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Coffee with David
Volume 1 Issue 1
August 1, 2010
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In this Issue
 Spotlight
on Coffee with David
Spotlight
on New Website
Spotlight
on Upcoming Presentation on Internet Writing
Spotlight
on Upcoming Presentation on Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing
Spotlight
on Poetry
Spotlight
on Articles
Spotlight
on “The Tower”: A Science Fiction Short Story
Spotlight
on Herne’s Law: a Space Western Novel
Spotlight
on Shattered Dreams: a Spy-Fi/Crime Drama Novel
Spotlight
on Dark Medicine: a Gothic Horror Novel
Spotlight
on the Devil’s Bounty Hunter: a Paranormal Crime Drama Novel
Spotlight
on Haunted Days: a Supernatural Horror Novel
Spotlight
on Nomad’s Ocean: a Science Fiction Novel
Calendar of Events
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This newsletter for my website is named after one of
my favorite blogs I use to write. Coffee with David as a blog was
a glimpse behind the scenes. In that spirit, I am going to continue to
provide a “behind the scenes” look at the life of one writer with the
hopes that you will share in the laughs and tears, triumphs and defeats.
2010 has proven to be a year of overload. My “bill
paying job” has been super busy. My writing output has suffered, so I
have dropped my blog writing so I can focus on the writing that matters
most: articles, fiction and poetry. The blogs were fun, but they were
eating away time I did not have anymore. In place of those blogs, I will
be putting out a monthly e-newsletter with the publication date being the
first of the month. |
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For sometime, I have wanted to redo my website.
After talking with a few friends of mine, I took the plunge and did a
total redesign with a focus on ease of use and a focus on the writing I
do. As with any website, there will be many updates over the next month
to make the site better and make corrections.
The banner on each page is comprised of four
different pictures chosen to represent the fiction genres I write. The
picture of the graveyard represents horror. The picture of Neptune as
seen from one of its moons is for science fiction. The next picture is of
a skeleton with a dagger between its ribs to represent the paranormal
crime drama. The final picture is of a cop’s badge and a pistol for the
spy-fi/crime drama stories. These four genres are the core of my fiction
writing.
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On August 28, 2010 at 12 PM in Kirkwood Park,
Kirkwood, Missouri I will be presenting a seminar on Writing for the
Internet as part of the St. Louis Writers Guild 90th
Anniversary “Writers in the Park” writers’ conference. The seminar will
focus on internet journalism, writing content for websites, and writing
blogs—especially an eye on ethics, style and legal issues writers face.
This seminar, as with the conference, is free and
open to the public. For more information, please visit
www.stlwritersguild.org. While pre-registration is not required, it
is strongly recommended so that I have enough handouts for everyone. |
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On August 28, 2010 at 12 PM in Kirkwood Park,
Kirkwood, Missouri I will be co-presenting with Jaclyn Devey, Winner of
the St. Louis Writers Guild 2009 short story contest, a seminar on Science
Fiction & Fantasy Writing as part of the St. Louis Writers Guild 90th
Anniversary “Writers in the Park” writers’ conference.
This seminar, as with the conference, is free and
open to the public. For more information, please visit
www.stlwritersguild.org. While pre-registration is not required, it
is strongly recommended so that we have enough handouts for everyone. |
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I am a reluctant poet. Part of that is from the
classes I had in High School that stressed poetry was written in rhyme.
The other part was that poetry has been looked down upon as flowery or
feminine. If you have read or heard me read some of my poems, they are
not flowery or feminine. Some are darker than an Emo’s dream. My poems
are portraits of the world as if seen with just a slight tilt of the head
to look beyond the accepted norm people see—and like Stephen King wrote in
The Colorado Kid, though I may miss the exact quote—when God
created the world, he gave it a tilt.
As for poetry being feminine, I will remind the
speaker of such words that samurai warriors of Japan to the warrior-poets
of the Scots to the celebrated writer and swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac
were poets. I stand with them.
