Having a ball at New Year’s time

PANAMA CITY BEACH — There was a span of time during which we ushered in each new year with fireworks and a house full of kids. The open house reverberated inside and out, a statement to the energy and optimism of youth — as well as the influence of junk food, parlor games and comedy films.

New Year’s Eve has been quieter in recent years, a statement to the truism of the empty nest (though ours is not quite empty yet). Life goes on, kids grow up, and friends move in different directions — sometimes to far-flung cities, where they create their own annual traditions.

In anticipation of another quiet New Year’s Eve, and recognizing our lack of available fireworks, we have talked about going out to the Pier Park celebration this year, which would be our first visit to that particular madding crowd.

(Note that this was written a couple of days before the event, though it publishes a couple of days after it. Maybe you saw us there. Maybe we didn’t make it. If we did, I’ll let you know about it next week.)

It’s the sixth time Pier Park has held a New Year’s Eve event, and this year the fireworks will illuminate a second phase of the mall’s development, rising in a skeleton of steel on the north shoulder of U.S. 98. By this time next year, that part of Panama City Beach will be twice as bustling as it is today.

Little wonder that it looks like the city’s growing up, too, according to a friend who grew up here but recently moved to the Northwest. The old “tourist traps” have been replaced by an upside-down amusement center and a “beached” ocean liner, and the strip plazas by an open-air mall that is expanding even as we speak.

At least the beach is still accessible — and with the sunny weather we’ve had recently, it has been welcoming. I’ve seen people walking the shore, para-surfing and more.

Sunday, I was setting up a smoker grill in my front yard as out-of-state neighbors visiting for the holiday walked their pooch. I asked how their Christmas was, and they threw their hands in the air to indicate the blue sky and warm sunshine.

“It’s 20 degrees back home,” one of them said, and that was answer enough.

I suggested that, if they really wanted to make the folks back home jealous, they could always go to the beach and make sand angels — that’s what my daughter wanted to do on Christmas day.

I reflected then that we are ending 2013 with more sunny days than rainy ones, more grins than tears. We have made new friends, begun new traditions (and carried on a few of the old ones). I hope that, for each of us, the new year brings more of the same, as well as plenty of pleasant surprises.

Happy New Year!

Share Your Thoughts:

What are your hopes and aspirations for 2014? What memories of 2013 will you carry like treasures into the new year and beyond?

'Dragon Rising' is coming tomorrow!

My latest novel is "Dragon Rising," Book One of The Shadow War. It will release on Kindle and in print via CreateSpace on New Year's Day (if all goes according to plan). Expect links and whatnot as soon as it is live and ready to order.

Here is the unfinished artwork/cover design from artist and graphic wiz Jayson Kretzer:

You'll get to see the finished version tomorrow, and I'll also be writing about the story behind the story for tomorrow's launch, so don't miss out.
Peace.

Another year of fire and ice

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Every year, it’s the same thing: Columnists and commentators, fashionistas and critics, all spend the last days of December looking back at the year that was and trying to prognosticate about the year that’s yet to be.

That is, trying to make sense of events they didn’t understand and extrapolating from that place of ignorance about a future that they can’t imagine.

And by “they” I mean “me,” of course.

On a recent Sunday, I was walking in my neighborhood and thinking about a new year’s approach as the sun set and the temperature dropped. I considered the possibility that I might freeze to death before rounding the next corner, when I saw the sky erupt in red-orange flame. It was a gorgeous sunset, one that made me stop short and hug myself against the cold wind so I could soak it in.

A moment later, I remembered I could photograph it with my cell phone and carry it with me wherever I went, a sunset frozen in time. In the act of freezing that moment, I recalled Robert Frost’s poem about the ways the world might end. “Fire and Ice.”

The end of the world has been a long time coming, at least according to the seers, prophets and prognosticators that get the most press. In the old days, we had to worry about angry gods fighting their last war here, or wiping the planet clean so they could start over with a more agreeable population of worshipers.

These days, we’re able to do the job ourselves, either from pollution, climate change, nuclear war or engineered viruses. And now that our orbiting telescopes can spot massive asteroids zooming through the celestial neighborhood, we have a whole new set of fears to ponder.

I like to think that we’ve begun taking steps to ensure that this civilization of ours, and the species that created it, will continue. We’ve sent probes beyond the edge of our solar system, and the radio (and later, television) signals created here are now floating a century’s worth of light-years away.

Drops in a bucket, yes, but enough drops will get you a bucket full.

Along that line of thought: One of the films I’m looking forward to in 2014 is “Interstellar,” from director and co-writer Christopher Nolan. Set in modern times, it follows the discovery of a wormhole in space that allows astronauts to travel interstellar distances. As usual with Nolan’s projects, little is being said about it this early on, but the teaser trailer evokes the last century of advancement, from Chuck Yeager to Neil Armstrong — to the retirement of the Space Shuttle program signaling an end to manned space flight.

Having pressed into that unknown frontier, we draw back into our caves to see what the gods might throw at us from on high.

And that reminds me of a statement by one of my favorite writers, Warren Ellis, in an essay for Wired magazine. He wrote that the “single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a (stupid) way to run a species.”

On the slightest of provocations, my mind goes a-roving. I see a sky alight with sun-fire on a cold evening and imagine a future in which we never stepped back from the frontier, in which the future is an unending quest to know and to be more.

Some say the world will end in fire. Looking to a new year dawning, I prefer to believe it won’t end at all.

Peace.

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(My column for this week on PanamaCity.com and in The News Herald.)

