The Weird Weekend

That was a pretty strange weekend. I spent most of the day Friday at home writing, but decided to head to the bookstore later in the evening. On the way I got a call from my brother. Something wasn't right with my grandpa, and my brother suggested I get over there. When I arrived, it seemed like my grandpa was dying. I mean, he was dying. It's kind of weird to recall it that way, because as of right now he's completely fine and happy and alive, but Friday night, I think he was right there. What's more, I think he wanted to be there. He's talked before about being ready to go home to be with Jesus, and I know he's got a lot of aches and pains and weariness and stuff. I don't know, now that I start typing about it I really find that I don't want to talk about it. Suffice to say, it was a surreal night and my grandpa very nearly passed away. And the next morning he was completely fine again.

So Saturday was just sort of an impromptu family day. A lot of relatives who rarely come around were around at my parents house to visit my grandpa. He was in great spirits, and while he didn't seem to have much memory of the previous night, did talk about how he hopes everyone saw how peaceful it is when someone who's saved and knows they are going to heaven is going to die. Beyond that, I worked my second job and remained a little shell shocked from the previous night.

Then today I slept in and woke up feeling a little sick. I've been doing a ton of writing today, working hard on Black Badge Season Two. As it's gotten later I'm starting to feel worse. I'm hoping it's just being tired and not getting for real sick. Spent a little too long digging through old emails. What started out as an innocent search for some info turned into a depressing trip down memory lane. It's weird to relive old friendships, old relationships, and be reminded of what your life had then that it doesn't have now. It was funny to read my 23 year old self emailing his then girlfriend and talking about "having it all together". Oh 23 year old self, if only you knew what 30 year old self knows. And that's that no one ever really has it all together. Sometimes you're closer than other times to having it together, but really we're just trying to do our best.

Anyways, like I said, weird weekend. I'm worried about my grandpa. I realized a little while ago that I've been keeping my cellphone and my home phone right by me no matter where I'm at in the house. He seems so fine, but after being right there with him and holding his hand on Friday night as he took what appeared to be his last breath, I just don't know. It might be a little while before I stop expecting to get that phone call from my mom to tell me he's gone.

Finding the right readers

Okay, I need some help. I'm protective of sales numbers for my publishing company, Hall Brothers Entertainment, but I'm going to share a little about them right now. We're doing well, our first book sold beyond our projections and turned a small profit, our two anthologies have done extremely well and turned healthy profits, but one book hasn't quite found its audience yet. And that's where I'm hoping you can help.

Scrolls is my favorite thing I've ever written. If you're unfamiliar with it, I'll give you a fast summary. It's about a college kid who longs to be alone, but his life is complicated. His co-worker likes him, a campus security guard wants to be his best friend, his sister is in town trying to expose his well kept secret, and his ex-fiancee that he left without a word two years ago just transferred to his school. Oh, and magic is real and he's able to use it in ways no one else can, making him the target of a local magic wielding madman.

I feel like Scrolls is awesome. I'm not trying to be egotistical here, I'm just being honest. It's a collection of all of my favorite things, and I love everything about it. The people who've read it agree with me and seem to really enjoy it, but unfortunately it's a little bit different from everything else we've done on the website so far. If we were a television network, most of our projects would probably be on a network like FX. But Scrolls is much more like a CW show (but ya know, good). The problem is, most of our current audience seem to be those that like FX style shows (gritty, action packed, etc..), and reading about a college kid with magic powers dealing with his feelings for his ex-fiancee while trying to start a new relationship with a different girl doesn't seem to be getting them interested in buying the book.

So here's what I'm hoping you can do. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, come over to the site and check it out. If this sounds like something someone you know might be interested in, please steer them over to check it out. I'm not asking anyone to blindly buy the book (although it is a gorgeous and wonderful book), I'm just trying to get people who are interested in this type of thing to check it out. If you/they like it, then awesome, and if you want to buy the book, then awesome. But the whole thing is online for free, and more than anything I just want to build the audience and get more people on board before season two debuts.

Anything that you can do to help me out with this would be greatly appreciated. I love this project and would love to get the sales numbers up enough to where this isn't something that we have to consider cancelling before I have a chance to delve deep into the years and years of Scrolls stories I have planned.

