History My Schools Didn't Teach Me

When I was a kid my mom used to sit me down and show me books with Jews in them. I'm talking when I was reeeeeeeeeeally young. Maybe five years old. She had books with pictures in them of people in various traditional Jewish garb and photos of people living in kibbutzim. Of course at that age I didn't know why she was doing this. Later I learned it was because she was half-Jewish and she wanted me to know a little about shared culture and heritage.

By the time I was eight years old she was teaching me about the Holocaust. Nothing too graphic, but letting me know that one group could try to exterminate another out of pure hatred over differences.

All during these same years I was tagging along with my father and older brothers on Indian relic hunts. That's what we all called them. My dad would load up shovels and earth sifters in the truck and let me know that we were going "Indian relic hunting". I loved these trips! We'd go to various rural spots. Sometimes deep woods, sometimes farms where land owners had given my dad permission to dig. My favorites were when we'd walk through corn fields or bean fields after a hard rain and the ancient tools would be sitting right on top of the ground waiting to be picked up.

My dad taught me that long before our people were here (the Europeans), the native folk had occupied the country. And he explained to me how their lands had been stolen from them and how they'd been exterminated--entire nations. Most kids might not have believed such tales, but I knew it for a fact, for I was walking on acre after acre, mile after mile of the things those ancient people had left behind. Almost everywhere you looked in the open spaces of the rural south one could find the signs that Indians had left. And it hit me:

There had been MILLIONS of these people! And now there didn't seem to be ANY!

In fact, I'd never seen a real Indian. My dad had once had a friend named Ben Gess who was a Cherokee, but he'd moved away. And my oldest brother's father-in-law was half Cherokee, but I'd never met a real Indian, nor seen one.

We'd killed most of them, and I knew it.

Not too long ago I went for a hike in a local state park. This park has exposed rock in it made of rhyolite which is volcanic in origin and very hard and very brittle. It makes good tools. With just about every step you take in that park you are treading on the remnants of tools. For thousands of years Indians went to this place to mine the rhyolite and make tools with it. The flakes of their industry are simply everywhere the dirt has been turned.

As I was hiking down a trail I spotted a big pine tree that had recently blown over. I decided to look into the root ball to see if there was anything interesting lodged there and pushed up by the fall of the tree. Reaching in, I immediately found what is known among the archeological set as a "blank". That's a bit of worked stone that can be turned into any one of a number of tools. It could be a hand axe, a knife, a spearhead, a drill, an awl, a scraper, a celt...you get the idea. This was a particularly good blank. For some reason the craftsman who'd made it thousands of years before had cast it aside. Why? Hell if I know. Maybe he had enough material to work with already. Maybe he was a perfectionist and there was some kind of minor flaw in the stone. I don't know.

What I do know is that this land was once filled with different nations than my own. And now they're all gone.

And because my parents were who they were and taught me the things they did, I know why those people are no longer here:

The Holocaust was not a new idea.

When I was finished looking at the blank, I put it back into the Earth.

And for those of you who get your news and history from the USA propaganda wagons, do yourself a favor and read this brief bit about Haiti.

Photos By Jack

I thought I'd post some photos from the hike I took with Jack Thyen on MLK Day. He was nice enough to send me several shots that he took of me.

A guy and (not) his dog. This was good ol' Spot, the dog who led us to the falls, watching out for us all along the way. What a great companion!

Jack took this one of me through the window of the abandoned hydro station. Long out of use, even the outflow channel has been inundated with soil and debris.

The log bridge at the old hydro station. This was the only place to cross the stream without getting wet.

Me, climbing down from the Upper Catawba Falls. A dicey climb, especially with patches of hard ice all over the place.

Later in the day, near the summit of Brushy Knob in the Montreat Community.

This was probably the best view we had on the hike in Montreat. Looking westward toward the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Black Mountains.

What's better than hiking in the snow? Hiking in the snow when it's 60 degrees! I had to switch to shorts--thank Jove for convertible pants!

Trunk Fiction and Surrender

I tried for many years to become a professional writer. Now, there are lots of different definitions for "professional writer". Most writers organizations have settled on a definition that essentially says that a person has made a certain amount of sales at a rate that has been agreed upon by its members as being "professional rates". It's all a matter of coming to an agreement among the founding members and, perhaps, amendments by officers at a later date. Many set a rate of, say, five cents per word as a professional rate. Or fifty dollars per page for some kind of script. Or one thousand dollars for a novel advance. (These numbers are all arbitrary on my part...don't hold any group to them.)

