Is Stephen King Overrated?

My mother wouldn't let me anywhere near Stephen King's novels when I was a kid. Of course, that didn't stop me from reading them. Cujo was the first book of his that caught my attention because I thought the idea of people being terrorized by a demon-possessed dog sounded cool. Granted, Cujo is not King's best work.

But, to be frank, I never thought any of his work was that great. Even as a teen I got to a point where I couldn’t figure out why his books were so popular, and I thought, “You know what, I don't like these books. Why am I reading this?" From Carrie to It to Pet Sematary to Thinner, I thought King’s books were boring, wordy, unscary, and forgettable.

But that's not my beef with him. There are plenty of awful writers out there, and I just don’t bother reading them. But with King it’s different.

You see, he wasn’t all the rage when he first started writing. Throughout the early parts of his career, King was dogged by critics who called him out for his genre-specific, “popular” literary stylings, even as he was selling millions of books annually.

In the early 80s, The Toronto Globe called his novel Carrie "a clumsy experiment." The Los Angeles Times called Cujo "Paws" instead of "Jaws," saying, ‘[the book] doesn't work." In 1983, the same year that Christine and Pet Sematary were published, an essay in the Times suggested it was a slog for reviewers to read King's work, saying they would rather just have a beer with him than read his books. In 1986, the Times said, "Where did Stephen King, the most experienced crown prince of darkness, go wrong with It? Almost everywhere."

In 2003, King won the National Book Foundation’s award for distinguished contribution, and Boston.com writer and Yale professor Harold Bloom let the world know that giving King the award was wrong. He said it was “another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life.”

A recent article in The Huffington Post said King can’t write. The author, Michael Conniff, an instructor and writer himself, said Stephen King’s broad-stroke descriptions are actually hurting his work.

In an article in Salon, Dwight Allen from the LA Review of Books asked why is Stephen King so beloved? Allen dissected a bunch of his books and came to the conclusion that King is overrated as a writer and as a storyteller. He argued that sales do not translate to excellent writing, and questioned some publications that wrote glowing reviews of King's body of work.

So why is he so popular?

I think King’s saving grace was Hollywood. His books, though poorly written, were edgy, and edgy is always what catches the attention of Hollywood. Once movie makers started turning his books into feature films the Stephen King bandwagon really took off. Remember those two-night Stephen King television "events"—It, The Langoliers, Storm of the Century? When those mini series became trendy people assumed some literary masterpiece had landed on earth and they started they eating his books by the trough full.

And then King's popularity began to overshadow his shortcomings as a writer.

When King published the seventh volume of his Dark Tower series, The Washington Post gave it a gushing review, saying it was “a humane, visionary epic and a true magnum opus.” The New York Times listed his JFK assassination novel 11/22/63 one of "The 10 Best Books" of the year.

Ultimately, I don’t think the quality of King’s work stands up. In fact, I think it’s downright awful. For a guy who has taught English for much of his career, who had given lectures and written books about the importance of story, he spends a good deal of time drowning his stories in words.

But what do I know? King has sold over 350 million books so he is obviously doing something right. Readers have voted with their wallets, and they have crowned King… king. I’m glad that a fellow author has found success, I just wish it could be for the quality of his work and not because he won a popularity contest.

What do you think? Is Stephen King overrated?

10 Horror Movies That Are Actually Scary And Why

Tell me if you've heard this one before.

A group of unrealistically gorgeous twenty-somethings go out into the remote woods to get drunk and have sex when they stumble upon *insert random demonic zombie killing machine ghost creature here* and end up getting cut to ribbons.

Familiar?

Of course it is. Worse than the redundant storytelling, worse than the cheap jump scares, worse then the lack of originality, the problem with horror movies today can be summed up in one phrase: (to quote the great Magneto when he plugged Rogue in the back of the neck with a tranquilizer dart in the first X-Men): "Young people."

Young people running scared through the woods, Evil Dead.

Young people running scared through the woods, Friday the 13th (2009).

Young people running scared through the woods, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Horror movies have always appealed to young people, teenagers mostly, people who don't know enough about the real horrors of life to even know what's scary. They'll jump at anything that's thrown on the screen accompanied by a loud sound effect and a splash of gore. And most of the time you don't even need the gore.

I still watch the occasional horror movie, but I'm selective with what I see. The first thing I look at is the cast. If they fall into that "unrealistically gorgeous twenty-something" range, I move on.

There have been some decent efforts though. The Blair Witch Project, Scream, Evil Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, but mostly it all looks the same: Final Destination, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Prom Night, House of Wax, My Bloody Valentine, Sleepaway Camp, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Joy Ride, Wrong Turn, Rest Stop, and all their sequels, remakes, ripoffs, and retreads.

You can only watch teenagers running around acting scared for so long. Eventually, you realize they're all repeating every performance that came before them, and that's not scary. Not in the least.

