On the Subject of Hobbits

               I'm a big fan of the fantasy genre. I suppose given my own choice of subject matter for my first book that should be apparent. But where I prefer to write dark modernist twists on classic fantasy and folklore archetypes, I like to read any variety of the genre, depending on the quality. I guess that's what I want to talk about here as well, the subjective nature of quality.
              I should give a bit of background here. I recently started taking part in a movie night that one of my coworkers invited me too. It's something that he and some of his closest buddies have been doing since High School and they take it very seriously. Essentially once a week they all get together and everyone chooses two films (the guy who hosts the viewing each week has a massive DVD collection) and through a series of group voting and ritual narrow those choices down to one film. I should reiterate that they take this very seriously.
             At first I didn't quite know what to make of the whole thing. I've got what I think is a pretty wide and varied taste in film myself but they're of course all films that I sought out. As an example there's a large selection of Bruce Willis actioners mixed in with more studied dark comedies such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or 80's cult classics like Big Trouble in Little China. It was actually referencing some of these films with my friend from work that got me invited to the weekly hang out. But these guys casually discuss Japanese cinema from the fifties and sixties, look forward to a new film from a documentary director, and feel the need for me to experience films from the 30's I mention I haven't seen. I don't like to bring up that there's a reason I haven't seen the majority of the films they mention. I guess I can divulge the dirty little secret here... I don't want to.

           All of the guys in the group, or the majority, like myself have at least one child so there's no alcohol or serious partying. Just movie nerds hanging out, eating junk food, and watching films that they may not have seen otherwise. I should point out that so far I've made it three viewings, due to work and other constraints and have not thoroughly enjoyed any of the films I saw.
            The three films, a documentary, a Chinese comedy/drama, and a true classic (the one I enjoyed the most), were all interesting but not necessarily something that I wanted to invest the four to five hours out my one night off a week to see. But I appreciated being invited and being included by such an obviously close knit group of guys. This inclusion also extended to their email group and this is, I suppose, where the true point of this post comes in.
          The guy who hosts the group, lets call him Stan, he recently viewed the new Peter Jackson film The Hobbit. Well Stan, who can be a bit let's say... judgmental of films, didn't care for the it. I opened one of the group emails and saw a massive four paragraph dissertation on why the film was lacking and promptly closed the email without reading it further once I got the gist of it. This wasn't done out of shock or irritation, I just hadn't seen the film and didn't want to go in with a predisposed view of it.
           I should point out here that I read the original Lord of the Rings Trilogy in Junior High, The Hobbit quickly thereafter and the extended legendariams of the Lost Tales and the Silmarilian after that. I watched each film of the Trilogy every December as they came out turning it into my yearly ritual. I would take my last final of the semester and then go see the new film in the trilogy. Then I would go home and watch the ones I had on DVD. I own the extended editions and am one of the people who has watched every single hour of the supplemental material, more than once. So, to say that I was looking forward to The Hobbit would be a bit of an understatement.
            I saw the film with my wife and I enjoyed it. Was I predisposed to enjoy it? Maybe. I can't say for sure. I know that there were issues with the film. I have issues and little gripes with all three of the films from the previous trilogy. The way they portrayed Frodo (winy and self -centered in the books, yes, but not the overly emotional and self important ponce they turned him into in the films), the casting of Eowyn, the rushed way some of the scenes play out, Peter Jackson's sometimes irritating habit of falling back on his camp sensibilities and numerous other small details I saw differently in my head. They're not perfect and honestly never could be. But I still loved them.
            The Hobbit I found to be a lesser film, but enjoyable in a completely different way. In essence it was always a light adventure tale with elements of deeper darkness lurking behind it. This is where as a film The Hobbit finds its best stride. When the film focuses on the things from the original story, things from Bildo's reference point, I loved it. It had a different tone, more whimsical, more comedic, and even lyrical with songs mixed into the narrative. The possibly exaggerated nature of the creatures or situations (the mountains coming to life and battling for example) was something that I could enjoy because it's all being told from Old Bilbo's perspective and memory.
           They actually have a very nice scene early in the film that addresses this when Gandalf (the always excellent Ian Mckellan) tells Bilbo (an equally excellent Martin Freeman) that tales get bigger in the telling. So, the frame work is set up. It's only when they deviate form this that the film lagged for me. The Council of Elrond, the Radaghast Scenes, and the need to make Thorin into an epic hero, all undercut the quaint adventure tale. Did I enjoy those scenes? Absolutely. They're gorgeously shot and appeal to the fantasy nerd in me. That appetite is always hungry for more.
             But the part of me that recognizes story technique and narrative flow took issue with them. They cut away and shift the tone of the story which can never be the Lord of the Rings. Those films are not told from one characters perspective, they are supposed to be happening as you watch it. It's more of a documentary of events than the tall tale Bilbo is spinning as an older man.
            This brings me back to the film group and the emails. Basically Stan can't stop tearing down The Hobbit. Every time I open an email from the group, there's a new multi-page argument for why The Hobbit is the great example of Hollywood over-indulgence. He derides its plot, pacing, and acting claiming that there is not one truly great scene in the film. He has even started targeting the original trilogy of the films claiming that only the Fellowship of the Ring can be counted as a good movie and the rest are just so much fluff.
             I originally took issue with this whole line of argument and got my dander up as you would say. But I didn't reply. I thought about flying into a passionate and detailed argument for the films but stopped myself. I thought about what was really bothering me about his assertions, long-winded and overblown though they may be. I realized that what was getting to me was that if I really argued my case he would stop me at the point where I said that I was a fan to begin with and say that I was predisposed to like them and therefore my arguments for them invalid. I can say this with certainty because another person in the group argued for the films in much the same why I would and was told this exact thing. I think I actually got a little angry when I read something saying that the other guy who defended the films was wrong to like them and only did so because he was going into it convinced he would like them.