If not for the constant support of other poets and
writers, my poetry would remain mental exercises. Because of them, I have
had some poems published and like “The Tower”, I have put some of the
poems on the web for people to read.
Currently I am working on various poems and a
separate collection of warrior poems called Shadowed Warrior. |
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Speaking to my fellow Americans for a moment, do you
know how much of your life is run by administrative law? Administrative
laws are regulations that have the force of law written by bureaucratic
departments of the government. This is the case for both the Federal
government and the state governments. Administrative law can be the
implementation of laws passed by the legislator, orders by the executive,
or can be rules that the department believes it needs in place. Either
way, no one you voted for wrote those laws, but they are a fact of
everyday life.
Recently, I have broken down under pressure and begun
to write articles on the administrative laws I work with everyday in my
“bill paying job.” With the changes in health care coverage in the
United States, I have been busy with both my “bill paying job” and writing
online articles about the changes. Most of the focus of these articles
has been on Medicare, but Medicare has always driven the health insurance
industry. If you have ever had a company deny coverage for something,
before you go hopping mad like an ape, look at Medicare first. You may
not be on Medicare, but it is the first place the industry looks to
determine coverage.
When it comes to the cost of health care coverage,
before just blaming the insurance industry (which bares a portion of the
reason), look also at the administrative agencies in your state and at the
federal level. Many things they do drive the cost upward through
mandates.
With this said, I have been posting numerous articles
on new Medicare regulations, trying to show the good and the bad in a
balanced light. Anyone who has a parent or a grandparent or they
themselves are on Medicare should stay informed. I hope my articles in
that area help everyone understand what the Health Care reform is
doing—the good and the bad. |
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The Tower is a science fiction short story that I
have posted free online to give readers a taste of my writing in that
genre. It is the first of a few stories I plan to make available like
this.
The main characters, Mark and Shelly have been
dispatched from Fountainhead to repair one of the colonies skyscraper
sized atmosphere exchange towers. The colony, lost on a world with
runaway greenhouse gasses, is in race against time—will the planet be
terraformed before the colony grows too big for its resources. If only
they can keep the towers online, but the constant breakdowns are causing
the resources to be spent even faster. When Mark and Shelly discover the
reason for the breakdowns, a new discovery is made about their world.
Like all discoveries, sacrifices are made.
The Tower grew from the same idea as the upcoming
novel Nomad’s Ocean, but with an entirely different twist.
To read The Tower
click here. |
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A few months ago I began researching and plotting a
Space Western. While some believe that a Space Western is nothing more
than dressing up a science fiction space opera with cowboy hats and old
furniture, I disagree. The opponents have enough kids’ cartoons and other
stories to support their point of view. However, with Firefly and
Serenity, Joss Whedon showed that a Space Western could be much more. I
am not rewriting Firefly or even Star Wars (another Space Western).
However, I am tying my story to same hitching post.
The original concept for Herne’s Law is completely
different from what it transformed into as I started working with the
characters and plotline. One huge character difference is that Herne was
going to be of Welsh background and based on a ghost of the same name—an
inspiration to the old Western song: Ghost Riders in the Sky. However,
during the character development, I heard a Mexican-American Comedian joke
about the role of Hispanics in science fiction. Like many jokes, the edge
of truth is there. He joked that you see a lot of White people, some
Black people, and occasional Asian—but where were the Hispanics? Then he
referenced Chewie from Star Wars. The joke made me think of all the
science fiction
 stories I had read, movies I have enjoyed, and TV shows I
have watched. His point was made and almost against my will Herne
transformed into a character of Hispanic descent—which has been a
challenge and I am very grateful to the advice and assistance from my
Hispanic/Latino friends.
Another aspect of change is the role of the American
Civil War. History tends to repeat itself, and in the new Herneverse, the
role of a civil war and its outcomes plays. Now, I can hear the moaning
some people may be doing. Nevertheless, let’s take a step back for a
second and look at the American Civil War with a science fiction eye.