I considered myself having become a professional writer when I had sold stories and scripts to national publications for money that made a difference to me. But I never felt that I had reached my actual goal until I sold my first novel which was published by Five Star Books in 2006. That was when I felt I'd crossed a certain threshold.

This year, I stand to make as much or more through writing than I do in my regular 40-hour a week job as a government employee. For the first time in my writing life I feel that I've really surpassed most definitions for being a pro writer. Save one, of course.

The last wall to breach would be to be able to make my living writing full time. That's a really tough nut to crack. Writers rarely have enough money to kick the day job, and they rarely are in a position to be able to afford health care and such on the money they earn from their prose. I'd like to hit that point, but it's going to be the most difficult goal for me to reach. It's possible that I could do it, and for the first time in my life I feel that there is a good possibility for me to be able to do that. Nothing would make me happier than being able to walk away from the daily grind to create art full time.

One reason that I've been able to get this far is that I never quite gave up. I got really discouraged all along the way. In fact, a couple of times I actually did give up. These surrenders lasted a few months each time, but I always got over my depression and started writing again, and started submitting work again, and kept trying to locate a good agent or squeeze my way into the next market at which I was aiming.

I tend to look back at a story I wrote as an example of why it's good never to give up and never to lie down and let the bad guys win.

When I was 26 years old I wrote a story based on some notes I'd jotted in a notebook when I was 16 years old. I kept that notebook around and kept seeing those notes every so often when I'd go through my plots and scribblings. It was a good idea but I never could quite figure out how to turn it into a complete story. Finally, by the time I was 26 I had written it down as good prose and started submitting it.

Back then, I had no name among editors at all. No one really knew me, but now and again I'd sell a short story or a comic script. So when "Visitation" started making its rounds I had a hard time selling it. Most editors seemed to like it, but not enough to accept it and pay me professional rates. I made a huge list of all of the magazines and anthologies that might be in the least bit interested in such a horror story and mailed it out time and again. This was in the days of submitting via the post office with return postage affixed. So the story kept going out and back and out again incessantly. I had a lot of faith in that story and I just didn't want to give up on it.

Finally, after several years of trying to sell it, I decided that enough was enough and I filed it away as a "trunk" story. That is, I put it in that dusty bin with the other stories that I'd written that just weren't good enough or lucky enough to move. But I put it on the top of the stack.

Years would pass, and I'd take it up and send it out. Not very often, of course, but now and again. Three times a year. Twice a year. Once a year. A year or two came when I didn't send it out at all. Then, in 2001 I got word that editors were reading for an anthology that I figured the story would fit. So I hauled out "Visitation" and dusted it off, altered it a tad, and sent it out. It sold. Eighteen years after I'd written it I was paid very well for that short story. It appeared in the Pocket Books anthology CHILDREN OF CTHULHU edited by Benjamin Adams and John Pelan. The story had sold, and finally saw print in a fine anthology in hardback and in mass market paperback.

I had just not given up on that story. It took me almost eighteen years, but I sold it.

Just like I never (really) gave up on becoming a novelist.

My dad used to keep a little poem in his wallet. It was called "Just Keep On Keepin' On". I've heard this poem attributed to Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers and other recording artists. But my dad had that poem on a tattered page that he kept in his wallet years before any of those guys got going (the Allman Brothers, in fact, lived down the street from us in Macon GA--I used to hear them jam every once in a while). My dad liked that poem and he'd read it aloud from time to time. It must have stuck with me.

Keep On Keepin' On

By Anonymous

If the day looks kinder gloomy
And your chances kinder slim,
If the situation's puzzlin'
And the prospect's awful grim,
If perplexities keep pressin'
Till hope is nearly gone,
Just bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin' on.

Frettin' never wins a fight
And fumin' never pays;
There ain't no use in broodin'
In these pessimistic ways;
Smile just kinder cheerfully
Though hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin' on.

There ain't no use in growlin'
And grumblin' all the time,
When music's ringin' everywhere
And everything's a rhyme.
Just keep on smilin' cheerfully
If hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin' on.

Maybe not the highest peak, but it's pretty darned good.

