Now that Kara and I are living in the house that books built, we each have some decisions to make. Most of it comes down to furniture, and placement of that furniture, and whether to make do with just what we have or try to upgrade things. There are pieces we need that are missing from our inventory, but it’s kind of tough to decide on what to get, when, and for how much.

Moving is expensive.

But it’s even tougher to decide on the where things go part, for me. Kara has a knack for designing a room, and being very intentional about it. But I’ve always been a bit more (to use her term) '“hodge-podge” about it. I kind of like finding things at flea markets or resale shops, even the occasional curb rescue, and putting it to work in my space. I think I have a definite design aesthetic. But yeah… hodge-podge probably fits.

But I have one thing going for me: I have Kara. She’s helping me figure it out and keep things straight.

An issue we’re dealing with, at the moment, is my very strong desire to have my desk face the window.

I love my view. My office is on the second floor of our home, and I get a wide, sweeping vista to look up to, as I work. It’s wonderful. I can see for miles, and it’s refreshing. And inspiring.

There are some issues, though. For example, around 2PM the sun shines directly into this window, and it makes seeing my screen kind of tough. I can’t get the brightness bright enough to compensate for all the backlighting. And we don’t yet have shades that can help (those come in a few weeks).

But that’s temporary, in all the ways. It’s just a couple of hours on any given day. Maybe three, total. I can tough that out, until the screens arrive and I have a barrier to pull down.

The other problem, though, is that view.

Not the view itself, really. That’s amazing and I love it. But it’s the fact that I want that view that is giving me a difficulty to deal with.

Basically, I’m working from my laptop’s 13” display. This size makes the laptop very portable and comfortable to use in the wild. But it’s not a lot of screen real estate to work with. It would be nice to have a larger monitor.

And I definitely can have a larger monitor. I have a couple just sitting around, waiting. Screens I’ve used in the past. I even have a swing arm I can use to mount the screens to my desk. But if I use any of that, then… no view. In which case I might as well put my desk in a corner.

It’s amazing what I’ll put up wiht in the name of having this view. I fought hard for it. I waited for it. Yearned for it. This view was the main reason I was excited about the house in the first place. Which, I know, sounds weird. But I’m very responsive to light and landscape. I like seeing all the trees and green and blue sky. I like looking out over my neighborhood and seeing life there. It’s a recharge for me. A massage for my soul.

Now, I could put the desk in a corner of the office that lets me still have windows on my left and my right. I would still be able to look out at the world. It just wouldn’t be this view. I’d have a giant screen in front of me, but that would be all I could glance up to see. Everything else is a turn of the head, a shift in perspective that requires intention, that takes me instantly away, out of productivity and into something else.

See, having this view means I can glance up any time. I can notice things. I can be inspired with a look.

Shifting so that the view is something I have to intentionally look at in order to see it means that I lose that spontaneity. I lose the discovery.

It’s a very serious thing.

You may be wondering what this has to do with anything. You who are readers of my work may not care one bit what my view is. Writers who come here for advice and insight may wonder when I’ll get to making some sort of point.

All I can tell you is that this is part of my universe. Part of the ingredients of my work. Like all writers, I have to live in this world as I create other worlds. And so, it matters. Designing my space is important to me, because what I create is important to my readers.

So it’s no small thing.

But it’s also not the end of the world.

If I have to move my desk in order to accommodate being more productive, then that’s what I have to do. I’ll work out another way to enjoy the view. I’ll adapt.

But I can take my time about it. I can ponder it, be advised on it, and be intentional about it.

That, in and of itself, is the best gift I can give myself.

Be intentional.

In office planning, as in life, intention is the key to discovering and experiencing the best version of yourself.

You ever think about the shape of your life?

Not in the sense of, “My life is currently such a mess/such a blessing.” That’s more like your life’s condition.

The shape of your life, the way I mean it, comes down to what you want your life to look like, and more for an overview perspective, rather than specifics.

Who do you want to be? What is it you want people to know you for? What do you want to accomplish? What habits, attitudes, and philosophies do you want to be part of your life?

I think that thinking of your life in terms of a shape is a better approach than thinking in terms of goals. Because goals are a target that, hit or miss, limits you in some way. Think about it—if you succeed in your goal, you have to stop working toward it. You have to pick a new one. That particular journey is done. And the same is true for when you fail at a goal. Failing to reach a goal deflates you, drains your initiative, because when the goal is no longer there you’re no longer moving toward it. No longer moving forward.

Goals make your life finite.

But a shape for your life—that’s a continuous and ongoing thing. That’s you living. Because if you ever stop living toward that shape you have in mind, it’s done. Full stop. But living into that shape every day is a practice of philosophy and effort, always. It’s progress. It’s momentum. It’s infinite growth.

As an example, I have a vision of my life as a writer. There’s a certain way I want my life to look and feel. It isn’t an Instagram fantasy version of my life, by the way. It isn’t about living like a Hollywood film star, driving Lamborghinis and living in hundred-million-dollar mansions. Those are just accessories, not the shape of your life. They could come, as a result of living into the shape I have in mind. But even if they don’t, they were never the point.

No, the shape of it is, I want to be someone who does what he loves, all the time. I have a goal of doing only what love, 100% of the time. And that’s a great target to aim for, because even if I fall short, and only hit, say, 50% of the time, I’m still doing what I love 50% of the time. That’s joy.

The shape I’m aiming for includes being a morally and ethical upright person. It includes being a thinker and a philosopher. It includes producing work that meets my mission: To inform and inspire, educate and entertain, in the service of God and humanity.

So as a writer, I see my life as opportunities to write, and to write what I love and enjoy. I see having readers who love my work, and follow me more than the characters I create or the stories I tell. I see living in a beautiful home, in an interesting and nurturing community, having friends and family who understand and appreciate me, having the finances to do what I love to do, and enjoy the things I want to enjoy. And taking the specifics out of that vision means that it becomes open to interpretation. It frees me up to look around and say, “Hey… this apartment is a nice home. My neighbors are nice people.” Or I can say, “Hey! This house is beautiful. The neighborhood is great. My community is wonderful.”

I get to interpret the shape of my life from my surroundings, rather than let the circumstances of my life dictate whether I’m failing or succeeding in pursuit of my goals.

My desires will always increase, as I go. But the shape of my life doesn’t depend on those desires.

For example, that mansion I mentioned above—that could be something I desire. The cars, the celebrity, the liberty to do what I want, when I want. Those could be desires. But if I’m more focused on the shape of my life, then even if I don’t get everything I desire, I’m still living a good and happy life. My happiness doesn’t depend on things, or achievements. It depends on the living part.

If I focus my energy and effort on becoming the sort of person I want to be, then what I achieve and accomplish and acquire becomes less important than who I am.

My identity, my sense of self, becomes focused on living in and up to that shape, rather than chasing this goal or that achievement or that possession. And since living into that shape is a constant, and requires continually renewing my commitment and effort, that means I can, potentially, be joyful, happy, successful, all the time.

Choose a shape for your life.

It doesn’t have to be a permanent choice, or a limiting choice. That’s the beautify of this philosophy. Because as you grow into this shape you’ve chosen, you may discover that there are other shapes you like, too. You’ll fit new patterns into that shape. You’ll find new ways to express your growth, to express yourself.

Stop chasing goals. Start defining the shape of you. And Start living into that shape.

For the past two years, Kara and I have done the “van life” thing, traveling the US, experiencing as much of the country as we could. For the first year, that was the entire motivation. But for the second year, it was mostly about waiting for our new house to be built, in the Texas Hill Country.

This wasn’t our first stint on the road, of course. A few years back we spent another two years living and traveling in a motorhome. That was a very different experience, with a bit more living space but somehow more limitations.

That isn’t what this post is about, though.

The thing is, both of those experiences served to change how I think about the world. And a big chunk of that was “how do I get X done?”
We took our work with us, as we got on the road. I wrote books, produced livestreams and podcasts, crafted content, did research, handled marketing for Draft2Digital, all of it. Kara came onboard with D2D during the last two years, too, and she managed promotions and took care of all those details while also managing the details of our lives. Every place we stayed was booked by her. I drove, she kept the wheels turning.

There are things you have to do, when you live on the road, that you wouldn’t even have to think about in a sticks-and-bricks home. You have to make sure water tanks are full, and black tanks are empty. You have to set up and break down camp everywhere you park, if you intend to do anything beyond sitting in place for a few days. You have to be judicious about how much you own, and how it’s stored while driving. And in this modern age, you have to make sure you have access to decent WiFi, on a near continuous basis.

That last one was always the biggest challenge of everywhere we went. Our livelihoods were dependent on good, high speed internet. And it wasn’t always easy to find.

Basically, living full-time on the road was a lot of work. And there was a lot of “figure it out, get it done.” And that, frankly, changed me.

I’ve always been that kind of thinker. I was always the guy who had to work out the details for how to get something from start to finish, usually in the shortest timeframe possible. But it takes on a whole new level of challenge when nothing in your life is necessarily “reliable.” Or maybe reliable isn’t the right word. Count-on-able.

You can never be sure that the resource you have today will be available tomorrow. And that means you are constantly in a state of assessing and adjusting and fixing.

It can be exhausting.

But I think it was the perfect training for a better life. Because having had that experience, I’m finding it much easier to adjust to the responsibilities of home ownership, and to take care of the myriad details that come along with getting into a new house.

Millions of people do this every day, so there’s nothing particularly profound about it. But the first time we owned a house, it seemed like I was constantly behind on things. It seemed like I never knew when the other shoe would drop, regarding plumbing or electric, putting in new floors, discovering a possum was in the garage, figuring out why there was a dead spot in the lawn and why grass wouldn’t grow under the oak tree.

It was overwhelming sometimes, and I don’t think I ever had the chance to just relax in our home.

The same has been true ever since, though. Except, honestly, it isn’t true. I’ve certainly had time and occasion to relax and enjoy my space. I just tend to dwell on the chaos more than the order. On the anxiety more than the comfort and peace.

Toward the end of our days in the van, I started to experience burn-out. Things were going wrong with the van and with work, and it seemed like our builder was dragging their feet over getting the house finished. The author conference circuit was picking up again, and Kara and I found ourselves racing from Pennsylvania to Tennessee to Florida over a three-day span, doing the conference thing for a couple of weeks, and then hitting a long, multi-day slog to Houston. Days of driving, hours at a time, on top of making sure I was keeping up with workload and domestic duties and all the things that van-life required—I got burnt. I got depressed, and the anxiety was overcoming me.

Of course, part of this was due to pandemic-related stuff. That anxiety piled on, along with everything else. There were conflicts and strife in the world. Things looked doomed and desperate. In many ways, they still do.

So… it got to me.

I was never suicidal. That goes against my core beliefs, and is the unforgivable sin in my culture. It’s a ticket to damnation, in my belief system. So I have never considered self-harm. But I did want to die.

I would pray, some nights, that God would take me in my sleep. I would pray that I’d go peacefully, and that Kara and my friends and loved ones would be comforted and taken care of. But always, always, I prayed, “Your will be done, in all things.”

And God kept me around.

I’m sorry that went kind of dark, but there’s a point:

Getting through that, I realized I needed to find ways to manage it all. I needed to figure out how to “get it done,” without the cost being my own sense of peace, my own will to exist.

And so I started working on that.

I started using apps like Apples Reminders to manage my tasks, which was helpful. But I also gave myself permission to move tasks to different days, instead of feeling guilty that I didn’t do everything on the list the day it was initially due. I gave myself permission to move deadlines, if there was too much to get done.

I backed off on my persistent drive toward rapid publishing. That way lies madness. I love writing, and I do it daily. But putting myself on a break-neck release schedule and then slamming myself for not holding up, that was killing me. I still need to work some things out on that front, so that book revenue doesn’t drop to non-existence. But I needed to give myself breathing room. I needed to find a different way.

I started being more assertive about certain aspects of my life and career. I can only do so much, and I won’t allow myself or anyone else to make me feel inadequate over what I’m unable to do, when I’m giving all of it my honest, best effort.

Of course, adopting that attitude means adopting another: I’m ok with taking responsibly and facing consequences. In fact, now I race to do both. Because owning responsibility means having control over my own fate, and facing consequence means having opportunities to learn and grow.

I had to become comfortable with the potential for failure, but more so with the potential for losing everything. For failing so catastrophically that I might have to start over from zero.

I became comfortable with the idea of zero.

I’m still learning and dealing with all of this, by the way. I still have bouts of anxiety and worry. I still have doubts and fears. I still have moments where I’m less productive than I want to be, and I let it bother me.

But a funny thing happens when you are willing to own both your successes and your failures, when you become comfortable with worst case scenarios but still hold on to hope, when you look for opportunities and willingly accept correction when you get things wrong…

You grow. You become more than who and what you were. And you see that you are stronger and better and smarter and more capable than you gave yourself credit for being.

I’m writing this all for myself, by the way. More than for you or anyone else. I needed this. But… maybe you needed it, too?

At this point in my writing career, I’m mostly known for my thriller novels. Dan Kotler and Alex Kayne have been very good to me, actually—I’m currently living in what I call “the house that books built.” Those who follow my work mostly want me to write those thrillers, and I’m happy to oblige.

But I started my career writing science fiction and fantasy. And to be honest, I miss it.

Read A Meme of War now!

Recently I wrote and published a novella called A Meme of War, which was a lot of fun to write. It let me dip my toes back into those sci-fi waters. And I think, based on reader reaction, I’ll probably write more stories like that, down the road. I even have a few olde stories I’m thinking of dusting off and making new again.

There’s a part of me that wonders if I’m making a mistake with this kind of thing. My bread and butter—indeed, the very roof over my head—as come from thriller novels, over the past six years. Will readers revolt, if I start publishing other genres as well?

Maybe. But I don’t think so.

Here’s the thing: I never wanted to be a thriller writer. I also never wanted to be a sci-fi writer, or a fantasy writer, or a non-fiction writer. I just… wanted to be a writer.

I wanted to write all the things.

All the things that interest me. All the things that excite me. All the things that make me anxious to get back to the keyboard, to fill the screen, to express the thoughts I have. All I ever wanted was to be someone who explores ideas and new worlds and interesting characters on the page.

So, really, what I want from a reader is someone following me, not the books. Not the characters. Not the genre. I’m looking for readers who like to read Kevin Tumlinson books.

In my own reading, I’ve always followed authors more than genres. That’s due, in part, to the fact that all the authors I love tend to write across a wide range of genres. They don’t stick to just one thing.

A lot of them tend to write under the heading of “speculative fiction,” and I billed myself that way for awhile, too. The idea there is that “I speculate on the story I want to tell, and then I tell it.”

The trouble with that, of course, is that book stores tend to want you to label your work. They want to know where it fits. And, to some extent, so do readers.

So, from a marketing perspective, it’s better to pick a genre. Nobody is out looking for “Kevin Tumlinson books,” unless they already know who I am.

That’s a tough thing to accept. But I think I’ve come up with some comrpromises.

I’ll write what I want, as a speculative fiction writer, and I’ll publish each book as part of a defined category or genre. That will make it easier for readers to discover the work, and to hopefully become “Kevin Tumlinson fans.” But it will also let me write the stuff I most enjoy.

I hope you’ll come along for that. I hope you’ll try out books that may be outside of the genre you enjoy. I’m a character writer—I argue, always, that my stories would be essentially the same, no matter the setting. Because it’s all about the characters. So… my hope is that you love those sorts of stories, and that you’ll follow me for more of them.

But let me know. Tell me in the comments. I’m listening. I may not do exactly what anyone tells me to do, but maybe you have a perspective I haven’t considered.

