More change -- the kids are coming home!

Since I restarted this blog talking about all the changes that had occurred in my life over the past 18 months, I'll continue that with a new one. My oldest daughter, the one who married and moved away last September, is coming back home!

Well, sort of.

They had to move out of state because her husband, who I'll call Andrew for the purposes of this blog, still had one semester of college to finish. My daughter, who I'll call Erica, has two years of school left, but she put that on hold so he could finish up and then, hopefully, get a job teaching. She had already been accepted at a university about 45 minutes down the road from here (after doing community college for her first two years of college), so they were fairly limited in where they could go.

The teaching thing hasn't worked out yet for Andrew, but yesterday he was offered a position with a media company in the same city where she will be going to college! Better yet, that puts them 45 minutes from us to the west, and 45 minutes from the rest of my family (mom, sisters and their families) to the east. She and Andrew will be smack-dab in the middle of us all!

Good for all of us – though she and Andrew might get tired of us after a while, I don't know.

The challenge of it all is the timeframe. He starts his new job in twelve days. That's right, less than two weeks. They have no apartment, they live three-and-a-half hours' drive away, and they both work, so it's not as if the two of them have nothing but free time between now and then. There's also the issue of furniture, but we'll figure that one out as we go.

Just as soon as I tell you all I'm back, ready to start publishing a few pieces under my own name again, I find I'm going to be a busy little bee over the next few weeks, doing a lot of traveling down there and back, helping them get set up, helping them move – all built around my day job.

It's a good challenge to have, though, and I can't tell you how ecstatic I am they will be moving this close.

And, since I wasn't blogging last year when the two of them were married, and I am talking about them now, I'm going to share a couple of wedding photos. The first is my wife and I escorting the lovely bride toward the ceremony and her waiting husband-to-be. The second pic is my mom with the two of them, and the third one is the happy couple. And yes, the dude is that tall – he's 6'7" (but he still can't take me on the basketball court. Just don't tell him I said that.)

Until next time (I'll post again this weekend), happy trails!

Lessons from the Walking Dead: Good vs. Evil?

I’m not big on watching television. Outside of some sports (NOTHING beats the NCAA basketball season and March Madness), I don’t watch a lot of TV shows.

One show I do watch, as do most of the people in my social circles, is The Walking Dead. Over the past two episodes something has struck me, and being a writer this is the only way I know to share.

I think sometimes in life there is little difference between good and evil, and I believe The Walking Dead shows that, in many cases, the difference is only a matter of perspective.

Let’s take a look at Rick Grimes, leader of our little band of survivors in The Walking Dead. These are people we’ve watched come together and persevere through the zombie apocalypse. They’ve managed to survive, to even find a safe haven of sorts, despite this worldwide epidemic that seems to have claimed most of humanity. They’ve watched their own family and friends fall victim. They’ve endured what few could survive.

Our good buddy Rick has taken on the mantle of leadership. He’s put his life on the line numerous times, he’s shouldered the constant worry of ensuring all are safe, and when they found Sophia, the little girl they had been spent months searching for, had been turned to a zombie, Rick is the one who put a bullet in her head because he knew the trauma of doing so would be too much for anyone else to bear. Quite frankly without his leadership my guess is everyone in his group would be dead by now.

And he’s managed to do so while holding on to some vestige of his moral code – you never leave your folks behind, there are certain rights that are always right, certain wrongs that are always wrong.

A stand-up guy.

Then we have the governor, the man who leads Woodbury. He’s evil. He keeps disembodied heads from his victims – zombies and regular folks – stored in tanks in his private bedroom for his own personal viewing pleasure. He led his men in an ambush where they killed a half dozen or so soldiers and stole their equipment. He assigned one of his men to assassinate Michonne once she chose to leave Woodbury and strike out on her own. And when they captured two of Rick’s people – Maggie and Glenn – the governor let one of his thugs tie Glenn to a chair and then beat the living-crap out of him before letting a zombie loose on the bound prisoner. Then the governor assaulted, and threatened to rape, Maggie.

A true, in-the-flesh bad dude.

But is there really that much difference between Rick and the governor?

Rick’s a good guy, but he’s done some horrible things along the way. When he, Glenn and Hershel encountered a few strangers in an empty bar, Rick shot them down with the icy cold calculation of a serial killer or a gunman in the old West. While his wife withered away emotionally, starving for some sort of comfort from Rick while she carried their baby, he would barely acknowledge her existence. And when it became apparent he and Shane could no longer co-exist in the group, and that Shane was setting Rick up to kill him, Rick went along with Shane’s plan until forced into a fatal confrontation with his former best friend, rather than less violently banishing Shane to go out on his own.