Four Color Memories

I'm not sure just why...it had to do with something more than just distribution...but the first two comic books that I can recall reading were Fantastic Four #4, and Fantastic Four #12. I got the #4 from a barber where I was getting my hair cut with my mom when I was five years old. The book fascinated me so the barber ended up letting me take it home. (He had batches of comics for the kids getting their hair cut.) I recall reading the damned thing to pieces and I assume it was tossed out or traded.
A few weeks later my mom took me to a used bookstore/fish store down the street from where we lived. No, I'm not making this up. The store sold pet fish (and bait) and used books. On one side it had huge concrete tanks full of fish and on the other side used books, magazines, and comics. It stank like Hell, but I liked going in there to search for comics. And this was where I encountered Fantastic Four #12. My mom bought it for me--probably five cents--and I took it home and read it to pieces just like the previous one.

Within three years of that my dad had sold his grocery store and hauled us to Atlanta where he opened up his first bookstore. By the time I was eight years old he had tens of thousands of comic books accumulating in his warehouse and I got to take and read anything I wanted. And the next book to fascinate the heck out of me was Fantastic Four #28. I don't recall the story being anywhere nearly as fun to read as the tales in the two previous issues I'd seen, but that cover just carried me away! For some reason after looking at that cover I just HAD to take that comic home and read it.

Jack Kirby was probably the single greatest creator of kids comics that ever was. He was hip to what fascinated American boys of the 1960s and kept us occupied reading the books he produced. There should be a monument somewhere to Jack Kirby.

Montreat Trails, A Sample

For years when I was looking at my trail maps I would see trails that went out of the National Forest and into an area called "Montreat". I later learned that Montreat was a private community featuring high-dollar houses, vacation cabins, a Christian-based liberal arts college, a community center, and the home of evangelist Billy Graham. I figured the area was off limits and that those trails were meant only for the residents and their guests.

Panorama from just below the summit of Brushy Mountain. (Click to embiggen this photo.)

Well, I was wrong. The trails are open to all who are willing to be courteous and who obey the rules. They're foot trails only, which means no bikes, no horses, and absolutely no motorized vehicles.

The thousands of acres that are locked up in conservation easements around the community are really good hiking territory. These lands encompass some great streams, forests, and peaks. Some of the mountains here soar well over a mile above sea level and lead up toward Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the eastern USA.

There was still a lot of snow on the ground as we climbed higher.

After Jack and I had hiked to Catawba Falls we headed over to Montreat to see what it had to offer. Neither of us was up for a long hike, so we opted for a shorter, simpler one. We finally settled on a loop hike that would take us to the summit of Brushy Mountain and then down and back to where we'd parked our vehicles. We drove through Montreat admiring the college, parks, homes and facilities. It would be a very nice place to live if you have the money to afford it. (I don't.) Eventually we drove up to the trail head and parked our trucks and headed up.

The hike we took was relatively short and brisk. It gained a fair amount of elevation in quick order and around lunch time we found ourselves at the top of Brushy Mountain. We took this opportunity to sit on the summit and have something to eat. After that we slogged through the snow toward a gap and then to the trail that would make a our hike into a loop that would take us back to our vehicles. The snow on the western facing slopes was a lot deeper than I had figured--in some places it was shin-deep. It felt weird to be hiking through snow so deep when the temperatures were warm enough for shorts.

The west facing slopes still had a substantial snow cover.

After we climbed down from the summit we began to encounter quite a lot of deadfall. Apparently the recent ice, snow, and wind storms have been too much for the trees. There were lots of downed oaks. Every few meters we found ourselves detouring around large trees and branches that had collapsed from the recent severe weather. It made the going slow and the progress frustrating. I feel sure that these trails are maintained purely by volunteer efforts, so there is going to have to be quite many hours put in to get them straight when Spring rolls around. As it is, hiking them is really tough, and I wouldn't recommend it to any casual hikers.

This was an easy patch of deadfall. It was everywhere and some of it was tough to negotiate.

We did find that the area is nice enough and the welcome open enough so that we'll both go back to try other hikes. Next on my list at Montreat is to hike to the summit of Graybeard Mountain. It rises to over 5,400 feet, so it's definitely on my peak-bagging list.

The summit of Brushy Mountain, where we had lunch. The white coloring behind me are from snow covered shadowed slopes.

And a last, lingering video of the Upper Catawba Falls. The sound of water rushing down the gravity well is soothing.

See Spot. See Spot Lead.

Spot Leads the Way

Falls below the breached dam along the Catawba Falls Trail.