And finally, I’m going to ask you for a favor: Tell people about my books. Point them to this website. Share with them, everything you’ve read and loved. Help me spread the word. Because finding fans of Kevin Tumlinson books is a tough business to be in. I can use all the help I can get.

Writing is a peculiar form of self discipline. It requires loads of alone time, which is typically alright by most writers—we tend to be an introverted lot. But even so, there are times when being alone for long stretches, with no one but yourself to talk to, and that in a sort of internally echoed voice reflected outward and onto the page—sometimes that’s a little tough. Sometimes you just want other people around. Sometimes the distractions are welcome.

There’s also those days when mustering the energy to sit and face the existential crisis that is the blank page just absolutely twists your guts. It’s hard to explain, as a sensation, but for me, it’s sometimes like my blood is sticky. Like it runs like syrup through my veins, and the very thought of getting started, of spending the next hour or two or more sitting and emoting and narrating and projecting my thoughts onto a screen, is just too much for me. At times like that, I can’t imagine moving my fingers as I do when typing. I can’t picture line after line of black text appearing on the white of the screen to make a staccato grey of it.

Imagine waking up at 5 AM, after turning in late the night before, and having to pull on running shoes and just go sprint for two hours. Imagine it’s bitter cold outside, below freezing, and your bed is warm. Imagine your muscles hurt. Imagine you’re exhausted. That’s what some days feel like. They feel as if getting started will take more energy than there is in the whole universe. They feel like even if you did get moving, you’re just going to burn like a fuse with too much current going through it.

I’m a morning writer. I get up early and I do all the things, the stuff that prepares me for my day. I take the dog out, and I clean up after her. I do my bible study and I do some morning reading, whatever non-fiction book I’m working through. I shower and I dress. I make coffee and check the mail, mostly so I can take a short walk to the box and call it a bit of exercise. And then I take my coffee upstairs, and sip while I jot down some thoughts in a Moleskine journal, filling a page to get a start on my day. And then I write.

On syrupy days like I described above, I have to pull the first words out of me, kicking and screaming. Me… that’s me kicking and screaming. The words are fine.

But once they start flowing…

I don’t do a lot of writing with a fountain pen these days. I own one, and it’s kind of a novelty. I like the idea of it, and want to write with it. I want to have an elegant script that I call my handwriting. Instead, I tend to write like a comic book letterer—block print, as neat as I can make it.

But when I’ve used a fountain pen, sometimes there’s been a long gap between that moment and the previous moment of writing. Enough time has passed that the ink has dried in the nib. And I have to dip it in some warm water and blot it with a bit of tissue to get it flowing again.

That’s what those syrupy-blood mornings feel like. That’s what it’s like to make myself write when nothing in me wants to do it. I’m soaking my muse in some warm water, and blotting at it with a bit of tissue, until finally it flows. Finally it stains. Finally it writes.

Those are rough days with rough starts, but I have to admit, once the writing starts to flow, it’s wonderful. It’s energy, passing through me. Damn the current, I’m no fuse now. I’m a low-gauge wire of many thick strands, and I can handle the load. The writing passes through me in megavolts. I can power a planet.

I don’t know for certain that it’s like this for any other writer, much less every other writer. But I suspect that in some way it is. That it has to be.

Getting started is the hard part. Pushing the boulder uphill is the hard part. Sprinting the first few feet, lifting the first few pounds, climbing the first few rungs, that’s the hard part. There are other hard parts, for sure. But the start is always the part that feels hardest, on those days when the blank page is an all-powerful foe. a weight of Sisyphus.

My advice? Make yourself start. Even if what you write is random and rambling, pointless and powerless, make a start. Open the valve and let the drip begin. Soon the whole frozen line will thaw, and it will just flow. You’ll have a harder time stopping it than you had starting it.

Canyons have been carved into the rock of the Earth by what started as a trickle. Drops can open a hole to the depths. Tiny scratches can widen into caverns. Time is one component, but so is effort. So is the work in motion.

You want a book? Write a word. Then two. Then fifty, a hundred, a thousand, sixty-thousand.

Not a writer? No worries. This advice is for you, too. Because it applies to working out and changing your car’s oil and mowing the lawn and taking care of sick kids and making a healthy meal. It applies to reading a thick book and doing your taxes. It’s the Law of Small. All things obey it. Everything starts this way.

Self discipline is born from the Law of Small. And anything you want to accomplish begins with that as your road map and as your fuel.

Obey that law, and big things get smaller.

You may or may not know this, but for awhile now I’ve been doing a podcast with fellow thriller author, Nick Thacker. It’s called (wait for it)…

Stuff That’s Real (That You Didn’t Know Was Real) But Also Is Cool Podcast. Or you can call it Stuff That’s Real or STR, we won’t mind.

Well, Nick might…

So the idea behind this show is that Nick and I both do a lot of research, as authors. We’re always reading, watching, listening to, and otherwise absorbing by osmosis all sorts of interesting facts about the world. We have experiences, we have conversations with each other and with other authors, and we end up with this filter full of ideas. A lot of those end up in our books. But some don’t—and what do you do with them then?

So our solution was to create a show where we share them with the world, two stories at a time, every week. And when we share them, we geek out over them. We discuss them, like two guys having a whiskey at a bar, what-if-ing our way through about 45 minutes of discussion. We talk about the story, and stories it reminds us of, and related ideas, and then we talk about how we (or some other author) might use this stuff in a thriller novel or other story.

It’s a fun time. I highly recommend it. In fact, I know I’m biased, but it’s become my favorite podcast to listen to. No joke.

Now, other than obviously pitching this show to a potential audience, the reason I thought I’d write about this is that STR represents a “secret” that I use ever single day, as an author. And when I say “secret,” I mean it’s really no secret at all. It’s just something I’ve always done, and always will do, in the name of having a never ending well of story ideas. And that secret is “stay curious.”

Today, in a chat about books among a bunch of folks I work with, I used this phrase:

The quickest and easiest way to become a genius is to be curious about everything.

That’s not a quote (well… it is… it’s just me quoting me). But it is a truth. It’s what I’ve observed, over and over, among the “geniuses” in the world. In fact, if it it can be qualified in some way, I would put money on there being an exponential relationship between one’s level of curiosity and one’s intelligence. The more curious you are, the smarter you are.

And the broader your curiosity, the more the higher the exponent in that relationship.

It’s going to be a controversial statement—I’ve actually had people get really angry with me over this in the past—but there’s a dirty little truth about “expertise.” In order to be an expert, you simply need to know more about any given subject than the next guy. Which is to say, an expert knows more about the subject than subjectively anyone else, but may only know more by a fraction.

It’s a relativity game. It means that if you read the top three books on a subject, you would be an expert on that subject relative to other people.

That doesn’t mean your the “top most expert on the planet.” It means that compare to Bob, you know more, and so of the two of you, you’re the expert. If he reads the top four books on that subject, he’ll surpass you in expertise.

All of this is sort of hypothetical, but it checks out, logically.

So if you’re the most curious person in your peer group, and you obsess over reading about anything and everything that interests you, and you consume movies and television shows, articles and blot posts, podcasts and YouTube videos on these subjects all the time—just can’t get enough—it won’t take long for you to be far more of an expert on all of those subjects than anyone else you know.

Most people, even if t hey have a strong interest, only go so deep into a subject. Most of the time, their interest and curiosity is passing at best.

So the moral is, if you want to be smarter than everyone else, consume more information about everything. Cultivate being curious. It’s a superpower.

And for writers, I’d argue that it’s your job. Your career is built on being curious, satisfying that curiosity, and then sharing what you’v learned with the world, through your writing. If you’re not doing that, you’re probably not quite hitting the mark with what you write. You may lose interest in your own writing. And if you do, the reader will.

If you’re a reader, I’d argue that curiosity is the shortest route to enriching your life, and giving you a means for feeling fulfilled and happy. You’ll gain more advantages, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the world and the people in it, and you' will be more interesting, yourself. You want to “win friends and influence people?” The secret is “be curious as hell.”

I’d love it if you gave Stuff That’s Real a try. And if you love it, share it with friends and family. And be sure to reach out to us with any topics you’d like to see us chat about. Say hello. And share in the curiosity.

One of the tools I use a lo tis something I call “resource thinking.”

The idea here is that we each have a ton of resources at our disposal, and we may be limiting ourselves to only thinking of them in one particular way. A hammer is just a hammer, for example. But it could also be a pry bar. Wrap a cloth around the head of it and it could be a mallet. Place it on a stack of papers and it’s a paperweight. You get the idea.

But the other half of the “resource thinking” equation is training yourself to be on constant lookout for resources.

As I move through daily life, I’m always looking for ways to use anything and everything around me:

What stores and shops are in my neighborhood, and what sort of merchandise do they sell?

What odd and potentially useful items are sold in gas stations and convenience stores?

What’s in the used and discount section of Ikea?

When is “heavy trash day” in my neighborhood, and who’s throwing out furniture, tools, and the items?

The key to resource thinking is to keep your mind open to all the ways you can use something. Think outside the box. Keep your mind open. And put some thought into “what if I tried using this for that?”

Once you’ve defined your problem, you can start applying your list of resources to it, looking for something that may provide a solution.

As an example, I recently found a base I could use for an old drafting table built by my wife’s great grandfather, whom everyone called '“Grandpa Pix.” And I call the table my “Pix table,” in his honor.

I was using a plastic folding table to hold this thing up in my office. It was a “good enough for now” solution at best. But I was on the lookout for a cheap table or stand I could use for it.

Now that we’re moved into our new house, I’m starting to branch out and explore the local area. And on a Sunday morning I decided to take a drive. I ended up finding a Goodwill Store in my area, and when I went in I spotted a gorgeous wooden drafting table. When I checked the price, it blew me away…

Ten bucks.

$9.99, to be exact.

I knew, the second I saw this thing, and especially once I saw the price, that this would be the prefect base for my Pix table. So I bought it, hauled it home, and set it up.

The thing is, I wasn’t looking for a base for the Pix table, specifically. I was just out for a drive, exploring my new community, getting to know the neighborhood. But spotting that Goodwill store, I knew I had to check it out. And once I was there, I knew there were resources I could put to work. I actually ended up buying a weed trimmer from that same store, and also for ten bucks.

The point here is that by keeping my mind open to the possibilities, I came away with a treasure, and solved a problem.

Keep this in mind, as you move around in the world. There are solutions out there, for every problem you can imagine. And if you remain open minded, and put some creative thought into it, you’ll find yourself moving through a world of solutions.

Recently, at an author conference in Florida, I sat with a traditional publisher. We talked about the conference, about writing, about the differences between his world and mine. As an indie publisher, my approach and perspective on publishing is very different from his. Night and day, in most ways.

Except where we overlap is in a love for the writing itself.

There are a lot of opinions about self-publishing out there. Over the years I’ve had people deem my work unworthy because it wasn’t vetted or approved by some third-party. They seem to forget that the concept of publishers and editors is a relatively new phenomenon, in the history of publishing—there was a time when all books were self-published. 

But that’s a semantic argument, and one that isn’t going to get us anywhere. In the debate of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, there is no debate. Both exist. Both can lead to success or failure. Both have their merits and their challenges. 

In the conversation with the traditional publisher, it came up that he works mostly with literary fiction. 

“I’ve written a couple of literary fiction books,” I said. “Nothing spectacular, but they were early days. I have an idea for one now, though...”

I stopped, and he encouraged me to go on. And I did so with caution. Because my idea sounds so typical, like the ideas of a million other will-be authors who feel like they “have a real book” in them.

I pitched an idea for a fictionalized story about a very specific part of my own life.

I don’t want to give away the pitch—I’m not yet ready to reveal it to the world. But what I want to do is borrow from various elements of my life and put it into a highly fictionalized novel.

“It’s not a memoir,” I emphasized. “I just had this series of experiences, and I think there’s some story value there. I think it could be inspiring to some people.”

He heard me out and nodded, agreeing. And then he said, “Write something up. I’d love to see it.”

I nodded in return. And then we shook hands and went about the rest of our conference experience. 

It’s been about a month now, and in that time I’ve done something I rarely do—I wrote an outline.

Actually, that isn’t entirely accurate. What I wrote was a treatment for about ten chapters of a book, and I divided that up with headings that read “chapter 1, chapter 2,” etc. That probably technically qualifies as an outline, when it’s all said and done.

Once I had about ten chapters, the treatment stalled. I looked at it and wondered where the story was going to go. It felt like writing to me—the same way writing a Kotler or Kayne book feels. But different, because I was including some details and insights that come straight from my own life.

Or... was that different?

The core of the story, for this book, is an event that actually happened to me, but in an effort to safeguard the privacy (and sensibilities) of the people involved I’ve fictionalized it. A lot. I used some very specific details, but I did more than “change the names to protect the innocent.” If anyone who was there for the live, IRL version of this story reads the book, they won’t have too tough of a time picking out the parts they were there for. But unless they get ticked and start calling things out, claiming to be the subject of this scene or that chapter, no one else on Earth is going to be able to figure it out. They can keep themselves from humiliation or drama by not bringing it down on their own heads.

Also, I really am changing the names to protect the... well, let’s say “subjects.” Because “innocent” is kind of a subjective term in this story.

I know, I know... that’s a whole lot of vague. Be patient, that book will emerge, someday. Though if it goes through the traditional publishing process, that day could be years from now.

Anyway, I had a realization as I was thinking about this book and the treatment I was writing. I was feeling a little weird about the fact that I was digging into the details of my own life, mining bits and pieces and manipulating them into a work of fiction. I had the thought that maybe that should bother me... until....

Until I realized, that’s what fiction is. And I’ve done it all along.

In each of my books, I put what I call “A Note at the End.” It’s effectively an author’s Afterword. I’m not inventing anything new here, lots of books have something like this. But I like to include it as a part of each book because it’s a chance for me to chat frankly and openly with my readers about some of my experiences in writing the book, revealing select parts of my life and experience. It’s a little like this blog, in a way. I may even start re-publishing them here, at some point. 

In those Notes at the End, I often talk about the things that inspired the book the reader has just read. I talk about the research I’ve done, the books and articles and movies and television shows that lent some details to the tale. But more often I talk about my personal experiences, the traveling I’ve done and the people I’ve met, or the thoughts I have on current events. 

Sometimes I talk about the fact that a lot of the experiences my characters have are reshaped versions of my own experience. And while my characters—and their viewpoints, philosophies, attitudes and beliefs—are not “me,” per se, those things come from somewhere inside of me. I consider ideas, and I’m able to look at things from various perspectives.

That’s how I can write about evil characters who do evil things, without having thought or done those evil thoughts or deeds myself. I’m an actor, in that sense, playing a part through the actions and dialogue of a fictional character, getting into their heads, expressing things the way they would express them. 

I can do that because so often in my life I’ve had experiences, thought thoughts, and done deeds that I don’t like. I may not have ever murdered someone, and never would, but I’ve had experiences where someone so enraged me that it crossed my mind. And then, like any sane and rational person, I dealt with it in a productive way. In my case, I usually wrote a scene or two. 

The point here is that I mine my life for material all the time. I borrow from all of my experiences to give my characters some realism, to give them something to do, something to think, something to say. I borrow turns of phrase I’ve used, or those I’ve heard someone else use. There is nothing (entirely) new under the sun.

When I was in high school I went to a newspaper camp at the University of Texas, in Austin. They had a guest speaker running one of the classes, and she said something along the lines of:

“Don’t rape your own history in the name of telling a story.”

That, of course, stuck with me. It’s a fairly shocking turn of phrase, and did the job she intended, making the idea stick with me. And I spent years trying to make sure I wasn’t doing anything remotely like that. It sounded awful.

