Well, the future of my own writing, to be more exact.

I have been writing for years. I did give it up for quite a long time as life tosses you new priorities and you evolve to the situations.
Over the last few years I had my family supporting my attempts to finally finish my novel. I couldn't have done it without their support, without their patience. I finally finished that novel, Mortal Death.

I sent it out. It was rejected. There are no surprises there. If you read anything about the writing process you will see that rejection is the norm. Many, many people are writing, and sadly enough, the publishing industry is shrinking. So I went the POD route.

I work a lot. When my daytime job that pays the bills is over, I am usually working small side jobs and freelance. It happens to be another consistent attribute to this day and age. You work, work, work. If I am not working, I am working at making some of my side businesses more viable.

I also have an artistic side. I have no choice in having to exercise that outlet or else go crazy. Ask anyone that harbors the artistic gene and they will tell you that it must be vented at times, you have no choice. I try and incorporate it at times into my daytime job since I can to a degree as a multimedia/web developer. Other times I am doodling, sketching, writing or thinking of writing. You have to trigger the release valve every once in a while.

The writing. Back to that. I have continued to write some since finishing Mortal Death. I submitted. Mostly rejections again, but some bites, some publications, but nothing earth-shattering. --Not that I expected my writings to change the world. I just wanted it to change my world in one fractional degree. That change would be that I would have people wanting to read my writing. Not just family and friends reading what I write. Complete strangers picking up my work and enjoying it, that would be the small change. It would be that small redemption that every writer wants, that small acknowledgment from the world - people like what I write.

The results of those attempts are more 'meh' than 'yeah'. As in a general apathy towards what I write. I can't blame the reading public. They have a lot of things to read out there, they have worries about their own lives to concern themselves with, they have their own interests. And consequently, my writing has not been exposed to the general public. My writing has been exposed to everyone I personally know, and to anyone that I could bring into my little space on the web. When you look at the numbers of traffic on the web, my percentage is inconsequential.

With my work out on Lulu I tried some small marketing pushes. I put a little money and some of my time into putting the word out that the next greatest book was out there just waiting to be bought. You know how this turns out. It doesn't. on Lulu there are 50,000 other people or more saying the same thing. In the world at large there are hundreds of millions of people out there claiming the same thing, but maybe with a different product.

And yes, some are very successful at doing this. Some people appear to do it without any real effort at all. That is why they are professionals. I am not a professional writer. Sure, I would love to be but I haven't reached that point in my writing career yet. Yes, I said yet. One thing I do is not give up easily. I'm too damn stubborn.

So what do I do next? What will I do to keep building that writing muscle? I will keep writing of course. I will keep blogging to my small audience.

But what will I do to create an audience that wants to read my writing? There are many schools of thought on that issue. Those schools of thought are more aimed at making career decisions at being a writer. I don't think it is realistic of me or fair to my family to assume that I could make a true income-earning, bill-paying career out of my attempts to write at the level or volume output needed to accomplish that goal.

I am attempting to create an audience the old fashioned way. I am giving away product. I have been giving away stories on my site for quite a while and also making available the first four chapters of Mortal Death. I have had professionally narrated audio of the first chapter of Mortal Death and a story, The Glow, out online to listen to free of charge.

Has it worked?
To a small extent, yes it has. I can look at the numbers and see that there is interest in reading and listening to my work. But I have had very few instances of feedback and only one certifiable piece of fan mail. So, what does that tell me?

Ah, here we get to the meat of the situation. If people read your work in a void, has it still been read? If people read your work but do not comment back on it, what does that mean? Does it mean you couldn't write your way out of a paper bag? Does it mean that people are just to busy these days to take the time and stroke your ego? Does it mean you made no change whatever in their lives other than to possibly have wasted their time?

I don't suffer from low self-esteem. I don't mutter 'I'm not worthy' to anything I attempt to accomplish in my life. For the most part, I am proud of the things I write. But if I am to be realistic in this endeavor, then I need to be honest to the art. What is the issue? In a nutshell, I'd hazard it's the editing. I hate to edit my own work. I hate to look back at what I've written and see that there are probably a few more hours needed to polish it into a nice, shiny bauble worthy of haggling over.