When Jack and I started our hike I saw a solid black blur of motion coming at us. It was a huge, playful, black Lab. She was soon leaping and jumping beside us, apparently eager to go hiking.

Jack told me that he'd read about this dog and that it was reported to join along in the hike. Sure enough, she did join us. Or, rather, we joined her. According to the big red collar on her neck, her name was "Spot". She was extremely friendly and seemed eager to show us the way to the waterfalls.

All along the way she would rush ahead and then wait for us at places where, I reckon, she assumed we might take a wrong turn or get lost. At the first creek crossing she led us to the water and looked back at us to make sure we were coming. However, Jack figured there would be an easier (drier) place to cross upstream and so we went that way. I'm sure Spot thought we were a couple of sissies, but she went with us to where we found a dead hemlock across the creek and went over there.


Sometimes she would disappear for a few minutes while Jack and I stopped to take photographs. But she would always come back to see what was keeping us, or to poke around to see what the heck there was that we found so interesting about hanging out in one place.

Soon enough, though, we were at the Catawba Falls. It's a really nice waterfall and the water volume was high due to all of the rain, ice, and snow we've been getting in western North Carolina. The noise of tumbling water was great and the views were tremendous. But Spot wanted to keep going and pretty soon she was leading us along the steep and treacherous semi-trail to the Upper Catawba Falls.

It must be easier to climb and scramble on four legs rather than two. Because Spot raced ahead of us in places where we had to pick our ways very carefully and tentatively on rock faces, along ledges, and over slick patches of ice. Spot just dug in and hauled ass and was waiting for us as we topped out. When I got to the upper viewing spot she was sitting there looking at the waterfall. "See? Ain't it beautiful?" she seemed to be saying. Indeed, Spot, it is a great place.

Spot stayed with us while we took dozens of photographs and lauded the handiwork of Mother Nature. And then we began to carefully pick our way down the rough trail to the lower falls. Spot was right there with us, trying to show us how it was done. And later, she followed us all the way back down to the trail head. By then, other hikers had arrived and were beginning to trek up to the falls. But Spot seemed to have had enough for one day and merely watched the others for a bit, then walked across the road to where she lived.

Good job, Spot!

The Upper Catawba Falls. One heck of a tough scramble to get to them, but well worth the effort. One of the most spectacular waterfalls I've ever seen.

Catawba Falls. The lower of the two. Very nice in its own right.

Jack coming down from the steepest part of the scramble to the Upper Falls.

Anchor and bolt for the rope. Don't use it to support your full weight. Not advised.

The Southern Appalachians have to be one of the greenest places on Earth. Even in winter.

Catawba Falls Trail

After Jack and I met up at the McDonald's in Old Fort we drove to the nearby trailhead to begin our hike to Catawba Falls. Neither of us had ever seen this waterfall, but we'd both read plenty about it. Until recently access to the falls was difficult. While the waterfall itself is solidly on public property (Pisgah National Forest), the trail passes through private property right at the start. The landowner had forbidden any trespassing at all, and so the only way to get to Catawba Falls was either via an arduous bushwhack, or taking yer chances and trespassing on private property.

Finally, though, an accommodation was reached and now access through the bit of private property is now allowed for hikers.

The trail is pretty easy and straightforward. There are about three water crossings, but only one of them can get you very wet, and we found a way around it by hiking upstream to a log bridge formed by a dead hemlock tree. Lots of dead hemlocks in those forests, of course. The place is soon going to be lousy with fallen hemlocks.

The best known of the three major falls on the hike are the ones generally called Catawba Falls. They are, in fact, best labeled "Lower Catawba Falls". For while they are the higher of the trio of big waterfalls, they are not the most spectacular. Still, they're worth the hike if all you do is travel to the base of the lower falls and look on. They are quite impressive.

Before you get to those you pass an unnamed waterfall below an abandoned dam. The dam once produced electric power pre-Depression. But it has long since been abandoned and breached and now is just a very dangerous spot where (stupid) people can crawl atop it and fall to their deaths. You can hike a trail to the base of these falls for a good look up at them.

But the best waterfall on the trail is the ones that lie far above Lower Catawba Falls. Access to them involves negotiating an extremely steep and rugged trail that follows the right side of the lower falls. It hugs close to those falls and often involves the use of all four limbs. At one point there is a rope that someone has installed to aid in getting up a rock face. The help is good, but I wouldn't trust the rope with full weight. As others have advised, just use it as an aid.