But now I realize she had a pretty skewed view of the topic. Because a term like “rape” has some shock value, but it isn’t exactly accurate to the experience of the writer. It implies the writer is taking something against another’s will—which is, of course, impossible for a writer to do to themselves. But it also implies a violent act, an unfeeling and uncaring act, a disregard for the meaning of the writer’s experience. It rightfully personalizes that experience, and rightfully advises that you shouldn’t sell your soul just to tell a story. But it makes its error in implying that the writer should never use their own experience to convey something to the reader. 

That’s just garbage. 

As a writer, it’s my actual and literal job to have as many experiences as I can manage, and to translate those experiences into something that can move and inspire the reader. That’s the gig. It isn’t rape, and it isn’t doing violence to my experiences. It’s willing sacrifice and service to the community I love.

Certainly writers must hold back on how much they share from their lives. Some things are sacred, and should always be treated as such. But some things are universal, and in expressing them we can encourage others, teach them how to be more human.

Writers should always endeavor to increase humanity, in themselves and in others. It is, again, our job.

So I mine my own life and experiences for the sake of those books. It’s something I do flagrantly and with great pride. And occasionally, when someone responds negatively to what I’ve shared, that hurts. It makes me introspective and self-evaluating. But that, too, is a good thing. Because “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.”

I live an examined life. It is well worth living. And it is, I hope and pray, helping others to live lives worth living as well.

---

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

As promised, Dr. Dan Kotler did me a solid and set me up with his friend and partner against crime, Agent Roland Denzel. This time, I’m catching up with Agent Denzel in Orlando, Florida, as he’s helping out with a case in the area. He’s graciously taken the time to sit with me for a couple of hours in my hotel room, early this morning. Once again it’s coffee, which Agent Denzel takes strong and black. 

He’s wearing a suit—the sort you’d expect from an FBI agent, but it still feels jarring to me. The weather outside, even at 7 AM, is muggy and humid. Plus, because this is my hotel room and because I’m driving on the first leg back to Texas in a few hours, I’m dressed decidedly less formal than my friend. My khaki shorts and blue-palm Hawaiian-print shirt are a stark contrast to the stiff and formal “uniform” of an FBI agent.

We make do.

Denzel is sipping his coffee while seated across from me at the little round breakfast table in my suite. He’s checked his watch twice since sitting. And now that we’ve gotten past the formalities of a polite greeting, we begin.

---

Kevin Tumlinson: Agent Denzel... can I call you Roland?

Roland Denzel: Sure. Unless I have to arrest you for something.

[I have to admit, Denzel’s dry humor doesn’t always hit, but I get it. The trick is to remember that he’s only ever half joking]

KT: [laughing nervously] So a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to chat with your partner, Dr. Kotler. I’ve had the pleasure of writing about the two of you for the past six years. Hard to believe it’s been that long.

RD: Six years? It’s hard to believe Kotler’s been in my life that long. Feels longer.

KT: He has a lot of very good things to say about you.

RD: [looking slightly uncomfortable, shifting a bit in his chair] Kotler is... unique.

KT: That’s one way to put it. But how do you mean?

RD: I’ll just say he’s a good man. Smart. Maybe too smart, sometimes. But he puts it to good use. Most of the time.

KT: What about the rest of the time?

RD: The rest of the time, Kotler likes to toe the line. Don’t get me wrong, he’s one of the most ethical guys I’ve ever known. But being ethical isn’t always the same as being a rule follower. Kotler is not exactly a rule follower.

KT: And what about you? Are you a rule follower?

RD: [thinks for a moment, then nods] I am. I’ll admit to giving Kotler a lot of rope, but there are lines I won’t cross, and so I won’t let him cross them either. I wear a badge, and I took an oath. Several oaths. My job is to serve the laws of this country, to protect the lives of citizens, and to put bad guys behind bars. To do that right, you have to stick to the rules. You have to know where the lines are, and you have to be the one who stays inside of them.

KT: Sounds like a tough way to live, honestly.

RD: I’ve never understood people who could live with themselves after stepping over the line. Any time I’ve ever done it, I’ve regretted it. I feel like a hypocrite. I know that sometimes you have to choose to do the right thing even if it means doing something wrong. That’s life. But the job is to enforce the rules, and I have a hard time doing that if I’m the one breaking them.

KT: Fair enough. I suppose that comes from a lifetime of serving your country. You’re actually a decorated war veteran, aren’t you?

RD: [Nods, but doesn’t say anything]

KT: Is that something you’d rather not talk about?

RD: [considers] I guess it’s something I’ve already talked about enough. I was in Special Forces, and served in Afghanistan. We ran a lot of missions, and I served with some incredible people. But... well, it happens sometimes, that you lose even the good people. And when that happens, you start to realize a few things. That life is pretty short. That no matter how good you are, there’s an end coming, some time. You also start thinking about why you do what you do. I went into the military because I wanted to serve my country, but I only had this sort of vague idea about what the country was, you know? I was thinking flags and picnics on the Fourth of July. I was thinking church and freedom of speech, and all the rights laid out for us in the Constitution. But there was this mission—it went bad. I was trapped under a ton of sand and rock, and I could hear all the people I served with getting gunned down by the bad guys. It... it effected me. It’s still with me. I dream about it. Sometimes... sometimes I’m in an elevator, or in a crowded place, and it comes back to me. I’ve dealt with it, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had therapy for PTSD. And Kotler... Kotler’s taught me a few mediation tricks. It’s helped. But the thing I’ve never forgotten about that day is that these people I served with, the people being shot down out in that tunnel, they were dying for something bigger than apple pie and fireworks, or even church pews and protests. It was all about the people. Human beings who lived and worked and spent time with their families. Those people are in constant danger. They’re always on the verge of having every bit of that taken away. So somebody has to be there to help them. Some guy who follows the rules, who crawls out of a hole in the sand and picks up a gun and does his job.

[There’s a moment of quiet, and Denzel is staring into his coffee. I wait. It feels reverent, and I don’t want to interrupt.]

KT: That guy with the gun, the one who crawls out of the hole and risks everything to make sure people can have that apple pie and march in that protest... that’s you, then.

RD: [looks up like he forgot I was there] Me. Kotler. A thousand other FBI agents and consultants. Every soldier who ever took a bullet. I’m not alone.

KT: No, definitely not. And you’ve actually served in a number of ways.

RD: [nodding] Yeah. Military, police, DEA, FBI. And now Historic Crimes. I’m still FBI, but the job has changed a little. I’m taking on a different kind of case these days. Usually.

KT: You used to run Historic Crimes, when it was first created. Now Dr. Liz Ludlum is the Director. She used to work under you, didn’t she?

RD: Yeah, when we were just a subset of White Collar Crimes. She was my Forensic Lead. She’s damn good at it.

KT: Any resentment, now that she’s your boss?

RD: [shakes his head] Not even a little. She can have it. When I was behind that desk all I could think about was getting back out into the field. I really needed to stay focused on the job, but I kept wandering away, dealing with trouble. Mostly trouble Kotler brought around.

KT: And for that I’m grateful. The trouble you two get into is paying for my house.

RD: Well... you’re welcome, I guess? I can say that with Kotler around, it’s never a dull moment. Except for all the research. But even that ends up leading to some kind of dangerous situation. Kotler is just kind of a magnet for it. I think I’ve been shot four times since he and I have been partners. 

KT: So now you’re working under Historic Crimes, Dr. Ludlum is in charge, Dan Kotler is still your partner. Seems like things may have settled into kind of a routine.

RD: If you can call it that. But there’s always something brewing. And now I’m taking on another project, within Historic Crimes. Kind of a... well, kind of a task force, I guess.

KT: The Outsiders?

RD: I can’t really talk about it much. Not yet. But yeah. I’m not that fond of the name, if I’m being honest. But what I can tell you is that there’s sometimes a need for people who operate a little less like me and a little more like Kotler. The world sometimes needs people who can push the line without going over. And those people need someone who tells them where those lines are, and makes sure they don’t cross them. That’s me. And I’m going to be working with Kotler, but also with a couple of other agents, and an asset who is really kind of over all the lines anyway. She’s a fugitive with some kind of robot that helps her stay on the run.

KT: You’re talking about Alex Kayne and... well, I mean, it’s not a robot, it’s an AI. You’re talking about QuIEK? The artificially intelligent quantum program she designed?

RD: [shrugs] She’s a confidential informant, but we know she’s out there doing her thing. Our orders are to arrest her. But since we can’t get close enough to even sneeze on her, we’re making the best of it by using the intel she gives us. I  think it’s kind of a dicey game, but so far she’s come through. We’ve taken down a lot of bad guys because of her.

KT: But you’ll still arrest her, if you get the chance?

RD: Until the people I report to tell me otherwise, she’s a fugitive. And my job is to take her in. So yeah, I’ll arrest her. 

KT: You have a complicated life, Agent Denzel.

RD: [pauses, considers] I’ve never really thought of it that way. To me, things are simple. Or should be. My job is to make things simple, in a way. We can’t pick and choose which rules and laws we obey. We have to do what’s right. Sometimes there’s a conflict of interest between what’s right and what the rules dictate. When that comes up, you have to make a judgement call. My job is to make sure I have good judgement, always. And to live with the consequences when I don’t. I’m prepared for that. 

KT: I think the world is in good hands then. I also think it’s time we wrap up, so you can get back to taking down the bad guys and saving us all from the evils of the world. I appreciate you taking the time to chat.

RD: Thanks for the coffee.

With almost no further word, Agent Denzel gets up, finishes the coffee, and places the cup next to the sink. He nods to me as he leaves. And as I bid him farewell, I can’t help thinking that he’s maybe the most pragmatic character I write. He’d be considered “lawful good” in the gaming world. And knowing that, it’s a wonder to me that he and Dan Kotler could even be friends, much less partners.

But knowing them both, and having written them for six years now, I think I understand their relationship. At least a little.

They are both men of integrity, and both driven by a sense of what is right and what is wrong. That’s their common ground. The fact that Kotler is willing to bend or even break rules, and sometimes just ignore them all together, doesn’t change the fact that he’s out to do right, or to make things right.

Denzel is the same way in at least that regard. He’s intent on doing the right thing. He’s much more of a rule follower, but he’s wise in his way—he knows that the world isn’t black and white. Or rarely is so. And because of this, he’s decided that it’s his role to be the rule follower, and the role of others (Kotler) to be the rule benders. 

He’s there, always on guard, to make sure someone like Kotler doesn’t go too far. But he knows that the Kotler’s of the world have to have more leeway if they’re going to keep the rest of us safe. 

Kotler needs Denzel. And Denzel needs Kotler. And the world needs them both.

---

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Agent Roland Denzel. I’ll be doing more interviews with my characters over time, and may even get some of them back in the chair for follow-ups. Stay tuned. 

And please be sure to leave questions and comments below. Share this interview with your friends and family. And of course, find Agent Denzel, Dan Kotler, and a whole cast of other characters when you read my books.

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

I’ve been writing the adventures of Dan Kotler for more than five years now—currently twelve full-length novels, two novellas, two short stories, and one crossover with Alex Kayne. Kotler is, in fact, the character I’ve spent the most time with, out of every other character I’ve ever written. So I think I know him pretty well.

But we’re about to see.

In this post, I’ve sat Dr. Dan Kotler down in the office of my mind. We’re both in comfy chairs, both have coffees (Dan would have preferred doing this over a bourbon at Hemingway’s, in Manhattan, but it’s only 9 AM and we’re currently in my home office near Austin, Texas). Dan is dressed as he often is, in the casual clothes of an explorer—durable grey khakis and a comfortable white button-up. His grey tweed sports coat has the brown leather elbow patches that his profession practically demands, and it’s currently folded neatly and draped over the arm of his chair.

He smiles me from his seat, right leg crossed at the ankle over his left knee, casually reclined with his coffee, and I can tell just by looking at him that as I’m observing him he’s also reading me. 

I decide this is the place to start.

---

Kevin Tumlinson (KT): Dan, thanks for coming out and agreeing to this. I know you’re pretty busy with your work.

Dan Kotler (DK): Well, how could I say no? After you’ve gone to so much trouble to keep me in... well, so much trouble!

KT: Yeah, sorry about that. Mostly. But thanks for always managing to get out of it. The readers love it.

DK: I live to serve.

KT: So I was thinking just now about your skill at reading body language. It’s become kind of a go-to for you, especially as you’ve started working with the FBI and Historic Crimes. But it’s sort of unusual, isn’t it? What prompted an archaeologist to pick up and master a skill like that?

DK: Well, I should point out that my specialization in archaeology is anthropology. The study of human culture. And what’s more human than our expressions and microexpressions? Cultures start with individuals, and individuals are just constantly broadcasting their inner thoughts. The culture they belong to is a web of these thoughts, and also a result of them. Or rather, a result of how every individual adapts to the language they’re subconsciously picking up from every other individual. 

KT: Sounds kind of heady.

[Dan laughs]

DK: I suppose it is... but think about it for a moment and I think you’ll agree. Our personal interactions are part of the foundation of culture, and beyond that of society. How we deal with each other determines the sort of society we live in. I am fascinated by humans—can’t learn enough about them. Knowing how they speak when they don’t even know they’re speaking, that gives me a much deeper insight into not only the individual but into the whole of humanity. 

KT: And it’s hardly your only unconventional trick.

[Again, Dan laughs... something that becomes a common theme of how he interacts with me and, frankly, everyone. His personality is wry, ironic, observant. He watches everyone, all the time. He studies them. And his interactions with them come from a place of admiration.]

DK: No, it’s not my only trick, I guess. I’ve made it mandatory for me to know as much about human psychology as I can. So in addition to studying history, I study psychology. I’ve also gotten into studying neurology, though that’s kind of new. I want to know how the brain works, and how that impacts how the mind works. It’s a hobby, mostly. A useful hobby.

KT: I’ll say. That sort of thing seems to give you a leg up in your current work. How does working with the FBI connect with your work in the field of archeology?

DK: In more ways than I ever anticipated. Both impact the other, but I’ll admit that my background in archaeology tends to help out Roland and the rest of the Historic Crimes team more than the reverse.

KT: Roland Denzel. Agent Denzel. I’m planning to interview him at some point. What’s he like?

[Dan smiles pleasantly, reflecting before answering.]

DK: There are very few people that I think so openly and adamantly deserve the title of “A good man.” Roland has always been one of those. Though he’ll probably roll his eyes if you say it to him.

KT: The two of you are close.

DK: Oh, absolutely. We have been since the whole Coelho Medallion affair. We had maybe a rocky start, but I don’t think we were ever adversaries. More like... unwilling sidekicks, at times. Though we both might argue over who was sidekick to whom. [laugh] But Roland is a man of honor and integrity. He’s a war hero, though he’ll probably shoot me for saying so. 

KT: So you admire him.

DK: More than I’ll likely tell him in person. Not because I’m embarrassed by feeling it, but because he’d be embarrassed to hear it. And Roland gets cranky when he’s embarrassed.

KT: The work the two of you are doing in this new branch of law enforcement...

DK: Historic Crimes.

KT: Right. That’s been pretty impressive. How would you describe it?

[Dan pauses here, thinking, hands tented around his coffee cup over his stomach, chin down. When he looks up I can tell something funny has occurred to him]

DK: I’d say Historic Crimes is the only law enforcement agency in history to deal with the source of trouble instead of just the trouble itself.

KT: How so?

DK: All of the cases we take on have their roots in history. Sometimes it’s ancient, sometimes it’s something only decades old. Weird bits of history that fester into something that threatens the modern world. It’s the only reason I’m part of the team, to be honest. They certainly don’t need me around to take down the bad guys, I probably just get in the way.

