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Why I named my son Beyowulf

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Twenty years ago today, (as of 11:11 AM), my wife and I had our first and only kid. he was a couple weeks past due, so we had to go in and get him. For various reasons, we opted for a C-section. “Grande!” A nurse said during the operation.  He was a big kid. I don’t remember how big, cuz I’m bad with numbers, but pretty big. Ten pounds? That sounds right. The doctor’s first comment was, “It’s a linebacker!”   We were very happy.

My wife got an infection, so they decided to make us stay overnight an extra night  in the maternity wing, and then he crashed. SIDS. Fortunately we were in the hospital, and they caught it, but if my wife hadn’t gotten sick, if they’d let us go home, he would have died.

They rushed us by ambulance to All Childrens in St. Pete, and he spent a week in the NICU while we stayed in the Ronald  McDonald House a block away (seriously: give them money. They do great things)

For various reasons, only one of us was allowed in the NICU at a time, so the wife and I took shifts. I talked to him constantly, sang him The Might Be Giants songs, and told him how strong he was and how much fun he’d have if he’d just get well and come home with us. I held his tiny little hand and prayed pretty much every moment I wasn’t talking or singing. My folks came down to see him in his little Lucite crib with all the IVs sticking in him and monitors attached to him and so forth. The four of us looked at him for a couple minutes and cried, then the nurses told us that they’d already looked the other way as long as they could, and three of us would have to leave. I took my folks out.
“I don’t see why we had to leave,” one of them said, “that other kid had six people visiting.”
“that other kid is dying,” I said. “that’s the family saying goodbye.”
“Oh,” the folks said, chagrined. They knew how bad off we were, they didn’t realize how bad off everyone else in there was.

All the other kids died. All of them. Mine lived. I attribute that to God, but you can say it was just dumb luck if you like. I won’t argue with you. This isn’t a sermon.

What this is, I guess, is me ruminating on that time. I’d like to say it was a fairly tale after that, but in fact it’s been a pretty hard couple of decades for all concerned. Additional medical conditions, awful, awful, awful schools that have no idea how to work with special needs kids, poverty, my own ineptitude as a parent, the list goes on and on. It really wasn’t until a little over three years ago, maybe four,  when it finally began to settle down, and feel like the train might actually stay on the track.

Through it all, though, my kid has been a treasure. He is the reason I am alive, the reason I keep on going. With all the odds repeatedly stacked against him, he’s kept fighting and, well, I suppose nothing’s going to change there. The fighting continues. Some people get a normal life, others have to claw and scrape for it. But the important thing is that we’re all still here, the three of us, we all still love each other, which is better than most people in our predicaments.

I could brag about that, I suppose, but I’m humble. I’m fully aware and ashamed of how outclassed I am. if I was twice the man I am, I wouldn’t be a quarter of what my father was, and it pains me that I haven’t been able to be nearly as good a dad to my son as he was to me. He was superhuman, that one. And my son is superhuman, too. All the times he’s faced death and made it back off…well, a hero is someone who keeps on fighting, right? someone who doesn’t give up, and just keeps slugging away when the odds are frankly abysmal?

There’s a moral dimension to heroism, too: like my dad before me, my son has always done the right thing, if he’s been aware of what it is. He is that rare person for whom there is no difference between what he should do, and what he does. He’s moral, he’s smart, he’s ethical, and he’s braver than anyone I’ve ever met in that there are times when he’s abjectly terrified, but he just keeps on going, fighting, striving, winning less often than he loses; but then “victory” isn’t the measure of heroism. A willingness to risk defeat is. I could see all that in his eyes the very first instant after his birth. He was born with them open expression was like someone desperately trying to make sense of the situation, and figuring out what to do next.

(am I reading too much in to that instant? Of course I am. I was overwhelmed then, and now. Just the same…it’s real to me, and it feels real to my wife and him.)