Once you reach the top of the trail you are rewarded with a grand view of what has to be among the finest waterfalls in all of the southeastern USA. There are few waterfalls that I've encountered that equal this one is sheer beauty. I would dearly love to revisit this spot in summer to go swimming in the plunge pool at the base of the falls.

I reeeeeally need to revisit this waterfall.

The falls at the abandoned dam.

The Lower Catawba Falls

The Upper Catawba Falls

Catawba Falls

I went hiking today. To get the blood flowing and to help me think. Outdoor activities generally aid my ability to write prose. I met up with my hiking pal Jack Thyen in Old Fort NC and we hiked two trails. The first was to see the Catawba Falls. I'll post more about the hikes later.

For now, here's a shot of me at the lower Catawba Falls. After that, we hiked (scrambled/climbed) to the Upper Catawba Falls. It was even more spectacular.

LA Trip

Carole and I are planning a trip to Los Angeles in February. It's been a very long time since I've visited California, and I've never been to LA. So this will be all new territory for both of us. While there I'll get to meet Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Earl Hamner Jr., John Shirley, and a host of other area authors whose work also appeared in THE BLEEDING EDGE.

I'll post more later.

The novel is going to be keeping me extremely busy over the next weeks (and probably months). Not sure how much I'm going to be able to post here on my blog. We'll see.

Earl Hamner, Jr.

Ray Bradbury

Richard Matheson

Dock Ellis Pitches a No-hitter on LSD

Mark Martin showed me this link.

It was so funny I had to post the video here:

THE BLEEDING EDGE Arrives

Some months ago Jason Brock and William F. Nolan announced that they were going to be editing a new horror anthology entitled THE BLEEDING EDGE (Dark Barriers, Dark Frontiers). It would feature stories that were to be cutting edge horror with themes that pushed the envelope of the genre. I had a story that I figured would qualify and submitted it. They bought "Love & Magick" from me and soon paid full pro rates for the tale. Bill Nolan had me make a few changes, but having my work edited has never been an issue with me.

Last week the book arrived. Jason worked long and hard putting this anthology together and ensuring that it would be an impressive book when it was off the presses. I have to say that I am impressed with the look and feel of the package. The paper quality is grand, as is the binding. The book is bound in blood red stock with appropriately black title.

The contents, too, are excellent. The lineup of authors is impressive, with stories by some of my favorite authors and many professional writers from my youth. Some of the names present are William F. Nolan, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, John Shirley, Earl Hamner, Jr., Joe Lansdale, Gary Braunbeck, Steve Rasnic Tem, and others. Brock and Nolan included not just stories but also teleplays. It has been a long time since I've seen that format presented in a fiction anthology.

I've now received my copies of the trade hardback version, but the signed and numbered limited edition won't be release until later in the month. I look forward to seeing it. Thus far, quality-wise, this is the best anthology of which I've been fortunate enough to be a part.

You can order the book at Amazon, or directly from the publisher.

Questionnaire

Over the past few days I've begun working with my editor at Tor Books. This has been a bit different, so far, to my experience with Five Star. I filled out a relatively detailed questionnaire for the folk in the promotions department. Now I have to send a photo. I'm pretty sure I know which one I'm going to send them...it's one that Carole took of me when we were in Key West.

Got the desktop up and working so that I can do the scans for the post I've wanted to do for two days.

More tomorrow...

This has nothing to do with the subjects on my mind. But I just stumbled across this photo I took when Carole and I were on a hike in Beartown State Park in West Virginia. It was the first bear we've ever encountered while hiking.

Phil Ochs

I wanted to post about the new anthology THE BLEEDING EDGE, in which I have a story. But my desktop computer is on the fritz again and I don't enjoy doing scans and such on my laptop. So I'll try to post about the new book tomorrow.

For some reason today I was thinking of one of my favorite folk/political musicians, Phil Ochs. I only vaguely recall Phil Ochs from my childhood. I'd heard a couple of his more popular songs, of course, but he was just a minor memory until he committed suicide when I was in high school. And it wasn't until I was in my forties that I actually sat down and began to listen to his music with any kind of concentration.

He was a courageous writer and performer. I guess the stress of constantly being on the losing side was just too much for him.

Most Violent Minority

Whenever some asshole starts whining to me about "illegal aliens" or some minority that they claim commits more crimes or controls the most money, I generally remind them about another segment of the population.