KT: “Weird bits of history...” that’s certainly true. Does it seem unusual to you that so many historic sites, artifacts, and events seem to lead to threats on the modern world?

DK: Well, you tell me. 

KT: We’ll just leave it as “It’s a mystery.”

DK: And mysteries are the point, aren’t they? Life itself is that kind of mystery, by the way. It’s the reason I think Historic Crimes works, the whole reason it exists. Historic Crimes is kind of a microcosm of human culture. Something in our history has influenced and impacted the present, in some negative way, and the only way to put things right is to deal with that history in the here and now. If that isn’t a metaphor for life, I can’t think of anything that is.

KT: That sort of thing is important to you, isn’t?

DK: What, metaphor? Yes. Absolutely. Metaphors are stories. And just like you, as an anthropologist I’m in the business of stories. My stories tend to be about questions. Who are we, as a species? Where did we come from? Where are we going? The work I’m doing with Historic Crimes is about a darker side of those questions, but it’s just part of the whole quest. My life is dedicated to exploring humanity’s place in the universe. It’s the reason I slogged through not just my PhD in Archaeology, but also a PhD in Quantum Physics. Believe me, it’s not because I love math. I’m terrible at math.

KT: That was an influence of your parents, wasn’t it? Those two directions in graduate studies?

DK: Yes, definitely. My father was a physicist who had a side passion for archaeology. My mother was a mathematician. I’m willing to admit, these days, that part of what drove me to study the way I did was that I was paying homage to the two of them. Sometimes our paths get dictated to us, just a little. But I think they’d be proud of the middle road I carved out. I don’t use my PhD in Quantum Physics as much as my father would probably have preferred. But it’s come in handy, from time to time. 

KT: And you keep studying.

DK: [nodding] Always. Because that’s life. Studying. Learning. Growing. When that stops, life stops. When you aren’t learning something new about the world, you’re just existing. Experiences mean less if you learn nothing from them. But the good news is that even the most seemingly insignificant experiences have something to offer, something to learn and know. It’s up to us to pay attention to it, but it’s there. Just look.

KT: Well, I have to get on the road, and I know you do, too. This seems like a good stopping place for today. Want to do this again sometime?

DK: Absolutely. How often does a guy get to chat with his creator?

KT: [smiling] I do it every morning and all day long. But I’ll admit, I’d love to sit with God and a cup of coffee sometime.

DK: [chuckles] That’s the sort of thing that’s inevitable, isn’ t it?

KT: [laughs] Yeah... no rush, though.

---

We end that first interview with the promise that there will be another. And Dan has agreed to grease the wheels for me with Agent Denzel and Dr. Liz Ludlum. He’s even putting in a word with Alex Kayne. 

So stay tuned. Comment below with your thoughts on this interview, and tell me what you’d like me to ask Dan and the others in future interviews. 

God bless, safe travels, and see you out there.

Find more about Dan Kotler and his adventures with Historic Crimes on his website, https://DanKotler.com.

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

Something I’ve discovered about myself (as recently as five minutes ago), is that once I start complaining about someone or something, I immediately spin off into a really negative head space, and then it’s negative turtles all the way down.

This is something I both actively dislike and actively want to change about myself.

First, criticizing, complaining, and talking bad about someone is the epitome of wrong. If the subject of your derision isn’t anywhere nearby, with the ability to defend themselves, then the conversation can’t possibly serve a good purpose. And if they do happen to be close at hand, shame on you (ok, me) for treating people so poorly. 

Second, it’s tough enough to stay in a positive frame of mind, and put all my energy into building rather than tearing down, without adding the extra weight of grousing and complaining and criticizing. It’s a bad habit. No good comes of it. 

That’s why it’s best not to start in the first place.

It’s by sheer coincidence that I started writing this post just after going negative on someone in my life. But there’s a key here I try to remember, and one that I know works for me, so it might work for you, too. 

Putting my thoughts on the page gives me a chance to take a closer look at them. 

I’ve had this advice pop up from various gurus and guides and mentors I follow. Writing things down—in a journal, in a blog post (one you probably shouldn’t post), in a letter (one you probably shouldn’t send)—is a good way to work through what’s really bothering you. If you take the time to put your thoughts on the page, it gives you a chance to see where you’re head is really at, and to get a feel for the shape of it. And it’s a good way to change that shape, if you need to. And let’s face it, you probably do.

Writing is creating. And creating is, by its nature, a positive act. Or at least, it’s an additive act. And as such, it’s a good way to examine and start to eliminate negative thinking.

I’ve been a big fan of journaling, for a very long time. I haven’t always done it as consistently as I like (as I mentioned in a previous post). But I’ve done it enough over the years that I know the value of it. So journaling has become one of my go-to tools for dealing with myself. 

I also put this stuff into my fiction. 

There have, at times, been scenes in my fiction that were more or less me working through angst or anger or frustration with something. I once wrote a scene between a husband and wife that was a rehash of an argument I had with Kara, and the way I wished it had gone.

I’ve written scenes that featured prominent political figures I’ve wished I could throttle. And scenes where a truly annoying neighbor met their demise at the hands of a demented bad guy. 

One must always be careful of thriller authors—we are murderers on the page. 

That’s all harmless therapy, in the end. And often I’ll feel guilty about lashing out on the literary visage of my so-called enemies, and I’ll soften the blows. I’ve made those political figures more admirable, I’ve made the deaths of insensitive neighbors less graphic, and I’ve made arguments with virtual spouses come to understandings and heartfelt resolutions. 

I really don’t have the heart for vengeance, even if it is just fiction. 

Writing, of course, isn’t the only way to deal with negativity and angst and anger. Painters have been known to take out their fury on the canvas. Sculptors chisel their vitriol from slabs of marble. Singers strain their vocal cords to let their hurt hearts resound in the souls of their listeners. All artists have their way.

And those who are not artists can use the same methods. Negativity fades in the light of creative effort. 

When it comes upon you, when it robs your thoughts of light and weighs your heart into the pit of your stomach, decide that the way to deal with it is to create something. Write in a journal, pick up a pencil and sketch, take a hammer to a box of nails and a row of fence planks. Go make something.

There is no harm in creating from anger. The harm is letting anger drive you to destruction. 

Ahh. I feel better! 

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

There’s a quote that’s come up a lot for me lately:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” —Chinese Proverb

It’s come up as I think about all aspects of my life—from finances to life goals. From investing to building to learning a skill, the best time is always “as early as possible.” And the lesson from that proverb above is, “Right now is always as early as possible.”

Don’t lament the time you lost. Yes, you should have started saving when you were a teenager. Yes, you should have put in the time to learn guitar when you were in college. Yes, you should have traveled when you didn’t have so many responsibilities. Those were the best times, if you wanted to reap the benefits right now.

But right now is also the best time. Start right now so that twenty years from now you aren’t lamenting what you did not do.

Easier said than done, for sure. But it’s also easier to start right now, to commit to doing the work right now, than it will be to play catch-up later.

When I was a kid, and right up into my 20s, I loved to draw. And I was pretty good at it—from a natural talent standpoint. I still have some of the drawings from when I was younger, and I think they show a lot of promise. Some are downright amazing, considering how little training I had and how little time I put in.

I loved drawing. I was particularly fond of comic book style art, and I wanted so very badly to get really good at that—I wanted to be able to draw like my comic book artist heroes, maybe even get a chance to work for Marvel Comics “some day.” 

For some reason, though, I started slacking off on the drawing.

Part of it was the writing. Somewhere along the way I began gravitating toward putting words on the page, instead of art. I think I felt it was easier—and it was, I’ll admit.

I confess there were rough areas in my writing in those days (there still are... every skill is mastered over a lifetime). But my skill with writing was good enough to impress people, to win awards and scholarships, to land me dream jobs. I was a bit lazy about it, mostly about the editing, but I was talented. I rested on that talent for a long time.

Big mistake.

The thing is, talent very often is not enough. Not for achieving certain goals and dreams.

Resting on talent alone will lead you to a mediocre life.

The proof of this is that when I started writing and publishing, my books met with mostly lukewarm response. They were good, but the message I was getting from reviews and from friends willing to “go there” was, “These could be better, with a little more effort.”

I remember a time when I was asked by the Houston Chronicle to write a blog—something new and unusual at the time. I wrote. I brain dumped whatever was in my head, week after week, and left it for the masses to find and appreciate. And they did. The blog became popular, and I enjoyed some minor celebrity.

My friend David pointed out some typos and grammar gaffs in the posts, and to this I basically said, “Well, it’s good enough that people love it, and that I get paid for it. So why bother putting in so much extra time, making sure it’s perfect?”

To which he replied, “Just imagine what kind of reaction you’d get if you put more effort into it.”

That was a strike. It left an indelible mark on me. And though I continued to be a bit lazy about writing and editing, those words clung to me, haunting me. 

Later, I became a copywriter for a big marketing agency. I was good. And I produced good work. But eventually, after a couple of years, I was pulled aside and told I was being let go. 

“You’re good. But you just aren’t diligent about editing what you turn over.”

Ouch.

Another strike.

Years went by, I had other agency jobs, I worked as a copywriter in agency world and as a freelancer, and I even started winning awards and accolades for my work. But I was still lazy about it. Typos kept popping up, getting pointed out by clients, embarrassing me. And I kept making excuses. But I knew the truth—that typo was there because I hadn’t bothered to even go back and read and correct what I’d written. I wasn’t doing my best.

There’s a story from Jimmy Carter, about his days in the military. He was applying to be a part of the new nuclear submarine program, under Admiral Hyman Rickover. The Admiral had interviewed and grilled Carter for hours, covering every imaginable topic—from current events to literature to the nuances of serving as a Seaman. 

Eventually Rickover asked Carter, “How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?”

Carter was proud of his time and accomplishments at the academy, and he boasted, “Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820.” A stunning accomplishment, to be sure, and one that Carter had hoped would be the tipping point for getting an appointment in Rickover’s program.

Instead of praising Carter for his success, however, Rickover asked, “Did you do your best?”

Carter was on the verge of saying, “Yes, sir!” But stopped. 

He remembered that at times he had not actually done his best. He had not been as committed to learning about strategy or weapons as he could have, he had not studied the enemies and allies of the United States the way he should have. Carter, wanting to be an honest man, even if it meant casting himself in a bad light, answered, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.” 

The Admiral studied Carter for a long moment, then asked, “Why not?” And with that question he left the room. Interview over. 

There are probably several lessons to learn from that exchange—the most obvious being “always do your best.” You owe that to yourself and to those depending on your or supporting you, to take seriously every responsibility that is on your shoulders, and to do the very best you can with it. That’s admirable, virtuous, and right. 

There’s another lesson there, as well. 

Carter was number 50 in a class of 820. My friend David would have said, “Imagine what your rank would have been if you’d put more effort into it.”

Just imagine.

So back to drawing...

Over the past few decades I’ve secretly held on to this dream, of being a comic book artist. I’ve envied artists who could pencil and ink a scene in incredible detail. I’ve felt that sting of “I wish I could have done that” when looking at stunning artwork. Regret. Lament. 

I recently watched a video of an artist at work—something I often do, sort of a way to get close to a dream without actually taking the steps toward it. And in the video the guy was talking about how he got started in the business, but more importantly how he developed his amazing skill.

In the humblest way possible he said, “I just started drawing when I was a kid and I drew every single day, as much as I could, as much as life allowed.”

Every day. Hours and hours. He practiced his skill, learned new tricks, did it better, and eventually—mastered it.

And something about the way he said it clicked with me. It gelled with something I tell authors all the time. 

When people ask me how I got to where I am, how I developed the skill to write as quickly as I do, and to produce as much work as I do, I say, “I started writing when I was a kid, and I did it every chance I got. I just wrote a lot—that’s the only secret. I wrote every single day.”

I still do. And over the years I’ve gotten far better, and I’ve learned new tricks. I’ve made a discipline of writing, and it’s paid off. I started far more than 20 years ago, so I have a nice little forest growing around me, with trees almost as old as I am.

So when that artist made essentially the same statement, it hit home. 

I remembered the story about a virtuoso pianist, out for a night with friends, who sits at a bar piano and wows the crowd. One of his party said, “I’ve always wanted to play piano like that!”

“No you haven’t,” the pianist said in response. 

Confused, the acquaintance asked what he meant. 

“If you’d always wanted to play, you would have found a way to play. What you want is to have already mastered becoming a pianist, without having to put in the work.”

Similarly, there’s a quote that comes up in the writing world a lot:

”I hate writing, I love having written.” —Dorothy Parker

Almost every author who ever lived would rather have awoken with the sun to find that the story they envisioned was already typed up neat and pretty for them, from their mind to the page with no effort whatsoever. A fantasy that would rob that writer of the joy that comes after the hard work is done.

That has been me in a nutshell, with becoming a comic book artist, or a pianist, or a coder, or any number of things I’ve dreamt of. I’ve said, my whole life, “I want to do that.” I wanted the forest, but I didn’t want to do the work of planting the trees. 

Two days ago I bought some art supplies—just basic stuff. Pencils, erasers, sharpener, art pad. And I started watching tutorials and following along. I’ve done some practice sketches, with the plan to track my progress daily. And I’m happy to realize that it didn’t take as much effort to knock the rust off as I’d feared. I’m doing pretty well. 

I have a long way to go, but I’m happy with the progress. Because it is progress. Because I worked for it. I earned the reward of having drawn.

More importantly, I’ve made a commitment to keep doing this. I’m putting in the time, and I intend to do so every single day. It will at times be uncomfortable. It will at times be challenging to even drum up the effort to get to the page. But just like writing, the more I do it the more tricks I learn. Eventually I’ll have that muscle memory, and I’ll learn some go-to methods that solve little problems, in ways that will thrill me. I’ll keep learning from the pros, and eventually, I truly believe, I’ll gain the level of skill I want.

Actually, that’s important, so let’s rephrase and repeat:

I will gain exactly the level of skill I truly want at the price I’m willing to pay.

No more, no less. You get exactly as much out of life as the price you’re willing to pay.

So I could fail to become pro-level proficient as a comic book artist. I could decide the price to get to the level I dream of is too high. Which means I only wanted it to the level at which I dropped out. 

Or I may get to a level that I deem “good enough,” and go no further. Which means that’s all I really wanted, and no more, and so any lament or regret I have about it is just wasted energy and wishful thinking.

Whatever it is you want in life, decide on the price you’re willing to pay, and pay it. You’ll move closer to your goal. And you’ll learn what the real price is. If you’re willing to pay that, you’ll go further. You’ll discover what it is you actually and truly want by the amount of effort you’re willing to put toward getting it.

But the time to start is right now. Because every new skill demands the cost of time, and that’s slowly running out for you, just as it is for everyone. Eventually you’ll reach a point where you come up short, and can’t pay. The only time in your life when it’s too late is that moment—the moment at which you’ve run out of time.

But the investment you make early compounds as you go. Everything you do toward your goal now will be multiplied as you get closer. Daily practice is a force multiplier. Put in the time. Start now.

See you in the forest.

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

When you start diving into things like “personal development” you inevitably come across the “1% Rule.” The idea is to improve by 1% every day, so that every 100 days you’re 100% better than you were.

Except the reality is you end up multiplying that outcome as you go. It creates momentum that carries things further and amplifies your efforts.

Because as you start to improve you start making connections between whatever it is you’re learning, or whatever you’re making a daily habit, and other aspects of your life. You synthesize connections, to use the fancy terminology. You cross-pollinate ideas, to use the jargon.

