September 11

I have no stories of personal tragedy on September 11, 2001, thank God.

That day was the perfect fall day. There was that crisp bite in the air, a nice breeze, no humidity, low-70s temperatures, and not a cloud in the sky. I had been unemployed at that point for just under a month, having moved back up from Maryland due to a relocation for my wife’s career. I was going to the town library early in the morning, and must have got there right after 9 o’clock after it just opened.

Very strange. The few people in there were huddled together, talking, weird expressions on their face. I quickly found the book that I wanted and checked out. The librarian seemed in pain and examined my face for an uncomfortably long time. I had no clue what was going on. Then she did something extremely bizarre. She reached out and seized my hand. “Do you know what’s happening?” she asked me. When I shook my head, she said, simply, “We’re being attacked. They’re attacking us with planes.”

Now, my first reaction, after retrieving my hand, was to think that this lady was completely nuts, except for the fact that there was this weird pallor over everyone there. I high-tailed it out the doors and to my car. I don’t think there was anything playing on the radio. That scared me. Driving the mile or so back to my apartment, I scanned the skies, expecting to see military aircraft soaring overhead and possibly foreign troops parachuting down.

I got home and switched on the TV. Some stations were snowed out. That ratcheted up the fear more. If you’re invading a country, I reasoned, one of the first things you do is knock out the enemy’s means of communication. But it was only a couple of the low channels that were out. Most were working –

Then I saw the image of one of the towers burning. And then, a minute or two later, a second plane few straight into the other tower, igniting in a fireball.

I sat down, horrified, numb, uncomprehending. The station kept replaying the crashes, over and over and over.

My wife was in New York City that morning for a meeting. I called her cell, and got nothing. Dead.

I called my mother at her work; they were watching TV there, too. Nobody really knew what was going on. But within an hour or two it was established that it apparently was an isolated incident. Well, there was the crash/attack on the Pentagon and reports of a downed airliner in Pennsylvania. All commercial flights were grounded, and that appeared to be the extent of it.

An anxious afternoon passed until my wife was finally able to communicate with me via her cell. She had been in Penn Station during the attacks, about two or three miles north of the World Trade Center. Still too close. And she’d be unable to get back to New Jersey. She and her colleague were somehow able to get out to Long Island and they were going to stay at another worker’s home overnight. It was not until the following evening that I saw her again.

A year later I was working in New York City on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. It was very tense. I got into the city early, around 7 am, and it was a ghost-town compared to the normal pedestrian traffic I encountered. There was a rumor of radiation being detected on a ship in the harbor, but it turned out to be either completely false or blown out of proportion, I don’t remember which. I do remember being very glad to get back home that night.

I’ve read some of the profiles on those victims of the savages. Some have brought me nearly to tears: a young couple on one of the planes, on vacation, bringing their three-year-old daughter to her first visit to Disneyland. A man’s recorded phone call to 911, rising in panic as he describes that he’s trapped on one of the upper floors of one of the tower, his frightened “Oh God –” and then pure silence as the call is cut short. Sheer heartbreaking.

I pray that we are able to overcome and eradicate such pure evil. I pray for the brave and intelligent men and women who keep such evil from occurring again. I pray for the 3,000-plus victims of such barbarity. I pray for the innocent victims and the heroic ones. I pray that their sins may be forgiven, that they all may be given a free pass, and that they may all be brought into the arms of our Father in Heaven.

2009 Writing Goals

Better to be ambitious than not, right?

I’ve been posting daily to this blog for six months now, and I feel confident that it served its purpose: to get me back in that habit. I hadn’t written consistently (read: 1,000 words written a day or 1 hour editing a day) since the previous November when I finished re-writing my 1999 novel Kirana. But daily blog posting is all I have been doing, and I’m itching to produce some more works for possible public consumption.

Kirana’s complete as far as I’m concerned. A 2009 goal would be get to that out on the market.

The Whale of Cortary is my second novel; I finished the second draft in July 2007 and a few people have read it with generally positive reviews. However, I’m slightly disappointed with the 40-page “Endgame,” or final part / long ending chapter of the book. It needs to be tightened up, made more suspenseful, made more clear. Probably I need to trim it in half, down to 20 pages maximum. So that’s another 2009 goal. Then, send it out.