If those qualities aren’t the universal hallmarks of heroism, well, they should be. There is no one in this world that I am prouder of, no one I love more, no one I know who cares more, who feels more, who tries harder. despite all he’s had to fight against, he was, is, and evermore shall be the bravest, most noble person I know.

There’s a reason I named him Beyowulf.

Greetings to everyone who heard me on the radio!

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Hello to everyone who heard me on 106.1 FM or 1340 AM. If you’re checking this site out because of that, thank you very much.

Also, the first article (Below this one) isn’t indicative of this page as a whole, or me, I’m just wondering aloud about an issue of mine.

Anyway, thank you for coming, and please do surf around. I got a ton of cool crap on here. Annnnnnnnnd vastly more boring crap than that.

I just finished my 9th book, “Big Pharma”

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I just published a new book yesterday.

My friend Jim Graham had been writing a series about a guy with the unfortunate nickname of “Scat” (Real name: Sebastian Scatkiewicz). He was a retired marine who more-or-less accidentally starts a civil war and ends up (As Jim put it) as the fulcrum about which the history of the galaxy turned. It called on a lot of stuff from his time in the British Army. Good military space fiction with political intrigue.

He was about 4/5ths of the way through one of his novels when he discovered he was terminally ill. He asked me if I would please finish the book for him, and of course I said yes. I had hoped to have it done before he passed, and he’d thought he’d had some more time left than he did, but that ended up being the last time we spoke. Jim passed away less than a month later.

His widow Vivien sent me his manuscript and notes, and I got cracking.

He’d written two “Main” novels in the series (“Scat” and “Army of Souls,”) and intended to write a third to bookend the series. (About which nobody knows anything, AFAICT). As the”Army” takes place about a decade after “Scat,” he intended to write a bunch of shorter novels set between the books. I call these “Interquels.”

I’m gonna be honest, it was a little daunting. My normal method is to just sit down and sprawl out crap as it comes to me, hence the hokey-jokey herky-jerky style of writing. It works for my stuff, and Jim liked my stuff, but it didn’t fit him at all. I wanted his last book to be *his* last book. I didn’t want it to be 4/5ths his book and then – zang – it switches to crazy Randy bullcrap, right?

So I reread the previous books, I took ridiculous amounts of notes, and I tried to match his style as closely as a could. I found I tended to overthink things. “How would Jim phrase this? Would he say it this way, or would he reverse those two words?” Etc. This isn’t be complaining, by the way. I don’t feel put upon at all. I feel honored to have been chosen to do it, and glad that I was actually able to make good on my promise to my friend. I also had help in the form of the Reverend Oliver Harrison, Church of England, who was of immeasurable assistance in translating my portion of the book from American to English.  He went through it and painstakingly identified places where Americanisms had to be replaced by Anglicisms. (Remember, Jim was British) I didn’t want the tone to switch from “Stiff upper lip” to “howdy, howdy, howdy, I’m a cowboy,” you know? And overall I tried to match Jim’s tone as much as possible.

Also, as with *everything* I’ve ever done, it simply would not have been possible without David Teach. He’s my George Martin. Mad love, man!

Anyway: I don’t really consider this “My” book (Though they were insistent that my name be on the cover), I consider it Jim’s book, and I was just a pinch hitter here. If anyone chooses to read it, and you like it? That’s all Jim’s doing. If you read it and hate it, that’s my fault. Also for my fans (If any) it might be a little hard to follow since it takes place in between books 2 and 4 in a very involved series.

Still and all, I think it’s a good book, and I think I did a pretty good job with it, and I think the points where it switches from him to me and back again are pretty seamless. It’d be fun to know if his fans can spot the sutures, so to speak. I hope to hear back from some of ’em.

The book is now up on Amazon and Smashwords.

Phew. So now that that’s done, it’s time to go back to my own normal weirdo-chaotic-goofball-nightmare stuff. 