I hate to admit this, but there are no shortcuts to big success. And I should know.

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to get the “miraculous win.” I’ve run the gamut from buying lottery tickets to investing in get-rich-quick schemes, to putting all my eggs in the basket of one idea or another, hoping that it will miraculously pay out. And in many respects, this sort of thing has actually happened for me over the years. I’ve ended up with some big wins, big blessings. I’m grateful for those.

But some of my more ambitious goals have always managed to elude me. And it’s because, I can now admit, I put all my hope into the miracle, but I didn’t actually put in the work.

Miracles are a funny thing. We want them to be supernatural, to have no explanation. But the truth is, real miracles come from mundane, everyday actions. Miracles are just the end result of putting our faith in something and then acting on that faith.

Or as the Bible puts it, “Faith without works is dead.” 

(This is actually a paraphrase. The actual verse goes, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” You’ll find this, along with some more insight into what it means, in the book of James 2:14-26. I heartily encourage you to check it out.)

Basically, I always wanted the miracle, but didn’t want the work. So I put my faith in things that sounded really good, that promised reward just for wanting it. And the good news is I got everything I worked for!

Which, in most cases, was zilch.

I’m a big believer in the validity of the Law of Attraction. But I’ve learned a lot since watching The Secret, and reading tons of books and watching far more videos and films. I’ve learned that everything you’ve heard about the Law of Attraction is real and true and totally works—as far as it goes.

There was something kind of big left out of The Secret. A big piece of the puzzle that I think may have been hinted at, but was never made explicit. And that is, you can dream and repeat affirmations and visualize and create vision boards, but you also have to take action.

I think there actually is a bit in that film that talks about “inspired action.” And I think I, like millions of others, sort of did a “yeah, yeah, but tell me more about wishing” thing, when I heard it. Because wishing is more fun. Wishing is easier. Wishing is exciting.

But I was totally overlooking how fun and easy and exciting inspired action could be.

It’s a little like chicken wings versus broccoli. 

Hear me out on this...

I love chicken wings. I could well be christened Chicken Graveyard, as I am the final resting place of much chicken, in the form of mostly BBQ wings. I can eat my weight in the stuff, which means infinity, because the more you eat the more you way. SCIENCE.

But I always hated broccoli. Because what’s good about it? No BBQ sauce. No dark meat. No bones to gnaw. No delicious fat.

It wasn’t until we started steaming broccoli and eating it alongside things like chicken wings that I realized, “This... isn’t bad.”

Steamed right, prepared right, I actually like this stuff. I like it when it’s nice and soft all the way through. I like putting brown mustard on it, maybe a little horseradish. Heck, some BBQ sauce doesn’t hurt. But I’ve found that even if it’s just steamed with nothing on it, I like it. I even want it. 

All it took was preparing it the right way. Taking the right action.

So now think about something like working out to get fit, or writing a book, or learning how to manage ads on Facebook. These are all activities that can have a positive impact, but they aren’t always fun to do. Except...

I’ve found that I like calisthenics and rock climbing and hiking. And because of these things, I’ve dropped around 40 pounds over the past year. I look and feel better. And even though I tried losing weight and keeping it off for years, it wasn’t until I took consistent, inspired action that it happened. I’ll lose the next 20 pounds the same way. It’ll be fun.

Writing, of course, is something I’ve done all my life. And with 50+ books on the market, I’ve clearly mastered the process of producing a book cover to cover. But there was a time when writing was drudge work for me, just like it is for most people. I was good at it, but there were aspects of it that I absolutely dreaded and refused to do. One of those was editing. 

It wasn’t until I started taking some consistent, inspired action that I found a way to love editing. I created my “edit stack,” which lets me play with multiple pieces of software. I built my Street Team, who help me find typos and other errors. I created processes to pull it all together and.... well... I discover I liked building and using processes. 

The work became fun because I looked for a way to make it fun. And once I did that, I did the work consistently. And once I did that, I got better. I improved, bit by bit, day by day, until it didn’t feel like “work” anymore. It was just more play.

This is how you do it. This is “the secret” that The Secret left out. 

John Assaraf called this “The Law of GOYA.” Or “Get Off Your Ass.” 

I’ve heard it called “The Law of Consistent Action,” which I like.

Or you can call it “The Law of 1% Improvement.”

I’m working to eliminate the phenomenon of “regret” in my life, but as I still do have some. I’ll admit that I regret not starting sooner with all of this. I regret that I didn’t heed the lessons that came my way, as early as childhood, about the idea of incremental improvement and consistent action and the compound effect. There’s a lot I regret. 

But regret is wasted energy, just like worry and anxiety.

SIDE NOTE: 

Regret is wasting your energy by trying to live in the past, while worry and anxiety are wasting your energy by trying to live in the future. 

What matters is that I’ve learned these lessons and I’m applying them now. I know that if I put in the effort, if I take consistent action toward a goal, then that miracle I wanted will occur. It just may not seem all the miraculous, because I’ll know what went into it. But no one ever said miracles had to be the result of unexplained phenomena. Everyday miracles come from everyday actions.

8 Steps for obeying the Law of Consistent Action

The funny thing about this is that when you start taking consistent action toward what you want, the results of that action compound. You gain momentum, the more you do, and all those 1% actions add up to more than 100% in time—usually a very short time.

Consistent action creates miracles.

So here’s how I think of it, as a process:

1. Decide what you want, and write it down. That’s your goal. It can be literally anything, even if it’s fantastic and amazing, even unbelievable. Just be specific about it. “I want $10 million in book sales by age 50.”

2. Add some gratitude. This is an important step, so don’t skip it. And it’s going to feel unnatural, but it is vital. Write it down in present tense: “I am so happy and grateful now that I have made $10 million in book sales!” Be grateful now for what is already yours. This comes down to the idea of the “infinite now.” Basically, NOW is the only time there is. It’s the only moment in which we are conscious and aware and have the power to act. So in essence, every moment is NOW, and that means NOW is infinite. What you want is already yours, because you have it NOW. It’s kind of a complex idea... mull it over. If you still can’t figure it out, comment below. I’ll do my best to explain it better.

3. Decide on the consistent action you’ll take. Some people call this “the price you’re willing to pay.” And I like that. This is what you’re saying you will do, consistently, to move toward your goal. And this part can be a little vague or general—it might start with, “I will start watching videos and reading books about how to make money by selling novels.” That’s broad, and it’s ok. Commit to doing something that falls into that action bucket, every day, and you’ll make progress.

4. Be open to taking inspired action. As you go and grow toward your goal, you’ll learn new things, and have new ideas. Your brain is pretty awesome, and it does this thing called “synthesis.” When you learn new information or new skills, when you gain a new frame of reference, your brain will start making new connections. And those new connections will open up even more paths to ideas and actions you can take. Be willing to take an inspired action when it comes to you—it’s your brain’s way of saying, “Maybe this will work.”

5. Measure your progress. The aphorism goes, “What is measured can be improved.” So this is a crucial step in following the Law of Consistent Action. Basically, keep notes on how you’re doing. Keep a journal, or a spreadsheet, or an Apple Note. The how and what aren’t as important as the why. You are keeping track of your progress so that you can see your progress. But you’re also keeping track so that you can adjust your plan. Which leads to...

6. Adjust your plan. So think about this for a second: You decide you want to drive from your home on the East Coast to a friend’s place on the West Coast. You decide that since your car has a compass on the dash, the best way to get started is to just start driving, and keep your nose pointed West. This does let you make some progress... you are further away from home and closer to your friend’s house, by the end of day one. But the problem is you’re lost. You’ve wandered onto some back road that dead ends at a field. You spend the night in the backseat, and you ponder your life choices. Clearly, on day two, you can’t rely on that same plan—it literally led nowhere. So, it’s time to adjust. You take out your phone, open the GPS app, and type in your friend’s address. It isn’t that your first plan was bad, it just wasn’t complete. And if you think about it, how many big successes in the world were built on the plans of someone who knew nothing at all about whatever it was they were trying to achieve? They may have started there, but as they went they adjusted, reset their course, tried new paths and new ideas, until eventually they created something that changed the world. Ignorance is a starting place, not a strategy. You achieve success by adjusting as you go, not by sticking to the plan you made when you knew nothing.

7. Celebrate every success, big or small. When you learn something new, when you achieve something that moves you closer to your goal, when you manage to overcome some minor or major obstacle, celebrate. That’s the exact sort of 1% progress you were hoping for! And celebrating as you go gives you more momentum and energy. It rewards you, gives you a little dopamine hit that you’ll want to bring back when you can. Celebrate what works so that you feel like the whole journey, and all the work, is worth it.

8. Learn to recognize when you’re done. This is the final tip. You have to know when something has failed. But you also have to know when it’s succeeded. Failure is what you measure so you can adjust your plans. Success is what you measure to know if your plan is working. What you must do is make sure you know what both of these look like. Your ultimate success is easy to recognize—it’s the goal you set in step 1. But along the way,  you’re going to set objectives toward that goal, and knowing when these are successes or failures is how you keep momentum. You’ll know that if something isn’t working, it’s time to end that path. You’ll know that if something is working, you should do more of that. 

I hope these help. All of this has helped me a lot, I can tell you. Every day I’m getting 1% closer to my goals and dreams. Every day I’m improving on who I am, on the work I do, on the skills I have. It adds up. 

Don’t waste time or energy regretting what you have or haven’t done.

Don’t waste time or energy feeling anxious or worried about what might or might not happen.

Put all of that time and energy into committing to setting a goal, making a plan, and performing consistent action. You’ll get there, 1% at a time.

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

I would like to start this post by telling you that I have faithfully kept a journal since I was a young lad, ensuring each and every day that I penned (and eventually typed) my thoughts on the page, preserving my opinions, ideas, inspirations, and pearls of wisdom for future generations to decipher as they wish.

I would like to tell you that. But I can’t. 

Don’t get me wrong—I actually do have journals and diaries from when I was very young. So I did, in fact, preserve some of my thoughts, opinions, ideas, yada yada. It’s just that it was far from daily, and far from consistent. In fact, there were entire months.... nay, years... in which I wrote not a word. I have dozens, maybe even hundreds of journals that were begun and then abandoned. Thoughts, isolated on the deserted islands of notebooks that are more blank pages than filled. 

My great shame.

Although, to give myself at least some credit, I may not have been consistent in the daily practice but I was very consistent in the coming-back practice. I came back to those pages eventually. In fact, I’d say at least half the entries I wrote between the age of sixteen and circa 35 are along the lines of, “I’m sorry I haven’t kept up this journal, but I’m going to do better this time.” Then, six months to a year later, “Yeah... me again. Sorry.”

There are actually long stretches in my journals in which I did write daily, or at least weekly, for months. Some journals have gaps of months in them, but the months with words are pretty consistent. 

I didn’t really develop a true, ongoing discipline with journaling until a few years ago, really. Already in my 40s, and trying to reshape my life so that it looked as I really wanted it to look. I have certainly taken to journaling as a habit, at this point. I write daily. And the days I don’t write are dark days indeed—I get grumpy. 

My wife, Kara, saintly and patient as she is, has picked up on this. She now realizes that if I’m not writing daily, then I’m not so fun to be around. And so she is often the one gently coaxing me back to routine. “Go do your morning thing,” she says. And I go and I do and I feel better and act better. 

Journaling may have been an on-again-off-again habit in my life, but looking back at entries past, I can see how much it benefited me. I’m so very grateful that I kept it up, even sporadically. I long to read what would have been on those empty pages, but I’m grateful for those that are filled. 

At various points I have attempted to migrate away from handwritten journals and use only digital journals. I’ve used a variety of methods for journaling on computers over the years, most of which weren’t all that conducive to keeping me in the habit. But I have files on my hard drive that represent several years worth of typed entries that I should, some day, transfer over to Day One (my preferred digital journal app). Just as I have always thought that some day I should digitize my handwritten journals.

Neither of these things is likely to happen. 

Not because I wouldn’t love having all those entries in one place, searchable and sortable, tagged for easy reference. But mostly because it’s just too impractical for me to pursue the endeavor. Maybe someday I’ll hire someone, and pay that poor soul to sift through all those entries, type them up, photograph the sketches and the doodles and the diagrams, document everything I sort of documented as I went. 

But probably not.

The thing is, journaling is useful to me, as a writer, more because it’s something other people probably aren’t going to read. It’s therapeutic. It’s a way for me to look back and mark my growth and progress as a human. 

I have a rule—write everything as if someone is eventually going to read it. 

It’s a bit like the old wisdom about guns: “Never point a gun at someone unless you plan to shoot them.” As well as “treat every gun as if it’s loaded.” Which, I think you’ll agree, is a much more humane way to teach someone to respect guns as dangerous weapons. 

Still... if you’re going to point a gun...

If you’re going to write...

It’s best to treat the things you do as meant for something.

In the case of journaling, maybe the reader you’re writing for will only ever be you. But that’s enough, isn’t it? 

This morning, as I opened my Moleskine to do my daily journaling, the notebook opened to July 4th and 5th. I read the entries there, and it turned out they were relevant to everything I was thinking about this morning. They even included advice, and it was of the sort I sorely needed in that moment. 

My past self advised my present self on precisely what I most needed to hear. 

As I read those entries, I remembered what I was feeling when I wrote them, what I was struggling with and what was making me feel hopeful. I thought, “You haven’t seen anything yet,” which is the arrogant way our present self always thinks about our past self. And the way our future self is thinking about the “I” that we are today. It’s easy to look back at who you were and be critical.

But it’s better to look back and recognize your own wisdom.

Because think about it—you were so ignorant of what was to come, but you got through it anyway. That takes something. It takes courage. It takes strength and capability. 

Some of the entires in this particular Moleskine are a little somber, sometimes sad, sometimes a little hopeless. This one started in February 2021, smack in the middle of a polar vortex that knocked out power for Texans and left us freezing in our own homes. My entries from those days are a little bitter and angry and hopeless, but there are also notes of, “Maybe this is God’s way of saying there’s something incredible coming next.” 

I read that and realized, yeah, it was. And it is. 

I keep handwritten journals and I keep digital journals. I keep multiple journals, to accommodate various parts of my life. I have spent a lot of time fretting that I might not be journaling “correctly.” But I’m finally starting to realize—it’s up to me, and it’s all correct. If it helps, if it allows me to see who I am and shape who I become, then it’s the right way. 

Journaling has given me incredible insights and remarkable resolve. It has given me hope when I felt hopeless, and it has allowed me to shape myself into someone better than I was, to grow into being someone more like the man I want to be. 

Journaling, in fact, has led to this blog—an extension of the same part of my mind that writes exclusively for me. Each of these posts starts first in my journal, aimed at my ideal reader (me), and then given to you, whom I hope will also become my ideal reader.

Journaling gives me a way to tell you that I appreciate you, and that I am grateful you’re here. And it allows me to say, “Welcome. Let’s go on some adventures together.”

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

When I started writing my Dan Kotler Archaeological Thrillers, I glommed on to the idea of “weird history.” I thought it would be fun if Kotler and Agent Denzel were always finding themselves dealing with modern-day threats that had their roots in some quirk or twist of history. And I thought it’d be most fun if at least some part of that history was real (though I’ll freely admit I add-to and make up what I need to fill in certain gaps—still, there’s always some thread from the real world interwoven in my books).

When I first thought about “weird history,” it was the sort of thing you might find on Ancient Aliens or in older shows like Ripley’s Believe it or Not or That’s Incredible. Or any number of shows, documentaries, books, and magazines covering the quirkiest and strangest tidbits of our past, from ancient temples and artifacts to fringe science throughout the centuries. That’s the stuff that’s always gotten me excited. Things like comparative mythology and ancient technology that is, somehow, more advanced than what we have in the modern era. The unexplained mysteries of cultures who rose and fell without leaving much of a trace, and the mysteries of places where strange events and circumstances happened.