The Older Protagonist

I sincerely believe the problem with horror movies today is the lack of older protagonists.

There's something different psychologically about watching grown adults be scared, people who have been through enough of life's hardships to know that everything that goes bump in the night isn't a mask-wearing serial killer.

It's not the job of creature effects or jump scares to sell the fright. It's the responsibility of the cast. If we're convinced they're scared, then we crap our pants. And a young cast just can't sell the scare factor like seasoned adults.

That's why the protagonist in my latest novel, Rabbit Punch, is a 62-year-old retired boxer. His feathers don't ruffle easily, and it makes the stakes feel higher when they do.

Here are ten horror movies in random order that nailed it in the scare department thanks to a cast of mature actors that knew how to deliver scary.

ONE
Alien remains the quintessential "how to make a horror movie" movie. The entire cast is made up of mature adults, weathered and weary "truckers" who aren't easily deterred. So when they start losing their cool, you know what just hit the fan. You want to know when the Alien movies lost all sense of scariness? 2004. When the studios watered down this R-rated franchise to PG-13, cast a bunch of gorgeous young twenty-somethings, and marketed it to teens.

TWO
John Carpenter's The Thing remains another one of horror's classics. You can point to the tremendous creature effects, the isolating locations, or the brilliant direction as the reason this movie is so terrifying, but, as always, it's the cast of grown adult males that make this bit of science fiction feel real.

THREE
Jaws. It's not the shark jumping up out of the water that's scary. It's Chief Brody's reaction as he backs away slowly in shock until he looks at Quint and says, "You're going to need a bigger boat." People always remember the shark, but they don't realize that it's Chief Brody that sold the scare.

FOUR
Dog Soldiers looks like a B movie, and it is, but the thing that makes this werewolf story one of the best in its genre is the cast of hardened Scottish soldiers who, during a training exercise, wander into the territory of a family of werewolves. Nothing's scarier than seeing grown soldiers frightened out of their fatigues.

FIVE
The Pack. I've never found dogs to be scary, so I watched this movie with a bit of nonchalance. To my delight, the cast was mainly a middle-aged man and his wife, their two children, and a local police officer. When a pack of wild dogs start invading their farm, the scares feel genuine because anyone who knows a farmer knows rugged ol' farmers don't scare easy.

SIX
The Exorcist was plenty scary, but having someone with the aged gravitas of Max von Sydow playing Father Merrin lent the film a tonal weight that chilled the bones. The Exorcist is considered by many to be one of the scariest films ever made.

SEVEN
Predator. As far as horror movies go, this is more action, but you can't deny this franchise lost a lot of clout when the studio began watering down its R-rated content for teenagers—remember my mention of Alien vs Predator above? Before that, nothing was scarier than watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's tough-as-nails team of soldiers be terrorized in the jungle by an alien who thinks he's a spinal surgeon.

EIGHT
Misery. Hollywood, take note. Stephen King is not the master of horror for no reason. He knows what scares, and his books generally feature older protagonists. Misery, one of the best screen adaptations of King's books, works thanks to the sweaty, agonized performance of James Cann alongside Kathy Bates' psycho with a sledgehammer. Try not to flinch. I dare you.

NINE
The Shining. Who didn't cringe watching Jack Torrance lose his mind in the isolated Overlook Hotel? It's his wife, Wendy, played by actress Shelley Duvall—who was often actually terrified on set—who convinces us what's happening is truly frightening. And it works.

TEN
American Horror Story. There's a reason this show is scaring people all across the world. Its cast is almost entirely adults reacting to supernatural horror situations like any logical adult would react. Watching their pysches break down is the most terrifying thing of all.

How I Saw The Hero Change - A Look At Heroes In The Movies

I was raised in a pretty traditional home in rural Vermont. My father was a police officer. My mother a God-fearing woman. So a strong sense of justice and right and wrong was instilled in me.

As a kid, the types of heroes I gravitated to were the heart-of-gold heroes, uncompromising and duty-bound. The heroes who believed in truth and justice. Superman. Batman. Luke Skywalker. He-Man. The Ninja Turtles.

In the early 1980s, there was no question that heroes were good. It didn't matter what made them good, just that they were good, that they fought the bad guys and won in the end. And that's pretty much all I cared about too.

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Handsome Stranger in Cactus Jack

When I was around eight years old, my mother introduced me to a movie that changed my perspective on what makes a hero. Cactus Jack, also known as The Villain, was a western comedy that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Handsome Stranger, a perfect cowboy who did what was right because, well, it was right. In my little eight-year-old eyes a hero couldn't get any bigger than Schwarzenegger. I mean, come on, he was Commando, Kalidor from Red Sonja, Detective John Kimble from Kindergarten Cop, and Dutch from Predator. He wasn't just a hero, he was the hero!

