Funeral.

My uncle died last week. My mother's only brother. He spent more than two years battling and succumbing to an aggressive brain cancer. I don't know name it has been given, but they give people a 5% chance of surviving 24 months at whatever stage he was diagnosed. He beat those odds. In December of 2010, he was given 4 to 6 months. He survived into January of 2012. As the months passed, the pain increased and so did his medication dosages. You could see that he was fading. Or at least my aunts could. Until that last week he seemed about the same to me, a bit groggy, but still about the same.

Then on Saturday, on the morning before my Cousin's wedding, it all ended. I've stated that I have mixed feelings about it. He lived a sad life and had a sad death. Now he was no longer in pain. Were I a man of faith in a just universe, I think that this would test my faith. But only until I was able to convince myself that he would be getting Sky Cake at this very minute and that all was right again.

What really matters is my Aunts. They strove heroically to make sure that their only brother's last weeks and months were as full as they could make them. Concerts and roadtrips and everything else they could conceive. They got him out of the house and moving in an attempt to make the best of a rotten situation and I think to keep his spirits from flagging. I don't think they ever told him how bad his situation was. There was the implication that he may not be able to fully comprehend. Whatever. I feel that they did right, as hope can be a fragile thing.

I wasn't close to my uncle, so no need for condolences. I've spent most of my life on the far side of the state, when not the country. I would only ever see my uncle a few hours every few weekends when we came up to visit the family as a whole. Both sides, and those hours were divided between all of our familial obligations. When you're in town, people get offended if you don't drop by for a visit. Never mind that they don't ever bother to swing by your corner of the world.

We would only pass a few words of greeting. Hey, how are you, fine and you, fine. Before settling to watch television quietly and wait for the visit to pass. I'm not much of a conversationalist, and neither was my uncle. We held little in common besides – though maybe more than I thought. I won't utter any blather about how I wished I would have gotten to know him better. This would be empty prattle on my part. A lie. I am not one for connections for the sake of a misplaced sense of duty.

He had suffered from mild brain-damage. My mother went through a laundry list of possible causes – each was sadder than the last. From illness to falling and striking his head. He managed to graduate high school and hold a job for 20 years. The latter I have yet to manage, and beats my best attempt by more than a factor of ten. His illness though left him with a speech impediment. Once, when I was eight or nine, I made a joke about it. I don't recall getting punished or yelled at. I never did it again. Once was well more than enough. Even as a bratty smartassed child I knew that, though I had yet to learn that sometimes it was better to let a stupid joke go even though it seemed to be really funny at the time. Honestly, sometimes I still forget this lesson.

My uncle was generous and stable, whatever his flaws. He was a fixture of the community, if not a pillar. He was well loved by his family. I doubt that when the time comes, my funeral won't be so well attended. I am an abrasive introvert with hermetic tendencies. My circle of friends is small. I am OK with this. I prefer it that way.

As it was, I felt about the same about my uncle's illness and death as I would any acquaintance. Sad, but the sadness was more of an abstract. Like how one would feel if a friend of a friend were to die. More sympathy for those others than a sense of personal loss. I may not have had a connection with my uncle, but my mother and her sisters and most of my cousins, and my Grandmother most of all, he was a part of their life. Many of cousins grew up around him, seeing him daily. He and my Grandmother lived together. She's from stoic German farmer stock. Hers has been a rough life as well. I think that in the end that the final death brought a sense of relief.

This leads finally to the funeral itself.

Funerals are there for the comfort of the living. They do the departed no good, but allow those who were left behind a chance to gather and grieve. I don't think I want a funeral. I'd just like to be dumped into a hole and buried. No coffin or chemicals. Then have a tree planted over atop me. Something natural where I go back to where I came from in the most profound and literal way. The best way for the atoms that make up my body to rejoin the universe. That is for me. Now back to my uncle.

I've been to one other funeral in my life, my Great Grandmother's back in the 1990s. She died after a long bout with bone cancer while in her 90s. I was in high school. Hearing of her death left me with that 'punched in the gut' feeling. I can still remember some of the experience but not too much, bits and pieces mostly. What she looked like in the casket and the meal following. Who knows how much else, and what is real and what manufactured. Which details have changed over the years as memories have rubbed up against one another and merged. Was it a sunny day? Was the church full and as cavernous as I remember?

