Long-winded Update

It has been way too long since I’ve written here. Well, since I last wrote here there have been quite a few changes. Kori got out of the hospital, after being in with pneumonia for five days. Somewhere in the whole mess (either at the doctor’s level, the billing lady’s level, or at the insurance level) someone screwed up and the insurance company is trying to claim ‘previous condition’ and they’re trying to pawn off the whole $12,000 debt on us. That’s not why I buy the expensive ($200 per paycheck) insurance. Meh, it will all come out in the end, it’s just frustrating.

Well, now that that rant is over, the rest of the catch-up since May. Kori just kept getting sicker and sicker. I called to schedule a vasectomy, then somewhere in there, for the 4^th of September. The last Friday of July, however, Kori thought she might want another kid. So, I called and canceled. Then, the next week she realized she was wrong, and we both knew that we were done. We prayed and both felt so. So I called the next Monday, and re-scheduled realizing I wouldn’t be able to get the operation until the first Saturday in October. However I asked to be put on a waiting list in case anyone canceled. I had already received the paperwork and rules for after the surgery.

I thought I was at least in for a wait until the first Saturday in September. That was until that Friday the 3^rd. I got the call at work (one of the rare days I was at work; I had been working a lot at home because up until last week Thursday Kori had had a lot of bad days and I had to beg Darrin, my manager, to work at home a lot). The caller told me is that a cancellation had occurred and I could have my vasectomy the next day at 11:45. I said “yes.”

I called Kori, first, to tell her. Then later I called David Weinstein (my former manager at Rio Tinto and now one of my best friends) and asked him to be my driver to drive me back from the surgery. He was cool with that.

The next morning, I dressed in my best t-shirt and Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” pajama bottoms. When we dropped the kids off at Kori’s mom’s house, Justin yelled out, as we left, “Bye bye, Mason’s fertility.” We drove over to the doctor’s office in a building that looks like something from Philadelphia's Independence section. We went in, I turned in all the paperwork, and waited. Waited for about an hour in a waiting room that looked like the den of an expensive gentleman's club with over-stuffed sofas and armchairs (just not leather). There were a chest of drawers that bulged out in a round curve in the center of its three drawers. Its light-brown wood was grooved and carved in a nice re-creation of a style from the 1930s. A very modern 32” TV/VCR sat on top giving CNN a broadcast to the empty waiting room. A table in the middle of four single chairs was a small round table with many men’s magazines stacked and laid out in a neat order. David pulled out some magazines which he had brought and began to read them. I turned off the television after half an hour on CNN of the report about the miners, a tragedy to be sure. But I kind of had a lot on my mind.

Finally, Dr. Lisa Stout, tall with long curly-hair came out in her blue scrubs and white sneakers to call me into a room for a consultation. Kori and I walked in and she looked at me. “You are a very young thirty…” she began, looking at my chart which she held with my other permission papers on a manilla folder. We explained our situation. Yes, I am thirty, but Kori had two incredibly difficult pregnancies, one with our son one with our daughter, and she was having problems with her IUD so I was getting the vasectomy to take care of the IUD problem. So I had Dr. Stout perform the surgery.

And yes, I had shaved the surgical site the night before. The hair still hasn’t grown back.

Since I started this blog entry, Kori has been back to the hospital every week this month. She still is not improving very rapidly. I just keep praying that the blessings she has received will be enacted in her life so she can truly heal and not need to go back to a hospital again for a while; at least not until she needs to go in for her orthopedic work, which I hope won’t be for a while. The kids miss her and I do too. I find it hard to sleep when she’s not there.

On the plus side, I did have a short story spring entirely formed into my mind. I wrote it in about a week. 11,000 words. I, right now, can hardly wait until 3 November 2007 when I can open the story, print it out, and then do my first-pass edit.

I was an idiot tonight, I wrote a true, heart-felt message to Neil Gaiman through what I thought was his myspace page. Boy did I feel chagrined when I went back to the main page and saw the “not the official page, just a fan page” message. Oops. I’m sorry to the owner and maintainer of that page. But, if Neil ever reads my blog, though I don’t know why he would, here is the text of the message.