But the main character of Cactus Jack wasn't Schwarzenegger. It was the bad guy Cactus Jack Slade, played by Kirk Douglas, a thief and a scoundrel and a liar. Heck, he even had his own "Bad Men of the West" handbook. He was rotten to the core, but he was the hero of the story. Sort of. He was the focal point anyway, and it's the first time I remember thinking differently about what makes a character a hero.

Seeing the trend

As I got into my teen years I began to notice a trend in popular culture. Heroes went from being wholesome and good and chivalrous to dark and brooding and even more dangerous.

I didn't know it at the time, but the anti-hero was nothing new. The movement began, I think, in the 70s with films like Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, Death Wish, and Dirty Harry—in fact, Clint Eastwood became the poster child for the brooding anti-hero for many years.

This wasn't just a film trend either.

In comic books, we saw the emergence of The Punisher and Wolverine in 1974. This ignited a dark and brooding anti-hero trend that exploded in the 80s with Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns—a title that redefined Batman as a nightmarish vigilante—and Alan Moore's Watchmen series, which gave a dark new definition to what makes a comic book hero.

In literature, we saw the popularity of the anti-hero rise with books like Steven King's The Dark Tower, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, and many, many others.

On the political front, Ronald Reagan began appointing conservative judges who cracked down on crime at a time when most of the public perceived crime rates as high. The sexual revolution and the Cold War era helped breed a mindset within American culture that had a lot to do with shrugging off society's standards and government control.

The public perception of what a hero was supposed to be was changing. No more Greek demigods or mortal "chosen ones." Heroes were becoming more human and more imperfect.

My favorite imperfect hero

For me, the next big milestone came in the early '90s when Bruce Willis took on his most iconic role, that being the tough-as-nails cop John McClain in Die Hard (1988), Die Hard 2 (1990), and Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). I might not have been drawn to a character like John McClain with his drinking binges, foul-mouth, and bad attitude had it not been for the fact that my dad was also a cop.

The more I watched John McClain, however, the more I realized that underneath his imperfect exterior was a true hero. Sure, he was a nut, and he screwed up a lot, but you could always count on him in the end. Die Hard remains one of my all-time favorite movies.

Other movies that challenged my perception of what makes a hero included Sean Connery in The Rock, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in Bad Boys, Wesley Snipes in Blade, and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.

The hero becomes the villain

Shortly after the turn of the century, I observed another change in how our heroes were being portrayed. This time dark took an even darker turn.

Sin City (2005), based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, remains an incredibly grim and hyper-stylized story of bad guys doing the right thing. Its brutal violence pushed the anti-hero to the edge, even going so far as to make the audience root for the bad guys. (Let's face it, everyone was a bad guy in that movie!)

Also in 2006 Showtime presented us with Dexter, a hugely popular series that ran for eight seasons, based on the books by Jeff Lindsay. The hero of this series was a serial killer. Oh, sure, he was a conflicted serial killer, and the show did an amazing job at making him likable, but this kind of programming never would've been produced ten years ago.

The hero had changed again, and he was really, really bad.

How far the hero has fallen

Nowadays you'd be hard-pressed to find a film with a perfect, uncompromising hero. If you do, it's probably made fun of—i.e. Metro Man as voiced by Brad Pitt in Megamind, and Emmet as voiced by Chris Pratt in The Lego Movie.

The closest example would probably be Chris Evan's strong-jawed portrayal of Captain America in Marvel's Avengers franchise, but even he is depicted as being an archaic concept from a bygone era.

Has the concept of the "true hero" become a thing of the past? Why are we, as a culture, so averse to the notion of perfection? Why aren't our heroes wholesome anymore?

As much as we as individuals strive for perfection we know we can't reach it, and we're quick to tear down anyone who appears even slightly perfect. Tabloids hound celebrities for their dirty secrets. Politicians attack one another like rabid dogs to expose the skeletons in their closets. For some reason perfection makes us feel awful about ourselves, so when we meet people who seem to have it all together our impulse is to gossip about them, talk behind their backs, smear them, bring them down so we feel better. We hate perfection, and yet we're obsessed with it.

We want to see our heroes win, but it's like we can't buy the scenario unless we can perceive them as being worse than ourselves.

I guess all of this is to say as much as I've embraced the anti-hero with all of his foibles and problems, I kinda miss the heroes I grew up with.

From Tohellwithit: Those Spiders Are Too Big!

I love living in Maui.

I hate spiders.

No one told me about Hawaii's Giant Cane Spider (capitalized and bolded for effect). That's one of the things you learn after you get here.

I know what you're thinking. "Spiders. What's the big deal?"

Heck, I grew up in rural Vermont around barn spiders and big hairy wolf spiders, but cane spiders are different. They're like spastic anorexic acrobats if acrobats were the things nightmares are made of.

