Late Saturday night, I finally finished my next book "Against the Deep", and it has been a journey of starts and stops for almost 6 years in arriving. During that time I've been promoted at my day job (where I'm also a writer) umpteen times, moved from Tennessee to New Hampshire, gotten married to my beautiful bride, and almost died at least once.
Against the Deep is the largest work I've yet written, and what made it so much fun to write was the numerous times I would be banging out pages and scenes, only to completely surprise myself with where the story took itself. You might ask, "But Stephen, you're the author, how could the story surprise you? Don't you know how it will all go?" 
A fair question, and the answers to that point is that while I start out with an inspiration that drove me to write the story, it is like I have to make the journey for myself through an unknown land guided only by that creative spark. As the author, I don't always know what characters I will meet along the way, what strange environments I will trek through, or what revelations will visit themselves upon me in the struggle. It's incredibly rewarding, and the value of that journey is why I will always be a writer. Whether it is legal writing, fiction writing, or adventure writing for my Dungeons & Dragons game, I have been hooked on the written word for as long as I can remember, and I never want to beat this addiction.
Thanks for reading.

Stephen

    I was asked by the editor of Knight Templar Magazine to review another book for him, and considering the last one I did for him (just scroll down for that horrific literary experience), I was nervous. The confused description of the book I read on Amazon did not reassure me, either. Read on for what I found when the book came in the mail.

Charlie Chaplin’s Uncle. Okell, Ian. Feedaread.com, 2012. 362 pages. Available on Amazon in book and Kindle formats, for $14.95 and $6.70, respectively, in the US. Click the image to the left to go directly to the Amazon page.

    Reviews of terrible books are sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious events, as the reader has to endure the reviewer’s report of the horrors he experienced at the hands of an incompetent wordsmith. As luck would have it, neither you nor I will have to worry about that this time, though, as Charlie Chaplin’s Uncle is a rollicking good time! The story is set in England in 1892, when railroads ruled the world of industry and were the objects of romance and adventure, and the British Empire stretched around the globe. The main character is a brother Mason, an ex-sailor of the Queen’s Navy, and a train driver by the name of Mr. Fowler, and he is plunged into a rather gripping tale of cloak-and-dagger espionage and royal assassination.

    To be perfectly honest, I had no idea what railroads, Charlie Chaplin, and Freemasonry were doing in the same story. Having finished the book, I can assure you that while there are no indelible links between this story and a real, historical event from Charlie Chaplin’s childhood (he appears in the story as a toddler), it does not matter, because the story and Okell’s ability to turn a phrase and write vivid characters sucks you in and keeps you wondering what will happen next. Okell’s witticisms and biting observations kept me laughing and looking for the next zinger, and the action of the story (and the climbing body count) kept the plot and the pages moving right along.

    The book, though entertaining, is not devoid of short-comings. For instance, the author is not a fan of the rules of punctuation, and this alone keeps the book from achieving a certain level of professional polish. As can also be seen from the eventful, but confusing book description on the back cover, this book really needed a competent editor to clean it up and cut out some of the sections where the book kept going without adding anything to the story. Considering that the publisher is a print-on-demand firm, this bears repeating: if you are going to publish your own books, make EVERY effort to make it the most polished and professional product you can. An independent author wants people to spend their money on their book instead of the mass publishers' products, so give the people a good reason to do so. No matter how highly you think of your English skills, get at least one other person who knows when to use a comma to read it and find the problems you missed, because you will miss plenty. I read and reread the first edition of To Save A Life seven or eight times, and there were still little errors to be found in the text.

    Since I'm already in a full digression, let me advise independent authors and publishers to try this piece of advice: not only get an editor who doesn't speak Twitter hashtag language, but when you think your book is perfect, let it sit for a month. Don't touch it, don't work on it, don't print it and ship it. Forget it exists. Let your mind clear out all the details you thought you had written down and put into your story, and then come back and read it again, this time with fresh eyes. Those spelling errors or your overuse of semi-colons will jump out at you, and you will have a chance to better evaluate whether everything you put into the story works as well as you thought it did, or if there's more work to be done. If after fixing all the little hobgoblins that were hiding in your manuscript, your story brings a big smile to your face when you finish reading it, you will know that this is indeed the story you wanted to tell.

    For these faults, one thing must be kept in mind: the most important thing in telling a story is to tell a good story. While rough around the edges, I would highly recommend Charlie Chaplin’s Uncle for any reader looking for adventure and a good time.