So, what is the future of my writing?
From the looks of it, the future of my writing needs to consist of re-writing what has been written. Why, you ask? Why not just get on with writing something new? Why not move on with what you have learned and use it in your next project? I can and I will, as I start writing the Blood Vow books, but I need to work on another group of muscles in this regiment. The editor muscle. And how better to practice it than to shred what has been done before and rebuild it?

Currently, I am trying a different side business that involves owning a Mac for the first time in my life and learning a whole new programming language, so my minutes to write have shrunk yet again. These skills at editing that I want to enhance can only help me if I take it with me into my programming career both during the day and during the evenings.

During my edits and re-writes I will keep my work online that already exists. I will most likely kill the whole Lulu thing and write that off as a learning experience and move on. I will probably put the edited stories up side by side to the old and anyone looking for other people's mistakes to learn from can find them online there. I'm not sure what all I will attempt as I go through this. It is a journey, an adventure in gaining wisdom and knowledge.

I need to point out that this journey and all the journeys that I attempt are not paths that I walk upon alone. My family travels with me. They support me. They have a level of confidence in me that at times surpasses my own, and that is the worthy prize. I might never gain an audience of readers that impatiently await my next piece of work, but I have a saintly-patient, beautiful wife and wonderful kids that are there beside me. They are next to me, holding my hands as we take the next steps. They are behind me, cheering me on. They are within me, filling me with the courage and love to attempt anything and not fear failure. They are my future. All the rest is icing, pure icing.

The Ghost Hunters came to WPAFB

TAPS answers a call from the U.S. Air Force to investigate the Wright-Patterson base in Dayton, Ohio, one of the oldest and largest military installations in the country. Over the years, stories of inexplicable encounters and incidents have been passed on from employee to employee.

Witnesses have seen lights turn on after they had been switched off; papers moving around on desks when there are no breezes; random series of characters typed on their computer screens; and the elevator going up and down with no one operating it.

They have heard the sounds of footsteps, doors slamming unexpectedly and children's laughter. There have even been reports of phantom smells of cooking although the cafeteria hasn't been operational for decades.

The Ghost Hunters tackle claims in three of the most allegedly haunted buildings on the base in the hopes that they can uncover some answers in this military mystery.

This episode aired last night.
Since I work at Wright Patterson Air Force Base as a contractor, I had some interest (curiosity!) in what the Ghost Hunters would do and see while there.
The show itself can be annoying as they insistently play a low level soundtrack while all the time the people are say 'Did you hear that? I heard knocking'. Well, no I didn't hear it, I heard music!
Regardless, it was kind of cool to see them on Base. I won't spoil the episode but they did have some encounters along the way. You should be able to catch the episode online at SciFi Channel. Like, here.

6:00 AM and we are heading out to the Piqua Mall. It's tryout day for the game show Deal or No Deal and Valerie (saintly-patient, beautiful wife) is trying out to take on the Banker.
I've heard anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 people will be going to tryout. The doors open at 10:00 AM.

Wish her Luck!

Update Later.

7 hours later, we are back.
5 1/2 hours in line.

About 7:00 am we glided into the parking lot of the mall through some of the thickest fog I have ever seen.
We trekked into the mall, going past the crowd that had shown up the night before and camped out, were led through a maze of people roped off and waiting, and out the back door, through the back parking lot, and guided to our wait at the end of the line.

You can see what the crowd looked like around 7:15 - those not buried in fog. 7 am Crowd Video
The woman in pink at the beginning of the video wasn't there long. They held an auction for 'front of the line' tickets and her $500 cash bid won.

After a few hours the sun eventually burned away most of the fog. And still the crowd grew.

At one point a woman came through with a clicker counting potential contestants, we were around 1750 and the largest mass of people were behind us. It was then that the people near us realized that I wasn't there to tryout, I was just there for Valerie. They thought I was crazy but also gave me a touch of prestige for giving Valerie such support.