Along with five of the other nephews I was a pallbearer for my uncle. I was a part of the funeral ceremony. Thankfully for us, they have nifty carts for the casket. There is very little actual bearing of the pall, and most of that is into and out of the hearse. According to the Pastor my uncle had passions for Coke, Sweets and Pizza. More than one of us cursed these passions and wished that he prefered rice cakes, salad and exercise. We were there as an honor guard of sorts, to walk beside and 'guide' the casket as it left the church and entered the chapel. We were expected to be there an hour early to greet the guests and prepare.

That was to be my job. My anxiety kicked in. It does when I feel trapped. And here I was for an indeterminate length of time with no back door to flee to. So I sat off to the side as the various friends and family made their way in. I only really recognize the more immediate family, aunts and uncles and cousins. When it comes to great aunts and second cousins, well at best I've met many of those people only once or twice in my life. They were unknown faces. Maybe I had heard the names in the past and maybe not. They're family, but no more part of my life than is Christina Hendricks. Though she is most welcome to introduce herself.

We were gathered for the final viewing before the service began. One by one we were trooped by my uncle's casket. To say goodbye I suppose. The purpose of the ceremony wasn't explained. I'm not really one for goodbyes.

I didn't touch the body. Nor did I get to close. I didn't want the experience. Plus, there are far too many horror movies kicking around in my mind and revving up my superstitious monkey-brain. As I stood and looked at what remained of my uncle, my mind conjured a powerful image of him waking up and lunging at me with his hands open. I moved on quickly, opting to allow the next person in line deal with the wrath of zombie-uncle while I high-tailed it to safety.

After that the family gathered into a small classroom for a prayer/pep talk by the Pastor. I don't really recall the exact contents beyond Jesus is awesome. It was a repeated theme through out the day. The affirmation of faith was not unexpected.

I was raised with a somewhat obscure off-shoot branch of Christianity. For years I tried to adhere to faith. I didn't want to let that part of my life go. But I think too much, and read too much and finally came to the conclusion that the story was too circular for my liking. In order to buy in, you had to take some of the given material as granted, and I had reached the so-called age of 'independent verification of facts.' I shun descriptive adjectives when applying them to myself.

My mind and outlook are constantly shifting as I listen and read and ponder. But Militant Agnostic seems good, I don't know and neither do you. I do find myself being hostile towards the die-hard self-righteous religious types. Especially those who were just lucky enough to have been born into the 'true faith' without having ever had to explore the whole vast realm of the human spiritual universe before making up their minds.

I am ever questioning and unbelieving. In my writing, many of my characters tend to share these traits with me. I think I will trust more in science until God Almighty, the eternal asshole that he is, gets off his ass and sets the world straight in no uncertain terms. Give us evidence that we can all verify and share. That we can record and review and discuss. Nothing secret or personal – the experience should be shared by the whole of humanity and repeated for every generation. If God created us in his image and likeness, God should know better than to allow a bunch of stupid monkeys such as we to play a game of politicized gossip over the course of hundreds of generations by schizophrenics with a cause.

Until he fixes his vastly flawed system, he may eat a bowl of fuck. For this, if there is a hell then according to Christian teaching, I am going there. Depending on who's take is to be believed, I won't be alone.

As such, I've not been to church in years. In the future, I would like to sit in on other services for all the various faiths and sects. To get this basic human experience. To observe and perhaps record. I've noticed with the Lutherans, unlike my own experience, that they sit while singing hymns. I wonder how many other branches of Christianity do this and why. My own sect always stood. Baptists seem to as well. Do Muslims and Jews sing at their services? How about Hindus and Pagans?

I don't know about other funeral services in other faiths and cultures, how they are arranged. This one involved prayers and poetry and music. The pastor read selections from the Bible. Generally the service was cheerful and positive. I would like to suppose that this is how all Lutheran services are, focus on the good rather than the bad. In my mind this would be far better than those fear-mongers who forever harp on eternal damnation and hellfire and brimstone. Peddling hope is far more just than selling fear.