    Just to touch base on the new bookstore distributing Langhorne Creative Group's titles, I could not be more psyched than I am about Logue's Black Raven Emporium deciding to make money and entertain their customers with our books. I spend a lot of time at the Emporium and the Cult Fiction Underground movie theater and lounge beneath it, so I've gotten to know the owners Robert and Robert  pretty well. These are great guys that are putting out a different product than anybody else out there, and they are feeding Nashville's hunger for weird and entertaining, especially my own. On the first day of sale, Memphis Dirty has sold out, so I'm prepping the next supply of that awesome book. Now maybe the book sales there can help pay off the tab I've run up at the bar...

With the coming of New Years, I was faced with the choice of all revelers about to party: what libation will best help me celebrate this moment of national, nay, global joy? Was it a time for beer, the proof to mankind that God loves us? Was it time for wine, such as the traditional champagne to pop in the New Year? Maybe tequila, so we could all have a fistfight and let loose the demons of 2012 before the New Year could come?
Nay, I wanted to get slobber-knockered. The woman and I developed a variation on the traditional Long Island Iced Tea, called the Georgia Tea (you replace the tequila with peach schnapps for the touch of Georgia), which we had previously unleashed on unsuspecting party-goers to their amazement. By amazement, I mean that I heard one reveler say, "Wait, this has alcohol in it?" after starting their sixth cup, and just as their knees began to buckle under its awesome might.
Such was the drink of the evening. If you too would like some, here is the recipe:
One part vodka
One part gin
One part white rum
One part Triple Sec
One part peach schnapps
One and a half part sweet and sour
Coke to taste, to make the drink a brownish tea color and smooth out the sweet and sour
Drink with more care than I did, as I'm on day two of recovery. Enjoy.

    I just got back from a trip I took with the woman to Colorado, to celebrate her X1st birthday (decade obscured to protect my life). We had a blast! We stayed with an Army buddy in Colorado Springs for two days, which included hiking the Garden of the Gods and Seven Falls, brewery visits, and homemade Korean food. While the latter two activities were good on their own, it was in the hiking expeditions that the woman and I (who are no out of shape shlubs ourselves) discovered what a difference 10,000 feet can make on your expectations of whether you'll pass out while going up some stairs or not. The Garden of the Gods was an easy walk and pretty; Seven Falls featured over 200 stairs we had to climb up the side of sheer cliffsides. The best part of that equation (narrow steps + hundreds of feet up) is that I'm also afraid of heights! So while we enjoyed the hiking and the natural beauty of the mountain when we got to the top, we were nervous as can be on the way up and down it.
    We then went up to Denver for two days, primarily to see the rocking Jersey band The Gaslight Anthem (they're like Bruce Springsteen if he rocked more and didn't mumble every lyric) at the Fillmore Theater. We took in the state capitol building (adorned with a 24k gold roof), the Denver Art Museum (adorned with paintings of cowboys), the streets of Denver (adorned with more hobos than I ever imagined could be in one place at a time), and a non-existent "antique district". See, both the official Denver tourist guide and a website dedicated to the antique district said, "That on South Broadway between street number X and X are over 100 antique shops! OMG!" After walking three miles, all we saw were empty warehouses and more hobos. TO HELL WITH YOU DENVER!
    But the concert was excellent, the beer was plentiful, and I got to slap a Romney/Ryan sticker on the back of my die-hard Ron Paul-loving friend's truck! Good times!
    

    As you may already be aware, on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America by Muslims, US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, two Marines, and an embassy staffer were killed by a mob of Muslims in Benghazi, Libya. Ambassador Stevens and his companions were killed by Muslims in a country he had dedicated his life to improving from the dregs of civil war and Moammar Qaddafi's long reign. I assume that Ambassador Stevens was a Democrat, but whatever his party, he was America's ambassador, and I was deeply saddened and angered by the news of what happened to him and those who stood with him at the end. I ask that you reading this join me in praying for them and their families. God bless.
    Fun fact: I was scheduled to take a train ride through Madrid, Spain within hours of the train bombings that killed so many innocent Spaniards, also done by Muslim terrorists.

Recently, there were some people angry that the president of a Christian company might hold Christian views on social issues, and then millions and millions of people bought his chicken sandwiches to show their support for what he believes. The following is a short discourse between two Masters of their respective fields, Arkansas historian Adam Miller (MBA, pictured left; ladies, he is single) and director Stephen Clements (MA Political Science; ladies, he is not) concerning the issue. Enjoy the reality check. If you're easily offended, stop reading. Seriously, we'll probably make you cry.