If you look closely at the picture you will see that yes, that is a line of people about a half mile back lined up against the fence that are not even part of the main mob yet.

We were around a great group of people and we were having fun people watching.
Where else could you catch the likes of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe standing in line with you?


Or Squirt Man? -- We asked.. he had squirt guns..


About 11:00 we finally got inside of the mall.


And the crowd was again, HUGE!


We wound through, watching as people removed their coats and jackets, revealing some interesting garb underneath. I didn't get any pics of them, but there was a belly dancer, a prom dress, some custom made t-shirts. There was an older woman in a wheelchair with a terrier wearing a shirt that said 'Banker Bite Me'. Interesting times.

Finally, we were at the front and it was even crazier.
They start counting off in 10's and sorting you out into lines in a separate room. The room is full of long tables and when they call your line you rush to the table like a small crazy mob.
That was the anti-climactic part of the whole morning. 10 people to 1 casting director. Each person gets 20 seconds to give their spiel, hand in their application and be pointed to the exit.
Everyone sorts of walks out in a confused daze. All those hours of buildup and a few seconds later you're out the door.

Whatever the destination or outcome of that event, the journey was quite an adventure.

It wasn't quite as profound as the last time we were outside with a crowd but it was pretty entertaining.

We have had this 5 megapixel Polaroid camera for about 2 years now.
The cameras anymore are point and click, right?
Which is why it took me this long to realize that there is actually a very nice close up function to it.

I attempted a new approach when I put out my latest work, Blood Vow, as a stand-alone website that gives away a novella of the 'origins' of my werewolf saga.

Why would I do that? Well, first off is because it is a story I enjoy. I have faith in it entertaining people and I have fun creating, outlining and writing the story.
And well, because deep down I want a publisher somewhere to hear some talk about it on the Internet and offer me a large bundle of cash to publish the trilogy.

Having a background in web design helped in steering the ideas of how to market my latest work. I wanted to make the Internet work for me for once.
I have written on this blog for about 3 years now --oh, 3 years exactly on March 22nd!-- and have some modest traffic. I have earned a small placement in Google for all of my efforts over the years, so the first thing I am going to do when the site is up is to mention it in a post.

My next step was to get into my Google account and its Web Tools. There I laid claim to owning bloodvow.com and verified my site by adding their small proprietary meta tag to the index page. I tweaked some of the keywords I would use for meta searches. I hit the other search engines and planted the site's URL wherever they would let me. Basically I hit all the normal logical spots you would when first putting out a new site.

The one difference was that I don't have any money to spend on advertising. My only coin to spend is my knowledge and my time.

So where to go next? What might help me place in the search engines but also get me some readers?

Aha! I needed to go some place where the downloads run like water, where I might find a large audience that would like the type of fiction I write.
I wanted to get into the peer-to-peer world.

I started researching how I could get into the bit-torrent world of downloads. Sure, I've performed some downloads over the years using eMule, Kazaa and various bit-torrent software. I know how to download something, that's the easy part: you find the torrent file of something you want in places like Pirate Bay or Mininova, download it and start up your software and tell it to download.

But I needed an education about the other side. How could I create a torrent file and seed it out to the masses and drum up some downloads?
A quick hit to Google brought me to Torrent Freak giving tutorials on various ways to create one depending on your software.

uTorrent has been my software of choice for a while now so that was what I used for creating a torrent for my PDF of Blood Vow. It was pretty easy, and Torrent Freak even offers you a nice list of trackers to list when you upload it.

My next step was to create an account in Mininova using a different email address than I normally use -- hey, I do enough ego surfing on the Internet, I don't need to look disgustingly vain by uploading my own file and advertising it. So with my new account I uplaoded the torrent file, filed it under eBooks and waited.

Of course, you need to keep your software running in seed mode or no one will ever be able to actually download your file. (more)>>>>>>

Over the years I have worked the freelance angle along with having a full-time job developing websites and multimedia applications. On my home page I have finally added a 'Web Development' section where I will be showing examples of previous projects.
For starters I have included a collection of seating charts I created once upon a time for a local newspaper but they have orphaned the links, so if anyone needs to see the seating for specific venues in the Dayton, Ohio area, you might want to give these a look.

