It has been one hell of a month.  I’ve been back from our NTC rotation for about ten days now and I’m settling back into routines at home and work.  I intend to write, both privately and professionally, about my experience at Fort Irwin, but I’m still collecting my thoughts on that whole mess, so I’ll summarize by saying; 1 day of fun 28 days of absolute, mind numbing idiocy.  I love my command, I love the field, but I hate NTC with the fire of a thousand burning suns.

But enough of the negative waves, man.  I’ve been having a blast settling back in with Michele and our girls.  Thanksgiving weekend was a much-needed and appreciated break, though it went by in a blur. I seem to remember it was mostly fun.  Since my friend, Eric wasn’t going home for Turkey Day and his girlfriend is currently holding down a post deep inside enemy territory (somewhere in the vicinity of Boston, People’s Republic of Massachusetts, exact location classified), we had him over for dinner with us.  We are such nerds that after the obligatory stuffing of the faces (Michele did a fantastic job with the chow this year, don’t worry all you 21st Century enlightened types, I did help, but Michele was the mastermind) we (the three adults) played Settlers of Catan, talked about religion, politics and movies and (after the kids went to bed) watched BSG: Blood and Chrome and Caprica.  Have I mentioned lately that the new Galactica universe is, in my not so humble opinion, some of the best science fiction ever filmed?  Well, it is.  I mean, okay, they botched the series finale of BSG pretty badly, but the first two seasons were sheer genius and the third and fourth seasons had moments that eclipsed even the awesomeness of the first two seasons, though they also had doldrums to rival the made-for-TV Babylon 5 movie Legend of the Rangers.

Anyway, even though it’s a little late, I figured I’d publish the top ten things I’m grateful for with a self-indulgent explanation for each.  Attend:

1)      God and all His Works.  Okay, I know this post is technically over since this bullet can cover everything that follows, but it is the first and foremost thing for which I’m grateful.  As painful, sometimes horrific, as existence is; I’m grateful for it.  I’m grateful to experience and think and feel my way through life in this limited, carbon-based bipedal body.  Thanks, God.


2)      Michele.  I could write about my wife every minute until my dying breath and it wouldn’t capture how deeply I love her or how much I’ve come to rely on her.  She’s put up with every quirk and neuroses in my considerable repertoire, changed the bandages on my wounds (this is not a euphemism, my wife has literally changed bandages on wounds I sustained in combat) and borne two wonderful children to us (without a drop of anesthesia)- and that’s the three second highlight reel.  Beneath the self-deprecating attitude, the manic perfectionism and the meticulous decency with which my wife goes through life is a soul forged of high-carbon steel.  She would have made a fine Roman matron or Spartan queen.  I’ve admired few people the way I admire my wife, quite aside from the fact that she owns my affections.  We have our challenges, like any marriage, but in seven years I’ve never for an instant regretted asking Michele to marry me.  Convincing Michele Glosup to become Michele Watson was the smartest thing I’ve done in my entire life.


3)      Evelyn and Maeve.  Along with Michele, our children make up my whole world.  Being a parent is the hardest, scariest, most stressful job in the world.  Appropriately, it is also the most rewarding.  Every day I’m here, well almost every day, I get to see two amazing little people growing and learning, seeing fully formed personalities develop from habits and quirks, and having them look to us to arbitrate their whole worlds.  It’s humbling and wonderful to have to explain the most awkward questions to your four year old daughter- and enlightening!  Your children will ask you questions you haven’t figured out yet as soon as they can talk.  Having kids is (or should be) more impetus to be a better person so that when they’re old enough to realize you’re another human being the same as them, your life is still one they can admire, your memory a legacy worth keeping.


4)      Mom and Dad.  Last sentence of bullet #3?  Totally my parents.  They busted their asses raising my brother and me, and were each admirable as individuals despite having their fair share of flaws.  Those are quite literally gifts that keep on giving, because I see so many people in this world, from angry teenagers to disenchanted middle aged officers and NCOs, hurting deeply for lack of them.