The governor, by contrast, has created an oasis for nearly 100 people, a village where they can live peacefully, protected from the zombies. He allows newcomers to take up residence in the village, provided they do so in small enough numbers as to not pose a threat to the village. And, through the course of the series, we’ve learned the governor has an undying love for his daughter, the sort of all-encompassing devotion only a parent can truly understand. While his little girl has been turned into a zombie, he has kept her there, hidden away but separated from others to keep the rest of the village safe, supporting research into curing the zombie virus, mostly driven by this love.

You might say Rick’s evils, if you want to call some of his acts by that label, are driven by his desire to keep the group safe, that everything he’s done is consistent with his role as group leader, and even the bad stuff is okay when viewed in that light.

I would argue the same for the governor. Virtually everything he’s done can be construed as necessary, or at least likely necessary, to protect the town, to keep its people safe, and to one day bring his daughter back from her zombie state.

Does he take a little more dark pleasure in inflicting pain or retribution on others? Sure, but then again Rick seemed to take some sort of perverse satisfaction in the emotional pounding he inflicted on his own wife, day after day, until she was dead.

Do we view Rick as good only because the show’s creators and producers have shown him to us in that light, and we see the governor as evil, again, only because of the way the show has present him to us.

At their core, is there really a difference between good and evil, other than perspective?

I'm curious to know your thoughts. Leave a comment below and tell me what you think.

Check out my own zombie tale, where you really can't tell the good guys from the bad, for just 99 cents. Summer's End. Again, just 99 cents!

You want me to do what?

Here it is, two days before the release of my debut novel, CLAIMING MOON, on Kindle (Nook, other formats to follow). I should be all wrapped up in preparing for that, nervous, thinking more about how to get the word out, continuing to find reviewers for the work, all that sort of stuff.

I am doing that, I really am. But you know what is foremost in my mind right now?

Basketball.

Any of you who know me know I coach, or I did coach, a girl’s high school varsity team up until March of this year. (For a little more on the end of that season, and why I coach, check out my blog from Feb. 29).

As much as I love coaching, I decided to give it up for two primary reasons. It is an all-consuming commitment. There’s practice planning, conducting practices, studying the strengths and weaknesses of your players, designing drills to address those, scouting other teams, watching video, preparing specific game plans for some games, travel to games…the list could go on. The team I coached played 35 to 36 games every year, traveling across three or four states to do so. We start practice in August and finish the season in March.

It’s great, but it’s long and takes, as I said, all my time outside of work.

My first reason for giving it up was simply to spend more time at home, with my family. I have five kids. Two of them are attending a local community college and will be transferring to four-year schools after this upcoming school year. This is my last chance to be at home with them (although, to be honest, they both work, they go to school, they have boyfriends – there still isn’t all that much family time at home with them).

The second reason was more time for writing. This summer I’ve edited and revised and prepared a novel for publication, I’ve collected a novella and some of my short stories for two upcoming collections to be released (some are original stories, some reprints), and I’m about a third of the way through a new novel.

None of that, most likely, would have happened if I were still involved with basketball.

So what’s the problem?

I opened my e-mail yesterday and there was a little note from a coaching buddy of mine. He started up a girls homeschool basketball program two years ago and, quite frankly, has done a remarkable job growing from a start-up to a fairly competitive program in just two seasons.

Now, the parents want to start a boys program, with a junior varsity team this year. He asked if I’d be interested in helping to get it up and running and to serve as the coach.

Wow.

I was just thinking a couple of days ago about how it’s nearly August, and how much I miss the preparation work I’m usually doing at this point for the first practices, but also how much I’m enjoying the freedom from that time commitment.

If you followed the link I supplied earlier in this blog, you know a little bit about my coaching. I coach because I love the game of basketball, and I’m far too old to try playing competitively. I coach because I get great satisfaction from working with kids, watching them struggle and work and then suddenly get it, master some skill, understand the offense, figure out how to play defense. It’s amazing to watch -- sometimes you can literally see their face light up with excitement.

That’s usually just the beginning. They grow more confident, on and off the court, become a stronger, more self-assured person. I’ve had a handful go on to play some college ball.

I enjoy the competitive aspect of coaching. The chess game, matching wits with another coach. The feeling after a close, hard-fought game (elation with a win, disappointment at a loss). I’m not above bragging a bit here – in three seasons we won 72 games, we went to two state title games, winning one and nearly pulling of a major upset in the other. There’s a camaraderie between coaches, between coaches and officials, coaches and players, that can’t be matched anywhere else.

All of those are reasons I so much enjoy coaching. And, honestly, miss it already.

Yet that is a chapter I had closed, at least for now. I had moved on. Or so I thought.

Anyway, I’m going to give it serious consideration. It is a junior varsity, after all. Not as much practice, not as many games, no late-night video sessions to scout the other teams, not quite as much time, right?

