If you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ve probably noticed that my posts have come less and less frequently. I used to get one up almost every week, but of late it’s been 3-4 weeks between updates. I’ve had good reasons for not posting as often, but at the end of the day an excuse is still an excuse. I’ve decided to start posting weekly again, so here goes.
What’s new in my world? A lot actually. I’ve come pretty far since I stopped smoking weed in December. My life is a lot busier these days, but I’ve rarely been happier. After the long winter of the last couple of years spring has finally come. I’m finally letting go of all the pain of past mistakes, and am learning to move forward with life.
The first major change is my lifestyle. Anyone who knows me is aware that I work a sedentery desk job, and in my free time can most often be found in front of the television or the computer. Until December both work and play required very little movement, which made me fat and complacent.
On New Years I set a series of goals, and the one I pursued most aggressively was getting in shape. I was tired of being an overweight couch potato. I was appalled that rather than explore the amazing natural beauty of Northern California I’d sit home all day getting high and playing video games. I felt like there was so much I was missing, and I decided to go out and discover those things for myself.
The first weekend in January I drove out to the coast in the rain on Saturday. Sunday I hiked Armstrong woods, also in the rain. Monday I hit the gym and went for a walk around spring lake before bed. That first week I hiked over fifty miles, and I loved every minute of it.
For the first time in years I experienced nature. I saw an eagle soaring over a stretch of rocky coast. I stood under towering redwoods that were over a hundred feet high when Christ was born. I heard the awesome thunder breaking low over the valley, and saw a bolt of lightning strike the top of a redwood. I heard bubbling brooks and saw waterfalls.
The next week I added Sugarloaf Mountain to my circuit of hikes. Then Annadel state park. Every week I resolved to go somewhere new and see something I’d never seen before. Sometimes that was a new trail at Armstrong, sometimes it was an entirely new park I’d never been to.
At first I worried that this was a fad. I thought I’d do some hiking, get tired of it and quit. Only that didn’t happen. Every week I was excited to see whatever new thing I’d chosen to explore. After a month I invested in a new camera so I could document the things I saw. Purchasing It was a difficult decision, because I worried that if I quit hiking the camera wouldn’t see much use.
Nearly six months later I still hike every weekend. I’ve brought my camera along on every trip and taken over a thousand photos. My Canon Digital Rebel was worth every penny, and I use it far more often than I’d ever have imagined. Every time I come back from a new hike I bring back a fistful of awesome pictures, and it feels good looking back at all the places I’ve seen.
The lifestyle change was exactly what I needed. Being surrounded by California’s natural beauty recharged spiritual batteries I didn’t even realize were empty. I began meditating on these trips, which helped restore my center. It’s something I’ve neglected for years, and now that I’ve begun tending it again I realize how much of my unhappiness was caused by spiritual neglect.
In addition to the camera I bought a nice pair of hiking boots (waterproof). They’re comfortable enough for a twenty mile hike, and durable enough to cross streams or climb mountains. I picked up a walking stick for tougher climbs, a hat to keep the sun off my face and a stainless steel water bottle to keep my water cool. Before making each of these purchases I worried that I was wasting money. If I quit hiking all of them would just gather dust, which has happened to me with other hobbies in the past.
All of them proved to be a great investment. As the months have passed I’ve gotten in much better shape, and if anything my love of hiking and seeing all the amazing vistas in California has grown. I’ve even made a list of all the places I want to go in the next year. It’s an ambitious list, but one I intend to complete on journey at a time. I can’t even begin to express how much the outdoors has affected me. I’ve gained an understanding of people like John Muir, who dedicated their lives to the outdoors.
As the months have passed and I’ve spent more and more time outdoors I’ve thought more and more about the next logical step for me. To date all the trips I’ve taken have been day trips. I leave early in the morning, drive a couple of hours and then reach the spot I plan to hike for the day. I usually return home tired and sweatly by late afternoon.
That’s fine as long as I intend to go to parks that are within a certain distance, but if I want to see some of the most distant parks it’s going to mean overnight trips. Even Yosemite is too far to drive to and back in a day, not if I really want to enjoy it anyway. The reality is I’m going to need a day or more to really enjoy the places I want to see.
I took a good look at my car and realized it had some serious limitations where camping was concerned. The first problem was getting places. While I was in Atlanta Brandy took me up to a waterfall at the top of a mountain. It was a beautiful sight, but her car didn’t like the climb at all. By the time we reached the top we were eveloped by the smell of burning transmission, and her car didn’t run quite right on the way back down the hill.