5)      Being Born a Middle Class American in the Late 20th Century.  Look, we’re going through a rough patch (though I think our grandparents might laugh at that claim), but the fact is being a middle class American in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is hitting the freaking jackpot.  We enjoy liberty, security and, yes, comforts and luxuries that only the very uppermost echelons of the socioeconomic stratosphere would’ve known in centuries past.  I live in constant fear that we are sacrificing the first two for the sake of the second two, but that’s a subject for another post.


6)      The United States Army.  I’ve said before that it’s lucky that I have a country I can serve in good conscience, because I might be a soldier regardless.  I bitch, a LOT, about the bad aspects of the Army.  In part that’s because I’m like anyone else and I’m not immune to feeling sorry for myself.  In larger part, it’s because I am constantly and genuinely incensed when the realistic necessities of forging an effective combat unit are eschewed in favor of some politically correct nonsense being pushed on us by the powers that be- often flying under the false flag of “taking care of the Soldier.”  I can’t even mention an example here because it will derail the post into a rant, but what I’m getting at is:  A lot more of my stress comes from my professional life than my personal one.  Yet being an officer in the United States Army is still at the core of my identity.   

There is straight-up magic in being a part of a good unit.  It is perpetually hard to describe the experience, just as it is hard to describe anything based on the spiritual-emotional aspects of life. 

There are men to whom I owe my life.  Even amongst those I didn’t like all that much, and who weren’t overly fond of me, it was and is understood that we would risk our lives to protect each other and accomplish our mission.  There are exceptions.  We have a few cowards and far too many fools in uniform, but even in this dark age of namby-pamby idiocy, they are still the minority.  There are still thousands of damn fine men and women out here fighting for a country that pays lip service to them on July 4th and November 11th and would rather forget that there’s a war on the rest of the time.    


7)      Friends, Comrades and Mentors.  The protagonist of my favorite book says in the second to last chapter of the novel, “my luck has always been people.”  To name a few, not to the disparagement of those unnamed; my big brother James, Jason Taylor and Wayne Hall, who literally saved my life on a really bad day in Iraq, LTC Latham, who took me under his wing from the inauspicious beginnings of a remedial English class (long story), Stacy, who is the closest thing I have to a big sister, Jake and Joe, who have been like brothers to me since the sixth grade, Tucker, who lived with me for two years and still managed to be one of my best friends, a feat matched by only one other person so far (and she volunteered for the job, he didn’t!), Eric, who is one of the most committed fighters I know in the long struggle we wage between civilization and barbarism,  Kellen and Julia who are the best friends Michele and I could ever ask for, Sam, Bethany and (again) Stacy, for reminding me that however insoluble our political differences seem, there are good people and patriots on both sides of the aisle.  Finally, but by no means least; Douglass Dicenzo, Robert Blair, Christopher Swanson, Jeffery Loa, Carl Eason, Derek Hines, and James Puckett.  We will never forget.  


8)      Books.  Author Jo Walton (whom, I’ve admittedly not read yet) said in an interview, “if you love books enough, they will love you back.”  Stories have power, in my case, the power to maintain, arguably, to restore sanity.  Fiction, like acting, isn’t about telling a convincing lie, it’s about using an art form to entertain and to tell something true, if not factual.  Before I believed in God, my father read to me from Heinlein and I knew how a man should act.  When I was turning the corner into puberty I read Herbert’s Dune books- I memorized the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (it’s still useful) and I learned from Duke Leto that the only coin which can buy loyalty is loyalty.  More recently, I read as JK Rowling proclaimed to the children of the world in the seven bestselling novels EVER that dying a hero is better than living as a coward (and what’s your message, Stephanie Meyer? Oh, yeah, you want your shiny vampire boyfriend, you make me sick).  I read Tom Kratman’s barely disguised and scathing critique of our political and military institutions and felt kinship born of frustrated devotion to duty.  

I’ve long since lost count of the number of Truths I learned from books and have since verified in real life.  If you don’t read, I recommend you take it up, there’s no limits to what you can experience and learn with literacy and an imagination.  


