The Ride

It’s been threatening storms all day. Most of it is off to the east now, scrunched up against the Boise front, where the watercolors are shades of black, random ribbons of cloud hugging the foothills like a dark garter gathered up against their rising crests.

He’s suited up. The clipless shoes make a grinding click sound against the concrete with each step as he walks to the bike. He does the usual checks: wheel bearing tightness, cranks, headset. Those are all good. Chain: clean and not too dry. Brakes: within tolerance. It’s good. Spoke tension and wheel trueness can be checked next time the bike’s in the stand. For now, it’s time to ride.

He loves colder weather for some reason. It makes him feel alive. It’s a great time to ride because most people won’t be out now. They’ll be huddled home by the fire, oddly enough for a June day that topped out at about 56 degrees. It’s actually blustery. Crazy cool.

He swings a leg over, clipping the right shoe into the pedal. Chock. He pulls the right side crank up to about ten o’clock with that foot and then pushes off. The left foot glides up to its pedal. Chock. He’s clipped in, and cycles, pushing down with the right and pulling up with the left, up and over, then pushing with the left and pulling with the right, making the rear tire dig, and he can hear the chain twang-grinding against the cogs; a sound he loves.

A stop sign. In Idaho, cyclists can treat them like yield signs if it’s clear, and it is, so he carries on. Now he’s at the main road and there’s light traffic. Two people, a man and his little girl, are walking along on the sidewalk across his path and he pauses on the pedals, smiling at them as they go by. He doesn’t want to unclip, so he creeps until there’s a break in the cars coming from the right.

Clear. He gets on it gently, scooting out across two lanes and onto the opposite shoulder, turning left onto the main road. He concentrates on his form, keeping the knees in, straight up and down, smoothness, not pushing it, just getting his body warm. He shifts up through the gears. Snick. Snick. He finds a good ratio for the road’s resistance, the wind, and the mild incline—all things people in cars never notice—and in about five blocks he feels good enough to push a little more.

He gives it a little more welly, as the Brits might say, and snicks up through one more ratio. Very little wind today, in spite of the stormy skies, but at this speed it’s noticeable, like a rubber wall that pushes and gives, then pushes again. This will be the cruising gear until he turns up ahead, and God knows what the wind will be doing then.

Another stop sign after a while, and a construction zone to boot. He stands up on the pedals, leading with his left, and lets the blood flow more freely to his legs as he coasts up to it. The stop sign is the Great Equalizer of traffic, and he finds he’s caught up to a few of the cars that passed him not long ago. Once he’s matched speed, he merges into the lane full-on; he’d rather not risk getting run over by someone who either didn’t see him or chose to be a bastard. He will have his own turn at the four way, by God.

Right turn, and now that he’s warm, he digs deep, sprinting in the saddle, letting his legs churn through the power pulses, push-left pull-right, push-right pull-left, and then do it again, feeling the chain worming around the chainring, pulling it forward powerfully from the cogset, listening to that glorious biomechanical synergy, a real modern symphony of sound, of well-oiled rollers meshing perfectly into and out of the teeth of the simple machine. The tires hum and grind against the asphalt, the spokes prang inaudibly over the imperfections and whistle through the wind soundlessly, but he thinks he can hear them as he gains speed—the wind is more at his back now as he snicks through the gears.

At length he finds himself out past the edge of the storm. The clouds are at his back, crashing like breakers against the mountains and he’s out in the flats, the fields of beans and corn starts and onions and wheat, still green and swaying in bursts of breeze out across the flat expanse. He thinks of his boyhood, of the vast Illinois floodplain where he spent so many years. But out in the distance he can see the Owyhees and their still-snowcapped peaks—their north sides naturally getting less sun—and that’s nothing like Illinois. He revels in the magnificence of the brilliant acrylic blue sky, high cannonshots of pure white cloud scattered randomly across it. Out here there are about one point five farmhouses per square mile, and he loves that too. He makes the pedals turn, wing wing wing the chain sings.

It’s all about cadence and heartbeats and consistency and form—keep the knees in—and standing up or giving his legs a little breathing space every now and then, letting the blood course freely.