The Hall Brothers Entertainment Scrolls page can be found HERE.

The Kindle edition of Scrolls can be bought HERE.

The print edition of Scrolls can be bought HERE or HERE.

The big 3 - 0

Thirty years sounds so dang old. Today is my birthday, and I am in fact 30. I hate the idea of being thirty. I feel like everything about me screams "guy in his twenties", but I guess it's just time I break the mold of what we expect of people in their thirties. Or more than likely, it's time I break my own mental barrier of what I perceive people in their third decade to be like. I'm all for being responsible and a good human being and more wise, but I'm not all for being boring, normal, or into NCIS (or related shows).

So, thirty years old. It doesn't feel like I've been alive for all that long, which is just frightening evidence that one day soon I'm going to wake up and be sixty and wonder how the heck I became an old man so fast. I feel good about who I am these days. I feel like a good person in general, a good uncle/son/brother/friend/employee/business owner/writer/citizen of the earth. But I feel like I've always been pretty good at those things, and maybe the thirties is when I should focus on kicking it up a notch, going from good to great. I need to do better with my relationship with God, that is something I'll immediately identify as a deficiency in my life. And I need to lose weight and make that something I commit to fully and just do. But beyond those things, I'm pretty awesome. I know, I know, sounds like something someone in their twenties would say, right?

So that's it. For my birthday I teamed up with close friends and family to buy myself an iPad2, and I'm thrilled about the purchase. It's awesome and super powerful and all that jive, and I feel like I'll be using it three or four years from now. I also now have a new (used) car. It's my first ever car payment. Having a car payment is something that people in their thirties are all about.

As far as the past year, I have zero regrets really. It was by far the most productive year of my life, and from 6/15/10 to 6/15/11 I've written not one or two, but three novel length projects. I've also written a bucketful of short stories, just another thing that has caused my creative output to surge far beyond past levels. Creatively it's the life I always dreamed of living, and Hall Brothers Entertainment has made it a reality. Few people have the honor of saying they are living off of money made doing what they love most in life, but I get paid to write, and spend my days and nights writing fiction and journalism, and people read it and most enjoy it (some cuss me out over it, when the news doesn't fall their way, but that's okay).

I deeply love my family, and I love my life. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I still believe that there is goodness in this world, that people can be gentle and kind and thoughtful and funny and wonderful, and that the world is a place full of wonder and hope and amazing things and people just waiting to be discovered. I believe that there is joy to be found in every day, that happiness is possible for each and every one of us. 98 out of every 100 days are good days for me, full of laughter and optimism and creativity and passion and love, and I see no reason why turning thirty will change that whatsoever. I kind of wish I was still 28, or 29 even, but oh well, I guess I'll just have to accept being thirty, at least until I finish work on this time machine...

The Randometer

I know as a lifetime North Texan I'm supposed to be jazzed about the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs, but the urge to jump on the bandwagon just hasn't hit me yet. I've got a website open keeping track of the score, and I hope the Mavs win, but running through edits on a Hall Brothers Entertainment project and listening to some tunes just strikes me as a much more pleasant way to spend the evening.

However, I did have the urge to blog since it's been a bit since the last one. I don't really have too much to talk about, so here's some random thoughts.

I like the idea that mean people mellow with time. Not all of them end up losing that meanness, but most just turn "surly", which is at least a bit more bearable than mean.

I'm normally super excited about my birthday but this year I'm just not feeling it yet. It could have something to do with leaving behind the twenties and entering into the thirties, a fact that I find to be horrifying and awful in a lot of ways. Seriously, who wants to be thirty? It's awful sounding. So for now I'm just pretending like my birthday isn't fast approaching, and we'll see what happens from there.

A new videogame came out that I want to buy, but I just can't rationalize buying a game for full price anymore. $59.99 plus 8.65% sales tax = $65.18, and spending $65.18 on any game just seems like such a wasteful thing to do. Maybe it's a sign that I really am approaching the dreadful 3-0's, but I just hate the idea of spending THAT much money on a game. I could by 10 books for that much, or 8 gallons of gas (ZING!, take that economy!), or pay my car insurance bill for the month. The thing that stinks is that it takes so darn long for games to come down in price, and by the time the game gets cheaper I'll have forgotten all about it. Oh well! I've got stuff to write anyways, and I've never been particularly good at balancing how much time I spend playing videogames.