The sad thing is that Brandy’s car has more horsepower than my Hyundai Elantra, so if she struggled on hills like that I was going to have an even worse time of it. I knew that if I wanted to explore some of the parks I’d researched my car wasn’t the best choice. I could take it, but there were going to be places I simply couldn’t go.
The other problem with my car was lodging. Many of the more remote campsites allow camping, but that means bringing and setting up a tent. I don’t mind doing that, but as I considered buying my tent a lightbulb went on. If I had a truck I could solve both problems. It would easily handle the hills and instead of using a tent I could get a camper shell and sleep in the bed of my truck.
This idea came to me back in March, but I was reluctant to act on it. Having a truck sounded really cool, but what about gas mileage? What about the increased insurance? Most importantly what about an increased car payment? Was all that something I really wanted just to make camping a little bit easier?
I started doing my homework on trucks. How much was a good truck? What were the best types? Was it worth buying used, or should I hold out for a new? I spent several weeks finding the answers to these questions, and some of them surprised me.
My insurance would go up $11 each year. The truck I liked best was the Toyota Tacoma, and it averaged 26 mpg. That’s just a few less than my Elantra. Much to my surprise I’d probably spend about the same on insurance and gas if I traded in the econonmy car for a new truck.
Now that I had some idea of what I was looking for I started looking at 2005-2009 trucks in the area. I wanted to see whether it made sense to buy used, and I also wanted to know how much value a new Tacoma would retain if I bought it. I liked what I saw among the used, but they weren’t that much less than a new truck.
Tacomas are rock solid and drive forever. They retain their value better than any other truck in their class, which would make it easy to sell later if I decided I didn’t like it. So I decided to get some quotes on a new Tacoma. I submitted a request to every dealer in the north bay, and then I played them off against each other. Each time one was willing to make me a deal I submitted it to the others to see if they could beat it.
On May 9th I went down to Hansel Toyota and got a damn good deal on a 2010 Toyota Tacoma. After test driving the truck I fell in love with it. It was so nice being up high when driving, and it took me back to the days when I drove a Land Rover. Driving becomes a whole different experience when you are above most cars, and since I get similar gas mileage I’m not giving up much for that added enjoyment.
Meet Kermit the Truck
The truck is Timberland green, so with the help of my friends and family (thanks Heather, Brandy & Alicia) I decided to name him Kermit. Kermit is a great new addition to my family, and I can’t wait to explore California and eventually Arizona with him. There are so many ruins, ghost towns, state parks and other places I want to see now that I have him!
I plan to get the camper shell in the next couple of weeks and have already researched the which one I want. I’ve also gotten an air mattress that fits perfectly in the bed of the truck. It’s plenty of room for one person, and works for two if they don’t mind each other’s company. Speaking of which that leads me to the next major change in my life, Amelia.
I haven’t seriously dated since moving back to Santa Rosa in 2007. At the time I was in the tail end of the relationship with Jen, and when it ended I had no desire to look for another one. I decided to enjoy bachelor life for a while, but instead ended up playing video games and staying home most of the time.
It was a dark time for me where I became more introverted, put on weight and neglected some very important parts of my life. I did some dating during that time, but one was a long distance relationship (they suck), and the other was just a few dates with a girl I met in my History class at Santa Rosa JC.
When Jeff and I decided to move into our own place in May of 2009 I was at a low point and had given up on dating. Still, I was hoping the new place would provide an opportunity to turn things around. One of the goals prompted by the move was meeting a girl, someone who really clicked with me and fit my lifestyle. I didn’t act on it immediately, because I wanted to get my house in order before I went searching for a girlfriend.
In October of 2009 I started flirting with a girl at work named Amelia. She was cute, funny and outgoing but I didn’t pursue her because we work together. In my experience office romance tends to end badly, and that was something I didn’t want to step in. When Amelia asked me to go out for a few drinks I didn’t take her up on it, and after transfering to a new department at work I rarely saw her. I dismissed the possibility of a relationship and moved on.
Then I saw her at the gym. When I went down to San Jose for the Gathering Storm book signing Mary passed me a message saying ‘Amelia says hey’. I kept seeing her everywhere, and when she asked me out for a beer a second time I said yes. That was back in January.
Several months later we are boyfriend and girlfriend. We’ve been on dates pretty much every week since February, and I have to be honest- the girl rocks. She isn’t a gamer per se, but knows enough about it to understand and respect the hobby. She has my bizarre sense of humor, she’s cute…ok you get the point. Let me sum it up by saying this girl rocks, and I’m extraordinarily glad I met her.