Before he knows it, he’s back home. The ride is done. Some stretching, some calisthenics, a snack and shower. And then, a chair, a book, a cup of tea, and a short time to bask in the afterglow.

11/22/63

Stephen King is one of the greats, for sure. I was completely transported by 11/22/63, a novel based around this one question: what if somebody had been able to stop the assassination of JFK?

King explains a little about it here.

I love that when I read one of his books, I’m completely unaware of the shoptalk side of novel writing. I’m just taken in and along for the ride. I think that’s a mark of excellence, if there is one. I had to force myself to notice that it’s written in the first person, that he juggles tenses, that he uses fragments, that he has lots of subplots going on in the background. I loved it all.

I was telling a friend that King must have done scads of research, because he completely nailed it. It wasn’t just the socio-political climate of the late fifties and early sixties, which was much closer than we are to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, World War II, the Cold War, segregation in the South and Jim Crow, and the kind of relations between the sexes that one can see in an episode of Mad Men. Not to mention the boozing and the smoking. Plus, it was before all those major watershed moments that have defined our contemporary world: the civil rights movement, Vietnam, the eighties obsession with materialism, 9/11, Y2K, the internet age, and digital this and that.

There were good parts to the fifties and sixties as well, and King nails those, too. Not that I was there. But I felt like I was. There was real root beer in real glasses. Ice cream made from real cream and sugar. Bicycles and paper boys. Telephones on kitchen walls, their numbers with the exchange letters as a prefix. Cars without any plastic in them or on them. Libraries with card catalogs. Banks without security cameras. And a whole bunch more that was implied or left to the reader’s imagination; another mark of excellence.

It was a world more innocent. It was delicious to linger there. It reminded me of my childhood a little, of low sunset light streaming in through single pane windows in a farmhouse kitchen that always had a certain aroma to it. It was like sinking into the perfect easy chair.

There was also, though, the lingering aftertaste of…well…dissatisfaction. If I could wish for anything, it would be a more tightly wrapped ending. There were a lot of questions left dangling out in the breeze because of one little detail at the end of the book. It didn’t cancel out the magnificence of the work, though. I’m more and more inclined to think lately that the great novels are like the master works on canvas: there’s no disputing the touch of a master’s hand, but one has to account for tastes and preferences in the reader too. After all, a story is an expression of the storyteller, and if the beholder doesn’t connect, he doesn’t connect. Authors spin a good yarn, but we're not magicians. I can amend that by saying some of us appear to be wizards. That would be King.

I connected with the vast majority of this book. King is still a little too broad-brush chummy with leftist Democrats and their assessments for my taste, but then again, he’s always been that way and I've liked him anyway. He managed to pull off a story centered on politics with reasonable poise and balance. He did it better than I probably could. But another thing I didn’t like: the love scene sections that were full-bore erotica. It was an endearing character study on humanity, sure. But it’s not my cuppa. And I thank God we don’t have a meddlesome federal government trying to protect us from books yet. The last thing I want is for my books to carry labels for content; I’m not complaining. “Just an observation,” as James May might point out.

What he wrote, and the skillful way he wrote it, is food for thought for me for the next little while. He managed a large cast of characters really well. Much better than another book I tried to read recently, which introduced ten characters on the first two pages; yikes. Nope. King is really good. This book was masterfully paced, clearly thought out, and a heck of a lot of fun to read. Good fiction is so hard to find these days. But not when it has these four letters on the spine.

Murphy’s Law and the Sunday Horror

Every man has a nightmare scenario, a pet horror. We stoke the boiler rooms of those things without even trying. Just yesterday I thought, gee, it sure would be nice to sit out under the umbrella and smoke a Macanudo cigar and sip whisky and read a book. The problem was the umbrella was broken. And life is about consequences. Remember…I only wanted to enjoy a cigar…

It’s a good thing I live close to a Home Depot. And a Lowe’s. But even that is a mixed blessing. It’s like I was telling the lady at the register as I was checking out with my second armload of home improvement crap of the day: It’s like owning a pickup. When people call asking what you’re doing this weekend, you know they’re not considering inviting you on a bar crawl or an adventure-packed daytrip. No, they’re calling to see if they can mooch off you. They’re like, “Heyyyyy! Can I buy you a case of beer?!” One always responds to such questions with, shall we say, reservation. Same with “being handy.” It’s a blessing, sure, that I don’t have to call a plumber because I can do it myself. But it’s also a curse because hello, I can do it myself. The problem is, I’m always doing it myself, and I have to make three flipping trips to get it done. At least.