           That is what really bothers me. I can take that someone doesn't share my opinion of a film, but to discount my entire viewpoint because I was a fan of the source material is insulting. I love comic books but think that a huge group of the films based on the sources are horrible no matter the budget or special effects (I'm looking at you X-men 3, Spider-man 3, Superman 3-4 and Returns, any Fantastic Four film, Daredevil, and anything with Nicholas Cage turning into a flaming biker). I like to think that even with love in my eyes for fantasy and Tolkien's work in particular, I can recognize and enjoy a film on its own merits.

            I watched The Hobbit with my wife and enjoyed the film as I watched it. I didn't leave bored out of my mind and convince myself on the drive home that the spectacle was worth the price of admission, like a cheating husband convincing himself that what he did was justified. I enjoyed the world that was presented to me as it unfolded on the screen. I was not as drawn in as I was with previous films in the trilogy, there was not the same level excitement. But I enjoyed it. This actually very much mirrors my experience reading the books.
             I recognized the issues, evaluated them and decided that they were not enough to detract from the things being done right on screen. I did also find one truly excellent scene in the film. The Riddles in the Dark segment of the film, much like the original book, was incredible. Andy Serkis I would say possibly did a better job in this film than in either The Two Towers or Return of the King. And Gollum who is sad and pathetic in much of the Trilogy was truly frightening here. He was creepy and pitiful but seeing him drag away a stunned Goblin and casually bash the poor creature into lifelessness elevated the film to a level of menace that it required.

             The interplay, the tone, all of it was amazing. My only minor gripe was the level of lighting available in a cave but again it was Bilbo's memory of it, not the actual event and I let that go. It was a great scene. I guess what all of this is about is me trying to say that I don't want to get into a pedantic argument over why I liked a movie, although I have done a bit of that here, with a guy I barely know. That's not what I want to argue. I think that if you enjoy a film while you're watching it and can point to scenes that drew you in and got a reaction from you, an honest one, then you shouldn't have to defend it.
              If there's someone who had a deeply moving experience watching Transformers 2 (hey it could happen I guess) then so be it. It's not up to me or anyone else to convince you that what you experienced was only retroactive affection for a source material. I take issue with that entire frame of reference. We go to films to be shown something out of the realm of possibility and to enjoy something we couldn't have seen otherwise. Sometimes those films can miss the mark or leave us with a bad taste in our mouth. But it isn't for someone else to convince us that we were wrong to enjoy it.
              Some people think of film as a place where only elemental truths and deep statements need be found and those things should and do exist in film but sometimes I just want a fun ride. Call me pedestrian or a philistine in my tastes, so be it. Maybe I'm a bit like a Hobbit myself in that way. Give me a Second Breakfast, some good Ale, and a decent movie and I'm in Heaven.

Green Lantern: a Film so Horrible it May Have Saved Comic Book Movies

           In another post I'll probably address all of the things I found wrong with the film Green Lantern. Or possibly not, that would be a long ranting diatribe that would probably border on petulant. I'll just sum it up this way, Green Lantern is one of my all time favorite comic book characters and the film version of his story was laughably bad. And it may just have been so awful that it saved the comic book based film genre as a whole.