The level of quality we're finding in some of the novel proposals at Hall Brothers is unbelievable. We've got one book contract signed that will be releasing later this year and it's so good. It's a fantasy/western genre mash-up and the story is just a blast. It's like the best kind of summer blockbuster movies, with some great character moments, a brilliant setting, awesome action, just so good. Then we've got a book contract in place with a writer who brought us a brilliant proposal for a novel. I don't want to reveal much about that one since it's not releasing until next year, but the concept is so great and this is a book that we really think can be a big seller. We have a book contract offer out right now on another manuscript that I fell in love with. It's such a triumph of storytelling and I really hope that when the author gets back to civilization (he's travelling across Europe, currently) he'll respond affirmatively to our contract offer. It's been really humbling and inspiring for me to read the works of these people, just to see the quality of stories they're entrusting to me and my brother. I take being a publisher to be something as a sacred duty, and I really want to do everything I can to get these works in front of readers and share the brilliance of these writers with the world. I'm excited about it, as you maybe can tell.

I wrote a pretty weird story for Memorial Day. It'll be up at Hallbrosentertainment.com next week. Some really big issues made their way into it, stuff like life after death, and the physical properties of heaven and the horrors of war. Sometimes, right after I finish a story I'll rush around the house and find my roommate and proclaim that my story is super brilliant, but other times I'll sort of slowly amble around the house and find my roommate and shuffle my feet and proclaim that my story is weird and I'm not quite sure if it's any good. This was definitely the second option, and even after editing it today I'm still not sure about it. I usually make my final judgement after my brother reads the story and tells me what he thinks, so I'm hoping he does that before he goes to bed tonight. I'm curious to know if it's weirdgood or just weird.

Even though I know cool people aren't supposed to feel this way, I really don't like Radiohead. Maybe I'm not as cool as I think I am, but I just can't get into their music. Some great songs for sure, but overall their catalog inspires a big fat "eh" outta me.

Alright well, back to editing for me. I hope the week is going spectacular for everyone!

one simple rule

Another day of sleeping like a human has come and gone and I feel good. I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I should've today, but I gave my permission to take it easy. Sometimes I can be such a harsh taskmaster over my projects and deadlines that I don't fit in any time to just recharge and have a day to regroup and refocus. Today was that kind of day and it felt good. I had work early and I did a few work things throughout the day, but mostly I just let the day flow. Watched a movie, read a book, planned a few future projects, thought a lot about vacations (fun fact: I LOVE daydreaming about and planning vacations. It's my goal in life to someday have the resources to follow through on all of those plans) and that was about it. I will say though, I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow and getting back on track. There's a tall stack of MUST BE DONE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE HOLY CRAP! things going on in my life, and they won't be ignored two days in a row. A few weeks ago I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by some of that stuff, but my brother and I had a breakthrough about how to deal with that stuff and it's been a major help to me. In a nutshell, it's just about doing what you can. If you can, awesome, and if you can't then you can't, and you deal with it. It's a very zen kind of approach that I find inspires me to work super hard but to do it from a place of calmness and not in this frantic state of "MUST GET DONE". So that's nice.

My roommate and I stayed up super late last week and were talking about lifestyle changes and reliable ways to work out and such. Mostly we were trying to figure out somewhere we could go swimming at this Summer, as both of us love to swim but didn't do it a single time last year (and I'm kind of thinking I didn't swim the year before that either). But anyways, while talking about diets and exercise regimens and such, my roommate came up with an idea of a system with a single rule. No matter what it is you decide to do to get in shape and get healthy, you have just this one single rule to follow. Don't Quit. That's it. One simple, powerful rule. It's something that I'm trying to apply to everything in my life that I wasn't doing a good job of controlling, most notably my nutso sleep schedule (or lack thereof).

Speaking of sleep, it's just about that time for me. Hopefully the week is treating you all well up to this point. I'm excited about Thursday. It's become family day for me, I go to my families house and hang out with everyone, play with my nephews, have a business meeting with my bro and then play a board game with my mom, sister-in-law and grandpa. It's always a great time and such a refreshing and recharging experience to spend a big handful of hours around the people that love you no matter what and you love them no matter what.

