My Influences

***MY INFLUENCES***

We all have our favorite books, authors, movies, actors, music and bands. But how much of that creative fuel actually changes the way we approach our art? I can safely say that even though Daniel Bryan is my favorite pro-wrestler of all time, he doesn’t make me want to adjust my writing style. In other words, even though I prefer watching Mr. Bryan over other wrestlers, he’s not necessarily an influence to me. An influence is someone you model your work after, not just someone who tingles your senses. Soulfly is one of my favorite heavy metal acts of all time, but they don’t change the way I write stories. So what does influence me? Who are the people and what are the mediums that make me want to become a better writer? I never gave much thought about this until now, and as of today, there are ten items on this list. Starting with…

***DIALBO II: LORD OF DESTRUCTION***

I’ve always credited this computer game with giving me a fascination in barbarians. I’ve always loved using melee-ranged warriors whenever I played RPG’s and the barbarian personifies that in Diablo II in a way no other class does. Actually, that’s not entirely true since the paladin’s fire and cold auras can jack him up like Brock Lesnar, but who’s keeping track? Bottom line, if it wasn’t for Diablo II, Deus Shadowheart, Brutus Warpath, Corey Darkside, and Magnus Warcry would never be possible. I’ve always considered Deus to be my honey child despite the fact that he’s an overloaded Gary-Stu. He finally found a story to be a part of and that short story is appropriately called Deus Ex Machina, a high fantasy tale that preaches teaching people how to do stuff as opposed to doing those things for them. Deus Ex Machina is one of the cornerstones of my soon-to-be published anthology Poison Tongue Tales. But it’s not just barbarians that held my fascination. Hannah Jason from “Bee Jay the Glutinous” is a sorceress, Marcus Edge from “Stardust” is a druid, Edwin Stryker from “Crossing the Line” is a paladin, so many characters were influenced by the dark magic Diablo II is known for.

***FINAL FIGHT***

More and more these days, whenever I’m riding in the car and I see a dilapidated neighborhood through my window, I always tell my brother James that said neighborhood looks like a stage from Final Fight, a beat ‘em up arcade game where most of the stages take place in ghettoized buildings. Ever since rekindling my interest in this game earlier this year, lots of Dungeons & Dragons campaign, novel, and short story ideas have come from those broken down buildings. I’m still waiting for the day when I can sit down with James, Reina, and Shara and guide them through an adventure that takes place on a shit-infested subway train. Stage backgrounds from videogames have always fascinated me, but the biggest piece of creative fuel I drew from Final Fight was Mike Haggar, a pro-wrestler who pile-drives, suplexes, and clotheslines Mad Gear gangsters into powder. When I wrote the first draft of “Occupy Wrestling” back in 2013, I wanted the main character Mitch McLeod to be a throwback to Mike Haggar in terms of body size and outfit, right down to the shoulder strap and the plated boots from the second Final Fight game. With thick rimmed glasses, pale skin, and puffy spiked hair, Mitch McLeod keeps himself from being a complete clone of Mr. Haggar while honoring how badass the Mayor of Metro City really is.

***WWE***

This one’s a no-brainer in so many ways. Where do I begin? Well, if I didn’t have such a zealous love for pro-wrestling, “Occupy Wrestling” wouldn’t be possible. If it wasn’t for the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic award, I wouldn’t have a basis for how to build Keegan Day from the ground up since he’s supposed to represent everything wrong with the wrestling business. But what about the dark fantasy aspects of WWE wrestlers? The Undertaker is without a doubt the biggest one with his necromancer gimmick. Bray Wyatt as a sadistic cult leader will always be an influence on the creepy monsters from “Occupy Wrestling”. Stardust and Goldust? Well, if I ever decide to write the sequel to Occupy Wrestling and call it “The Black Widow”, Rosie Rogers will be a parody of the Rhodes brothers’ bizarre gimmicks and she’ll be called Angel Dust. WWE will always be my favorite form of violent entertainment. Ignoramuses who call it “fake” can say the same thing about other forms of fiction like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones.

***THE CLEANER***

Stephen King once famously said that if you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time nor the tools to write. In the summer of 2009, I finally got the wakeup call I needed when I read “The Cleaner” by Brett Battles, a fast-paced, exciting, well-thought-out novel that set the standards I now have for the books I read. My tastes have changed over the years, but “The Cleaner” will always be what I base my reading and writing on since that was the novel that set me on the right path. Jonathan Quinn really is a badass character and Brett Battles really is a badass author. Check out this book whenever you get the time.