The Pastor spoke of my uncle's bravery in the face of adversity. I don't know if he spoke truly or if he was being flowery and painting a good face on the last to years of waiting. Then there was the promise of heaven. Many different faiths have a paradise that is held in trust for the true believers. The Jews invented heaven after they were conquered by the Greeks in order to keep their citizens from adopting Hellenistic culture. They taught that the faithful will meet God. Some Muslims believe that martyrs will be awarded a number of Virgins for years of awkward and traumatizing sex. While the Mormons are said to believe that they will become the God of their own universe. Or maybe they'll spend an eternity with their family. I'm not quite sure, I've heard both. Maybe one is for the men and the other for the women. Mormonism seems to be divided based on sex in many ways.

The Lutherans, at least judging by this Pastor, only promise beer and pizza with dead relatives. Oh, and an end to worldly complaints. Something to look forward to, and not really so far removed from reality that it would be impossible to believe. Life just keeps going on, only with all of the ups and no downs. I quite understand the appeal of this sort of belief. It is nice to think that there is some sort of cosmic justice or karma balancing the universe and rewarding the righteous. Even if the system doesn't make too much sense to me.

I have to wonder if it is just assumed at funerals that the recently departed will have made the cut and gained entry. How stringent are the criteria really? Will the preacher/pastor/priest/imam or whatever look down and say “well that dude was an asshole! Good riddance!”? Are the rose colored glasses assumed for the duration? We have a tradition of not speaking ill of the dead.

Following the funeral and the service graveside(in this case we used the chapel in the cemetery) the family and friends gather for a meal. Americans love to eat. Ham, Scalloped potatoes, beans and bread. Not to mention the rainbow of jello molds and salads. There are few things in life better than a substantial meal and feeling pleasantly full. You feel as if you're holding onto life. After the sad business of burying a loved one a meal seems that much more important.

Afterward.

You can learn a great deal about a fellow human being by pawing through their possessions. This is the basis of Archeology as the adherents uncover lost civilizations. What were the desires of the people and what did they believe? What sorts of things did they value? The same holds true with my uncle.

My grandmother asked us all to look through his things and take what we like. My uncle loved movies and music and had a fair-sized collection of DVDs and CDs, not to mention VHS cassettes and Audio cassettes. I wasn't the first through, or the last, so I picked a few of his films and a handful of cds that interested me.

Most of the music were by classic rock bands from the 80s and more recent pop-country stars. I think he had a dozen disks by the band Alabama. And at least 4 copies of ZZ Top's greatest hits. That was another thing about him, he was extremely fond of having back-up copies of everything – the man had hundreds of cassette tapes, many copies of albums he had purchased. His movie collection was even more diverse, ranging from love stories to action. But most were modern, those movies that came out during his lifetime. I personally snagged the Smokey and the Bandit collection. All seven movies in one box. Bad idea? Who would waste their money on that kind of crap? My uncle. I cannot really look down upon the collection much, I've knowingly purchased boxed sets that were bad and some which were much worse.

Finally there was his library of books. Most are hardcovers, not a one has been read. He, like much of the family, wasn't a reader. But he seemed to buy books almost obsessively. I cannot fault him with that, I do the same and have a substantial library of books that I will probably NEVER read myself. I just keep adding to the collection. It seems that he would hear someone mention a book and then go out and buy that book. I have done this exact same thing. Many times. I grab books that look like they might be interesting and often squirrel them away for a later date when I'm in the mood to read them.

My uncle had a substantial collection of porn. This didn't surprise me, I stumbled upon part of it when I was in high school some fifteen years back. The collection has grown since then. But to remember this changes my view of the man, that he was a man with all of the urges and needs. It makes my uncle less abstract for me and fills him out as a person. Like many men he yearned for female companionship, or at the very least sex. Biology is a powerful driver in human nature. Still, I think that the Aunts may have been shocked by the discovery. I wonder if the revelation would have altered the Pastor's funeral oration or opinion.

There he would be awaiting in the afterlife with beer, pizza and porn.

He was obsessive with his collecting and acquiring – even beyond the vale of movies and music. We found set upon set of drill bits and screw-drivers. Multiple copies of each, all the same, and most unopened. He collected them in what seemed to be madness. Why would he need drills or grinders? Or entire bins of tacks meant to hold down electric wires.