            The reasons for this can be laid at a lot of doorsteps, the director, the casting of Ryan Reynolds (who although funny and talented was not the right choice for Hal Jordan), and most of all at the feet of the writers and the studio. The whole comic book movie revolution has been both a blessing and a curse to those of us who love the genre. A blessing in the sense that in the last fifteen years there have some amazing films with truly incredible casts made about a subject that up until Blade hit cinemas was always regarded as the obsession of geeks and losers.

            As has been addressed before in other articles from countless other sources, what was once a subculture has become mainstream. As a person who once took X-men action figures to school with him in the third grade and read the Knightfall arc in Batman exhaustively between classes in Junior High, I now have to accept that guys who have never picked up a comic book walk around wearing Captain America shirts. Its frustrating but I can live with it because without that mainstream attention great films like the Dark Knight, Iron Man, the Avengers, X-Men 2 and First Class, and several others would never have been made.

            But for every one of the successful films there are at least three others that are total misfires. This is for several reasons. The first is that Marvel at the beginning of the Superhero movie craze farmed out a lot of their bigger properties to other studios and in doing so put themselves at the mercy of executives that don't necessarily care that we get the best version of a Daredevil or a Mr. Fantastic on screen. This isn't saying that Marvel itself has not made some blunders, I wasn't  crazy about the Incredible Hulk and I think Thor is really only saved by a few strong performances.

            It's really not too hard to see what happened. Studios found out that extremely large amounts of money could be made by producing films featuring attractive young actors with super powers doing heroic things. They went about this in the most efficient way possible, gathering up directors with mild to strong interest in the projects and using in house writers to produce scripts with varying amounts of respect for the source material. Sometimes this could work to amazing effect. Zac Snyder, John Favreau, and the masterful Christopher Nolan being the best examples. In Nolan we trust as my friends and I say.

            But like the films themselves for every Nolan, you get a Ratner, a Steven-Johnson, or a Story (I don't mean to pick on the Fox films alone but they've been pretty horrible). Film makers who were so poorly matched with the projects they were given that you wonder how the studios ever thought they would be successful. Of course in that first wave of comic book films it didn't really matter. As fans, we knew that Daredevil was going to be horrible, you could see it in the trailers, but we went. The same thing with Fantastic Four, and the same thing with X-Men 3. Oh, sure interest may have been down but those movies still made their money back. 

             Because in those early days of the comic book movie the fans were so happy to simply see a big budget film based on the Fantastic Four that we went regardless of how horrible the Thing looked or truly questioning why they thought they needed to Anglicanize Jessica Alba. Seriously Hollywood, if you want to cast a person of different ethnic dissent than the original character, that's fine. But slapping a blonde wig and some blue contacts on them to make a Hispanic American actress appear more Arian is just stupid and insulting. 

            Jessica Alba's acting ability or lack thereof is a different matter and a subject I'm going to step around here. Suffice it to say that the film, both films, made about Marvel's first family of superhero's The Fantastic Four, were truly horrible films.

            I mean other than the fact that he's trying to kill them can anyone tell me what they're trying to stop Doctor Doom from doing in that film? Nothing so far as I can tell. He murders another man earlier in the film (call this guy 'jerk who pushes the bad guy over the edge' man), but they don't know that. All they know is that he's attacking them because Reed Richards got his science wrong and turned him into a freak. In some circles what he was doing could be described as temporary insanity brought on by extreme stress and the so-called 'heroes' of the movie in fact try to murder him on the streets of New York and are celebrated for it. 

            I don't mean to go off topic but I think that this ties into the whole argument that for a long time the films based on comic books were being made with a great deal of misguidance. But studios didn't see any reason to change things because it was making them money. The formula was straight forward, hire a writer that has a dubious track record but can produce schlock (Simon Kinberg of X-men 3, Jumper, Fantastic Four, and This Means War  fame among others), and put around $150 million toward a film that follows the same essential formula.

            A random character or characters (our heroes) are introduced, they're the underdog in the story with some sort of odd character defect, they have a love interest that for whatever reason is beyond reach, they gain abilities, they learn to use the abilities, they doubt their own power, meanwhile some quasi evil but reflective character develops into a villain that the hero must dig deep to defeat learning a lesson and becoming a better person in doing so. A few of the films toyed with that line but not many. For a long time studios kept generating the same basic film because if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

            If you want to get technical Iron Man actually follows this exact formula to the best effect. That is the one time that doing it by the numbers paid off in terms of story. But when you rewatch Iron Man, there are so many original dashes of inspiration that it's hard to argue with the results. Robert Downey Jr. as has been stated elsewhere was an inspired casting choice for Iron Man. The rest of the cast was excellent. The effects were old school and still hold up and there is a genuine love and craft going into it's execution.

