’s inexhaustible envy, which comes to light in the full version of the story.

•  Why this story?

The idea of escaping an unfulfilling life through video games, Facebook, Smartphones, etc. is becoming increasingly prominent in our society—so too are the government’s attempts to regulate and control these aspects of our lives. I wrote the first draft of this story in college, and over the past few years, some of my predictions about the future have already begun to manifest. This, of course, is what makes Science Fiction so great.

•  Who do you think would be most affected by or touched by this work?

It’s hard to make assumptions about the audience for any work. I would imagine that gamers and hackers would particularly enjoy being rendered as heroes, but Reese as a character represents everyone who has been the underdog—undervalued, marginalized, struggling just to make ends meets and care for his “nontraditional family” (i.e. Victoria). This story is a love letter to all the noble knights of the digital age, in whatever shape they assume.

•  What is a profound memory from this title’s writing process?

During college, I received three upper division credits for meeting two other writers (one of them was my professor) at a bar, where we bounced story ideas off one another. Most of my encouragement for this novelette came from that “study group”.

•  What do you hope the reader will take away from reading this story – is there a theme, or philosophy?

The theme of the novelette appears to be “the unsung hero”, but as the story continues beyond Reese’s internment, many other thematic elements surface. These range from “love in a postmodern universe” to “the nature of truth” to “connectivity of mind, body, and spirit”. In many ways, “The Wolf of Descarta” is just the first step into a much larger world.