Then the revelation came out that my uncle wanted to be an Electrician. I don't know where he got the idea and why he clung onto that. Maybe he dreamed that he could master the skills. A noble thought, to try and improve yourself. The mom and her sisters don't think that he could manage it with his limitations. But that was his dream and more power to him. Life holds little meaning by itself. It is up to us to instill meaning into life, and we do this with goals and dreams and how we interact with the world including those around us. My uncle did this as well as anyone. So there he is, there he was. He inhabited that gray area between hope and despair.

The world will keep going.

Big Doings on the Road

Well, the wonderful week of clear and warmish weather has passed. And in proper fashion too, with a snow storm. Well, first there was rain, and then dropping temperatures brought snow. And wind. Can't forget that. As winter storms go, this one wasn't terrible. Driving in a snow/rain mix sucks, and some(most) people refuse to slow down. Still, I didn't see any accidents on the highway on the way out, and only one in town.

The way back, that was worse. The snow had fallen, temps dropped and it had begun to stick.. More was coming. The plows were out. I dropped my speed to around 40-50 when I came through a heavy band that was about 50 miles across. Even the Truck drivers were going slow in places. I was following a convoy that was at least eight trucks long at one point.

A few of the fools who didn't slow down ended up turned around, flipped over and in the ditch. At one point in the night I could see a car up about a half-mile ahead of me flashing bright yellow lights on the roof. Turned out to be a cop car who was looking for one of those fools who didn't have the sense to lighten up on the gas.

So, Thursday night was long. But the weather was only part of it.

Now onto griping about people.

Every month Cycle is delivered to the facilities. That is all of the medications needed for each of the patients for the entire month. For some of the facilities, this means a truck full of medications all in their little bubble cards. This leads to some problems, as the pharmacy might run out of a specific drug – so whatever was missed has to go over the next few days.

Wednesday was cycle. Thursday, the day of the storm was catching up and filling in the gaps. Guess which was more annoying?

One faculty member has the job of going over the medication delivery. Cycle as a whole is to be taken directly to that member's office during the day hours when that member is working. Cycle largely went smoothly. We had to change offices because the Nurse on hand didn't have a key to the elevator and she didn't want me to haul the endless totes downstairs by hand. Doing so wouldn't have bothered me, I was on the clock and I was willing to get the exercise.

Cycle+1. 20 more individual packages, plus several more cases. The little Aveo I drive across state through the storms was packed full. Cycle Proper is delivered to the office. After Cycle things change. At night all of the packages for that administrator are to be brought to another building, one that is directly across the parking lot. Easy enough, I've done it before, and know what to do. Take it in and give it to the med passer and she signs off on it and saves it for said administrator.

Problem. She was indignant at being responsible for the Administrator's packages. Why should she have to do this? She asked. The administrator is in another building completely. I shrug my shoulders – Delivery Monkey knows not the answers. Delivery Monkey follows instructions. Instructions are, deliver large pile of packages here and a have staff sign paperwork and stash them away for administrator. Delivery Monkey thanks you and leaves, basking in a job well done.

Bing, bang boom. Just like they were last night, and the night before. Staff grabs the poor counterpart who works in the Administrator's building, and sees about having him sign for the packages. No dice – he ain't allowed. Rules is rules and all that guv. I get frustrated, she's 'sposed to sign, she won't sign. I call our rep/salesman/troubleshooter – as these are my instructions for when I run into snags, figuring that he could bludgeon this through.

He calls administrator. She calls the building and talks to staff. Staff then hands the phone to me and I am informed something along the lines of 'it is very easy, why are you making it difficult?'

Right. Why am I at all. I'm such a dick.

Papers are signed. Offerings of a pleasant evening are given. I leave the facility and stew about being bitched out for someone else's douchery. Administrator will be woven into the Pharmacy novel – someway or somehow.

Encounter 2.

The facility seems to have cut down on staff. Their medication passers – not nurses, just college aged kids whom they hire to pop pills and give them to the patients – now seem to divide their time between multiple halls. Said staff are sometimes difficult to locate and waiting is often involved as they finish up tasks and are summoned by the orderly on site.