Dear Neil,

I discovered your works quite late in the game, but since I discovered you, through your BBC Neverwhere, I have become an admirer. I really respect you and what you have done not just as an author but as a father as well. I can tell from your interviews and children's writing that you truly love your wife and children. I am the husband of a wonderful wife, Kori, whom I respect and adore deeply. We have two wonderful children, Harald (3) and Klara (1.5). I am finding that Stephen King's comment in his On Writing is true: "Art serves life." I write for them.

I am the nephew of SF/F writer Dave Wolverton (David Farland) and am friends with several other authors in the business. I am writing my own works nightly to follow in my uncle's footsteps. I will be submitting my first professional piece in seven years before Christmas. (And maybe I'll get paid for it this time.)

I primarily want to thank you for dipping so deep into the collective unconscious when you write. Your works make me think and explore my own thoughts and mind. I love how you draw on mythology and other classical references to not just tell a tale, but weave a story.

I learned a lot about mythological gods which I did not know before reading American Gods. I loved just the good-natured fun you gave me with Neverwhere (I had actually purchased a bootleg copy on VHS before I bought my DVD copy when A&E put that out; I bought it as soon as I knew it was coming out). THEN I finally read your Sandman books. My mind was opened to whole new ideas which I loved. Your characterization is flawless and your population of your stories is alive and approachable. And, by the way, 1602 was so incredible, it has been the only comic book I have purchased in the last ten years.

I am not going to (or at least I hope I have not already) go all fan-boy on you. I just wanted to message you and say thank you. You have written some of the sagas and Eddas of our times and I hope to be able to meet you some day in person.

I will keep my eyes and ears open for your next trip to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Thank you sir,

Mason Emerson

Well, that embarrassment is over. I can’t wait until I can actually meet and talk to him. I’m going to try and do better at updating my blog and gain some readers to follow my saga the way I follow Neil.

Listen to me here, I sound like a total fan-boy. I sound like I worship him. But more, it is that I truly respect the man for what he’s done and how he lives his life.

I’ll try to update more tomorrow or the next day.

M—

Thank's Chris!

I had despaired that no one was reading my blog anyway. I was getting ready to throw in the towel on this whole blogging thing. But someone actually read my blog. Thank you Mr. McKitterick for your comment, it has given me hope that when I link my own future website to this one, I will continue to write here. I thank him for reading it. The fact that he took the trouble to read it just makes him all the cooler for having done it. Check him out at http://www.sff.net/people/mckitterick/ . I hope, maybe in a summer or two, to be going out to Lawrence, Kansas (a really fun place I’ve been to before) to enroll in the summer SF workshop. Right now that is still too hard to arrange as Kori and I have two kids under three. I still write daily (almost) and have not given up my hopes of achieving all the “new author” awards I will qualify for with my first book. But, I need to get on the stick and get things finished.

Speaking of which, I actually (read: finally) finished inputting my corrections to “Crisis of the Mind,” my first completed short story (read: novella; I am a little long-winded). I’m handing it off to Kori again for review. Then it’s to input her corrections and I do that big step and hand it off to my readers, whom I hope will include a couple of my friends (and relative).

I guess that should be all for now, I have to get back to work.

Peace all!

My Learning and My Top Ten Books

I wasn't going to blog today, but I decided that I might as well. Neil Gaiman always is interesting to me to read as he posts, so maybe, some day, I’ll be interesting to someone. I am still writing my story and corresponding with L.E. Modesett Jr. for help in processing stuff. I am still working on some of the stuff I’ve been assigned at work and studying up on virtualization and grid computing. It’s interesting and I think that it might be influencing my story. In fact I know it is, but so is everything else I read.

I commute about forty miles each direction to and from work, for now. So I made sure to stock up on audio books to listen to going to and from work. I am using KU’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction’s Basic Science Fiction Library as kind of a list to give me suggestions as to what to read. They are at http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/ and well worth the visit. Dr. Gunn and Chris McKitterick are two wonderful human beings. I started my listening with Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker Trilogy. I personally enjoyed the rather darker tone of Mostly Harmless unlike Adams himself.

