Stuff I Help With

So I figured that now is as good a time as any to plug a couple of ventures that I am associated with. Seeing as no one is really reading this, I don't know what good a plug will do, but I wanted to talk about it so I will. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am aspiring to be an author. I write fiction and want to be a storyteller. It's something I enjoy, and I hope it is something I am at least marginally talented at. It's very hard to tell. If you are a published author and your story sells several million copies, then it must be easy to say, "Well. I must be a pretty good writer!" Awards are pretty good for letting a writer know that they are accomplished in their craft, but I am far from the Pulitzer, so I have to work on faith. My wife and kids love me, thank God, so they can't say, "Gee, Jason, this really sucks," so I have very little to gauge my work against. That is why I just have to do what I know how to do, and then redo it until a book is done. After that, all I can do is hope that someone down the line will read it and say, "Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe I can sell it." Anyway, what this is all leading to is that my good friend for many years and writing partner, Patrick McDonald, has put together a couple of websites that I am involved in, and I felt that this was the perfect place for me to talk about it.


The first site is http://www.farwalkers.com/. This is the official site for the series of middle grade stories I intend to finish one day. The first book is called "Farwalkers: The First Crossing," and is currently in the submission process, or as I have come to call it, the rejection process. The site is very cool, though, and won an award in Writer's Digest for being one of the top ten author's websites. That's right, my name was in the esteemed pages of Writer's Digest right there alongside the man who did all the work. I'm still pretty proud, even though I almost feel like I was riding on his coattails. I hope that when I finish my next couple of books that he will help me design at least pages for them if not entire websites.



The second site I am very excited about. In the process of learning about how to query agents in an attempt to get someone to buy our book, we found that there were several sites out there that listed the agents that were available, but nothing to keep track of which agents you had already queried and which ones were left. From this simple problem, http://www.querytracker.net/ was born. Querytracker is much more than just a list of agents, though. It had become much more than that. It is a tool for authors to more accurately target their queries to agents who are interested in their genres. This is accomplished by providing users with statistics gathered from all users on the site. As each user inputs data, it is compiled and presented in query statistics reports that show authors how quick an agent responded to a query, how often they rejected it and how often they asked for more material. Querytracker also shows you what genre individual agents are more likely to respond to, what sort of word count they are partial to, and even what seasons they are more active in. It is a fantastic site and every writer should be using it. Once again, Patrick McDonald is responsible for creating this wonderful tool and community for writers. His "Social Data Gathering" model uses the power of the Internet to benefit everyone involved. I am proud to be involved in such a great endeavor and hope that one day it revolutionizes how authors reach agents.

HALO 3!

Ah, yes, Halo 3 came out today, and I am happy. It is as awesome as everyone hoped and as Bungie promised. The textures, the graphics, the gameplay. Yay! I am giddy. I can't wait to get into it a little deeper, and especially to play the multiplayer with my oldest son. He had No Child Left Behind testing today, so he didn't have any homework, so he and a few of his friends got together after school and had a ball with it. Now this always brings up the question with my wife about whether or not these games are too violent for a 12-year-old to be playing. I always say no, because he has the ability to separate the game from reality. It's not like he's going to be grabbing himself a rocket launcher and blasting up the school. However, one concern I do share is the amount of time spent playing the games. I know I can spend hours at a time in front of the screen when I am engaged in a good game. Other than being a waste of time, it's not detrimental to me. Until my wife finds out and wonders why I am playing a video game instead of cleaning the house or doing yardwork, then it's detrimental to me! With the kids, though, I always feel that they should be spending more time exercising or reading. But it is especially difficult to convince them that they should put down the controller and go outside when I am still sitting on the couch with the controller in my hand!

Video games have been a big part of my life since the early '80s when Pac Man first came out. I can't even tell you how many quarters I spent on Defender, and when I worked at Aladdin's Castle, a local video game arcade, when I was in my early twenties, they became an even bigger part. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II were huge, and I loved them all. I was a little sad as consoles began to get more and more powerful and fewer and fewer people went to the arcades, but the quality of the games became so much better that there was no need to go anywhere to play a good game anymore. Instead of coming to the arcade for the higher quality games and settling for whatever happened to come close on the console, now the consoles are the top of the line, and they are amazing. The pure eye candy of games like Halo 3 make them so much better than their arcade predecessors, that they are well worth the $60 that they cost. I bet I spent twice that trying to beat Smash TV.

A friend and I were discussing what we would have thought if we had been given these games to play ten years ago. We decided that we would have lost our minds. Our heads might have actually exploded. Thank goodness this kind of progress is gradual...