As I was awaiting the arrival of the staff one of the residents approached my little corner. He was chattering a little in a friendly manner.

Then the staff member arrived. Resident in question declares that he knew that the med passer would be along. Which led to the revelation, that he had psychic powers. I was willing the staff to hurry up and get his checks done and sign off on the delivery.

If nothing else this dude looked the part. Now, after years of watching movies, reading books and comics, I have been presented with a definite idea of what a mutant with psychic powers should look like. If Hollywood were casting him in a movie, he'd be a dead-shot for Psionic Wasteland Hobo. Or perhaps an oldtimey prospector long living in the mountains away from civilization. A man who has been used hard by life.

Then he started talking more, about said powers. I think. I didn't catch everything he said. There were several layers of conversations about the room and the radio was on. But he was talking about being pyschic, which then morphed somehow into him telling me about a space microbe that was scooped up by a satellite and returned to earth. The microbe made an entire town disappear. Was it a conspiracy theory or a vision of the future? I've met some folks who believe in conspiracy theories on that campus.

But I'm not sure. What I do know is that he was talking about the plot to the movie the Andromeda strain. Maybe that was the conspiracy, it actually happened and the government covered it up. Or maybe he just switched gears and decided to tell me about his favorite movie. I merely agreed with him that it was a good movie and held off until my transaction was finished and I could finally show my back to that place.

I'm told that I need to make ten goals for myself for the job. Goal three through ten are all Not get myself killed by those various means so casually available to me. Seven involves brain melting by psychic hobos.

Hack Novelry part 2 Errata – an addition to yesterday's winding path of whining.

So, I explored different avenues with getting my work published. Here, I had something that I made, a world that I slaved over and lived in for months at a time, and it was just sitting on my harddrive collecting sub-atomic dust. One day it occurred to me to see whether or not I could upload it to Amazon for the Kindle as an independent. The answer was yes. They required a steep 65% cut of the profit at the time.

E-Publishing of course has its pros and cons. Like about everything else on the planet. I like the phrase 'double-edged sword'. It cuts both ways. The positives and negatives are also heavily intermeshed, with reasons showing up on both sides of the list, depending on how one looks at these things.

Pro: No middlemen, you go directly to the public, there are no publishers or agents, thus you get a larger share of the profits. That seems to be me the highest Libertarian ideal of the free market in action – though I'm not a Libertarian. No editors, your story stays exactly as you envisioned it.

Con: No editing, no assistance with cleaning up your prose, and you only have one set of eyes (unless you have a horde of willing friends – most of my friends are busy, uninterested, or both), to catch mistakes and help add that layer of polish. Lack of resources or expertise – you're forced to market it yourself. Lack of reach, no inexpensive print books(I prefer print to electronic). There isn't anyone out there actively working to pimp or improve your story. You're alone in the world to fend for yourself. I find myself needing feedback, a seperate set of eyes. It is difficult to envelop the entire story in my mind. I cannot see the forest for the trees as they say.

Woohoo I just brought out another tired old adage!

There are, out there in the vast wilds of the internet, services that will create a physical copy of your book. I've tried it – and sold somewhere around 3 copies(I have a feeling that at least one of those was a friend of mine). I don't blame people for not being interested, the first version had a lot of formatting issues and I'm the sole editor, so you can safely bet that there were mistakes aplenty. In fact, I've myself purchased nearly as many copies(2) as proofs.

As it is, I am a one man show. I create my own blurbs – which I mentioned I lack skill in doing. I've slathered together my cover art, some of which I am proud of visually, though I'd rather a real graphic artist uses their skills.

I started out and my sales tactic was to upload and wait. In the mean time I'd Calculate how many sales I will need to quit my shitty job and take up the gauntlet full time. The mathematical principal worked out to the answer “Way more than you're getting fool!”

The independent ebook author's dream seems to involve a deep hope that eventually someone will find your work, and then rave about it on their blog – prompting others to buy and rave. A word of mouth campaign. I'm just waiting for the likes of Simon Pegg or Penny Arcade to magically show up out of the chaos. So far, the wait has been long, and I honestly don't expect it to ever end. Magical Thinking and all that.