Cane spiders are about the size of a can of tuna, with leg spans that can equal up to five inches. They're super fast, they jump, and, oh, their eyes glow. Did I mention that? Shine a flashlight on them and their freaking eyes light up like headlights. Like demonic silver headlights from the pits of hell.

As if this creature couldn't get any weirder, it doesn't spin webs, it carries its egg sack in its mouth, and it only comes out at night because darkness is how it hides so it can murder you. See? This thing was created to haunt your dreams.

I might be slightly exaggerating.

Maybe.

Truthfully, I really can't complain. Cane spiders are harmless to humans and total pussy cats when it comes to confrontation. On the plus side they eat cockroaches—another one of Maui's delightful little natives that no one tells you about until you're here.

Still I'd prefer my house free of intruders with eight hairy legs.

Terrified in Tohellwithit,

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From Tohellwithit provides an optimistic/pessimistic view on life, love, and all the things that ruffle our feathers from the mind of author C.W. Thomas.

Chocolate Chip Cookie In A Mug - Oh, The Decadence!

I feel like I have to apologize for this blog. It's a recipe for something truly sinful and delicious and goes against everything my wife tells me do to, which is probably why I make it at 11 o'clock at night after she's gone to bed.

I'm talking about Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Bold and underline added for increased impact.)

Actually, in this case, we're talking about a single, hot, gooey, melts-in-your mouth chocolate chip cookie. The best part is this cookie doesn't take an hour to make as you mix the ingredients, roll them into balls, and bake them 12 at a time in the oven.

No, no, no. We're far more clever than that. This recipe takes five minutes to make.

And if you ask if it's a chocolate chip cookie replacement I'm going to slap you. Nothing can replace the chocolate chip cookie. Nothing. Ever! If I have the time and permission from the wife I prefer to make a whole batch of cookies, but when I'm feeling naughty and just want a sweet treat this yummy little devil hits the spot.

I discovered the recipe on FoodGawker a couple years ago, at which point it began popping up on food blogs all over the internet including The Comfort of Cooking, The Sweetest Kitchen, Pure Wow, and pretty much every Pinterest board related to deserts.

I've tried a number of different versions of this recipe, but this one is my favorite. I think the salt and the extra vanilla adds to the flavor.

A FINAL WARNING: Make this at your own risk... and then a drop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and pour a glass of milk. Ho-ho-holy heaven!

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Chocolate Chip Cookie In A Mug

Ingredients

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons flour
2 heaping tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Choose a microwave-safe mug or small bowl. Place the butter in the mug and melt it in the microwave. Don't burn it. The butter should be melted, not boiling.
2. Add sugars, vanilla and salt. As with any chocolate chip cookie recipe be sure to mix it well. I use a fork and mash/stir/fold until everything is well combined.
3. Add the flour, and stir until combined. It should look like real cookie dough. If it's too runny add a touch more flour, or if it's too stiff add a splash of milk.
4. Stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Microwave it for about 30 seconds. If the top of the cookie still looks wet, microwave it for another 10 or 20 seconds. Keep in mind the cookie will continue to cook on the inside while it's in the mug, so you don't have to overdo it. Just get the top of it looking nice and cake like.
6. Drop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and let it start to melt as you poor yourself a glass of milk.
7. Go somewhere private where the kids and/or spouse can't find you. Let the cookie make love to your mouth. No need to give back. This is all about you. Just relax and enjoy!

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Surfing

In the same way that some people say "I don't do pain," or "Nope, I don't do spiders," or "snakes," or whatever.

I don't do athletic. I just can't. But I’m tall and trim so I can fool most anybody into thinking I'm in shape.

The truth is if I didn’t have hands to catch myself I’d have no face from all the tripping and falling I’ve done over the years. My nose would be flat. Just a flat nose. Just a flat face with a flat nose because I’m a big non-athletic clutz.

But apparently I’m good at surfing.

On my first wave I jumped to my feet, kept my balance for a short distance, and sat back down before I wiped out. And I actually did that more than once. That’s surfing right? I'll pretend it is.

Our Instructor From The Zoo

I’ve got to give credit to our instructor though, a man who introduced himself as Armadillo, or Armor for short. He claimed to come from the zoo. He has a brother named Possum, and other family members from the rat species.

Honestly, if you asked me if he was kidding, I wouldn’t know what to say. In between pushing back long strands of gnarled blond locks from his copper face and looking like he desperately needed some weed to take his mind off his hangover, for all I know Armadillo probably actually was born in the zoo.

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Surfing

1. Bikinis and Surfboards Don’t Mix
Most movies about surfing always show the female surfers in bikinis because, well, I think the reason is obvious, but after 10 minutes on a surfboard you begin to realize just how unrealistic that is. Surfboards HURT! Even with a long-sleeved surf shirt my stomach and chest were beat red by the end of our lesson and the insides of my thighs were chaffed from straddling the board.