Dayton Dragons - 5/3 Field
University of Dayton Flyers - UD Arena
Schuster Center
Victoria Theater
Ervin J. Nutter Center:
Hockey - Dayton Bombers
Concert
Basketball - Wright State University Raiders

Also, I am including a link to one if my most enjoyable projects: The Embedded Battlefield.

And yes, I am still freelancing. If you need a developer, shoot me an email.
I have completed numerous CBT/eLearning courses that will eventually make it into my online portfolio but they were all proprietary information so I need to sanitize them before I can place them online. There are some cool ones though, one even placed in 3rd place in a national competition.

Clarke's three laws:
1. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
2. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
3. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away today.
I can't help but feel that these last few weeks(years) have made me focus back on my youth and the events that made me who I am today. That, and I'm getting old, because all of my influences are dying away: Clarke, Gary Gygax, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Snyder, Kurt Vonnegut..

I believe the first thing I ever read from Arthur C. Clarke was a short story titled The Star. It was a story that made me think. It was so powerful it made me explore my own imagination. The story revolves around a group that comes back from a space trip where they had found the remains of an old civilization that had known their sun was going supernova so they had archived everything they had ever done. The twist to the story is that the supernova that had destroyed this whole civilization, the light from this devastating sun, had been the light that came to Earth and guided the three wise men to the baby Jesus.

Powerful, yes?

His stories and novels always struck me as very profound and thoughtful. I re-read everything of his I could lay my hands on. And still do from time to time.
For about the last decade he had teamed up with Stephen Baxter, and I have just recently re-read The Light of Other Days. This was yet another profound novel that used a time viewer so that anyone could view past events, completely changing people's views of history, even religion.

With my own little time viewer, looking back at my own life, I can see where my imagination evolved and my ideas came to light by reading about monoliths, and Rama, and 'sufficiently advanced technologies that were indistinguishable from magic'. As was the imagination and talent of Sir Clarke - it was indistinguishable from pure magic. I thank you.

Seth Godin wrote an entry in his blog that ties nicely into the Ten Things I've Done You Probably Haven't list by John Scalzi - celebrate being spectacular!!

Why bother having a resume?



Nudged from John Scalzi's Whatever Blog..

Here is my version of Ten Things I’ve Done You Probably Haven’t

1. Contributing artist in Wirehead: The Virtual Gallery in 1994 (rubbing virtual elbows with Charles Csuri)

2. Possess two belly buttons (as previously explained here)

3. Was once cussed out by Robin Leach

4. Shook hands with Twiki from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

5. Was in the stands when Tom Browning of the Cincinnati Reds pitched a perfect game vs. the L.A. Dodgers at Riverfront Stadium (September 16, 1988).

6. Created the database and website for the Tanks to Tumors program (Applications of Infrared Imaging and Automatic Target Recognition Image Processing for Early Detection of Breast Cancer) without ever receiving any personal credit.

7. Refused to sell beer to a man after legal hours who then went behind the store/gas station and jumped in front of interstate traffic, committing suicide.

8. Presented to the IEEE an e-conferencing web application I developed.

9. Threw snowballs at a girl in seventh grade that 19 years later would become my saintly-patient, beautiful wife.

10. Have a rock from the walls of Tulum sitting on my desk.

A new release!
A new web site!
A whole new story line!

Blood Vow has been released into the wild. It hasn't been released as just a new story but as a whole new web site altogether.
This is my werewolf story. Blood Vow itself is a novella that begins the tale of Alex Arkham and his quest for vengeance against the beast that murdered his sister.

I like the idea, I like the story, and Blood Vow lends itself to a nice genesis so that there is actually an outline for a trilogy to wrap up the whole Blood Vow story line.

Check it out. Read it online or download the PDF.
Let me know what you think.