Adam - Check it - my boss and another employee were bickering about Chick-Fil-A today. Was in and out of the office so I only caught part of the conversation. Apparently panties are in a wad over Chick a flick donating to "hate groups." After trolling thru Google I finally found Schindler's List of said hate groups, so designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Included amongst these were "Focus on the Family," the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Exodus International. Discretion is the better part of valor, so I mentioned only that a real hate group would break windows and drag homosexuals out of their houses during the night, and that a Republican newspaper once called Federalist John Adams "a hermaphrodite," confirmed that that was indeed hate speech, and stated that there's nothing new under the sun, just eat wherever you like. 
    Your thoughts? Concerns? This is the first I've heard of Chick a flick contributions to hate groups. And by hate groups I mean whatever groups were compiled on that list on HuffPo that are decidedly unfabulous enough to deserve their scorn. Saying that the SPLC can go eat a dick is unlikely to sway anyone's opinion, and may seem overly homophobic, thus is detrimental to my argument. I don't recall Focus On The Family recreating Kristallnacht and forcing gays into churches at the point of a gun, either.

Stephen - The SPLC is a front group for socialist, atheist agitators, and I have seen them in action before. If you want to know what side a person with any morals or love of human freedom should support, just join whoever the SPLC is bad-mouthing.
    Your elucidation of what "hate" actually looks like brings an incredibly needed reality check for this topic, because the people accusing CFA of "hate" must have no idea what it really is. I would also add that "not endorsing something" does not equal "hating something", and the slander that these morons cast about like its nothing proves how shallow and desperate they've gotten. Remember, the Democrat party (their federal surrogate) is losing money and power hand over fist, and the people of this country repeatedly reject the endorsement of their defining issue.
    For the people who aren't gay and support gay marriage, I say this: you always laugh at me when I point out that once marriage becomes open for redefinition, there is no logical or legal reason to stop polygamy, marrying animals, or marrying children. So long as "consenting parties" is the operative mechanism, anything an be argued to have the ability to consent. So if you don't want all these groups (who really exist) to be able to marry how they want to, you're now a bigot. Congratulations!
    To the gays who want the right to marry: nobody is denying you the same rights we all have, so shut your cock-holster/clam-shucker. And what does it say about you and your worth as a human being that you define yourself solely by how you like to get off? Shallow and worthless? Maybe so. Get a hobby. And why are you the only group who can't have a parade with clothes on?!

Adam - BTW you needn't even bring animals or children into it - just posit whether it would be acceptable for one consenting adult to marry his/her mother. Or both mothers if they live in Vermont. I sometimes wonder if Alexander the Great would laugh at the attempt to redefine "marriage." 
    BTWBTW I've shucked a few clams in my time, never considered the name. Now it's tattooed in my brain, so thanks for that.