2. Surfing Should Be Called “S.E.D.”
Surfing shouldn’t be called surfing. It should be called Shoulder Exercise, or maybe S.E.D., for “Shoulder Exercise, Dude," because, really, there's little "surfing" involved. There's lots of paddling and chaffing and falling and swimming and praying and looking for sharks, but surfing is actually a very small part of the whole process.

3. "Surfer Dudes" Are Real
They’re not just some stereotype invented for TV. I already told you about Armadillo, who is every bit the laid back surfer dude you’ve ever imagined, but there were plenty of others just like him with long, scraggly hair, sun-spotted skin, and a nonchalant strut.

4. Surfing Will Kill You … No, Really.
Death is a major deal in surfing. If you don’t do it right it will kill you. There are sharks in the water that can kill you. There are rocks and rock walls that a wave can plow you into in a matter of seconds, killing you. If a wave carries you in too far and too fast even the beach will kill you. When you wipe out there are rocks and coral under the water that will gash your body, slice your arms and legs, and, yes, even kill you.

5. Snowboarding Doesn’t Make You A Better Surfer
I was proud to tell Armadillo that I was a fair snowboarder on the wintery cold mountains of Vermont. He just dropped his head between his shoulders and shook his head. Apparently snowboarders are hard to teach. When your brain is so used to having your feet strapped to the board it can be hard to get your mind to remember that surfing requires you to often change your footing.

Going Back for Seconds?

Unfortunately, cameras and surfing don’t mix, so Danielle and I have no actual proof that we did any of this. We intended to go back and take turns surfing while the other took pictures from the shore, but, honestly, surfing can, like, totally freaking kill you, so we decided to get pizza instead.

My Favorite H.G. Wells Quote

The Island of Dr. Moreau is by far one of my favorite books. I first read it as a teenager and have probably read it more times throughout my life than any other book.

As a kid I even memorized the final paragraph. To me this single section of text reveals a profound insight to the human condition. It suggests that nothing we do can fulfill us—not acquiring wealth, not garnering fame, not being in control or chasing after power, status, love, sex, drugs, or anything else. It points to a source of peace far beyond ourselves to something much more esoteric.

The story in The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exploration of humanity's animalistic tendencies. Are we, by nature, animals, or are we held to a greater standard by the concept of morality? If morality does exist, who decides what is moral, and can it save us from ourselves?

In Wells' story this concept is presented by the character of Dr. Moreau, a mad scientist type who creates a race of humanoid beings by genetically modifying animals—pig-men, dog-men, leopard-men, and many others, though sometimes with nightmarish results.

The curious thing about this tale is that without the continued medicinal support of their creator the creatures revert to their more feral natures. Once they became self-aware enough to recognize the cruelty of what Moreau is doing they turn on him, but in destroying him they destroy what they need to survive, essentially destroying themselves.

At the end of the story the main character returns to civilization and struggles to find peace after all the horrors he witnessed on Moreau's island. He turns to astronomy and finds something he did not expect.

And I quote.

"Ah-hem."

Taps microphone.

"There is, though I do not know why there is or how there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live."

Hope.

Sometimes it's as vague as morality, but according to Wells we can't survive without it. It can't be found in what we can see, taste, or touch, not in our troubles or our worries or our fears, but from somewhere else.

And maybe it's found in different ways for different people, but this much is clear: as I watch our society destroy itself under its myriad of petty arguments on racism, gender issues, politics, ethics, religion, and more, it becomes increasingly apparent that people need to shift their focus. The more time we spend obsessing on all these issues, fostering dissension, hate, and fear, the further we fall from hope.

World, Meet My Son

My son has arrived! He weighed 8 pounds, 10 ounces, and was 22 inches long. His name is Tobias Alexander (when I'm mad at him), but most of the time we just call him Toby.

If I could use one word to sum up what I witnessed as my wife labored and gave birth, it would be strength. I saw my wife do the miraculous. I saw her push past limits I never knew she had. I saw two midwives watch stunned at not only the long, hard labor she endured, but the steadfast, resilient, determined, way she handled it with no meds, no hospitals, and after 24 hours of no sleep.

Several times the midwives made remarks like, "Your pain threshold is unbelievable," "You haven't complained once," and "I wish more women handled labor like this."

They were in awe. I was in awe. I've never been more honored to call myself her husband than I am today.

My favorite moment.

Toby was doing fine until his head emerged. His right hand was trapped behind his head by his umbilical cord that was also wrapped around his neck. There were a few moments of worry as the midwives worked to get him free of his little tangled mess.

When he finally came free of the birth canal, the midwives tried to get him to breathe, but he wouldn’t make any noise. They cleared his nose and mouth of fluid, but he still wouldn’t suck in air. 

Dani started praying out loud, “Dear Jesus, help Toby breathe.” The midwives said, “Talk to your baby. Let him hear your voice.” “Breath, Toby,” Dani said. “Come on, Toby.”