Incarceration

As I walk the path of the aspiring writer, I have a day job to pay the bills. Well, it's an afternoon job. I work swing shift at the county jail, supervising inmates for eight hours a day. Before I started working here I had no clue what jail was like. I had never been in jail, and I had never been to the jail. All I knew was what I saw on TV. Jail is nothing like what you see on TV. If you want to see a great show about what jail is really like, check out Inside American Jail on Court TV. That's what it is really like. But that is not what I wanted to focus on in this entry. What I have discovered since working here is how easy it is to end up in jail! I had no idea that even the most innocuous of "crimes" like jaywalking or speeding could land you in jail. And it has given me a much better perspective on the power that law enforcement holds in this country, and how easy it would be for them to set someone up. I don't think it happens nearly as often as it is claimed, but it would be surprisingly easy for a cop to plant drugs on you if he wanted to, and there you would be, sitting in jail.

Another thing that surprised me was the kind of people who end up here. Mostly it's people who can't learn from their mistakes or can't handle the responsibility of having to show up for court when their ticket says to. There are bad guys in here, too. Drug dealers, rapists, child molesters, murderers. But even among them, there are few evil people. Mistakes, bad decisions, even stupidity account for a lot of crime, but the truly evil person is a rare breed. They're almost like an exotic animal. When you actually see one it is almost exciting. I have worked at this jail for three years, and in that time have dealt with thousands of inmates, we booked around 24,000 in that time, and of all those, two were people I would consider evil.

What would be considered evil? Well, in my eyes, aside from the biblical definition, an evil person has a blatant disregard for anyone other than themselves. In one particular case, an individual enjoyed watching others suffer from the things he did. He even enjoyed thinking about the pain and worry he caused to the families of his victims. He told me right before he went to prison that as soon as he got out, the first thing he was going to do was hurt someone. Now in some people you can chalk this up to tough talk and someone's desire to be perceived as a thug, but this guy is the real deal. When you see them, you know.

Now, that being said, this is still a tough world to live in, and there are a lot of guys in here that I would not want to live with. In our medium and maximum security units, inmates live 18 1/2 to 23 hours a day in an 8x10 cell... with another guy. Not ideal living arrangements. Even the most patient people can be pushed to the breaking point. So make sure you stay out of here. You won't like it.

My Buddy

So I read a couple of things today that I felt the need to comment on, and, unfortunately for all you who might be unwise enough to venture here, it is about religion. YAY, religion! Am I religious? Yes. There, I said it. I believe in God, and I am not ashamed to admit it. Does that mean that I hate everyone who doesn't believe in God? NO! It also doesn't mean that I ask for any sort of special accommodation because I do, but I do wonder this. Why do people who don't believe feel the need to make sure that anyone who does never mentions it again? I don't believe in the bogeyman, so you can talk about him all you want. I don't care. So why do atheists feel the need to silence religious people? Why do atheistic state senators file lawsuits against God? I think it's because they are scared of faith, because if we're right, then they're screwed, and they don't want to have to think about it. I have friends, very close friends, who were atheists, and, yes, I tried to convince them to think about God. I would never try to convert a Muslim or a Jew, because I think we all have something in common, and that is a recognition that this is all to big to be something that "just happened."

Now, along those lines, I recently read that Kathy Griffin stated, "Suck it, Jesus" when she accepted and award recently. I find that appalling, but I'm not all a-twitter about it. I do want to mention this, however. You attack Judaism, you're an anti-Semite. You attack Islam, you're an intolerant bigot. You attack Christianity, you're a comedian. I find it utterly hilarious that at the bottom of the web page that the article was published on, there were ads for tickets to Kathy Griffin shows and then right below those ads were ads for religious sites. Now, wouldn't it be ironic if Kathy Griffin saying "Suck it, Jesus" sent someone to that article, who then proceeded to click on one of those links, learned about Jesus, and then became a Christian? I think that would be... divine.

So it begins... And who cares?

I never thought I would do it, but I have been inspired by those who have gone before me, and here it is. My first post on my very own blog. What do I have to say? What do I have to contribute to the universe? Well, not a whole lot right now. I will say that I am a writer, though not published. In case you were wondering about my opinion, and if you weren't, why would you be reading this blog, I don't believe that you have to be published to be a writer. A writer writes. I know, I know. It's used and worn out, but it's true. I write because I want to. Because I need to. I may suck to high heaven, but you know what? I don't even care. Well, that's not true. I don't want to suck, so I guess that means I do care. But what I am saying is that I will write even if I do suck. Even if I never publish a word, and no one but my wife and kids ever read it, I will still write, so in my opinion, that makes me a writer. Scoff if you will, but one day, who knows? Maybe my persistence will be rewarded.