What was all involved in the war? The answer is multileveled. It was a
war fought between two ideas of government. One government idea was of
state run independence as in a confederacy and the other of a strong
central government that can supersede the individual states. It was also
a war between technologies. On one side, we had an economy that focused
on the industrial machine. The other was an economy that focused on the
human machine (I do not mean solely, but I do include, slavery into that
statement).
The truth is, the fight over these ideas continues
even today in various parts of the world. As a science fiction author, I
can easily see these ideas and the others in the civil war being fought
again in the future. This is the building blocks of Herne’s universe, but
not the story entirely.
At the time of this posting, I have written
6,811
words in this novel. |
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The question of illegal immigration has come to the
forefront of the consciousness not only in the United States, but also in
many countries around the world. Today, in the United States, the focus
of the attention is on the state of Arizona, which has passed and partly
implemented new immigration laws. Regardless of which side you may stand
in regards to this issue, the story of illegal immigration and those
behind it is much deeper than what any news media will portray.
I began work on Shattered Dreams in 2008 and had to
put the story aside to do more in depth research. Now, it is coming back
and just in time to when the controversy is now boiling over. The goal of
Shattered Dreams is to dive deeper into organized crime, human
trafficking, and politics.
It is not a book simply about illegal immigration and
law enforcement. Shattered Dreams is a novel of undercover
detectives working for a fictional city’s police intelligence unit who
must put their lives on the line not just to enforce law, but also to stop
a race war that comes like a tsunami wave. It studies a job where you
must live a life of a lie. This is a life where the safety of your family
and friends is maintained by keeping them away from your work. It is a
life where danger is at every turn, where you can never believe that you
are alone. This is a life where you cannot go home and feel safe, because
the enemy is on your home soil. It is a life where you are willing to
sacrifice your life for a stranger. This is world of Shattered Dreams.
At the time of this posting, I have written
4,438
words in this novel. |
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Everywhere you turn in a bookstore you run into a
vampire story. The market may be flooded with them, but Dark Medicine
is a story that will not die. I wrote a first draft of Dark Medicine,
which was over 500,000 words, in 2009. The problem was I made the story
far too complex. Like many a novel the length of War and Peace, it
collapsed under its own weight. I put the manuscript into the tomb—my
nickname for my drawer of manuscripts waiting for me to come back to, and
moved on with other projects.
Over the last few months, in discussion with various
writer friends, I have been rethinking the tale of a vampire being
reawakened after several hundred years of entombment. Yet, when I thought
about the novel, I thought about how complex the story was and what caused
it to go wrong. For the life of me, every time I took a bite at it I
seemed to have missed the artery—until now.
With both happiness and horror at realizing what I
have done wrong, I have begun the rewriting of the story of Alexandre
Levreau and the town of St. Croix.
At the time of this posting, I have written
1,082
words in this novel. |
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The idea for The Devil’s Bounty Hunter came
from multiple directions and became a collision in my consciousness. I am
a fan of the FX Television Series: The Shield. Its main protagonist, as
you really cannot call him a good guy, is Vic Mackey—a very consequential
moralistic detective. The character was strongly written and well acted.
It left an impression in my mind. I just never thought I would play with
a character like him. However, in The Devil’s Bounty Hunter, I
will. The Devil’s Bounty Hunter is a paranormal crime drama novel,
whose main character is also a consequential moralistic detective by the
name of Reo Pennington. She is no Vic Mackey, though I could easily see
them tossing back some beers as well as doing things that Vic was known to
do.
Like Vic, Reo’s boss wants her badge. She runs the
line between law enforcement and the criminal very closely. She has no
problem doing what ever it takes to get the job done. She is also
burdened by debt as she cares for a mother who is not in the best of
health. Skimming some of the drug dealer’s money never picks at her
conscious either—after all the money is only going to sit in an evidence
locker and then . . . well, why not put it to some use?