That’s when I leaned down real close to him and said, “Hey Toby. This is your daddy. You need to breathe buddy.”

And at the sound of my voice he inclined his head to me and squeaked for the first time.

10 Things I’ve Learned With Apartment Living

I haven’t lived in an apartment in almost twenty years.

Many of my earliest childhood memories take place in Unit F, a small two bedroom apartment in Lyndon Center, VT. There were five other units in the building, and while growing up I experienced a range of colorful people moving through them.

As a kid I wasn’t world-weary enough to know how humble those beginnings were. So as an adult moving to Maui, the idea of living in an apartment didn’t sound too bad. And it’s not.

Mostly.

But I’ve changed. Or maybe living in a house for the last twenty years—three of those years were spent living in my OWN house—kind of ruined me for apartment living, even if our complex is right across the street from the ocean.

Seriously, this is the view from the front of our building!

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1. NOISE.

There’s a couple acres of “common area” outside encircled by the four buildings that make up our apartment complex. Every day it gets filled with about 60-80 kids playing hopscotch, basketball, volleyball, tag, yelling, screaming, laughing. It can be kind of a madhouse.

2. SMELLS.

Smells are everywhere. Every time I step out into the hallway there’s a new smell. Sometimes it’s a good smell—like if the guy across the hall is cooking a steak. Sometimes it just smells like old cigarettes and body odor.

3. COMMUNAL LIVING.

In an apartment building no unit is an island unto itself. Every bang on the walls, every fast food wrapper that gets dropped in the elevator, every time someone breaks the washing machine because they overloaded it, EVERYTHING becomes a part of your neighbors’ lives. It's called communal living, and it surprises me how few people understand this concept. Most everyone lives day and night like no one else exists, having shouting matches with their significant others, drunken profanity-ridden tirades, loud music, parties.

I find myself asking, "Are people really so stupid as to be this oblivious?"

And myself answers, "You were being rhetorical right?"

4. TINY SPACES.

You just can’t keep a small apartment clean. Ever. There’s only a few nooks and crannies and drawers to hide stuff, everything else has a designated “pile.”

5. THE LAUNDRY.

Doing laundry isn’t as simple as “throwing in a load.” First, you need a stash of quarters to use the communal washers and dryers, and then you need to time your wash cycles in between everyone else’s—if they're kind enough not to let their freshly dried clothes sit in the machine half the day.

6. SPEED BUMPS.

Urgh! The driveway that circles the complex was recently converted from a two way into a one way, but they didn’t remove the speed bumps. So at every entrance, at every corner, there’s not ONE speed bump, but TWO, not ONE chance to slow to .5-miles-per-hour and enjoy a miniature earthquake, but TWO! It’s like having a roller coaster in your own backyard... sans everything that makes roller coasters fun.

7. COMMON DECENCY.

Some people don’t have it. They smoke cigarettes in the entryway (even though the building policy clearly states smokers must be a minimum of twenty feet from the building). They walk around without shirts on, beer bellies on proud display. They curse at their kids in the parking lot. They have domestic fights at the top of their lungs that go on for hours—seriously, how can anyone yell and curse for an hour?

8. WE HAVE A POOL!

In the daytime the pool is pretty much vacant until the kids get home from school, so Dani and I try to use it shortly before noon. She likes laying out in the sun. My Scottish skin doesn’t. So while she tans I sit in the shade and read.

9. SIMPLE LIVING.

We left Vermont with four suitcases full of the bare necessities. It was hard leaving so much behind, but we’re realizing how easy it is to get along without so much... stuff. Would my waffle maker be nice? Sure, but you know what, pancakes are just as good!

10. IT’S PARADISE.

I mean, really, at the end of the day I’m still living in freaking Maui! Every night as Dani and I pray together I’m thankful for how blessed we are to be here.

From Un-me To Real Me: The Birth of "Children of the Falls"

Part 7

We now return to the exciting adventures of Craig William Thomas, his turbulent start as a writer, his hatred for all things Twilight, and how a dip into the waters of self-publishing re-ignited his passion for writing.

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If you're truly passionate about something you can't give up on it. Even if you try, your passion won't let you.

I tried to ignore my passion for writing for six years—there had just been too many disappointments and unfulfilled expectations. I thought I was done. I thought my interest in writing was a phase that had come and gone.

But passions don't die.

My employer had recently cut my hours to 20 per week. On top of finding myself with extra time on my hands, a royalty check from Amazon for some ebooks I had self-published lit a spark under my butt.

And that's when my desire to write returned with a vengeance. Unbeknownst to me an entire cast of characters had been building in my brain and they had a lot to say! Once I started letting them speak they wouldn't shut up. For a year I wrestled with sleep, anxiety, and attention problems as these characters poured their souls out to me. I couldn't write fast enough. The story just flowed.

Children of the Falls was born.