           Of course more original films have been made even from the beginning based on comic books. Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy is the best example but V for Vendetta, 300, Watchmen, and quite a few others. Some are hits and some (I'm thinking of the truly strange Superman Returns) are misses but they at least tried to branch out from the standard formula.

            Fans like me though would go to the formulaic movies and think about what might have been merely shrugging. Trying our best to find the silver lining that, horrible film or not, someone was making an actual movie with Deadpool in it, even if the end result was bastardizing almost everything about that character. It felt like things were going to continue on in that vein until Green Lantern was released.

            Green Lantern was DC's attempt to fire back at the growing juggernaut that was Marvel Studios. At the time DC comics through Warner Bros. studios had the Dark Knight Trilogy going but little else. Meanwhile, Marvel was wracking up hit movie after hit movie each summer with their empire building gambit that as we all know paid off in the billions. So, going to the old formula, DC applied the A (find an attractive likeable actor whose persona is 'quirky') times B (go with same origin story plot from countless other films) equals C (generic crap fest where a hero who isn't really heroic fights a CGI monster no one cares about) equation. 

            Unfortunately for Green Lantern, fans finally wised up. This isn't to say that Green Lantern didn't earn it's place as a bomb. It's a horrible film. Something that had the easy plotting of a kids sci-fi film from the 1980's without any of the heart or base originality you can find in those films. Ryan Reynolds was stuck (and I have to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and believe he wanted to play it differently) in the same quip-py guy role that has hounded him since Van Wilder. The CGI 'suit' looked like a bad body paint job. Blake Lively was so forgettable as Carol Ferris she could have just been called "paycheck". And finally (I swear) a villain that literally looked like shit.

            When I say that fans wised up, I mean that for truly the first time, comic book and movie fans looked at the previews for a film, read the reviews and decided they could catch it On Demand. Green Lantern did okay at the box office but overall it was a critical and commercial failure. This is a huge step forward. Because the only way that studios change what they're doing is when profit margins and markets change. With the death of Green Lantern, the film studios finally realized that they needed to do something different.

            There are still origin stories being produced but they're becoming few and far between. The Amazing Spider-man was a good film. The biggest complaints about it were the areas where it unnecessarily overlapped with the Raimi films and the sequel looks to be moving in a better direction. The few origin stories we do have in the works look more and more interesting. The studios are finally trying to produce original and well crafted versions of our stories.

            I believe that we are about to witness what I would think of as the 'Next Wave' of comic book based films. I think that The Avengers was the official end of the first wave and that Man of Steel will lead the charge of the second. The news coming out about casting and directors for the working projects look truly exciting. Josh Trank who made the great and underrated Chronicle directing a new series of Fantastic Four films. Edgar Wright making an Ant-Man film. We're seeing projects like Guardians of the Galaxy and a possible Dark Universe film from Guillermo Del Toro.

            All of this is to say, that if it took one of my most treasured superheroes being sacrificed to the Gods of Cinema to get studios to figure out that they need to actually put effort into these films, then I'll live with it. Because if superheroes, as has been stated many times before, are our modern mythology then the cinema is our most revered modern church. There will always be new films being made by new directors with new techniques and new writers to guide them. I don't mind one bad Green Lantern film because I'm fully confident that sooner or later another actor will wield the ring on film and I can't wait to see how they do it. 

Story Time

            Stories are a big deal for me and always have been. In many ways they defined my childhood and shaped my education. Hell, they were my education. Who cares about Geometry at thirteen? For me what was going on with the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings or with my favorite X-men was a lot more important. They were real to me. They were what I spent my time living and studying after the homework was done and the chores finished. And it's still where I like to spend my time now. 

            My introduction to stories started with movies, that unofficial god of the eighties. A time when it was okay to park your kid in front of the screen and let them soak in its comforting glow. I ate them up as a kid. Ghostbusters was then and is now, still my all time favorite film. It goes to a root belief of mine that sometimes great stories just happen. The right mixture of ingredients will merge and Bam! Lighting in a bottle.