***PINK FLOYD THE WALL***

I started listening to Pink Floyd on a regular basis when I moved to Chehalis, Washington in 1996. Back in those horrendous middle school days, I loved hearing Roger Waters say, “We don’t need no education!” I didn’t gain a full-fledged appreciation for The Wall’s message until I watched the movie version of it quite frequently in my sophomore year of high school. Seeing those faceless children plunge into a meat grinder made me fear conformity so much that I resisted everyone’s attempts to break me. If it wasn’t for Pink Floyd the Wall and its message of anti-conformity, lord knows where my creativity would have ended up. Maybe I wouldn’t have made it out of high school with my individuality intact. Maybe there would be no Garrison Kelly novels.

***KILLER BE KILLED***

Okay, so this super-group hasn’t been around for a long time, but their song “Snakes of Jehovah” is a huge part of the reason why Occupy Wrestling is a success (in my mind at least). After Keegan goes to a minimum security jail for corruption charges, he has his robe and snake mask-wearing henchmen, The Snakes of Jehovah, do his bidding for him to make sure the police don’t interfere with his behind the scenes work. These faceless minions are blessed with magical powers, creepy limbs, and the ability to put up a barrier just by forming a circle and speaking in tongues. Thank you, Killer Be Killed, for putting out such a badass album! Without you guys, Keegan would have to shell out even more money from his billion dollar bank account to keep the police at bay.

***GEORGE CARLIN***

With intelligent speaking abilities, a raunchy and dark sense of humor, and a disdain for politically correct policies, George Carlin gave me permission to be as wild and crazy as I want when it comes to my writing. Before watching my first George Carlin routine, I had to rely on comedians like Johnny Carson, Benny Hill, and Bill Cosby to be my creative fuel. Being as young and naïve as I was back then, those three comedians’ messages didn’t ring true for me the way that Carlin’s did. I feel so good about my comedic abilities that I currently have a novel idea sitting in my reserve stack called “Suck It, Double Dork!”, which is basically one long rehashing of Carlin’s joke about making rape funny by picturing Porky Pig sodomizing Elmer Fudd. They’re cartoon characters; nobody gives a shit what happens to them. Even at the age of 71, Carlin died too soon. Rest in peace.

***CLERKS***

When I reviewed Clerks and Clerks II, I should have given both of those movies five stars instead of four. A lot of the well-spoken dialogue from those movies is the basis for my characters’ dialogue and my writing was well-received because of it. I wish I would have known how to interpret creative fuel in a more mature way when I was a teenager and a twenty-something. Otherwise, my first movie script Pumping Filter wouldn’t be such a mess of racial and sexual slurs from Pulp Fiction. As I look up scenes from Clerks I and II on You Tube, I realize that it’s not enough just to copy a style of dialogue. It has to fit your story’s world and sound 100% natural too.

***DUNGEONS & DRAGONS***

It’s a pencil-and-paper role-playing game where my love for dark fantasy themes is rekindled and reenergized once more. Many of my player characters and villains from these campaigns went on to become major players in many of my stories. Brutus Warcry, my level eight human barbarian, had his last name tweaked to Warpath and he became the main character for a short story called “Stone Cold” about a barbarian who wants revenge for his fallen wife. Bob Rua, a tiger monk and MMA practitioner, was the main character from “Tiger Bullet Kick”, where he guards a tomb full of treasure from a necromancer and a newly awakened mummy king. Charles Goodhorn, a paladin with a dark past, will be the main character in a novel idea called “Barbaric Justice”, where three intergalactic barbarians hold a trade route hostage in exchange for the means to return home. So many characters, so many stories, so much fun!

***THE SHIELD***

Maybe this detective show was responsible for my teenaged works being so offensive and crass due to its blatant TV-MA rating. Over a decade later and it becomes central to a novel idea called “Silent Warrior”. Spoiler alert, high school introvert Scott George has sex with his vengeful history teacher’s daughter and says to him, “Your daughter’s pussy tastes like sweet butter.” Okay, so maybe Silent Warrior isn’t as extreme or brutish as The Shield, but the writing style and dialogue have a lot of similarities, especially when, spoiler alert, Scott gets put on trial for having sex with a minor while being 18 years old.