And while I’m on the subject of Home Depot, WTF is up with these spaces labeled PRO CUSTOMER PARKING? And just what exactly is a professional customer supposed to be? Someone who shops for a living? Just how does that work, precisely? Home Depot, we are laughing at you. Not with you.

I suppose I should throw some light on the source of my angst, seeing as how it is considerable.

It all started ignominiously enough. We have a big yard umbrella; one of those that stick up out of a portable base. Some stupid bolt that was way past its prime on the base (Which is cast iron and freaking HEAVY) finally gave up the ghost and rotted off. That left the umbrella tottering on a wobbly base that had to be propped up just right in order to work at all. Redneck engineering. You know what that is, Randy (I’ll leave the last name to be filled in by those who know).

Anyway, it was either fix the goldang thing or prepare to be irritated at least a little bit every time I went to use the durn whozemawhatzee. So I steeled myself for a walk down the hardware aisle at the big Orange Menace. I have to say at this point that Lowe’s is FAR worse than Home Depot in the hardware department; extremely disorganized. Most hardware sections are like a Vegas casino anyway: once you’re in, good luck getting out. You’ll need to track your waypoints on a GPS. But Lowe’s—really? I’m not a conspiracy theorist. At least I wasn’t until I went to Lowe’s.

Anyway, turned out my first batch o’ bolts was too short. And there was much rejoicing. On the second trip to Lowe’s I was really in a bad way, because I had foolishly decided on a lark to pitch the family tent in the side yard today—you know, just really quickly set it up and see what’s broke and what’s missing. It’s funny. I didn’t think a guy could forget so much about tents in so short an amount of time, but a guy can, and a guy did. It probably didn’t help that I did it all wrong, it’s an eight man tent and enormous, I was trying to do it all by myself, the neighbor lady picked that exact moment to pop over to the fence and ask me, “Puttin’ up the tent?” I mean, I had heard about the legendary most-unnecessary-rhetorical-question-ever, but I had never witnessed it in the round. It was staggering.

And boys, if you’ve ever wondered what fiddlefarting is, I was full on. I was dead center in the fiddlefartage. Murphy and his cansarned Law were both doing their worst, too. Why is it tent stakes get bent out of shape so easily? It probably didn’t help that I was using the sledgehammer, but still…I wonder.

I finally wrassled the tent up with my wife’s help, and it’s still up. It can stay up for a few days, as far as I’m concerned. I only mention it to help explain how foul my mood was as I perused the conspiratorially disorganized nuts and bolts at Lowe’s (trip #2).

Trip #3 was to Home Depot. But that was only after I had dragged the Dremel, the Roto Zip with the angle grinder attachment, and the fifty foot drop cord out of my cellar. Did I mention it’s a genuine pain in the ass to do anything around my house because all my crap is buried in stacks in my tiny little cellar? I didn’t mention that? Oh. Well. I should have. It adds at least 50% more effort to every handyman task I have to do around my house, because half the time I spend going up and down the cellar stairs chasing bits of crapola I need that I forgot just where it is in the first place—though most of the time it’s under something that’s been stacked on top of it. Whatever’s on top is almost always either heavy or just awkward for the sake of being awkward.

It’s like bolts that are so rusted they have to be cut off. It makes one wonder why the one that rusted its own way out, thus necessitating the repair in the first place, couldn’t have provided a better example for its two other mates. But no. It also makes one wonder why the factory that built the freaking umbrella base in the first place couldn’t just weld the two pieces together to begin with, thus saving the need to have fasteners of any kind at all! But that would be unreasonable. Or maybe it would be too reasonable; maybe that’s it. As with most conspiracies, we’ll never know the truth. Not until somebody important dies and the secret tapes are released.