Day One

Well, day one of the new sleep schedule seemed to go really well. I felt more mentally acute than I have in months, to a degree that actually freaked me out a little bit. It made me feel like I had been seeing the world through a slight haze for the past month or more and now it was gone, and I was finally fully awake. I slept straight through the night, and honestly that's probably the first straight 8 hours of sleep I've gotten in over a year. I normally sleep 5 or 6 hours at the most. So yeah, I think I may be an all new, super powered version of myself if I keep this up. I'm weirdly excited that it's almost bedtime now. I'm about to lay down and turn on a show and just relax and welcome the end of a good day.

Well, good day aside from that horrible Texas Rangers loss, but we won't discuss that.

I did my first coverage of Benbrook City Council today, that was fun. I've wanted to branch my council coverages out to neighboring cities for a while now and this was the first time I've done it. They have an amazing website that makes it super easy to watch the council meetings and it was a good experience. I liked it a lot and had fun, which is weird I guess. I suppose I've missed writing council coverages seeing as the primary one I cover here in my hometown hasn't met but three or four times in the past four or five months.

I'm giving up on the book I was reading. It was so poetically written, so magnanimously worded, so full of fearful fire and geared with grinding grit, packed to the gills with packing tape and gusto, as if it were a box begging to be shipped to the top of the world, feet tucked in and diving off of the cliffside with a scream escaping from pursed lips as they prepare to plunge into the depths below; certainly, with no hesitation. Seriously, the book was all like that. In a way it's a beautiful work of art but I've been struggling for two months to read it and I just can't ever stomach more than a few pages at a time. The guy is so obsessed with crafting these insanely complex sentences that it takes fifteen pages for a character to go from point a to point b. I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks it's a masterpiece, but I prefer more story in my stories.

Now I'm faced with the daunting task of choosing my next book from the hundreds I've yet to read. I'm leaning towards "Sandman Slim".

Alright, I guess I'll shut up now. I'm kind of wide awake, which worries me a bit. I'm hopeful that getting everything quieted down and getting in bed will help make me more tired. I hope the week is rolling along smoothly for all of you!

Simple Math

So it's not going to win me any maturity points in the great game of adulthood, but today was day one of putting myself on a strict bedtime and wakeup schedule. I've always been an erratic sleeper, usually going to bed between 2 and 3am and waking up around 10am. But lately it's slowly edged later and later, with some nights seeing me up until 4 and 5am and sleeping until 11 or even noon. I'm blessed with a pretty freewheeling job that rarely sees me needing to be up early, but the schedule was just messing with me bad. Sleeping that late makes me feel like a big portion of the day is lost and I just hate how it makes me feel. So last night I made the decision and enacted my one day turnaround plan. I couldn't fall asleep until around 5:30am but set my alarm for 9am and woke up. That's made today... interesting. There were bouts of staring off into space and nearly falling asleep, but for the most part I held it together and had a productive day. Now it's midnight, which is when I retreat into my room and start the bedtime countdown and get ready to shut down and head off to sleepyland. I'm weirdly looking forward to it and hope to establish a normal sleep routine for the first time in a long time.

One thing I did today was finish my Earth Day story for Hall Brothers Entertainment. It should be up at hallbrosentertainment.com in the morning, so be sure you check that out and let me know your thoughts. Earth Day was a strange holiday to use for inspiration but I'm really happy with the direction my brother and I took our stories in. It's so weird how enjoyable the holiday stories are. I have a deep love of writing them and I feel like they represent some of our best work over at the website.

You'd think I'd have more to talk about than that, but I really don't. I spent some time mulling over the differences between baseball and softball on a long drive the other evening, that was interesting. Baseball is played pretty quietly, with almost a sort of reverence given to the game unfolding out on the field. Softball on the other hand is rowdy and loud, with the players singing songs and playfully taunting the other team and such. In a way it's sort of a gender role reversal, if you think about it, because men are generally thought of us rowdier than women but that's not the case in the baseball/softball comparison. That's about all I got on that one.

Alright, officially tired and going to bed. I hope everybody is having a great start to their weeks!