(By the way, this was my 2nd co-authored book, and my 9th book overall)

The Beautiful Farewell to Star Trek

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You ever stumble across something really stupid that, nevertheless somehow manages to fill up a hole inside you that you never knew was there?
 
It’s no secret I don’t like Star Trek, and the reason is obviously that I loved it once, as a kid. I’ve considered all subsequent Treks to be disappointing or flat out awful, and I abandoned the franchise somewhere around 1993 or 4. I like amateur films and videos and things, so my only exposure to Trek in the 21st century was through Fan Films, which primarily had nostalgia value, and mostly suck. Eventually there were just too many of these, and they were all too awful, and I drifted away from them.
 
Fan Films have always been illegal (Copyright infringement) but generally not prosecuted. A year or so ago, Paramount decided to start enforcing their rights, and now they’re verbotten. Nobody’s making ’em anymore. Nor will they.
 
Now, the slickest bunch making ’em was a semi-pro outfit out of California called “Star Trek Continues.” Despite the actors not looking much like their TOS originals, and some occasionally dodgy production values, it *felt* like Trek. It was really good, but I lost interest. Over 5 years they made about 10 episodes. Their final episode was said to be the last one of the golden age of fan films, the last one anyone could get away with, which just squeaked by under the wire. I decided, ‘what the heck, I’ll give it a shot.’
 
Now, when I was 10, 11, 12, I adored Trek. Obviously I wanted more, but like everyone else of my generation I really wanted “Seasons 4 and 5” more than movies, or spinoffs or whatever, right? Even still, I long ago made peace with the fact that it wasn’t gonna happen. And love TOS like I did, even as a kid I was aware that it had a lot of problems. I wasn’t blind.
 
But you know what I wanted? The thing that was secretly buried in my heart all this time? A hole in me that I never even noticed was empty? To my surprise, it wasn’t *more* Trek, nor more TOS.
 
I wanted a conclusion.
 
I wanted a solid end to the original show. Not a reunion movie, or anything like that. I wanted the Final Voyage of the Starship Enterprise at the end of its Five Year Mission.
 
And I got it. Holy crap, did I get it!
 
“To Boldly Go…” is a two-part episode. Without spoiling it, the Enterprise’ mission is complete, and it’s heading back to earth when it gets called aside to investigate strange goings on. It bookends the entire series, revisiting some of the circumstances of the “Where No Man Has Gone Before…” and there’s an extended callback to “The Enterprise Incident” that works really well, but the story is all new. Those elements simply serve to bring things full circle, to give a very well-earned sense of completion.
 
The sets are flawless, as are the costumes, the script hits all the right ’60s beats (Though with some modern flourishes, and with some ’60s narrative flaws that I think have to be intentional), the soundtrack (Mostly culled from old episodes) is perfect. It is a bang-on production, and honestly I had no difficulty believing this was the final episode of TOS (Which presumably would have aired in the spring of 1971)
 
At some point, about a third of the way through, the continents shifted inside me and this stopped being a fan film, and *became* TOS. It wasn’t about nostalgia, it was about an end to the epic and the epoch that had been dangling and incomplete in my mind these last 40 years. I never noticed, presumably because shows didn’t have finales in those days. They just *stopped.*
 
This, though, more important than ‘more Trek,’ this was the conclusion I’d never known I was missing. At some point, perhaps halfway through, my ten-year-old self showed up, and we watched it together, me remembering what it was like to be that young, and the other me forgetting what it was like to have grown so crusty and cynical about something I’d once loved.
 
So we watched it, and neither of me can say whether it was really objectively all that good. Both of us thought it was, but both of us were far too close to it emotionally to really be sure. In a way it didn’t really matter if it was good or not (Though, again, I think it was very good), rather it was about fixing that leak inside me. It was about closing that door that had been banging in the wind all these decades, and doing it with a sense of contentment and finality.
 