Really, if wishing and Magical Thinking worked, I would be a billionaire Ninja-Wizard who lived in my underground compound with a cadre of brilliant and beautiful geek women of all different flavors. The so-called author of “The Secret” can cram it into all of their various orifices. And then pack it in with a chainsaw.

Really though, how does an independent get the word out? I want to be fair and honest, no hype or bullshit. I hate, HATE, advertising. I also hate approaching strangers and just talking about my work. How is the blog different? You're coming to me if at all. Once again, I'm just tossing this up in my little point on the web. I like to think of it as a recording of me talking to myself.

Amazon has offered a service where one can give their books away free. Wooh? Well, if it gets you some buzz, why not?

But once again, how do I go about capturing an audience to spin my tales? I've been told that the stories are great. The characters are interesting and enjoyable. Sure, all of that was from my mom, but a mother must be Objective when talking about her kids prospects right? Pfah. Actually, after a year of complaining that she didn't get a copy of zombie 1, and receiving one, the Mom still hasn't gotten around to reading it(she doesn't like zombies). - all relevant compliments have come from outside of my circle.

The high point of December was receiving a letter from a fan wondering if there was going to be a zombie 5. How simple it is to raise hopes and spirits. A few positive words from a stranger is all it takes. Yes, I have plans for zombie 5, but other stories have gotten in the way. Especially after my hopes flagged over the first four books not going anywhere.

I just need to keep pushing onward. To find the energy to finish the projects I'm working on. The time to write the ideas that I have bumping around in my head. This is slow going.

Hack part 1

Hack Part the One

I enjoy writing. To the point that I have two blogs, though I don't update either as often as I should like. Sometimes concentration is difficult – my attention span is so short.

Sometime back in the spring of 2005 I was watching 28 Days Later with a friend of mine. After she freaked out at the Church Scene, she told me about her grand plans whence came the Zombie Apocalypse. She and her friends had decided that they were going to hole up in the local Walmart Dawn of the Dead style. Really for them Walmart was the only choice. The local mall sucked donkey gonads, and it even did that poorly. The big box concern was the most logical destination for a bunch of geeky fucktards to flee for if the dead started coming to life. Never mind that all the other assholes in the city would probably have the same idea, this is their fantasy damn it! The other denizens can find their own big box store turned fortress.

This sparked an idea in me, to write a story about those people. The ones who made plans for the ZombPoc and then had it dropped into their laps. It was a fun idea and my plan was to write a 8,000 word short story. Maybe 10,000 words. And then see where it took me. I made fantastic headway and the writing took on a life of its own, to the tune of about 35,000 words by that summer. Then I lost steam and put the project aside.

Then I graduated from college. I live in Michigan, and our economy has been in the cesspit for decades. It hadn't improved, and has only since gotten worse. On top of that I have a Bachelors of Fine Arts with a Concentration in Ceramics, and a second Major in History. The History Major? I added it to the queue because I thought it would be more applicable to the outside world.

Heh. Stupid art fuck. Who let you leave home and play adult?

As I worked through college and being cheap and obscenely dull I had money 'saved' If you don't take into account the tens of thousands in student loans. With no real prospects or direction in the real world, I tried to decide what to do next while applying for Fed jobs in the region. After graduation I came across a copy of Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide.

Boom. I was inspired again. I began writing 2,000+ words a day seven days a week. Every day after the morning routine I would work on the first 1,000 words. When that was done I would get some exercise and otherwise enjoy my afternoon. Then dinner. Then around 8 or 9 I'd start working on the second 1,000 words. I looked forward to getting up and going to work every day. The story was a blast and the process of creating it was a blast.

Six months after I graduated I had 300,000 words of zombie uprising goodness following the travails of several groups of survivors for one full year following the apocalypse. I named it the Survivor Chronicles(i am shite when it comes to naming). I was proud of what I had done.

I thought I needed a story that long, as in college I had found Robert Jordan and other fantasy authors. Those men and women who create those giant doorstop volumes. This must be what the Industry was looking for me thought. They will see my work and pay me thousands and thousands of dollars for the honor of being my publisher! Now all I needed to do was decide what I was going to do with my newfound fortune.