The sad thing here is, though, that the Salt Lake Public library has no other audio books between Adams and Haggard and then nothing again until Heinlein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers (the book never the movie), and Stranger in a Strange Land rank as three of my top ten novels of all time (I think I’ll list them as part of this post). I am currently listening to The Rolling Stones and seeing where Roddenberry got a lot of his ideas.

I am also physically reading other things: Neuromancer by William Gibson and Ansen Dibell’s Plot. I am trying to refine my story telling tools. But I realize that my writing will still only improve if I actually do it. So I am hoping to prove Bradbury right, from Zen and the Art of Writing, when he said through quantity (of words and sentences written) quality will, with all hope, come.

Mason’s Top Ten Books (In No Particular Order):

1. Herbert, Frank Dune

2. Card, Orson Scott Ender’s Game

3. Bester, Alfred The Demolished Man

4. Gaiman, Neil American Gods

5. Gaiman, Neil Anansi Boys

6. Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land

7. Heinlein, Robert A. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

8. Heinlein, Robert A. Starship Troopers

9. Asimov, Isaac The Foundation Trilogy (I know it’s three books but I have them in one volume)

10. Bester, Alfred and Zelazny, Roger Psychoshop

I would also rank Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles, the entire thing, up there too, but that’s ten books all on their own and, as with my cheat with the Foundation Trilogy I would include them as one.

I haven’t blogged in a while. For that matter, I don’t think anyone actually ever looks at these. But I guess I write them more for me, to have a bit of a record as I make my way through the sledge to the bright shores of publication and prepare for the whole new strain and struggle that will be. I am writing my story, many thanks so far and more to come to LM for all the help you’ve been thus far. Thanks to Neil Gaiman, though he’ll probably never read this, for blogging and showing me that I can be a writer and be normal as well. He is a dad, just as I am, and he successfully juggles his writing career around his family. I do find it hard, though, to write when I have work from 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday and have to drive an hour each way. (I know people in New York are saying ‘cry me a river’ but for me it is hard.) I don’t have the option, really, of car-pooling, having a wife with the occasional special need or emergency, as our lovely children end up hitting her or damaging her at least every other day, I have to have the flexibility and mobility of being able to leave at a moment’s notice. And then even when bedtime hits, it is not always well received or respected. What can expect? They’re two and one.

But I love all three of my dependents, they are the light of my life and world. Art serves life, not the other way around. I write because A) I have to and B) my family deserves better than they’ve had. Kori deserves better than she has ever had in her life. I know money won’t make that happen, but perhaps my writing and the money I will get from it will make it easier for us to be able to do the things Kori and I have been denied in our childhoods.

Such is love, such is life.

The Move is done! Can I get back to work now?

Arg! Moving sucks! It has totally screwed up my writing schedule. And we still have unpacking to do. But I'm hoping that time will stretch a little better now. We got all of our stuff out of the old place, but the normal dirty moving stuff is left. We didn't leave the old apartment filthy, just very cluttered. But hey, we already told the old landlord that he could keep our deposit to improve the place. He was kind of a lousy landlord anyway. Great guy as a person, but a lousy landlord. He and his wife really should just sell the place and get out before too many more things need to be repaired.

So, I'm hoping that, now the move is over, I can get back into my pattern and schedule for writing. I miss it. I would get up, stretch, read my scriptures (have to give BIG DAD his due so he will let me have a little bit of success in my writing, that was my agreement with Him), and then write for five pages or until it's time to go to work, which is still quite early. But usually I get three to five pages written in that time. I'd like to re-establish that pattern.

My first priority is to take care of my wife and kids, that means get up early and go to work. And, if I can ever get to bed again at a half-way-decent hour, get up while they're all asleep so I can write without interruption. It sucks, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for them. My wife comes first. Then my kids. And keeping my job takes care of their temporal needs. Then I ask for my time to write and thus take care of myself. I write because I have to. But art serves life, not the other way around.

A Little Writing Time is Better Than None At All

Here it is, a new year, and I'm still not finished with anything. I haven't even finished inputting my corrections for “Crisis of the Mind.” I know I need to get on the stick. But the stick is a short one. I can either write new stuff in the early-morning hours in which I can still some time, or I can input corrections. I'm choosing the former for now. But when one is moving, it gets tough to steal the time at all. And that's what any artist of any profession has to do until they can make their art their profession. Unfortunately most of us will be completely unable to make it our profession. Most of us have to do a day-job to keep our minds inside our bodies instead of on to the next state of existence. Such is the human experience.