Kotler’s stories always have some element of that. But something I’ve discovered while writing these books is that “weird history” is sometimes just “history.” And maybe there’s a reason that it’s been recorded in the first place. Maybe history gets recorded and remembered because it’s weird.

Take, for example, the H.L. Hunley—otherwise known as the Civil War submarine. 

Built in the 1860s in Mobile, Alabama, and pressed into service in the Civil War from 1863 to 1864, it was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel, bringing down the Union ship, the Housatonic, with a spar torpedo. Unfortunately, the sub disappeared after that fight, and was assumed sunk, all hands dead.

That turned out to be true, as was verified in 1995 when the Hunley was rediscovered in 30 feet of water, 4 miles offshore. It was raised in 2000 and moved to North Charleston’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center, where it resides to this day.

The strange thing about the sub is that it was found intact. No damage. And the crew were all at their stations, showing no sign of panic or trying to escape. There was no obvious reason for either their deaths or the sub’s failure. 

There have been a lot of theories about what brought down the Hunley. Some speculated that the crew died from asphyxiation from carbon monoxide. Others assumed the sub had taken a hit that wasn’t evident, or some seal must have broken, allowing water to rush in and drown everyone.

In 2017, however, a team of researchers from Duke University came up with a new theory: Blast lung.

The Duke team speculated that the blast from the torpedo that took down the Housatonic may have created a shock wave that was powerful enough to transmit back to the crew, through the water and the hull of the sub, and cause blood vessels in the crew’s lungs to rupture. This could potentially have killed the entire crew instantly.

Their historic victory turned out to be the cause of their own demise.

It’s a weird note from the pages of history, and in more ways than one. First of all—a submarine in use in the Civil War? Who could have seen that coming? 

Add to that the mystery surrounding first the Hunley’s disappearance, and then the cause of the crew’s death. It was a real “locked room mystery,” given that the sub was intact (taking into account a century of being underwater), and the crew was still at their posts, with no apparent cause of death.

This is the stuff good thriller novels are made from.

It hardly stops there. History is crammed to overflowing with mysteries and things that make you feel an eerie and mystified sense of confusion. There are question marks in our history books that we have no way to answer, except by the scribblings of an author determined to bring some kind of resolution to the unknown and unknowable.

That’s my job. And I like it.

History is weird. Weirded than any fiction, when it comes to it. And that means that I, and others who aspire to this work, will have business to sustain us for years to come.

---

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

Lately I’ve been reading and watching and listening to a lot of material that fits into a sort of central theme—the idea that we build our reality first in our minds, and then express it in our actions, live it in our lives. 

It’s a heady sort of philosophy, but here’s the kicker: I haven’t been pursuing this idea, it’s just been appearing in literally everything that comes my way.

Now you can make some pretty solid and convincing and even defensible arguments that this is simply the way things work in the world, especially in the digital age. If I buy a book on Amazon or watch a video on YouTube, those two services literally have algorithms meant to suggest other content that fits. And these things work so well they’ve given birth to conspiracy and paranoia, with suggestions that our electronic devices are spying on us at all times, listening to our conversations, even tracking the movements of our eyes, all so Facebook and Amazon and Google and Apple can nudge us and influence our thinking with suggested content and product recommendations. 

Maybe. I’ve seen things like that happen, for sure. I post something about camping and suddenly every ad I see on Twitter is camping-themed, camping emails arrive in my email, camping videos get suggested on YouTube. So yeah, pretty sure that’s real.

But what about the things that happen outside of the digital landscape?

There’s a concept called “synchronicity,” which is in essence the confluence of events that begins to spin out from one central thought or action on your part. This idea has been coopted by the mystic and spiritualist community, New Age thinking, Law of Attraction folks (I have a position on this... it’ll probably come up). But synchronicity has been studied and given scientific veracity in disciplines such as psychology and physics. There is, by measurable evidence, something happening in the universe that makes seemingly odd and coincidental events synchronize. 

For example, let’s say you’re binge-watching a television show, such as Big Bang Theory. You’ve watched several episodes per night before going to bed, and over the course of the past few weeks. 

You’ve traveled out of town, perhaps by camper van, and find yourself randomly deciding to spend a few weeks in an area that is new and strange to you, one you’ve never been to, never even heard of before. And almost from the moment you arrive, you start noticing little Big Bang Theory coincidences.

A sign says Sheldon’s Dry Cleaning.

You have to turn on Leonard Avenue.

While parked at a grocery store you exit to find that someone has tucked a copy of Penny Saver under your windshield wipers.

While driving randomly through a neighborhood, you see that a family has hung a sign on their front patio that reads The Wolowitz Family.

The man behind the counter at the gas station has the first name Raj.

And so it goes, on and on and on. Little synchronicities.

Every single thing I just mentioned happened to me and Kara when we drove to Holland, Michigan, last summer. It was a random destination—literally picked from a quick Google search, to find some place on the lake where we might enjoy spending time, after retrieving our motorhome from a rental service so we could sell it. Prior to that trip, we’d been binging Big Bang Theory for a couple of weeks, and talking about the show a lot. And from the instant we got to Holland we started seeing little synchronicities everywhere.

Why? 

Well, one explanation could be what’s known as the reticular activating system. This is a bundle of nerves in the brain that gets engaged when you’ve been concentrating on something, and makes you hyper alert to signs of that something in your environment. This is a useful ability if you are, say, a tribal hunter looking for wild game, so that you can feed your people. You know that rabbits and deer make for a good meal, so your brain starts flagging any sign of rabbits and deer. You recognize trails, footprints, hair fibers, even scat. You see movement and your brain alerts you as to whether it’s a potentially delicious rabbit stew or a potentially scary saber tooth tiger that you’ll now need to escape. 

This system also makes you more alert to things that you have decided are important to you—something that your brain might conclude if, for example, you’ve spent hours binge watching a show and weeks thinking and talking about it. The characters, their names, their qualities, their quirks—those things jump out at you as you see them in the real world. 

It’s a spooky kind of thing, at times. We’ve been thinking about red Jeeps, and suddenly we’re seeing red Jeeps everywhere we go. We’re thinking about sculptures of horses, and we see them everywhere. We’re thinking about narwhals, and narwhals become the theme of every freaking place we stop on a three-thousand-mile road trip. Seriously, where are all the narwhals coming from? I bought my niece one narwhal piñata!

A few years ago, while I was traveling in Europe, I had carried a little toy travel gnome with me. I had thought it would be fun to take photos of the gnome in all the places I visited. The idea was that the gnome would be everywhere. And suddenly everywhere I went I was seeing gnomes. I’m pretty sure I’ve never noticed a gnome in a public place in my life, until that trip. But they were everywhere. 

And in fact, I’ve noticed that any time I carry that little gnome with me, I start seeing gnomes everywhere I go, even here in the US. When I do, I make it a point to take a photo of my gnome looking at that other gnome. Which probably only exacerbates the whole gnome thing.

The reality, of course, is that those gnomes are already out there, but I wasn’t primed to see or notice them. And when I decided to focus on gnomes everywhere, my brain started alerting me to every gnome it discovered. Good brain. Sit.

So the reticular activating system probably has a lot to do with with synchronicity such as this, but there are many examples that can’t be so easily explained. 

How many times have you started thinking about someone you haven’t talked to in a long time, and they suddenly call or text or email you out of the blue? 

Or you were on the fence about reading a book, one that’s been out for ages, and suddenly someone you care about and respect recommends it to you, unprompted.

Or you’ve been thinking about a song, got it in your head one morning while brushing your teeth, and now every time you hear music, anywhere you go, that song is playing. 

There are probably a million reasons why things like this happen, and why we notice them, and they’re likely all very logical and reasonable and rational. 

Because that’s how reality works.

That’s the thing that, I think, disappoints people when it comes to “miracles” or “synchronicity” or “faith.” We have this expectation that if something is truly miraculous, it has to be supernatural and unexplainable. It has to happen without the possibility of a rotational and reasonable explanation, because rational and reasonable are real, while miracles are above real.

But the truth is, everything in our universe has a rational and reasonable explanation, if we can known all the facts of it, because the universe is governed by a collection of rules, laws and principles. If we can know all the facts, we can follow the line of logic and see how things played out to produce the result we’re seeing in our lives. And if we can’t know all the facts, it seems somehow magical and strange and spooky. Weirdly, we have normalized and accepted the idea that not knowing how something happened could be proof that it’s a miracle. That’s weird, right? Because if we know the how and why something happened, it becomes mundane, and we don’t see mundane as miraculous.

What we’re missing out on, with that kind of thinking, is that even the mundane is magical and strange and spooky from the right perspective. We’re actually being a tad bit illogical in that assertion. If we are willing to accept the possibility of the supernatural and miraculous, then we’re in “two things can be true” terriotory.

In other words, just because we can explain something doesn’t mean it lacks supernatural origins. Two things can be true.

This is a tough pill for some folks. They see rational explanations of “miraculous” events as absolute proof of hokum and foolishness. If they can show you the logical thread of something from end to beginning, then it certainly is not a miracle. And just because you started thinking about it beforehand, constructing it in your thoughts first before expressing it on the page or building it with your hands or announcing it with your voice, doesn’t mean you thought it into existence!

But... doesn’t it though?

See, that’s where I am in this, these days. I’ve been a rational and logical thinker from day one, but pragmatic and practical as I may be, I recognize the truth in this idea: Thoughts really do become things. It’s an absolutely logical, provable, practical, pragmatic, reasonable assertion. The simple fact that you are reading this post proves it. I thought it, my thoughts signaled my hands to type it, and then to post it, and then… poof. Thought to thing in a very short time.

A few years back I became somewhat obsessed with studying a concept known as “design thinking.”  I won’t go into the weeds on this, but I can say that in part the idea is that everything around you is designed. Even the placement of certain plants and trees in your sphere was likely planned, if not to plant them there then to leave them there, as they grew naturally. So it is with your furniture, your clothing, your coffee mug, your toothbrush—every bit of that was designed. And as such, it all started as thought. 

Thought was followed by action, and action produced a result. And so there we have it, right at our fingertips and in every direction we look, the absolute proof that thoughts become things.

It’s just that there is a part of us that doesn’t want that idea to be quite so mundane. 

When we hear or use the phrase “thoughts become things,” what we really want is for the thought to magically materialize out of our minds and into the physical world, through no logical action on our part. We want to think, “I have ten million dollars,” and open our eyes to find stacked of crisp $100 bills piled in front of us. 

So when that doesn’t happen, we want to write the whole idea off as bunk.

But what if we had that same thought, “I have a ten million dollars,” and when we opened our eyes we started writing down a plan of action. We mapped out exactly what it would take to get that money, and then we put that list to work. And as we went, we measured what we were getting, and adjusted the plan, then put that plan to work. And we kept doing that until, over time, suddenly we had $10 million.

Our thought immediately became a thing when we wrote down that plan. And we shaped and reshaped that thing until it became the thing we intended it to be. From thought to thing to action to thing to more action to more of the thing, and so on until we end up with what we originally had in mind. It just took going through a progression, following the rules and laws of the universe, to get there.

Sound preposterous? 

Let’s dial it back a little...

What if we had the thought, “I want to be a piano player.”

When we open our eyes we write out our plan—buy a piano, find a piano teacher, take lessons weekly, practice daily. 

We commit to working that plan for 30 days, exactly as written. And if, at the end of those 30 days, we can’t play the piano, we determine we’ll adjust the plan. We’ll practice more than one hour per day. We’ll take two lessons per week, instead of just one. We’ll buy a portable keyboard so we can play while traveling or plug in headphones so we can practice at night, without disturbing anyone. We see what’s working and do more of it, we see what’s not working and do less of that.

And we give it another 30 days.

Chances are we’re going to see some progress as we go. Even that first 30 days, it’s pretty likely we’ll be able to play a little something. And if we keep at it, we’ll get better. We didn’t learn to play in an instant, but we did decide in an instant that it would be our reality, and we committed to creating that reality in our lives. 

We had the thought, we took action, and the universe, being structured on rules and laws and principles, delivered our intended result. 

If that isn’t a miracle, I’ve never understood the term.

You can call this semantics, but if you really drill down on every religion, every faith, every philosophy in the history of mankind, this is the obvious and evident way things work. Miracles happen. Sometimes we can’t explain them. Sometimes... we can.

And it all starts with thought. 

We build our reality first in our minds, then in the space we occupy. The cost of the miracle is faith, and “faith without works is dead.”

Get it?

We’ve been told this from the start, and we dismiss it because it feels obvious. But is it really all that obvious? 

Because we do tend to dismiss the truth of this when what we want feels too hard or difficult to achieve. We think, “Sure, I can learn to play piano, if I really want to. But what I really want is that $10 million, and that’s impossible!”

And so, it is. 

Because just as we can build the world we want if we believe and act from that believe, if we do not believe, and do not act from belief, we’ll build nothing. Or worse, if we believe that something cannot be, and we act on that believe, then it cannot be, and that’s that.

When I was a kid, and all the way up through my early 30s, I wanted to be a novelist. Wanted it bad. Dreamt of it. Pictured it. Wished for it. Told friends about it and daydreamed and pretended. I bought notebooks and journals, I had typewriters and computers and laptops, I had portable keyboards, I got work writing for ad agencies and software companies, I wrote short stories and submitted them to magazines, I won awards and scholarships for short fiction.

But I didn’t write any books.

I’d start a book. Sometimes, with great effort, I’d even finish one. I’d submit it, and get a rejection. And I’d shelve it. The rejection became evidence that thinking and wishing doesn’t make it so.The dream wasn’t happening. Doing it the other way—doing the work and being resilient in it—was too hard.

I wasn’t willing to pay the price that the life I wanted demanded of me. I wasn’t willing to keep working to make my dream into a reality. 

Faith, but no works. Dead.

Then, in my 30s, I changed my perspective. “If I want to do this, I have to do the work.” It seems simple. Dumb, even. But there it was. “I give up on the whole magic thinking thing. I have to do the work!”

And I did. Not realizing, until later, that I was finally living up to what I believed in faith. I was finally saying to the life and the universe and God, “Yes! I’ll pay that price! Gimme!” And when I started saying that, by my actions, by faith, it started to materialize.

Faith with works. Life.

I wrote a book. Then I found a way to publish it. Then I wrote another book. And another. And I realized, I’m not doing this right. I’m not getting to where I want to be, with this method. I need a new way, a new process. So I created a new process, adjusted the plan, wrote more books, wrote faster, improved as I went, learned as I went, implemented what I learned, as I went.

And repeat.

And adjust. 

And think, and plan, and do.

And then, this moment, here, now, hanging out in my travel van with my iPad on a little lap desk, resting on my knees. Writing. Writing about writing, about life and philosophy, writing novels and more.

I’m in Pennsylvania, a place I never even pictured visiting untilI one day I did. I’m surrounded by nature, as I always wanted. I’m writing in the crisp, cool, morning air, wafting in through the screen door. I have 50+ books in print, and more coming. I have money from book sales, enough to finance a lifestyle I dreamt about (and manifested, by taking the right actions). I have readers who love what I do and can hardly wait for the next book. I have everything I’ve pictured for my life, over the past 48 years. Miracles.

I somehow became a novelist. Miraculously. Overnight. Without entirely noticing how or even when. In the grand, sweeping scheme of the universe and of the artificial construct that is time, my transition to become the author I wanted to be happened now. The infinite now. It always was and always will be.