What Reo never counted on was another idea—well,
actually two ideas that collided first and then collided into the Vic
Mackey like character: that of a bounty hunter and of a reverent—with some
other twists. In the first chapter of the book, Reo is killed. She comes
back to life after making a deal with the Devil. What is that deal
she has made? You
will find out when you read the story.
The hardest part of the plotting and character
creation for this story is the not the portrayal of Reo, but of the
Devil. For his character, I have gone to the Book of Job and a few other
Old Testament books as well as other references. Then I am mixing in the
aspects of a few characters played by the late actor Gregory Peck.
This story should be very interesting and very fun to
write—not to mention a real chess game between characters.
This story is in the queue to be written. |
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Haunted Days is a novel about a Catholic
priest who has left the priesthood over the child abuse controversy. I am
writing with my background in Catholicism, having thankfully been taken
under the “wing” of a bishop when I was young, and taught to study and
understand the faith, rather than just accepting what is told to me.
Child abuse and the scandals surrounding it in the Catholic Church has
given the church and the Holy See a black eye. I am not looking to add to
that or pick on the Catholic Church. After reading an interview of Father
Gabriele Amorth, which inspired this novel, I wanted to explore the life
of a man who leaves the church in protest and tries to reconcile his faith
in God and the Church with the abuse that has occurred.
Thanks to the help of someone whom I will not name at
this point, not without their permission, I have an understanding of the
pain and loneliness that such a priest as my protagonist in this story
would face.
With that said, this is a horror novel that focuses
directly on exorcism. Unlike my other novel, The Devil’s Bounty Hunter,
this is not a fun game of cat and mouse. [For the record, I don’t treat
the devil lightly in The Devil’s Bounty Hunter either, just
differently.] My protagonist in this story still feels the call to be an
exorcist and finds himself in a spiritual battle standing toe to toe with
evil.
I am in the middle of my research on this story.
That research includes some extensive reading on exorcism, especially
events written about the experience of Father Amorth. Father Amorth is a
Catholic priest and an exorcist of the Diocese of Rome. He founded the
International Association of Exorcist. |
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Have you ever wondered how man might build a city on
the ocean? I don’t mean an oil drilling rig or a big cruise ship, nor do
I mean a city by the ocean. I mean actually on the waters of the ocean
where there is no land in sight. While Nomad’s Ocean is set on an
alien world where there is not any land at all, the concept of having to
build floating cities has been researched as a possible method to help
with the crowding of our planet.
The concept of building a city on the ocean is not
new. You can find floating cities or cities standing in the middle of the
ocean in many science fiction stories. While the concept remains in
science fiction, the reality of it may not be too far away and could be
created with the technologies we have today.
Nomad’s Ocean is a story of colonist who have
traveled to a new world, expecting it to be like Earth. They were wrong.
While it is habitable, the entire world is one giant ocean. With limited
supplies, they begin to build a new home, facing the dangers that such a
world would offer in the ways of storms, tsunami waves, or even what may
lie in the deep. |
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August Open Mic Reading at
Wired Coffee
Wired Coffee, 3860 South
Lindbergh Blvd.
Sunset Hills, MO 63127
August 10,
2010 from 7PM to 9PM
I will be
reading from Herne’s Law.
For more
information:
www.stlwritersguild.org and
www.wiredcoffee.net
Writers in the Park—a St.
Louis Writers Guild Writers’ Conference
Kirkwood Park, 111 South Geyer Rd.
Kirkwood, MO 63122
August 28,
2010 from 10 AM to 2 PM
I will be
co-presenting a seminar on Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy at 10 am. I
will be presenting a seminar on Writing for the Internet at 12pm.
For more
information:
www.stlwritersguild.org and
www.kirkwoodmo.org/content/City-Departments/1804/parks-recreation.aspx |
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