I, to compound the fact that I do have to worry about world matters for myself, have a family, small though it is, that I must provide for. Now that the financial needs are being provided for, again gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the job at Novell. Now we are just finishing up the move to our new condominium. We moved in December 27^th last year and are now almost done with our month-long move. We decided to pay the rent one more month on the old place to use it as a glorified storage unit until we can get the stuff moved in that we already have moved into the new place. Living right off the freeway in Murray has advantages too. It's nice that it has cut ten miles out of my daily commute.

I, finally, got twenty quick minutes in to write this morning after I had finished my scripture study because I slept in to 5:55. I need to try and get up at 5:00 to get out by 7:00 to allow myself the writing time I need. I almost missed a whole week of writing because of this move. The daily grind is along the lines of get up at 6:00, because we didn't get to bed until 12:00/1:00 AM just so I don't fall asleep on the way home from work in the car, a crash would suck. I leave for work, as I said, at 7:00 AM. I arrive at work somewhere just shy of 8:00 where I stay until 5:00 PM and after sometimes. If I'm lucky, and other drivers don't do something stupid, I may arrive home by 6:00 PM. Then there is time for dinner, and then we run back over to the old house, depending on if we can get someone to help watch the kids. I think sticking them in Harald's old room with the toys and locking them in is a good idea that way they don't get hurt while we move the last few things. Kori's friend Larry is coming back on Saturday with his truck again to help us get the last few big things out of there.

Regardless, if we're lucky, we get back home in time to get the kids down for their 9:00 PM bedtime and then we clean up and unpack usually to 10:30 or 11:00. If we get any time to talk it's after we're finally in bed and then we need so much defrag time that we'll both read our respective books and magazines until it's too late to do anything else. Then I'm up again at 6:00. Fun life, huh?

I look forward to getting things settled, it will make it so we all can get back into a routine that might help us all get a little more emotionally and temporally stable.

Well...

Well, I made my goal of 50,000 words. I made it three days short of the end of the month. But the search for the day job made it so I actually didn't get much further than 53,700 words for a final count and I would rather not deeply discuss the outcome of the story. I didn't like it. There are elements there that are good, but, I think, somewhere along the way, I lost control of my story and it nose-dived. I only pushed through the downward spiral to make it through my goal. I made it, so there.

Now that I've made it, I have kind of been spinning my writing wheels. A lot of external factors have contributed to that. I did finally land that day job. But it's in South Provo and my wife and I live with our two kids in Salt Lake City. Or we did until just this last Wednesday when we started moving into a three-bedroom condominium. It's nice, the rent is even nicer. And the space is the nicest. But between that move, the holidays, and sickness over said holidays, my writing has suffered. I started this morning, though, new year and all, to work at re-establishing my early-morning writing sessions. I forgot to stretch though, so I'll have to remember to do that tomorrow. But goodness knows hiking the stairs up to the seventh floor with a bag of about twenty-five pounds is stretching and exercising enough.

Today I decided that I have two stories I can work on in an effort to keep the writing wheels turning. After all, according to Bradbury, through quantity comes quality. Although I did decide to re-visit David Morell's section on neuro linguistic programming (NLP) for writers just to help me get a leg up. The two stories that I will work through in this time of dearth of a passionate new idea, have been kicking around in my head for some time: “The Wraith” and an untitled one about an alien abduction. I'll see how they turn out. I wish I had an extra me, one to just read all the stuff I wish I had in my head, and then the me to take care of the problems of daily life until I get my writing career off the ground and become an author. My friend Ken Jennings said that, “...a writer is someone who has completed a story. An author is someone who has had it published.”

Here's to authorship for Ken, me, and anyone else out there who writes. But I don't write for the goal of authorship. I write because I have to, the authorship is just a side goal. But the hope is there as well. Ultimately, I write my stories for myself, and if authorship comes, the I will ride that wave when it hits me.