I started with a thought, then changed my thought until I knew what I wanted my life to look like, and then changed my actions until I was working from and toward that thought. And then that thought became now. Just like every other thought I’ve ever started with.

I have more dreams. I have a bigger vision of who I want to be as a novelist, as a husband, as a man. I’m continuing to adjust my thoughts and my actions and my approach, until my work is in harmony with my faith. Until my now is the version of reality I want it to be.

I’m learning more about how profound and miraculous this whole thing really is. 

You’ve probably heard of “law of attraction.” I believe there’s something to that. We really do attract what we think about most. But there are other laws that supplement this. The “law of consistent action” being chief among them.

It’s all true—every word of it. Your thoughts really do become things. Your mind is the starting point of every bit of your reality. 

The greatest deception, and the one we all fall for, is that miracles have to be unexplainable. The truth is, just being here, alive and thinking in this vast universe, is the unexplained miracle. Everything else fits within that.

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Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

The THIRD Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller! Releases September 4th, 2021. Get it Here.

In two days (Saturday, 4 September 2021) my new book Compromised, the third Quake Runner: Alex Kayne thriller, will release worldwide! I’m happy. And from the emails and other responses I’ve gotten, I think my readers will be happy. This series has been a lot of fun to write, so far, and I’m looking forward to more books down the line. 

I wrote about some of the reasons I started writing Quake Runner in another post. The gist was I had a popular series that was exclusive to Amazon, and as part of a strategy to expand into “wide distribution” (ie “distribution to all stores, everywhere, if they’ll have me”) I started writing books that would only be wide, from the very beginning. Various hiccups happened along the way, various changes and alterations to the plan occurred, but for the most part that strategy is playing out, and Alex Kayne has been hugely helpful in resolving some of my exclusivity woes.

That’s just so like her.

I’ve been asked before, on a podcast or two here and there, why I chose to write a female protagonist. I’ve answered that, when asked, but I don’t think I’ve ever elaborated on it here. 

The truth is, when I first wrote the name “Alex Kayne,” I had a male protagonist in mind. And far from being the creator of an advanced, quantum-based artificial intelligence, he was just going to be a very smart and clever man who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and who took it on the lamb. To make a living while on the run and in hiding, he would take on various tough jobs, helping people solve problems that law enforcement either ignored or couldn’t solve. 

Not too dissimilar from the Alex Kayne we’ve all met.

At that time, I was also pitching a series concept to James Patterson—starting with a book I titled “Run, Jane, Run.” It felt like a Patterson book to me, with that title and the premise. And the foundation of the story provided some now-familiar elements: Jane was the VP of a successful technology company, a brilliant programmer who creates a quantum-based encryption system. This digital security is uncrackable, and data protected by it can only be unlocked if two users, in two very specific geographic locations, both input their unlock codes at the same time. The two locations are located on the West Coast and the East Coast, respectively. And Jane, our titular heroine, has to get to the East Coast location, break into the the secured vault, steal the second device, and then do as she’s told, unlocking it at a precise time so that the bad guys can get the data they’re after. If Jane fails, her daughter dies.

Does that not sound like a Patterson plot?

He didn’t think so. Or didn’t feel strongly enough about it. And so he turned down my pitch.

I kept it, though, and figured I’d write it someday anyway. And, despite giving away the meat of the plot just now, I still might. It’s kind of an exciting idea.

But a few years back, sitting in a restaurant at one of the Disney Resort hotels in Orlando, Florida, I started working on my male Alex Kayne story when something clicked. And in a rush of enthusiasm I looped back, changed all the pronouns, and started adding a dash of Run, Jane, Run to the plot.

The result of this union of ideas was the female protagonist, Alex Kayne, along with her unique super power—the AI known as the Quantum Integrated Encryption Key, or QuIEK for short.

True confession, I had in mind (and believe I worked in) an homage to the joke from the Avengers (one of the related films, anyway... I can’t recall which one), wherein someone asks Agent Coulson what “S.H.I.E.LD.” stands for, and when he explains it they reply, “It sounds like someone really wanted to be able to use the name SHIELD.”

I really wanted to use the name “Quake,” for reasons I cannot now recall. But it turned out to be perfect, in my present-day opinion. And the acronym I came up with is so engrained in my fingers now, it’s an automatic. Even spell check recognizes it now.

So that’s the origin of QuIEK. What I’m supposed to be sharing is the origin of Alex Kayne. And though part of her origin includes being an amalgam of ideas and characters I already had in mind, there was and is something deeper at play.

My wife (Kara) and I used to love watching Castle. Nathan Fillion is one of our favorite character actors, and we’ve loved just about everything he’s been in. But I was particularly in love with his character in Castle, because he was, in essence, the type of thriller author I wanted to become. 

Fame, wealth, a penthouse lifestyle in Manhattan, fast cars, poker nights with other famous authors—who wouldn’t want that life?

Plus, the opening line of each episode was always, to me, one of the best ways to sum up being a thriller or mystery writer:

“There are two kinds of people who sit around all day thinking about killing people...mystery writers and serial killers. I'm the kind that pays better.”

I love that line, and frequently steal it as my own.

But there was something that always bugged me and Kara about the show: Specifically, Kate Beckett.

The thing about Kate is she’s the “typical strong female character” from film and TV. Meaning, for some reason Hollywood film and TV writers think the only way a female character can be “strong and independent” is if they’re portrayed as rough, aloof, damaged. They have to be scowling and intolerant of humor—unless it’s their own wry joke at the expense of the male lead. They have to always be smarter than everybody else, but only at everyone else’s expense. Which often means the writers dumb down the men in the scene so the female protagonist can roll her eyes over their stupidity and ineptitude, correct them, bark orders at them, and then leave them to go fumble and screw up so she can come rescue them later. 

Basically, Hollywood writers appear to think women are only strong and independent if they’re also unlikeable, and that showing a woman’s strength has to come at the expense of everyone else around her. Especially the men.

Worse, Hollywood seems to prefer the stereotype of strong women as basically being “men in dresses.” They’re usually either asexual or overly sexualized (never anywhere in between these two extremes), and are typically brooding, quiet, contemplative thinkers with a complete disdain for everyone around them, keeping themselves so locked up and silent that no one ever knows what they’re thinking or planning, or why they’re seemingly going out of their way to do everything BUT what their superiors tell them to do. Or, my least favorite, they’re constantly doing things no one can figure out, keeping all information to themselves, so that no one else could possibly help them out of whatever dilemma they’re in. They’re closed off and they refuse to talk, so their irrational actions only make sense once they’ve managed to survive what probably could have been avoided if they’d just talked to someone.

That, in a very large nutshell, was Kate Beckett. 

Over the course of the series, we found out that Kate was at various points in her life a fashion model, a sci-fi nerd, a tattooed motorcycle rebel, a hard drinker, a big fan of Castle’s books, the top of her class at the Police Academy, a kickboxer, and I think maybe an Astronaut or something? My memory is hazy. Mostly because it was such a long and ever-growing list of remarkable accomplishments to explain Kate’s character and strength, and yet she was still somehow such a profoundly two-dimensional character. A caricature, really, upon whom the writers tacked any and every cliché they could come up with in an attempt to add “depth” and make her “tough.” Instead she came across as shallow, unlikeable, and unbelievable as a human. A parody of a strong woman.

And this, in my opinion, is just one extreme version of the Hollywood idea of a “strong, empowered, capable female protagonist.”

I hate it.

I hate it, because I grew up with actual strong women in my life, who could run circles around Kate Becket in just about any venue. They were capable, smart, funny, clever, resourceful, and brave, and yet still soft, feminine, caring, and loving. Some of the strong women in my life were brusque, stern, tough as nails. But they weren’t “damaged.” They didn’t need Kate’s litany of personal tragedies and haunting backstory to make them who they were. They were tough and resourceful without a laundry list of personal problems that bordered on psychological disorders.

I wanted to write a female protagonist who was more like the strong women I had in my life. Someone who was resilient and resourceful and clever, who might have some tragedy in her life but who was not really “damaged” by it, and who might have mitigating circumstances determining her actions, but who nevertheless acted with agency and autonomy. 

Alex Kayne represents that woman, as I’ve known her in various forms all my life. 

When I was a boy, maybe around six years old, I was chased by a horse named Rebel. I had gotten too close, and every time I tried to walk away he followed me, nearly walking over me. He stepped on my bare toes, which hurt, and I became afraid.

I cried out, shouting, trying to get someone to help me. But we lived in a rural area, and there was no one around. No one but my mother.

She heard me and came out into the pasture, and she told me to start moving closer. And when it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to get to her without Rebel possibly stepping on me, she told me to run. 

“Run straight toward me!” she shouted. “Go past me and get in the yard!”

I ran, straight toward her, and when I’d passed her I climbed through the barbed wire fence and into our yard, and then I turned and saw what was happening. 

My mother, standing at maybe 5’8”, weighing at best a buck-ten, soaking wet, was standing there with her arms out wide, facing down this young horse that was galloping toward her, chasing me.

She didn’t move.

He did.

When the dust settled, Rebel had peeled off and was running across the pasture, and my mom turned and shakily walked to the fence, climbed through, and hugged me.

My mom has no tattoos. She doesn’t wear leather pants, doesn’t ride a motorcycle. She was never a super model or an astronaut. She never free-climbed the side of a building or wrestled a cougar. But I think she could have. And would have, to protect me and my little brother. 

That’s the kind of female protagonist I wanted to write. 

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Now... Alex Kayne is kind of a badass, I won’t dispute that. She knows Krav Maga, and she’s a multi-dimensional thinker and planner at a scary level. She’s brilliant enough to create an AI that can do things no computer in the history of the world (so far) can do. So she does have her mythic side.

But at heart, when you boil her down to her root character, Alex Kayne is a tiny woman standing with her arms spread wide, facing down a charging beast five times her weight and three times her size, refusing to budge, refusing to even blink. All to protect someone who couldn’t protect himself.

Alex Kayne is my mother, my Granny, my aunts, my friends, my wife. The greatest women I’ve ever known, some of the most capable people I’ve ever known, are reflected in Alex Kayne.

As this third novel in her series launches, I’m proud of the way she represents the women I’ve known. And I can’t wait to see where she grows from here.

---

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

I don’t need an office, I just want one.

I’ve been writing for a very long time. I started as a kid, using mostly lined notebook paper and a pencil, but sometimes writing in a little journal adorned with cartoon characters and quirky little writing prompts. 

When I started doing the “serious” writing, the writing I thought of as my work, I still did a lot by hand. I used spiral notebooks and sometimes something fancier, like the little cloth-bound red and black Record book I must have picked up from a grocery store somewhere. My idea of fancy, anyway. 

I’m big on journals and notebooks—I’ve had hundreds of them. Mostly I hand-write things in my little pocket Moleskines, but over the years I’ve collected dozens of leather bound journals, some super fancy, some only kinda fancy. I’ve also filled more spirals notebooks and legal tablets and ring binders than I can count. 

But I’ve always had a hankering for the keyboard. 

When I was in high school my grandmother bought me a Canon Typestar 110 electric typewriter. I was learning to type on those giant, blue IBM Selectrics in school, and the idea of a battery-powered typewriter that would actually allow me to scroll up and edit, in-line, was an amazing novelty. I wrote every school paper and tons of short stories and “first thirds” on that typewriter. “First thirds” is what I call the starter chapters for various novels I began and abandoned over the years. 

Having a portable typewriter was handy, but at school I transitioned to the computer lab and to the computers in the journalism room. And that’s when I discovered the wonders of writing digitally. It wasn’t long after that I managed to snag a Commodore 128 and a dot matrix printer. My essays and papers and short stories didn’t look quite as crisp and clean as they once did, but there was suddenly a lot more of them.

After graduation I started college, and at the same time started working for Radio Shack. This was fortuitous, because I met my good friend Bob, who has been a lifelong pal, and who introduced me to flea markets. And it was at the flea market that I found and purchased my first laptop—a Tandy 1000 that was, at the time, nonfunctional. I paid $25 for it. A steal, even if it was a brick.

I have a background in electronics, so I was unafraid to open that laptop and see what was going wrong inside. It turned out to be something very simple and minor—a tiny short in the circuit regulating power, of the type that someone at a repair center must have made and overlooked. I removed the short with a soldering iron, and bam. Working laptop. Just in time for college English.

My English professor favored a particular word processing program, called Norton Textra, and had ensured that it was available for purchase in the college bookstore. It wasn’t expensive, from what I recall. But it was... glorious.

I had used various word processor programs up to that point, mostly whatever came with my computer. Which probably means something like Notepad, or whatever text editor was there by default. Norton Textra gave me a whole new lease on life, writing-wise. It had features, like grammar and spell check, and even a tool that measured the Flesch-Kincaid readability rating of your document. 

Norton Textra was my word processor of choice for years, until Microsoft essentially overwhelmed the world to become the dominant word processing tool. I was, eventually, forced to trade my beloved Norton Textra for Microsoft Works, and then eventually traded that for Microsoft Word. 

I still miss Norton Textra. Sometimes I Google it to see how it’s doing. 

Since those early days, there’s been multiple technological revolutions. Writing went from being an activity I did while locked in my bedroom to something I could do while sitting at a cafeteria table to something I could do literally anywhere I was. I’ve had an evolution happen under my fingertips, from the humble pencil and sheet of notebook paper to desktop computer to clunky laptop to portable and handheld devices. 

Even on that list, things evolved in astounding ways. At one point I was doing all of my writing on a Palm V with a portable keyboard—this was the era of the PDA, the “personal digital assistant,” which was the precursor of the smart phone and smart tablet. And from there I’ve had so many small, handheld writing tools and folding keyboards and Bluetooth devices, I couldn’t possibly recount them all. 

The current version of all of that, though, is that I have multiple devices to allow me to write in whatever way I need, whenever I need to do it. 

We’re currently on the road full time, so I’ve culled down some of what I had in my home office to be more portable. I was using a Mac Mini as my “office computer,” and my MacBook Pro as my “portable computer.” Because some of the work I do requires more computing power and options than writing requires. But because I’m obsessed with portability, I eventually started writing almost exclusively on my iPad Pro. Its “always-on” internet makes it ridiculously useful for quick research, and for instantly backing up everything I write to the cloud, which facilitates writing on whatever device I need, whenever I need to switch.

For a long while I was traveling to conferences via airplanes and rental cars, staying in hotel rooms just long enough to sleep and shower, and spending most of my time in hotel bars and lobbies. For those trips, I started using my iPhone for writing. All the same software is there, and it’s always in my pocket. 

At first I made sure I always had a folding keyboard or a Bluetooth keyboard with me, to make writing on my phone easier. But at times that’s tough, too. And sometimes I find myself sitting in space or waiting in a line or seated at an event that isn’t keeping my attention, and the urge to write strikes. So I have learned to use the onscreen keyboard of my iPhone, which allows me to write and edit from literally anywhere, literally anytime.

It’s been quite an evolution.

The point is, people often ask me about what it’s like to write from the road. They wonder if I ever feel cramped in the van, or if I ever get tired of having to “find a place to write.” They ask me if I miss my writer’s space, my little home office.

I do. But not for the reasons they may think.

The truth is, I’ve learned how to have an “office anywhere” headspace. 

My typical writing setup, in the van, is to turn the passenger seat around, kick my feet up on a little folding camp stool, and place my iPad on a little lap desk that rests on my knees. It’s probably one of the most comfortable writing spaces I’ve ever had. I may keep doing it, once we’re back in a house full time. 

And of course, I have my iPhone, which lets me write from literally anywhere. 