            My childhood idea of the story and the hero was formed by a lot of those lightning strikes. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Muppets,  the golden age of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, John MClane, Bill Murray and the rest of the Ghostbusters. All of those elements blending together, with the occasional helping hand from a Willow or a Batteries Not Included. It was a healthy mix of fantasy, macho heroics, and snarky comedy that fed straight into an adolescence formed by more traditional sources.

            I know that a lot of my ideas on heroic male characters are formed not so much by the comic books I would later read and identify with but more the Clint Eastwood westerns my dad would occasionally watch when I was little. He was primarily a classic sci-fi monster movie guy, but that did little for me. It was seeing Clint on our big wood frame television, impossibly cool and collected, two massive guns in hand as he would slowly advance on some snarling bad guy that formed once and for all my image of the unbeatable tough guy.
          

 

             Stories became the rhyme and beat of my daily life as a child. I would take my action figures through large intricately plotted battles and campaigns that would last for hours and require cutaways and pick-ups. Each battle was a story in and of itself and every hero had their own voice. Every new film was an adventure to be treasured. Saturday morning cartoons told stories that amplified my imaginations reach and introduced me to one of my other great loves, comic books. 

            The thing that I always try to keep in mind regarding the films or the comic books that I either love or loath is that it always comes down to the writing. True, gifted actors can elevate the writing of any film or play and amazing artists can make even the worst scripted comic book something to collect cherish but the things that really resonate with us come down to writing. It's the words, the actions, and the motivations of characters that strike a chord and of course the best of all worlds for me is a film based on a great novel or comic book with a truly gifted actor bringing to life a well adapted fictional character. In this instance the standouts for me are Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and Heath Ledger as the Joker in the Dark Knight. 
             Of course there are too many other great portrayals and adaptations to list. These are just the top two on my list and still in the end, it comes down to writing. We remember great writing. It gets inside and stays with us. We forget bad writing, as simple as that. When we read a badly written book or a badly written movie, we know that something is wrong with it. When it's really bad, we remember that it's bad but can't remember the details. All that we remember is that it was something we endured instead of something that caught us up and carried us away.

            That's what good stories do. That's why those moments from my childhood in front of the television watching the movies and moments that I'll always remember stand out. They carried me away with them and embedded in my consciousness. I suppose saying that they imprinted on me is the simplest way to state it. Once I found novels (a subject I'll address later) I was hooked. The world opened up and although it doesn't need to be stated, I found that I was only at the limits of my own imagination and that of the author I was trusting to take me on an adventure.

            It's dangerous stuff trusting a writer. When we commit ourselves to a film or a novel, or yes even a comic book, we're allowing the person that crafted the story to carry away for awhile. We're putting ourselves in their hands, trusting them to see us through the coming trials and dramas, never knowing what might happen. If they do things right, a truly gifted story teller can get your emotions in the palm of their hand. If that storyteller fails, they've let us down.
            Although I would later learn narrative structure, voice, diction, and numerous other writing terms and devices one of my primary beliefs was learned watching those cartoons and reading the comic books they were based upon. Stories are endlessly fascinating things that grow and change on their own. The cartoons were based on the comics but told their own unique stories. It's the same with adaptations of novels and comics to film and vice versa. The formats and structure are different or the content has to be changed. So characters receive subtle shifts in their original persona that create their own deviations on the story.
            I believe that stories are endless. Their may only be five root stories, or one, or however many want to claim and that's in many ways true. The root stories do not change and it is hard to find truly original works but they do still happen. Because our creativity is endless and the influences upon it ever changing. I can think of no better profession to be in honestly. But as big a fan as I am, I would think that. 

Shall We Begin?

           I went back and forth on how to start this blog. With a story, the beginning is always self evident. For me that's being right in the thick of things, running from the word go. I  toyed around with the idea of doing something like that here. Just writing my idea on what stories are and why we love them so much but I don't think that's the best foot to lead with. No, at a certain point that I should actually take the time to introduce myself.
            My name is Jacob Kaine. I'm a happily married twenty-eight year old father of one who is trying to make a living as a fiction writer. Currently I'm one of two manager's at a local Fine Dining establishment in Fayetteville, Arkansas which also happens to be about as close as I come to a home town.
            I completed my first novel, a multi-genre Modern Dark Fantasy set in (you guessed it) Northwest Arkansas. I'm hard at work on my second novel, a fast paced heist story that has a few western as well as contemporary influences. I'm a fan of several genres but in fiction I like it dark. Comedy, horror, and action work best for me when they have an edge to them. I like to have my feet first firmly set in a grim and gritty real world only to find out that the real world has dark places in it.
            My other attraction in terms of stories is character. I can be drawn in like anyone by spectacle but I'll always come back for well written characters with a dose of real world humor. The grittier the better. If it tells you anything my own personal favorite author is the man himself, Stephen King.
           