Here it is: when I got back from trip #3 I was ready for a trip to the firing range. Let me tell you. But I prevailed over rusty yard implements and won my shade. The umbrella is up. And it’s rock steady. The only problem is, now I’m too tired and irritated to smoke my cigar under it.

A Pairing, For Your Delectation…

Coffee snobs the world over, rejoice. Rejoice, I say. Because now the concept of pairing (putting two things together that were made for each other) has come to writing.

Yep. I knew it would be good, too, just like coffee and bacon, before I even tried it. Let me explain. I was trudging through a lengthy novel that was mildly interesting. I was into the triple digit pages and it still hadn’t bitten me. I decided on another trip to the library to find something good. When I found Stephen King’s 11/22/63 on the shelf, I walked straight to the checkout. King’s latest is a novel about the possibility of changing history; a book that asks the question, “What if Oswald had been stopped from assassinating Kennedy?” And it’s a ripping read so far. I’m less than halfway through it.

That much I expected. What I did not expect was a parallel inspiration in my own writing.

I used to fret that, if I wrote while reading another author’s work, I would subconsciously copy it. Not so, dear boy. Or girl, if you are one. No, reading King’s work has inspired me to think clearly in regard to my own, igniting the fires of my imagination in entirely different directions.

What I’m doing is alternating from King’s book to my own rough draft of The Wagner Diary. I’ve found a good pairing. Already it’s taking on new and previously unimagined traits. And I’m loving it. I thought I had written myself into a box a bit in Marsburg. Not so. For those who are truly creative, there is no box. If there seems to be, one can think one’s way out of it.

And I’m changing up the layout of things a little here. While Marsburg was built around the writings of a dead man, in Wagner things are shaping up to be a little more…contemporary. Of course there are plans to integrate the antiquarian bent of the Airel Saga Diary Series, and this book will have Teutonic overtones, but it should turn out to be cracking good.

If it’s half as good as King’s work, it will be. I’ll keep you posted on that.

The Dangerous Expert

You know what I’m talking about already, don’t you: that guy. The guy who watches a documentary on Afghanistan and suddenly becomes a foreign policy expert. The housewife who hears from a friend of a neighbor that so-and-so only won X Factor because so-and-so is related to the ex-lover of one of the judges’ former roommates, and don’t you think they ought to sue. It’s called armchair quarterbacking, and it’s epidemic.

It even works on Amazon.

Not to pick on my personal gravy train, but I think there is a point where readers' remarks officially get out of hand. Aided and abetted by technology, the Dangerous Expert is out there…somewhere anonymous, usually…with corrective measures just a notch or two beyond pithy.

Certain people among us, usually those personality types who take it upon themselves to police the entire world, have been reading blogs and books on writing and have become expert literary critics. Well, I say. Their mission is nothing shy of forcing all writers into the same perfect box. That’ll be lovely, won’t it. And there shall be no room therein for criticism of any kind, because all books will be automatically excellent. By their definition, of course.

There shall be no personification. The moon cannot have its own agenda.

There shall be no short sentences. Fragments. Know what that is? Bad style. Not debatable. Green squiggly lines underneath. Crap, in other words, and the Self-Appointed Expert shan’t deign to read it.

There shall be no love at first sight. Such things are not realistic, and as such, they get the double strikethrough treatment, as they deserve.

There shall be no freedom of expression. All new authors are to study, refer to, and conform to the styles that have been laid out by “established authors,” i.e. those who are real professionals and have contracts with one of the Big Six. Any style that differs is invalid.

The indie houses are to be discouraged, punished, demoralized, scolded, talked down to, and ridiculed at every possible opportunity, usually with comments such as, “Get an editor you fool,” or “I can’t believe it’s not butter.” Okay, scratch that second one. It IS BUTTER. And that’s why you HATE IT. 

