Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween from Oregon (and Vulcan, of course)!!!

Adam August Awesomness!

I've been fortunate enough to be invited over to Jeff Hargett's blog "Strands of Pattern" to take part in his August is Awesome blog fest!

Head over there to read about why your story NEEDS an animal.

And a HUGE thanks to Jeff for the opportunity to visit his blog and for all the nice things he said about me. I'm all warm and fuzzy...

One more thing, I added a new page to my blog with links to some of my writing that is floating around the world wide web. Take a look!

Have You Been Saved?

Am I talking about tent revival, dance with venomous snakes, sell all your worldly possessions and tour around the country warning the public about the all-too-soon rapture kind of saved?

No.

No, no, no. Noooooooooooooooooooooo.

I'm talking about Deadliest Catch type of saved. Have you seen this show? It's a Discovery Channel reality series following the lives of Alaskan crab fishermen. I'm pretty anti-reality show but I can't help but like this one. I find it fascinating. I've worked some pretty dangerous jobs (more on that in a minute) but nothing compared to crab fishing. It's some scary shit. Just listen to Wikipedia:


"Commercial fishing has long been considered one of the most dangerous jobs in America. In 2006, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked commercial fishing as the job occupation with the highest fatality rate with 141.7 per 100,000, almost 75% higher than the fatality rate of pilots, flight engineers, and loggers, the next most hazardous occupations.However, Alaskan king crab fishing is considered even more dangerous than the average commercial fishing job, due to the conditions of the Bering Sea during the seasons they fish for crab. According to the pilot episode, the death rate during the main crab seasons averages out to nearly one fisherman per week, while the injury rate for crews on most crab boats in the fleet is nearly 100% due to the severe weather conditions (frigid gales, rogue waves, ice formations on and around the boat) and the danger of working with such heavy machinery on a constantly rolling boat deck. Alaskan king crab fishing reported over 300 fatalities per 100,000 as of 2005,with over 80% of those deaths caused by drowning or hypothermia."

As you can imagine, working in such dangerous conditions involves a lot of saving. Guys are constantly pulling one another out of harms way. As dangerous as crab fishing is, it would be a lot worse if fishermen didn't look out for one another.

Which brings me to my saving moment.

Years ago I worked for Quality Beam Corp. in Salmon, ID. For a detailed description of my time at the beam plant, check out one of my oldest blog posts. In short, the work involved gluing boards together to make large wooden beams used in building construction. It's hot, dirty, dangerous work and I worked in the hottest, dirtiest, most dangerous department: the glue room.  That's where we applied glue and used huge metal bolts to squeeze the wood together so that it could dry under the massive heaters that kept the room hovering right around 100 degrees.

My first day on the job I watched a coworker lay open his side with a chainsaw. Shortly before I left I saw a guy get bent backwards over a piece of machinery, breaking his spine and rupturing his spleen. Those kind of major injuries were relatively rare though. Busted fingers was the common injury. Guys were regularly getting fingers smashed between the fast moving and heavy boards. That was just part of the job. A lot scarier was the number of guys that were missing fingers. Some guys would get them torn or cut off by a piece of machinery but the most common way to lose digits was to get them caught between the wood and one of the large metal braces we used to squeeze the glued wood together for drying. Once you hit a bolt with one of the pneumatic wrenches, anything between the brace and the wood would be ground to powder. No chance of reattachment.

We worked 10-hour shifts assembling dozens of beams a day, using the pneumatic wrenches constantly. It was one of those situations where one moment of inattention, one bad decision, could cost you big time. One day we were rushing through an order and I picked up a large metal bracer the wrong way. The guy on the other side of the 7 foot tall stack of lumber couldn't see me. He went to hit the bolt with his pneumatic wrench as I was sliding the bracer onto the bolt, my fingers between the wood and the bracer. One of my coworkers, Jared, saw what was about to happen and kicked the wrench out of the guys hands the same moment he hit the trigger to tighten the bolt. Even in the split second (literal fraction of a one second) the wrench was on the bolt it tightened enough that my hand was squeezed between the wood and the brace. Another fraction of a second and I would have lost all the fingers on my left hand. We backed the bolt off, examine my bruised but functioning hand, I gave Jared a hug (what can I say, I'm a huger), and we got back to work.

Saving is a prevalent theme in many stories. Someone is always saving someone else from physical, emotional, or mental harm. In my manuscript, there are at least 7 life-saving scenes. With something that's so common in fiction, it's easy to become complacent when writing these scenes. They can become shallow, especially in battle heavy genres like Fantasy and Science Fiction. Believe me, there is nothing shallow about being saved. The sense of gratitude that I feel at being able to sit down and type this post with two hands is profound. The sense of gratitude, relief, and obligation your characters feel when they're saved should be profound as well.

Give saving the weight it deserves and your stories will benefit from it.

Another Colorado Mass Shooting

I remember April 20, 1999 very well.

My friends and I were sitting on the "senior steps" during lunch, even though we were only juniors, when my wrestling coach walked up and told us that some kids with machine guns were shooting up a Denver high school. He had actually been on the phone with the Columbine wrestling coach trying to set up a meet when the whole thing started. For about an hour that's all we knew. Gradually classes ground to a halt as portable TVs and radios showed us what was happening just an hour to the north. We had a track meet that evening which continued as normal except that they played live news radio over the loudspeaker the whole meet. It was very surreal.