***CONCLUSION***

(Gnaws on a carrot) Meh…that’s all folks! Wait a minute, wrong Looney Tunes character. My bad! Hehe!

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I’ve got the obligatory Hendrix perm and the inevitable pinhole burns all down the front of my favorite satin shirt. I’ve got nicotine stains on my fingers. I’ve got a silver spoon on a chain. I’ve got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains. I’ve got wild staring eyes. I’ve got a strong urge to fly. But I’ve got nowhere to fly to. Oooo, babe! When I pick up the phone, there’s still nobody home.”

-Pink Floyd singing “Nobody Home”-

Dark Fantasy Gimmicks in Wrestling

***DARK FANTASY GIMMICKS IN WRESTLING***

There actually used to be a time in the history of professional wrestling where everybody took it seriously and didn’t question its fictitious nature. When Hulk Hogan body slammed Andre the Giant, it was a proud American moment. When the N.W.O. took over WCW, it felt like being a part of the battlefield. Suspending disbelief was as easy with professional wrestling as it was with movies and television shows. And then the internet boomed with popularity and everyone was finding out wrestling’s dirty little secrets. Chris Jericho says in his first memoir “A Lion’s Tale” that being a wrestling fan in the 1980’s is different from being one in the 2000’s.

Before the internet became as popular as it is now, were dark fantasy gimmicks to blame for the inability to suspend disbelief? Many wrestling insiders thought so. In 1992, a voodoo priest named Papa Shango used to cast spells on his opponents and make them shake and vomit into unconsciousness. Instead of being feared by adults, he was given the following awards from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that year: Worst Gimmick, Most Embarrassing Wrestler, and Worst Feud of the Year (vs. The Ultimate Warrior).

Then again, the WON is the same publication that gave The Undertaker the Best Gimmick award from the years 1990 to 1994 for being an undead wrestler. We all know zombies don’t exist in the real world (unless they’re extremely tired or high on drugs), but how was The Undertaker more believable and likeable than Papa Shango? This is a guy who made lightning crash all around him, who put his opponents in body bags and caskets, and teleported to the ring at will when the lights went out.

What’s my opinion of occult gimmicks in wrestling? You should all know by now just from reading my stories that I love the dark fantasy genre and therefore have no problem with seeing those kinds of characters in wrestling. Yes, wrestling is supposed to be believable, but that doesn’t mean it always is. If it works in movies like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the upcoming Warcraft, why can’t it work in WWE? Kayfabe died a long time ago when Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels hugged each other in Madison Square Garden back in the 1990’s.

You’re probably going to think I’m crazy for saying this, but I actually enjoyed the Stardust gimmick. He came to the ring with silver paint on his face, a black jumpsuit, and a red cape with spikes for shoulder pads. That’s some serious dark fantasy shit right there! Yet in 2015, the readership of the WON voted Stardust as having the Worst Gimmick of that year. Cody Rhodes got so upset with portraying Stardust that he recently asked for his release from WWE and was granted it along side his wife Eden Stiles. Poor Cody. Poor, poor Cody.

And then you have some more dark fantasy creative fuel with The Wyatt Family, a backwoods cult consisting of 300 lb. giants with scraggly beards and dingy clothes. I guess The Wyatt Family was a little more realistic than other dark fantasy gimmicks, because cults do exist in this world. Maybe that’s why The Wyatt Family won Best Gimmick in 2013. But then why would Bray Wyatt, the leader of the group, get nominated for a Worst Gimmick award in 2014? Wasn’t he doing the same things he was doing a year earlier?

I don’t see why wrestling fans get their knickers in a twist over dark fantasy gimmicks in the WWE or any other organization. It didn’t bother them when they were playing Diablo II on their computers. It didn’t bother them when they were gathering around the table playing D&D and eating Doritos. It won’t bother anybody who eventually goes to see the new Warcraft movie, which I’m dying to see. So why should it be bothersome in WWE? We know it’s fiction, so why not go the full nine?