The final scenes set up ST:TMP, but I don’t care about that kind of continuity. It’s well done, but I don’t need it. What I do need is Kirk, Spock, and McCoy standing alone, talking about what happens next.
 
What I needed was Kirk requesting a desk job because he can still see the faces, and remember the names of all 78 people who died while he was captain, and he just can’t throw people’s lives away like that.
 
What I needed was was Bones retiring because “I’ve seen too much death, and I haven’t seen my daughter in five years.”
 
What I needed was a heartbroken Spock retiring to Vulcan because he’s been tainted by human emotion to the point that he just can’t take it anymore.
 
What I needed was these three guys having been *changed* by their voyage, saying goodbye to the people they were when they started, and moving on to the next stages in their lives.
 
What I needed was them coming home. What I needed was me coming home.
 
Trek is done for me now. There is no more. It ended here, now, last night, on Youtube. None of the subsequent stuff exists. This is all I ever wanted without knowing it, all I never knew I needed. It’s done.
 
The episode ended, and rather than the usual music playing over the closing credits they just played the normal background bridge noises. Then that ended, too.
 
Then I sat there in the darkness, staring at the screen in bittersweet silence for a long time, feeling something I hadn’t felt in 30 years, and smiling all the way through, body, mind, and soul. 
 
And then the ten-year-old version of me got up, walked out of the house, and quietly closed and locked the door behind him.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I finished Big Pharma!

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I just finished writing the novel, “Big Pharma,” which I’ve been working on (And mostly fighting my anxieties about) for a bit over a year.

About a year and a half ago, maybe a little under, my friend James Stephen Graham told me he was dying. He’d written several space adventure novels in an ongoing series, and there was one that he was about 4/5ths done with, which he’d obviously be unable to finish. He asked me if I’d do it for him. I said, sure, of course, I’d be glad to.

Since then I have taken a *SHAMEFULLY* long time finishing the manuscript. (And, as I said, mostly fighting my own anxieties about doing justice to my late friend’s work). I read and re-read his other books, took extensive notes, wrote, got frustrated that I wasn’t really capturing his voice, started over again, got frustrated. It wasn’t hard work, all the details and outlines I could need were given to me, but I was basically fighting myself. I do that a lot.

Anyway, the manuscript is done. Now I need a British friend of mine to translate my portions from American to British (You know, spelling, weirdo quotation marks, etc) so it’s not a jarring transition for the reader. Then a quick formatting edit, and then it’s online.

This also ends my self-imposed exile from writing.

To all Jim’s fans, and his wife Vivien, I truely, deeply apologize for the delays.

You can find Jim’s other books here https://www.amazon.com/…/B0…/ref=bseries_auth_1_B006OM9GX0_1

MY DIARY: Day 18,257 (Finishing Jim Graham’s Manuscript)

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I’ve been overthinking this.
 
I just finished Jim Graham‘s incomplete manuscript for “Big Pharma,” which he asked me to finish for him a few weeks before he died. I cheerfully agreed to do it, and he was pretty happy, since he always said he liked my writing, and I was his first choice. That’s a huge honor, don’t you think?
 
It was also our last conversation.
 
I probably should have torn into the project the moment I got the manuscript and the notes, but I decided to hold off until the first of the year, during which time the specter of doubt had time to grow. Stupid, Randy, stupid. I generally work best when I leap before I look, getting something done before I realize how difficult (or easy) it was.
 
Now, “Big Pharma” takes place in the middle of a fairly intricate continuity involving three other books. I had to make sure I didn’t have a character survive who’s dead in the book that takes place after this. Likewise, I can’t add anyone of significance because they wouldn’t be in the later installments. I wouldn’t do that anyway, as it’s way too Mary Sue, but you get my point. I also can’t introduce any huge events that logically would be spoken about in subsequent stories simply because the subsequent stories are already written, and it’d be distractingly odd if, say, I blew up the galaxy in this book, and then in “Army of Souls,” the galaxy is suddenly back.
 