For a Colorado highschooler it was a pretty earth shattering day. Everything changed after Columbine.

What makes me sad today is all the things that haven't changed.

As most of you know, another mass shooting took place last night in a Colorado suburb. As Coloradoans, and as a nation, we'll go through the same "post-massacre routine" over the next few weeks as we did last time, as we've done every time.

The news media will make wild speculations about every detail of the case until the authorities finally release some information. The victims, their families, their neighbors, the shooters neighbors, teachers, relatives, and everyone in a 3 mile radius of the theater will be interviewed by CNN.

The anti-gun people will come out and say, "This wouldn't have happened if nobody had guns!"  The pro-gun people will come out and say, "This wouldn't have happened if everyone had guns!"  

Politicians will make grand speeches about how important public safety and responsible gun ownership are. They'll make promises about what they're going to do to make sure this kind of thing never happens again. They'll point out that their opponents aren't doing enough to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.

Some religious figure or another will come out talking about moral decay. There will be prayer groups and candlelight vigils.

And every one of us will dissect the shooters life. We'll look at his childhood, his CD collection, his internet search history, every little thing we can find in order to separate this man from the rest of us. We'll remove him from society because that makes this kind of thing easier to deal with. We'll point out his abnormalities. We'll de-humanize him. It's easier to label a monster and an outcast than it is to deal with a member of our society that has serious issues. That might mean that there's actually something wrong with the collective "us".

In a year there will be an anniversary with miniture versions of all the above. Then a 5 year and 10 year aniversay.

Of course, by that time there will be new mass shootings and new massacres. The cycle will repeat.

I'm not trying to be grim, that's just the way it is. My heartfelt "prayers" (I don't pray but sometimes there just isn't a better word) go out to my Colorado family. Hang in there.

It's My Birthday

Today is my birthday. 

It's the bit three-ohhhhholy crap I'm getting old. 

I'm going out to the coast to do some fishing. 

My present to you is a little video. 

Several folks commented that they liked the picture of the curious deer I posted yesterday.

Her name is Violet. 

She's very curious...and hungry.

And I was very cold.

Enjoy!

  

Kreativ Blogger Award

The always lovely and potential dangerous Vero Sicoe has honored me with the Kreativ Blogger Award! I know people hand out these blog rewards like HPV at a frat party, but since this is my first one I'm pretty stoked.

First the rules:
1. Thank & link back to the person who nominated you.
2. Answer the ten questions below.
3. Share ten random facts/thoughts about yourself.
4. Nominate seven worthy blogs for the Kreativ Blogger Award.

Now the results:

What's your favorite song?

Impossible question to answer. Instead, I'll give you the three songs I'm listening to the most right now.

What's your favorite desert?

Hooray for pie!!!

What ticks you off?

People who are more than ready to shove their opinion or belief structure down your throat but throw a hissy fit as soon as the conversation starts to look like any kind of intelligent debate.

And Swedish people.

What do you do when you're upset?

Drink myself into a blind stupor and shoplift? No, I cook or write or work out or kill aliens on my X-Box. Honestly I don't get upset very often and when I do it usually doesn't last long. Oh, and I bitch to my wife. That's a big one.

Pippin on top of the world.

Which is your favorite pet?

PIPPIN!!!!!

Which do you prefer, black or white?

What kind of racist BS is this? Where does this blog award come from, Idaho? MOVING ON!

What is your biggest fear?

Death

What is your attitude mostly?

I'm that nice fella who helps you move and likes to talk about literature and beer. Then every once in a while I'll say something so off color that you wonder what the hell is wrong with me.

What is perfection?

A town in Nevada plagued by giant burrowing alien worms.

What is your guilty pleasure?

Baked goods. You put a tray of snicker-doodles in front of me, you'd better stand back or you'll lose a hand.

Ten Random Facts

1. My pinky toes don't touch the ground when I walk. I might be the next step in human evolution.
2. My mom still calls me Pumpkin' Pie.
3. I've never watched "Dirty Dancing", "The Breakfast Club", or "The Life Aquatic" and I didn't care for "The Big Lebowski" even though I quote it occasionally.
4. I've broken three ribs, two arms, one leg, several fingers, and dislocated one kneecap. None of them were mine.
5. I've got nothing against it but I've never smoked pot.
6. I'm trying to learn to play the guitar. So far all I've managed to do is make my fingers sore and piss off the dog.
7. I'm a beer fanatic. I've probably tried somewhere between 300-500 different kinds of beer from all over the world. Some of the longest conversations I've had in the last year have been about beer.
8. I teach an on-line class for Oregon State University called "Field Sampling for Fish and Wildlife".
9. My wife and I will have been married for 7 years on May 28th.
10. At 6'4", I'm the tallest person in my family.

Yeah Beer!

 My seven extremely worthy tags:

1. The Mad Ravings of a Feaky Snucker 
2. Morgan Shamy
3. Myself as Written
4. Cara Bertrand
5. Dangling on the Edge of (In)Sanity 
6. Strands of Pattern
7. The Death Writer