In short, what mankind has unleashed upon the earth is nothing new under the sun. They used to be called busybodies. Gossips. Ne’er-do-wells. Their rallying cry was their narrow vendetta, and it still is. Today their fuel is an ill-advised doctrine of the Correction of the Wrong, of which I am apparently one. Because I write in fragments. And because my characters don’t need all of Books Two and Three to fall in love because they’re conflicted or confused or one of them happens to be a werewolf. And because celestial bodies, in my world, are anthropomorphic and have their own agenda. It’s clearly ridiculous, but you know what? I liked it when I wrote it, and I still like it now. I think it’s frickin’ cool. And so do thousands of other people, who are buying the crap out of the crap I write. The world is made of magic and fairy dust and sentence fragments and that’s why I love it. And that’s why my evil agenda cannot be stopped. Cue evil laugh here.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I just saw the Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Subtitles and all. It took me a couple of weeks to muscle through it—there are some shocking scenes in there that have to do with rape, sodomy, bondage, grisly serial murder, and other horrifying aspects of life on earth. I’d argue that these potentialities have little to do with most of us, but the simple fact is, whether graphically rendered in the imagination or not, all of us have given safe harbor to these ideas before, in one intensity or another. For some of us it may be quite tame; an episode of road rage that provokes us to violent or murderous thoughts. For others it may be full-blown deviant sexual fantasy or worse. Whatever the case, Steig Larsson’s book tackles some of the worst of our potentials without fear. I find that striking, because we all play with fire from time to time, ignorant of its full potential or not.

I’d heard, of course, of the Girl books. I was curious about them, but was too busy to follow through. When the Swedish version of the film popped up on Netflix, it was easy to get at. I watched the film not for its entertainment value, but for its value as a kind of case study. I read fiction that way, too. I know I’m weird. Though I may be a couple of years behind the power curve, I finally got curious enough about the Girl stories to give this one a look.

I had to look away from the screen at several key points, because the scenes were just too intense for me. I got the point, though. I don’t know from experience what rape is—though I’m sure there are those who will read this who do—but it was real enough for me as acted out on screen. It was unspeakably awful. I couldn’t watch.

And I mention it because I’m conflicted about the inclusion of those elements in the story, in the movie.

See, I think Larsson was quite brave to plow directly into the issue of these manifest evils in our society, God rest his soul. Part of me asks, “Why would he write this into his story?” And another part of me knows already that authors and writers and other artists have a responsibility to address—and not ignore—those parts of our culture that shock and appall, and speak truth: that after all the evil that enshrouds every one of us has been cut through, we are still invaluable, we are still God’s image bearers. It’s a great mystery that these things that are in violent opposition to each other can exist in the same vessel.

Part of me felt some of these scenes were gratuitous. That was the part that questioned why a man should write—why a movie should be produced—about rape, about sexual torture, and so graphically. What would be the purpose? Do we not already have enough saturation in our culture, in our society, of these greasy and dishonorable things? Detestable, I should say. But as the movie played out, I realized the purpose, the design of the writer, the producer, the director.

Those elements of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo didn’t just occupy space in the narrative. The writer was trying to tell a story. As it happens, it unfolds slowly and we discover at the end just why all that bone-chillingly horrid stuff is in there. It’s a central part of Lisbeth’s character and identity. Though I can’t relate to what the Girl went through literally, I can relate to feeling used, abused, to having issues with authority, to feeling fragile, to having a need to be guarded.

I realized that there are universal aspects to things, even to pure evil like that. And while that may make for a bit of an awkward read on my blog, it makes good food for thought in regard to Story. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo isn’t what I’d term a recommended movie, especially the Swedish version (I have a feeling the American version was toned-down a bit; less graphic, but I don’t know for sure). But it had an effect on me. What’s interesting is that I had no idea what I was getting into with it. I didn’t know what the story was about, what it centered on. If I had, I wouldn’t have watched it. And though it was beyond shocking, I’m glad I did. I’m certain it will make me a better writer in the long run. That doesn’t mean I’ll be mindlessly copying ultra-graphic elements into my stories. No. It means I’ll be taking a more considered approach to my characters, my plots, my stories. It also means I’ll be reading Steig’s Girl series soon. 