                  Mr. King has been a distant friend through his writing for me since I first made my way through IT at the age of thirteen. Since then he's become something of a personal inspiration. His On Writing book is something I would suggest to anyone trying to find a starting point. His daily regimen alone is something to aspire to for any starting writer. The idea being that a writer should have a place where they write that is completely theirs that they go to every day for a set time period. Not always an easy goal to attain but one that I've found to be well worth it in practice.
            I try and write every morning for at least three hours although between my supportive but energetic wife, a fifty plus hour a week job, and a beautiful two-year old girl, I sometimes find myself asking where the day went and when I'm going to be able to put in my three hours on the book. A new regimen of waking up at five a.m. every day has helped a lot in this regard.
            I do have a degree in English Creative Studies which I only mention because it has done little for me in terms of a career beside broaden my horizons a bit as a reader and a writer. It certainly is not the entrance pass to a wonderful career straight out of college. If its any indication, my first full time job after obtaining my degree and leaving the restaurant industry for a brief time was at an armored car company. This is a common theme with people who have an English degree. We either teach or find ourselves adrift in the job market, trying to find something that meshes with our artistic sensibilities.
            The closest I've come to being paid for anything closely relating to writing was a job as a Correspondence Writer for a fairly large mortgage company based out of Oklahoma City. It was a season in hell to say the least and I left it after only a year. I have no problem with hard work but when that hard work saps every bit of my creativity in addition to leaving my family scraping to get by, well I think in that instance it's time to do something else.
            The one positive thing that came out my office job was that it got me started, really started, on my first novel. I'd toyed around with them in college, writing a bit here and there to have something to turn in for my writing courses and I had some good ideas which have led to both my current works. I dabbled a bit writing chapters when I needed something to turn in but really, I was too focused on the college pursuits of drinking, screwing, and trying to finish my damned degree. Plus anyone who has taken four Lit courses at once can attest that its very hard to even think about writing when you're pulling all-nighters just get the next days reading done.
            Of course that may all be irrelevant. The truth is that I wasn't in the right mindset at the time. I knew I wanted to write but I was unfocused. I figured there was all the time in the world to try and really get a book out. It was bullshit of course but I didn't know it. There's always time. And almost everyone has a book in them. They may need a little finesse and hard work to get it out and the language may be choppy but its in there.
            The other distraction was my second passion which is comic books. I'll probably get to them at some point in one of these blog posts but all that matters here is that I originally went to school on an art scholarship. My plan leaving high school was to become a comic book artist/writer since I also have a fair degree of talent in terms of illustration. My senior year writing project was a fully outlined (down to the issue) 60 issue run and written first full issue of a comic book series that I've been tinkering with for years.
            So, you can see where writing, real, rigidly scheduled daily writing, fell through the cracks for me. I would start a writing project only to turn back to illustrating and then back again for a short story. I let my creature comforts and daily distractions convince me that I could get to a book later when there was more time. Things may have gone on like that for a long time. I can't really say what would have happened or how long I may have taken to come around to doing what comes most naturally if it were not for meeting my wife and my daughter being born. That set a lot of priorities straight.
            The office job refocused things a bit for me. I had a little help in that arena. My wife and I agreed that she should be the stay at parent home early on while she finishes school. This was decided for several reasons that I don't need to get into here. It only matters to say that one starting income does not a comfortable living make. We had a little girl who I of course want to provide the world for. And I found out that the stories were still in there.
            That was a major revelation. I remember being bored at the office one day, I was in between training modules and was told to look busy, so I started typing. Soon I was back in an old story that had been kicking around in my head. The next thing I knew I was a hundred pages in and it was clear that I needed to start working on it in earnest at home. The story was real, it was there, and it wanted to be born.
            Since then, we've relocated, I got back into a much more comfortable environment in the restaurant industry and things are doing much better in terms of finances. The biggest advance though has been finishing the novel. Its energizing and draining at the same time. Now all I can do is hope that people read the damned thing. In terms of what I want from a career of writing, that's it really. I want the ideas to keep coming, to keep getting the same joy out of living in the little worlds my mind spins out, and finally for other people to read and enjoy them. I guess only time will tell on that last part but for right now, the writing itself is a blast.