A New Old Story Comes Back to Haunt the Living

When I was 14, I started writing a story, like many back then, that was little more than a bald reworking of comicbook ideas. The main character was named Magus, and he was my version of Doctor Strange, the mighty Marvel Comics master of the mystic arts.

The work evolved over time. I became less interested in writing about Magus and more interested in writing about a young man (Tom Caliban) who worked at a hospital in the small town of Junction, Ala., and whose life got mixed up in horror from beyond this realm. I was 16 or 17 by now, and I was working as an orderly at Century Memorial Hospital.  But no doubt about it, this time I was also under the influence of a horror film called The Manitou, which takes place in a hospital.


Awesome, right? I saw this edited for TV and thought, "I can do that."

But that didn't quite work, either. By the time I was 18, it was time to try again. I was really into H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard at the time, and I was attending Pensacola Junior College and hanging out, when I could, at used book stores, searching the stacks for treasures. I was also into Native American history (which resulted in my first serialized fiction appearing in the PJC paper). I began to incorporate the old book store ideas and ancient grimoires of magic, like the Necronomicon, into the storyline, along with Indian legends, serial killings, and an old wizard called Magus.Various iterations of that held on for several years, as I moved from school to school, eventually married and started jobs, had kids, and entered a career.

In 1992-93, I got serious about the story again and wrote a complete novel. I asked a few people to read it, including Lynn Wallace and Carole Lapensohn, both of whom I was at the time participating with in a novel writing workshop. While they had some positive things to say, I kind of got the feeling it wasn't their cup of bubbling potion. An editor at my day-job asked to see the book, read it and liked it (although he also said it made him see me in a different light), and forwarded it to a friend of his that was starting a literary agency. The guy didn't like it. At all. Said it was too mixed up (the narrative was non-linear as characters became immersed in each other's memories).

I did a rewrite that brought it into a more linear configuration, but the guy wasn't interested in reading it again. I put it away.

Over the years, I have revisited the characters in the book. I wrote a novella about Magus that tells of one of his early adventures and how he met his wife. I wrote most of a sequel featuring an old Caliban faced with destroying his world in order to save other worlds. I wrote most of another sequel I pitched to an agent at a writers conference as "Constantine meets Payback set in the Big Easy." (I really liked this one, but couldn't make it stand alone without first telling — i.e., publishing — the earlier stories.) I wrote part of another story about one of Caliban's distant cousins set in the Civil War, and part of yet another story that brought the two together to fight the progenitor of all vampires (this would have been the second in the Caliban series, as he comes under the tutelage of Magus).

And I put them all away and chased other rabbits for a while. I wrote most of a zombie novel. I wrote and published two very different novels, two short story collections, many short stories in anthologies here and there, made some videos, wrote lots of things that few (or none) have ever read, painted some pictures. Lived a life like I never expected. Laughed some and cried some. Kept writing into the night and kept getting up in the mornings. Breathing.

And this month, I have returned to revisit Tom and Magus, and the changeling and the soul eater. I have set myself a goal of finishing a rewrite on this book for once and all, and sending it into the world while I follow up with Tom's further adventures as if they too might have some kind of future in print.

I know his stories, as he's told them all to me as each of us have grown up. He's been through some shit over the years, let me tell you.

I hope you will — let me tell you, that is.

Peace.

Hearing the hush of a new year dawning

PANAMA CITY BEACH — There were no parties for us on New Year’s Eve. No hats or noise-makers. No champagne in plastic flutes.

Instead, after a day at our jobs, we worked on settling into our new home. Unpacking boxes. Rearranging furniture. Mounting bookshelves to walls. Unpacking more boxes.

In the late afternoon, I pulled weeds from the yard and trimmed hedges (until I cut my extension cord with the trimmer, resulting in an unexpected bit of fireworks). In the evening, we took the family to a local restaurant, stopped by a bookstore, then back home to watch a movie.

Not the most exciting of itineraries, granted. We talked about heading to Pier Park for the big event, but hadn’t the energy remaining. At least we were all together.

We saw a fox loitering near the treeline when we returned home. Our headlights spooked it, and it disappeared silently into the night. Since moving in, we had seen deer and ’possums in the neighborhood; they were to be expected. But it was a nice surprise to glimpse the fox.

I thought about the stories of Native American tribes that believed foxes had healing powers — or like Prometheus, had given humans fire.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that, at midnight, we stood on the front balcony of the house and took in the spectacle of fireworks visible through the treetops to the southeast. Schooners, I suggested, though it might have originated someplace else entirely. Perhaps the fox was celebrating, setting fire to the sky.

The haze of clouds overhead glowed red, and rumbles like thunder rolled over us, frightening our dogs. Someone at a nearby house, invisible behind the treeline, launched sparkling rockets as well.

At last, the haze broke and bright stars glimmered. I hoped it was an omen of clarity and promise in the new year; that, like the fox, it foreshadowed an awakening.

Before bedding down, I took the dogs for a walk and looked for shooting stars and wild animals, but all the starbursts seen that night were man-made and already had ended, and all the wild animals had gone elsewhere.

New Year’s morning, the work again awaited us. Laundry and dishes to do. Sweeping up. Cutting a pet door. Errands to run, groceries to purchase. More boxes to unpack.

But there was a quiet in the atmosphere, as if the fireworks of the night before had burned all the energy from the world. The air felt close, like a hug, like a friendly reminder to slow down.

During a morning walk, hearing the waters of St. Andrew Bay churning just down the hill and through the woods — it seemed to be whispering, “Hush.”

It’s a new year. Take a moment to listen.

Peace.