Combining dark fantasy elements with professional wrestling is basically what I’ve done when I wrote and published “Occupy Wrestling”. Mitch McLeod, a professional wrestler with the body of Mike Haggar and the hair of Goku, kicks the asses of and gets his ass kicked by skeletons, ogres, orcs, demons, devils, and even a group of hooded mask-wearers called The Snakes of Jehovah. I actually had a beta reader named Layla who told me that combining urban fantasy with pro-wrestling was a bad idea. I had two chick lit-reading women give my book a two-star rating. Thank god I have people like Marie Krepps (Babe-a-Licious Mondo), Edward Davies (The Delightful Brit), and Andy Peloquin (The Kick-Ass Canadian) who believe in me and my ideas.

In fact, now that I’m almost finished editing the shit out of Occupy Wrestling with Marie, she’s given me some valuable advice that I’ll definitely take to heart. Once it’s been republished, I should market it to people who are both wrestling and fantasy fans, who will most likely be males ages 20-29. I may have to search far and wide for these people, but they’re worth finding, because they’ll love what I’ve got. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Marie. It’s a debt I can never repay in my lifetime.

So what about it, Dave Meltzer (the Editor at Large for the Wrestling Observer Newsletter)? What awards will you give Mitch McLeod? Wrestler of the year? Feud of the year (vs. Keegan Day)? Dare I say, Most Overrated or Worst Gimmick? I sincerely hope the newest version of Occupy Wrestling makes it in the mailboxes of some of these wrestling insiders. They may be harder to get a hold of than the 20 to 29-year-old males, but it would satisfy my curiosity at least. It would be worth it to hear Jim Cornette scream in his Kentucky drawl. Hehe! We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

The new contest is already here and I’m damn well ready for it. Speaking of dark fantasy, I have yet another short story ready with the suffix “mancer” in the title. The theme this week is “Dark Truth” and my story will be called “The Cryomancer” (a wizard who controls ice). It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

Julian Kane, Human Screenwriter

Olivia Snow, Elf Cryomancer

PROMPT CONFORMITY: After being exhausted by his relentless work schedule, Julian’s fried brain doesn’t now what the dark truth is anymore.

SYNOPSIS: Julian’s latest movie script features Olivia as a fictional character as she does battle with an army of orcs. In the middle of writing, Olivia starts talking to Julian as if she was a real person. The exhausted screenwriter figures that it’s just his mind playing tricks on him, but when it starts hailing outside and his apartment becomes unexplainably cold, he begins to think that maybe Olivia’s requests for a lighter battle schedule seem reasonable.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

Continuing with the theme of dark fantasy, my next drawing will be of someone who in no way can cast a decent spell. His weapon of choice is a modified blunderbuss and his diet of choice is meat from the carcasses of the game animals he kills. He is a chubby motherfucker named Joseph Stone and he comes straight from the short story “Unleash the Animal”. Stinger Crushwar may have been the most obnoxious character in that story, but never forget who the real villain is. That’s right, Joseph, I’m looking at you, fat boy!

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“All my life they let me know how far I would not go. But inside the beast still grows, waiting, chewing through the ropes. Who are you to change this world? Silly boy! No one needs to hear your words. Let it go. Carnivore! Carnivore! Won’t you come digest me? Take away everything I am. Bring it to an end. Carnivore! Carnivore! Won’t you come and change me? Take away everything I am. Everything I am.”

-Starset singing “Carnivore”-

***POST-SCRIPT***

It’s just a coincidence that the next Dark Fantasy Warrior is a guy who eats too much meat and the lyrics of the day come from a song called “Carnivore”. Then again, I just ate a whole Meat Lover’s Pizza from Pizza Hut earlier today, so maybe it’s not much of a coincidence anymore.

Stardust

When Mitch O’Connor’s spacecraft touched down on the world of Stardust, he couldn’t believe how small it was. It truly was a retreat for an introverted hermit like Marcus Edge. The door to the pod-like spacecraft opened and Mitch clunked down the stairs in his spiked metal power armor while carrying a gauss rifle that was bigger than his own arms. “Oh, this is too easy. Too damn easy!” he said to himself.

Stardust wasn’t the most complex world in the galaxy. Smallness aside, it appeared to be a jungle land complete with coconut trees, dirt trails, tall grass, plant life, just your everyday nature trail on planet earth. Even for a planet this tiny, Mitch still had a problem finding his target Marcus Edge. It didn’t help matters that the space mercenary was stomping around on the ground in his gigantic metal boots. Then again, his job didn’t require a great deal of stealth, so he didn’t dwell on it much.

