Thursday, April 17, 2014

A writer's secret...

Everybody likes secrets, right? Especially other people's secrets. In this post I'm going to reveal one of mine. It's not some sordid characteristic  that carries over into my stories and no, I don't have a concubine. I love my wife and I like to keep my life simple. This secret reveals a little about me as a writer. And for me personally, it's exciting. Every year for the past six to eight years (time flies and who's counting anyway...) I make my way up to our place in Oklahoma. We have a couple of hundred acres in southeast Oklahoma near the little town of Talihina. You've heard of the contemporary rock band called "Kings of Leon" for sure. Well, they're from Talihina. It's hard to imagine a rock band, especially a really good one being from Talihina.
Our place is about eight to ten miles from town and in the middle of it there's an old farmhouse. I stay in that farmhouse whenever I go there. My wife's grandfather built it back in the sixties just before he passed away. There's something very peaceful and relaxing about being in that farmhouse, I love it. Of course, it's old and old farmhouses have mice and spiders and even an occasional snake. Rat snakes, nothing to be afraid of. My wife refuses to stay in it, she says too many spiders and critters for her. I've never been bitten by a spider or a mouse or a snake and I've slept really close to all of them before. I did get bitten by a tick while I was there once and got Rocky Mountain Spotted fever. I think a snakebite may have been easier to deal with... This farmhouse is a respite, a temple of peacefulness. There's a few ponds on the place, I used to fish them before the drought a few years ago caused them to get really low and killed off all the fish. And the place is big. A couple of hundred acres. Lots of trees, open meadows, as you walk around you're sure to flush out a herd or two of deer and some turkeys. To the north towers the modestly high Buffalo Mountain. No majestic, craggy peaks like the Tetons, and certainly not high enough to have a timberline. Just a beautifully wooded, verdant mountain that was once roamed by Choctaws, Chickasaws and the James Gang. As in Jesse and Frank James. On the other side of Buffalo Mountain is Robber's Cave, the infamous hideout used by myriad marauders back in the 1800's.
This place is called "The Farm". Has been ever since I can remember. It was once a working farm and probably will be again someday. But for now it's just a quiet, peaceful and inspiring place. As a writer if you come here and aren't inspired you probably need to be embalmed pretty soon. It inspired me to write a book that I'm working on now and should be published sometime this year. I call it a 'historical thriller'. It's fiction of course, but based on a real place, real events and real people. Some of the characters were real, the main characters weren't. I got the idea for the book while I was there several years ago and have written much of the story sitting in the old farmhouse. I am, in fact headed up there this morning to spend Easter weekend there. Early spring is an absolutely wonderful time of the year to be there.
I suppose you could say The Farm is my Walden Pond. I choose to go there and live deliberately, as Thoreau would say, but I take plenty of food with me. And unlike Thoreau, I have to return to civilization pretty often. But while I'm there, sitting around the campfire listening to the coyotes and the occasional cougar (that's no joke, I've heard them), gets me as close to God and nature as I've ever been. God doesn't even mind the glass of whiskey as I sit around the fire. He told me so. Really.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Malaysian Air Flight 370

About a month has passed and Flight 370 still hasn't been found. The Australians have picked up on the pings form the black box, but they haven't located, or found anything yet. Very sad for the victims and especially the families of the passengers. And in the squalor and ineptitude of their helplessness the Malaysian authorities claim that every passenger remains a suspect. How nice, these families have lost loved ones in a tragic and mysterious lost plane and the authorities insult them by claiming all of them are suspects. Possible perpetrators of what has happened. It can't be called an accident yet, because no one knows or has evidence that it actually was an accident. Could a passenger be responsible for what happened? It's possible. Could a pilot have been responsible? Of course. In fact that scenario is a lot more likely since they were driving the damn thing. Given the level of sophistication the world intelligence community has reached, one would think it would be known if there were a terrorist on board. But those slimy little bastards seem to crawl in and out of places before the spooks can catch up to them. But they also like to claim responsibility for their vileness. They want the world to know they killed infidels before they go off to enjoy their 72 virgins or however many it is... I think it would be safe to say it wasn't the work of a terrorist. Could it have been a mechanical malfunction. Once again, it's possible. But airplanes don't have a habit of turning around and flying the other direction unless someone with a pulse takes the controls and turns it around. Again, I think it's safe to say, no mechanical malfunction. So, we are left with the arrow of guilt pointing at the pilots. Was it just one of them? Big jets have at least three in the cockpit. Did all three conspire to ditch their own jet? Probably not. Radical thinking capable of something like that usually doesn't come in triplet form. Could the perp have 'disabled' the other two somehow then executed his plan and 270 people alone? Now we're really getting into the field of likely scenarios.
But, there's always a big but in every story. But, we don't know that for sure, and the sad thing is we never will. We can figure out some likely scenarios but we'll never know which one it was. There's certainly no survivors and any and all evidence is lost at the bottom of a very big and very deep ocean. It's really hard to find stuff in a place like that. But, there's another one. The last thing anyone needs to do is say that 270 passengers are suspects. Or, is it maybe 269...

When Does it end? For now, it doesn't...

An incident that happened some time back when a high school basketball player sucker punched a player from the opposing team causing serious...