For now, maybe in writing this I’ve gotten basketball out of my mind for a few hours. Time to focus on writing.

If I can.

Back to blogging and writing

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and that’s okay I suppose. I know many writers who update their blog two, three, even four times a week, and for the first two months after I started this one, I was determined to do the same.

Funny thing, though. I was reading author John Locke, one of the best-selling Kindle authors in the world, and he takes a different tact. He has a blog, but only updates it a few times a year. His belief is that he tries to write truly heartfelt, deep blogs that take a long time to assemble, edit and revise. He wants each blog to really show him, what’s inside, his personality, his beliefs, as a way for others to get to know him in a somewhat less superficial manner than would be possible through pieces he might hammer out every couple of days.

The reasoning behind his blog, behind most everything he does, is simply to build an audience to buy his books. Who could argue with his results? He’s the first self-published author to sell more than a million Kindle books.

So, the last blog I posted, the one about the basketball team I coach losing the state championship game, was one I decided to leave there for a while. I think it shows a little bit more about me, about who I am and who I’ve become over the past few years coaching this team.

I’ve also been quite busy wrapping up the basketball season. We had our final two weeks of practice after the state tournament, then we attended a national tournament in Lynchburg, Va. It’s a great experience—five games in three days—but it’s exhausting, I don’t sleep well away from home anyway, and add to that the fact that I spend half the nights there watching video I get of other teams we might play, and it is tiring.

But exhilarating.

Then comes the crash. Every basketball coach knows it. You’re playing basketball, practicing three times a week, traveling all over two states for games, going over defenses and offenses in your head during the daily commute to and from work, figuring out ways to motivate the team as the season-ending playoffs occur, and then…..it’s all gone.

The first year I coached it literally took a month for me to re-adjust to life without basketball. There was this big hole in my life – in addition to all the time involved, I also missed the players. Over the course of a seven-month season you grow really close to the players, to some of the parents. Then bam! It’s all over.

Since that first year I’ve been better prepared for the end, but it’s still hard that first week or two. We returned home from the tournament about a week ago, and now I’ve mostly re-adjusted my thinking, my emotions, and I’m ready to focus all of that energy and time back on the writing.

And this blog.

That means a treat for you who follow me, because on Wednesday I’ll have an interview with R.J. Cavender. He’s a writer and editor, the man who years ago started this little online entity called the Horror Library that pulled together a group of writing hopefuls into a critique group that has spawned a huge number of writing and publishing ventures, a dozen or so writers who have since garnered  hundreds of short story publishing credits, and a handful of writers who have gone on to publish novels and short story collections, including one best-selling author from the group.

After Thursday’s interview I’ll be back to a few random thoughts from me, some publishing news (I have a couple of novels coming out later this spring), and some more author interviews set for April and May

So, thanks for sticking with me through this little lull, and I hope to hear from you all.

A crushing day, and the real reason I do what I do

FAIR WARNING: This blog is not about writing, publishing, or an interview with a literary figure. It is simply something I felt I had to write – it tells you a little about me, hopefully, and a little bit about where all my time has been spent these past three years (instead of writing). It’s long. It’s heartfelt, and if that’s not your cup of tea, feel free to pass right on over. I’ll be back with regular stuff soon.

Saturday was a painful day.

Some of you know I coach a high school ladies varsity basketball team. It's a team of homeschoolers – but let me say up front you probably don't know what homeschool basketball is all about. It is where more of the top high school talent is playing, where more colleges are going to find players, because homeschoolers often play a college-like schedule – 30 to 40 games a season, a fair bit of travel, and national tournaments. Talented players, and their families, are sometimes opting to go the homeschool route for athletics – most notably in basketball.

I began coaching this team nearly three years ago, at the start of my oldest daughter's senior year. A week after practice began the coach quit. At my daughter's cajoling, I offered the athletic director my assistance to whoever might be named coach.

Turns out that was me.

Spending that time with my daughter was a wonderful experience for both of us, and gave me memories I'll cherish always. As a proud father, I have to tell you one of those memories was in the season-ending national tournament we attend each March. We advanced to the final four (in the nation, may I remind you), and, with the final seconds ticking away in that semi-final game, my daughter hit a shot that sent us into overtime!

Here's the thing, though – well, before we get to the thing, let me give an ever-so-brief background on our program.

We work hard on this team at preparing for the season, at doing whatever is necessary to win (within the rules and good sportsmanship, of course). We work and play to win. My first year as coach we were 30-5, won the state title and finished third in that national tournament.

With six seniors graduating, the next season was more challenging, particularly since our team was mostly made up of ninth-graders (and a couple of eighth-graders and a seventh grader thrown in). Our top scorer from the previous year did return, but injured her ACL a week before our first game, so we were behind the eight-ball from the start. Still, finishing 18-17 with one of the youngest varsity teams in the state was quite an accomplishment.