“Marcus Edge!” shouted Mitch through an amplified microphone inside his space helmet. “I know your ass is around here somewhere! I’m feeling pretty good today, probably because toasting your little world is going to be the easiest thing I’ve ever done! So here’s what I’m going to do, Marcus: I’m going to give you the chance to get your hermit ass off this planet so that when I burn down the plant life and kill all the animals, you won’t have to be a part of it. My boss at World Corp wants to turn your little home into a vacation getaway. It don’t look like much of a vacation right now, buddy boy. It looks more like…”

Before he was allowed to finish his oratory, Mitch O’Connor’s legs were snatched up from underneath him and he hung upside down on a vine. He was so far off the ground that when he dropped his rifle, he couldn’t pick the damn thing back up again. “Oh, you’ve got traps now?” he said. “Well, I got news for you, smart ass: I’ve been doing this shit for a whole decade and ain’t no vine going to stop my ass from burning everything in sight!”

His boldness turned to fear when he found himself face to face with a Venus Fly Trap, the owner of that tight vine. This particular plant had teeth the size of railroad spikes and blood oozing from its mouth like a waterfall. Mitch’s lips were vibrating and his eyes widened at the sight of this monster. And then he went back to being bold when he said, “Wait a minute! Why the hell am I scared of a goddamn plant?”

With his metal space helmet, Mitch O’Connor unleashed a powerful head butt to the Venus Fly Trap, loosening a few teeth and spraying some more blood, but more importantly, loosing the vine’s grip on the mercenary’s legs. Mitch plummeted to the grassy ground below, but his metal armor protected him from injury, so he pretty much picked himself up, dusted himself off, and found his rifle again.

“Is that all you got, Marcus? Some stupid plant? Oh, this is going to be easier than I thought! And I’m making millions off of this job! It’s like Christmas came early!” boasted Mitch.

“Don’t be too sure of that, you disgusting human!” said the busted up Venus Fly Trap in a raspy voice. With Mitch watching in awe and horror, the plant morphed into a human being wearing bear skin clothing and a raccoon cap on his head. This was him alright: Marcus Edge, hermit druid.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be, huh? You want to put up a fight? Well, goddamn, man, you’ve got one now, bitch!” shouted the soldier for hire when he raised his gauss rifle and opened automatic fire. That many plutonium bullets would have been enough to shred a normal human being into dust. Hell, the surgeons would need a microscope to put his sorry ass back together again. But when the storm of bullets ended, there was no corpse.

Instead all Mitch O’Connor got was a deafening bird squawk right in his left ear. Marcus, who now morphed into a parrot, continued to blast his windpipes in his opponent’s ear and double the man over as he got a headache. When the druid believed his adversary had enough, he flew off into the sunset and left Mitch to clutch his aching head.

The sudden drop in volume inspired the mercenary to aim his rifle and unleash another rainstorm of violence upon his opponent. The shredding impact only resulted in one feather this time. On measly little feather.

“What the hell’s going on here?!” Good question, Mr. O’Connor. What was going on was that Marcus Edge had now morphed into a charging rhino. The tank-like beast barreled and stampeded his way across the grass and knocked a few trees over. With little time for his opponent to react, Marcus gored Mitch and sent him flying backwards several feet, knocking a few trees over himself.

That power armor was a blessing for Mitch since he had just survived a high drop and getting spear tackled by a rhino. But now the mercenary was feeling the pain. He was so exhausted from these attacks that he took longer than usual to get up. He crashed into trees, for god’s sake. Trees! Yet he continued to be brash and cocky in the face of danger.

“Is that all you got, you son of a bitch? What are you going to change into now, a small puppy? Are you going to bark your way to victory?” yelled Mitch.

Changing from a rhino back to his human form, Marcus slowly approached his nemesis and said, “No, I’m not going to do any barking today. That’s been your job since you landed on Stardust, you asshole.”

With Mitch watching in awe of his opponent, Marcus continued his speech with, “You know what I detest about the human race? You people think you have the right to conquer whatever the hell you want. You did it on earth with pretty much every group of people that wasn’t white, including Indians and Africans. That’s all you guys do: just take, take, take. You have some oil? I’ll take that. You have human rights? I’ll take that as well. Is that supposed to be impressive? To who, exactly? Your mother? Your father? Your trophy wife? The president himself? How many more people have to die before you’re finally satisfied with the things you already have! You make me sick! You all make me sick!”