Where Serpents Strike Children of the Falls, Vol 1

Where Evil Abides Children of the Falls, Vol. 2

And this time, I didn't care about Stephenie Meyer and her crappy multi-million dollar novels. I wasn't writing to compete with her. Nor was I writing to impress some big publishing house. They could go play their money-grubbing marketing schemes all they wanted, preferably far away from me. I also decided I wasn't concerned about an audience. I had wasted too many years writing what I thought people wanted to read. It was clear to me that, good or bad, people would read anything, so trying to convince them that my work was superior to anyone else's was a waste of time.

I was writing for an audience of one—me. I was going to write my ultimate story. It would incorporate everything I love, take all the directions I wanted it to take, be as violent and scary and fantastical as I wanted it to be.

Sorry mom.

Children of the Falls actually began with an idea I had about nine years prior. The idea was simple: make an army of medieval super soldiers by training children from the youngest age possible. Think Spartan warriors meets kung-fu meets horror movies.

I had actually outlined a trilogy of books based on this premise called Edhen that I tinkered with over the years, but I was never satisfied with it. It served as the backbone to this new incarnation, expanding from three books to nine, from a trilogy spanning one continent with multiple kingdoms to three continents, dozens of kingdoms, multiple religions, languages, and cultures, and hundreds of characters.

It's been a fascinating journey, but something tells me it's just getting started.

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Part 1: From Un-Me To Real Me: Discovering My Passion For Writing

Part 2: From Un-Me To Real Me: Writing For My Mother

Part 3: From Un-Me To Real Me: What I Learned From Horror Movies

Part 4: From Un-Me To Real Me: Giving Up On My Dreams

Part 5: From Un-me To Real Me: How Stephenie Meyer Killed My Muse

Part 6: From Un-me To Real Me: How Getting Laid Off Gave Me My Spark Back

Part 7: From Un-me To Real Me: The Birth of "Children of the Falls"

From Un-me To Real Me: How Losing My Job Gave Me My Spark Back

Part 6

If you're just tuning in, I've been recounting how I got started with writing novels at the age of 14, developed a love of horror movies, lost my spark when author Stephenie Meyer ruined my life, and ended up where I am today.

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I always tell people, "If you want to get good at writing, go work for a newspaper."

Nothing will help you write faster, better, and conquer writer's block more quickly than having to write an 800 word story twenty minutes before deadline.

I know this from experience. I did it for five years.

Journalism was a good day job for me, but, as you may recall from my last entry, that was only until Stephenie Meyer, author of those soul-destroying Twilight books, crippled my interest in writing. Once that was dead, so was my passion for journalism.

So I moved into pagination, editing, and graphic design. My work caught the attention of a local marketing company that eventually hired me to be a full time graphic artist at their small publishing house. For years I designed book covers, illustrations, graphics, websites, business cards, digital books, book trailers, bookmarks, and much, much more. In fact I still work for them on a case-by-case basis today.

An itty-bitty sampling of my work.

Seeing the world of publishing from the inside out was a unique experience. I began to see just what kinds of difficulties publishers faced, how it has become a challenge for them to make a book successful, and how risky it is to spend months—maybe even years—preparing to launch a new author's work.

I also realized just how hard it was for an author to make a living writing books. Most of our authors went nowhere. Most of them suffered from what I perceive to be the biggest misconception among writers today—being a successful writer isn't about creating good writing, it's about marketing. There are tons of great writers out there, but few of them will ever be successful because they don't know how to market.

Our writers promised us all sorts of things.

"I have a huge email list that I'm going to use to promote the book."

"I've got thousands of fans on Twitter and Facebook, and I'm going to market to them!"

"I'm going to travel around to bookstores and libraries with my book."

"I'll use my professional speaking platform to spread the word about my book."

But few of them actually followed through. Once the book came out, the excuses started tumbling in.

"I'm just too busy right now."

"My speaking engagements are not really for my book."

"My email list is technically for my company, not myself."

"I didn't really have a good marketing plan."

"I don't know what to do!"

So the little marketing/publishing company that I worked for found itself losing lots of money. They couldn't afford to keep me on staff, but they didn't want to let me go either. They decided to cut my hours to part time while they reevaluated their business in hopes of hiring me back again if/when things picked up.

And then I found myself with about 20 extra hours a week on my hands. I spent some of it investing in some projects around the house that needed tending, and I did eventually get a part time job driving package trucks for UPS to help make ends meet.

But the real kick in the brain pan came when I got an unexpected check from Amazon.

Remember those two books I co-authored with my friend Mitch?

Well, after our publishing company failed to uphold their end of our contract, we asked for our books back. They begrudgingly agreed. Then, in an attempt to please our minuscule number of fans, we re-published the books on our own. (I had spent enough years designing books that setting them up was a breeze.) And the ebooks sold like hot cakes!