9)      Art and Science in General.  The fruits of humanity’s hearts and minds may be like crayon scribbles when you compare them to the raw majesty and terror of the universe itself, but look at how far we’ve come!  From little more than exceptionally clever primates 12,000 years ago (any time before the invention of the written word is a dark age to me, see above) to a space faring civilization today.  Do you know how short a period of time that is?  Earth herself is about four billion (that’s 4,000,000,000) years old and the universe several billion years older than that.  Imagine what we will accomplish if we don’t kill ourselves and a meteor doesn’t paste us before we can get all of our eggs out of this basket.  We are all the inheritors of Socrates and Leonidas, Leonardo and Locke, Christ and Buddha.  We are heirs to millennia of creativity struggling against the dark tide of barbarism that always threatens to drag us under.  


10)   Beer.  Come on, you saw this one coming.  Chimay, Duvel, Franzikaner, Paulaner, Blue Moon, Shock Top, Yuengling, Sam Adams, Modello Negro, Dos Equis and Killian’s Irish Red- I love it all!.  As a great man once said, “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

WADD/Straw Poll 10:43 PM

Best intentions to the contrary, I've had a hell of a time getting any writing done. It's easy to blame it all on being a battery commander. The new job is, admittedly, not conducive to writing... or sleeping... or doing anything other than BEING a battery commander. (Sidebar: this is not a complaint, I freaking love being a commander, and I have an excellent collection of men, NCOs, and officers under my command, this is unquestionably the peak of my career). That's not all, or even most of it, though.

While I don't think I've ever struggled with writer's block, I have an affliction that impairs my output nonetheless. I have Writer's Attention Deficit Disorder. Seriously, I don't think there's been a time since I was fourteen years old (I'm three months away from thirty now) that I haven't had at least three ideas for novels, hell, for full on epic sagas, running around in my head. To date, I've completed precisely zero first drafts. I usually get somewhere between ten and twenty thousand words into a story and then- I go to the field, or I go to Iraq or Afghanistan, or I watch Lord of the Rings and decide I should be writing an epic fantasy instead of a alternate history, or watch Battlestar Galactica and decide that military science fiction is my first love and I should be writing about powered armor and spaceships not magic. Oh, I'm also in the Army, so, yeah, write whatcha know and all that. Then, for good measure, I'll read The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and decide I want to do some multi-verse hopping brain trip through the World-as-Myth.  I can't stay on one project to save my life and once I come back to an old one, I usually discover I hate everything I've written and need to start over from scratch.

This is all the more frustrating since I've probably got several hundred thousand more words to go before I can start reliably producing solid prose. I'm not sure if all the false starts count or if the word count only locks in once you've got a full manuscript.

For grins I've decided to throw up synopses of all the crap running around my head and see what ya'll think. What follows is a working title and brief description of each story idea I have pounding on the inside of my skull, what I'd like from anyone caring to comment is which ones you might be persuaded to pay money to read and which ones leave you cold from get go. If anyone wants to take the time to rank order with commentary, I'd offer my sincere gratitude and throw in an autograph on the first novel I get published some day (caveat: don't hold your breath, it may be awhile). I'm not promising to order my schedule by the results of the poll, but you'll still be helping me out by assuaging my curiosity.

Here goes:

#1: The Reliquary Wars (Science Fiction): Several thousand years into the future, a colony world that has long lost contact with Earth and degenerated into a pre industrial state of existence is climbing its way back towards modernity. Perhaps the most important resource on the world is the knowledge found amongst the ruins of the original colony settlements which were founded with the full advantage of advanced technology. With nation-states now having worked their way back up to the computer age, the books, databases and artifacts found in the ancient ruins confer large advantages to the parties that can find them first. The use of these “cheats” has advanced technology far faster in relation to the social and political institutions of the various civilizations of the new world than what occurred in our own history. As a result, nations still practicing feudalism are equipped with technology roughly equivalent to our own. Monarchs, feudal lords, shamans and chieftains face the daily question of how to maintain control of their subjects while simultaneously creating effective work and military forces in an environment which requires a large number of skilled workers, researchers and soldiers rather than ignorant agrarian surfs, superstitious mobs and spear fodder. Into this world walks Nathan Day, scion of the middle class which has sprung into existence relatively overnight. Conscripted into a war over a newly discovered ruin, Nathan's service will propel him to the royal court of the world's most powerful Empire where he will be instrumental not only in winning battles and campaigns but in shepherding his society and the world through the technological and social changes that threaten to tear it apart.