An uncomfortable hush had fallen over the scene and then Marcus laid into Mitch some more, “That’s why I came to Stardust: to get away from it all. And now some space jockey like you decides to come to my world and sell it to some rich asshole? Let me fill you in on a little secret, buddy boy. Stardust isn’t just any tiny planet. It’s the product of my own imagination. As long as I keep being creative, I can manipulate any part of this world I want while you only have that stupid rifle to overcompensate for your small penis. To put it in words even a money-hungry thug like you can understand…you were screwed the minute you stepped foot on my world.”

This would have been the best time for Mitch O’Connor to get back in his spaceship and tell his bosses at World Corp to shove it. Just leave now while he still had his peace of mind and still had his health. But instead he decided to keep playing the role of an arrogant jerk-ass. He yelled, “You worthless piece of shit!” prior to opening fire yet again.

Except this time it wasn’t just plutonium bullets. It was also fireballs, ice sickles, lightning bolts, biological sludge, and laser beams, all of which were hidden compartments on his rifle and all of which were necessary in doing his job to destroy entire planets to get them ready for flipping.

After unloading a cataclysm of agony that Armageddon itself could never produce, Mitch didn’t even check to see if there was a corpse this time. He just dropped to his hands and knees, breathed deeply, and laughed his ass off. “I got you, bitch! I got you this time! And there ain’t nothing you can do about it!”

Mitch was so busy laughing his way to insanity that he didn’t realize he was sinking in a mud pit. Even when the mud was completely covering his space helmet, he couldn’t have cared less. It was when he was underneath the mud pit and into a cavern of filth that he realized what was going on. The realization hit him even harder when Marcus was standing there with his arms folded saying, “What took you so long?”

“No…no…this ain’t happening, man! This ain’t happening! Don’t you ever fucking die, man?!” screamed a deranged Mitch O’Connor.

Marcus laid a hand on his invader’s metal shoulder and said, “Old druids don’t die. They just get better.” With Mitch shedding tears of defeat, Marcus Edge transformed into a gigantic grizzly bear and started chewing and mauling his way through the metal armor, which at this point was a lot like opening a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. Oh, the meat sauce inside was going to be so worth all this rage.

Hanging Around

***HANGING AROUND***

For the past two weeks, my brother James and I babysat the puppies and kitties while my mom and step-dad Dale went to North Carolina to do some remodeling of their future retirement home. These two weeks would have been an awesome time to get some serious creative work done and so far, so good. I gave Andy Peloquin’s “Blade of the Destroyer” novel a four-star detailed review and did the same to Carl Hiaasen’s “Star Island” book. I also participated in two WSS contests and that’s why “Nail Bomb” and “Kill, Cut, Scalp” are in my Deviant Art gallery. I snapped some toy pictures of Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns, Homer Simpson, and Wario. I drew pictures of Katie Evans from “Froggy Smacks” and Machu Throatslash from “Ascension”, both stories a part of the Poison Tongue Tales anthology. I wrote a four-star review for a WWE match between The Prime Time Players and The New Day that took place at this year’s Battleground pay-per-view. I edited the shit out of an American Darkness story called “It’s Okay For You to Love Me”. And last but not least, I FINALLY pumped out the first chapter of Blood Brawl, which used to be called Dungeons & Dragons: Hair vs. Hair, but has since been changed.

You probably think the main reason for telling you all what I did over the two weeks my parents were gone is so that I can brag and get my jollies off. As much as I love to let my arrogant side every now and then, that’s not why I’m writing this journal. This journal is titled “Hanging Around”, which if you look it up on Urbandictionary.com is just a synonym for idling or doing very little. Truth be told, it doesn’t take a great amount of time to do all of the creative tasks I did in those two weeks. Snapping pictures takes literally a few seconds while writing a short story or novel chapter can take anywhere between half an hour to a full hour.