Blood Vow Web Site

My brother sent me a link to an article today that Gary Gygax had died.
It was fitting.
My brother introduced me to Gary Gygax, so why shouldn't he be the one to tell me of his passing?
I never met Mr. Gygax, really, I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons, and that was enough.

It had to be around 1976 0r 1977, I was 10 or 11. My brother brought me home a box with an awesome picture of a dragon on it, hoarding over his treasure. From there my life changed. My brother and I played it a few times, but my friends and I played it for years. And over those years, my friends might have changed but the game still remained.

That first boxed set of the Basic edition was pretty much a small pamphlet of rules with a few spells and minute lists of armor and weapons. Back when it began, there were no 4-sided, 8-sided, 12 or 20-sided dice to be found. You were given a laminated sheet with printed numbers. We cut them up and would use an old Yahtzee cup to shake up the 'dice'.

A few years later the Advanced set came out. The book covers will be forever burned into my memory. Rooting through the Monster Manual all hours of the night. Poring over the Dungeon Master's Guide as I created adventure after adventure. Having the ability to name all the spells listed in the Player's Handbook. I was hooked.

Dungeons and Dragons opened my imagination. It sent me into worlds I worshipped of raw power, wondrous spells and righteous violence. No novel could come close to living in that moment, controlling your character's actions and betting it all on the roll of the dice.

I became quite the adept Dungeon Master. My friends would be entranced by my stories and adventures. What made me such a good DM was that my friends didn't read like I did. They didn't know how many plotlines I stole throughout the years that made for epic re-telling. They had pages of notes of the adventures their characters had lived through as they advanced in levels. It didn't matter that my most popular enigmatic non-player character was basically the character Vain, stolen from Stephen R. Donaldson. Even had they known the Thomas Covenant novels, I had added enough of my own imagination to the story to make it plausibly original. I mean, if my Vain-type character really needed to speak to them, he would merely decapitate a foe and place its head on the thorny wooden crown that jutted from his wooden head and speak through it for a very limited time. Vain did nothing like that in the Convenant novels.

I created my own monsters. I invented new spells. I was a god creating gods, and governments, lands and its peoples. And I was fair. Fair yet just.

It wasn't until my last years in high school that I ran into another person that could DM with enough skill that I wanted to be a player in his adventures. It was amazing to live in someone else's world for a while and not be the one calling the shots. I loved not knowing what was coming next and also knowing how in- depth Frank's adventures were, which kept me on my toes.

I have years of memories and pleasure from Dungeons and Dragons. I could talk for hours about past games and my characters. For days I could talk about my own creations. The Feral Lands. The dragon, Yooknon Plethias. The cult of scrofulists - evil clerics that ruled the dark underbelly of most of the heavily populated cities.

And maybe some day, these adventures and ideas will make it into book form. To me, I think they would be the most enjoyable things to write - reliving those adventures from days gone by, and friends no longer seen. For now they make amazing memories that I can harken back to with joy, and still feel a thrill of the battle because of them.

And to Gary, I must say to you, dear sir, thank you for those memories. And to my brother, Phil, also, thank you for that introduction. I owe the two of you so very much for giving me the tools to explore my imagination in ways that, until then, --over 30 years ago-- was unheard of.

I have never been very good at drawing faces, so any chance I get to draw, that is what I aim for.
Sometimes a little successful, other times, uh, no.

Here are some of them.


This is some character from one of the kids' animated movies. Can't remember which one. I drew it from the DVD cover.


This is some other character.. an attempt to draw George W. Bush.


Yes, another character.. an attempted profile of David Letterman from a photo in a book.


This is Thunder cat. He is only an outline because that was a little easier to capture when drawing a pitch black kitten.


I believe this was drawn directly from a Todd McFarlane Spawn comic. An attempt at recreating his style. The glint in the eyeglasses I tried to capture looks more like a very exaggerated wink.

I've been a little busy trying to hit some dastardly deadlines and haven't written anything on the Blog since the whole Westboro Baptist Church thing.