And to keep distractions at bay, I plug in my AirPod Pros, which dampen outside sound and let me “close the door” to what I think of as my “mental office.” 

This setup is flexible, and portable. Which is exactly what I need. It’s also kind of inspiring. 

I’ve come to realize that I have always preferred keeping my life and work portable. I have always preferred the “write from anywhere” philosophy. And technology has been evolving as I go, allowing me more and better options. It’s been wonderfully accommodating. 

I’m blessed to live in the era I do, but I think that in any era I would eventually have made my writing portable. What is a pocket Moleskine, after all, if not the ancestor of the iPhone? And portable typewriters... those have been around for centuries. I own a couple as collectibles now, and in a pinch I would definitely carry one along with me and set it up wherever I needed to work, if I had no other options.

Office anywhere. Write anywhere. It’s a philosophy that’s allowed me to travel full time and still produce books, stories, blog posts and more. The evolution of my writing life has made given me the flexibility and power to be a writer on my own terms. And that is something pretty wonderful.

---

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

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I was in an Meijer’s grocery story in Michigan, about a year ago, taking the time to explore the aisles and be “not in the van” for an hour or so. Kara was doing some solo browsing of her own. It was some private time for both of us—something we need, every now and then, when circumstances (such as rain or other inclement weather) have us cooped up for too long. 

I have this thing for grocery stores. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but they bring me great comfort. And especially stores like the one we were exploring, which was more of a big box store chain, I guess (albeit one I’d never heard of prior to that visit). In addition to food and groceries the place sold just about anything you can imagine—tools, camping supplies, electronics, and best of all, books. In fact, there were at least four aisles of books, including tables where titles were stacked and displayed.

At that point in our #vanlife journey, we hadn’t had much opportunity to visit bookstores, thanks to pandemic restrictions. And this was heartbreaking, because there was a time where I visited bookstores nearly every day of my life, browsing the titles, sitting with a cup of coffee to read or write, soaking in the inspiration and ambience, the sheer psychic energy that comes with being surrounded by the works of other authors. 

I missed it. Sorely. I’m so very grateful to have it back.

In addition to my weird passion for grocery stores, I’m particularly fond of the book sections. This may be due to the fact that I grew up in Wild Peach, Texas, where bookstores were nonexistent, and even public libraries were hard to come by.

It’s not that there weren’t any—Lake Jackson had a Hastings, and there was a wonderful used bookstore called The Book Rack that formed my mental template for used book stores. And in the Brazos Mall there was, of course, a B. Dalton and a Walden Books (God rest their souls). Brazoria, West Columbia, and Sweeny all had public libraries, of course—the closest to where I lived. But all of these options were only available to those who had motorized transport.

if I couldn’t ride my bike to it, then it didn’t exist. And besides, I didn’t have any money.

So the only real exposure I had to books, outside of a school setting, was when we went to the grocery story, or to a Walmart, or even better, when we went to a Sam’s Club. And in these places I would move as quietly and reverently as if I were in church, picking up paperbacks, reading their covers, opening them to read a few pages from the front. Heaven. 

I’d say that a full 90% of the books I owned from the ages of 0 to 16 came from grocery stores. After I got a driver’s license and access to a car, I also gained access to book stores and libraries that were out of bike range. My collection expanded to include things that weren’t necessarily on a bestseller’s list.

But I’ll confess... even then, I still bought a lot of my books from Walmart. Old habits die hard.

I’ve gotten off the path a little here. But the point is, when we were stretching our legs a little in that Meijer’s in Michigan, and when I stumbled onto their fairly impressive book section, it was like traveling back in time. It felt, just a little, like going home again.

The whole van life thing makes owning paperbacks a little impractical. There’s just no space for them. Of course, the RV life in general has this issue. Which is why so many people buy a book, or borrow one from the laundry at an RV park, read it, and then pass it on (such as putting it in the laundry at another RV park). With the rise of Little Neighborhood Libraries, this kind of buy/borrow-read-donate thing is going mainstream. People seem to love donating their books for someone else to enjoy.

Giving away books, though, has always been tough for me. I’m better at it now, but it was rough going for awhile there. Which, I guess, is one reason why reading ebooks has been such a great advance in my life. Not only does it save space while we travel, I can always have a book on hand to read, without having to wait until we can find a place that sells them, and I never have to worry over giving the books away. 

Ebooks have lots of great advantages. I love them.

Still... there really is something magical about holding a paperback in your hands, smelling the pages, seeing your progress as whatever slip of receipt or Post-It Note or candy wrapper you’re using as a bookmark travels from front cover to back cover. 

I love paperbacks, too.

All of these things—feelings and emotions, nostalgia, and the sheer excitement of being in a place that sold books, after most of a year of isolation—all of these things must surely have contributed to me picking up a copy of Camino Island, by John Grisham.

I’ve read Grisham’s work before. Classics, by now. The man is a heavy influence on me as a writer, with books like The Firm and The Pelican Brief and A Time to Kill. I’ve read a lot of his work over the years. But something about Camino Island felt different right from the start. 

For one thing, there’s that cover. It looks like a romance novel, if I’m being honest. Like something Nicholas Sparks would write.  And even though I’m not much of a beach fan, there is something inviting about the scene of a wooden walkway terminating at a line of sand, ocean, and sky. 

But the thing that hooked me was the description, which promised a tale of intrigue regarding a  set of stolen, rare manuscripts that end up in the hands of a bookstore owner who has his fingers on the pulse of publishing. 

The first part of the book is a heist story, which is always appealing. The rest is a hunt for the stolen manuscripts that feels like a spy novel. 

The characters are intriguing and appealing—to the point of having me fantasizing about life as a bookstore owner in the Florida Keys. Bruce Cable, said bookstore owner, isn’t even the primary protagonist of the first novel, and yet his demeanor and style and history make him someone you absolutely want to know. 

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And in the sequel, Camino Winds, Bruce is the primary protagonist, and we get to follow along and know him better, which feels like scratching an itch left by the first book. 

The fact that these books provide a kind of deep dive look into some of the nuances of the traditional publishing world, at least in terms of the authors and the booksellers, makes them all the more appealing to me. It’s a bit like seeing that world from the inside, alongside Grisham himself, in a way that typically feels inaccessible. 

Grisham expresses an unfavorable view of self published authors, in the first novel, but I don’t even mind. I still felt right at home, sitting at the dinner table with Bruce Cable and his eclectic collection of quirky, broken author friends, gossiping and backbiting, teasing each other mercilessly about books past and books not-yet-present.

The plots of these two books are filled with intrigue and danger of the kind one only finds when a great deal of money is involved. And Grisham has managed to weave tales that have so many side paths and turns, you get that “heist story” vibe throughout. Even the more mundane elements of the story feel exotic and enticing. 

I read the first book as a paperback, taking great pleasure in lounging in one of our camp chairs under the awning of our van, as we moved about the country. From lakeside in Holland, Michigan, to the foot of the Black Mountains in South Dakota and the Rockies in Colorado, to the long and mournful plains of Wyoming, and finally back in my home state of Texas (just in time for an historic bout of winter weather), I read and enjoyed Camino Island as a new old favorite. 

And upon finishing that first book, I immediately bought the second book, Camino Winds, this time as an ebook, and read it as the polar vortex swept through Texas, knocking out power and damn near freezing us all to death. 

If I never hear the phrase “unprecedented times” ever again, I will be astonishingly grateful.

Reading a book about the aftermath of a hurricane while bundling up next to a fireplace in a dark room, trying to keep my frozen appendages warm, is kind of head trip. But it did make the book all the more memorable. And again, another “old favorite.”

These books are wonderfully adventurous. And if you happen to be interested in the world of writing and publishing, they’re a playful treat you’re sure to love. 

I’ll be rereading both, in the future, and I look forward to more in the series. 

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Get my newest Quake Runner: Alex Kayne Thriller!

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

Buy on Amazon

I’m currently reading The 48 Laws of Power, and taking my time as I go through it, grabbing quotes and logging them in my “Commonplace Book.” That’s a fancy term for a journal or other collection fo quotes, ideas, excerpts and more that you gather as you move along in the world. I learned about the concept from Ryan Holiday, and though I do mine a little different than he does his, the utility of the thing is still on point. It’s the perfect way to keep research organized so I can go back and use it later.

I’m tempted to gush on and on about my Commonplace Book, but I’ll save that for a future post. The point I was making was that in going through Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, I just read a section about the power of symbols.

Greene’s point was to demonstrate that “symbols are more powerful than words.”

“Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power—everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.”

— Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

Now, I’m going to go on record saying that I’m not always a fan of Greene’s perspective. He’s chosen to focus on the darker side of human nature and psychology, and sees the pursuit of power as necessitating deception and manipulation. I can see his point, but I don’t buy it as the only path to power. 

Greene has been a mentor to Ryan Holiday, who has also studied extensively the lives of the Stoics, and particularly Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome who was known for being empathetic, wise, and virtuous.  Virtue, in fact, is a cornerstone of Stoicism. 

I don’t believe that Marcus Aurelius would have condoned deception and manipulation in the name of power. He may have seen it in use, and may well have recognized its role in the power of many. But his own life showed that power does not need such fuel. You can become powerful without deception and manipulation. You can be virtuously powerful.

My much better and more at-hand example of such power is Christ. 

Regardless of your spiritual alignment or beliefs, Christ as an historical figure was something of an anomaly in the world. If you take his story at simply Earthly face value, he began his life in the single most humble origin I’ve ever seen. Our first encounter with him, his family is essentially homeless and begging for help. Forced to return to a region that was not their home, arriving where there were no accommodations for them, Mary gives brith in a stable, swaddles her child, and lays him in a manger—a trough in which farm animals fed.

Shortly after his birth, the King decrees that all male children must be slaughtered, and so Jesus and his family take refuge in caves, hiding, avoiding the insane hunt ordered by a mad king.

Poverty and adversity—at a level very few others have ever known, and it started from the moment of Jesus’ conception. 

And from those more than humble beginnings, Jesus grew into adulthood, and eventually began teaching in the synagogue. A role no one gave him, but that he assumed for himself. He became a Rabbi, a teacher, through no Earthly authority beyond the fact that he simply took action. 

And from there his influence grew and spread, until he had a team of disciples, and followers by the multiple thousands.

Now, leaving history for a moment (and remember, we’re not even including the supernatural and spiritual aspects of Christ’s origins, though I very strongly and dearly believe in those attributes), let’s look at how the Christ story played out in scripture and then into the world.

The New Testament is absolutely riddled with symbolism. And most of those symbols came down to everyday, common things. 

Think of the fish and the loaves. Christ prayed over these and divided them to feed thousands. Both actually played a recurring role in the Christ story. Jesus first recruited fishermen as disciples, with the phrase, “Come with me and be fishers of men.” Fish—symbol of humanity. Then later, as he fed the 5,000, fish were a symbol of abundance, of miracles, of God’s power. 

Bread not only fed the multitudes, but was an example of the kingdom of God—yeast in bread, indicating that the kingdom was everywhere, permeating all things, and was part of the very nourishment of mankind.

Bread was the tool Christ used to indicate who would betray him, when he told the disciples that the one who would do the deed was the one to dip his bread at the same time as Jesus. Bread was also the center of one of the temptations in the desert, when the devil goaded Jesus into turning stones to bread, so he could eat, and Jesus replied, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.”

Fish. Bread. Wine. Seeds. Vineyards. Trees. Donkeys. There are symbols everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus used symbols and metaphors to reach people with his message, and those symbols were nearly always humble in nature but hinted at a deeper, divine meaning within.

And that was ultimately the core message of Christ’s ministry: That we, humble and common as we might be, could have the kingdom of God within us. Our origins may be mundane, but we can rise to greater glory.

At any time Jesus could have said that plainly, and in some ways he did. But the symbols and metaphors he used made that message more poignant, made it stick more in our brains. It made his message something that endured for two-thousand years.

Another quote from Laws of Power that resonated with me:

“Symbolism appears as a sort of short cut of thought. Instead of looking for the relation between two things by following the hidden detours of their causal connexions, thought makes a leap and discovers their relation not in the connexion of cause and effects, but in a connexion of signification.... Symbolist thought permits an infinity of relations between things.”

— Johan Huizinga

Looping back to the example of Christ, each of the symbols he used had multiple, deeper meanings. That’s what made them so effective.

By nature, a symbol has multiple meanings anyway. First, it is what it is—a fish, a loaf of bread, a bird, a tree, an arrow. But when used as a metaphor for an idea or abstract, it takes on a deeper level of meaning. A rose represents not only beauty, but the fleeting nature of beauty and youth. Fragrant, lovely, fragile, a rose is the perfect symbol of feminine youth, but also of mortality, and we see it as a recurring theme in literature and art throughout history. 

In terms of power, symbols such as eagles, fists, hammers, even wheat have all been used to represent strength and leadership. Flags fill this role as well—how many soldiers have given their lives “in defense of the flag,” when what they really mean is “in defense of everything the flag stands for.” 

The American flag, as one great example, symbolizes abstract concepts such as freedom, liberty, strength in unity. It’s lately come to symbolize other, darker things for some among us, but that demonstrates how human nature, psychology, and culture plays a role in the meaning of symbols. Our relationship with a symbol changes its meaning. 

The Christian church used the symbol of the cross to instantly convey all the teachings of Christ without saying a word. Some institutions, in our history, corrupted that message and meaning, and used it for gaining power over their subjects. Power that was abused in the name of the symbol. As a consequence, there are those in our culture who see the cross as a symbol of hate, instead of love. They see it as symbol of oppression, instead of peace.

That isn’t what it means for me or millions of others worldwide, but to some that’s the only meaning that makes sense, and so the sight of the cross causes a different feeling and emotion for them than it does for me.

The same is true, more recently, for the American flag, and for other symbols of the United States. Some have declared these to be symbols of hate, racism, bigotry, oppression. My take is and will always be that they symbolize peace, unity, equality, and freedom—even if the nation represented by the flag or these other symbols has not lived up to those ideals, the symbols represent what we could be, if not what we are.

Our relationship with a symbol can turn, in other words, and take on new and nuanced meanings, depending on who is using it and what their goals and intentions are. Which further demonstrates the power of symbols. What was once a symbol that unified can become a symbol that divides, and those who know how to leverage and use those symbols can reap great power and control from that transition. 

This is why “symbols are more powerful than words.” They are shortcuts to telling a story, and if you understand how the reader, listener, or viewer is going to respond to a symbol, you can leverage the metaphor and underlying meaning to influence them in whatever direction you need or want. 

It’s kind of fascinating. And kind of inspiring. 

And kind of frightening. 

We should, as a rule, start paying very close attention to the symbols we encounter in our daily lives, and what emotions those symbols evoke. We should learn to question our first reaction to those symbols, to ensure we are not being manipulated in ways we would rather avoid. We should know the story behind the symbol, and we should know whether we agree to that story.

But we should also learn to leverage and use symbols in our own lives. 

The powerful have used symbols to deceive, control, and manipulate, at times. And some have used them to inspire, motivate, and compel. But we are, ultimately, empowered individuals. We should learn to use symbols to shape our own lives, beyond outside influence. We can use symbols to lead ourselves.

An example of this is as simple as carrying an object in your pocket, such as a coin or token, to remind you of your personal values. Wearing a cross or other pendant to remind you of your spirituality. Bearing a tattoo on your arm to remind you of your principles. 

Our personal symbols are meant to remind us of our personal power: The power to choose our response to the world, and to what happens to us.

Go find the symbols that empower you. Question the symbols that are used to influence you. And learn how to use the language of symbols to shape how you think and how you live.

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