On Criticism

With the release of Michael has come a storm of reviews, all this past week. Michael garnered two five-star reviews, Airel took down one of those plus a couple of one-star scorchers, and I’ve heard back from various people and fans through unofficial channels on some of my other works, like K: [phantasmagoria]. All of it has combined into a critical wave that has given cause for pause. I took a walk last night, reflecting on all of it.

I want to touch on the subject of Bad Reviews here. It’s something all published authors have to deal with, and it’s something arguably made worse by technology—anyone and everyone that wants to can leave poisonous black barbs in the creative part of the author’s heart, and at a whim. I’ve seen quite a lot of it. One of my favorites was a young lady’s one-star review that must have been ten paragraphs long, poorly written natch, at the end of which she basically said she was on her period in finals week so she probably shouldn’t be writing reviews while she’s in a bad mood and isn’t it funny, lol! Yeah well. Pardon me for not laughing. And perhaps I used the term “lady” too loosely. I’ll leave that to you to judge.

I’m not bitching. That’s first. I’m not. I can take the bad with the good. I have to. And while I wish there weren’t so much bad and so much eagerness on the part of readers (or jealous authors?) to launch it at me and others like me, I have a right to say something about those bad reviews. For my fellow author, I have a responsibility to address the elephant in the room, because nobody tells you how to deal with bad criticism when you’re setting out on your journey. Too often, we authors set out on that journey with rose-colored glasses anyway, only to have them ripped from our faces at various points as cold reality shoulders its way into our lives.

Here’s the thing: I know I still have a lot to learn about writing. Perhaps some of my one-star reviewers think I’m haughtily earning millions as I scourge the market with tepid mass market drivel. “Get an editor!” they say, not realizing that I devoted more than two years of my life to the project, not realizing that me and my family made sacrifices to be able to afford the $4k+ bill our incredible editor sent us. It was all worth it, by the way. My critics may not realize that I sat at book signings skimming the print version of the First Edition, finding errors, resolving to go back through and find them and fix them for the Second Edition, which is already on sale. Perhaps my more disaffected reviewers are just pissed that I’m able to make a living as a writer, full time. Maybe they’re jealous, though I can’t imagine why. Truthfully. I’ve seen my life. It’s not ready for prime time. I’m not going to be featured on MTV Cribs anytime soon.

Nevertheless, I’m in a bit of a storm here, and I’m trying to figure out what makes the one-star critic tick. Let’s play devil’s advocate for a sec: Usually, at least on Amazon, for some magical reason all the five-star reviews are some kind of conspiracy against True Art. In other words, they’re meaningless because obviously, the author has a huge network of minions who do his bidding in regard to reviews. This gang of indiscriminate five-star reviewing superfriends boasts perfect Tom Selleck moustaches, you can bet, and they are well supplied with three dollar bills by us rich author types, so that they can buy our eBooks again and again and again, thus sending our crummy unworthy books up the rankings undeservedly. Anyway, if all this were true, and the five-star review should be ignored because it’s so obviously skewed, then all one-star reviews ought to share the same fate. Hell, we learned about bell curves and means and medians in junior high, for crying out loud. Why not apply it here.

There’s been a lot of assumption in our culture, too, about what “Mainstream” is. On the conservative side, there has been name calling. Conservatives label the traditional powers in the press the MSM, or Main Stream Media, but that’s a misnomer. NBC and CNN aren’t mainstream. Hollywood tree huggers aren’t mainstream. Eco-terrorists aren’t mainstream, and “artists” who defecate into jars and then display it in galleries aren’t mainstream. What’s mainstream in America is by and large a Biblical sense of morality, a Christian outlook on how the world should work.

As that relates to our stories, that means we like the kinds of books and movies where the bad guy loses and the good guy gets the girl. Why do you think Princess Bride is a classic? Because that’s what most people want. The best criticism I got about Airel this year was this: “A good light read.” Why? Because it means I’m on target to reach the largest audience, giving me the best chance for success and giving my art the widest distribution. Some people resent that. Some people possess a morality that goads them on to fight against the actual mainstream; they resent most of us as backward, rednecks, gun-toters, religious nut jobs, evil conservatives, or just plain old intolerant and uneducated idiots. But I think it’s plain to see who’s really intolerant.