This segment commits 91% of all homicides.

They engage in 98% of all sexual assaults.

93% of all armed robberies are done by them.

89% of aggravated assaults come from this group.

Even lighter violent crimes such as simple assaults are theirs 82% of the time.

Who are these assholes?

They're men.


Maybe these ants figured that out?

Mark Masztal's THE FLOCK bookmarks.

Mark has now penciled and inked and lettered the two versions of THE FLOCK bookmarks. I love both versions!

Version One Front.

Version Two Front.

Back of Bookmark.

Career Surprise

I wrote THE FLOCK in the days when I didn't have an agent. I sold it that way...on my own, without the help of an agent. Then I got inquiries on the movie rights, and in a sequence of events I've talked about here before, movie producer Don Murphy expressed interest in optioning the film rights. That's when I got in touch with agent Robert L. Fleck who negotiated the deal for me.

After that, he asked me if I'd thought about writing a sequel. I think he was just cleaning up some details and wasn't encouraging me to do that. He just needed to know if I'd given it any thought. I told him that other people had asked me the same thing, but that I had no intention of writing a sequel. I'd pretty much made the statements I wanted to make with THE FLOCK and didn't see any real need to continue with those characters.

But the thought must have lodged somewhere other than the back rooms of my mind, because one day the idea for a second and third novel hit me. Not only did I suddenly have a decent pitch for a sequel, but for a third novel to complete a trilogy. Yeah, I was completely surprised.

So I wrote down the ideas and emailed them to Bob Fleck. He liked the ideas, too, and added them to the package he was shopping around to publishers.

And so, here I am writing a novel using a continuing cast of characters. I'd never really thought about doing that, but my second novel will be a continuation of my first one. I rather like the idea, and although I generally try to forget my characters as soon as I write "the end" on my novels, I'm having a good time getting to know them again.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

Bookmarks

Mark Masztal is working on some custom bookmarks for me. Here are a couple of the roughs he's done. It's going to look killer when he's finished them.

Richard K. Morgan

I had Wednesday off. I had hoped to go hiking, but frankly I was just too damned tired. I'm getting old and schlepping the mail is becoming quite the task for my 52-year-old body. So I ended up sleeping in and napping most of the day. Yeah, I'm getting old. I admit it.

I also spent some of the time reading.

When I was a kid I read a lot of science fiction. Most of the usual suspects, of course. But when I got older I stopped looking at that genre. Why? I'm not sure. I suspect because I just didn't see much in the published work that I found original or well done. I never saw anything that matched the poetry of Ray Bradbury, the politics of Frank Herbert, or the magic of Philip K. Dick. The cyberpunk movement never impressed me, so I completely missed out on that wave.

But a couple of years ago I discovered a guy named Richard K. Morgan. A lot of his work is described as cyberpunk, which I reckon fits. But different enough for me that I liked the ideas and themes that he has used. His breakout first novel was ALTERED CARBON, which I have yet to read, but which I have been told is really a fine book. I did manage to read a few of his follow-up novels and thoroughly enjoyed them. One of the most impressive things about his writing is the readability of it. I have little patience with poorly rendered fiction, and Mr. Morgan definitely knows how to tell a good story and keep the reader going, even through some pretty complicated plots and scenarios. In addition, he writes real science fiction, with the emphasis on the science. Despite introducing the reader to some complex notions, he does it with such skill that those ideas are easy to follow and infinitely simple to understand. The only writer of my youth who did this as effectively was one of the grand masters of SF, Hal Clement. That's pretty good company.

Currently, I'm in the midst of one of his latest books, a novel called THIRTEEN (entitled THE BLACK MAN in its original form in the UK). It deals with genetically enhanced humans bred for their fierceness and focus and later found to be far too dangerous to allow to remain free on Earth. One has managed to find his way back to Earth (from a Martian exile) and is wreaking havoc (as they say). The solution is to draft another such creature to track and subdue him. I'm halfway through the tale and it's a good one. I'll post my final judgment after I complete it. (But thus far it's pretty darned great.)

Survivor

I can't say if this guy was horribly unlucky or truly lucky. I reckon he was the only person on Earth who survived two atomic bombings. (Thanks to my nephew, Chuck, for pointing out this story for me.)

Part of the film adaptation of BAREFOOT GEN, the comic written by Hiroshima atomic bombing survivor Keiji Nakazawa.