Yes, I got a lot done, but what about the downtime in between creative work? Most people fill this time up by doing chores, going to their day jobs, or hanging out with family members and friends. While it is true that I had a lot of chores to do to maintain this two-story house and keep the animals happy, the chores are also super easy to do and don’t take very long, so that’s even more downtime that I have between creative projects. Closing this gap seems like an easy thing to do at first glance. Okay, so I’ve edited an American Darkness story, so my next project to hop on is writing a chapter of Blood Brawl.

Except it doesn’t work that way, at least not in my world. You know what I do during my downtime? Plenty of things that would constitute “Hanging Around”: napping to new age music, checking my online messages, dinking around on Face Book, and walking around my house like a zombie while talking to myself (usually reciting dialogue from Clerks or Pulp Fiction). So basically, instead of being a relentless worker, I am a professional zombie.

While I’m frying my brain on Face Book and snoozing despite not being tired, I’m doing something that brings all of this idling to light: waiting. I’m waiting for my mental energy to be restored. Only with maximum mental energy can I plow through my creative projects. Anything less and I just crash at the first few words of the story. For years I’ve tried to figure out the secret to my mental exhaustion and I have many answers: sleep apnea, schizophrenia medications, bad diet, minimal exercise, and an aversion to low barometric pressures. That’s a lot of things I have to fix just to be active and alert 24/7. But the one thing that outweighs all of those other problems is my sleep apnea.

Sometime when Mom and Dale are home, I fully intend to make an appointment with a sleep clinic to see if I need a breathing mask or not. I probably do, but the clinic visit is just a formality. Until then, I have to admit that I feel guilty about watching my time go by. I have no excuses. The reason I don’t get much done is because I’m literally sitting around doing nothing while waiting for my brain to stop being an asshole to me. As someone with a strong work ethic and an even stronger creative urge, this makes the guilt more powerful.

But you all have told me over and over again that I don’t need to feel guilty over not getting everything done at once. I sound like a broken record when I talk about mental energy, but that’s because I can’t thank you guys enough for taking that weight off of my shoulders. I hope you can continue to support me now that you know I’ve been spending most of my free time “hanging around” instead of relentlessly working.

I’m actually thankful I don’t have a day job right now. Even with my sleep apnea-induced mental tiredness, I’d still have to work an eight hour day doing presumably boring work just to pick up a paycheck. To those of you who have you are enduring the corporate grind, you have my empathy, my love, and my thanks. I don’t know how you do it, but I have all the respect in the world for you.

I do have plans to get some creative work done after Mom and Dale get home tomorrow. Bulldozing my way through unedited American Darkness stories is a top priority. Writing the second chapter of Blood Brawl and introducing Ivan Blackstone to the story is another top priority. Before those two things, it’s a new week at the WSS contest and the prompt suggestion is “Different Worlds”. Here’s a synopsis of my eventual story this week, which is called “Stardust”:

　

CHARACTERS:

　

Marcus Edge, Morphing Druid

Mitch O’Connor, Space Mercenary

　

PROMPT CONFORMITY: Stardust is a world different from our own.

　

SYNOPSIS: Mitch is hired by an intergalactic corporation called World Corp to colonize planets by killing off the inhabitants and burning the plant life, thus getting them ready for rebuilding into the CEO’s image. Mitch has been doing this kind of work for a whole decade, but when he goes to a hermit’s planet called Stardust, he finally meets his match when the one person he has to kill is a shape-shifting druid named Marcus Edge. Marcus can change into any kind of earthen animal from a wolf to a bear to even something as annoying as a deerfly. During the battle, he reveals that the reason he became a hermit was because of his disgust with the human race.

　

I do have bursts of energy every now and then and I’ll always have free time of some kind. Come hell or high water, these projects will be done and they’ll be done the right way. You hear that, American Darkness stories? The Hate Train is coming for your asses! Hahahahahaha! The only reason I’m calling it the Hate Train is because it’s also the name of a Sanction VIII song and that was the first band that played on the night I went to see Cavalera Conspiracy in Seattle this past May. And as long as I’m making references to obscure metal bands who probably don’t venture outside of the Sea-Tac area…

　

(Points to American Darkness) This is what I stand for!

(Points to Stardust) This is why I fight!

(Points to Blood Brawl) This is what I live for!

Prepare to die tonight!

　

We’ve got ears, say cheers!

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“The Miz is WWE’s version of Right Said Fred: he’s a one hit wonder.”

-John Layfield-