Their kind of morality demands that they fight in shrill tones against any mention of God, any writing about Biblical scripture without some kind of apology or prequalification. Their view of true art is exclusive, it must be edgy, it must be “realistic” (i.e. hopeless and self-serving), it must contain ever more gratuitous sex, foul language, denigration of women, attacks on traditional values, and it must be a crutch to ever more extreme splinter groups and radical factions of our society—in short, they don’t believe all of us were created equal, their morality insists that we be forced to be equal. My writing is decidedly outside that mold.

I think that could be one reason why I must suffer the attack of the one-star review from time to time.

But what else might have filled my one-star reviewers with such angst, God love them? Allow me to posit another theory, based on how most of these are composed, because probably about 80% of all one-star reviews are filled with spelling and grammar errors. I submit to you the idea that they’re not themselves authors, or even writers. How many critics of literature have historically been writers? How many food critics are chefs? How many motorjournalists, who eagerly criticize the iron they test drive, have ever worked the manufacturing lines, have ever set foot in a design studio, are able to engineer a car? I think it’s reasonable to say that it’s easy for a connoisseur of food to criticize the chef, especially when he doesn’t know how to cook the dish. I’m not trying to insult you, one-star critic, but I think it’s a fair question to ask: have you ever written and published a book? If not, do you think it’s intellectually honest for you to ask again and again, “Howe does this carp git pulbished?” I think it’s a question that begs an answer.

All my books have errors in them. I am trying to find them all, but it’s difficult to ferret them out from the hundreds of thousands of words in which they’re buried. For example, I just read Rainbow Six, by Tom Clancy this past week, and I found errors in it. I found turns of phrase that I would never use. I came across bits of writing that struck me as awkward, but I loved the book. I realized that it took Clancy probably a couple of years to put that one together. Lots of people had their hands on it, trying to make it all work right. It does. All that work, and I digested all 738 pages in a week, easily. It’s striking to the point of filling me with reverence for the man. And though my tastes as a writer are different than his, I won’t be blasting him with a one-star review on it. No way.

I have to admit something. If I’m hurt by one- and two-star reviews on my own work, I should be more careful criticizing others’ artistic expressions. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I should be more careful. If I’m standing before a work that doesn’t speak to me, that doesn’t mean the work is crap. It just means it doesn’t’ speak to me. I should move on. It may not be a case of bad art. It may be a case of bad taste. Or at the least, missed opportunity.

I humbly state here that I am not finished. I am still learning how to write. I love that I have loyal fans, I love that there are people out there who get what I’m trying to do, that I’m able to connect with somebody through my art. I know I won’t be able to connect with everyone. My art won’t speak to all to read it. Some won’t get it. Others will be repulsed by it. The reaction will be different every time. But what momma taught you, or should have taught you, about not saying anything if you can’t say something nice, holds true here. If you’ve got a negative reaction to the work, don’t hold the worker responsible for your reaction. A truly free society needs no police.

In the end, I write because I choose to, and I write about what I want to write about. And how. I take all the risks on publishing it, too, knowing full well that I will bear the wounds of the critic’s arrows. I could hide my work under a rock, but I don’t want to. I want to share it. I have to give some weight to the criticism I receive, but I also know what I’m trying to do here. If I were swayed by these breezes, I wouldn’t be worthy of the mantle God gave me. There’s probably nothing worse than a man who abdicates his life’s pursuits to the whims of popular sentiment. Bill Clinton was that kind of president. I’m not that kind of man.

So, to my fans: fear not. I will continue to write what you love. I will continue to learn my craft and hone excellence into all that I do. Thank you for your undying support.

And to my critics: I humbly thank you for your input. You’re entitled to your one-star opinions. All I ask of you is that you remember and consider, as you criticize me, that I’m an artist who takes my work seriously, who labors over it, who tries to make it as good as I can, not only for my fans, but also for little ol’ me. As such, please consider how you’d feel if someone said those things about your work. If you indeed have any work. If you do, please feel free to send me the links to it, so I can read it in turn, and give you my unsolicited opinion on it. I do believe that’s what would be considered “fair.”