This year, we're still young – a senior, a junior, three sophomores, and the rest freshmen, ninth-graders, and an eight-grader -- so we struggle at times, but our record stands at 22-9. It's that ninth loss which made Saturday so painful.

Sports can be an emotional roller coaster. Little more than a week earlier, we made it to the semi-finals of the regional playoffs, where we squared off with the No. 1 seed in the state. They were on their way to pounding us pretty good, with a 20-point lead in the third quarter, and our prospects were looking bleak. The loser was done for the year, the winner would move on to the regional championship and clinch a spot in the state playoffs.

One thing you need to know about my players – they don't know how to quit. From 20 points down, they stormed back. Fittingly the senior who missed her entire junior year with the ACL injury hit the free throw – with 2 seconds on the clock – that sent the game into overtime, and we went on to win.

I'll never forget at the end of the game seeing her fall to the floor, overcome by emotions, tears of joy rolling down her cheeks.

We continued moving on, winning until Saturday, the day of the state championship, where we faced a team of giants. Our opponent was stacked with seniors, their shortest player is taller than my tallest, and they have three that top out at six-foot or taller. While the game was back and forth for three quarters, we just couldn't hang with them for the entire contest.

Here's where we get to the pain. It wasn't the loss, but afterward, when that same senior came walking off the court. A few steps before reaching the sideline, she went down to one knee and started quietly crying.

What do you do? The other team is lining up to shake our hands, the tournament directors are setting up at midcourt to hand out the trophies, and the two teams preparing to play for the guy's state title are filing from their locker rooms, ready to take over the two team benches. When the game's over, you celebrate quickly, then move on.

This young lady went through hell over the past year. She had two knee operations, months of agonizing physical therapy, and times when she felt she would never make it back.

Yet all season she has been the team's heart and soul, pumping up the others when they felt down, leading by word and deed. She had already tasted success at this level, on that state title-winning team from two years earlier. She put everything she had into leading her team back to the state title game, only to fall short in the end. She was crushed, yet the rest of the world was ready to move on.

What do you do?

As far as I was concerned, that court was going to be ours until my player decided she could stand and walk off. That took a while, but finally, surrounded by her teammates, she stood and we walked off the court.

And that brings me to the “thing” I mentioned earlier.

I love coaching basketball. I love the competitiveness of it, the strategy, the nervousness and energy – particularly when you face a team that outmatches you physically, or when you're going into a major tournament or season-ending championship. I get an even bigger thrill out of watching my players grow up, become more confident on the court, and then carry that confidence into other walks of life.

In the end the wins, the trophies, the championships – we've collected a lot of them over the past three seasons – they mean less and less as time moves on.

But certain events will always be with me – watching my daughter jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas morning, her teammates overwhelmed with joy, when she hit that shot to send us to overtime; then watching those same ladies absolutely crushed when we fell short, losing our long-sought national championship (I spent a lot of time over the next hour with my arm around shoulders, comforting weeping players); watching this year's team – especially that senior I've talked about – be absolutely overcome with joy with that 20-point comeback which propelled us onward in the playoffs, and then consoling her on that court as the bitter realization hit that her dream of another state title was over.

When you share eight months of the year with a group of young people, you grow close, and you feel one another's emotions – joy and pain. That connection, the ability to reach across three decades of age difference, to be a mentor, and a friend – THAT is what coaching is all about.

Several of my former players are playing college ball now, and some on this season's team will no doubt do the same. I keep in touch with quite a few – they drop me e-mails, Facebook messages, show up at some of our games. Whenever we see one another, we strike up a conversation. They keep me up-to-date on how life is going, what their plans are, and I understand them, and they know I do, because of what we've shared.

My youngest – she is 10 – has expressed a bit of interest in playing organized ball next season, and if she does I'll probably help out with the team, but otherwise, this will be my final season on the bench. I love doing it, but coaching at this level is time consuming. I have a demanding full-time job and a family. I've lost family time to coaching, missed out on plenty of sleep (was up until 4 a.m. the night before the state championship, watching video of our opponent) and my writing career has essentially been on hold during this period.

We have the national tournament coming up in March and after that I'll be hanging up my whistle. I'm going to miss it. Already the thought of being away from the game, away from the players, of not being in a gym come August, is depressing. But it's what I need to do, to be with my family more, to resurrect whatever writing career I might have.

Still, I wouldn't trade these past three seasons for anything. The highs and the lows, the emotional connections I've made to these players, knowing I've helped them through those and hopefully taught them a life lesson or two along the way – those are lifelong treasures that nothing could replace, and will be with me long after the wins are forgotten and the trophies are packed away.