Here is what I have been working on: AgentGurus Network

It is a non-profit organization for helping out Property and Casualty Insurance Agents in marketing, retention and sales type-stuff.
It's a pretty nifty site and had me really stretching some coding muscles to get the Flash modules working in a mannerly fashion.
Of course, some of the coolest code you can't see unless you're a Member, but it's there, believe me.

I held the American flag in my hand today.
It was cold this morning and it chilled to the bone. The wind was crisp, making it a perfect medium for voices shouting in hate.
The violence that pulsated beneath everyone's skin could have split open at any moment. The protestors held signs of hate, -- bigoted, simple-minded, messages that were created only to raise spite. They have an agenda, and pass it on through their need to spew hate, and fill their coffers through banal lawsuits -- because in America, freedom of speech is guaranteed. To force someone to hamper your freedoms can get you notoriety, press and lawsuits.

This morning was the funeral of Maria Lauterbach, the pregnant Marine that was allegedly raped and murdered by Cesar Laurean. Outside the church, down the street from the line of veterans holding flags along the whole driveway of the church, were masses of people united for two purposes: To honor the memory of Maria Lauterbach, and not let the Westboro Baptist Church disturb the solemn event.

Whenever the WBC is involved, though, there is a disturbance. It is inevitable. Emotions run high. Veterans and soldiers and proud citizens are all susceptible to the emotions that come forth when you have a small group holding signs that drip vile messages against people of which they have no knowledge. The voices of hate can then come from both sides.

Valerie (saintly-patient, beautiful wife) and I were in Vandalia this morning. We walked over to the crowd on the sidewalk and were immediately asked if we wanted flags to carry. We waved them proudly, rose them high as traffic drove by honking at us. Nestled within the crowd was a small area roped off with yellow tape. Two police officers were protecting four protestors within their own little island, as they were draped in flags that scraped the ground, held picket signs that said things such as Semper Fi Fag, Maria Burns in Hell, and other rubbish guaranteed to spark emotion.

Part of the mob split and moved directly across the street from them. The yelling began. Back and forth. The tension all around was nearly a physical apparition. I have never experienced anything like that.

From the church I could see two lone Army soldiers striding our way with severe intention in their step. They came up and across the street, straight to the WBC. The police stepped in between and routed them with quiet words before they crossed the police tape. The soldiers came around behind them and joined with our crowd. Reporters gathered, getting their spin on what was happening. These were two soldiers that had come from Detroit to pay their respects. Three friends that had deployed to Iraq for 15 months, only two returning as one was buried in Ypsilanti. They came to honor Maria Lauterbach, but when they saw the signs of the WBC they couldn't let it go. I am not sure of what their intentions would have been if they had been left to their own actions. They spoke frankly to the cameras and reporters without censoring their words. They were proud men upset with the hatred.

We rallied against the hatred. Songs were sung loudly to chase away the dark words. Flags were raised high with pride.
They packed up and left.
I don't know if they were leaving to get to the cemetary or if we had helped in not letting Fred Phelps and his little cult spread their disease to the friends and family of Maria Lauterbach. I believe they might have had a rough time getting anywhere in good time. There was quite a crowd that followed the WBC crew as they left encircled by a small gauntlet of police officers protecting their rights and safety.

I want to applaud the Vandalia Police Officers for acting so professionally during an event that could have turned chaotic and violent at any given moment.
I want to applaud the veterans and the crowd whose pride would not let hatred defile a family's mourning.

I held the American flag in my hand today.

On my website I have the novelette, Siege Therapy available as a FREE PDF download.
Give it a read, let me know what you think.

It's avaliable under the Written Words section. (along with the first 4 chapters of Mortal Death)

Steve Thorn Website

Our youngest daughter called the other day after getting home from school saying that Picasso would not walk on her right front paw. When we came home we checked it out, and yes, she was not a happy kitty. Long story short, she broke it. Now she has this monstrous splint/cast thing on her leg that gets there before she does. Sounds like a peg legged pirate heading our way when she's trying to trot along, but most tmes she just sits and soaks up the pity given to her by everyone in the house. She has it on untl Valentine's Day.