Forest Calm

I go into the forests for quiet where I can relax and meditate. There I can forget about the machines and lose myself in places where the stench of diesel and gasoline are not present. No voices, no cigarette smoke, no pushing, no noise, no violence, no press of people and our society.

My last day out was December 29. I'm hoping for another outing on January 6. Somewhere. Not sure just where.

The brief journeys bring me a measure of peace and help me to write. So that's where I'll be when I can find the time in the next few days--at my desk, writing.

The quartzite caprock of the Crowders Mountain area.

The forest is calm, and quiet.

I Can Feel It

Mother

Earth

Is

Dying.

Don't say we weren't warned.

I've long thought it fitting that as our hemlocks die off and slide into extinction, that they shed their bark to reveal the bloody underlying color.

Writer at Work

No regular blog installment today. For the first time in my writing life, I have a novel to complete because of a professional obligation and not merely because I just want to write. I've turned a corner and passed a milestone in my long struggle to be a professional writer.

For the next few months I'll be hard at work on THE CLAN, to get it done before the self-imposed deadline I turned in to the publisher. I'll be busy.

Me, last year at Apple Orchard Falls, on Apple Orchard Mountain in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia (just off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Peaks of Otter).

Me and Snow

I never saw any snow until I was seven years old. We'd moved from the low country of Georgia to Atlanta at the beginning of my second year of grammar school. Soon after we arrived at the house my parents rented (not far from downtown Decatur) I saw my first hard frost. At first I thought it was snow. I asked my mom if it was snow and she explained what frost was. It was still a new and exciting thing for me to see.

A couple of weeks later it really did snow. When I was a kid the Atlanta area would get at least one or two heavy snowfalls each winter. To this day, my favorite sound in all the world is that of fresh snow crunching underfoot. But it doesn't snow very often these days in Atlanta. (You folk who discount global warming go fuck yourselves.) Now if so much as an errant snowflake finds itself in the Atlanta area it makes the national news.

From our X-mas tree hunt this year. That's Peach Orchard Mountain in the distance, where our property is located.

But when I was a kid every winter would bring snow. Enough so that my parents bought me a sled. I used that sled so much that I broke it and they had to buy me a new one. By the time I had completed the sixth grade my parents uprooted us again and we headed south to Macon and I never saw snowfall again until I was in high school and we were living in the north Georgia mountains.

When Carole and I retire, we're hoping to build a house on the property her dad left her in the mountains of North Carolina just south of the Virginia border. The land sits at 4,000 feet above sea level and that entire part of the state gets quite a lot of snow each winter. I want to live where there is actually a winter season. I enjoy seeing snow. I never got tired of playing in it. One of these days, I would like to think that I'll live in a spot where I can look forward to experiencing a real winter again.

Hopefully, Carole and I will have our cabin on the mountain behind me.

As I write this (01-01-2010), the forecast for much the North Carolina mountains calls for snow eight out of the next nine days. I can't recall the last time that happened here in the state. And, of course, I'm stuck working here in Charlotte for the duration.

The Bad Guys of My Youth

Conservatives I could respect:

Back in the day, there was a brief period during which the political right in the USA could have said with truth that it had a few decent folk among its numbers. Yes, there were always racist, greedy yahoos in there, but there were also some decent thinkers and writers.

When I was a kid I used to enjoy reading the stuff these guys produced. I never agreed with it, but I enjoyed reading it. These few fellows apparently had good reasons for the stands that they took. What I mean to say is that they weren't arguing their positions out of venality, but out of solid logical thinking. They believed it and were willing to be relatively civil about defending those positions.

Most of these people either quietly retired from the public scene, died, or were unfortunately shoved out of the way for the likes of what we have now among the American right wing of so-called thinkers. Today, we don't have cats like James J. Kilpatrick and William F. Buckley, Jr. Instead, we have a group of hate-mongering creeps who are nothing but neo-fascists and modern day Nazis who have all of the fine tuning of a bloody hatchet.

Well, I reckon that's okay, in its way. In my youth those gentlemen of the right never convinced me of their positions, but at least I had respect for them. And at least I had the impression that they had some measure of respect for their leftist analogs. Their replacements are nothing but monstrous creeps deserving of my contempt and needful of physical destruction.

Wonderful portrait of William F. Buckley by the amazing Drew Friedman.