In our last conversation, I asked Jim how it all ended, and he said he didn’t want to tell me. He said that he knew how the book would have ended had he been around to finish it, but that it suited his present frame of mind to just hand it over to someone else and let them take it where they will.
 
Ok. No ending. Great. Still: I can do this.
 
So I started re-reading Jim’s books. I had to reacquaint myself with the characters, the events, the *feel* of the thing, right? And I took notes. Far too many notes. Far, far too many notes. You can get addicted to that sort of thing. As I said, I was overthinking this.
 
I worked my way up to the “Big Pharma” manuscript. I read it slowly. In my mind I went back to the beginning several times. I took days off. It was slow going, which just made the whole thing more intimidating, you know?
 
Well, just now I finished it, and I was certain that, yes, I can do this. And that I really *should* leap before I look, because I’m just better that way.
 
In the last few chapters of the manuscript, it changes from a 3rd person omniscient narrative to terse present-tense outline-styled notes on what happens in each chapter. There are also a few completed scenes in there which I can insert in the appropriate locations. The bulk of what happens in the unwritten portion is an action scene, and that’s cake, since I’m actually really, really good at actions sequences. I can do him proud there. And I even know how it ends! He actually did have that burred in the tail end of the manuscript!
 
So I’ve been overthinking this. Now I start actually *doing* stuff.
 
Here’s what happens:
 
– The writing starts very soon.
– I don’t think it’ll take me long to finish. It’s just shy of 90,000 words right now, and I can probably bring my portion in at 20,000 words or so. I work fast, so I can easily do that in a week. Maybe less if I get in a groove, which I often do when writing action sequences.
– I’ll send my portion (Approximately the last 20% of the book) to a British friend of mine who will help me convert any Americanisms into Anglicisms, and maybe suggest places where British slang would be likely to turn up.
– I will *probably* add a list of Dramatis Personae (There are a *lot* of characters in this book, some of whom are easy to confuse with others) and a glossary (There’s a lot of invented terminology in here, and it’d just be handy for the reader if he forgets the difference between a PIKL and an RAV).
– I would also like to include Jim’s map of Go Down City. He did such a wonderful job of realizing a nonexistent city that feels real. I think his fans would enjoy that.
– Then I’ll send my portion off to my editor.
– Then I’ll send the whole manuscript, including my portion, to Jim’s widow, for her to forward to his editor and do whatever else needs to be done to get it published.
 
And there you go. I don’t want to pin myself down to a timeline, but I think things should move very quickly from here on out.

I’M GIVING AWAY FREE COPIES OF ALL MY BOOKS!

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IF YOU WOULD LIKE A *FREE* COPY OF SOME OF MY BOOKS, they’re available at Smashwords.

I was gonna space this out over several days, but what the heck, these coupons have an expiration date on them, so let’s get it all out of the way at once

Just go here to find a copy of my book, “It’s Not Rocket Science.” All ya gotta do is go here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591078 and then use the coupon code VF97F when you’re purchasing it. “It’s just that easy!”

“The Care and Feeding of Nightmares” is my most recent collection, and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. Go here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/571923 and use the code NT98B

“Ice Cream and Venom” is my first collection of short stories. Go here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591073 and use this code VZ84U

“The Bones of an Angel” is another collection of short stories. Available here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591080 and the code is PM79U

“The Undead at War (And Other Stories)” is my most popular book. Just go here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591076 and here’s your code MJ37R Larry Niven even blurbed one of the stories in that book.

“After Conquest” is a novel I co-wrote. Go here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/584212 and the coupon code is UW73B

There’s also a book of my poems and lyrics on there called “Everything is Something’s Food,” but I’d reccomend you all avoid that one. It’s pretty bad. No coupon for that one, it’s always free. I couldn’t actually take money from people for that one in good conscience 🙂

If you have friends who you think might be interested in this stuff, please feel free to spread this information around.