    Yesterday, the woman and I had the pleasure of watching the spectacle that is "The Dark Knight Rises", and I'd give it a solid 8/10 for entertainment value. It was everything I expected out of the dark, violent, and gritty Batman universe that director Christopher Nolan has made, and it delivers solid action all the way through the 2 hours and 40 minutes you spend in a dark room with a bunch of people you don't know watching it. In this review, I will first touch on elements of the movie I found worth talking about, and then I will put the action of the movie in context for how accurately it portrays how revolutions in societies usually work out.
    Regarding the movie simply on its own terms, it was good. I admit that I was nervous about how the director would handle a couple of elements introduced to this movie, the first being the addition of Cat Woman to the cast of characters. In my opinion, the Batman franchise Tim Burton created got worse and worse as the movies progressed, due to the adding and adding of villains to each movie that had conflicting storylines, wasted the audience's time on sloppily slapped-together plots, and the lack of build up needed to establish a villain's credibility. If a villain has no credibility as a genuine threat to the hero, then a story will feel like the conflict is merely a foregone conclusion, and the drama and excitement of the movie will suffer. By necessity, if you have three or four villains running around, none of them will ever get the screen time necessary to build up to the level of making the audience think he might actually defeat the hero, and that just sucks. Fortunately for this movie, the Cat Woman character (she's never actually referred to as Cat Woman in the movie) serves as a complement to the story, not a distraction. The director gives us tastes of her background, and the action she brings to the screen is both excellent and advances the main plot, so we don't have to go on some sob-story diatribe for 30 minutes of the film and lose sight of the real villain in the story. Anne Hathaway does a great job with the role, and I came out glad she was included, so in that instance my apprehension was unwarranted.
    However, the other thing the trailers made me nervous about was how Tom Hardy (who plays the main villain Bane) would be used in the flick, and I'm stunned by some of the performance decisions the director made this excellent and imposing actor do to muck up the character. You may not be familiar with British actor Tom Hardy, but check out him as the lead in "Bronson" and as a supporting actor in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and I'm certain you'll be impressed with his range, his amazing physique, and that gravelly, resonant voice of his. He's also a former male model, so the ladies would have plenty to look at. Well, this movie blows both advantages you get by casting Tom Hardy. First, the director went with the completely face-covering mask Bane used in the comic book, so ladies don't get to enjoy his face, and his ability to convey emotions or, I don't know, act, is limited to whatever he can do with his eyebrows. Second, rather than let him use his regular and compelling voice, I laughed out loud when I heard his voice dub in the movie, which sounds like Sean Connery with a bad microphone in a bathroom. Despite these problems, Bane still comes across as a villain you can take seriously, but I'm mystified by the director's decisions here.
    I also find the movie's depiction of what happens when Bane succeeds in taking over Gotham City with his army of criminals and aggitators to be worth talking about, because it's so accurate as to how revolutions go, throughout history and in the future. This is hardly a spoiler, but for a time, Bane succeeds in taking over Gotham City, destroying the city's political structure, and taking it over with brute force and fear. He promises freedom from the greedy rich and corrupt politicians who oppress the masses, and basically talks like any Communist/Occupy Wall Street/President Obama speach you've ever heard. And what comes to pass once he and his gang of thugs take power has been repeated throughout history (with only one exception): the more affluent are beaten, robbed, and killed; objects of art and beauty are destroyed forever; any semblance of order is maintained through violence; starvation becomes common; show trials for the regime's enemies are put on in order to provide entertainment for the people; life becomes nasty, brutish, and short.
    This was the case with the French Revolution, when anarchists brought down the gilded Bourbon monarchy and plunged their country into the Reign of Terror, where priests, non-aligned academics, people the mob didn't like (almost all of France's leadership), and countless more were massacred for the sake of "justice". The Communists in Russia overthrew the 1,000 year reign of the Tsar and his nobles, heirs to the Roman Empire, and their great plan for "social justice" led to the death of around 60,000,000 of their own people. Let me repeat that: the Communists' "great society" led to the death of SIXTY MILLION of their own people, innocent, allied, enemy, what have you. Not to be outdone, the Chinese mass-murderer Mao was responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000 Chinese. 
    And what did these social revolutions against rich people and corrupt politicians make of their newly "liberated" countries? France was taken over by Napolean, the tyrant par excelence, who plunged the world into war. The Communists in Russia produced Stalin, who starved to death millions of his own people and launched a bid for global empire that brought war to every corner of the globe. To be fair to Mao, he mostly kept busy by executing every Christian, non-Communist, Nationalist, and others he could find to launch global wars, but he did contribute mightily to making the world a more dangerous and tyrannical place. Each of these men came to power through violence and maintained power through conducting terrorism against their own people, just as Bane does in the movie. 
    On an aesthetic level, as in the movie, these regimes also sought to destroy the trappings of the old class and all the art they created, so countless, priceless works of human beauty and genius are forever lost to their hunger. These artifacts were judged to be a representation of the old oppressors and had to go, but the style of art typical of the Communist, fascist, and anarchist societies that emerged is known as "brutalism", which replaces grace and beauty with an emphasis on bulk, strength, and ugliness. The human spirit is brought down from the sunlit sky to a brooding, soul-crushing, painful reality by these regimes.
    So what was that exception to the rule of how revolutions go that I mentioned? The American Revolution alone did not produce the mass blood-lettings and destruction of humanity and art that almost all later revolutions would. Why not? The difference is in the character of the revolutionaries themselves: the anarchists/Communists/hate-mongers want to murder a named enemy group, meaning that all their power would be based on bloodshed; the American revolutionaries objected to a way of political governance and sought to make a country based on ordered, civil liberty. Since there will always be people aggitating for this political side or the other, I urge you to pay attention to how they speak of their grand ideas: do they speak in favor of a better and more productive union, or do they say that this group or that group is the root of all evil and it's time for them to pay? You now know the directions each road to revolution will take you. Choose wisely.