#2: Lords of Contagion (SciFi, Zombie Apocalypse, Post-Post Apocalyptic): The brilliant and sociopathic Dr. George Rome uses RNA resequencing to create the rage virus long envisioned by authors of many zombie apocalypse stories. Only the brilliant efforts of nano biologist Erica Hernandez allows the survival of the human race. She creates nanite antibodies which are infectious, just as the virus itself is. Unfortunately, Rome's virus mutates at an accelerated rate, requiring the remaining human population to conduct periodic anti-virus updates to ensure they don't fall prey to newer versions of the rage virus. Fast forward three generations, those organizations capable of reproducing Hernandez's anti-viral nanites have evolved into the real powers of the world. The human population, now at less than one hundred million world wide, has stabilized and even started to rebound, but the savages afflicted by Rome's Virus are showing disturbing signs of intelligence, applying tactics where before they had been mindless ravenous beasts, and, even more disturbingly, evidently gaining the ability to reproduce sexually (don't think too hard about it in a graphic sense) rather than solely through infection. As if this were not bad enough, the factions dividing the American continent; the Washington Remnant, the Mormon Free State, the San Joaquin People's Republic and the Great Lakes Confederation have allowed their relative success at beating back the zombie hordes to foster complacency and even rivalry amongst themselves. The situations is now a powder keg, with the remaining human population eyeing each other suspiciously and ignoring the obvious warning signs from the afflicted. A few clear thinking individuals work to preserve the human race regardless of factional lines, but the polities controlling the antivirals have established the tightest control on their citizenries since the fall of the Soviet Union, and they have no intention of relinquishing that control, even in the face of possible extinction.

#3: System Patrol (Science Fiction, Young Adult): One hundred years into the future, governments and corporations have finally begun to fully exploit the resources of the solar system in the form of asteroid mining, solar relay stations and extensive zero-gee manufacturing, agriculture and research. Shortly following the creation of wealth come those who wish to take it by force rather than develop it honestly. The first space war ends in 2115 with ad hoc forces facing one another in orbit around Mars, mineral rich asteroids and Earth itself. Countries scramble to create viable space forces to protect their offworld interests. Twenty years after the end of the first war, the space powers have managed to avoid the outbreak of another general war, but corporate and covert privateering is commonplace, as is Cold War style brinksmanship between the great powers. We join the class of 2139 of the Western Coalition Space Academy as they come of age personally and come to understand the ambiguities of the solar system in which they will serve. I'll admit this one is heavily inspired by Heinlein's Space Cadet, but with less of a globalist view of the universe. I'm a nationalist who is extremely skeptical of the value of the United Nations. I can believe in strong alliances of countries with aligned interests and values but I do not consider a one-world (or one solar system) government desirable, nor achievable short of massive and multiple genocides.

#4: The Throne of Albion (Fantasy, Alternate Universe): It is the early 19^th century, by subversion or conquest, the whole of Europa has has fallen under the sway of the Marquin dynasty. Only Albion, a land in which industrial advancement and sorcerous knowledge are both at their peak, has successfully resisted the conquest of the Marquins, but the noose is tightening. In an attempt to maintain a modicum of independence while assuaging the Marquins, King Alfred II of Albion agrees to marry Alecta, a powerful sorceress in her own right and youngest daughter of the Marquins. For some years his strategy works, but eventually his bride of convenience sows insurrection and discord amongst his kingdom and finally kills him. Now the King's illegitimate daughter Miriam finds herself on the run with only an apprentice wizard and a smith's son to guard her. To find aid for the loyalist forces of Albion, she must cross the channel to Eire and treat with the querulous Gael tribes and Fae courts that have long eschewed contact with the rapidly industrializing world of man, then return to Albion to oust the assassin queen from the throne.

I have a couple more, but these are the ones that keep me awake at night right now. All opinions are welcome, though I understand if science fiction and fantasy are not your cup of tea, none of these may sound appealing to you.