I’m thinking of possibly expanding my short story “The Treatment” into a novel. It’s got an inherent ragged lunacy that would make it fun to write. I need to spend a few days working on a potential outline and see if the story has legs.

I have two other novels inside that have been nagging to come out. First is a short, mystery-slash-SF story dealing with immortality. I’m having structural difficulties, though, as to whether to make it a first-person narrative or focus on an alien Hercules Poirot. Also, I’m admittedly not a fan or a reader of mysteries. The plot as I have it so far appeals to me; however, I am at a loss at how to wrap it up at the end.

The other novel I’ve been pondering is a longer work, an epic, kind of a cross between fantasy and SF (has that ever been done before? - Just kidding). The idea of building a cohesive world appeals to me. I’ve taken all my notes and plotlines from my nerd D&D years in the early 80s (yes, I’ve saved them in a box in the attic) and have perhaps the barest of skeletons of a world. And I have an idea that might make it unique among the thousands of books in the fantasy-slash-SF market.

I have about fifteen or so short stories gathering dust in a desk drawer. Maybe three or four are good enough to get published. Another 2009 goal would be to send ’em out. Get experience in the fine art of rejection acceptance. Aaaaaah!

For years I’ve been toying with a “par” for writing. I think a short story a month is doable, and by short story I mean about 5,000-7,500 words. Which is what I do now in week’s worth of posting. So it shouldn’t be too difficult; just need three things: time management, energy management, and idea creation. And I have a backlog of around twenty short story ideas.

The blog thing has turned out to be incredibly fun and rewarding. With absolutely no promotion whatsoever I actually get visitors from all over the country, and some from other parts of the world. Not a lot by any stretch of the imagination, but more than I thought I would have (which was originally about 1 – my wife). So, naturally, I wonder what the next step should be.

In 2009 I think I will maintain this blog as an archive or a “writer’s business card,” adding to it two or three times a week. But more exciting, to me, is that I want to branch out and start two other specific-interest blogs, and vigorously try to market them. I have four expansive ideas right now, which is too many to be manageable, so I need to either combine some or else whittle them down. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. When I come to definite decisions, I’ll post them here, of course.

Right now my new writing office is half finished. I have a new baby on the way any day now and I have my daughter’s new bedroom to paint yet. Lot of busyness on the horizon, which is why my writing goals are targeted for 2009. Hopefully the littlest one will be sleeping through the night by then …

Water & Lemon

For about two weeks now I’ve been doing a simple technique that has noticeably improved my physical well-being. I learned about it in a short little book I read during those often-wasted moments: waiting in grocery store lines, waiting at traffic lights, waiting for my work and home PCs to boot up. It’s a quick read and I will review it completely later.

One of the techniques the author advocates is hydration. You all heard the standard line: drink 8 glasses of water a day. That’s 64 ounces. This author’s contention is that we are all massively and majorly dehydrated, which is one cause that leads to disease, and what our bodies crave most to achieve better health is a massive and major influx of water. He recommends drinking 50 to 75 percent of your weight, in ounces. I’m tipping the scales at about 195 (an easy 15 pounds over my ideal weight), so that figure for me would be about 98 to 146 ounces of water a day, or 12 to 18 glasses of water.

I settled on 15 glasses of water, almost double what it commonly recommended. The author is vehemently against water straight from the tap, so I’m drinking only bottled spring water store-bought by the case (about 25 cents per 16 ounces), or drinking PUR-filtered water at home.

(Oh, and I cut back on my soda and sugar drinks considerably; I think I’ve had about seven or eight, or one every other day, where I used to average probably two, even three a day.)

But what makes it all palatable is to add lemon to your water. There are many reasons why lemon juice is healthy for you. The Romans used it as an antidote to poisoning. It’s alleged to help with heartburn, hiccups, nausea, and constipation. Many believe it stimulates the liver in its production of bile and helps to dissolve gallstones. High in vitamin C, it is a good preventative against infections. It’s also a diuretic, so it helps the body flush out accumulated toxins.

Even if all these reasons were just old wives’ tales, it at least makes water tastier. How much lemon to add to your water? Squeeze the juice from a quarter of a lemon, preferably organic, into a large 16-ounce glass of water.

So after two weeks of doing this I’ve noticed I’m sleeping better, I feel better, and I’m naturally eating better. And you’d think I’m going to the bathroom every five minutes, but I’m not going any more than I used to in the past.

Try it, and see.