Last weekend we stayed a the Hilton in San Francisco, and had a chance to see the play Wicked. It may very well have been the best weekend of my life, and if it wasn’t it was certainly near the top of the list. I haven’t clicked with anyone like this since Darlene, and I’m falling pretty hard for this girl. Expect to hear more about Amelia and some of the places we’ve been in future posts!
What about the writing Chris? That was the whole point of this blog originally after all. I was supposed to post updates about my fiction, and add new stories to the site on a regular basis. I’ve fallen off the wagon there, and I want to get back to it. So without further ado here’s what’s going on with my writing.
In early April I decided to start the 4th draft of The Bond of Jhordil. This version would center on an entirely different set of characters, and would take place before the previous three drafts as far as the timeline goes. I knew it was an ambitious move, because I was effectively shelving everything I’d written so far and starting from scratch.
This was unbelievably daunting, because I was discarding six months and over 250,000 words. Unfortunately I had no other choice, because the early versions of the novel just weren’t good enough to see print.
When I started the fourth draft I tackled it completely differently than the previous versions. Before I’d always just sat down and started belting out chapters. Some of them were great, some mediocre. More often than not I discarded completed chapters, because while they were good they didn’t fit the theme of the novel.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a more efficient way for me to go about this, and by the end of the third draft I was REALLY tired of discarding thousands upon thousands of words. So this time I sat down and wrote a 25,000 word synopsis of the plot. I sat back and considered the plot, and started correcting the things that made no sense.
The synopsis turned out to be exactly what I needed. The first draft was bad, so I improved it. I started asking myself questions about possible alternative plot lines. Each what if made the plot stronger, until it finally hit a point where I was happy. Instead of wasting months writing chapters and then discarding them I only lost a few thousand words.
The end result is that two weeks ago I started writing the prologue. I did three different drafts, each of which took a slightly different angle. I’ve written two versions of chapter one, both of which take radically different angles. After I’d finished all those I sat down and went back to the synopsis. I took another hard look and made another round of changes. It’s taken a while, but each iteration strengthens the plot.
There’s no question in my mind that I’ve finally found the right way to write a novel. I put WAY less work into belting out hundreds of pages, but the work I DO belt out is stronger, full of tension and flows a heck of a lot better. I’ve learned an important lesson, one I feel will speed me on the way to becoming a published novelist.
So what is The Bond of Jhordil about? Here’s my tentative back cover copy:
Aranthar couldn’t be further from the ideal knight. He drinks too much, thinks chivalry is a type of wine and sleeps until noon most days. He’s also the only hope the people of Olivantia have.
Fifteen years ago the people deposed their dark masters, the evil vampyr. The survivors have neither forgiven nor forgotten the betrayal that drove them into hiding. They have concocted their revenge, a plan that will topple the knighthood and enslave the unsuspecting people of Olivantia.
Only one man can stop them, if he can set down his wineskin long enough to do it.
I made some pretty sweeping changes to the world as well. Originally the vampyr were removed from power during the purge. The Knights of the Dawn were placed in charge, but proved woefully inadequate to the task. The people were hungry, tired and under near constant assault by the Orokh and bandits.
That doesn’t make a bad backdrop, but ‘not bad’ isn’t going to cut it. I need a background that is both memorable and unique, that makes the reader wonder about the world and about what might lie around the next corner. After some careful thought I came up with this revised backdrop.
The purge was just the first step in a three year war. Many vampyr were killed, but the survivors banded together. They created an army of consumed (think mindless vampires) and waged war against the Knights of the Dawn and the people of Olivantia. In the end the knights cornered the leader of the vampyr, and my main character killed him.
Unfortunately, this released the army of consumed that the vamypr had bound to his will. Thousands upon thousands of consumed were suddenly free and flooded across the countryside wiping out everything in their path. In the intervening decade and a half their numbers have only increased. The people of Olivantia now huddle in fear behind tall walls. They don’t go out at night, and if they travel from city to city it must be done in giant house sized wagons capable of fighting off the consumed.
So the setting has become more horror and less fantasy. The consumed are an everpresent threat, one the reader is very aware of from page one. This is far more fitting to the story I want to tell, because the main character is indirectly responsible for the consumed overrunning his country.
If my current progress is any indication this version of the novel should be finished by the end of the summer. Then begins the next major round of editing, and I don’t even have a theory as to how long it will take. But you know what? I don’t care.
I’ve finally come to the realization that writing is a profession like any other. I’m going to spend several years learning to write before I get a novel published, but that only makes sense. You wouldn’t expect some guy who just learned what carpentry was to go out and start building houses. The same is true for writers. The important thing is that I keep writing no matter what. If I do publishing a novel is not an if, it’s a when.
So there you have it. My very wordy long overdue update is over! Expect more regular updates in the future.
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