Posts made in November 25th, 2011

• Thanks for the Readers

  Giving Thanks

  If I started thanking all the people I owe thanks to, I could be here the rest of the day and y’all would stop reading around about page sixty-zillion, if not before.

  So I want to instead write briefly about how much I appreciate the readers in my life.

  In that, I don’t just mean just the people who read what I write now — who, yes, I am very thankful for. So, yeah, thanks to all of you who take a moment to read these ramblings, or my ramblings elsewhere, or my books.

  But in the U.S., it’s the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving week is a time that’s usually about family for those of us lucky enough to have family (which, incidentally, I like to remember that plenty of people don’t). So I’m going to take a moment to be thankful for the readers in my family who taught me, early in life, to love reading — by doing it themselves. (more…)

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• The Book that Nearly Killed Me

  Giving Thanks

  On May 15th, 2006 I was about 3/4 of the way through writing a book called God’s War. I was drinking a lot of whiskey and writing a lot of disjointed dialogue and fight scenes. I was also slowly dying of an immune disorder, and didn’t even know it. All I knew was that for the first time in my life, I could eat whatever I wanted and continue to lose weight… despite the fact that I was becoming physically weaker day by day.

  People are always asking writers where ideas come from. Though there are all sorts of influences that went into the creation of the Bel Dame Apocrypha, it’s worth pointing out how much of my experience during the year I was dying and the subsequent stay in the ICU – with its syringe-carrying nurses, hourly bloodletting, complete dependence on strangers, memories of fragmented consciousness, and the thin bearded Indian doctor who attended me post-ICU, went into a lot of the key scenes in these books.

  It’s also an interesting example of how some of the worst experiences of your life can turn out to be some of the best… if you just know how to apply them.

  Here’s what I wrote about that experience on May 20, 2006 just a day after getting out of the hospital: (more…)

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