Thank you for your consideration!

If you’ve been curious about my books, but didn’t want to shell out the cash, now’s your chance to check it out! If you didn’t know that I wrote, well, hey, what the heck, it’s free, right? Might as well check ’em out.

The only thing I ask is that if you do grab a copy of a book, and if you actually decide to read it/them, please post a review on Smashwords and/or Amazon (You don’t have to have purchased a book on Amazon to review it). I don’t even mind if it’s not a particularly glowing review, just please post something no matter how short.

I’m Giving Away Free Copies Of All My Books!

announcements, Original Short Story, poetry, Uncategorized, What I'm Doin', Writing Updates

If you’ve been curious about my books, but didn’t want to shell out the cash, now’s your chance to check it out! If you didn’t know that I wrote, well, hey, what the heck, it’s free, right? Might as well check ’em out.

The only thing I ask is that if you do grab a copy of a book, and if you actually decide to read it/them, please post a review on Smashwords and/or Amazon (You don’t have to have purchased a book on Amazon to review it). I don’t even mind if it’s not a particularly glowing review, just please post something no matter how short.

Goodbye, Republibot (2008-2016)

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Once upon a time two friends and I started a website called “Republibot.” There is a tendency among people on the far right, be it religious or political or both, to view Science Fiction as liberal, bad, and maybe even sinful. Our mandate was to show them that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that, just like most other good things in art, it’s open to everyone.

I don’t know how well that worked. Most of our readership ended up being Libertarian, with a lot of liberals, too. They liked us, though. A lot of our regular readers seemed to show up intending to make fun of us, then be rather shocked to discover that we weren’t name-calling or picking fights or plugging those dopey “Left Behind” books. Instead we were writing insightful, respectful articles, explaining complex concepts to people who probably hadn’t been exposed to them before, writing serious reviews, publishing original fiction, interviewing interesting people, and stuff like that.

I should mention that I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a Republican. I did pretend to be one on there, though I felt increasingly icky about it over time, and eventually dropped the pretense. The goal was a public service, though, not an agenda. We were just trying to show people “You don’t need to be afraid of this. Some of it might actually be good for you.”

So: Five years as head writer/editor, literally MILLIONS of words written, hours a day on it, and of course we never made a dime. We never got as much readership as then-small sites like Topless Robot and some others, which is weird because we were honestly doing better work. We lacked a budget and the media connections, I guess. I dunno.  Pretty much sums up my whole life right there: I beat my brains out trying to make something good, and end up with nothing to show for it, except maybe carpal tunnel and some depression.

I don’t know if I should go into the things that happened, but about three years ago I quit the site, and it was handed over to a new interim editor. Readership and content plummeted, which isn’t too surprising as the new editor was only keeping it running until a permanent replacement could be found. Time ground on, and not only was a replacement not found, but I don’t think the site owner was even looking. (As was repeatedly pointed out to me, I was only a hired gun. An unpaid hired gun at that). A year after I left I came back as a favor to the beleaguered new editor to contribute one guest column a week. I left at the end of that year.

They decided to ‘put the site in amber,’ so to speak. That is: they kept the content online – oh so much content – but didn’t allow new content, nor comments, nor anything else. I was, of course, disappointed. I’d spent so much of my life on that damn site, you know? I was one of the founders. I quit, but that didn’t mean I wanted it to fail. I wanted it to go on and be successful and have a life of its own, just without me having to do 90% of all the work. So: Disappointing, but at least all that stuff was still available, including the fun comments conversations.

A couple months ago, I noticed that the site was down. The site owner and I haven’t really spoken in two years, so I didn’t contact that person, but going through a third party I was told the owner was looking for a cheaper server and that the site would return.  I doubted it, but it was possible.

Yesterday I noticed that the URL was up for sale.

It’s gone, it’s not coming back, and everything I did was for nothing.

Sigh.

http://www.republibot.com