And that check from Amazon? It was almost enough to pay the mortgage that month. Wowzers!

I used to think there was no money in writing novels, but I was wrong. There was money to be had, but the method of getting it had changed.

My muse was coming alive again.

To be continued...

From Un-me To Real Me: How Stephenie Meyer Killed My Muse

Part Five

I've been reflecting on my journey as a writer, what drew me into the world of writing and shaped my style, and how my muse came to a sudden and depressing end...

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For fourteen years I had been obsessed with writing. I had written about nine books, two of which had been published and a third had just spent three years in limbo with a publisher that didn't fulfill its end of the bargain. My co-author and I were at odds, and my "writing career" was not what I had hoped it would be.

I was discouraged, depressed, dissatisfied, and done.

Along came Stephenie Meyer in 2007 with a teen vampire novel called Twilight. For reasons I have never been able to figure out her books took the world by storm. When the movies began to hit in 2008, Meyer made millions off her three novels and four films over the next five years.

Here's the thing that pisses me off about Stephenie Meyer: her books were horribly written; the characters were boring, unrealistic, and one-dimensional; the pace of the story was dreadfully slow (she routinely violates the "show don't tell" rule of storytelling); the plot was thin and unoriginal, and YET teenagers devoured these books like candy.

I agree with author Stephen King, who, in an interview with USA Weekend, said, "Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."

DISCLAIMER: If you're a fan of Twilight, I apologize. It is not the intention of this article to demean fans of the franchise. I'm a huge fan of the 1987 Dolph Lundgren film Masters of the Universe. It was a truly bad film, but there's something about it that awakens the kid in me and I simply love it. So if Twilight is your thing, I understand, but that doesn't change the fact that "Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn."

The Great Satan of Literature?

Before you ask, yes, I read the first book in her series, Twilight. I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I plowed through it in an afternoon, speed-reading through her horrendous over-use of adverbs, the atrocious dialogue, and her repetitive descriptions of the oh-so-hot male characters. I could spend hours picking apart Meyer's inability to structure a story, design characters of any depth, craft an intriguing romance, or write an action scene—and I have... all over the internet in fact.

Here's the thing...

I remember back in 1998 when Director Michael Bay released Armageddon, People magazine published a story on why some big-shots in Hollywood viewed Michael Bay as "the great satan of movies." Their point was simple: Michael Bay's over-stylized and empty-headed approach to filmmaking was devaluing the craft.

Michael Bay says, "Talk to the hand!"
as he walks to the bank.

I'm calling out Stephenie Meyer—though I am hardly the first to do so—to say that she's doing the same thing to the craft of writing, her and the slew of copycats and wannabes she inspired—yes, I'm thinking about you E.L. James.

Do I think my writing is superior? Absolutely! And I can point to a hundred other indie authors whose work is superior to mine who are worth all the books sales Meyer got and much more.

Here was Stephenie Meyer, a middle-aged soccer mom with no previous interest in writing, churning out the most basic, badly written, adjective-stuffed melodramatic teenage drivel and making millions, and yet thousands of other writers, myself included, with much better ideas and years of practice couldn't get a single publisher to take a chance on us.

The Real Problem

But Meyer's success put a big spotlight on the real problem—big publishers.

I began to realize that publishers aren't seeking quality work anymore. They're looking to fill a predetermined novel mold established by a marketing team to guarantee major sales. They don't care about content or genre or how good or bad an author is at their craft. They know the market and they want content to fill what the market wants as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Author Alan Moore said in November, 2015, “Publishing today is a complete mess. I know brilliant authors who can’t get their books published." He went on to explain that the reason is because publishing houses are afraid of taking risks on fiction. Moore’s solution? “Publish yourself. Don’t rely upon other people.” (Alan Moore Advises New Writers to Self-Publish Because Big Publishers Suck.)

Big publishers just want to meet the market demands and make as much money as they can in the process.

This is a major shift from just a few decades ago when publishing companies were all about discovering the next great American novel, which is a shame, really. The literacy level in America has been dropping for years. The LA Times, The Huffington Post, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and many other publications have been spotlighting this problem for the last ten years. Whether work like Meyer's is a contributing factor or just a sign of the problem is open for debate, but either way she, along with the companies that publish her, is not helping.

I suppose the fault is more than just bad authors and lazy publishers too. With the rise of self-publishing and digital books, combined with the increasing cost of paper and printing, publishers started realizing that the old way of doing things was no longer working. Editors no longer had the time to sift through stacks of manuscripts to determine which novel was most worthy of publication. The digital age was booming fast, more and more people were writing books, and publishers had to act as quickly as possible to keep money flowing in.

And they've been making bad decisions ever since.

So after reading Twilight and seeing first hand the kind of awful literature the market was willing to settle for, and after I had begun to get a glimpse of what the world of publishing was becoming, I decided I was done.

And my muse died.

To be continued...