Wrong.

As a Ceramics/History major, I have no real education in the ways of getting published. I just had to leap into the awaiting arms of Google and figure it out. The worst part for me was the crafting of the Query Letter. How do you take the whole of who you are, and your labor and winnow it down to a concise trio of paragraphs? And make all of that interesting? And sell this idea to a complete stranger.

Even now, nearly five years and additional five novels later, I don't have the foggiest notion. There is a feeling that my letters are hit or miss. But after a lot of thinking, something came out and my first twenty pages were on their way to Tor books. Even then I wasn't sure exactly what I had. One book? Or two? Would there be more? My story was an open-ended affair with no over-arcing plot element. There was no great evil to defeat. Just people surviving the apocalypse as best they could. Surely, foes sprang up. But there wasn't a built in ending. The series would last as long as my interest and imagination could hold out. Right now, all told the series a bit longer than the Lord of the Rings. Or about the same length as a single Robert Jordan(RIP RJ) novel.

Here you go Tor. Take it in! This was sometime in the summer months of 2007.

I don't know if it's a failing of the creative mindset to be able to construct and inhabit such grandiose delusions. Or maybe I was just driven by a naïve optimism. All while teetering on the brink of insecurity and self-doubt. They were like a pit beneath my feet. Tor books crushed my hopes with a single letter. For about a week.

It was a blue week as I climbed out of the pit and pushed forward.

I was at the time only aware of one zombie novel, and that was the afore mentioned Max Brooks' World War Z. Though I admit that I really didn't go looking, so there might have been dozens of zombie novels by then, and there probably were. There is only one overriding fact in my mind. I like zombies. Many of my friends share the interest. Someone must want to read this story.

I then sent out more letters and samples. One at a time. To any Publisher who foolhardily took direct submissions from the bottomless sea of unknown hacks. TSR/Wizards by far sent the most promising letter with a 'No, but if you write something more in our genre, please think of us.' Or at least that's how I translated it. The letter left me feeling a mite more hopeful than I had been.

I still have that letter here somewhere I think. I kept them all as a reminder (mostly so I didn't forget and try again).

Oh well, by then I was already working on what would turn out to be Zombies 3 and 4. Each time rejection hurts a bit less and the effects go away all the sooner. I've built a shell of pessimism. I send letters with little exposed hope. When I open the responses, from those who have the courtesy to respond at all, I chant my mantra. That expected answer: Thank you for letting me see, but this doesn't work for me at this time. The bane of the struggling writer.

I've had the phrase repeated to me a hundred times or more now.

There are those who might suggest that one takes a more positive outlook and mindset. To expect that good things will happen. As if one could force their will on the universe simply by wanting something and expecting it. This is Magical Thinking. And it's utter bull shit. Ask any five year old who didn't get that pony that they asked for for Christmas.

All you can really do is keep writing and keep trying. So, I moved onto agents. I've since retired my zombie novels and moved onto other stories. Short and long. No dice. But I keep writing and submitting. All while working – mostly in between employment. An eight hour shift takes too much out of me and drains my focus. My creativity comes in bursts.

About that time, I had quite a job that I hated. HATED. For a company that I despised. I am fairly sure that remaining there would have driven me to a heart attack and an early grave. So I handed in my two week after over-reacting to some petty event. And there it was again, the chance to write and the forgotten desire to do so. Even with the uncertainty of being able to eat it was the best decision of my life. I quit, so there would be no unemployment. Back to living on savings!

The cycle began anew. Write, revise and submit. And be rejected.

A wonderful tool has evolved as I quite my job. Or at least it came to my attention. Independent publishing, largely with eBooks. Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Smashwords among a legion of others. My zombie novels have finally found a home. Once again my optimism was fired up and I jumped into a whole new maze of confusion. How much do I charge? I started high and then toned the price down, tweaking it as I thought about my problem.

My stories don't have professional editing, or cover art. I am a one man show. One who really doesn't enjoy editing at all. It's work, where writing is fun. The words just seem to flow on past my eyes, making it difficult to fix problems that are there in the prose. But it needs to be done and so I tackle the problem as best I can. Write, revise and submit.

And hope. There's always that fragile hope.